October Happenings (10-2018)

Very soon after arriving home in October, Paul's  brother Tom and his wife Sue stopped by for a few days. They are now retired and have a motor home. We look forward to meeting up with them along the way!


Of course we made time for a trip to the Desert Bar before they left....

Our daughter Jess moved into a new apartment in Los Angeles, in October, and needed some of her household items that were being stored at our place, so I took a short road trip and met her about halfway,  where we transferred her stuff from my car to hers. There may have been some shopping done as well, haha.

Back at home, the hummingbirds were hungry enough to eat from the handheld feeder. Pretty cool.

The weather wasn't great in October in Havasu... we did manage to take the boat out, and hike a few times, but it wasn't too long before we decided to go on a road trip.

We loaded up the truck camper and headed to California.

The  route we chose was fairly remote, with few campgrounds along the way. In fact, most of the towns we were going through didn't have any television reception, which we considered vital that particular night. We called places until we found a campground that had cable (only in the clubhouse, but that worked) so we could watch the Red Sox win the World Series.

Our first stop was  Giant Sequoia National Monument, where we walked the Trail of 100 Giants.













This wasn't a particularly long trail but it was an interesting one.















Our second stop was Sequoia National Park.  Here we spent several days exploring and hiking. We found it astonishing that neither of us had spent any time here!

We couldn't have asked for better weather, and one of the perks of traveling in the truck camper is that its easier to fit into campgrounds that are IN the national parks, which really adds to the experience.

Many of the trees and groves here have been given names...The Senate, the House, etc. And of course, General Sherman tree....the Largest tree, by volume, in the world.  Note the car in the picture of this tree.

As impressive as the trees were, the trail with the best view was the granite dome called Moro Rock.

This trail wound around the granite, all the way to the top. Or, at least I assume it goes all the way.  The trail got a little narrow for me, and the railing was a little low for my taste,  so I waited for Paul just below the crest.

Even driving around the park was interesting...

 After a few days of hiking, we moved on to our final destination- Fresno, and the fraternity brothers.

Kirk was building a hot tub shack at his cabin in the mountains, so the guys got together to help, while the girls played Rummikub and provided the men with refreshments.

 Once the weekend was over, we headed back to Havasu.

“Running” Across the U.S. (10-10-18)

Once we re-entered the U.S., we had a decision to make…to go back to Virginia and the Carolinas to continue our genealogy research, or beeline for home. We decided to take the time and head to the Carolinas.  But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have fun along the way!

Our first, brief stop, was Acadia National Park, again. We stayed in the more remote Schoodic Peninsula area and spent one day hiking before moving on.













We also met with friends Lester and Sue in Maine- we missed them on the way north. Lester and Paul go way back and its always fun to catch up with them.

By mid September we had arrived back in Massachusetts for a brief visit.  The weather was cooperative so we finally got a chance to go to Lowell National Historic Park.

Lowell (dubbed the "Lowell Experiment" at the time) was built as a carefully planned industrial city, making use of the canals that connected the Merrimac River to the Charles for transportation, fishing, and power production. By the mid 1800s, it was a thriving, massive city, and the largest textile center in the country.

 By the early 1930s its role in the textile industry had severely declined and the city fell into disrepair and abandonment.  This is the Lowell I remember.  High unemployment, high crime- it wasn't somewhere you wanted to visit, never mind live.
Starting in the late 1900s ta re-birth began and over the years the city has begun to thrive again, embracing it's history. I was amazed at the cobblestone streets and the beauty of the waterfront area.

 Another neighborhood we visited while in MA was my own- the one I lived in growing up. The little blue house was ours.

 I am still friends with the women I grew up with on that street, and we all got together for a barbecue before we left town.

 As always, a visit to Boston feels too short, but
we were soon on our way.  We detoured to Cape Cod, (since it was after Labor Day-it would be too busy during the summer) and spent the evening with our friends Les and Alane. On the way to dinner we stopped to get a picture of the sunset.







The place we pulled off to watch the sunset was coincidentally the home of the actual Small Boat that performed the  greatest rescue in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard.... the story was featured in the movie "The Finest Hours".  After watching the sunset and checking out the boat, we went back to Les and Alane's and watched the movie!

After leaving MA, we went to VA,  and also spent a brief time in the Carolinas, looking for more family history information.  Finding none, we bee lined for Texas to check up on Paul's mom before heading home to Havasu.

Southwest Nova Scotia (09-05-18)

We came away from Cape Breton with a much better picture of my family history- especially regarding the King family, which has been my primary focus.  We have new leads to follow and have already started. We stopped in the Guysborough area of Nova Scotia and although we didn’t learn much here, it was very cool for me to realize that my 5th great grandfather moved to this area from Virginia, in 1784.

We were headed to Halifax, again, to look for land deeds, but we took the long way there.  With temperatures hovering at 30 degrees ( that's Celsius) we opted for one more beach day. One of the perks to traveling in a truck camper is that we can check out from one campground, stop at the beach with the camper, hang out, make our own lunch, take a shower, and then go to the next campground. And that’s exactly what we did.

Once in Halifax, we hit the Archives as soon as they opened, and found the records we were looking for. We had suspected that my 5th great grandfather came to Nova Scotia with 4 children, not just the 3 we knew about, and the land deed records showed that Amelia Cook, daughter of George King, sold land at the same time as her sister, Rebecca King Langley.

That was a key piece of information for me, and the only thing we were looking for, so we met with Neil and Susan again for dinner, this time down at the Halifax waterfront.

Labor Day weekend is one of those weekends that its not always a good idea to wait till the last minute for campground reservations.  Paul and I had looked ahead and had to decide where we wanted to go. We could have done the Cabot trail again, on Cape Breton, but decided we didn’t need to do it again.

We debated heading back to the States, but there was a section of Nova Scotia that we hadn’t really explored, and we decided that it could be “now or never” so we booked places along the south western section of Nova Scotia.

Shelburne

  We bypassed the quaint, but well known towns of Liverpool and Lunenburg because we had visited them before and settled near the seacoast town of Shelburne.

This is a cute little town, with a few nice restaurants and a long history of Dory making.

I have seen Dories before, in fact, Gloucester MA has dory races every year. Anyway, although I had seen dories , I didn’t know much about them. Shelburne was known for their Dories, and at one time there were 7 dory builders in town. Now there is one museum, and they build about two per year.So here is what we learned:

A Dory is a shallow bottom boat, usually about 12-15 feet long. The shorter boats can be manned by one person and the longer boats require two people at the oars.

Dories have many purposes- fishing, transport, etc

They were cheap, and considered to be disposable, so if a dory sprung a leak, it was tossed overboard.

They were painted “Dory Buff Yellow” which was, at the time, the color most visible in a fog. New ones are sometimes painted in neon colors.  Back in the day, when they were used for fishing, two members of the same family were not allowed to go out on the same dory- the fatality rate was pretty high in the dory fishing world.

Kejimkujik

Trying to get back into the hiking routine, as much as possible, we stayed in provincial parks, as well as Kejimkujik National Park.

There are two sections to Kejimkujik- one deep in the woods, and another along the seashore.

We hiked them both. Paul’s favorite trail was probably the Gold Miner Trail- an interpretive hike that showcased the gold mining history of the area.

We noticed these weird contraptions all over the park, and finally chatted with a volunteer to find out what they are. The Blanding Turtle is endangered, and they love to lay their eggs in this particular area, only at night, and each year they return to the same spot. There is a group of volunteers that stay here and cover the eggs once they are laid, protecting them from predators. Once they hatch, each turtle is marked with a unique code ( they notch the shell) and released.









As we were hiking back to our campsite one day, I got a kick out of this sign that showed our speed. I was pretty impressed with our walking pace until I remembered it’s in kilometers per hour, not miles. Still, it was funny.

Digby

Our final stop in Nova Scotia was Digby.  They are known for their scallops so of course we searched for a restaurant on the water where we could enjoy a glass of wine and some seafood.

Nearby Annapolis Royal has a cute downtown area and also Historical botanical gardens.  We meandered around the gardens for a bit, and bought some amazingly delicious orange vinegar from their gift store.