It Could Have Been Worse…(12-30-11)

Well, we've left El Paso and have moved on to Benson AZ, where we'll  stay for New Years.
       This morning, while we were discussing the hike we intended to take today, Paul asked me if there was anything to see along the route we were going to take. That led to a short discussion of what we would see, etc. It also gave me the idea for the title for my next blog post:     The Difference Between Hiking and Walking. See, the reason he asked that is because yesterday we walked 6 miles, but it wasn't hiking. What are the differences?                                                                                                  
  Well, when I walk, I get bored, when I hike, I don't.  When I walk, I look at my watch every five minutes and wonder why an hour hasn't passed yet.  When I walk, I look at the ground ahead of me, and wish I had brought my Ipod.  When I hike, I look all around me, and not at the ground (which, in retrospect, can be a problem sometimes).  When I hike, I bring my hiking stick, both to help me with my footing, and also to use on any wild animals that might attack.   When I walk, I don't bother with the hiking stick. It just adds unnecessary weight.  When I hike, I happily pack up a lunch, and carry a lot of water in my pack. When I walk I just carry one or two bottles of water and maybe a snack. When I hike, my camera is out quite often and I take lots of pictures. When I walk, I bring the camera, but I am not sure why, because I don't take any pictures.

     The point to all this is that yesterday Paul and I went for a 6 mile walk on the San  Pedro River Trail.  There are no pictures, because nothing seemed picture worthy.  We thought we would actually be walking along the river, but the trail was too far away from it to see anything interesting. That's ok because that hike was just to get us "warmed up" for all the hiking we plan to do in the next few weeks, but we did buy a book of nearby hiking trails yesterday, so we would get to see something of interest while we are here.

    

 Today we were supposed to go on a 7.5 mile hike in Slavin Gulch in the Dragoon Mountains, about 30 miles from Benson.  This is an area that was frequented by Cochise, one of the most well known Apache Chiefs. Fascinating history around these parts. In fact, nearby is the area where Cochise met with the US government to hammer out a treaty.   We were hoping to see that area, Council Rocks, tomorrow.

   To get to the trailhead, we had to drive 10 miles down one of the roughest "roads" we've been on.  The guidebook recommends high clearance 4x4 vehicles, and they aren't kidding!  I tried to get a picture but it was too rough for that.  After finally reaching the end of the road, we started hiking to the gulch. Mentally I was comparing how much fun I was having today, compared to yesterday.
And that's when the day took a turn for the worse.

I screwed up.  I was going over a short barbed wire fence and didn't check well enough to see if the boulder I put my foot on was secure.  It wasn't.   I knew the minute I fell that I had broken my wrist.  Paul immediately took off my rings and watch, before my arm could swell too much.  After downing 3 Advil, we turned back and slowly made our way back to the truck, and back down that lovely road that seemed even worse on the way back! 

We drove a little further than the nearest town because we wanted one big enough to have a decent hospital.  We landed in the ER in Sierra Vista, and they did a great job of checking me out.  After confirming that I do indeed have a radial fracture, we discussed options.  Apparently the bone appears to be broken in two places.  They suggested that we head up to Tucson and see a orthopedic surgeon there, to determine our best course of action.

Tuesday we'll head up for the day since its only 45 miles from us.
Anyway, it could of been worse.  If I had broken a leg, it would have been a lot harder to hike the 2 miles back to the truck!

Tis The…

Tis two days before Christmas and its snowing and blowing,

The highways are closed, the tow trucks are towing.

The trailer is shaking, the slides are pulled in, it’s white-out conditions. our patience:  wearing thin.

 

1 to 3 inches of snow is what they’re forecasting,

And with winds this strong, it feels like sandblasting!

The electric heater and furnace are both spewing heat,

in an effort to keep us warm- in this cold-quite a feat!

 

The cat's looking scared, he's starting to pout,

he needs  a safe haven to wait the storm out.

To the closet he goes,              …... then the cabinet ...and drawer,

but I know nothing will suit him -   I've seen this routine before!

His eyes soon light up,

his thoughts I could see,

as he debated which perch 

would most annoy me.

 
 
 

With I and my lap top

and Paul the TV,

I get the spreadsheets,

he: "Live with Kelly"

 
 
 

We're not going out

with the wind chill in the teens,

guess its time for the cookbook

and the recipe for Pralines.

 
 
 

We traded the brick house to avoid

just this season,

Our home now has wheels-that’s one of the reasons!

As much as I love this lone star state,

The cold and wet I totally hate.

 

 

Instead, next December

we might think it best

to say   Merry Christmas to all…

from sunny Key West!

 

Texas Hill Country, Part 2 (12-17-11)

Continuing on with Fredericksburg:
     Fredericksburg is home to a world class museum- The National Museum of the Pacific War.  Why is it located in Fredericksburg? Because Admiral Chester Nimitz was raised in Fredericksburg.  Like many museums, this one is huge and can be overwhelming.  It was divided into small rooms and each room had a theme, whether it was a person, a battle or something else of significance that happened before or during WWII.  We skipped some rooms completely and others we investigated thoroughly. I spent some time in the Midway room-having seen the movie about it a million times, it was interesting to see more details regarding how it all happened and why it went down the way it did.  At that time, the Americans knew an attack was planned on something the Japanese code referred to as “AF”, but they were in disagreement over what the target “AF” actually was.  The American code breakers had broken some of the Japanese code, but not all of it, so key information was missing. Someone came up with a simple ruse.  The personnel at Midway were instructed to radio to the mainland that they were running low on water.  Soon thereafter, a Japanese message was intercepted that stated that “AF was low on water”, and the target was confirmed. Quite clever!
Many of the rooms had backlit tables that showed movement of troops and ships, complete with a narration that explained when and how a particular battle took place.  It did a great job of giving us an overall sense of what happened, and what significance a particular battle had. This room was the Iwo Jima Room. 


Some of the rooms were about the people- sometime soldiers, but also the general population, and the effect the war was having on everyone.  There was one room that talked about rationing.  My mom was a young teen during that time and I remember her telling us about the rationing, and collecting metal to donate to the cause.  She and the other kids in the neighborhood used to go around with a wagon, collecting whatever they could for the war effort.
Another room was dedicated to the Sullivan family from Iowa.  There were 5 Sullivan “boys” in the navy.  Although there were technically rules against  family members serving on the same ship, one of the brothers asked for, and was granted, permission for all of them to serve on the USS Juneau.  In November of 1942, the USS Juneau was sunk during the battle of Guadalcanal. There were only 10 survivors, and none of them were named Sullivan.  Security was such the navy didn’t want it to get out that the Juneau was lost, so the family was not notified right away and in fact, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan heard rumors from neighbors that her boys had been lost, and wrote to
 



A separate building houses a small museum dedicated to Admiral Chester Nimitz and his life, and down the street there is an indoor/outdoor arena called the Pacific Combat Zone that contains realistic, life-size models of  battlefields, PT boats and an aircraft hanger on an aircraft carrier.



   

 By now it was close enough to Christmas that the downtown lights were all ablaze and the annual “Christmas Journey” was supposed to take place while we were in town.  The Journey is a drive through “show” of the story of Christmas, portrayed by live actors.  Unfortunately it rained the last night, which was when we had planned on going, so the show was canceled. When we got to San Angelo, we found out they have a “drive thru” holiday show as well, but it isn’t comprised of live people.  Its an enormous light display. Even though it rained while we were there, we did manage do do the drive-thru. They had everything from the “12 days of Christmas” scenes to an animated Snowman machine.

the snowman machine

 


There is a small historic downtown shopping area, and some pretty good hiking in the San Angelo area.  We did an 8 mile hike in San Angelo State Park and Paul used his Iphone to geocache for the first time.  We found 2 caches

Texas Hill Country, part 1 (12-11-11)

    Before I discuss Texas Hill Country, I will explain why this post has been so delayed.  I made the mistake about 10 days ago of  mentioning that I hadn’t been sick, not even a cold, in about 6 years.  Well, of course, that was a dumb thing to say, since I promptly came down with my first cold in 6  years.  So, anyway, we have left hill country and have been in El Paso for the last few days, where we’ll spend Christmas with Paul’s mom.
      Texas is such a huge state that it is home to several different climates, depending on the region.  West Texas is arid, desert like, with some areas receiving as little as 12 inches of rain per year. The eastern, Piney Woods region, by contrast, is humid and can receive as many as 87 inches of precipitation every year.  It contains numerous forests of pine and hardwood trees-so different from  the deserts of the western part of the state.  The gulf coast is yet another region- one that remains warm all year, and is very hot and humid in the summertime.   Hill Country is sort of in the middle of the state and is known, of course, for it’s rolling hills and many rivers. Usually the weather here is pretty good, but during our stay, mother nature did not cooperate. We had a lot of raw, chilly days, and rain.  We were happy to eventually head towards the drier, western half of the state, but then, it rained, hailed and snowed here in El Paso last night.  Go figure.

     We spent a few days in Fredericksburg, a town that was settled in the1800s by German  immigrants.  This town really gives a lot of “bang for your buck”.  There are at least 6 museums, and an awesome downtown shopping area, full of unique stores and many restaurants, ranging from Southwestern to German food. We ate at a German restaurant with Julie and Mike, and then drove out to Luckenbach with them to listen to some guitar playing. 

 

Luckenbach is a very small unique town that is known for it’s music. It consists of a dozen or so old wooden buildings- one of which is a bar, and one is a dance hall.  Apparently there is music being played in multiple locations on most days, but of course the day we were there the weather was so cold and raw, they were only playing inside the dance hall.  We did enjoy listening for quite a while though.  

More tomorrow…..

Enchanted Rock (12-09-11)

   Enchanted Rock Natural area is about 19 miles outside of Fredericksburg and it has about  8 miles of trails.  We have been really antsy to get some decent hiking in, and chose yesterday to go there based on the weather forecast.  I started out the day with two sweatshirts on and by 2 pm they were both tied around my waist.  The rock is a 450 ft tall pink granite exfoliation dome that is part of one of the largest batholiths in the U.S.  A batholith  is an underground rock formation that becomes uncovered by erosion.
Although it doesn’t look that big in the pictures, the part that protrudes from the earth (which is really the “tip of the iceberg”) covers 640 acres.  We first took the trail that went straight to the summit, in case we ran out of steam later.  It was pretty steep, a good cardio workout!

Once at the top, we were surprised to see the vernal pools, like oases in the midst of solid granite.  Over a period of many years enough dirt settles into these basins to allow algae to grow, then small plants take root and eventually larger plants, even trees, settle in to these small pockets of water.

                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

       

In the distance, we saw an outcropping of rocks, with a sign in front of it.  After figuring out that the sign said “cave entrance”, Paul made a beeline for it. It wasn’t a cave that you could explore, but we spent a fun 30 minutes scrambling around on the boulders and poking around. I was glad we had found it because the scrambling was fun and the views on the other side were awesome!

  We had a great day- this is our favorite kind of hike. It was enough of a cardio workout, somewhat of a challenge, and had plenty for us to see and explore along the way.  And the weather was perfect for it.







An exfoliation dome erodes by essentially sloughing off it’s outer skin, like the peeling of an onion, instead eroding one grain of sand at a time.  We could see evidence of the exfoliation on this chunk of granite, and although the layer peeling off is thin in some places, it’s not as thin as it appears.






the picture below is the same shot as this picture, but zoomed in closer.  In the picture below, you can see the hikers climbing down the boulders.  We could hear them, and the 3 girls were not very happy with the 3 guys.  The guys were happily scrambling down the side of the dome and the girls were not convinced that they were going to make it down safely (they did, though).

Austin, TX…sort of. (12-4-11)

   The day we arrived in Austin we drove around the city,  I actually like it quite a bit.  It’s bigger than the usual size town that we like, but it isn’t overwhelmingly large.  Its not to difficult to navigate and has “neighborhoods” that each seem to have their own character.  Along the way we saw signs pointing out which way to go to get to different attractions.  One of them said “Umlauf”.  After spending a few minutes trying to guess what it could mean (our best guesses were college campuses?) I googled it, and it turns out its a garden of sculptures.  Reading about it really peaked my interest and I was looking forward to going there.
   After getting the “layout of the land” we made a list of things we wanted to do or see in the 4 days we were going to be here.   And that’s about as far as we got on that list.  We did make it to one museum- The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.  I have an uncle named Bob Bullock, so I was really curious to see it. Having spent a fair amount of time in different parts of Texas now, we are beginning to get a real sense of the history of the state, and this museum helped quite a bit with that endeavor. I learned about the 9 or so years (1836-1845) that Texas was actually an independent republic (the Lone Star Republic),  recognized by the United States, Britain and France, after winning its independence from Mexico, but before it was accepted into the United States.     
      So what stopped us from doing everything we wanted to do? The weather.  It turned cold.  Really cold. And the wind blew.  And it rained. So we stayed in, mostly.  We got out the Christmas decorations and put them up, and realized we don’t have enough (but then, Paul always wants more decorations!). We didn’t put the ornaments on the tree yet.  We’ll be moving a few more times before we settle for Christmas, and then we’ll put up the ornaments. At some point we spent 2 hours calling AT&T stores to find out if they have any Iphones in stock and when they all said no, we headed to the local Apple store to get Paul an Iphone.  He’s only had it 2 days but so far he really loves it.  Of course, anything would be an improvement over his 7 year old flip phone with the screen that is impossible to see.  We are moving forward at light speed in the technology department!  In addition to my Ipad data plan, Paul’s Iphone can be a hotspot that will run the computer and the Ipad. In fact, I am using it to post this because the campground Wi-fi doesn’t work. More and more often we come across campgrounds whose Wi-Fi is either spotty or non-existent.

     We braved the cold to eat at a BBQ restaurant called the Salt Lick.  You can see the huge pit that was just full of sausage, brisket, and turkey.  The place was enormous, although not very busy the day we were there.  The tables are mostly picnic tables and they serve no alcohol, but they have a winery and a store onsite so you can buy whatever you want and bring it to dinner with you. Since it was early in the day, we just had diet coke. 
So, we’ve already left Austin, after having done very little exploring, and are now in Fredericksburg TX.

One Awesome day in San Antonio (12-3-11)



The Tamale Tent

      Of course, we were actually in San Antonio for a few days, but only one was awesome.  The first day we got there it rained most of the day so we did things like buy groceries, return cell phones and surf the web.  My new phone doesn’t work very well at all, so I returned it and have gone back to my old one for now. 


listening to music on the river



   Saturday was the day of our planned excursion to the Riverwalk with Julie and Mike. The weather forecast wasn’t the best, but the rain did hold off for us and the temperature was  perfect for being outside.  Julie and Mike are staying in a campground outside the city so they got a hotel room on the Riverwalk and we met them there.  Our first stop was to the newest section of the Riverwalk, called Museum Reach. On the way there we passed by the local VFW where we were invited to partake of the $2 bottles of Dos Equis they were serving.   We assured them we’d stop in after we’d had our fill of tamales.  We were headed towards the 2nd annual Tamale Festival at the Pearl Brewery.  There were venders all lined up in a huge tent, selling tamales for $1.00, as well as other tasty dishes.  The price was such that we could graze and were able to try several different kinds of tamales and other Mexican dishes.   In addition to the food (and drink) there were several venues providing live music with performers that changed every hour or so, and a row of booths with people selling crafts. 

holiday lights on the Riverwalk

                                                                     

After listening to music for a bit, we took advantage of the free riverboat rides that were being offered and got a waterside view of the Holiday lights.  The boat drivers were tour guides to an extent and shared information about  the river, the locks and the art that we encountered along the way.  Our driver was kind enough to drop us off at the VFW



Paul and Mike investigate the art



on the way back, and we joined the ongoing party.  On any other night we would have loved to have just stayed there and listened to the live band that started playing while we were there.  But not tonight.  We wanted to get to the other end of the river to see the luminarias, the lights and the Christmas Carolers.

                              Along the way we decided we were hungry for dinner and chose La Paloma Restaurant. The only good thing about the restaurant was the outdoor seating along the waterfront. I only mention the name of the restaurant so everyone can avoid it if they go to San Antonio! We elected to pass on dessert, but stopped later in the night to get something.  We never did make it to hear the caroling, but it was such a fun and full day, I think we would have been hard pressed to add anything else to it!

Habitat for Humanity (11-30-11)



Paul works on the caulking



    One of the goals we’ve had since we went on the road full time was to work with Habitat for Humanity on a house build.  We finally realized that goal here in Livingston, and now that we have gotten our feet wet, so to speak, I hope we continue to seek out opportunities to work with other chapters as we travel around the country. It works well for our lifestyle that no commitment is needed, and if we can only work for a day or two, that’s fine.. Habitat has built or rehabbed over 500,000 homes all over the world, since it began in the 1970s.  Pretty impressive. I’ve always thought it was a great program because people can donate their time and effort instead of money, and have the satisfaction of seeing the progress on a house that will go to someone in need.  The new owners are also required to volunteer a certain amount of hours before they can move into the house.  Recently, in the Livingston area,  a woman whose house was finished couldn’t move in for a month, because she hadn’t put in enough hours volunteering.

I had contacted the local chapter before we arrived in town to find out what, if anything, they were building and it turns out they are working on a house in a nearby town, but are mostly just working on the weekends.  The Saturday after we arrived in Livingston, we headed out to help.  I spent most of the day painting the outside of the house, while Paul helped with the caulking and a variety of other projects. (The man in the bright yellow shirt is the man who will be the new home owner. )   



Mike works on the interior



Kathi stains the kitchen cabinets



There was a great sense of camaraderie and cooperation among the workers, and at about 10 am, a separate crew arrived from a local church, and began putting lunch together for everyone.  There were about 20 people there that Saturday, but the project leader, who happens to be a fellow Escapee living in Livingston, mentioned to me that they hadn’t had much of a turnout lately and really wanted to step up the pace if they could.  Its the nature of the beast that they are never sure how many people will show up on any given day.  Since they weren’t planning on working the week of Thanksgiving, Paul and I decided to stay a few days beyond that to give them a hand.  This past Monday we went back to the house, and this time brought our friend Mike with us.  His wife was still in Omaha visiting their new granddaughter.  Mike worked at caulking the interior of the house, while Paul installed most of the light fixtures, and I spent the day staining the kitchen cabinets.  Before leaving for the day I had committed to coming back on Tuesday to help two other women polyurethane the cabinets so that they won’t have to be done on the weekend when there are more people around.  The whole experience was a really great one, and one I hope we can repeat with some degree of regularity!