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Archive for the ‘Favorite Places’ Category

Favorite Places: Hannibal, Missouri

Posted in Favorite Places, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 14, 2012| 6 Comments »

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ” — Mark Twain

Tom and Huck’s Cardiff Hill

Mark Twain put Hannibal on the map, and the city is now using the places where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn played and roamed to entice people to the tourist town. You can take a ride on a paddle boat, tour the dark corners of the cave Tom and Becky got lost in, visit his home and walk up 253 steps to get to the top of Cardiff Hill. I did them all, simply because. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I climbed the steps and then discovered the road that most others took to the top. I think I would have taken those steps even if I knew the road existed, however. That’s just who I am.

Bean’s Pat: Camping With a Canine in Cornwall http://tinyurl.com/726he22 This reminded me of many of my own adventuress when I was a tent camper. .

 

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A Week in Chicago

Posted in Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , on March 13, 2012| 1 Comment »

 “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” ~Seneca

The Art Institute of Chicago – and Snow

While I tend to hit the backroads and boonies most frequently in my travels so as to satisfy my need for Mother Nature’s sanctuaries, I also enjoy big cities.

That good because I recently spent a week in Chicago. The purpose was to visit my youngest son, Michael, but I also got in a bit of sight-seeing in the Windy City.

My son, knowing that no visit to any big city is complete without a visit to an art museum, set aside a day for us to take in the Chicago institute of Art, which has a great Impressionist collection.

What a great day it was, from being amused by the pair of fierce lions guarding the museum entrance to getting re-acquainted with the works of Van Gogh, even though my favorites, his Starry Night series was not among them.

A snowy early morning view from my son's third-floor Chicago apartment. -- Photo by Pat Bean

It was a great visit, which included a fancy dinner at the top of the John Hancock Building, which came with a foggy night view of the city.  But  I especially enjoyed getting up one morning and looking out my son’s apartment window and seeing snow. This winter has been spent mostly on Texas’ Gulf Coast and snow has not been part of the landscape.

Change, I think, is good for the human soul. At least it feels that way for mine.

 Bean’s Pat: Cats in Paris http://tinyurl.com/7ql84jt Quite an eclectic collection, and I loved them all.

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Favorite Places: Manatee Hammocks RV Park

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , , on March 2, 2012| 2 Comments »

 “Hear! Hear! Screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, “winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel if you know where to look for it.” — Henry David Thoreau.

The pier through the trees at Manatee Hammocks RV Park in Titusville, Florida. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Florida scrub jay -- Photo by Pat Bean

I’m sitting by a bank of third-floor windows looking out past naked tree branches at a dull Chicago day in which snow has been forecast.

It’s quite different from the Texas Gulf Coast I left behind. According to today’s weather report, it’s 77 degrees and raining in Lake Jackson. I hope someone remembered to shut the windows in my RV and turn on the air conditioner for Maggie.

Actually I’m sure they – my son, Lewis, and his wife, Karen – did. Karen just texted me that Maggie had a nice walk this morning and shared their steak dinner yesterday evening.

I left Maggie behind to fly into Chicago for a week to visit my youngest son, Michael.

Thinking about my two-and-a-half-hour flight from one climate to another got me thinking about the winters of my past.

Oranges just outside my RV door. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I grew up in Dallas, where we might get a bit of snow that stayed on the ground less than a day. Then there was Texas’ Gulf Coast where the world stayed green through the winter, and a rare half-inch of snow maybe once every 10 years shut down schools.

In January, 1971, I moved to Northern Utah, where I didn’t see ground beneath the snow that year until early April. I took up skiing and came to love the snow.

Since retiring in 2004, winters have mostly been spent on the Texas Gulf Coast, although I did spend one December in Guam, and one entire winter in Florida.

That winter in Florida, while my friends back in Utah were buried in snow, I was seeking out shady spots – and getting a good look at my first Florida scrub jay, a bird that can be found only in Florida – and only in one small portion of the state.

I saw the bird on a tour that was part of the Titusville Bird Festival. For the week I spent in this area adjacent to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, I stayed at the Manatee Hammocks RV Park. It was a delightful place where I could pick fresh oranges just outside my RV door.

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Today’s News Made Me Angry

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, tagged , , , , , , on February 29, 2012| 7 Comments »

“If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” — Marcus Aurelius

Soap Box Day

My rant might not have been pretty, but Lake Reidsville in North Carolina is awesome. I need to sit beside such a place until my blood pressure returns to normal. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I live on a fixed income, almost 20 percent of which goes to pay for Medicare and Medigap private insurance. While it’s too much, I try to be grateful that I can at least pay the health-care costs. Way too many older Americans can’t. And the young and poor are in the same situation.

Then today I read a story about Dallas-area medical service providers who bilked Medicare and Medicaid of nearly $375 million.

But that’s just a drop in the bucket. Health Care fraud costs the government at least 60 billion annually, according to the Associated Press story.

Part of that is my money, and yours, How much less would we seniors have to pay for medical care if the greedy cheaters had a drop of human kindness in their hearts. And how much more would workers get to take home of their paychecks if the cheaters didn’t get their unfair share.

Have these arrogant sons of, well-you-know, been among the world’s population all along, or have we forgotten to teach our children that the world does not owe them a living? What can we do about it?

I wish I had answers. All I can do is hope that some judge, somewhere, will put these greedy so-called medical providers out of circulation so they can do no more harm – and deny them medical care, too.

 

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Favorite Places: Bar Harbor, Maine

Posted in Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , on February 23, 2012| 13 Comments »

 “Lie in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Park at the Pier, looking out on Frenchmen's Bay -- Photo by Pat Bean

Bean’s Pat: Zottel is Back http://photobotos.com/2012/02/23/zottel-is-back I couldn’t resist this goat. Remember Doris Day in”Don’t Eat the Daisies.”

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Favorite Places: Wolf Park, Battleground, Indiana

Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on February 21, 2012| 8 Comments »

 “Wolves are not our brothers; they are not our subordinates, either. They are another nation, caught up just like us in the complex web of time and life.” -Henry Beston
“The wolf is neither man’s competitor nor his enemy. He is a fellow creature with whom the earth must be shared.” L. David Mech

Howling With Wolves

 

Wolves in Snow. Image Source: http://www.findfreegraphics.com/wallpaper

I was on my way to Maine when I read about Wolf Park, a place where people could howl with wolves.

It was shortly after I had been luckily blessed to see a wild one in Yellowstone National Park, a miracle that I never thought would happen.

The opportunity to howl with one also seemed like a miracle, and so I rerouted my driving route to take me through Battleground, Indiana, and it’s number one tourist attraction: Wolf Park. It’s a place where wolves live as they do in the wild, but were conditioned as pups not to be afraid ofhumans. It’s a research park so we humans can better understand these wild creatures with which we share the planet.

The night I howled with wolves, including Tristan, one of the pack leaders at the park, is still etched vividly on my brain.

When I found this video, I immediately wanted to share it with my readers. I hope you howl along.

Bean’s Pat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqgrfBLIcoA Howl with Tristan

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Favorite Places: Grand Teton National Park – For One

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2012| 13 Comments »

“Give me the comma of imperfect striving, thus to find zest in the immediate living. Ever the reaching but never the gaining, ever the climbing but never the attaining of the mountain top.” — Winston Graham

While this tiny creek is too small to make most maps, it makes it on the list of my favorite places. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Wyoming's Grand Teton, photographed at the end of a hike to Taggart Lake, makes my long, long list of favorite places. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I get tongue-tied when people ask me what’s my favorite place among those Maggie and I have visited in our RV travels.

How do you name one among so many?

I’ve discovered beauty and awesomeness everywhere I’ve gone, from coast to coast and border to border.

I’ve ridden to the top, in a tiny cramped ball, of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, stood beneath Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln at Mount Rushmore, and gazed down on New York City from the top of the Empire State Building.

All these places were awesome.

But just as grand and beautiful in the eyes of this nature-loving old broad have been all the nature refuges, lakes, mountains, rivers big and small and even the trees, especially the redwoods, that Maggie and I have visited.

Yes. Perhaps that’s the answer. My favorite place is where Mother Nature resides. 

Bean’s Pat: 20 Minutes a Day: Saturday Morning http://tinyurl.com/6w8ce3h A writing prompt that had me laughing all the way through.

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Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , on February 18, 2012| 7 Comments »

 Weekly photo challenge: Down

“To trace the history of a river or a raindrop…is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both, we constantly seek and stumble upon divinity, which like feeding the lake, and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself all over again.” – – From Islands, The Universe, Home, 1991 Gretel Ehrlich

Headed DOWN the Snake -- Photo by Pat Bean

Down River

White water rafting was how I got my adrenalin rush for 20 years. These days I’m mostly content to sit by a river and watch it flow past on its way to the sea.

Or take a gently canoe ride down a flat section of river and watch the scenery float by.

I like rivers. I live to hear their music, from the tinkling,, bubbling lullaby of a small mountain stream to the the bass roar of the rivers, like the Snake and Colorado, just before you come upon a man-eating white-water rapid. 

Hey! Who stole the boat? -- Photo by Pat Bean

“SothisisaRiver”

“THE River,” corrected the Rat.

“And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!”

“By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing. Lord! The times we’ve had together…”  –– From the Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahme

 

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Favorite Places: Zion National Park

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on February 15, 2012| 5 Comments »

“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” Leonardo da Vinci

 

All cares drop away when I hike Zion National Park's Gateway to the Narrows trail, an easy 2-mile out -and-back roundtrip that parallels the Virgin River. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

“Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” Winnie the Pooh.

Bean’s Pat: Philosopher of the Mouse Hedge: http://tinyurl.com/6mfskt4 Belly laughs and smiles. Especially if you click on the Carman Miranda link at the end. Remember her –  and her energy. I smiled all the way through the clip.

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Happy Valentine’s Day to All

Posted in Favorite Places, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on February 14, 2012| 12 Comments »

 “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.” Blaise Pascal

I married twice, but never had a honeymoon. So I took myself to Niagara Falls. What a beautiful sight. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Seeing as how my choices of men as soul mates were always poor ones, today is not a lovey-dovey sentimental one for me, although I truly rejoice for those who enjoy it as such..

While it wasn’t always so, I am quite happy that my only domestic partner is my canine traveling companion, Maggie. I think the choices I made in my life led me to this point, perhaps because I subconsciously always knew it was the end I truly wanted.

 

My first great-grandchild. He's 2 now and one of the loves of my life. Happy Valentine's Day Junior. -- Photo by Baron Marsh

And just because I don’t have a significant other, doesn’t mean I don’t have love or passion in my life.

My friends (both male and female), children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren provide the love. While I married the wrong man, the union did provide me with five wonderful children. And because of that, I can have no regrets.

Books, writing, nature, birds, travel and a zest for life, meanwhile, provide all the passion my old-broad libido needs these days.

I don’t think I have settled. I think it is truly who I am. I feel like I finally fit in my own skin.

So Happy Valentine’s Day to all those out there who are enjoying it with a person of their choice, and happy hunting to all those still seeking that special someone. Just don’t forget to live your life while you’re looking.

And may the rest of us just enjoy a happy day. And the same tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow …

Bean’s Pat: Horsetail Fire Falls http://photobotos.com/2012/02/13/horsetail-fire-falls A rare photograph captures why this waterfall was so named. Absolutely awesome! But then I’m a nature lover.

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