Houston County Lake

Crockett, Texas

Sunny Saturday

Not hot but very pleasant

Chincoteague Island

So how many of you (mostly the 20-40 age crowd) remember one of your parents reading to you the children’s book “Misty of Chincoteague”?  Cathryn recalls reading it to our kids and loving it herself, a story about the wild ponies on the island of Chincoteague, a true story. 

So today we went to the Island of Chincoteague and saw the wild ponies,most of which are pintos. There are numerous legends about how these 2 herds came to be here, but the most enduring is of a Spanish ship wrecked on the shores in the 1700s, and these are the descendants of the horses which succeeded in swimming to shore. Whatever the truth, these herds survive in the (mostly) wild today and remain beloved by the surrounding communities. 

The Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge is beautiful, is a birder’s paradise, and today was sunny, calm and mild (mid 60s). We had a late lunch of delicious crab cake sandwiches at a waterfront spot in Onancock where we’re also staying tonight. It’s a small, neat and tidy town on the western shore of the DelMarVa peninsula, the Chesapeake Bay side. The peninsula is mostly inhabited by farmers and “men of the sea”, fishermen, crabbers and oyster men. Lovely and bucolic.

No Clay Feet In Virginia

We spent yesterday morning touring Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson,  author of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Freedom of Religion in Virginia, and the co-founder of the University of Virginia. These are the three things by which he asked to be remembered.  He was  also, of course, our third president.  A great man and the creator of a beautiful home and grounds in Monticello.

Bob had just finished reading the very insightful book “The Hemmingses of Monticello” about a family of slaves who spent several generations serving the Jefferson family.  The tour of Monticello left the Hemminges largely out of the story. It wasn’t until the very end when the guide mentioned that most people now believe Jefferson fathered 4 children with Sally Hemmings with whom he lived  for 40 years, four times as long as with his wife Martha who figured more prominently on the tour.

Nor was it explained that Monticello was built and supported by almost 200 slaves, only a few of which received any wages beyond the most basic shelter, clothing and food.  The fact that the entire plantation culture that made Jefferson's life possible was based on this institution was left out of the story almost entirely.

Jefferson was a great man who accomplished many critically important things during his life, but his feet of clay were equally as important to understanding the man and his times. We also noted the same lack of telling the full story at Williamsburg the day before.  It’s disappointing that these two historic sites leave so much out of the story they tell.

The picture below is of a group of Sally Hemmings’ descendants gathered at Monticello.

Monticello VA

Latitude:38.005
Longitude:-78.45242
GPS location Date/Time:05/11/2011 08:36:39 PDT

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A Fitting Beginning

We flew from Seattle to New York City (JFK), then to Norfolk, Virginia, which had us flying down the east coast, site of part of our future Great Loop adventure.

Oh, that’s right – we haven’t confirmed on this blog our plans for a next Great Adventure!  Four years ago Cathryn made friends via the internet with a man named Mark – long story how this came about, so we’ll save it for later when we actually meet him, which hasn’t happened yet.  Suffice it to say that Mark dreams of someday doing The Great Loop, a 6,000-mile loop journey by boat, covering the eastern Atlantic, northern Great Lakes, midwest rivers and the Gulf of Mexico. His passion for the idea and our subsequent research inspired us to do it. We currently think we’ll start this journey sometime in 2012 on a boat yet to be purchased, somewhere along The Great Loop route (Google it if you’ve never heard of it; until Mark mentioned it and got us all enthused, we’d never heard of it either). 

So . . . now we’re on our way to a Great Loop Rendezvous, a 4-day seminar conducted by America’s Great Loop Association, and which includes people currently doing The Loop (by boat), and those planning to do The Loop in the future, like us.  We’ll stay at a hotel in Norfolk, Virginia, next door to a  marina where folks currently underway will stay on their boats and offer boat tours to those of us considering buying “the perfect Great Loop boat”. 

So flying south from New York City to Norfolk, we spent an hour over the east coast, including Delaware Sound and Chesapeake Bay, two bodies of water we’ll navigate when we actually do The Great Loop, as well as a lot of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.  It was a beautiful, sunny, blue sky day, and the waters (seen from 16,000 feet in the sky) looked calm and enchanting. The coastline swirled all over the place.  Enough about that.

We landed in Norfolk yesterday and spent today touring Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown, two historic sites established in the 1600s when the British first colonized North America.  Both were interesting sites with restorations and reconstructions, period-costume attired staff, and re-enactments of various period events . .  .  a great way to spend the day for history buffs.

Tonight we’re in Charlottesville, Virginia, and plan to visit Jefferson’s Monticello in the morning, then we’ll  back-track east to the Delmarva Peninsula. Meanwhile, we had a delicious dinner at a gourmet hamburger joint adjacent to the University of Virginia campus, where students appear more homogenous and more like youthful versions of who they will be in their later years than students we’re accustomed to watching at places near the University of Washington and University of Colorado. We sat at an outside table next to the sidewalk in 75+ degree, sunny weather with a beer and good food. Bob (actually both of us) is happy. It was still cloudy, rainy and in the 50s when we left home yesterday. 

Last Night on the Road

11 hours of driving brought us to LePage and Philippi Parks,  30 miles east of The Dalles, Oregon.  We’re camped right on the shore of a pretty inlet off the Columbia River, and the campground is run by the Corps of Engineers.  It’s sunny and mid-50s even at 6:30 p.m., and if the wind would die down, we could have a last campfire. But this is famous wind-surfing territory, so we won’t expect it to calm. Our Garmin GPS tells us we’ll be home mid-day tomorrow, and we’re eager to arrive. This is a nice end to another wonderful winter in the Baja, despite the lack of our pretty blue Hobie kayak on top of the trailer (see post from last Thursday if you’re interested in that story).

Homeward Bound

Adrienne and Justin drove out to the Boulder County Fairgrounds this morning where we’ve been camped the last 4 nights to join us for breakfast in the trailer. We had a pleasant and leisurely meal and visit, gave Justin a “ tour” of life in a tiny RV, said our good-byes, then they headed out to do chores and homework, and we hit the highway at 9:30.

It felt like a long day as it was cold (low of 22, high of 49 outside, with the trailer 44 degrees inside on arrival at our campsite), windy (30+mph) and sometimes icy with blowing snow, all at elevations between 5,000 and 8,000 feet, so our progress was slow.  We saw two 18-wheeler trucks over-turned on the side of the highway, witnessed one car spin-out into the snow in the median, and our truck and trailer skidded once while Bob was driving, but he got it under control without incident. It does NOT feel like winter is over along Interstate 80.

So we made it to Brigham City, Utah about 7:30 pm and will hit the road again in the morning. We expect to be home by Wednesday night at the latest, perhaps earlier that day.

Weekend in Boulder

Two attributes Boulder shares with Seattle are beautiful scenery and politics (left leaning). These features draw us to the town and make us feel readily comfortable here. The characteristic in which they share almost nothing is WEATHER!  Yesterday it was sunny and 80 degrees in Boulder. Today it was 32 and snowing by afternoon, though the morning was a bit warmer.  When we returned to the Artic Fox after dinner Sunday night, it was 34 degrees outside and 45 degrees inside.  BRRRR!  We’re telling ourselves this is preparing us to be back home in 3 days, where it’s been cold and wet much of the past 5 months.

We’ve had a great visit here. Saturday Bob and Cathryn met Adrienne and her good friend C-May, walked to the Pearl Street pedestrian mall and had lunch at the Boulder Café. We spent Saturday night at Adrienne’s apartment, and after dinner her boyfriend Justin taught us a card game that is popular in the midwest where he grew up: Euchre.  Bob and Cathryn had “beginner’s luck” and won!

Sunday we had planned to go on a hike, but the weather interfered, so the four of us took a walk along Boulder Creek before it began snowing, then went on a tour of the Avery Brewery in the afternoon. Sunday night found us at Buddha Café for Thai food for dinner.  We’ve had lots of good food and socializing for three days, and tomorrow we hit the road for home. We’re glad we made this stop that was a little out of the way on our way home  from Baja.

Stuff Happened

Thursday morning when we pulled out of the campground south of Colorado Springs, we did our usual “walk-around” the trailer to make sure everything was ready to go: electricity and water un-hooked and stored, stairs stowed, roof vents closed, spare tire and kayak looking secure on the roof, stabilizer jacks and front support legs retracted, etc.  And we were off!

Winds and gusts were very high on the drive to Boulder, but we made good time and arrived seemingly without incident.  Yesterday morning Bob climbed the ladder at the rear of the trailer to the roof, to install a new vent cap to replace one that came off a couple weeks ago, and noticed . . . . umm . . . . something missing . . . . like a kayak???? 

That’s right, our two-person Hobie kayak was no longer on top of the trailer!  It was very windy last night in Boulder, so we looked around the campground hoping to see that the kayak had blown off and landed on the ground.  Nope.  Cathryn went to the campground office and asked the woman there whether she recalled seeing our kayak on the roof when we arrived yesterday. She had no recollection either way.

On closer examination, Bob found that two of the eye-bolts  embedded in the trailer’s roof and to which the webbing straps secured the kayak to the roof, were missing. Either the wind gusts alone, or perhaps the gusts combined with gradual losing of the eyebolts over 20,000 miles of driving, caused the system to fail. We now have a new item for our pre-departure check list (assuming we replace the boat)!

Bob called the Colorado State Patrol and the Department of Transportation to report the loss. We were worried we might have caused an accident, or even injured or killed someone if the kayak fell off in the high winds! Bob reported the hours during which we were driving, the highways we took, and a description of the kayak. Both people he talked to seemed more concerned about whether they might find and return our kayak to us than whether we might have caused any accidents or injuries. 

Now, a day later later, we’ve heard nothing back from either the State Patrol or Dept of Transportation. Heavy sigh.

No Longer a Mystery

Today we met our daughter Adrienne’s boyfriend, Justin, and he seems like a great guy. It’s especially satisfying to see how happy he makes our daughter.

In addition to making Adrienne happy, he was also willing to invite her parents to his place, and cook dinner for them the first time he ever met them.  Dinner was great: baked sweet potatoes with walnuts, baked spiced chicken, and home made bread!

Justin also showed us around the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm where he is interning.  A CSR is devised to provide its members, in this case 28 people, a weekly basket of seasonal vegetables and some fruit during the growing season in exchange for a fixed payment. Justin is the only full-time employee, and in addition to his day-to- day work on the farm, he manages the work of those members who choose to buy a “work-share” at a reduced price in return for committing to work 72 hours on the farm during the year.  The goal of this farm is not only to be sustainable, but also to create a model system that others can duplicate.

We came away with the conclusion that we liked this man.

Last trip to Boulder??

Ryan, our son, attended law school in Boulder, Colorado some years back, so we made several trips to the city during that time and always enjoyed it.  Now our youngest daughter Adrienne is about to graduate from the University here, so we’ve made additional visits during her 4 years in town.

We arrived this morning from Colorado Springs and set up camp in Longmont, at the ONLY place within 30 minutes drive of campus: the Boulder County Fairgrounds, which has a decent, though nothing fancy, parking lot with electric hook-ups, water, a dump station, a bathroom and garbage AND recycling cans. The latter is important because the Seattle area where we live is seriously into recycling, but Baja Mexico, California, Arizona and New Mexico are not. So we’ve been carrying a box of beer bottles and crushed aluminum cans for quite awhile that we’re happy to have disposed of today.

We spent the afternoon at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) just up a hill from the city. The NCAR is a federally funded center engaged in research and development in the atmospheric and related sciences, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and working in conjunction with 60 universities around the country as well as numerous partners worldwide.          

We learned a lot about the study of atmospheric influences and related topics including climate, weather, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and the cryosphere. The attractive facility was built 50 years ago, designed by world-renowned architect I.M. Pei, and it has stood the test of time remarkably well in our view.

Later we parked near the Pearl Street pedestrian mall and sat at an outdoor table for a beer and shared salad. When the wind died down at times, we were happy in the 68 degree sun. It’s a lively, interesting place for people-watching, and we enjoyed the afternoon. Tomorrow we’ll see our daughter Adrienne and meet her boyfriend Justin for the first time.

Garden of the Gods

This morning we pulled out of Taos, New Mexico and drove 200 miles north, traveling on a high mountain plain ranging from 7,000 feet in Taos to over 10,000 feet elevation just before we dropped down to the east side of the Rocky Mountains. Low temperature at the top of the pass: 32!

We stopped shy of Colorado Springs where we deposited the Arctic Fox in a campsite, then drove the truck half an hour further north to see the Garden of the Gods.

In 1879 Charles Elliott Perkins, then head of Burlington Northern Railroad, purchased 420 acres intending to make it his home. It encompassed the land which is now Garden of the Gods. He never built, preferring to keep it in its’ natural state, and after he died in 1907 his children donated the land to the City of Colorado Springs, in keeping with his stated wishes.

Today the park charges no admission and is open 24 hours a day according to a volunteer Park Ranger we talked with, though the park signage indicates otherwise.

There are paved walking paths among the rocks, bike lanes, mountain biking trails, and people who arrive with the appropriate equipment and seek a permit are allowed to climb some rocks designated for such purpose. Look closely at the top left side of the right-most rock in the photo above.

The rock is red or white sandstone and has been shaped by water and wind for millions of years. This constitutes the most spectacular City Park we’ve ever seen, and we very much enjoyed wandering the pathways and driving the loop roadway.

Check-in Garden of The Gods Colorado Springs

Latitude:38.87615
Longitude:-104.88135
GPS location Date/Time:03/30/2011 14:38:04 PDT
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Taos, New Mexico

We left Albuquerque this morning,  drove right through Santa Fe (we’ve both been there several times already) and continued on 65 miles north to Taos. At over 7,000 feet elevation, last time we were here in February 2008 it was snowing and 27 degrees.

Taos is small, artsy and very pretty. Today with sunshine and 53 degrees, it was warm enough to wander the town Plaza for a couple of hours, then sit on the second floor balcony of a restaurant right on the square for calamari and a beer. Out of the wind and in the sun, it was actually warm enough to sit in our t-shirts!  But, we have to admit we have left summer behind. Las Cruces in southern New Mexico was the last time Bob wore short pants. The temperature is predicted to get down to 27 tonight. 

Albuquerque

Cathryn’s friend Paula had to go to work today, so we went  on a “field trip”. We drove to Madrid (the locals pronounce it “MAD-rid”, an anglicized version of the capitol of Spain, we presume). Click on the photo above to see how the fence was constructed.

 

It’s a small former ghost town on the “back” side of the Sandia Mountains, at about 6,000 feet elevation and populated mostly by artists.

It reminded us a bit of a two-steps-more-prosperous version of the town of Nederland north of Boulder, Colorado. The main road through town is lined with small shops filled with paintings, metal and rock art, sculptures, pottery, jewelry, unique clothing including Western attire, and a handful of small restaurants.

We wandered in and out of galleries and shops for a couple of hours, and Cathryn bought a pair of earrings. It’s a funky, fun place.

Next we drove the 14-mile winding road that goes to the top of Sandia Mountain at elevation 10,600 feet. It was 41 degrees and the wind was blowing hard at the summit, 70 degrees when we got back to Albuquerque. The view at the top is vast and pretty, and the “back side” of the mountain is heavily treed and green, while the side facing the city is mostly brown and rocky. 

Paula made delicious lasagna for dinner, and we sat outside to talk and eat until time for us to head back to the Arctic Fox for bed. It was great to catch up with her again!

Check-in Sandia Mountain, Albuquerque NM

Latitude:35.21056
Longitude:-106.44948
GPS location Date/Time:03/28/2011 12:49:05 PDT
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Since We’re in the Neighborhood

We’re now on our way north to see our daughter Adrienne in Boulder, Colorado.  She graduates  from University of Colorado in May, so this is our graduation visit. She also has a new “interest” in her life who we’ve been hearing a lot about and want to investigate first hand.

Today we drove  to Albuquerque where Cathryn wanted to visit her friend Paula who she’s known since seventh grade.  We showed up at 3:00, talked for a couple hours, then went to a good restaurant for dinner part way up Sandia Mountain with a great view of the sunset and the city below.

After dinner Cathryn dropped Bob off at the fifth wheel and returned to Paula’s house so they could have some “girl talk” into the night without the constraints of a male presence or  snoring curmudgeon.

Today we’re exploring Albuquerque, then returning to Paula’s house for dinner with her, one of her sons and his fiancee.

Not a Beach, Not Baja

So this picture looks like we’re at a beach today, right? Sand dunes and all. Or maybe we’re back in Morocco on a camel trek in the Sahara Desert like last October.  Oh, that’s right . . . the sand here is white, and there’s no water, so it can’t really be a beach or Baja or Morocco, can it?

This morning we left our beautiful spot at City of Rocks, New Mexico and drove about 100 miles east to Las Cruces, New Mexico where we set up camp, then drove another 30 miles just north of Alamogordo (think nuclear missile testing facility) to White Sands National Monument.

This place rises from the heart of the Tularosa Basin in the form of glistening white dunes of gypsum sand engulfing 275 square miles of desert making up the world's largest gypsum dune field.

Unfortunately, we visited this place on a Saturday rather than a weekday. There were hordes of pick-up trucks bringing young men with their dune boarding equipment, and lots of families with young children sledding down the sand. It’s not that we object to other people enjoying the same places we enjoy; it’s just that the crowds alter the pristine-looking nature of the views. Many of the groups even set up shade devices along with barbecues to cook a picnic lunch.

We hiked up a few dunes, took some photos, and drove the loop into the furthest reaches of the place. It’s pretty awesome.