The Bezabor Log: October 2009

Family visit in Austin ; ‘The Turn of the Screw’ ; the drive home to PA

(posted from home!)
(This post covers October 23 – 29, 2009)

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Thursday, 29 October-

We were on the road by 0900 today despite our late start. Our 250-mile drive up I-81 seemed to go quickly, helped along by listening to podcasts of ‘RadioLab’ and ‘This American Life’.
We would have made it home by 1430 or so but diverted at the last moment. I wanted to pick up some candy for tonight (since Halloween in our neighborhood is always the Thursday before) and to pick up a movie since we won’t have television or internet until I get the cable re-connected.
While we were away our grocery store moved so this was also our first time in the new Giant. After seeing dozens of upscale grocery stores on our trip, I can’t say our new one qualifies as an upscale store like the Albertson’s at Jackson, WY, the new Safeways in Canada, or the Von’s in Bishop, CA. There’s no Starbucks counter (no coffee counter at all, in fact), no olive bar, not even a decent selection of foreign cheeses. The aisles are wider and Labashi did find they now carry La Factory low-carb tortillas (our favorite) and now there’s a Giant gas station there so we can more easily use our gas points. And the new store is definitely a visual improvement over the old.
We were very happy to find everything in order with our house. We turned the power on and spent an hour unloading the van and putting things in order.
That evening we only had five trick-or-treaters so we started a movie. We watched ‘State of Play’ with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck. It’s well done, though the intricate plot almost lost us (thank goodness for the Back button on the remote!).
This one I can recommend.

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Wednesday, 28 October-

Last night was a noisy one. Some fool trucker (it only takes one) decided to park near us and keep his engine idling all night. Around midnight we moved but the other side of the Wal-mart wasn’t much better. The parking lot itself was quiet enough but for some reason there was a constant stream of buzzbombs and muffler-challenged pickups zooming by most of the night.
Today was a MUCH better day for driving. As we neared Knoxville in mid-afternoon, the sun came out and revealed the bright Fall colors around us. Off in the distance we could see the Smokies, colorful down low but a rust-brown up high.
Shortly after Knoxville we hit I-81 north and though we were still many miles from home it seemed like our backyard.
At the I-77 junction we found a steakhouse and took an hour out for a filet mignon and baby-back ribs, then pressed on for a few hours, giving us a 500-mile day.
By 2130 we were nearing the I-64 junction at Lexington, Virginia and there we found a Wal-mart for the night. Since it was at the junction of two interstates I didn’t expect we’d want to stay but it was actually a quiet one—at least for awhile. Around 2300 some kid decided we all wanted to hear his boom-boom music but that only lasted for an hour or so. I was a bit wound from the driving so it took me awhile to drift off but then I slept the sleep of the innocent and we woke late (0830-ish) to beautiful sun.

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Tuesday, 27 October-

Today was another driving day as we head for good old P-A. The rains and wind continued as we left Texarkana and passed by Little Rock on I-30 and turned onto I-40. By late afternoon we had crossed Arkansas and entered Tennessee at Memphis. We continued on through steady rain, sometimes heavy, until dark. For some reason we came upon four car accidents in the last hour of our driving. We don’t know if there had been an especially heavy downpour or what but we first saw a rollover (with emergency crews still there), then three spinouts, i.e., situations where the driver lost control and spun into the medial strip or an embankment along the interstate. And again, emergency crews were still there. And we saw ambulances passing in both directions.
We were pushing to get to a Wal-mart at Dickson, TN for the night and had no problem ourselves other than lower visibility in the harder rains but it was surreal to see all these wrecks along the way.
That evening we watched two episodes from the ‘Planet Earth’ DVD set, ‘Deep Ocean’ and the first part of the ‘The Future’ extras disk.

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Monday, 26 October-

We had thunderstorms in the night and were in no mood to leave our hosts this morning. We had a long, leisurely breakfast of ‘migas’ and tortillas and finally said our fond goodbyes at 1030.
We spent the day driving northeast, now ‘heading for the barn’. We drove through heavy rain for several hours, then light rain the remainder of the day.
We ended up at the Wal-mart at Atlanta, Tx, (near Texarkana and the Arkansas and Louisiana borders). We rented ‘Gran Torino’ with Clint Eastwood from the Redbox. What a terrible movie!

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Sunday, 25 October-

We spent the morning and much of the afternoon continuing our wide-ranging conversations with our hosts. Labashi had mentioned theatre and we soon learned of a play going on this evening—‘The Turn of the Screw’—and bought tickets online.
Around 1530 we loaded up the car and drove to the SoCo district’s Austin Playhouse. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ was great. In this case, it’s a two-actor play of Henry Jame’s late 1800’s novella. It’s the story of a young English governess who tells a ghostly tale and we’re not sure if she’s imagining, telling us the truth, or deliberately misleading us. The male lead plays multiple characters, including a middle-aged female housekeeper and a ten-year-old boy. He also verbally does the sound effects.
The female lead evolves from a shy girl to a screaming madwoman, all in the bounds of a 75-minute-long play where the only prop is a chair.
We loved it! It made us think, it made us marvel at the actors’ skill.
We then had supper at Guero’s Restaurant, an Austin Tex-Mex institution only a few blocks from the theater.
Back home we had a celebratory fire in the back yard fire-ring and drank champagne and had butter pecan ice cream with berries in milk-and-white-chocolate tulips (!!!!) before ending our day.

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Saturday, 24 October-

Today was yet another perfect-weather day and on top of that it’s our 39th anniversary. Our hosts treated us to a wonderful day.
We toured their favorite Austin neighborhoods and it was a treat. They’re real estate agents and have refurbished several houses so it was fascinating to hear their tales of their experiences with properties and with the people buying and selling them.
Our tour also took us to the ritzy side of the city and we walked the bluffs about the lake, looking down on the multi-million dollar estates on the lake.
We also dropped in to Central Market, an upscale produce and grocery market where we pursued and found prickly-pear fruit. The produce guy was a treat here. When asked whether he had any prickly-pear fruit, he not only took us to a basket of the fruit hidden away under a stand but also cut slices for each of us to try. And then it turned out the prickly-pear fruit only cost $1 for five of them. It was hardly a money-making proposition for him to spend some 20 minutes with us for a $1 sale but he certainly made an impression. We took the five fruits along for later.
Late in the afternoon our hosts took us to ‘The Oasis’ overlooking Lake Travis. This is a fabulous restaurant on the hillside some 500 feet above the lake. Terraces overlook the lake and contain tables enough for hundreds of people to watch the sunset while having Mexican food and drinks. Our hosts talked our server into taking the prickly-pear fruit to the head bartender and requesting he make prickly-pear margaritas for us. Surprisingly (to us, anyway) it was no problem. Prickly-pear maragaritas are excellent. Like the taste of the fruit slice we had at Central Market, the taste of the margarita is sweet and soft, toning down the harshness of the tequila. (Labashi and I had four of them, just to be sure!)
We finished up our meal just 20 minutes before sunset and then enjoyed the view over the lake as the sun dove behind the hills in the distance. Magnifico!
We spent the rest of the evening back home on the porch as the gentle evening breezes caressed us.

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Friday, 23 October-

We had a pretty morning this morning and decided not to go back into the city today as we had planned yesterday. Instead, we started off hiking a few of the McKinney Park trails. I had taken a walk last night after supper, touring the campground after dark. I like to see what types of rigs the other campers have but in this case there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. But for some reason I had extra energy to burn off and I enjoyed the walk.
Our walk this morning also originated at our campsite but we walked to the visitor’s center (which, it turns out, is only open on weekends), then along the creek. This trail took us under a rock shelter carved out of limestone over many years. We kept following the creek and the trail brought us out to a massive rock outcropping typical of the Austin area. Where there is soil, it’s relatively thin and lies on a relatively porous rock. It seems odd to us to be walking through what appears to be a woods much like the woods back home but then to come to a meadow sprinkled with prickly-pear cactus.
After our walk we once again changed our minds and drove into the city. Yesterday’s plan was to visit another museum or two but we decided instead to check out the SoCo (South Congress) district of funky shops and restaurants on our way to Labashi’s brother’s neighborhood. We weren’t scheduled to show up to his house until 1500 so once we found the general area, we looked up the nearest library. That library happened to be closed on Fridays but the wi-fi still worked (we learned that latter fact from a fellow parked in the library parking lot and working away on his laptop). We spent the next two hours doing our normal wi-fi stuff, i.e., checking email, posting a blog update, checking weather and news and some favorite hobby forums.
Some 15 minutes before our appointed time, we shut down the laptops but mine popped up a Windows update message. It picked that time to install 18 updates, which meant I couldn’t power down the PC. The updates took more than a half hour and I didn’t want to take a chance on driving around while the disk drive was working so hard. That made us late but then again it had been an ‘around-1500’ time so it didn’t really matter.
We easily found her brother’s house and were warmly greeted. The lady of the house was working but we enjoyed learning about two inventions he’s perfecting and was working on in his backyard shop. He showed us prototypes (which I’ll deliberately keep vague here) and we received a quick course in what it takes to bring a new twist to a familiar object to market.
We toured the house and then spent the evening on the magnificent back porch. We had perfect weather and sat around talking and having a bit of wine (after a steak dinner!) late into the evening.

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Lubbock ; American Wind Power Center ; Silent Wings Air Museum ; ‘The Proposal’ ; Colorado Bend and Ink’s Lake State Parks ; Blanton Museum and Story of Texas Museum (in Austin)

(posted from Austin Library, Millwood Branch)
(This post covers 20 – 22 October, 2009)

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Thursday, 22 October-

WOW, what a night. We had rain as I was writing up my blog entry but after we went to bed the skies really opened up. We had some lightning but it didn’t seem close. But we couldn’t get to sleep for the rain pounding on the roof and blowing against the back door of the van.
Our campsite was right on the lake—within twenty feet of the shoreline--- so I kept an eye on the water level. That was not real easy to do, given I could only see the water level during the lightning flashes, the rain water was streaming down over the van and the windows kept fogging.
By midnight I knew the water had come closer and realized we had better move. Even if the water doesn’t reach the van, I wouldn’t sleep for checking on it.
Fortunately it’s easy to just climb forward to the driver’s seat in the van and start it up. We moved to higher ground at a campsite above the shower house and the campground host’s trailer. If it rose that much, there’d be plenty of commotion to wake us in time to move to yet-higher ground.
We still didn’t sleep for another hour or so as the rain pounded the roof but then it moderated and we dozed off.
After showers and a visit to the dump station this morning, we stopped in at the ranger station for a recommendation for a local breakfast spot. The ranger said he heard the storm dropped between six and nine inches of rain in the region. The park’s rain guage overflowed at six inches so he’s not sure how much more than six we received. The lake rose three feet. After my shower I had walked back to our previous campsite and saw that we wouldn’t have had water on the van but I was still glad to have moved, just for the peace-of-mind.
We took the ranger’s recommendation to have breakfast at the Blue Bonnet Restaurant in Marble Falls. He had praised the biscuits and cream-gravy and they were indeed very good while Labashi satisfied her hankering for a pancake. Neither is on our regular diet but we’ve found we can stray a bit without harm.
We then set the GPS for downtown Austin. We spent the early afternoon in the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas. We happened to arrive just as a lecture was getting underway regarding the reconstruction of a Veronese altar painting which had been cut into pieces in Venice and the pieces sold to collectors or dealers in London, Edinburgh, New York (if memory serves), and Austin. Not all the pieces have been found but it’s now possible to see most of it. Our speaker was quite thorough and interesting in telling us about this painting thought to have been done in the 1560’s.
We spent another hour and a half in the galleries, then took a break at the café before crossing the street to the ‘Story of Texas’, a museum-quality exhibit of dioramas, artifacts, films, and displays, telling the history of Texas.
In looking at the brochure for the ‘Story of Texas’, I wasn’t particularly impressed so thought it would be a walk-through. But it was really, really well done. We had two-and-a-half hours until closing time when we started and found ourselves only a little over half-way done at the 30-minutes-to-go mark.
The exhibit closed at 1800 so when we reached the van we headed to McKinney State Park, our home for the night. We found the park is nearly full and is booked for the weekend but we did manage to snag a good site for tonight.
After Labashi made us a fantastic meal of fajitas (we’re eating like kings out here!), we spent the rest of the evening blogging and researching.

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Wednesday, 21 October-

Our night at the Sweetwater Wal-mart was noisy due to the nearby I-20 traffic but we both managed to sleep well.
We drove through Sweetwater, then on to Abilene. I had thought we might find an interesting museum or two in Abilene but nothing in the Tourbook caught our attention (or perhaps we were ‘museumed-out’). We had not yet passed a Texas welcome center so we tried finding a visitor’s center in Abilene. A sign on the beltway said there was one but we never found it and after driving two miles out of our way, we gave up. Not one sign after turning off the beltway. And the GPS says the nearest visitor’s center is in another town entirely. That was enough of Abilene for me. We did get a brief look as we drove through on Business 20, then down the east side of the beltway so that will do.
We drove southeast down route 84, passing through mile after mile of ranches. The mesquite trees hide the ranch buildings and cattle but for an occasional glimpse, yet we can get a feel for what they are like. We did find it interesting to being seeing lots of goats and then happen on a sign proclaiming Mills County the ‘Meat-Goat Capital of the World!’.
At Bend, we decided to take the late afternoon off by going to the Colorado Bend State Park. The listing in the AAA guide said it was a four-mile gravel road from Bend and we thought it nice that we made it to the entrance to the park without hitting a gravel road. That’s because the TEN mile gravel road to the park OFFICE--- which you must visit to get a permit to do anything in the park --- starts at that point.
But we didn’t really mind. We had been surprised to see how little public land there is in Texas so we were happy to be on a gravel road in the Hill Country, headed for our campground and perhaps a hike of some sort.
After rattling to the park office, we were surprised to learn that Texas State Parks have a per-person fee in addition to the camping fee. So to camp at the primitive campground we’d have to pay $14 to camp and $6 in per-person entry fees for pit toilets and no showers. I asked why the price is so high for a primitive campground and the ranger-lady said it’s because the state government doesn’t want to undercut the local campgrounds, two of which are nearby. So it has nothing to do with value offered, but rather with representing the best interests of business over those of the common folk. Where have I heard that before?
We had intended to take bush-showers in one of the more remote campsites but the rules make it clear that NO greywater (or, of course, blackwater) may be left anywhere in the park and there’s no dump facility. So if you wash your dishes or take a bush-shower, you have to take the soapy water out with you (and if you’re travelling, what do you do then?). Thank you, Texas, but we’ll just move on.
We drove on south to a more modern state park, Ink’s Lake, where we have pay the most we’ve had to pay in overnight fees in the 59 days we’ve been on the road ($22—I hope the local campgrounds approve!!!) but at least we get showers and a dump station.
Ink’s Lake is, according to our check-in person, the second-most popular state park in Texas. It’s within an hour’s drive of Austin and San Antonio so perhaps that explains it. We found our nice spot on the lake and settled in. It’s raining this evening so there won’t be a walk but we do have a very comfortable temperature (70) and we have some blogging and reading to do. And I have some work to do on improving my grumpy attitude.

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Tuesday, 20 October-

We had a most-excellent night at the Lubbock Wal-mart last night. The winds were quite fresh but did not have the turbulence which would cause the van to shake and the heavy traffic on the nearby beltway died down by 2200.
We wanted to go to a museum but it wasn’t to open until 1000 so we found a nearby coffee shop with wi-fi. As we walked toward the door, another customer emerged and mumbled something about ’15 or so’ as she handed Labashi a card. It was a gift card for the coffee shop we were entering. I used the card to pay for my coffee and it did indeed have over $15 of value left on it. We spent an hour or so on the web catching up and on the way out I passed the card on to a Texas Tech student sitting near us.
We then drove to the American Wind Power Center on the other side of town. They took my idea (sort of)! Several times in the past I’ve thought I’d like to have a collection of working windmills (the farm-level watering-tank ones, not the Don Quixote ones) and here it was—a collection far more extensive than I ever could dream of having.
We learned windmills have been found in history as far back as 600 AD on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. These reportedly were like door-sized panels mounted vertically on a turning pedestal. (I’d love to see a drawing and should have thought to ask whether there might be one in the attached library).
We spent several hours looking at windmills, each with something different than the last. This was the first time I had seen a sectional windmill. This design appears to operate backward from a ‘normal’ one. What we think of as the tail of the windmill is in front of the wheel. The blades appear to be mounted backwards. As the wheel turns faster and faster, a counterweight on the tail causes the wheel to change shape, breaking into segments and forming a partial-cone shape, keeping the wheel from turning too fast. It’s an ingenious design but (we learned) overly complicated. Newer designs added controls to the traditional layout (wheel toward the wind, tail behind) to prevent over-running.
I really liked seeing a Zenith Farm Radio Wincharger windmill and it’s accompanying advertisement. For $15 you could order a windmill with a six-foot blade designed to run a Zenith radio. Prior to the electrification of farms, the family could order one of these and mount it on a granary or barn roof or other handy, out-of-the-way spot to power the family radio via what the ad called ‘Frepower’ (wind!). The best part? For your $15 you also got the Zenith radio!
After our tour inside the building we went outside and approached the Vestas V47 wind-turbine across the parking lot. This is a 660 kilowatt power-generating behemoth, circa 1995. It generates 60-cycle three-phase AC power (and thus no batteries are involved), one-tenth of which is used to power the Center and the remainder is sold to the power company. Another wind-turbine lies in pieces along the other side of the parking lot. I found I could stand up inside the base of one of the giant fiberglass blades. This one is a GE and produces 1.5 Megawatts. The V47 (the 660 kW unit) cost $1 million and the GE now costs about $1.5 million. The Center is planning to also have the GE unit installed and operating as money becomes available.
After lunch we drove to the nearby Silent Wings Air Museum. This one is dedicated to the World-War II glider pilots. This was an amazing story, supported by footage from the War. These clumsy-looking gliders were towed to the battle zone by C-47 (think DC-3) aircraft, carrying payloads of up to 8000 pounds. The payloads might consist of troops, a howitzer, a jeep, a small bulldozer (!!!) or one of many different configurations of pre-loaded jeep trailers containing ammunition, medical supplies, food, mortars, etc.
The gliders could land where no other aircraft could land. The clearings in Holland and Germany, for example, often were only 1000 feet long and surrounded by hedgerows of tall trees. After release, the gliders would enter a steep bank and circle down quickly to make what could only be considered a somewhat-controlled crash.
The front end of the glider could be unlatched and tilted up to allow the jeep or howitzer to be rolled out. And, incredibly, in one of the stories-of-the-war video segments, we learned that a cable could be connected via a pulley arrangement to the back of the jeep which opened the door automatically as the jeep drove forward. Incredible!!!!
We also saw incredible training footage of how a C-47 could pick up a glider using a tailhook. The film described how to lay out the nylon rope and how to hang it between two twelve-foot-high poles for the C-47’s tailhook to catch as well as the preparations by the plane crew. The C-47 slowed to 130 miles per hour to make the pickup. A retrieval mechanism in the C-47 and the stretch of the rope (up to 40 per cent for a new rope) allowed the glider pilot to feel an acceleration of 0-60 miles per hour in 200 feet. One glider pilot described finding his hat in the tail of the glider after such a pickup. The pickups, by the way, were primarily used to evacuate wounded soldiers though of course would have been used for any high-priority need.
It was very sobering to learn of the high fatality rate of the glider missions. The tales of former glider pilots included many stories of flying into heavy flak and taking enemy fire throughout the landings. There are stories of watching the tow plane in front of you lose a wing or catch fire and watching the crew bail out, knowing you need to unhook NOW, whether you can see a place to land or not.
The museum has a full glider to look into. Looking to the tail, you see nothing but a light framework of metal tubing, covered with cloth. In another part of the museum is the front three-quarters of a glider with the nose up and a jeep inside, showing how closely it fit. A howitzer and a mortar sit nearby as does a mini-bulldozer, only as wide as the jeep and with a blade only about 18 inches high.
The video-taped stories of the veteran glider pilots grabbed us. These normal-looking, man-in-the-street guys told incredible stories of their experiences.
After the Silent Wings Air Museum, it was time to say a fond farewell to Lubbock (or book another night at the Wal-mart!).
We drove southeast. At supper time we were near the town of Snyder and stopped at the Wal-mart for a look-see. It really wasn’t time to stop for the night so we shared a burger at the What-a-burger across the street and then pressed on.
As we left Snyder we noticed that the density of wind-turbines in the area had increased dramatically. Where before we were seeing lines of them atop the distant mesas—perhaps 50 to 100 at a time leading off into the distance---- we were now in a full-fledged wind-farm. We drove from Snyder to I-20, a distance of nearly 30 miles, through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of wind-turbines, on all sides and stretching to the horizon. And these look just like the GE models, the $1.5 million-dollars-each models. Somebody has put a LOT of money in the Panhandle Plains in wind turbines.
As we approached Sweetwater on I-20 the wind-turbines thinned out (though we could still see a line of them on the mesa on the southern horizon).
We found our Wal-mart for the night and rented a Redbox movie. We watched ‘The Proposal’ with Sandra Bullock. It had a great start but then fizzled badly. Sandra plays a powerful editor in a New York publishing firm. She’s demanding, mean, and self-centered. But a big problem turns up. She’s Canadian and her visa has now been denied. On the spur of the moment she tells all that she and her male assistant are about to marry, thus solving the problem. But of course it’s more complicated than that. She and the assistant must go to his parents’ home (in Sitka) and (for us) hilarity is supposed to ensue. But from that point on it was very poorly done. The actors looked like actors bravely trying to make something of the drivel given them. The powerful woman realized what she really needed was a man. And the man (the assistant) who hated his boss, realized (upon seeing her naked) that he actually was in love with her. Give us a break! Give me my $1.06 back!

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Across Arizona and to the Tonto National Forest; Tonto National Monument ; Show Low, AZ ; Besh-ba-gawah pueblo ; El Morro National Monument ; El Malpais National Monument ; Sky City ; family visit in Albuquerque ; on to Texas

(posted from Daybreak Coffee Roasters, Lubbock, TX)
(This post covers 13 – 19 October, 2009)

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Monday, 19 October-

We left Albuquerque this morning, yet another blue-sky-and-75 day. There were snow flurries back home over the weekend but I see it’s supposed to get up into the Sixties in the next few days.
We drove across New Mexico seeing ranches east of Albuquerque and seeming to stretch to the horizon. We turned down Route 84 toward Clovis and saw much the same, though we did see a nice wooded valley along the Pecos River at Fort Sumner.
As we neared Clovis, we began to see more green in the pastures and a definite change from range-land to fields. In Clovis we started seeing giant farm machinery for sale and we saw a massive field of pumpkins which took us a few seconds to recognize; they seemed out of place.
Soon after Clovis we entered Texas and saw an immediate difference. Cotton appears to be king around here.
We changed our clocks to Central Time and continued on to Lubbock, where we looked up the local Wal-mart, checked whether we could stay, then sought out the nearest Starbucks for an iced-tea, and a Walgreen’s, hoping to get a flu shot. All the flu vaccine is gone in this area, though. We’ll have to keep checking as we go.
We had supper in the van at Maxey Park in Lubbock and took a short walk after to the lake.
As darkness neared we returned to the Wal-mart and shopped to replenish supplies, then blogged the evening away. It’s quite windy here tonight. The winds were coming from the west as we drove today and I’m sure that helped the gas mileage but it appears they’ve swung south and become stronger, which may give us a less-than-comfortable night.

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Sunday, 18 October-

Today our friends had church responsibilities so we had most of the morning to ourselves. I walked down to the nearby Smith’s Grocery and had a cappuccino at the Starbucks in their lobby while Labashi did a bit of laundry and relaxed.
After lunch Labashi’s brother took us and the two boys to the Albuquerque Zoo. What a nice zoo it was! We were surprised to see that most animals were out and all appeared very healthy and active. The polar bears were incredible and were inadvertently hilarious as they played with ‘floaties’ (giant floating discs). The snow leopards were an unexpected treat (and had two young ones) and the jet-black jaguar mysterious and possessed of burning eyes which gave me chills to imagine meeting in the wild.
We finished off the afternoon at the zoo’s climbing play-space where the boys had a blast. Finally, they kicked us out at 1730 after the zoo closed.
We went out that evening to the County Line, a bar-be-que restaurant where Labashi and I split a full rack of baby-back ribs. Labashi likes the fall-off-the-bone type of ribs and these definitely weren’t that. They had a tarry covering of burnt skin and wanted to stick to the bone but once you decide to just pick up the ribs with your fingers and dig in, they were excellent.
At home we said our goodbyes to the folks who we wouldn’t see in the morning and read for an hour before sleep.

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Saturday, 17 October-

Today we awoke to another beautiful New Mexico day. The forecast is for mid-Seventies and clear for the next few days with overnights into the mid-Thirties here. We took a tour of the house and continued the conversations from the night before and then that afternoon we went to another house her brother is selling in this cooled-off market. Afterwards, we drove to the Sandia Aerial Tramway, the world’s longest.
We caught the tram going up the east side of the valley just as the sun was setting on the west. Though it was still 70 as we boarded the tram at 6000 feet, it was 42 at the top’s 10,000-foot level but fortunately the winds were very light.
We spent about an hour looking at and photographing the view and the small Forest Service visitor’s center, then had a drink at the restaurant. Labashi and I split a ‘Black Diamond’, (which was Bailey’s, Kahlua, coffee and a bit of hot cocoa) while our friends had a hot cocoa liberally doused with peppermint schnapps. Lovely!
Later that evening we had leftovers from a birthday party at the house, then sat up talking for a while.

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Friday, 16 October-

We left El Morro this morning and continued eastward through the Indian reservations on Route 53.
In a short while we came upon the El Malpais National Monument. The ‘malpais’ or ‘badlands’ are lava from the many volcanoes here. At the visitor’s center I noticed that the Continental Divide Trail goes through here and I talked with the ranger at some length about it. I’ve been impressed by the CDT at every trail crossing and want to read more about the experiences of the CDT thru-hikers on Trailjournals.com.
After El Malpais, we continued eastward, which then turned a bit north toward Grants and then into New Mexico.
We soon were on I-40 East but noticed signs advertising Sky City, an Acoma Indian pueblo. The sign that attracted my attention was one advertising traditional Acoma foods. We diverted some 15 miles off the Interstate to visit this out-of-the-way pueblo and visitor’s center.
The valley in which the pueblo lies looks like something out of a movie. You descend down off the mesa into a deep, wide valley strewn with fantastic shapes of massive bluffs and standing rocks. Across the valley lies another mesa, atop which is a pueblo.
At the visitor’s center we bought tickets for a tour and while we waited we had a delicious red chile poblano stew and fry bread. A small bus then took us up the mesa and into the center of the pueblo. We later learned the road had been built by whites who were making a movie in the Twenties. Otherwise, the only way in and out is via a hidden canyon and steps and hand-holds carved into the sandstone.
We had a long tour of the pueblo and it was very well done. We learned the pueblo is of course the historical home of the Acoma people. Still today, there’s no electricity and no running water. In general the Acoma live in nearby homes much like ours or perhaps in Albuquerque but have their homes in the pueblo for weekends and ceremonies. Upon retirement, some Acoma may live full-time in the pueblo though of course many choose to continue to live outside the pueblo.
Our Indian guide had a good sense of humor. When we stood on an area looking down from the mesa at the tops of ravens below, he said those ravens are known as the Acoma Air Force. And at the one tree on the pueblo (next to a water-collection basin), he said his friends call it the Acoma National Forest. He spoke of the kivas where traditional ceremonies are held but simply said he would not speak of or describe the ceremonies themselves.
There are 14 clans within the Acoma people, most with names like Wolf and Bear but our guide’s clan is the Pumpkin clan.
Our tour concluded at the old straw-and-mud church, built in 1629 and it was very impressive, as was the five-levels deep cemetery.
After our tour we climbed down the stone stairway and there were several spots that made us blanch. We had to turn around and use the handholds to keep from falling and the ‘stairs’ were merely impressions in the rock. A fall would have been very nasty, though it would have ‘only’ been ten or fifteen feet since the ‘stairway’ was more of a trail leading from ledge to ledge.
After making it safely back to the visitor’s center we had a snack at the café and than bid a fond goodbye to Sky City.
Back on I-40 East we noticed we crossed through Laguna Indian lands, then Isleta Indian lands as Albuquerque and the Sandia Mountains came into view.
We arrived in Albuquerque at the rush hour but had little problem finding our way to Labashi’s brother’s home in the northeastern foothills. This was our first visit to Albuquerque but we immediately liked the look of it, particularly in those foothills.
We spent the evening catching up as we all went out to a Mexican restaurant and had a wonderful time.

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Thursday, 15 October-

This morning we took nice, long showers in the state campground. We’ve learned to take a folding chair and our Buddy heater in to the shower room, particularly when the weather’s cooler (like this morning’s 38 degrees) and the shower building is made of a stone-based material. It makes a world of difference to have a bit of heat and a comfortable (and dry) seat for undressing and dressing. (We’re so spoiled!!)
We then used the GPS to find a local coffee shop (“Java Deli”) listed in the wififreespots.com listing for Show Low so Labashi could ship off one of her Oregon Trail logs to family and friends.
We then hit the road again, bound (in general) for Albuquerque. We could have zipped up to US40 to shorten the trip but instead took the secondary roads through the Zuni and Navajo reservations, crossing into New Mexico around lunch time.
We bought freshly-baked bread from an Indian bakery in Zuni, home of the Zuni Pueblo, the most traditional of the 27 pueblos still in existence in New Mexico and had it for a roadside lunch in the van.
After driving through miles and miles of ranchland, we came to El Morro National Monument. It’s know for having a centuries-old water source at the base of a massive white rock called ‘The Bluff’ (El Morro in Spanish) and for inscriptions left by people visiting the water source in their travels. The oldest inscriptions are by Spanish explorers who came through the area as early as 1605. Also, atop the rock is a partially-excavated pueblo dating to the 13th Century and thought to have consisted of 800 rooms to support a community of about 1500 people.
The water source is a pool 12 feet deep and holding up to 200,000 gallons of water. It’s not fed by a spring but by rain water and by snow melt.
After touring the visitor’s center, we walked the trail past the rock inscriptions and petroglyphs, then climbed steep switchbacks to the top of El Morro. There we walked a narrow path across open rock, at times with steep fall-off’s on both sides, to get to the pueblo. A few rooms were reconstructed but most of the 800 rooms are still under stones and earth. So this is what an unexcavated site looks like. The clues are subtle but the shapes and contours say there’s a large pueblo here.
After our 2-mile walk we descended to the visitor’s center again and then on to the campground in another portion of the Monument. The campground charges no fee this time of year and our two hours of walking put us at a good stopping time.
We spent the remainder of daylight cooking our prairie-coal hot dogs for supper. Then we took a walk around the campground and chatted with a few of the other campers. Next door is a woman from Albuquerque who is camping in her truck camper with her dog, Stella. We also met a guy from San Diego who’s camping in a Tab trailer. These trailers are about the size of a Casita but they have the shape of a teardrop trailer. This fellow bought his Tab off Ebay and loves it for its comfortable simplicity, much like we love Mocha Joe for the same.
We blogged and I did some skywatching to while away the pleasant evening hours. This was one of my better skywatching nights. I saw four satellites, one nearly as bright as the brightest stars in the sky. I also saw what I call a ‘sizzler’. It was a shooting star so bright that it seems it must be making a sizzling noise.

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Wednesday, 14 October-

This morning we left Cholla campground and drove along Roosevelt Lake to the nearby visitor’s center. I talked at some length with the permits lady about the Tonto Basin permit system. Here I am with my Interagency Pass (formerly called a National Parks Annual Pass) which, when raising the price from $65 to $80, the government said could be used for multiple agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the Reclamation Service, and others. But when I arrive at this US Forest Service site here at Roosevelt Lake, I find they want me to also pay a daily fee for any use of Forest Service facilities here. I can, explained the lady, get an Interagency Pass upgrade for $15 and that will allow me into picnic areas and primitive campgrounds. But if I want to get into a developed campground I have to buy a daily pass. And if I don’t have an Interagency Pass I would have to have the same daily pass. In other words, there’s no benefit whatsoever to having the Interagency Pass at this site.
She also explained that the marina next door to the visitor’s center is owned by the US Forest Service but it’s operated by a vendor and you must have a separate vendor pass to enter the grounds (at six dollars per car and four dollars per boat per day).
Fortunately, we were done with the US Forest Service. We drove on to the Tonto National Monument. This Monument has two 12th Century cliff dwellings, one a half-mile walk above the visitor’s center and the other out of sight and available only by special arrangement for a ranger-led tour.
The visitor’s center movie was one of the best we’ve seen and we later learned it’s an award-winner. Afterwards we began the very steep walk up to the cliff-dwelling, knowing all the while that it’s blocked off due to an infestation of Africanized honeybees (at least that’s the story!). We had a wonderful walk, though. After we were about half-way up, ranger Eddie Colyutt came along on patrol and we struck up a conversation. We spent the better part of the next hour chatting with him about everything from other archeological sites in the park (there are 72 of them); the reasons the people left (overcrowding, drought, over-use of resources); palo verde trees (this green-barked tree is the state tree of Arizona, is a relative new-comer to Arizona, is believed to have been a key factor in the Indians changing from living in a widely-dispersed, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a farming lifestyle; saguaro cactus (to get moisture from one, dig into it like you would to take a plug out of a watermelon, then suck the plug); the quality of the National Park Service (top-rate, according to Eddie, who has worked for three different agencies in his 30 years in Federal Service); the paving of the road to the remote little town of Young (being done by the state for tourism but it ruins the remoteness of the town); and on and on. Eddie is a very intelligent guy (and says he’s a survivalist) and we greatly enjoyed our talk with him.
After Tonto Monument, we drove on east to Globe, a copper-mining town and home of an early pueblo (‘Besh-ba-gawah’, by name). This wasn’t a cliff-dwelling but rather a stone-and-adobe pueblo abandoned, like the cliff dwelling at Tonto) by 1300. Today, the adobe is almost all gone but part of the pueblo has been rebuilt. We were able to walk about in a three-story reconstruction which had ladders between the levels and was furnished much as it would have been when in use. Very nicely, done, citizens of Globe!
We then continued east on Route 60 into the Fort Apache Reservation. We drove for the better part of a hundred miles through beautiful mountains, going up and down between 3000 and 7000 feet and back and forth through the vegetation zones associated with those altitudes.
We finally reached the town of Show Low. We didn’t actually enter the town, we turned just before it to go to Fool’s Hollow Lake Recreation Area for our campground for the night.
Our campground is nice but a little more citified than what we were looking for. We had hoped to go out into the National Forest tonight but directions didn’t match the map and we were ready to stop.
After supper I took a walk around the campground in the dark, looking at the sky. I didn’t see any shooting stars tonight but the Milky Way looks like a searchlight coming up from the southern horizon. Very cool!
We blogged and I read a copy of ‘Family Motor Coaching’ I picked up from the book-swap box at the after-hours sign-in station. I’m stunned to read ads for motor home ‘pads’ selling for $75-150K in resort areas. And the entry-level motor home featured this month costs $179K. So you spend $180K on a motorhome whose value plummets like a rock the moment you drive it off the lot and costs you $1000 to have the tire pressure checked. And to have a parking spot in a resort area, you also have to pay another $100K for the privilege of using a clubhouse and pool, perhaps even a golf course in the exclusive, gated “Motorcoach Resort”. And I guarantee you there’s an owner’s-association fee to pay that goes up every year. And the ‘pads’, like timeshares, are difficult to resell.
A fool and his money, say I.

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Tuesday, 13 October-

We awoke in our Motel 6 room this morning, both having done only ‘OK’ in the sleeping department. I didn’t get to sleep for awhile and both of us were awakened repeatedly starting at about 0500 by slamming doors. This particular Motel 6 appears to be popular with work crews judging by the number of utility trucks in the parking lot and apparently they like to go to work early.
Labashi cut my hair and we took care of phone calls, emails, and web ‘stuff’ we needed to get out of the way before getting back on the road.
After checking out we drove to the nearby Wal-mart to re-supply and had lunch at the Red Robin across the street.
We then began driving across Arizona toward Payson. I loved seeing the land and the different types of vegetation. Down low is sage and mesquite but it doesn’t take much elevation (or water) to introduce trees, yet the understory is wide open. Along a creek will be willows and cottonwoods and otherwise it will tend to be juniper and ponderosa pine.
Now we are starting to see various cactuses. We see some prickly pear (and a few appear to be in bloom!) and late in the day we started seeing the classic desert cactus, the saquaro.
After crossing through the Prescott Valley, we climbed and descended into Camp Verde and the Verde Valley, then crossed yet another range of mountains and finally hit Payson. We merely passed through, though, and then headed south toward Phoenix.
We were only a few miles outside of Payson when we began looking for prospective campsites. We found Teddy Roosevelt Lake recreation area and Cholla campground by 1700. The campground is a very nice Forest Service facility and is relatively empty. And campsites were only $6.
We had a spectacular sunset while Labashi was cooking supper. The clouds lit up a brilliant red against an electric-blue sky I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
After supper I was fascinated by the stars coming out so quickly. The Milky Way was visible before it even got completely dark. I saw four shooting stars and two satellites in only about an hour of watching.
We spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading.

********* END OF POST **************

Lassen Volcano National Park, Truckee and Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, Yosemite (Tuolumne Meadow area), Bishop, Death Valley National Park, Las Vegas, Flagstaff, Sedona

(posted from Motel 6, Prescott, AZ)
(This post covers 4 – 12 October, 2009)

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Monday, 12 October-

This morning we drove on to Sedona (AZ). We parked in the Gallery District and a shopping village called Tlaquepaque, reportedly modeled after Guadalajara (I can’t verify—yet!). We enjoyed seeing and walking through all the shops and thought the village very well done and decidedly upscale. It was great to get some ‘art time’ for a change, i.e., to come in out of the forest and mountain and see what the Sedona community is doing.
After lunch we walked to Hozho, another cluster of galleries. We then decided to leave Sedona but as we were driving I saw Starbucks sign and drove up the hill to the Pinion Pointe shops. There we found even more galleries. There we met Lou Deserio, the owner of the Lou Deserio Photographic Gallery. We apparently caught him in a pensive mood. Lou treated us to a mini-seminar on the philosophical underpinnings of photography. He clearly loves his subject and the contents of the gallery amply demonstrate that love and commitment. When he says he has driven 1000 miles to take one photograph (not one image, one photographic idea), I absolutely believe him.
Here’s more on Lou: http://deseriogallery.com/artists-bio.htm . We’re very lucky to have met him.
We then drove south out of Sedona and on to the old copper-mining town of Jerome. What an incredible sight to see this town perched precariously on the mountainside.
We drove on to Prescott and checked in to a Motel 6, our first motel stay of the trip, now on Day 50. We had a good steak at the nearby Cattlemen’s Bar and Grille and spent the evening lounging and flipping channels while catching up on the web via wi-fi.

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Sunday, 11 October-

Today we left the Williams (AZ) area and drove Route 66 east through Flagstaff and then turned northeast toward Sunset Crater National Monument.
We had a beautiful day for a drive—mid-Seventies and ultra-blue sky. We enjoyed our stop at the Sunset Crater visitor center. It’s a small one but has very thorough exhibits. I really liked a u-drive-it animation of the eruption of Sunset Crater about 1000 years ago. This was a largish flat-screen display up on the wall with a console with buttons and a joystick. The joystick allowed me to visually ‘fly’ around the volcano to look at it at any angle as I used the other buttons to select what point in history I wanted played. I could see the landscape before the eruption or through the several-month-long process of the eruption. In this case, the eruption began with a nine-mile-long fissure erupting all along its length. Can you imagine seeing something like that?
After a few days, a cinder cone began forming and built up. Fire went 800 feet high. Smoke and ash rose 2-1/2 miles. Lava began flowing from the lower portion of the cone. This went on for months.
Today, the cone is a beautiful sight, looking very symmetrical and black with pumice. In the area of the cone the earth is black. As you drive further north, you begin seeing patches of red earth showing through where the pumice and ash has been blown away.
We then continued north to Wupatki, a large pueblo built in the mid-1100’s and abandoned less than 100 years later. Wupatki was inhabited by people now called the ‘Sinagua’. The word is Spanish for ‘without water’ and refers to the mountains of this area (the San Franciscos), which the Spanish called the Sin Aguas for the scarcity of water in them.
The Sinaqua people were largely farmers and weavers. There were thousands of them in this area, most living at the 6000-7000 foot altitude level of the high plains. This permitted them to find pinion nuts and edible grass seeds and to hunt rabbits and deer as well as to plant corn, squash, and Indian cotton in small, terraced fields. The growing conditions were much like today (very dry) so much of their time was spent in collecting water.
But their efforts were doomed by a change in climate. The area had been made habitable by a century of higher-than-average rain but the pendulum swung the other way. Years of drought made it impossible for the society to continue living here. They are thought to have moved to other areas of the southwest, most notably to areas now part of the Hopi Nation.
After our visit to Wupatki, we drove on to a nearby pueblo remnant called ‘The Citadel’. From there, we could see eight other pueblo remnants, giving us some idea of the density of the community. Our idea would probably be understated, however, given that many families lived around the pueblos but outside of them. But today all we can see are the crumbled stone walls of the pueblos.
We then drove back to Flagstaff and drove through a few streets to get an idea of the town. But we didn’t do it properly. We were wanting to move on to nearby Oak Creek Canyon so cut our Flagstaff visit a bit short.
Oak Creek Canyon lies just above Sedona and is considered part of the red-rock area famous for artists and (of all things) psychics. We had already had a long day so after checking out the beautiful Oak Creek Vista at the north end of the valley, we stopped at the first available campground for the night (Cave Springs).
While Labashi made supper I met our neighbor, Abraham Habib, a sixty-six-year-old gentleman from Phoenix. Abraham had retired from Bell Labs in New Jersey and moved to Phoenix. He ‘blundered into’ a job with a defense contractor. This weekend he had taken a trip to Sedona and on to Oak Creek Canyon and was sleeping in his car, a compact model. But he had a great attitude about it. He said he was expecting to be uncomfortable tonight but he has been uncomfortable before and probably will again so it’s no big deal to spend an uncomfortable night if that’s the price of enjoying the area.
Labashi and I then retired to our little van and watched two more episodes of ‘Planet Earth’ (‘Shallow Seas’ and ‘Seasonal Forests’).

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Saturday, 10 October-

We woke early in the BLM campground just west of Las Vegas, mainly because of slamming doors of campers. There must be something going on this morning because a larger-than-normal number of campers left at first light. (We later figured out what it is--- there’s a large bicycling event going on).
We drove around the outskirts of Las Vegas to get to our route southeast over Hoover Dam. Traffic was light at 0800 on this Saturday morning and we had an easy trip out of town and over the Dam. We only stopped briefly at an overlook along the way.
We continued to Kingman, then took US Route 66, a more scenic route than the concrete slab of US40. We spent much of the day working our way toward Flagstaff and decided on an early stop west of Flagstaff.
We found a nice little freebie campsite in the Kaibob National Forest outside of Williams. We had seen very cheap motel rooms in Kingman ($26 to $39) so thought we might splurge on a motel night in Williams but we had missed the fact that Williams is the jumping-off point for the Grand Canyon and it’s a weekend. The Motel 6 wanted $63 for a night (and didn’t have any available!) so we opted for the nearby national forest.
Our campsite is in a sunny spot under Ponderosa pines. With the mid-70s temperatures we spent the latter part of the afternoon lounging about in the sun. I went for a walk around 1630 up the forest road and jumped a large mule deer. After supper I walked up to the same area and this time saw six mule deer. The forest here is very like a city park. The underbrush and most of trees smaller than a foot in diameter have been cut down and there’s a thick layer of long pine needles. The Ponderosa pines still standing are a foot to four feet in diameter. The larger ones with their golden bark look wonderful.
After the sun set I sat out watching the pink-and-blue skies while Labashi worked away on her computer. As darkness fell I heard coyotes yelping off in the distance.

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Friday, 9 October-

This morning I checked under the van to see what the new noise is we acquired on the washboard-road last night. The rear muffler-pipe hanger broke off and will have to be welded or replaced but there’s no immediate issue.
We needed to clean out the cooler (it needs a cleaning every ten days or so). We took advantage of having a nice, big picnic table and a warm, sunny day to take most of the contents of the van out and clean everything, then re-stow. Then we moved to a shady spot on the visitor’s center parking lot and I crawled under the van and wired the tailpipe in place until I can replace the hanger bracket and muffler clamp.
We began driving out of Death Valley and stopped at beautiful Zabriskie Point for the view. Our next stop was the 3000-foot altitude marker, about 20 minutes east. Here was another spot the ranger had told us we could use for dispersed camping. It would have been great. It was an old industrial town site which had concrete pads for a series of what must have been mobile homes or work camps, now all stripped of the plumbing and electric infrastructure. But our purpose this morning was different. We washed our hair and had lunch there in the desert.
We then drove on toward Las Vegas, some 85 miles away. But once we hit civilization at Pahrump, we saw an Albertson’s grocery store (with a Starbucks) and took an hour to re-stock the ice-box and pantry.
A few miles west of Las Vegas we came to the Red Rocks Conservation Area and I recognized it from a business trip years ago. We took the scenic drive through the Red Rocks canyon before moving on to Vegas.
In Vegas we arrived on the north end of Las Vegas Boulevard about 1630. That put us right in rush hour (apparently) and we were able to only inch along in heavy traffic through the Las Vegas Strip. It actually worked out very well. We had plenty of time to look at everything (and all the people) as we ever-so-slowly made our way south.
After the airport we turned in to Town Center, a shopping area, and asked a security guy for a recommendation for a good burger. We followed his excellent advice and had burgers at Bar Louie. Mine was called ‘Angry Louie’ and had srirhachi sauce, (a very hot sauce) and a fried jalapeno. Labashi had the California burger.
After supper we walked through the upscale shopping village, enjoying the evening. Then we headed back up Las Vegas Boulevard, this time to see the lights. We had no interest in stopping to see any of the casinos or shows but I was glad Labashi finally got to see some of the famous landmarks.
Our trip up the Boulevard and out to our campsite on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) lands near Red Rocks was much quicker than the ride in. We spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading.

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Thursday, 8 October-

We left Bishop this morning, heading south. I liked the feel of little Bishop and wouldn’t mind spending a month or so there but Labashi says I’d get bored. I guess I’m thinking of it as a jumping off point for exploring the whole area rather than just the town. She may be right, though, once snows in Tioga Pass cut off access to Yosemite.
Today our goal was Death Valley National Park. We made it to the Stovepipe Wells Ranger Station by 1530 and realized we’d better hustle to see the visitor center at Furnace Creek. The drive in to Stovepipe Wells had been a spectacular one as we descended about 5000 feet, giving the brakes a good workout.
We had been used to the 50-degree daytime temperatures for the last few days but now had a hot-and-sunny 90. But, as they say, it’s a dry heat! I was surprised how comfortable we were. The air rushing in Mocha Joe’s air vents felt hot but we weren’t sweating.
The Furnace Creek Visitor Center is only another ½ hour so we made that in time to see the introductory slide show and tour the exhibits and bookstore. Furnace Creek sits at 190 feet below sea level but we wanted to go to the lowest point at 280 feet under, the lowest point in North America.
After closing the visitor’s center (and seeing a roadrunner) we headed for the Badwater Road in the very nice evening light. We were only a half-mile from the visitor’s center when we saw a coyote cross the road ahead. It seemed very furtive but once across the road it only travelled 20 yards or so before ignoring us and starting to dig furiously at something with its front paws. Afterwards it hung around the area, disappearing then re-appearing as it made its way though small arroyos paralleling the road. This was the best coyote sighting ever for us.
About 17 miles down is the Badwater pulloff, where we could take a walk on the salt pan at the 280-feet-below point. The evening air was moderating already and with the setting sun, it was a perfect evening.
We had talked to a ranger about dispersed camping, i.e., camping in the National Forest outside of a campground and she gave us a couple of options. One of them was to drive down a dirt road (West Rim Road) for 20 miles, then turn up in and go at least two miles from West Rim Road to get to an area outside the park boundary. She did say the last road is rough, more suited to a jeep.
We started down the West Rim Road just as the sun dropped behind the mountains. That road turned out to be a disappointment, mainly because of the miles and miles of washboarding.
Because of the shaking, rattling, and rolling of the van over the washboard road surface, we decided to take the second rather than the third side road and cut off 12 miles of driving (and 12 back tomorrow).
The road consisted of rocks from golf-ball to football size —no dirt between them--- and was only as wide as the van. We had to slow to a crawl. The two miles suddenly seemed a long way to go.
We did pretty well for most of the first mile. The received hitch hit bottom twice and I realized I had a problem. If I had to back down this road, the receiver would likely hang up on one of those rocks and we’d be stuck. I’d have to try to dig us out or find flatish rocks to build a ramp.
We ran out of luck at exactly the one-mile mark. A washout across the ‘road’ made it impossible to go on. And there was no room to turn around.
I walked down the road a bit and found a spot that was perhaps a foot wider than the rest of the road. I backed to that, then started the laborious process of making an eight-point turn, turning and backing, pulling up and turning, etc to gain perhaps a foot of progress each time. Eventually, we made it and breathed a great sigh of relief. Now the trick was to avoid getting hung up until we got down to the West Rim Road.
Going back down didn’t seem to be as hard as coming up and I was even able to avoid banging the receiver hitch. Finally, we made it back down to the washboards. I was never so happy to see a badly-washboarded—but passable—road.
By this time it was well after dark so we retreated to the Furnace Creek Campground for the night. We had a perfect evening. The temperature had now dropped to about 70 and we could see the Milky Way from our campsite picnic table. After supper we took a walk around the campground and found a good vantage point where there were no lights to interfere with sky-watching. Labashi almost immediately saw a very bright meteor. I just caught the end of that one but then saw two smaller ones. By the time we were ready to turn in, we had seen eight of them, two of exceptional brightness.

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Wednesday, 7 October-

The overnight temperature was a bit lower than I expected. It was 17.4 degrees when we woke. The heater didn’t want to start, apparently due to the low oxygen content of the air. Between our night-time exhalations and the higher altitude, the heater just doesn’t want to light. We had to open both side doors of the van and turn on the overhead vent fan to push the CO2 out. To keep the heater running we have to have the door open an inch or so and use a small fan to keep pushing the CO2 out. Even so the heater shuts off every five minutes. I’ve always been able to eventually get it running, it just takes time to get it going and then keep it going. But when it’s running it’s great and we use it to heat water for luxurious morning wash-ups. At least they seem luxurious on a cold morning.
After breakfast we drove another two miles deeper into the Inyo National Forest, just to see what’s there. A sign pointed toward Crooked Meadow so we wanted to see what it looked like. It was actually very pretty, particularly in the morning light. The meadow was surrounded by pines on three sides and the other side was large boulders and a cliff.
The Inyo National Forest has odd roads compared to many of our other National Forests. Where the road builders tend to build up the road and have fairly deep trenches lining the roads (to keep water from cutting through the road surface), the Inyo’s roads are the lowest surface and they are lined by mounds from a foot to two feet high. In a rainier climate this would be a formula for turning the road into a riverbed.
After Crooked Meadow we worked our way back down to the hard road. I was surprised to see that we had camped at 8850 feet altitude last night. No wonder the heater didn’t like the O2 level.
We drove back to Mono Lake and the visitor’s center, which specializes in Yosemite info. Armed with a park map and the knowledge that Tioga Pass was open for travel, we started up the hill. Years ago we had attempted to enter the east side of Yosemite from Tioga Pass but the road was closed by snow. Finally, we’ll get to see more than the Yosemite Valley.
The trip up to the Pass only took a half-hour and the grade wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be. On top the view was wonderful, particularly the snow-dusted peaks. The road surface was good in our lane though we could see black ice patches in the other lane due to its being in the shade. But they were small enough patches to not be a worry.
We drove for 30 miles, enjoying every minute of it. At Tenaya Lake we turned around and parked along the lake to have lunch in the warmth of the sun and read the park info thoroughly.
We chose a hike back Lyell Canyon, leaving from the Dog Lake parking lot. This hike is on a section of trail where the John Muir Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail are the same. We hiked back in three and a half miles through very open pines and granite outcroppings, more or less following the creek upstream. We crossed two very nice open meadows which allowed us to see the mountaintops around us.
As is often the case, Labashi had an eye out for scat and tracks. The snow here and there allowed us to see several sets of small animal tracks (rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, mostly) plus deer and coyote. We also saw two instances of coyote scat, which Labashi of course had to examine closely and compare to her ‘Scats and Tracks of the Rocky Mountains’ book which she always has in her daypack.
We finished up the seven-mile hike a bit tired but we had had perfect weather for it so had gone further afield than originally intended. Back at the van we snacked to recover, then headed out by 1500.
We drove slowly as we headed back to Tioga Pass and stopped several times at pulloffs both in the park and on the way down the grade. We looked for bighorn sheep at one which told of 27 bighorns being released here in 1986. They are reported to be increasing in numbers but Labashi says she read at the visitor’s center that many of them have been taken by cougars and re-establishment efforts aren’t very successful.
Back down at Mono Lake we turned south and drove for an hour and a half to the town of Bishop. We had some re-supply shopping to do and we were only an hour and a half from dark so we stopped at Piute Palace Casino and made sure we could stay the night in the parking lot. We then did our shopping and had supper in the van at the county Isaac Walton League park before returning to the casino. We walked through the casino and checked out the restaurant. We were hoping to have a drink but this is apparently a dry casino so we decided we’ll have breakfast there tomorrow and gas up before leaving.
We spent the evening blogging, reading, and working on the crossword-puzzle book. It’s nice to be down under 5000 feet where the temperature is so pleasant this evening.

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Tuesday, 6 October-

We woke early this morning- just after dawn. The thermometer said the outside temperature was 24 degrees and our Buddy heater felt extra-good this morning.
After washup and breakfast we drove the ten miles to Lake Tahoe and started down the west side of the lake.
The northwest portion of the road circling the lake is jammed with houses and condos and ‘shopping villages’. We also saw many boats still tied to moorings and the lake was rough. Wind-driven waves from the East were rocking the boats about quite badly and we saw one ski boat in the process of sinking. The timing of the largish waves and the wind direction had apparently pushed the boat a bit sideways to a few waves and they began filling the boat. When we saw it the leeward quarter was under water and it was clear it wouldn’t be long till the boat went under. That will be a shock to the owner. He’ll probably think the boat was stolen until he notices the anchor buoy is also missing and realizes it was pulled down with the boat.
After about the half-way point down the lake, the drive gets really, really nice. We see the snow-capped peaks off to our right and the ultra-blue lake to our left. The pines seem to get bigger and bigger as you go south as do the granite boulders. At one point we were driving a ridge which was only seemed as wide as the road with sheer dropoffs on both sides.
As we neared South Lake Tahoe, we stopped at a US Forest Service visitor’s center. There we learned the kokanee salmon were spawning in the nearby Taylor Creek. Kokanee salmon are landlocked salmon. As a species, they were formerly sockeye salmon introduced into Lake Tahoe to provide a food source (their eggs, presumably) for trout. The salmon spawn in the streams and their young grow there, then move down to the lake and live there for two to four years before returning to the stream of their birth to spawn and die, repeating the cycle.
We walked the Rainbow Trail which took us to Taylor Creek and there we saw hundreds of salmon, bright red with their spawning colors. Most seemed to be content to mill around in the deeper pools. But a few were going through their spawning behavior and there were a small number of carcasses littering the stream bed, perhaps a dozen or so in the short stretch of stream we walked.
The trail also led us to a ‘stream profile’, which is an underground aquarium of sorts. Part of the stream is diverted past glass windows so we could see the salmon and trout from a different angle.
We then drove on in to South Lake Tahoe and we were both hungry for a good burger. We needed to stop at a pharmacy and while there I talked with a shopper in the parking lot, asking where we might find a good burger. She directed us to nearby Izzy’s Burger Spa.
Izzy’s turned out to be a great choice. We had char-broiled burgers festooned with all the fixin’s. We also ordered a salad but there were so many fixin’s on our burger, we saved the salad for supper.
We had thought of Lake Tahoe as a drive-through. We had been down the east side of the lake some 15 years ago as we returned from Reno and hadn’t been impressed. But the west side has a lot going for it. Once you get away from the developed areas, there are some really, really nice natural areas and the surrounding mountains are fantastic, especially with their light snow cover as we’re seeing them today.
After South Lake Tahoe, we headed away from the lake via Route 89. This turned out to be a fantastic choice. We climbed up from the lake to Luther Pass with incredible views on all sides. At Luther Pass we saw the aftermath of a motorcycle accident which had apparently just happened. Someone standing on the road gave us the ‘slow down!’ signal as well as motioning to us to drive in the opposite lane. We first noticed a motorcycle on its side but then saw several people gathered around the motorcyclist on the ground. He was lying down, face up and conscious and his face was bloody. He had a big gash over his left eye and perhaps another on the forehead.
We pulled off just beyond the accident. There were three or four cars off the road and a half-dozen people around the downed motorcyclist. I thought we might have to use my SPOT satellite messenger to call 911 but saw that nobody was running to the nearby houses or business to make a call so most likely that call had already been made. Shortly we saw an ambulance approaching so we moved on.
We continued down 89 to its end. That took us across some of the most incredible scenery we’ve ever seen. Perhaps it’s the dusting of snow on the mountaintops but they were incredible. We had crossed Luther Pass and then Monitor Pass (around 8000 feet) and then took the long, very twisty road down from the Pass to Route 395 very near to the Nevada state line.
We turned south on 395 near Topaz Lake and passed through the very interesting Antelope Valley for the next several hours.
Finally, we hit Mono Lake which is just east of Yosemite National Park. We spent an interesting hour at the Forest Service visitor center for Mono Lake and learned about the formation of tufa columns in the lake. They’re in a sense petrified springs. They are formed in the heavily-salted lake where fresh water springs mix with the mineralized waters of the lake. The mixing forms calcium carbonate (limestone) columns underwater. The lake levels drop as the season goes on, revealing the odd whitish columns.
Mono Lake is three times as salty as the Pacific Ocean. It has five main inlets and no outlets. Evaporation and diversion of its freshwater inlets by the city of Los Angeles has caused the level of the lake to fall but recent court cases have re-established the lake’s rights to the inlet water and it’s now in the process of recovering.
Mono Lake is too salty for fish but does support a very large population of brine shrimp, which color the lake with streaks of red in mid-summer.
I had inquired about local dispersed camping at the visitor’s center and was directed to the Inyo National Forest nearby. We first had supper at a vista point overlooking the lake, then drove well into the Forest, finally finding a nice spot as darkness fell.
We spent the rest of the evening blogging and reading. The temperature is around 41 this evening and expected to drop to the mid-Twenties. We’re at 7000 feet, which will affect our little propane heater in the morning, causing it to shut off every few minutes.

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Monday, 5 October-

This morning we woke to the sound of a sawmill sawing logs in nearby Greenville. After breakfast we continued on down 89 to SR 70 and the Feather River Valley. This is yet another scenic route, following part of the historic Beckworth Trail. I was just reading about Jim Beckworth/Beckwourth last night. He was a mountain man in the fur-trapping days, then when the beaver ran out he pioneered an emigrant trail cutoff and set up a trading station to supply the emigrant wagon trains headed for the gold fields after 1849.
We followed the Feather River for the better part of 100 miles as it descended to the Sacramento Valley and Oroville. I’m not sure I’ve seen a ‘twistier’ road. The river runs between extremely steep mountains and the road seems to carve out just enough space for cars. Along this corridor the ‘49ers took out millions of dollars-worth of gold but today the only remnant we saw is a rock crusher moved to a road-side pulloff for tourists to admire.
By the time we reached a vista-point overlooking the Sacramento Valley we were a little dizzy from all the sharp switchbacks. But there it was— Shangri-La for the emigrants. To our eye (as to many of the emigrants), the valley looked dry and burnt. But as we descended to Oroville, we began seeing orchards and crops. And where plowed up, the dirt now looked brown and rich-looking rather than sand-yellow and covered in sage. As we drove through the valley, we saw it was indeed an agricultural paradise (thanks to irrigation).
In Oroville we tried the library for wi-fi but it’s closed on Mondays. We tried the visitor’s center at the Chamber of Commerce downtown and lucked out; they had a very good wi-fi connection. We spent a couple of hours in the parking lot, catching up on email, posting the blog, and having a nice, leisurely lunch.
Oroville, by the way, is where Ishi came out of the mountains in the early 1900’s. Ishi, you may remember, was the last of his tribe. He was about 50 years old and had been wandering the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in this area for four years alone before descending to the white settlements. A professor from Berkeley learned of him from a news article and studied him, his language, and culture until his death from tuberculosis three years later.
We then continued on down SR 70 to the SR 20 turnoff at Maryville and headed east. In the Sacramento Valley the temperature was in the Seventies while it had been in the Fifties and below in the mountains. But as we drove east we began climbing into the Tahoe National Forest.
Our Route 20 eventually put us on to I-80 East, not far from Donner Pass. The Pass certainly looked ominous today. The mountaintops are dusted in snow and we have a low cloud-cover. As we dropped down off of Donner Pass via I-80 (on the roughest interstate highway segment we’ve ever been on), we needed gas so stopped at Truckee. We briefly stopped at the Emigrant Memorial State Park but the museum had closed by then. The state park is sited near where the Donner party was trapped so tragically in 1846. We realized we could follow the road right up the canyon past Donner Lake and up through Donner Pass.
We drove up through the Pass to the ski areas on top, stopping at several pulloffs to read historical plaques and turning at the Sugar Bowl ski lot, then retracing our drive down through the canyon.
We then hit the local stores in Truckee to refresh supplies and realized it’s getting late. Our AAA camping guide listed a Corps of Engineers lake (Martis Creek Lake) with a campground within five miles and it happens to be one of the few campgrounds still open this late in the year (and it closes in ten days). I’m not so happy to pay $16 for a campground with vault toilets and no showers but it’s getting too late and the choices too thin to try to do better tonight.
After supper we blogged and read. About 2030 we heard coyotes howling for a few minutes and I caught some of it on the video camera’s soundtrack.
We’re at 6000 feet and the outside temp this evening is 43. It snowed about an inch last night on Donner Pass.

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Sunday, 4 October-

After a surprisingly quiet night at Dusty Campground in the National Forest we continued south, winding our way into the California gold country. As I’ve been reading more of the emigrant diaries, I realized the latter chapters cover not only the main Oregon Trail going into Oregon but also the trails into northern and central California. We will be crossing the Beckworth, Noble, Lassen, Donner, and Carson Trails as we work our way south. We love it!
Today, though, we spent most of the day getting to and then enjoying Lassen Volcanic National Park. We had thought this a drive-through, thinking we had seen it years ago. But when we saw the Loomis visitor’s center, we realized we hadn’t seen the park at all and remembered that we had gotten as far as Mount Shasta on that trip but Lassen was still snowed in and we had turned back.
We were very impressed by the Loomis Museum and it was there we realized this wasn’t just a drive through lava fields. Lassen is the only place in the world with examples of the four types of volcanoes (shield, plug-dome, cinder-cone, and composite) within its boundaries. Our snowy drive climbed to 8500 feet, where we parked for a 3-mile hike to Bumpas’s Hell and back. Though the temperature was near freezing and we had several snow showers while hiking, I’d say this hike was the best of the trip so far. We had great views right in the parking lot and then took a beautiful side-hill trail skirting the valley and crossing over into the next valley, where we descended to the steam vents, mud-pots, and fumaroles of Bumpas’s Hell, a very active geological wonderland. Like Yellowstone, this is an area where you definitely want to stay on the boardwalk over the geological features. Nineteenth-century guide E. R. Bumpas was the first known white man to lose a leg to breaking through the thin-but-substantial-looking crust over the bubbling mudpots and steaming waters but a sign warns that each year a tourist or two makes the same mistake, even now.
As we returned to the van it started snowing in earnest and that snow appeared to be laying but we only had to descend a few hundred feet to find it melted on the roadway. We wound our way down to the new southwest-entrance visitor center for a short visit before departing the park late in the afternoon.
We began looking for camping for the night as we continued down Route 89. We found Greenville campground about a half-hour before dark and were surprised to find it was closed-but-not-closed. The sign at the iron ranger said the campground is closed but then said no services are provided. Another sign said camping is permitted (in designated spaces only). We took that to mean the campground’s pit toilets are closed and there’s no trash service but we could camp there just like any other dispersed-camping site in the national forest. We picked out a nice campsite and settled in for the night.
After supper we watched two more episodes of the ‘Planet Earth’ series (‘Great Plains’ and ‘Jungles’).

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The Bezabor Log

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Monday, October 19, 2009

Monday, October 12, 2009