Toaster Tales

Wednesday May 7

2008-05-07T09:31:00.001-07:00

More rain and cold. I should have stayed in Tucson.
No sun but a couple days when it didn't rain. Took
some long bike rides and went to the state park. John
the ranger is a very nice, very laid back type. I
think we'll get along fine. The park has old
conifers, very thick tops so the forest is pretty
spooky. I expect to see ROUS's (see The Princess
Bride) around every corner.

I'm sleeping in the toaster. Got a wifi modem so I
can listen to the BBC at night before falling asleep.
Getting lots of time to read. Finished a great
whodunit by Janet Evanovich called "Twelve Sharp" with
an accident prone female bounty hunter main character.
Saw a red breasted flicker and stellar's jay. Just
so some of you birders don't think I'm making up some
of these names, they don't appear in the eastern US
bird books. Find a western Sibley's and eat your
hearts out.

Went into Seattle last weekend and spent time with my
brother's old girlfriend, Kris, and got lots of
cultchah. Mostly improvisational dance. Lots of it
pretty boring. But a great video of a young couple
with an 11 month old discussing art: to my ears, how
many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The whole
time this little cutie is babbling and you get the
idea that what he has to say is more compelling than
the adult conversation. Don't know if that was the
point or not. Kris is my age (or so) but dances way
younger. She says she doesn't stuff Ibuprofen but I
don't believe her.

Saw a wonderful movie last night called A Band's Visit
about an Egyptian Police Orchestra that gets invited
to Israel to give a concert but ends up in the wrong
town. Much of it in Hebrew and Arabic but in halting
English when the Israelis and Egyptians talk to each
other. Touching but not sappy.

Got a 50 lb sack of Magic Mushroom popcorn. It was on
the doorstep when I got home from the movies last
night. Made some for breakfast. Wow. I'll send some
to the PCC.

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Saturday May 2

2008-05-02T08:38:00.001-07:00

THE TOASTER HAS LANDED! At 2:14 PM yesterday landfall
was achieved on Whidbey Island, WA. A beautiful ferry
ride from a strangely named town called Mukilteo.
Sunny day, lots of wind, just perfect for being on the
water. Mom was pretty pleased. Set up the trailer in
her driveway and now I have a couple weeks to sightsee
and kayak before starting at the state park.

The orientation for new camphosts was some boring and
some very well done. Three naturalists from the state
spent a day talking about geology and it was pretty
cool. A glacier created an enormous lake that finally
exploded the ice dam and carved out all kinds of
canyons, carrying rocks hundreds of miles and
generally created conditions for endless numbers of
PhD theses.

All kinds of interesting people. Lots of obnoxious
men, of course, who seemed as if they had never had
anyone to talk to and were making up for lost time.
And many lovely couples who were enjoying each other
and the time they had together in retirement.

Drove east from Coulee City over the cascades. Huge
amounts of snow at the top. Came through Leavenworth,
a ticky, tacky tourist trap made to look like a
Bavarian Village, complete with McDonalds and Holiday
Inn Express. The east side of the Cascades is big
apple country. Right in the middle of the apple
bloom; miles of soft white felt covering flats,
hillsides and mountain tops.

Mom has two cockatiels. This is their mating time and
they are obnoxious. Loud, flying around constantly,
and there is very little to tittilate human beings in
their sexual activity.

The day is overcast. We have great plans to get a
wifi modem and visit the state park. Or just stay in
and read a good book.

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Monday April 27

2008-05-02T08:19:00.001-07:00

A little overcast this morning but it warmed up
quickly. First day of orientation. Pretty basic
stuff. But talked to lots of interesting folk Two
guys who worked at the mint in Washington, DC regaled
us with tales of people trying to steal money. A
woman from Anacortes, WA who is further left than me.
She runs a group trying to get homeowners to get rid
of their lawns to save water. We were both pissed off
at a short video in thet afternoon essentially saying
that employees attitudes about custormer service have
nothing to do with how they are treated by their
bosses. The workshop on dutch oven cooking was great.
They made 5 desserts (one for diabetics) and it just
seemed like magic, piling all the ingrients into the
cast iron pots, closing the lids and putting hot
charcoal briquets under and on top, waiting 45 minutes
and finding exquisite looking (and tasting) things
inside.

Gas prices are having an effect on the number of
volunteer camphosts which is way down this year
according to the director. A number of state park
managers are here trying to recruit people who may
have some available months in their schedule.

There is a strong wind blowing tonight though it's not
very cold. There are no tenters so it's all very
quiet outside with everyone watching their satellite
tvs.

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Sunday April26

2008-05-02T08:18:00.001-07:00

Drove to Sun Lakes State Park outside Coulee City, WA
for the orientation for new camphosts. Finally here.
Lots of confusion around campsites because it was
crazy busy, being the first weekend of fishing season,
a new reservation process and the campground and the
volunteer program not communicating very well. It's
quieted down now. All bent out of shape noses seem to
be back in their correct places.

I had lots of time to sit in the sun and read this
afternoon. Started and finished a great book called
"Birds in Fall", fiction by Brad Kessler (thanks,
David). About the aftermath of a terrible plane crash
in Nova Scotia, interwoven with descriptions of fall
bird migrations. Takes place mostly in a fancy inn run
by a gay couple. Thoughtful, and settings that are as
interesting as the story.

I'm hearing peepers tonight for the first time this
spring.

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Thursday April 24

2008-04-26T09:18:00.001-07:00

Drove to Baker City, OR to the Oregon Trail
Interpretive Center. It sits on a hill top
overlooking miles of the old trail. You can walk
along it and in places the ruts made by the thousands
of ox-drawn wagons are still visible. When things
went well, the trip took 150 days from St. Louis to
Oregon. With poor weather, dead livestock, pissed-off
Indians it could take 200 days. These were tough
people. Most were middle class, many, farmers who had
sold their homesteads to get enough money to make the
trip. It was an expensive undertaking. Over 100,000
people went to Oregon by wagon between 1830 and 1850
(when the train made it unnecessary). I wonder about
the change in human character since that time. Is the
striving towards new frontier good for the human soul?
Or did it just give men more opportunities to build
phalluses (I'm talking symbolically here). There was
a bit on male/female relationships on the trail. The
heading was something like, "Men worked hard and had
fun and women did what men let them." There were very
few incidents of Indian aggression in the first few
years of emigration. The native tribes were actually
very helpful and were eager for trading opportunities.
At some point, however, the numbers of white people
got to the point where the local folk started to see a
decrease in property values: spoiled water sources,
decreased buffalo populations, annoying missionaries,
and they started to fight back. Buy the book and find
out who won.

Discovered that Farewell Bend, where I camped
yesterday got its name as the place where Oregon
Trailers, who floated down the Snake River to cut off
a few miles, got out to avoid the rapids further down,
and continued on by land.

Drove up and over the Blue Mountains, pretty much the
same route as the Oregon Trail, imagining what it must
have been like. Got into La Grande, OR and, for some
reason, noticed how white the population was. At the
same moment, I saw I drive-thru Greek take-out place
with a young black guy with serious dreads waiting for
an order. Of course, I went in. Yai Yai Nikki
(Grandma Nikki) was the proprietor, an old lady with a
Greek accent, and her American husband. The gyro was
better than anything I've had in NYC. I'm came
dangerously close to telling my blood sugar to fuck
off and suck down a piece of baklava.

Continued on into Washington, through Walla Walla.
Having also been to Okeefenokee, I only have Kalamazoo
still on the list of weird, trite, named places to
visit. This area is good sized hills totally plowed
and planted with wheat, a deep bright green with the
early plant shoots. Miles and miles of softly rounded
mounds lacking only pigmentation and nipples to be a
male adolescent's delight.

Tonight in Lewis and Clark State Park. They came
through here on their way back east. The park is in
pretty bad shape. No one else here. Not even a camp
host. Lots of wind damage. No hot water. I think L
& C used the bathrooms. I hope this isn't
representative of Washington State Parks.

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Friday April 25

2008-04-26T09:09:00.001-07:00

Drove through more miles and miles of wheat fields.
Huge grain elevators. Beautiful patterns of rows of
green wheat shoots on the hillsides. Contour plowing
meets cubism. As fertile and planted as the land is,
the small villages I passed through are dying, many
empty store fronts and houses in need of care.
Perhaps the only people left are on the widely spaced
farmsteads who do their marketing at Walmart.

I'm in Spring Canyon campground at the Grand Coulee
National Recreation Area, the lake on the Snake formed
by the Grand Coulee Dam (Lake Roosevelt). Not only
there a large body of water behind the dam but there
is a whole pump and canal system that lifts Snake
River water 300 ft above the lake and supplies an
irrigation holding reservoir that used to be a dry
canyon. It is 60 miles long itself.

The campground sits on a cliff overlooking the lake
and the dam. About half the sites are filled. It's
very quiet. Saw yellow-rumped warblers and northern
flickers.

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Wednesday April 23

2008-04-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to a light drizzle which turned
to real rain during my second cup of coffee. So I
quickly packed up and headed west. Got into Boise in
time to find a sports bar and watch Manchester United
play Barcelona in the second semifinal match.
Pinpoint passing but powerful defenses (and a missed
penalty shot by Christiano Rinaldo) ended up 0-0.

Major agricultural area. I thought Idaho grew potatos
but in this area it's soybeans. Wide irrigation
ditches, hundreds of yards long circular spraying
machines, enormous elevators and tractors the size of
small apartment buildings.

Stopped in to visit Mary Sullivan's son Patrick, his
wife Cory and kids, Sean and Lily. They were a little
bleary-eyed, having gotten back home at midnight last
night from a week in Puerto Vallarta. Parick runs a
shelter for homeless youth, with funding from the same
place as TLP. They have 12 beds and are staffed 24
hours. Patrick makes his own kettle corn with a
popcorn called, I think, Magic Mushroom, which he buys
in 50 lb. sacks. It is by far the best popcorn I've
ever had. Giant, perfectly shaped pieces, puts
Orville to shame.

Drove into Oregon to Farewell Bend State Park on the
Snake River north of Ontario. Only $13 a night with
electricity and $3 for a wheelbarrow load of firewood.
The Snake is famous for things during pioneer days
and tomorrow I'll try to find out what they are. The
campground is about ¾ full. It's no warmer here than
any other places I've been lately so I'll also have to
find what what the big attraction is. There are some
very noisy Canada geese walking around the camp. They
seem to be nesting on an island in the middle of the
Snake. And the robins are doing things we'd rather
our teens didn't. (No, not smoking little robins size
hash pipes.)

In coming into Oregon I'm now on Pacific Time. Seems
like some sort of milestone. All the way across the
country.

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Tuesday April 22

2008-04-23T07:52:00.001-07:00

Went back to the refuge and spent some time in the
visitors' center. Then a shower, laundramat, food
shopping and I was ready to head to the B & B Billiard
Parlor to watch the Chelsea-Liverpool semifinal, leg 1
of the European Champions League on the tv of the only
bar in Brigham City (pop. 9000). It was 12:30 and
there were a number of people already imbibing but the
bar mistress was quite welcoming and set up ESPN for
me. It was a great game and tied in the last 10
seconds of play by an own goal (I know this is
gibberish for some of you but to the initiated it is
important stuff.) You can still smoke in bars in
Utah.

After the game I drove to Lake Walcott State Park near
Rupert, ID. The lake is part of another wildlife
refuge and is filled with birds. There's a large
flock of white pelicans on the other side of the lake
and with the south wind blowing I can hear every
squack. Saw two grebes doing a mating dance on the
surface of the lake, running together for about 50
yards then diving underwater, like sychronized
swimming.

There are 36 sites in the campground and only two
others are filled. All sites have water and
electricity for the winter rate of $12.74 (tax
included), the best deal of the trip. The price is
discounted because the showers aren't open yet.

Had a nice fire tonight. The wind is creating a small
chop on the lake and the waves are making a familiar
and pleasant noise on the shore just below my
campsite.

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Monday April 21

2008-04-23T07:51:00.001-07:00

Drove to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge north of
Salt Lake City. It sits on northeast edge of the
Great Salt Lake (which, by the way, is very low. All
the boat ramps are high and dry). Had an amazing
afternoon:

American Avocet white pelican clarke's
grebe
Yellow headed blackbird black necked stilt western
grebe
Sandhill crane marsh wren franklin's gull
Eared grebe canvasback ruddy duck
Northern shoveler scaup (lesser or greater?)
white-faced ibis
Long-billed curlew black crowned sparrow snowy egret
Hundreds of canada geese thousands of coots lots
of lbb's
Mystery plovers

There's a great visitor's center that I didn't spend
much time in today. I'm going to do the whole thing
again tomorrow. One of the volunteers at the center
said "There's a lot of romance going on out there".

My campsite is 50 yards from the Great Salt Lake to
the west and ½ mile from snow covered mountains to the
east. Only the traffic noise from I-15 takes away
from the edenic surroundings. Had a nice campfire.
It's getting a little chilly but it's not supposed to
go below freezing tonight. I'm the only person in the
campground.

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Sunday April 20

2008-04-20T19:05:00.001-07:00

Spent the day today in Arches National Park with the
PCC women, looking at arches, hearing about lesbian
love affairs, and the whole lovely day followed by
watching Brie and Jill taste 9 different beers at the
Moab Brewery. I love PCC people. I was pretty sore
all over from yesterday so I played chauffer while the
girls hiked. Tomorrow they are off to Canyonlands and
I'm headed to Salt Lake City. And they have the best
selection of car snacks I've ever seen.

Got back to the car at Arches and found a note on the
window from Joanne Casey who lives around the block in
Bristol. She didn't know it was my car but saw the VT
plates and an envelope on the passenger seat addressed
to Mary Sullivan (who lives a few doors down on Pine
St.).

It's been very windy all day. The mountains to the
west are covered in mist or blowing sand. And it's
getting cold. I packed up and reconnected the trailer
to leave quickly in the morning if the weather is gross.

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Saturday April 19

2008-04-20T19:02:00.001-07:00

Just had dinner with Sherry, Michelle, Brie and Jill
from the PCC. Pretty cool to see them in Moab.
Tomorrow we're going hiking. They got here and found
that their reservations were at a place that was more
John Graham Shelter than Ritz-Carlton. So they madly
phoned and found a motel for tonight 30 miles back the
way they came. But they have a place in Moab for Sun
and Mon. Michelle wants everyone to know that, even
though she made the biggest stink there's at least one
other voyager who silently backs her up (only initials
please: SdG).

I rented a mountain bike this morning and rode Slick
Rock. Well, not the whole 10.2 miles. I crawled the
last 2. And walked many of the ups. The area is a
100 square mile sand dune which petrefied into rock
sometime in the distant past. No trees, very little
vegetation. Just hills of sandstone and a small patch
of sand here and there. I felt ok on the downs, even
the steepest, but going up the other sides, in
addition to being stamina sapping, there was always
the chance of tipping over backwards. I'm hurting
tonight but I did it.

Lots of souped up 4 wheel drive vehicles also parade
around the area. Their designated paths cross the
biking trails. They are pretty fun to watch as they
crawl up and down nauseatingly steep hills. I would
have taken pics but I didn't have the strength to
reach around the back of my biking jersey to get the
camera.

There's an old uranium processing plant just outside
Moab. The Department of Energy has closed it up by
burying it in hunderds of thousands of tons of sand.
And now, because of leeching by the Colorado River and
the discovery of deformed frogs, the DOE is going to
truck the whole thing to a different place. Your tax
dollars at work.

There's a full moon tonight and it is warm. I've got
the door open. The RV park is pleasingly quiet for so
many camping here.

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Friday April 18

2008-04-18T19:22:00.001-07:00

Woke up to a chilly but beautiful sunrise (see sun
glinting off Toaster). Connected with three other
campers for shuttling to a trail head. An older
couple from Denver who voted for Ron Paul in the
primary and a very pleasant retired elementary PE
teacher from Maryland. The hike was an 1800 ft drop
into Monument Canyon, beautiful rock formations but
the lady Ron Paul follower was driving me crazy with
her constant lecture on what's wrong with kids today.
The PE guy and I had to sit in the back of her pickup
for the ride back up the mountain and I think she had
figured out that I wasn't a fellow traveller; she
drove around 20mph hairpin turns at about 60. I know
she was trying to throw me out the back.

Drove to Moab. The last 30 miles or so along the
Colorado River through a mini Grand Canyon. There
were a few rafters and white water kayaks and plenty
of water and rapids but the river looked almost too
muddy to flow. The campgrounds in Arches National
Park were full as were all the Nat Forest sites. I'm
in an RV park that had no trailer sites so I'm in the
tenting area and have had to put up the tent: official
rules, though I'm going to sleep in the trailer. The
sites are very close together, no vegetation. On one
side is a family with 4 kids under seven and on the
other, two families with 6 young children between
them. At this moment there are two babies crying.
The two french guys a couple sites down have
disappeared.

Biked into Moab to see about renting a mountain bike
for tomorrow. This is the world capitol of MB'ing and
the most famous trail is Slick Rock, ten miles up and
down a giant boulder. I think that it will be a lot
like the top of Mt. Abe on a warm fall Saturday but
I'm here and it has to be done.

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Thursday April 17

2008-04-18T19:19:00.001-07:00

On the road again, la la la. Left Boulder this
morning in the sunshine with 3 inches of melting snow
on the ground. Labored over Loveland and Vail passes
in dreadful weather, snow, slush, wind, giant trucks
but eventually dropped back down to a more humane
altitude and rolled into Colorado National Monument
outside Grand Juction about 5:00. A red mesa with
numerous canyons carved into it. Very few people in
the campground. Met a young German couple who, for
the second spring, are delivering a new RV from South
Bend, IN to LA, paying only insurance and gas. They
get 3 weeks and 3000 miles to do the trip. It's a 21
foot, very fancy machine which, they say, would be a
palace in European RV circles where gas is $8.00 a
gallon.

Met a guy from Burlington who spends winters teaching
skiing in Breckenridge, CO and summers teaching
sailing in Malletts Bay.

Some things from the past two weeks:
At the Conference on World Affairs at CU I heard
Rachel Maddow who has a radio show on Air America.
She is very cool. She's been the token progressive on
some cable talk shows, usually does her show from NYC
but did it live from the conference for 5 days. I
went and saw her 4 times.

Saw the Slipstream-Chipotle Bike Team hanging around
in front of Boulder's most expensive bike shop. They
are one of two American teams invited to the Tour de
France.

I rode public buses a few days and everyone, college
students, old fogies, all say hello and thankyou to
the busdrivers when they get on and off.

Finally passed another biker. And seconds after got
smoked by six guys with matching jerseys.

Drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park and saw elk
and pronghorn sheep.

There are signs on classrooms in the new business
school building at CU designating which are still
available for naming (for a price, of course).

Discovered that there are 10 different flavors of Goldfish.

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Monday April 7

2008-04-07T19:36:00.001-07:00

Haven't written much since I've been here. Days are
uneventful but very pleasant. Having a great time
with Steven and Mandy. As I have very few relatives,
mom, Kate, and a cousin I haven't seen since childhood
(mom had one brother, dad was an only child) it's
fortunate that Steven is pretty special, not only by
dint of being my brother, but also because he is a
very nice man.

The days are running into each other even more than
being on the road, but I'll try to remember what I've
been up to the last few days. Heard some great jazz
on Wed: two CU student combos with a couple fine
improvisors. Got the trailer repaired: the post that
holds the Toaster up when it's unhitched was too long,
kept getting bonked on odd shaped roads. Have been
doing a lot of bike riding. Still haven't passed
anyone except the old grey-haired guy on a mountain
bike. I came close yesterday. I was catching up on
the rider in front of me when he/she turned right.

I spent today at CU. They have a weeklong "Conference
on World Affairs" with gobs of heavy hitters. Heard a
concert and history of Bossa Nova with a guitar
player, Oscar Castro-Nuevas who played with Antonio
Carlos-Jobim and Gual Gilberto in Brazil 50 years ago.
Margot Adler of NPR talked at a workshop about
whether we'd survive an attack by extraterrestrials.
Much more interesting and down to earth than it sounds
(by the way, she is a Wiccan Priestess). Also there
was Terry McNally who who wrote and produced the movie
"Earth Girls are Easy." The last workshop was about
the fight between religion and science with "The Great
Randi" from Skeptic Magazine and a gay former Jesuit
priest, now an atheist and married under
Massachussett's new law.

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Monday March 31

2008-04-01T07:25:00.001-07:00

There are exciting things to see even in the middle of
a SUV infested city. Walking along the streets of
Boulder I came upon a store called Now and Zen. And
in the window were these high tech meditation timers.
I couldn't tell if they bonged themselves or if you
had to do it manually. But please notice that the
clock also counts seconds. Again, I'm not making this
up.

Bought a new camera and mini bow saw. Met Steven at
the business school after his classes. It's a brand
new building with giant stone columns at the entrance
and the first room inside is a 3 tiered lecture hall
with a huge sign "Pepsico Classroom". There is as yet
no "Diet Bargs Rootbeer Faculty Lounge".

It snowed last night and the weather today is
atrocious. Cold and damp. And no better forecast for
the rest of the week. The sun is out and the
mountains are beautiful. Rode the stationary bike
while watching "The Hunt for Red October".

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Sunday March30

2008-04-01T07:24:00.001-07:00

Snow on the ground this morning. We took a trip to
the Coleman factory outlet store. So many cool
gadgets. Bought some fuel and a reflector gizmo to go
on the lantern.

Heard from Hope who was out in the boondocks of Utah
and was at Lake Powell the day after I left. I'll try
to catch up with her this summer when she's in Oregon
for two weeks.

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Saturday March 29

2008-03-30T08:42:00.001-07:00

Woke up to a sunny day. First night in a real bed for
a couple months (ok, one hotel night, also). Made
coffee without cold fingers and rinsed the pot with
warm water for the second cup.

Went for a bike ride in the capitol of beautiful bike
riders. I smoked one old guy on a mountain bike but
otherwise I watched a lot of well shaped butts go
flying by. There were groups of 5, 10, 40 bikers,
most very intense. About half responded to a wave.
Although the altitude is only about 5000 ft I was
felling it on the hills.

Went food shopping with Steven in the afternoon and
while he and Mandy were out for dinner with friends I
pigged out on English soccer on the telly.

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Friday March 28

2008-03-30T08:41:00.001-07:00

It wasn't too cold this morning but it was raining
and foggy. Went for coffee at George's Restaurant and
Drive-in in Walsenburg and watched two Colorado State
Policemen give a sobriety test to a pick-up driver.

Found I-25 and headed north. Just south of Colorado
Springs it started getting icy but the rotten
conditions were short lived. It stayed foggy enough
that I never saw the front range until I got to
Boulder.

Arrived at my brother's about noon.

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Thursday March 27

2008-03-28T14:57:00.001-07:00

Woke up to frost, a warming sunrise and canada geese,
robins and redwing blackbirds. It sounded like
Vermont. Nothing was frozen so I had coffee and
watched the shadows on the mountains disappear.

The road out of Navajo State Park was thick with
Magpies, enormous birds with long black tails that
make a blue jay kind of unattractive squack. Drove to
Sand Dunes National Park outside Alamosa, CO. The
highest sand dunes in the US, mountains of sand
carried off the Rockies by rivers and blown back into
dunes by the prevailing SW winds. I climbed part way
to the top but the footing is nasty. Some hardy souls
did go all the way to the top. It was so high you
could only tell they were people because they were
moving. The wind was fierce.

Went over two passes. One, Wolf Creek, has a ski area
on top and piles of snow 10 feet deep along the road.
The Suby managed nicely in third low gear at 40 mph.

On the way into Alamosa there was a cut field of
something, with about 30 sandhill cranes, stopping on
their way north to bulk up.

An ad in an RV mag I picked up about a fancy RV park
system, "These places don't just let any coach in
through the gates. There are standards and they're
high."

Tonight I'm at Lathrop State Park in Wahsenburg, CO.
It's situated between a busy highway and a golf
course; one of the less attractive camps I've stayed
in. There's one other site occupied. The little
reservoir was full of coots, canada geese and a pair
of mergansers whose bright coloring could only mean
one thing.

It's very cold. I'm under the covers and it's only
7:00. I've packed up everything so I can just jump in
the car and find a warm diner in the morning.

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Wednesday March 26

2008-03-28T14:55:00.001-07:00

Couldn't decide, when I packed up this morning which
way I was going to go. At the last second I decided
to turn north into Monument Valley, home of El Capitan
of "Close Encounters" fame. Very cool buttes and
mesas that stretched for miles. Now and then an
"Indian Trading Post" selling "Real Navajo Jewelry" at
"Wholesale Prices". And many little homemade roadside
stands with hand painted signs advertising the same
stuff. Passed three of four housing developments on
the reservation which must have been relocation
villages. The whole res culture is so mysterious to
me. And I have real hesitation and discomfort about
asking questions (which I have never had in
Newfoundland, for example). I feel like I used to in
the Middlebury Natural Foods Coop, imagining the
salespeople saying to themselves "what's he doing
here?" My own mischugass ("craziness" for you goyim
((gentiles)) ), of course.

Went through Mexican Hat and Bluff, CO, two little
towns on the San Juan River that are starting and
stopping places for rafting trips. There's a lot of
water in the San Juan because of the amount of snow in
the mountains and there were lots of rafts getting in
and out. I toyed with floating some of it but the
shuttle back to the starting point was a problem. I
liked the funkiness of the two towns. One had a
restaurant with a sign that said "Home of the Swinging
Steak" and no explanation or picture.

Drove through Cortez and Durango. Elevaton stayed
pretty steady at around 7000 ft. Lots of snow. The
only campground open was a state park near Ignacio,
which is also the home of an old college buddy, Hope
Vail. Hope tried to teach me to smoke and drink
scotch. Needless to say…. She and her partner lived
in Asheville, NC . after graduate school and enticed
me and Phoebe to move there. Anyway, I left a message
but haven't heard anything. Hope works for the
schools and this is spring break.

I'm camping on Navajo Lake, right on the water, no one
else in the campground. A beautiful view of the
snowcovered mountains. Had a campfire. I'm a little
worried about the temp tonight. It was 19 above in
Durango last night. It's a little lower in elevation
here.

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Monday March 24

2008-03-25T09:25:00.001-07:00

It was very windy and cold this morning. Had my
coffee and packed up and drove into Springdale, just
outside the park. Found a laundramat and by the time
my undies were clean and dry the sun had come out and
it was another beautiful day. So I went back to the
campsite (which I'd paid for anyway) and set back up.

Took the shuttle bus to a trailhead which also
happened to be under one of the most popular rock
climbing routes. There were four teams of climbers
headed up a sheer face of rock that takes two days to
climb. There was a climber hurt and I watched a
rescue team set up ropes to get him off the cliff.
Never did get to do a hike myself. The rescue guys
said they do about 65 rescues a year and almost none
are rock climbers. Usually, a hiker who slips and
breaks a leg.

Back at the campground I chatted with a young woman
who graduated from Bowdoin two years ago and now
teaches art and outdoor skills at a private school in
Prescott, AZ and her parents; the mom is a social
worker in Waterbury, CT who works in maternity with
high risk moms. Dad teaches art at a posh CT prep
school and makes wooden kayaks. And a man with
Aspergers who has a fiberglass teardrop trailer.

I've been looking at the map and the weather and I
think I'm not going to go any further north right now.
It's very cold in Bryce and in the mountains of
Colorado. Going to head east into the Navajo-Hopi
reservation and into Southern Colorado before I turn
north toward Boulder.

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Sunday March 23

2008-03-25T09:24:00.001-07:00

Drove from Page to Zion National Park by way of Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument. GSENM is
mostly accessible by 4-wheel vehicle. It gets it's
name from the 4 distinct geological layers in the form
of a, that's right, grand staircase, each tread being
about 25 miles wide.. Big time dinosaur remains and
lots of universities sending teams to dig. In the
more remote areas they helicopter in and out.

I'm starting to OD on beauty. Zion is another
spectacular place. Two immense canyons. You drive
down into the first, go through a tunnel into the
second. The tunnel was another CCC project, built for
the cars of the time. Some rigs are too big to go
through, and some, pay a special fee to they can go
through as a single lane while the traffic from the
other direction is stopped. The Virgin River Canyon,
where I am camped, is a very busy place. So much so
that you can't drive to the end of the canyon but have
to take a shuttle bus, and so much business that
there's a bus every 15 minutes for the 8 mile route.
The canyon is very narrow and the walls go up 500-800
feet on both sides. I biked to the end today and the
views were dangerous. In case anyone was wondering
what happened to the tops of the Appalachians, they
are outside my trailer. The eastern mountains eroded
and the dirt ended up in Canada. Then big sandstorms
blew the dirt down here (though, when this happened,
land masses were in some different places), turned
into sandstone and got eroded away again.

The campground is very much like ones I remember from
growing up. Lots of families with kids running
around, lots of tents. There's a woman with rather
large parts a couple sites down who keeps yelling
"Matthew". I don't know if Matt is a kid, a dog or a
spouse, but whoever, he keeps pissing her off.

Finished "The Worst Hard Time" about families that
lived through the Dust Bowl. I'd always thought that
the dust bowl was simply caused by drought. But it
was drought, after all the grassland had been plowed
under to grow wheat, which was encouraged by the
government. A great read. Just started "Special
Topics in Calamity Physics", by Marisha Pessl.
Fiction, stream of conciousness, made up literary
allusions, about a young woman with an eccentric
father. Very good so far.

This is my first night on daylight savings time. I'm
ready to go to sleep at my usual time of 9:30 or so
but when I wake up at 6:30 AM, this morning just in
time to see the sunrise, it will still be dark and
cold, even more so because it will take a couple hours
for the sun to peek over the canyon walls.

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Saturday March 22

2008-03-23T09:44:00.001-07:00

Woke up to a gorgeous sunrise. I set out my coffee
making equipment last night so I wouldn't even have to
get out of the sleeping bag to make the morning cup. I
sat sipping, and watching the sun slowly light up
Gunsight Mesa. I had planned to kayak into a couple
other canyons today but in the middle of the night the
first of the easter weekend
fishers/partyers/religionists showed up. To be
followed in the morning by the invasion of the bass
boats and parade of the floating apartment buildings.
Under this onslaught, not even my well protected
illusion could survive. I turned around and headed
back to the boat ramp at Antelope Point. The placid
lake now was like the ocean in Newfoundland, the many
wakes combining to make a confused surface and one
behemoth almost swamped me.

Got back to my starting point and as I was loading up
the car, a couple from Brunswick, Maine came over to
chat. She works at LL Bean. He's a woodworker who
has moved his shop to Kaneb, Utah and they are trying
to figure out how to live together again. She's on a
6 month leave and trying to make the leap.

Treated myself to a Whopper and fries and came back to
the campground of a few days ago. There are two
Arabic speaking RV's, one German, one Korean and one I
can't make out what language they're speaking, some
slavic tongue perhaps. The young couple next door are
on spring break from Santa Clara College. He's quite
full of himself, she seems in awe but I have hopes
this week together will cure her. They've just come
from Zion and Bryce so I got some good info.

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Friday March 21

2008-03-23T09:42:00.001-07:00

One of the things I like about kayaking is the
illusion that I'm paddling where no one has gone
before. Even in the face of jets overhead, floating
signs labeling waterfilled canyons, the occasional
speed boat and the odd floating beer can I can still
imagine that I'm the first person seeing all this
wonder. Labarynth Canyon is filled with water for
about 2 miles and makes lots of sharp turns. Most of
it isn't wide enough to turn the kayak around in and
the walls are hundreds of feet high. No one hd ever
seen this before. I got out at the end and started
walking up the dry bed. Until I heard the sound of a
motor boat. I rushed back and a film crew was getting
out to do some video taping for a web site. On the
way out I had to back up beneath and overhang to let a
party boat, skippered by a Woody Harrelson look alike
go by.

There's a hundred foot high white ring around Lake
Powell, the discoloration on the canyons' walls caused
by the water when the lake was full. The maps, all of
which were made a few years ago during high water
levels show channels which now don't exist. At the
places I camped, there are clam shells all over the
ground.

In the afternoon I paddled over to Gunsight Canyon,
much wider than Labyrinth and chose a much more
convenient site: a level area on a sandy beach,
protected from the west wind and wide open to the
morning sun from the east. The moon is just rising
and it is full, throwing sharp-edged shadows and mood
lighting the mesa on the other side of the canyon.

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Thursday March 20

2008-03-23T07:27:00.001-07:00

Loaded up the kayak and headed out onto Lake Powell.
Just east of the boat ramp is a huge marina, full of
private houseboats and one's to rent. It's hard from
a picture to get an idea of how large some of these
macmansionboats are. Some are three stories tall.
Many have 4 matching jetboats hanging off the back and
all have a second story water slide. You can rent a
pedestrian one story houseboat for $800 to $1200 per
day. The few floating estates I saw all travelled
with an accompanying water skiing boat.

I was fortunate that there were very few people out on
the lake. The surface was very still and after a few
hours I found a sandy beach to camp on. I passed one
other kayaker, on a situpon covered in mounds of black
plastic bags, poormans' waterproof sacks.

And now for the important info. The poop bag will go
down in history as an invention rivalling poprocks,
air conditioning and power car windows. Comes
complete with TP and a hand cleaner. You squat over
it, do your thing and it all closes up slicker than a
selfsealing envelope. Inside is a special gel which
breaks down the things that need breaking down so you
can just throw it into a garbage can when you get
back.

The moon is a day from being full. I found enough wood
to have a small fire. And little dried tumbleweed
bushes almost explode when they hit the heat, cheap
fireworks. I am sleeping out under the stars, the
water lapping at the shore, the moon rising. It's all
just about perfect. I'll have to remember tomorrow to
not set my sleeping bag out on the side of a hill.

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Wednesday March 19

2008-03-20T06:41:00.001-07:00

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise. No clouds. Just a
little cool. Drove to the Lake Powell visitor center
to get info about kayaking. There are many narrow
canyons to explore, lots of good camping spots to
paddle to but no bathrooms. You can pee anywhere but
pooping must be done in an approved container. The
high tech bags are $4 each or 5 for $15. I went with
the big buy. Apparently, the people downstream have
not been excited when the lake level rose and water
quality decreased. I'll keep you all posted on how
portaholes work. There are eight floating
bathroom/dump stations on Lake Powell but they are not
open yet.

Biked into Page. There was nothing here except Indian
land before 1954 when the government started building
the dam. The Bureau of Land Reclamation traded the
Navajos some land in Utah for the area that is now
Page. There were 8000 people here until the dam was
finished in 1963 and then the population dropped to
almost nil. Now the village is mostly tourist
industry and the only good sized town on the north end
of the Navajo reservation.

In the afternoon I took a tour of the Glen Canyon dam,
Pretty cool. Enormous beyond words. The lake is
down over 100 below maximum level, supposed to rise up
to 40 feet in the spring with the great snow cover in
the Rockies. But there were displays at the visitor
center about how much lower the lake would need to
fall before they could no longer generate electricity.
It's not real far.

Just outside Page on the Navajo reservation is a huge
coal fired electric plant, very high tech supposedly,
fueled by coal from the reservation, that provides
lots of jobs and noncasino income for the tribe. It
looks so out of place. Four extremely tall
smokestacks and the thing plunked down on a gorgeous
mesa. A whole set of interesting tradeoffs and values
foreign to my middle class progressive,
environmentally and scenically aware upbringing.

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Tuesday March 18

2008-03-20T06:38:00.001-07:00

It was pretty cold again when I woke up. Had a quick
cup of coffee, packed up and zipped over to Starbucks
in Camp Verde for more coffee, internet access and
warmth.

I had lunch in Pine, AZ with two of the people who run
the Workamper News web site. They happened to be in
the area and I have had some emailing with Jaime who
moderates the forums. Good conversation and lots of
pics with everyone and the Toaster.

Pine was settled in the 1870's by Mormons, who are
known for keeping excellent records and genealogies.
There are scrapbooks and histories of all the founding
families. The story is that they were sent there by
the elders in Salt Lake City to spread the word to new
areas. But I think they chose a pretty out of the
way place to practice polygamy without getting
hassled. The histories in the little museum (which is
quite good) are quite explicit about the many wives of
the first male settlers. The woman at the museum
entrance desk is a Catholic from Cleveland who said
that the Mormons still run the town. I bet there are
some great stories there.

Decided to bypass the Grand Canyon as overnight temps
continue to be in the teens. Drove north out of
Flagstaff through the Navaho reservation. Beautiful
red cliffs ran along the road for 50 miles. And
little clusters of very small houses and shanties,
nice pickup trucks among junked vehicles, lots of
corrals for horses and lots of horse trailers.

The approach to Page, AZ and Lake Powell is through a
pass in the red cliffs. The first glimpse looks like
someone flooded the moon. Eerie topography and no
vegetation. I'm in a National Recreation Area
campground on the Utah side of Glen Canyon Dam. There
is a marina here filled with 2 story houseboats.
Fortunately, there is very little activity this early
in the year on the lake and I'm hoping to take a few
day kayak expedition to see some out of the way
canyons.

Stopped in Walmart to use the bathroom and most of the
shoppers were Native Americans.

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Monday March 17

2008-03-18T08:41:00.001-07:00

It was very cold when I woke up this morning. None of
the snow had melted overnight. I turned the heater
back on before I got out of the trailer and enjoyed a
half hour of warmth. While making my coffee I saw 5
pairs of great blue herons nesting in a huge tree
above the park. I don't know how they managed with
all the snow but they seemed quite active. I couldn't
tell if there were babies.

I packed up and headed down the mountain. The five
miles between Sedona and Oak Creek on Rt 179 has,
perhaps, one of the 5 best pieces of scenery in the
US. The red rock peaks are beyond description. Then
I got into Oak Creek, a Sedona wannabe and the beauty
of the last 10 minutes was shattered like a thrown
wine glass.

On to Montezuma National Monument which has nothing
whatsoever to do with Montezuma. It's a 4 story
apartment complex built into a cave in the side of a
cliff by the Sinagua in about the year 1000 and is
amazingly well preserved. The area was abandoned in
about 1400 and no one knows why or where the Sinagua
went. The Hopis have some oral history of absorbing
them into the tribe but there is no other evidence.

I drove through Camp Verde and into Coconino National
Forest and the Clear Creek Campground. This whole
area is part of the Yavupi-Apache Reservation and
there is a casino in Camp Verde. I took a quick walk
through it. Mostly slot machines. The new technology
allows one to play the slots without using cash. You
get a kind of casino credit card that you wear on an
elastic leash around your neck and insert into the
machine. Some people have two or three cards and seem
to be connected to the slots like patients in an
intensive care ward.

It's a cool clear night. The moon is about half full.
There's an enormous sycamore tree that's been cut
down and the largest parts of the trunk are lying next
to my camp site. I peeled some punky layers of wood
off them and had my first campfire in a couple weeks.

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Sunday March 16

2008-03-18T08:39:00.000-07:00

Tourist: I'd like to see some of the sights of Sedona.
Information Person: Where are you from?
Tourist: Philadelphia.
Information Person: Well, we don't have any cream
cheese factories here.
(Conversation I overheard at info booth)

Ah, Sedona. Gatlinburg for college graduates. Santa
Fe without Mexicans. I imagine that sometime, long
ago, the first gringos came to Sedona because it was
so beautiful, to paint, explore, whatever. But it has
turned into an obscenity. Psychic readings, crystals,
jeep tours and expensive schlock stores. Towering red
rock cliffs and mesas to which a guide will take you
to your own personal vortex, in the vernacular, that's
a particularly healthy spot on the earth's surface.
Getting down and personal with the environment while
driving an Escalade and wearing $600 crocodile skin
cowboy boots. Thankyou. I'm done now.

No. Wait. I'm not. The big controversy in Sedona is
between resident/owners of million dollar homes and
people who illegally rent their million dollar homes
to whichever riff-raff can pay the toll. The average
house price in Sedona is $600,000. Now I'm done.

I got into Sedona, elev. 5000 ft, in a driving
snowstorm. Started to drive higher up the mountain to
a national forest campground and had to turn around
because of the weather. Plunked myself down in a
little RV park in Sedona for $31 a night. Went for a
walk in town and got back to the Toaster very cold.
Drove 17 miles to a Walmart to find a heater. No go.
They've got their spring inventory on the shelves.
When I got back to the park, I discovered the trailer
across the way was from VT. Turns out the woman, Sue
Ellen and her husband live half the year in Weston and
half here. She does "body work" in both places.
Barbara Miles in Bristol was one of her bridesmaids.
(I was going to move into Barbara's apt. had I stayed
in VT.) And even better, Sue Ellen had a little
ceramic heater which she has loaned me for the night
and I am warm as can be now.

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Saturday March 15

2008-03-16T08:05:00.001-07:00

It was a little chillier than I've gotten used to this
morning. Put on hat and gloves for the first time in
a couple weeks. But by 9:00 it was nice and warm.
Sat through an hour long sales pitch by a very
pleasant guy. Nothing I'm interested in but not a bad
price to pay for two nights stay.

Drove to Jerome, AZ, an old copper mining town that
flourished at the turn of the 19th-20th century, died
in the 1950's and was brought back to life by
hippie-entrepreneurs to the point that you can't find
parking on a Saturday afternoon. Art galleries, cafes
and shlock shops. The town reminded me of mountain
villages in Tuscany with narrow streets built up the
side of cliffs. You can see for 50 miles from
anyplace in town and there is a great little museum
that devotes a significant amount of space to
prostitution during the mining heyday. One of the
perks of working for the mining company was a weekly
visit to a brothel.

Spent the evening with the couple camping next door.
He rolled up yesterday with a chromed out Yamaha
cruiser pulling a little trailer and she came later on
with a car. His trailer opened into a tent bigger
than the toaster, complete with double bed, table and
lamp and all off the ground supported by a spider web
of aluminum tubes. They were married for a few years
in the late 60's, got divorced and went separate ways
for 24 years having 3 children apiece, got divorced
and found each other again in 1995. Have been together
again ever since.

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Friday March 14

2008-03-16T08:03:00.001-07:00

Packed up this morning and started north. A very
strong wind from the west. Went through Phoenix, very
smoggy, huge traffic. Just north of Phoenix the road
starts to climb and the rise goes on for 25 miles.
From low desert to Saguaro cacti to scrub Pines. The
car really labored for the first time and the wind was
whipping the kayak back and forth.

I'm now near Cottonwood, AZ in a big time RV park with
a social director and heated pool. They have a stay
two nights for free deal trying to sell a membership,
like a time-share come-on. The mountains have the
same coloration as the Grand Canyon and there's a fast
flowing river just below my campsite. Saw a gila
woodpecker on my walk down to the water. Walking into
the "family center" felt like going into Porter
Nursing Home, except not as many wheelchairs, though a
number of little electric scooters like George rode on
Seinfeld. And the campground is very quiet. Tomorrow
morning I have to attend a sales presentation

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Thursday March 13

2008-03-13T21:18:00.001-07:00

Tucson has a public park just for model airplane
flyers. I rode out there this morning to watch an
international vintage model competition. All men in
their later years, a physician who comes from Brasil
every year, a team from Japan. Every plane flies the
same pattern for 8 minutes while judges score. The
fliers stands in the middle of a paved circle and
controls the plane with two wires. The plane goes
around and around and around. Fun to watch for about
20 minutes.

Came home did some food shopping and cooking. Made
some great guacamole. Was going to go to the U to
hear the last jazz concert but ended up staying here,
doing laundry and getting ready to leave tomorrow.

Talked with my next door neighbor, a very nice guy,
older, with a pig tail who works at a call center that
subcontracts for Verizon. They are supposed to
average 400 seconds per call and the whole thing is
computer monitored so each worker can see each day how
they are doing. Chatty customer service people don't
last long. He's done this work for 20 years.

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Wednesday March 12

2008-03-13T21:16:00.000-07:00

Took a bike ride this morning into Sabino Canyon which
is a beautiful recreation area and full of very
expensive homes. They are all very attractive. No
McMansions. There are pretty strict zoning laws and
all houses have to be only one story. Lots of flat
rooves and adobe style right angles. There are no
lawns but many very well kept cactus gardens. Big
article in the paper this morning about how the
average house price in Tucson has just fallen below
$200,000 for the first time in years. Huge numbers of
for sale signs and apartment complexes advertising $99
total move in cost or first two months rent free. One
bedroom apts are about $450/month, way less than
Addison Co.

Spent the afternoon reading "The Worst Hard Time"
about the dust bowl years. Really well written. Then
the adolescent boy I've seen wandering around stopped
by with a story that he's 15, just got out of 11/2
years of jail because of mistaken identity but isn't
going to sue for false arrest because he doesn't need
the money. He came over just before I left for the
jazz concert to see if I wanted to take him miniature
golfing.

Another great show tonight. The UofA A jazz ensemble.
Amazing.

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Tuesday March 11

2008-03-11T21:33:00.001-07:00

I hate dentists. I've always hated dentists and, I
imagine, I'll hate dentists in the future. Last night
I bit into a tortilla and split my upper denture in
half. Now, when this happened in Newfoundland about 4
years ago, I thought, no way I'll get it repaired
here. And then I discovered a small dental lab about
3 hours away. He fixed it, said he wouldn't charge me
because he was sure it wouldn't last. And it is still
good. And many of you know my guy in Addison, the
Picasso of false teeth, who charges little and
entertains with stories of his navy days.

So, here I am in Tucson, with two little pink pieces
of plastic and a toothless smile. I called a couple
dental labs and they said I had to have a referral
from a dentist. One dentist said they don't repair
splits. I went to an office in a ritzy part of town.
The dentist said I'd need a new denture. I told him
it had been repaired before. He threw down a folder,
told me to go back there and stormed out of the room.
His nurse came in and said they'd make me a new
denture but the process would take two weeks. I left.
Rode around for a while and saw a practice in a not
so ritzy part of town. Walked in to three
conversations in Spanish going on at the same time.
The dentist came out, looked at the broken pieces and
said he'd have it back for me at 4:30. So, at 4:30 I
returned. The denture fit perfectly. They invited me
back if there is any problem. OK, I don't hate all
dentists. I had a great bike ride, put in lots of
miles chasing dentists and had some killer chicken
tacos for lunch.

Saw a sign at the UofA for the Oy Vey Café.

This evening went to another jazz concert. The B jazz
ensemble. They were great and had a wonderful guest
sax soloist.

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Monday March 10

2008-03-11T21:32:00.001-07:00

Gave my legs the day off today. Did laundry then
spent the morning trying to find new rubber latches
for the hatch on the tear. The old ones are about to
come apart. No luck.

In the afternoon I drove to the top of the Catalina
Mountains (above where I first camped) to a little
village called Summerhaven that burned almost
completely in a forest fire in 2003. Tucson is at
4000ft and Summerhaven at 8000. Passed many large
patches if snow. Lots of bike riders in both
directions. I think my next biking goal is to ride
that route. Starting to think about spending next
winter here. Saw yellow-eyed juncos.

One of the campgrounds in the Catalina Mountains, part
of Coronado National Forest, is named after Gordon
Hirabayashi, a Japanese-American who fought internment
during WWII. The camp was originally an "honor
prison", no walls or fences, and Hirabayashi did hard
labor there building the road up the mountain. He was
exonerated by the supreme court in 1987, the
prosecution having kept from the courts information
which showed that the Japanese in the US were not a
threat.

This evening I heard a great jazz concert at the UofA.
Members of the jazz faculty and famous bass player
Rufus Reid who blew the lid off the hall.

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Sunday March 9

2008-03-09T22:04:00.001-07:00

Rode back to the soccer tournament. The first
entertainment was a dance group from Mexico. Great
performers. Watched a couple games, listened to a
Mariachi band, gazed at the mountains. Reminded me of
watching soccer games at Mt. Abe on a colorful fall
day with the Green Mountains in the background.

In the afternoon did some reading and tidying up.
Remembering that I have electricity in the trailer
park, I went out and bought a clip on light. I've
been using the Coleman lantern but need to keep the
door open so I don't die from the fumes. I'll see if
the lamp puts out enough heat to actually warm up the
trailer in addition to providing cheap light.

While I was on the phone with my brother this
afternoon, a very odd looking woman came up to me in
the park and started telling me she was my neighbor
and did I want to buy two Sean Connery DVD's for five
dollars.

This evening I went to the UofA for the first night of
their jazz fest. A great dixieland band. The best
musician was the banjo player, used to be with the New
Christy Minstrels. Good trumpet player, former studio
musician now getting his doctorate at UA.

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Saturday March 8

2008-03-09T22:03:00.001-07:00

Rode to Oro Valley to a farmers' market. The big
score was a giant bag of roasted poblano peppers for
$5 which I brought back with some difficulty on the
bicycle and cooked up a pot of the weekly stew. I've
been adding chorizo to the chicken and the goulash is
developing a nice kick.

I did some reading in the afternoon and after dinner
drove to south Tucson to a men's soccer tournament.
Teams from Phoenix, Tucson and Mexico and live music.
Mostly Hispanic players and very good soccer.

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Friday March 7

2008-03-07T20:05:00.001-08:00

Rode to the UofA art museum to see an exhibit of Goya
etchings that were all like today's political
cartoons, complete with an ultraliberal (and not only
for that time) bent. I sat in the middle of one of
the two galleries to read the catalogue and classical
guitar music started to play. I thought, what a nice
idea, to have recorded spanish classical guitar
playing in a Goya exhibit. Except, it was a live
guitar player. So I sat, with eyes closed, listening
to the extraordinary music, when a second guitar
started to play, a different piece of music. Then a
third. Turns out they were warming up for a recital
of the guitar section of the music school. I stayed
and listened to 8 spectacular guitarists, all college
seniors.

Did a little food shopping, came back to the trailer
and spent the afternoon sitting in the sun and reading
"The Worst Hard Time", nonfiction about the dust bowl
of the 30's.

This evening I went back to the bookstore to hear an
author, Nadia Shivack, talk about her book, Inside
Out: Porait of an Eating Disorder. It's cartoons she
has drawn over the 30 years of her struggle, and very
well done. She is about to be 50, just started the
first job she's ever had, is anorexically thin, and is
so eloquent about the process of her recovery.

I've decided to stay in Tucson for a few more days as
the low temps in the places I want to see next are in
the teens and 20's. So I paid for a week, 7 days for
the price of 5, and looking forward to biking, reading
and getting to know Tucson better. Starting Sunday
evening is the annual weeklong UofA JazzFest.

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Thursday March 6

2008-03-07T20:04:00.001-08:00

Drove to the AZ Sonora Desert Museum, about 15 miles
away on the west side of Tuscon, combination zoo,
botanical garden and nature center. At the front gate
was a volunteer holding a kestrel. Two Harris' hawks,
put on a show of hunting and low flying directed by
their trainers. There were a number of people with
binos and walkie-talkies out on the fringes of the
demonstration area watching for owls and eagles that
might attack the tame hawks while they were putting on
their show. I walked through one aviary full of
hummingbirds and another of desert birds. Many of the
hummys were sitting on eggs or feeding young. The
nests were about the size of an espresso cup. There
were hundreds of species of desert plants, a small zoo
of desert cats and an art museum full of a recent
competition of paintings of flowers; the first prize
was $25,000.

This evening I had dinner with Margaret O'Neil-Frater
and her friend Ally at a great Peruvian restaurant.
Margaret and I competed about who liked Tucson more.
She is helping with some animal research on a farm
that milks 3500 cows.

I just remembered a country and western song that I
heard between innings at one of the ball parks. A
male singer sang to his girlfriend about their taking
a walk in the mountains, seeing the sunset, etc. And
the verse ended, "Then I'd like to take you home and
check you for ticks." I am not making this up.

I was planning on packing up tomorrow and heading
north. Then I looked at temps in Flagstaff, the Grand
Canyon and Bryce: in the low 20's at night and 40's
during the day. I'm rethinking my plans.

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Wednesday March 5

2008-03-05T20:45:00.001-08:00

Rode down to the Colorado Rockies spring training camp
and watched the morning workouts. The major leaguers
had a game so they took batting practice in the
stadium. I was watching the hopefuls. And they
looked so young. It was fun seeing what goes on after
hearing about all these years. Watching batting
practice with the big team before the game was a
revelation after seeing the wannabees. The hitting
power was amazing and the throwing accuracy was
unerring.

The Rockies' spring training stadium is the oldest in
the leagues. They are threatening to move to Phoenix
if Tucson doesn't build them a new palace. If the
Rockies leave, then the White Sox and Diamondbacks can
opt out of their contract in the new stadium built for
them 2 years ago because there won't be 3 teams in the
area. The major leaguers, apparently, hate being in
Tucson because there's no night life and the golf
courses are better in Phoenix. The Tucson city
council is debating whether to create a special taxing
district to pay for a new stadium.

I didn't stay for the game, climbed on the bike and
rode to S. Tucson to visit the Tucson Rodeo Parade
Museum. Frank Mazza wrote me that he and Deb saw the
parade a few years ago and there are no motorized
floats or vehicles. The museum has hundreds of old
horse drawn wagons, stage coaches, surreys with and
without fringe on top that are in the parade every
year. The parade is financed partially by the fees
companies pay to hang their shingles on the museums
wagons. There are ore wagons, hearses, milk carts,
calliopes and the winning wagon from this year, a
prairie schooner decorated to look like a Rose Bowl
float. The parade's been going on for 80 years or so
but the pictures of the recent ones look so much like
ones from the 50's.

Had dinner at the Taqueria Pico de Gallo. Dan, the
trailer park owner, said it was his favorite place.
There's a small walk-up counter to order from and a
series of 5 or six little dining rooms. Dan said the
restaurant was originally a wagon but it has done so
well over the years they've added on a new eating area
every so often. I had chicken tacos to die for.
Stopped at the tortilla factory next door and bought
flour tortillas that were still warm to bring back
for breakfasts.

This evening I drove into downtown to hear an author,
Amy Irvine, talk about her new book which is about her
Mormon upbringing, militant enviromentalism in the
southwest, a father who committed suicide and a
questionable love affair. Sounds a bit weird but I
liked the excerpts she read.

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Tuesday March 4

2008-03-05T20:42:00.001-08:00

Biked out to Saguaro National Park and rode through
the cacti. Some of the cholla and barrel cactuses
are beginning to have buds and the octillos that
always look like thiey're dead are starting to turn
green. Saw curve billed thrasher and phainopepla
(looks like an all black cardinal). Came back to the
campground and collapsed. Some ice water and I was
revived. Added some grocery finds to the goulash and
sat in the sun to read.

I've started "The Iambics of Newfoundland", a book of
essays by an American, Robert Finch, who splits his
time between Cape Cod and St. Johns, and he coedited
The Norton Book of Nature Writing with John Elder.
Very nice writing and lots of details about
Newfoundland I didn't know. The essays are mostly
from the late 80's when NL was still pretty primitive.

I finished Travels with Charlie. I think I read
Grapes of Wrath in high school so I don't know much
Steinbeck. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature. His
writing is effortless and a pleasure to read. But you
shouldn't try to give it a lot of thought. He tries
to rediscover America, comes up with all kinds of
generalizations, says it's impossible to come up with
generalizations and says even if he does they're only
his generalizations and an Englishman might see
something completely different. Duh. He's also a bit
of a curmudgeon, constantly catching himself
glorifying the good old days. The best part of the
book was his going to New Orleans to watch the crazy
crackers curse at the first black and white children
going to the same school.

At a natural foods store I saw a healthy living type
magazine with an ad that read:

My body, my fish oil.
On my path, I strive to achieve balance.
Fish oil makes me strong, enhances my well-being.

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Monday March 3

2008-03-03T19:28:00.001-08:00

Had the complimentary breakfast at the Ramada and went
to find a new camping spot so I drove back up the
mountain and retrieved the Toaster. It was very windy
and very cold. I'm now on site 13 in the Pima-Swan
Trailer Park right in the middle of Tucson. There are
about 24 sites and most of the RV's look like they've
been here for years. The one next to me has a tacked
together unpainted plywood door and is for sale for
$2000. The woman living in it told me most of her
life story within a ½ hour of my pulling in. But it's
quiet, cheap, has a nice bathroom and shower and the
owner is eccentric and entertaining. I even get a
wifi signal now and then.

Biked to the ballgame, about 8 miles. As I was taking
off my bike shoes at the ballpark a guy gave me a
ticket, first row right on first base, among a bunch
of season ticket holders who all knew each other, the
players and the umpires. I recognized the names of
many of the players and realized I was looking at and
(from this close range) listening to men making
millions of dollars a year.

Got back to the trailer park, had my afternoon coffee
and went in search of a Walmart which, I heard, was
having a sale on little heaters. Found the Walmart,
no heaters.

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Sunday March 2

2008-03-03T18:47:00.001-08:00

Had coffee this morning with the rock climbers. Turns
out they are in their mid 40's. She has a 23 year old
son. They have two of the best bods I've seen in a
long time. Spandex looks good on some people. He
works for Phelps-Dodge, the big mining company, she
teaches special ed.

Drove down off the mountain. Passed at least 100 road
bikers coming up and another 100 on the flats. Just
about every street in Tucson has a bike lane. Even
saw some bike teams training.

Went to Tucson Electric Park to watch the Diamondbacks
and White Sox. Nice new stadium, pretty antiseptic.
I had second row seats along the left field line right
near where the players come out of the locker room.
They were all great about signing autographs. The
game looked a lot like some A league games played in
Burlington. Lots of errors, lots of subs. But it was
warm and the two kids in the seats right behind me
loved looking through my binoculars.

Got back to the campground about 4:00 and repacked the
car. Unloaded everything, and made up a box of stuff
I don't need, extra pants, towels, curtains, shirts,
bike parts. Will send them on to mom's tomorrow.
It's easier to get to stuff now.

Then the wind started blowing. And it got cold. And
I haven't had a shower in too many days and there is
no running water in the campground. Climbed into the
Toaster and started feeling sorry for myself. So I
told the camphost to watch the trailer overnight,
drove into Tucson and got a room at the Ramada. Had a
shower, went out to dinner and I'm feeling much
better. Tomorrow I'll try to find a place down here
in Tucson and spend a few days baseballing and biking.

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Saturday March 1

2008-03-03T18:45:00.001-08:00

Drove to Willcox, AZ this morning. Had coffee at a
run-down antique store that had espresso, 30 coffee
flavorings and at least as many liquers. The barrista
told me that the ranchers and cowboys have develped a
liking for lattes but refuse to use the name as it
might make them appear less masculine.

Did my laundry and the owner/laundress said she'd been
travelling for a number of years after she retired.
On her way back to her home in California she stopped
in Willcox, saw the for sale sign on the laundromat,
made an offer and now she's been here about a year.
But she's getting the itch to be on the road again. I
could probably now be the new owner.

Washed the car and trailer, did a little food shopping
and went to the local museum which was dedicated to
Cochise and Geronimo. Very well done for a little
town. There was also a large travelling (southern
AZ) exhibit about the history of baseball in the area.
This is another place where baseball was a primary
source of entertainment. There were pictures of ball
teams from the 1890's. and a huge, life size photo of
Pete Rose as a very young man though there was no
caption and the museum woman didn't know why it was
there. Four members of the 1919 Black Sox played in
an outlaw league around Willcox in the 1920's after
they'd been banned from baseball.

Saw acorn woodpecker, mexican jay, spotted towhee,
gabel's quail.

Drove up the Skyline Parkway outside Tucson up into
the Coronado National Forest. Great forests of
Saguaro cacti. I'm in a pretty primitive campground.
No water, pit toilets. The camp host gets electicity
from solar arrays. And for the first time, no RV's.
Real live people. You can hear their conversations
and watch them do the camping thing. At first I was
annoyed that they were so obtrusive and then had to
remind myself that I'd gotten spoiled by all the 5:30
PM fogey disappearance rituals. A young rock
climbing couple across the way next to a single mom
with two young boys. On one side of me are 4 college
age kids and on the other 3 older hispanic folk. The
campground is all gravel, not brought in, but the
natural desert surface, surrounded by mounds larger
than hills but not quite mountains.

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Friday February 29

2008-03-01T07:16:00.001-08:00

Had my morning coffee in complete silence. Not even
the birds were awake yet. Made my way slowly down the
last 15 miles of bad dirt road. The forest at the
camp looks like the fir forests high on Vermont
mountains. Then a couple miles along yuccas start to
appear. The big pines give way to junipers and
further down sotol cactus, until at the bottom you're
back to desert.

Chiricauhua National Monument is a geologic wonder,
something to do with tilted uplifts, splits and
fissures and big time erosion until what is left is
chimneys of all shapes and one size, very big. I
thought I'd bike up the canyon to the trailheads but
after 3 miles I felt about to die. So I turned
around, flashed down the road back to the campground
and got the car. Took a nice hike through the rock
formations. About half way back to the car I heard
some clomping behind me. A tour group riding mules
passed by carrying bodies that made even the sweaty
animals look good.

Did some housecleaning this afternoon. The car and
trailer look like they've been mud wrestling after the
30 miles of dry dirt roads. And dust got into
everything. Emptied the cooler and washed it, shook
out all the bedding and wiped down everything in the
galley. I still need to find a car wash.

Bought a book at the visitor's center, about the
cavalry out of Fort Bowie, near here, and their
pursuit of the Apaches led by Cochise and then
Geronimo in the 1880's. Most of the story is
predictable: white settlers, mail routes all moving
into Indian territory. Indians both fighting back and
stealing horses and livestock as they'd done
intertribally for ever. The army finally winning and
sending the Indians to the reservation. But Geronimo
had so angered the government that his tribe was first
sent to an arid desert prison then moved by train to
Florida, to a reservation in Tennessee and finally,
after Indian rights organizations (and some
progressive cavalry commanders who understood the
natives plight) got involved, allowed to return to an
Apache reservation in Arizona in the late 1890's.

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Thursday February 28

2008-03-01T07:14:00.001-08:00

Woke up to a beautiful sunrise and a campsite
surrounded by 10 different kinds of cactus. Chatted
with a Dutch transplant to Montana who gave me some
good leads on places to paddle. He was at the park
and would be leaving when his dental work in Palomas,
right across the border, was done.

Columbus is famous because Pancho Villa, a
hero/villain in the Mexican Revolution came over the
border in 1916 and killed a number of people and
soldiers here because he was pissed that Woodrow
Wilson was supporting a dictator as head of Mexico.
Gen. Pershing followed him back into Mexico but never
caught up with Villa. Pershing was the first to use
airplanes in a combat operation in searching for
Pancho.

Pancho Villa State Park is 3 miles from the Mexican
border so I drove to customs, parked and walked across
to Palomas. The first shop is a very fancy optician
and there were many others, also dentists, pharmacies
and medical clinics all catering, of course, to
gringos. I walked to the end of the town, about ½
mile and NEWSFLASH: We have another candidate for the
best burrito contest. A little hole in the wall. The
woman spoke no English though I did find out through
an exchange of animal noises that the meat in the
burrito was beef. And, by the way, Mexican chickens
go "phew, phew". The filling was simple, great spices
and came with bowls of green salsa and a parsley/onion
mixture. All for 12 pesos ($1.20).

I decided to go to Chiricawa National Monument that
I'd been to a few years ago and loved. But instead of
going the longer well paved route, I rejected the
advice of a mail delivery person and a state trooper
and took the back roads. Straight up a mountain on a
rutted gravel road, crossing streams and around
hairpin turns. Halfway along as I was losing courage
there was a small group of 4 or 5 houses, the remnants
of the once thriving Paradise, AZ. A sign in front of
one said visitors welcome. A stained glass artist
lives there with her husband who works 3 hours away
and only gets home every few weeks. His great
grandfather built the house in the glory days of
Paradise. She also runs a small guest house, mostly
for birders and folk who come to the Southwest
Research Station of the Museum of Natural History in
NYC; it's an out of the way PhD mill. She looked at
the Toaster and said I shouldn't have any problem the
rest of the way. We chatted for a while and I left
and the road got worse.

I am now in a pine covered National Forest campground,
3 sites, no water or toilet. I'm the only one here
and the nearest people are probably 15 miles away.
It's very quiet, the stars are as bright as they were
at the observatory and I had my first campfire in
weeks.

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Wednesday February 27

2008-03-01T07:12:00.000-08:00

When I tried to make my morning coffee, the two halves
of the pot were frozen together. The handle on the
water pump was frozen. The sponges in the sink were
frozen. The stove wouldn't light because it was too
cold for the fuel to vaporize. And, to add insult to
injury, raccoons got the animal proof latch on the
cooler open and ate 3 apples and a half pound of
sliced turkey. The ranger said the low was 19
degrees. I slept well though,

Went to the lodge at the campground and had coffee,
into Fort Davis to get an oil change and then to
Lupita's lunch wagon for a Tournado Burrito: sliced
pork, lettuce, tomato, onion and then smothered in
guacamole.

Saw a large handpainted sign outside Van Horn, TX that
said "Van Gogh Gallery" so I got off the interstate
and almost rolled past the town. The gallery is a
combination bookstore, curio shop and Van Goghish
paintings museum all seemingly shaken sometime in the
past by an earthquake and then resettled by feral cats
with urinary tract problems. There was an old and not
so sober man tending shop but he was not the
owner/painter. He was holding down the fort for "the
boss" who he couldn't seem to tell me much about.

Drove towards El Paso. Got off I-10 and onto Rt 20
the old two lane road highway. It runs for about 60
miles right along the Mexican border. Miles and Miles
of cotton fields and pecan orchards. And all
Hispanic. Stopped in a bakery and the woman behind
the counter spoke no English. The quick stop cashier
said that just about all the cotton workers cross over
from Mexico every day. And, I passed 2 very large
high schools right at the end of the day when all the
kids were leaving. Made me remember the Lower East
Side Tenement Museum Kate and I visited in New York
City in January. Few of those immigrants spoke
English and now, 2, 3, or 4 generations later, even by
people's last names, you can't tell where their
families came from.

Planned to stay tonight at Franklin Mountains State
Park in El Paso. I called in the afternoon to make
sure they had room; they did. And then I couldn't
find it. No one I asked knew anything about it. The
two gates I found that I thought led to the park said
"park closed", and no one answered the phone because
it was after 5:00. I got totally lost trying to get
out of the city, found myself very low on gas on a
road with the next town 52 miles away. But the drive
was beautiful. I raced the sunset west and the pink
and orange sky made the mountains look like paper
cutouts. I made it to Columbus, NM and Pancho Villa
State Park in the dark.

I've passed at least 10 Border Patrol regional
offices. They are all brand new and each has a number
of buildings and acres of vehicles.

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Tuesday February 26

2008-02-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this entry on Wed morning. When I got
back to the trailer last night it was too cold to do
anything but climb under the covers. More details
tomorrow.

Rode the bike into Fort Davis this morning and had
breakfast at a little burrito place. Ordered the
"trash can" (the works). Great.

Not far from the campground is a group of hills
covered with expensive houses. Looking through the
binos I thought I saw a castle on the top of one of
the hills. Drove up closer and took a pic,. I have
no idea what the story is.

In the afternoon drove to the McDonald Observatory.
Stardate on Public Radio with the lovely voice of
Sandy Wood is produced here. Took a tour of giant
telescopes, saw a video feed of live pics of sun
flares. The observatory is here because it is one of
the darkest places in the US. In the evening they set
up 5 large telescopes and focus them on interesting
things and you can stumble around in the dark from one
to another seeing nebulae, galaxies etc. And
something special last night. Some time in the last
20 years some entrepreneur launched 27 satellites
hoping to make killing in satellite telephone.
Unfortunately for him, people found cell phones
cheaper and more convenient. So, your tax dollars
bought the satellites from him and our government
keeps them flying just in case. Anyway, they are
powered by solar arrays, and reflect vast amounts of
sunlight. If you are in the right place at the right
time it looks like an explosion. There was an Iridium
flare predicted for 8:04PM. About 8:03 we could just
make out a moving spot and then all of a sudden it got
brighter than anything in the sky. In seconds it was
gone.

Spent the evening at the observatory with the musical
couple from Minnesota. They lived in Northern Alaska
for years providing health care to a small community
and have lots of kayaking experience.

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Monday February 25

2008-02-27T07:31:00.000-08:00

Drove into Fort Davis this morning to visit the
historic site. Fort Davis was staffed by buffalo
soldiers (mostly freed black slaves) after the civil
war to protect settlers and mail carriers from
Indians. Interesting idea if you think about it.
The video at the visitor's center was narrated by
Kareem Abdul-Jabaar (former college and pro basketball
star for all you athletically challenged types) who is
very interested in the history of the buffalo soldier.
The first black graduate of West Point chose to
command the Fort Davis troops. He was court-martialed
in a kangaroo trial by white officers about a year
after he got there. And the Fort Davis Buffalo
soldiers were themselves successful in destroying one
of the last tribes of Apache holdouts who refused to
go to a reservation. Confusing thing, history.

I was going to continue on today but a 30 mph wind
was blowing from the west and I didn't think I would
make much progress with the trailer and everything up
on the roof. So I unloaded the car and went back to
Alpine to buy a new camera. Found a cheapie Olympus.
It takes good pictures but has no viewfinder, only the
screen on the back. That will take some getting used
to. Tried to get into the tomato growing operation on
the way back but they don't give tours.

The couple that went on the tour of Turlingha Abajo
are here. Stopped to talk to them. He is a retired
physician, she a nurse, from Minnesota. He plays the
nykelharpe, a 13 string Swedish instrument, a cross
between a violin, autoharp and accordian. You bow it
but change string length with buttons. There are four
strings and a drone that are bowed and 9 resonating
strings. It has an eerie sound. He belongs to a
nykelharpe band in Minneapolis and they get gigs.
She plays violin but a swedish style one: the standard
4 strings but with two added resonators.

A warning for those of delicate sensitivities, the
following is a little clinical. As many of you may
know, men of a certain age begin to need a trip or two
to the john during the night. At home this is no
problem, just sleepwalk to the bathroom and back. But
in a campground there are some challenges that require
deliberation and planning. Of course, you could get
dressed and hike to the toilet, but after a few nights
of two dark voyages you've become a daytime zombie.
So, here are step by step directions for how to solve
this highly personal yet desperately vital problem:
1. Choose a campsite as far from others as possible.
2. Orient the door of the trailer away from the
closest neighbor.
3. Place the trailer so the door opens onto the most
absorbent surface: grass better than gravel, gravel
better than asphalt.
Now I think further description is unneccessary.
However, let's say a) that no amount of trailer
placement provides sufficient privacy or b) there is
no adequately absorbent surface. Then one must revert
to the tried and true pee bottle. And this has it's
own set of considerations:
1. Bottle must have an opening of sufficient size.
2. Bottle must have a very tight fitting top.
3. Bottle must not be opaque as carrying it to the
camp restroom in the morning in full sight of other
campers could be embarrasing if it looks like you're
delivering a urine sample.
I think I've about covered it. But if any of you (of
either sex) has any suggestions or other thoughts,
please let me know. This is important stuff.

The wind has died down this evening and the temp is
fine. I've got the trailer door open. I'll make my
nightly cup of decaf and sip it out under the stars.

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Sunday February 24

2008-02-25T08:13:00.001-08:00

Drove to Marfa, a budding Santa Fe. The reason is
Donald Judd, the 60's, 70's minimalist sculptor. He
bought a property in Marfa that was a cavalry fort in
the 20's and a POW camp for captured Germans in WW2.
There are some major installations in the refurbished
hangars, mess halls etc. In the building where the
prisoners worked are 100 shiny aluminum boxes, each
nominally 4ft x 4ft x 8ft. Each has different
openings and inserts. With tall windows facing both
north and south, the sunlight created endless shadows
and reflections. The guide was a sultry and blasé
college age woman who, when she said she had graduated
from Sarah Lawrence I had a hard time keeping a
straight face. There was also a crowd of young female
grad students and some professors who had driven over
from Dallas after attending the national convention
for art historians. They had the same energy and
insider's knowledge that I remember from my Columbia
SLP days.

So Marfa has a lot of art galleries and fancy shops.
And a lot of film people. I was invited to the local
cine palace to watch the Oscars tonight with a bunch
that worked on "No Country for Old Men" which was shot
here. For lunch I went to Mondo's, a down home
Mexican joint. Local people and Texas state police.
I wanted to ask them what they made of the changes in
Marfa.

Lots of people moving to the area because of the
climate. Lots of real estate signs. One said "We
sell tranquility one acre at a time."

On the way to Fort Davis, 21 miles of desert, there
was a hawk dead in the middle of the road. I stopped
and pulled some feathers off it. It's talons were
enormous. In the distance I could see what looked
like a warehouse that stretched out for a half mile.
It was a greenhouse that grows tomatos. Up close it
was about 40 feet high. The tomato plants grew up
cages that stretched floor to ceiling. I'm going to
try to get a tour tomorrow.

Staying tonight in Davis Mountains State Park.
Beautiful, shady, and the bird people from NH are here
as well as a guy from Missouri I got talking to in Rio
Grande village 3 days ago. Cooked up another pot of
dinners for the week. I've been adding chorizo the
last couple times. Very nice kick. Went for a bike
ride and saw bunches of fancy houses built on all the
hills.

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Saturday February23

2008-02-25T08:12:00.001-08:00

Packed up this morning and went on a Ranger walk to an
abandoned agricultural village. People lived in
Terlinghua Abajo from the late 1800's until the early
1930's. Mostly Mexicans who had lived in other areas
of Northern Mexico. Pretty much subsistence farming.
The guide has interviewed people who lived there.
There are some broken down adobe structures,
foundations, a cemetary, and whats left of a complex
irrigation system. What is particularly interesting
is that the population of this village was about 80%
of the people who lived in the western Big Bend area
but there is almost no documentation or history. The
history of this area, as of most others in the US has
been written by Europeans.

Left the park and drove through Terlinghua/Study
Butte: barren land, very dusty. Motels, restaurants
and tour guide businesses that cater to people coming
and going from Big Bend. Everything looks windblown
and out of business, except they're not. But there is
almost no pavement other than the roads. Parking
lots, driveways, side streets are all just sand. And
it was very, very hot.

Drove about 80 miles in a might wind to Alpine, TX, a
town about the size of Rutland but with a good size
university. I'm staying in an RV park behind a
Quickmart. But cheap and it's got great showers and
wifi.

My camera has died so I won't have any more pics until
I can get another.

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Friday February 22

2008-02-23T14:49:00.000-08:00

A beautiful drive to Cottonwoods campground at the
other end of Big Bend and back on the Rio Grande.
Heard a great Ranger speak about the military history
of Big Bend. TRUE FACT ALERT: In the 1859 camels
were brought to the Big Bend area to provide support
for the military, under the command of Robert E. Lee,
who were here to fight the bad Indians and even worse
Mexicans. The Civil War interrupted things and
afterwards, the government wanted nothing to do with
anything Bob was involved with. So the camels just
roamed the area. Some were caught and sold to
circuses.

Someone at the talk asked the Ranger about the
infamous wall that is going to protect us from all the
horrible things that might cross the Rio Grande in the
night. He said the wall will not extend through the
National Park. There will be a series of high towers
that will have some exotic electronics that can
distinguish between animals and humans and even
between humans carrying backpacks and those not. He
did his best to keep a straight face.

I kayaked upstream into the Santa Elena Canyon. Had
to get out and drag it through some shallow water and
rapids but it was worth it. The canyon rises 1500 ft
on both sides and narrows to 50 feet in places. I
paddled as far as Fern Canyon. It's on the Mexican
side but is ok to explore (explain that, Homeland
Security). Also very tall, but no water and even
narrower that Santa Elena. The float back downstream
was a breeze.

Cottonwoods Campground is so called because it is full
of cottonwood trees. The campsites are on raised
areas of ground between the trees and the area is
regularly irrigated to feed the trees. It was a
little like Venice today as they had turned on the
taps last night.

Met a couple of serious birdwatchers from New
Hampshire who travel around the world trying to nail
birds for their lifelist. They are in this area
looking for the elusive rock wren. Mrs. BW told me
she took a trip to Newfoundland with the VINS bird guy
specifically to see a grouse that lives on top of Gros
Morne.

I'm really tired of men, generally within 10 years of
my age, who need to tell me all the things they've
accomplished, the places they've been and whatever
else they can fit into a monologue before I can find
some pretense upon which to escape. Are these all
lonely guys? Do they think they're accomplishments
are so interesting? I've been spoiled by the PCC boy
staff.

A very nice couple from Missouri almost has me
convinced there are great things to do there in
addition to eating BBQ in Kansas City.

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Thursday February 21

2008-02-23T14:48:00.001-08:00

Not a big activity day. A day for ruminating. I
treated myself to breakfast at the Chisos Basin Lodge.
Buffet style, including biscuits and gravy. Came back
to the campground and hiked down into a canyon where
the water treatment system used to be, was told there
was big bird action there. It was pretty but no new
birds. Spent the afternoon sitting at the campsite
enjoying the view, the sun and the breeze. Once
again I was reminded how primal feeling the wind is
for me. My earliest memory is a sensation more than a
movie. My family was camping and I was lying under a
tree. I can still feel the breeze and the contentment
of that moment. There is some combination of wind,
temperature and sunlight which evokes that memory.

Went back to the lodge to buy some groceries. Met
Bruce Hill who started a yacht sales business in
Shelburne now run by his son. On the way out the
door, an odd looking young man in kitchen clothes
pointed at my car and said that was his home state.
He then regaled me with a tale that involved high
property taxes, selling his house in Burlington and
being bored working in Big Bend. I finally got away.

Later in the aftenoon a lovely British accent asked if
it could disturb me. A relatively young retired
couple from the UK traveling in the US for a year.
Big time sailors who instead of yachting around the
world, fell in love with our fair country when they
came to visit a daughter in college. They want to buy
kayaks and seeing mine figured me for an expert. They
are on their way to Alaska.

Finished reading "Freedomland". Another in the best
thrillers of all time. Sort of a slog. A semigood
story involving black/white relations in what sounds
like Newark, NJ, a mom who claims her car and young
child were stolen a young black man, etc. No more
thrillers for a while, so:

ATTENTION PCC PEOPLE: I've started reading "Travels
with Charlie" that came with my lantern. Did you know
that the intro was written by Jay Perini of Middlebury College?

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Wednesday February20

2008-02-23T14:45:00.001-08:00

Went this morning to do laundry and got talking to a
couple from Michigan, Tony and Pam, who were bemoaning
having brought their kayaks and not doing any
kayaking. We said goodbye and I went back to my
laundry. About ½ hour later they came back and Pam
offered to drop me and Tony 8 miles up the Rio Grande
so we could float back to the campground. Went
through groves of bamboo, two small canyons and
dragged our bottoms (of the kayaks) through very
shallow rapids, floated down long stretches of calm
water and saw lots of birds and turtles. What a
treat.

Caught up with the Big Bend bird guy, Ranger Mark, who
convinced me that I had not seen a Flame colored
tanager, as they have been sighted in Big Bend only 4
times in his memory. It was probably a vermillion
flycatcher that wasn't fully breeding plumaged. I
also saw some spotted sandpipers. They have no spots
in the winter. In Vermont we only see them with
spots. Also saw today, white-throated swift, black
phoebe, tricolored heron, canyon towhee, pink-sided
junco.

Drove to Chisos Basin in the middle of Big Bend. You
climb steeply for about 5 miles then drop into a basin
surrounded by high craggy mountains. It was the first
big tug for the Suby and trailer and it did fine,
slowly, but fine. There's a very fancy lodge and
restaurant here, a small store that carries Splenda (I
was running very short) and Folgers coffee (I bought
some of that too, I was desperate). The campground is
below the little village and out of sight. As I drove
in there was a small herd of eight or nine Javelinas
including two babies grazing on some grass. I stopped
the car to take a picture just as a person walking a
dog came around the corner. The dog started barking
and the Javelinas took off. It amazes me how many RVs
travel with a little shit dog. Many have two. There
are all kinds of signs confining dogs to paved areas
only. I want to drown every one of them.

My campsite is at the edge of a cliff and looks west.
The sunset through the sharply outlined peaks was very
fine. The moon came up full and I could just see the
beginning of the lunar eclipse. It was about ¾ in
shadow when clouds rolled in.

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Tuesday February 19

2008-02-20T13:26:00.001-08:00

Met a retired, divorced kayaker from Green Bay, WI.
He's been traveling for 3 years. Spends spring and
fall in Green Bay volunteering at a Nature Center. He
seems to be living pretty high off the hog as they
say. I asked him how he manages. He has a state
pension, state paid medical insurance and Social
Security.

We decided to try to paddle down the Rio Grande
through the Boquillas Canyon and paddle back, about 14
miles altogether. When we went to get a river permit
the ranger looked at us like we were crazy. Nobody,
apparently, tries to paddle back against the current.
We told him we were pretty experienced and he just
nodded. We got on the river, went about ¼ mile then
just for fun turned around to try to paddle upstream.
We almost didn't make it back to our starting point.
So we kayaked about ¼ mile upstream before we lost all
energy and floated back to the takeout.

So we wouldn't feel completely defeated (and not
willing to drop the river permit back off after only 2
hours) we hiked to the hot springs, about 6 miles out
and back. I've posted a picture of a view from on top
of a bluff but it just doesn't do it justice.

Saw a white tailed dove. Also saw a bird with the
brightest red head and orange chest sitting on a tree
on the Mexico side of the river. The Golden Field
guide has a Western Tanager that looks a little like
it. Doug, the divorced kayaker, had a Western Sibley
(a bird guide, for you nonavians) and the bird seems
to be a Flaming Tanager, uncommon in the southern US
and northern Mexico. Pretty cool.

The moon looks pretty close to full. It's about 65
degrees and a very pleasant breeze. My campsite is
surrounded by trees that grow to about 15 feet high
then go looking for each other. I'm under a canopy of
leafless branches and the moon is shining through
them. There's a lunar eclipse tomorrow and I'm headed
up to the high point of Big Bend where there is a
campground and a lodge which is suppose to make a
great breakfast.

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Monday February 18

2008-02-20T13:25:00.001-08:00

Woke up to the coldest morning yet, frost on the car
windows. It was too cold and too dark to make coffee
so I went to Shirley's Bakery, actually now owned by
Don. THey boys there told me that Marathon waxed and
waned as far as becoming something. It was now on the
wane.

Drove to Big Bend National Park and Wow. Cliffs,
mountains, canyons, cacti, desert. I'm in the SE part
of the park, right on the Rio Grande. Went for a bike
ride to an overlook. As I rode in a young Mexican boy
scurried away, down the slope, hopped onto a horse and
rode across the river, which is only about 25 yards
wide. Sitting at the side of the parking lot was an
assortment of homemade souvenirs for sale with a small
sign in very poor English asking that people buy the
stuff and leave money in the jar as they are very poor
and 9/11 has cut their tourism to 0. Sitting on the
Mexican bank were 5 or 6 other people and a number of
goats. Before 9/11 people waded back and forth across
the Rio Grande to shop, see relatives, sell trinkets
or eat Mexican food. Now, even though you could
almost jump across the river, there are no official
crossing points in Big Bend. The 4 little towns right
on the river have died.

Took a short hike to some hot springs. Someone built
a spa on the banks of the Rio Grande in the 30's
hoping to make it big in the healing trade. All
that's left are a few abandoned buildings and the
foundation of the bath house which acts as a tub for
the hot water that bubbles up. One wall of the bath
separates it from the river. So you can get in the
100 degree water, jump in the cold river and back into
the bath. Two families from Marseille were soaking.
One teenage daughter speaks four languages fluently,
they all spoke English well enough to have a
conversation. And I let them know that Mareseille is
on the Atlantic (it's on the Meditteranean).

The part of the campground with hookups is pretty
small. So a lot of RV's use generators when they
can't plug in. I'm in the no generator part. I
walked through the generator area on my way to the
bathroom and it sounds like a hive of drunk baritone
bees.

It's warm tonight. I'm seeing the first bugs of the
trip: little moths flying around the

lantern.

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Sunday February 17

2008-02-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

I'm in Marathon, TX tonight at the Marathon Motel and
RV Park. From the road it looks like it's out of
business. But I'm sitting in front of a fire in a
beautiful adobe courtyard with an outside outlet and
wifi. For we involutary celibates, this is as good as
it gets. And it only cost $10 to camp.

Paddled up the Pecos River this morning hoping to get
to high, narrow Dead Man's Canyon. But the wind
became so strong as it funneled down through the
Pecos Canyon that I turned around and headed back
towards the Rio Grande. Didn't have to paddle, just a
course correction now and then. At the Rio Grande I
turned left and paddled a couple miles to more cave
paintings that can only be accessed by boat. Met a
couple other kayakers from San Antonio. Air Force.
Law and order types. Said Bye. When I got back to
the boat ramp, two dachshunds with life jackets on
jumped out of a fishing boat.

The other side of the Rio Grande is Mexico and the
border between the two countries runs down the middle
of the river. I was told by a few people not to get
too close to the Mexican side as the Mexican border
police are so pissed at what's going on with illegals
that they have become a little unpredictable when they
catch an American.

Marathon looks like it's trying to be a mini Sedona.
Little galleries and chichi coffee shops (none open
this time of year). There was only one grocery and
you could buy wasabi and pickled ginger.

Saw canyon wren, golden-fronted woodpecker,
mockingbird, white crowned sparrow, pyrrhuloxia, lark
bunting, cactus wren.

This area of Texas reminds me of Newfoundland. Miles
of spare, treeless ground. Canyons that look like
bays on the SW coast. I feel very comfortable here.
The night is clear and the ¾ moon is right over head
throwing shadows into the trailer.

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Saturday February16

2008-02-17T17:16:00.001-08:00

One of the joys of traveling is discovering the myriad
ways institutions have of foiling the public's
insatiable desire for toilet paper, I've seen bunwad
as thin as tissue paper and as narrow as the width of
4 fingers. I've seen dispensers that forced Rosemary
Woods style contortions to retrieve. Today, at
Seminole Canyon State Park in the great state of Texas
I think I've found the world champion. The paper is
as delicate as gold leaf and about the width of a
dollar bill. But the real genius is the delivery
system. The roll doesn't have a cardboard core. It
has been slid onto an oversized arm that deforms the
whole cylinder and doesn't allow it to rotate, even
using two hands. And with a full roll there is
almost no room to slide the paper backwards over
itself. Another of the top ten reasons Texas should
be sold back to Mexico.

Woke up to the worst weather yet, cold, rainy, windy.
Couldn't keep the stove lit for the wind so I drove
over to the visitor center that was a little out of
the breeze. Had my coffee and waited for the rangers
to decide if there was going to be a morning tour of
the cave drawings. The walk was cancelled so I headed
west. Stopped at a high bridge over the Pecos River.
It was magnificent. To the south I could see where it
emptied into the Rio Grande and to the north the river
ran through a very high canyon.

I drove on to Langtry and the combination tourist info
center and Judge Roy Beane Museum. He was the "law
west of the Pecos" in the late 1800's. A saloon owner
deputized as a judge to bring law and order to the
instant towns created by the workers building the new
railroad. He held court in the saloon and the actual
building is still there.

The weather was getting better as the morning
progressed so I turned around and headed back to
Seminole Canyon State Park to see about the afternoon
tour. We walked down into the canyon and along the
solid rock river bed. Then climbed stairs to the Fate
Bell Cave (Fate Bell was the landowner who sold the
property to the state). About 4000 years ago a
nomadic group of people lived in the area and spent a
significant amount of time in this well protected,
enormous overhang of rock. The paintings stretch for
about 100 yards along the back wall. There's even
some graffiti from the railroad workers who had a camp
nearby in the 1880's. No one knows what happened to
this group. An anthropologist, specifically a
coprologist (one who specializes in the study of
coprolites or petrified poop) studied their shit and
published a diet book based upon what he felt was
their very healthy regimen.

Talked to my first left winger on the trip. A
grandfather camping out for the weekend with his two
grandsons. He has a 1958 trailer that he refinished,
shaped like a teardrop but just big enough to stand up
in. He lives in San Antonio and really likes Pat
Leahy, gives money to him and is on the special donors
email list. He's annoyed with Pat because,
apparently, the senate just passed Bush's intelligence
bill. I've got to find a newspaper.

The wind has come up very strongly again. But it is
clear and a beautiful sunset. I've got the Toaster
door open with the Coleman lantern swinging on a
hanger I concocted to provide light when there's no electricity.

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Friday February 15

2008-02-16T08:33:00.001-08:00

Left Laredo pretty early. In Carizo Springs I visited
Dixondale Farms, the largest and oldest onion plant
business in the US. Mrs. Onion showed me around the
packing facility and Mr. around the fields. They grow
onions from seed and pick them for replanting. They
used to grow whole onions but couldn't make any money.
They have a big mail order business and do
drop-shipping for, among others, Johnny's Seeds in
Maine. TRUE FACT ALERT! Onions are sensitive to the
length of the day. Short day onions grow in the south
with about 10-12 hours of daily sunlight. Long day
ones grow in the north with 14-16 hours of sun. And
never the twain shall meet. Seeds to plants, however,
are not day length sensitive so Dixondale grows onions
for all areas of the country. I walked a field that
had just been tilled over looking for orphans and ate
my fill of little sweet raw onions.

Bought gas at a minimart with a drivethru grocery.

Stopped in Del Rio for lunch. Had the best taco ever,
the "Super Taco" with two flour tortillas, chicken,
beef and guacamole. Got chatting with another
customer who said that Del Rio is a baseball town.
Lots of leagues all summer. The best players cross
over to Mexico on the weekends because they can get
paid for playing on semipro teams.

Camping tonight at Seminole Canyon State Park. On a
mesa, bordered by a small canyon overlooking miles and
miles of high desert. Saw a cactus wren. The wind is
very strong and it's getting chilly, though I'm quite
comfortable in the Toaster. Tried to make coffee this
afternoon and the wind kept blowing out the burner.
Had to reposition the trailer to get the back end out
of the wind. Success.

Went for a bike ride, criss crossing the old Southern
Pacific road bed made in 1883 connecting New Orleans
and San Francisco.

Just remembered a story from the Alamo. When Santa
Ana laid seige to the Alamo he sent a messenger with
the terms of surrender. The commander of the Alamo
forces rejected the terms and sent back the message
"Come and get us" or words to that effect. Reminded
me of our own Texan George W's "Bring it on." Maybe
it's the water.

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Thursday February 14

2008-02-16T08:31:00.001-08:00

Headed towards Laredo and stopped in Alice to visit
the Tejano Roots Music Hall of Fame. It was a little
cinder block building with a big sign in front. But
noone showed up at opening time and the taco stand
person across the street didn't know anything about
it. I called the number in the tourist brochure and a
lawyer's office answered and said they'd had the the
number for a year and had gotten lots of calls for the
museum. A mystery.

Stopped at a really out of the way Mexican restaurant.
I was the only anglo. There was a spanish language
soap on the TV and pure white country on the
loudspeakers. The food was ok.

Got to Lake Casa Blanca International Park in the late
afternoon. It's in the middle of Laredo, convenient
to the airport and convention center. But I did see
my first roadrunner: and odd looking bird that doesn't
go "beep beep". Also saw a black throated sparrow.
Took a quick drive into Laredo and it was like going
into a foreign country. The downtown is totally
Hispanic. There are two bridges right in the middle
of the city that cross the Rio Grande into Mexico.
One is for walkers and people were streaming back and
forth.

Laredo has a 16 day George Washington's birthday
celebration. This is the 110th year. This weekend
there's a carnival (rides and such).

The weather this afternoon was hot. Low 80's. All
the shops had air conditioning on. It's very pleasant
tonight. A nice breeze. I'll sleep with the door open.

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Wednesday February 13

2008-02-14T06:30:00.003-08:00

It was cold when I woke up. Made coffee and watched
the sunrise. Went on another bird walk and saw
pie-billed grebe, black bellied plover, bufflehead,
snowy plover, forster's tern and a peregrine falcon.

In the afternoon it warmed up to the middle 60's. I
went for a long paddle up the intracoastal waterway.
There are islands made of the mud dredged from the
waterway, very small and covered with houses. In the
distance are oil platforms and a huge refinery. A
couple large barges went by. The intracoastal
waterway is dredged to about 7 feet deep and the
channel is not very wide. The large barges regularly
knock over the large wooden piles that define the
edges of channel. The whole Laguna Madre is about 2.5
miles wide and outside the Intracoastal Waterway,
which runs up the middle, it's only 2-4 feet deep.

Chatted with a retired couple from Durango, CO, the
first people I've talked to who were camping in a
tent. They are big canoers but just bought an
inflatable double kayak and were giving it a tryout.
It looked huge but weighs only about 65 pounds.

Spent a while talking to Titus from Anchorage. He's
31, grew up in Homer, AK and started working on
fishing boats in junior high. A gentle man trying to
figure out what he wants to do when he grows up. He
and his wife, Desiree, are heading towards Bryce and
Zion and we might reconnect there.

Cooked up another big batch of noodles, chicken and
veggies, food for the week. I always have a much
better relationship to food when I'm on vacation. The
constant gnawing yearning to eat disappears. I've
lost another notch on my belt.

Heading out tomorrow for Laredo. Remember Allen
Sherman, My Son the Folk Singer:

(Sung with a Yiddish accent)
As I wandered out on the streets of Miami
I said to myself this is some fancy place.
I got me a room at the old Roni Plaza
With breakfast and dinner included of course.

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Tuesday February 12

2008-02-14T06:30:00.001-08:00

Went on a bird walk this morning with a volunteer
couple, married 58 years. The other couple along have
been married 52 years. The volunteers really knew
their stuff. This is their fifth year here. The
first thing they showed us was a closed circuit tv
picture of a barn owl nesting with two young in a
crevice in a storage shed at the park headquarters.
Through the morning we saw sandhill cranes, mottled
ducks, white faced ibis, savannah sparrow, caspian
tern and lesser yellowlegs. The guides had been in the
Everglades doing bird walks for the national park for
ten years before coming here. They were told to stop
doing the bird walks so that there would be complaints
from campers which would, hopefully, put pressure on
the higher-ups to increase funding.

In the afternoon I went for a short paddle to an
island to see white pelicans. Then an enormous
thunder cloud appeared. We had a little rain, lots of
hail south of us. As soon as the front passed the
wind came up and it's still blowing strongly. I went
into town and did laundry.

Realized some time last night that I have been
freaking out about the drop in the stock market and
the consequent drop in my own asset picture. Trying
to get a grip now. We used to joke about my father
that he was only happy when he had something to worry
about. I seem also to need to find something to worry
about but it doesn't make me happy. Kathleen Ready
suggested I start meditating again. Paddling seems to
help.

Met a young couple from Anchorage who work there from
April to September and travel the rest of the time.
They live in their RV all the time.

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Monday February 11

2008-02-14T06:28:00.001-08:00

Went to the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, winter home of
whooping and sandhill cranes. Saw 3 whooping cranes
in the distance and another flew right overhead.
Didn't see any sandhills. Also saw a coot, little
blue heron, wilson's plover, ring-necked duck, common
moorhen, and a crested caracara. In the nonbird
category, a javelina, a sort of wild pig, an
armadillo, some very large alligators and a water
moccassin skittering across the road.

In the afternoon I drove back to the Padre Island
National Seashore and set up camp in a boondocking
area- free but no electric or water, just a couple pit
toilets. But it's right on the water. I wanted to
camp on the beach but it's too windy so I'm on the bay
side or Laguna Madre. I was just settleing in with my
book when the RV next to me turned on a very loud
generator. The camphost said that all's fair until
10:00 PM and apparently boondockers are generator
crazy. So, in the dark, I moved a ways down the shore
and found a very quiet spot. Made a hanger for the
Colerman Lantern and I'm snug as can be.

The weather is supposed to be pretty crummy tomorrow.
Might be a Corpus Christi sightseeing day.

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Sunday February 10

2008-02-11T13:40:00.001-08:00

Rode the bike to Port Arensas. Serious beach town
with lots of bars and tattoo parlors but no fried
dough joints. Went birdwatching in the afternoon and
saw some I'd never seen before ("lifelisters" for you
non-avians): ruddy turnstone, long-billed curlew,
roseate spoonbill.

Visited with a guy from British Columbia who was 1.
About my age 2. single
3. Travelling in a teardrop 4. A birdwatcher 5. Had a
fancy mountain bike. But there the similarities
ended. He doesn't cook or have a cooler. He goes to
Walmarts and buys meals in pouches that can be
boiled. A very nice person. Lives near Banff. He
collected coins his whole life. Has spent the last
two years selling them on Ebay. One of his best
customers is in St. Albans.

Another kind camper from Bellingham, WA who travels
with an ohmmeter helped me fix the problem with the
battery in the Toaster not charging. However, the
lights of the car now flash continuously even when the
key is turned off. So I've disconnected the battery
cables and will call Junction Suby tomorrow morning.
He has a small fishing boat on the top of his truck
and an motorized gizmo that takes the boat and sets it
on the ground (and picks it back up again.)

Another pleasant evening. I slept with the toaster
door open last night and will again tonight.

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Saturday February 9

2008-02-11T13:37:00.000-08:00

Drove down to the National Seashore on Padre Island.
There's free camping right on the water. A good place
to put in the kayak. I'm paid up here til Monday,
then I'll move over there.

Bought a Coleman lantern like we had when I was
growing up. It really throws a lot of light. I've
been spoiled so far this trip with staying in
campgrounds with electricity. Time to start roughing
it.

So I bought sushi for lunch.

Did some food shopping and cooked up a big pot of
stuff to eat for the next few days.

Finished the second of the thriller books I brought
along. A John MacDonald, Travis Gunther whodunnit,
"The Deep Blue Goodbye". A pretty pulpy standard kind
of adventure. Travis Gunther tells the story in the
first person and tries to convince the reader that he
only uses sex and violence for theraputic purposes.

Spent the afternoon on the beach. Saw a bird I'd
never seen before, royal terns: black head, a black
crown and bright orange bill, like a bad haloween
makeup job. Also saw another teardrop camped on the
beach. Bigger than mine and a great looking galley.
Nobody was home so I'll check again tomorrow.

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Saturday February 9

2008-02-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

Drove down to the National Seashore on Padre Island. There's free camping
right on the water. A good place to put in the kayak. I'm paid up here
til Monday, then I'll move over there.

Bought a Coleman lantern like we had when I was growing up. It really
throws a lot of light. I've been spoiled so far this trip with staying in
campgrounds with electricity. Time to start roughing it.

So I bought sushi for lunch.

Did some food shopping and cooked up a big pot of stuff to eat for the
next few days.

Finished the second of the thriller books I brought along. A John
MacDonald, Travis Gunther whodunnit, "The Deep Blue Goodbye". A pretty
pulpy standard kind of adventure. Travis Gunther tells the story in the
first person and tries to convince the reader that he only uses sex and
violence for theraputic purposes.

Spent the afternoon on the beach. Saw a bird I'd never seen before, royal
terns: black head, a black crown and bright orange bill, like a bad
haloween makeup job. Also saw another teardrop camped on the beach.
Bigger than mine and a great looking galley. Nobody was home so I'll
check again tomorrow.

Friday February 8

2008-02-09T10:52:00.001-08:00

History day in Texas. Went to the South Texas Oil
Patch Museum. About the oil strike in the Luling area
financed and supervised by a guy who made his money in
Brockton, MA. Too long a story to go into about how
he got to Texas. There are a number of wells pumping
in the middle of Luling. The curator said that with
the rise in oil prices a lot of the capped wells are
going to be reopened. Even if each only produces 3
barrels a day, that's 90 a month and $6300 at $70 a
barrell.

Had breakfast at The Coffee Shop in Luling. It looked
like any small town diner. Except it had a 4 head
espresso machine and a two shelf selection of Italian
syrups. Apparently, people from Austin are buying
houses in Luling and commuting because of the low
property values. About an hour commute.

Went to Helena, TX population 35 and falling. A
hundred years ago it was at the crossing of two
stagecoach roads and the San Antonio River crossing
for cattle herds being driven north, a populous town
with shops, doctors and the only judge for hundreds of
miles. JD Smith, a retired high school football coach
from San Antonio, showed me around the few historic
buildings left.. The story goes that a son of one of
the town patriarchs was shot in a gunfight. The
killer was never brought to justice (as the saying
goes) so dad vowed to ruin the town. When the
railroad was being planned he made sure that it
bypassed Helena and that was it for the little town.
JD showed me the home of the founder of Helena. It
was a very spacious house with 10 foot ceilings to aid
in keeping the temp at human level more comfortable.

I'm now at Mustang Island State Park, near Corpus
Christi. You get here by crossing ¼ mile stretch of
water on a commuter ferry. Six run at once and there
3 docking spaces at each end. And it's free. The
campground is completely paved. I discovered that you
can drive right onto the beach and camp. I'm thinking
about moving there if the weather holds. Once the sun
went down there were no people outside. There are no
fire pits. Folk don't seem to stand around and chat.
But the beach is beautiful, very few people. You can
see oil drilling platforms far offshore.

Some things I've noticed: Buses with Spanish names
that cater to Mexicans traveling back and forth across
the US border. White pelicans.

Hello to people from the Teardrops and TTT site.
MadJack, it's nice to know people still make gumbo
like in the olden days. And, Roly N,
thanks for your kind words.

There's a pretty strong wind blowing tonight. I've
bungied down the top hatch to keep it from rattling.
But it's warm enough to have the door open and the
breeze coming through is delightful. No peepers
tonight but lots of crickets.

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Thursday February 7

2008-02-09T10:49:00.001-08:00

Woke up to a very chilly morning. But, I think my
favorite part of camping is sitting at picnic table
first thing and having a cup of coffee. There was a
thick mist coming off the little pond I'm camping on.
And I put on gloves.

Unhooked the toaster and drove into San Antonio. The
downtown is in the process of being demolished and
rebuilt. The area around the Alamo seems to be the
only area remaining untouched. Although, over the
years, many of the buildings of the Alamo were torn
down so today, only the chapel and part of the
barracks still exists. The guides were interesting
and because there were so few people visiting they had
plenty of time to tell all kinds of stories. Was Davy
Crockett killed in the battle or executed afterwards?
Did Sam Houston come to the southwest to annoy Santa
Anna and foment revolution at Andrew Jackson's behest
or was he just a drunk looking for some action?

Downtown San Antonio is a tourist haven designed by a
thoughtful planner. The river walk is pretty; a long
canal like waterway missing only gondolas. And lots
of artsy shops. Went to the Museo de Alameda, a
converted movie house. Great exhibits of Latino music
and art. The ticket person set me onto a beautiful
church with wonderful stained glass windows and a
Mexican bakery in the hispanic section of San Antonio.

On the way back to the campground on I-10, I passed,
in the distance, a strange looking building on what
seemed to be a very large ranch. Turns out it is a
Buddhist center. I tried to get a closer look but the
gates were locked. There were lots of cars. They
seem to be keeping a very low profile. No signs except
ranchy looking entrances with the words "Silver Wolf
Ranch".

Stopped in Luling, also on the way back. Had great
BBQ and took a pic of the water tower painted to look
like a watermelon. They've been having a watermelon
festival for 50 years or so complete with queen and
largest melon (no smirking) competition. The largest
so far is 81 pounds.

Another clear night and nice fire. The camphost
brought over cookies his wife had just baked.

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Wednesday February 6

2008-02-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

Drove to Palmetto State Park outside Gonzalez, TX about 50 miles east of San Antonio. Stopped in Hallettsville, one of the many communities in Central Texas with a strong German-Czech heritage. I haven't been able to find out why so many settled here. But there are many sausage makers, kolaschke bakers and beer brewers in the area. In the museum in Hallettsville I met two older women whose grandfathers came over from Germany. There were also, in the 30's to the 50's a very active semipro baseball league in the area and the museum contains the Hall of Fame for the league.

The campground is deserted. Only the camp host and one other tenter all the way at the other end. Had a nice fire tonight. It's very clear so there are lots of stars but it's supposed to get pretty cold.

There are lots of billboards in Louisiana advertising casinos. Every one of them has a black border across the bottom with white lettering with the phone number for Gamblers Anonymous. Saw a huge billboard advertising a medical practice that reverses vasectomies, including a money-back guarantee.

Tuesday February 5

2008-02-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

Woke up this morning to drizzle and fog. Everything in the toaster was damp. Walked around Biloxi a little and discovered that everything is closed on Fat Tuesday: schools, museums, banks, restaurants, etc. And by 9:00 AM the town was festooned with confederate flags and empty Bud cans. WIth the weather looking no better I headed out without waiting for the parade.

Got into Louisiana and found everything closed there too. Even the visitor info center on the interstate. So I continued west. The high point of the afternoon was sampling boudin, a cajun sausage made with rice, wheat and some sort of meat or fish. Kilbasa it wasn't but the woman behind the counter had the most wonderful accent.

I'm camped tonight at Sam Houston Jones State Park outside Port Arthur, LA just a few miles from the Texas border. Chatting with a couple who live only a few miles from here I got the cooking tip of the year. To make gumbo you have to make a roux, a mixture of oil and flour and you have to cook it, stirring constantly until it darkens. This can take up to a half hour. But wait. All the grocery stores down here sell bottled roux. According to this couple, nobody in Louisiana makes it from scratch anymore.

Finished "The Thirty-nine Steps", one of the earliest 20th century whodunnits. Apparently, Hitchcock's movie was loosely based on this book. My brother sent me a list of the 50 greatest thrillers of all time so I ordered a few before I left home and am starting to work my way down the pile. I can't remember where this one was rated.

There's a pleasant breeze and no bugs. I've got the Toaster door open and can hear some peepers.

Monday February 4

2008-02-05T08:13:00.000-08:00

Sitting on the beach in Biloxi, Mississippi outside the Beau Rivage (translation: beautiful loser) Casino. The whole downtown of Biloxi is casinos and the eight story parking garages for the players. I'm set up in a municipal parking lot with about 20 other RVers waiting for the Fat Tuesday carnival parade tomorrow afternoon which goes along the highway right in front of us. The gulf beach is right behind the parking lot. I watched folk all afternoon climb out of their cars carrying loaves of bread to feed to the seagulls.

Left St. George Island early this morning. Great weather again. In Apalachicola I saw a sign pointing out the direction to the Ice Macine Museum. I couldn't resist, so: TRUE FACT ALERT! In teh 1830's a Dr. Gorrie tried to find a way to cool down the sick rooms of people afflicted with various ot weather diseases. He developed a refrigeration machine that made ice and it was quite the hit. But when he tried to market it, the northern ice lobby (the companies that made money by cutting ice out of New England ponds and transporting it south) was able to keep him from finding a manufacturer. He apparently died an unhappy man.

The drive from Apalachicola to Biloxi: Imagine Myrtle Beach. Now imagine Myrtle Beach stretching for 200 miles. It was so bad on Rt 98 that ran along the water that Interstate 10, with all it's monstrous billboards, was a relief.

When I got to the Mississippi visitors center I asked about a state park I was thinking about staying at. The info person said that the park was closed because there were still Hurricane Katrina victims living there in FEMA housing.

Saturday February 2

2008-02-03T06:59:00.000-08:00

A beautiful day. Mid 60's and a little breeze. Went for a bike ride and spent the afternoon on the beach. Interesting conversation with a young guy, wife and two kids who farm 4000 acres of rice, soybeans and wheat in Mississippi. The rows he plants are so long that the tractor is automatically steered by GPS to keep the rows straight.

My campsite has become a meetingplace for birds with ugly calls. I'm surrounded by grackles and catbirds. Every now and then a cardinal manages a few musical notes but is quickly drowned out by the painful squaks of the regulars.

Invited the retired couple in the next campsite over for a fire; he, a commercial artist and she, a banker, from Michigan. the only liberals I've met so far.

February 1

2008-02-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

Left Okeefenokee in the rain. Went around Talahassee down to the Florida Gulf Coast, across a 4 mile bridge and onto St. George Island. THe state park is past what looks like a cross between Hampden Beach and the most expensive parts of Cape Cod. It's at the end of the island and is lovely. Spent the afternoon on teh beach. Tshirt weather. Very few people.

THere are no tenters in the campground. The RV next to me has Christmas lights hung around the campsite. It's both eerie, because there are no people to be seen, and very pleasantly quiet because all are inside their big machines. I'm the youngest person here.

Had a nice fire tonight. Then walked out to the beach to see the stars and hear the ocean.

Attention PCC people: I really, really like my new lantern. It has become the chandelier over the galley, throws lots of light and recharges quickly.

Thursday January 31

2008-02-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

I JUST LOVE MY NEW STOVETOP ESPRESSO MAKER! Much easier than the plastic filter cone and paper.

Woke up to a cold, windy morning. Put on my parka and went on the 10:00 guided tour of Okeefenokee Swamp. I was the only tourist; two guides. Saw an alligator and black vulture (we only have turkey vultures in VT). And there's never been an alligator attack that the guides know of. TRUE FACT ALERT: In the 1890's, a General Jackson bought the swamp from the State of Georgia hoping to drain it and make a killing logging the cypress trees. As the swamp sits 100 feet above the surrounding country, he figured he could just poke a hole in the edge and all the water would pour out. Because of some strange hydrology, nothing happened when he dynamited for the first canal. He went bankrupt.

In the afternoon the sun came out so I kayaked Way Down Upon the Swanee River. It's called the Suwannee now and runs through the swamp (hence Stephen Foster State Park). The river widens to about 100 feet and narrows to just a few and I had to zigzag between cypress trees. No one else on the water.

A camper stopped by curious about the Toaster. She and her husband live in Portland, OR and plan their RV trip every winter to make their first stop in Al Gadona, Mexico, just across the border from Yuma, AZ to get their dental work done. Apparently, it costs about a tenth what it does in the US and they are very satisfied with the quality of the work.

Paid $4.50 for an industrially sealed plastic bag containing 6 small pieces of firewood. Fortunately, I found a large limb and with a borrowed ax was able to produce $9.00 more. Had a great fire. But there are no stars tonight and thunder showers are forecast for tomorrow. So I connected the trailer for a quick getaway in the morning if the weather is lousy.

Wednesday January 30

2008-02-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

A traveling day today. From Beaufort to the Stephen Foster Campground in the middle of the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia, right on teh Florida Border. I stopped for BBQ on the way at a drive-up near Waycross and the woman behind the counter, in all seriousness, told me I shouldn't kayak in the swamp because some of the alligators are bigger than the kayak.

After chatting for a while, the BBQ lady asked if I'd like some catfish. Thinking she was going to offer me a taste of somethng she was cooking, I said sure. She came out and walked me to the side of the house where there was a large sink with 4 enormous live catfish. I gratefully declined.

There are about 45 sites in the campground and only 5 are occupied. It is very quiet and I miss the sound of the ocean of the last few nights.

Cooked my first real meal in the Toaster. Bought some chicken, veggies and noodles and made a goulash. I must get some more spices as I think I'm already getting tired of salt, pepper and Frank's Hot Sauce. The galley kitchen works well.

Had lots of time to think today. I'm still yoyoing between being so excited to be on the road and wondering what I've gotten myself in to. I wonder how much of this angst is simply the loss of routine not having the security of predictability. There are so few campers here that t registragion, the range said to just pick any site I liked. One more decision to make. No, I'm not complaining.

The campsites all have water, electricity and cable TV hookup.

Tuesday January 29

2008-01-30T07:27:00.000-08:00

Forgot to write yesterday that Bonnie McCardell told me that corporal punishment is still legal in South Carolina, even in preschool.

Another beautiful sunrise. Went paddling for a few hours. Saw dolphins, loons, oystercatchers (a bird for you nonavians) and got buzzed by 4 pelicans who's wingspans must have been at least 8 feet. I was ina a salt marsh which was lined with oyster beds. A kayaking tour guide I talked to said the only client injuries in 10 years of leading groups were cut feet and hands from oyster shells. TRUE FACT ALERT! Oysters were a staple food in NYC from colonial times until the early 1900's when the beds were finally fished out.

Went looking for a plastic coffee filter cone. I would have had better luck finding an abortion clinic in SC. Finally bought a stove-top espresso pot which made a pretty passable cup of coffee.

Many of the churches here are enormous. Not like Chartres Cathedral, though. They spread out for acres. Saw one today with an indoor soccer arena. The up-side is the great gospel music on the radio.

Talked to a couple nice young guys in the campground who are freelance caterers for a Tibetan Buddhist organization that holds retreats all over the US. They are on their way from Florida to another retreat in New York State and had a large statue of Buddha on their picnic table.

Monday January 28

2008-01-30T07:17:00.000-08:00

I woke up to pee in the middle of the night and the moon was just rising. It was huge and orange and was matched only by the sunrise in the morning, which was so exquisite that not even not being able to make my morning cup of coffee could put me in a bad mood.

So I drive over the rotating bridge spanning the Beaufort River on my way to drop off the Toaster at the manufacturer to get mended and accessorized; I'm cruising up Cartoret St and there's a small woman jogging that looks a lot like Bonnie McCardell. And, yes, it was Bonnie McCardell. She and John have a home here. We had lunch at Plums, on the veranda overlooking the river. It was about 65 degrees. Bonnie and I took off our sweaters. Ours was the only table not underneath a heatlamp.

The Toaster got it's leaks repaired, new shelves in the cupboards and galley, electric outlet inside for external power and both the trailer and car got washed. They were excited that I had a kayak on the car and wanted to take pics for advertising.

Bought fresh shrimp on the way back to the campground ($5.00 a pound), cooked them up and ate them smothered in Frank's Hot Sauce. Sat by the campfire with the couple from Zimbabwe. Turns out he was head of propaganda for the losing side in the war 28 years ago that brought the dictator Robert Mugabe to power and changed the name from Rhodesia. He works for the South Carolina Realtors Association now.

Talked to a couple kayakers and tomorrow I'll go paddling.

Sunday January 27

2008-01-28T06:35:00.000-08:00

Got to Hunting Island State Park in Beaufort SC around 2:00. I have a campsite right on the beach. Next to me is a retired couple from Zimbabwe and across the way, two people who run a B&B in Alaska in the summer. As I'm writing I'm watching a pink-orange glow in the south-east, the spillover from the sun setting around the corner of the island. It was close to 60 during the day but the temp is falling quickly with the dusk.

The retired lady across the way invited me in for soup. I seem to have a way with retired ladies. She travels with a kitty on a leash and her hobby is taming feral cats. She showed me the scars on her hands that she's gotten while trying to put leash harnesses on teh rotten little animals.

The neighbors say they saw 10 kayakers at the end of the island. I'll track them down tomorrow.

The first tragedy of the trip: I left the plastic coffee filter cone in Bristol.

Saturday January 26

2008-01-28T06:16:00.000-08:00

My first night on the road. (Actually my second. I stayed in Lakeville, CT with old friends from my graduate school days. I grew up with Diane and worked for Joel in his family coffee business in NYC, the origin of my coffee snobbery. He's an artist and she's a potter.

Tonight I'm in Emoria, VA. In a Walmart parking lot. THanks for the atlas Linda and Jack. I ahve a view of Wong's Chinese Garden Restaurant and Kelly Tux Rentals. But the price is right. It's not too bright, noisy or cold. No other RV's here. I knew I wasn't in VT anymore as half the folk in the Walmart were people of color.

I stopped for gas in southern New Jersey where people speak a lot like me. Stopped 4 hours later at the FLying J Truck StoGLen, VA and heard thick southern accents. The parking lot was full or RB's with Quebec licensed plates and the restaurant full of hypernasal French-Canadians.

The car is running well, the coffee is terrible and I am so excied to be on my way.