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Archive for the ‘Journeys’ Category

My Grandson, David, Weds His Sweetheart

Posted in Journeys, tagged , , , , , on October 9, 2011| 11 Comments »

“True love stories never have endings.” – Richard Bach

I'm not sure who took this picture of my grandson popping the question, but my thanks to them for capturing a picture that's worth more than a thousand words. I couldn't resist writing about the wedding simply so I could post this photo.

A Day to Remember

I watched my third oldest grandchild get married yesterday evening.

As it should be, the bride, Sheila, was beautiful and the groom, David, was shaking in his new suit.

The “girls” had a breakfast earlier in the day, and the “boys” a lunch. At the breakfast, Sheila was worried, as are all brides, about what could go wrong. I told her that at least one thing SHOULD go wrong to make the wedding memorable.

The ceremony, however, went off without a hitch. Too bad, I was thinking.

But then, when it came time to take the photos, someone remembered the boutonnieres for the men’s lapels and the corsages for the women’s dresses that had been forgotten.

“See.” I told Sheila.  “Your wedding turned out perfect after all.”

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A Greener Landscape and a Wandering Mind

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2011| 3 Comments »

 “A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” – John Steinbeck

My wandering mind waa on green jays as i drove Highway 36 toward Lake Jackson. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

With my canine traveling companion, Maggie, snoozing away in her co-pilot seat, I left Harker Heights, and my oldest son’s home, early for our drive to Lake Jackson, and my middle son’s home 250 miles away. It’s a very familiar drive for me, one I’ve made many times.

As I passed oil rigs, grazing cattle, cotton fields, mesquite trees and roadside sunflowers that let me know I was in Texas, I was glad to see the color green still existed. It had been missing on my drive two days earlier down Highway 190, clear evidence of the dastardly drought the state has been suffering. .

To all Texans living where heat and drought has scorched the landscape, I just wanted to show that green does still exist. This is the view from my RV window in Lake Jackson. -- Photo by Pat Bean

While admittedly things weren’t quite as lush as I remembered from past drives down Highway 36, the landscape was still a far cry from the brown and dying cedar trees, lack of grass and stunted and yellow cactus that had dominated my entry back into the Lone Star state on Tuesday.

The driving this day was easy with little traffic. As usual under such circumstances, my mind begins to wander. This day, it went south to the Rio Grande Valley, perhaps because I was thinking about when I would be able to go there and do some winter birding.

From Lake Jackson, where I was headed, it’s only a half day’s drive. I would have to see what bird festivals were going on down there in the coming months, I thought as I drove.

My mind must have still been with the fantastic green jays down there when I came to the Highway 35 turnoff, because I took it. I was looking for it in fact.

Oops!

I then realized that what I had actually been looking for was the Highway 36 turnoff that I always took when I returned from the valley. But then I had already been on Highway 36.
I guess I should have been paying more attention to where I was than where I wanted to go.

Anybody else out there have a mind that plays tricks on them like that?

If so, I hope you have a traveling companion like Maggie. She never yells at me when I take a wrong turn.

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Suddenly the Clouds Overhead Turn Red

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on September 26, 2011| 3 Comments »

 “I advise you to say your dream is possible and then overcome all inconveniences, ignore all the hassles and take a running leap through the hoop, even if it is in flames.” Les Brown

Highway 395 passes through Modoc National Wildlife Refuge, where I stopped a bit to enjoy these Canada Geese. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

Travels With Maggie

Looking back at the fire from a service station in Bridgeport, where I -- gulp -- paid $4.99 for a gallon of gas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

My travels down Highway 395 the past five days have taken me from Oregon to California to Nevada and back again yesterday into California. \

“I already relinquished my lone apple to the agriculture inspector at the Alturas station,” I said to a second ag inspector as I re-entered California at Topaz Lake yesterday.

She smiled and waved me on.

Highway 395 is not one that will put you to sleep. The landscape it runs through is an eclectic mix of mountain passes, high deserts, green forests, both fresh water and salt lakes, historical parks and national wildlife refugees.

My dog, Maggie, and I have enjoyed every minute of the often steep and twisting drive. Me because of the awesome scenery, and Maggie because driving always lulls her into a pleasant sleep. She also enjoys the scents her nose discovers during our morning and evening walks at a strange new place. .

Flames were visible across the water from out Bridgeport Reservoir campground. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Yesterday’s travels took us over 7,000-foot passes that looked up at mountains still containing patches of snow. With all the heat so much of the country has had this year, the sight seemed like a miracle.

The red clouds I came upon in the late afternoon seemed much the same, until I realized the color was being reflected onto them by flames. Suddenly my view ahead was full of smoke, with actual flames occasionally visible from behind a ridge to my right. The flames, however, hadn’t yet reached the road and the smoke was mostly overhead, so I drove on, passing the fire just before entering the town of Bridgeport.

I breathed a sign of relief that the road hadn’t been closed, although I think it was later shut down.

The wildfire is still burning this morning, I can see it from the Bridgeport Reservoir RV Park and Marina, where Maggie and I spent the night.

It was nice, as we slept, to know there was a body of water between it and us.

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Highway 395 and Soul Words

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2011| 5 Comments »

 “The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination. – Don Williams.

 

The yellow winding road warning sign was no joke. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

For two days now, I’ve been traveling south on Highway 395 in Oregon. It’s an awesome road, full of twisty turns, steep canyons, grazing cattle, grassy meadows and flowing water.

I began my journey in Pendleton, where cowboys and Indians still roam, and on the first day I made it to the beautiful Clyde Holliday Park just outside John Day, where quail and deer still play. The second day found me in Lakeview, south of Lake Albert and just north of the California border..

The town of John Day is named for the John Day River, which was named for a Virginian who accompanied the Astor Expedition that followed the footsteps made by the earlier Lewis and Clark Expedition. Clyde Holliday is a successful logging entrepreneur in the area.

 

The roadsides occasionally hinted of autumn ahead. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The first day on the road took me through Battle Mountain State Park, and gave me a history lesson about the Bannock War. The park is the site of the last major fight the Bannock Indians fought against the encroachment of white settlers.

The highway north of John Day, while steep and winding, was mostly broad and open. The canyon south of John Day was steeper and narrower and often lined with trees. Except for an occasional logging truck, I was usually the only vehicle on the road.

Forks of the John Day River followed me both days. As I drove yesterday I composed a poem in my head. I seldom write poetry, but when I do, I call it soul words, which is my way of excusing my murder of poetic forms.

I hope you will, too.

Time Well Spent

Take me up to the mountain top

Up where the eagle and red-tailed hawk soar

Let me look out on a panoramic vista

Of meadows filled with golden grasses,

And clumps of frosty sagebrush

And patches of yellow wild blossoms

And here and there a tinge of red

That speaks of summer’s end.

Let me delight watching conifer leaves twinkle in the wind

And be amazed at how the stalky evergreens

March their way in jumbled rows up rocky cliffs

Let me linger a bit here on the high reach

Breathing in the fresh sky-scrubbed air

Scented with pungent sage and pine needles

Then let me slowly travel down canyon

Accompanied by the tinkling laughter of water

As it joyfully bubbles over riverbed rocks

Heeding the unwavering  call of gravity

Thankfully my life has seen such days as this

Unfettered by the world’s chaotic-ness

And doubly thankful again this precious day

That I’ve added yet another few peaceful hours 

To my piggy bank of memories.

– Pat Bean

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I Wasn’t Lost, Just on the Wrong Side of the River

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on September 14, 2011| 7 Comments »

 “In this world of change, nothing which comes stays, and nothing which goes is lost.” Anne Sophie

Thousand Springs from the wrong side of the Snake River. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

I never exactly got lost yesterday, but I never got exactly where I was going. My maps didn’t help, and my 25-year-old memories were useless.

I wanted to drive the section of Highway 30, known as the Thousand Springs Byway that runs south of Interstate 84 and west of Twin Falls – and I did. But I still never got to the actual site I was trying to find.

Back in the mid-1980s, when I was regional editor at the Times-News in Twin Falls, one of my girl friends took me right up to those rivulets of crystal clear water that gush out of the sides of the steep cliff and flow into the snake river.

I climbed among the tumbled rocks between the rivulets of water, and walked a short boardwalk that had water flowing beneath it. That was the place I wanted to visit again.

Instead, I found myself on the opposite of the river with only distant views of the springs. And after spending so much time at the nearby Haggarman Fossil Beds, which I was seeing for the first time and told you about in yesterday’s blog, I was short of time to search more.

So instead of close-up views of the springs, all I got was a distant view from the wrong side of the Snake River. And so that’s all you get to see, too.

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Stepping Back in Time in Idaho

Posted in Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on September 13, 2011| 2 Comments »

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

Looking down on the Snake River on a landscape over which wild horses roamed 3.5 million years ago, and one settlers crossed going West just 150 years ago. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Did you know Idaho has a state fossil? I didn’t – until today when I visited Haggarrman Fossil Beds National Monument.

It’s the Haggarman horse, which lived about 3.5 million years ago. Fossils from about 30 of the animals, which sort of looks like a hybrid between a horse and a zebra, were found near Haggarman, Idaho, back in the late 1920s.

Turning my back on the Snake River, this upward view of the monument looks to the future, and hopefully less dependency on fossil fuels. It's a beautiful view. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The area, which overlooks the Snake River near Haggarman and is about 20 miles north of Twin Falls, has also turned up an extinct species of camel that once roamed North America, as well as a mastodon, a dirk tooth cat and a bone crushing dog that lived over 3 million years ago.

The area is considered a world treasure because it contains the richest known deposits from the Pliocene epoch, the period before the ice age and the same period as the early evolution of man.

Fascinating, or so it was to me.

But the monument also has something for those who only want to go back in time about 200 years. It includes a portion of the Oregon Trail, which was first used by fur trappers, and then in the 1840s for the great western migration.

Today’s first day back on the road was short in miles, but certainly covered a lot of time. Life is good.

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9-11 Changed Everything

Posted in Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on September 11, 2011| 5 Comments »

  “I may never be normal again. But this is my life now. I have to live it.” — Manu Dhingra, 27, a securities broker who suffered burns over a third of his body on 9-11

A 10-year Perspective

The Twin Towers, March 2001 .. Wikipedia photo

How did 9-11 change your life, I was asked.

It was a question I found difficult to answer. No sudden revelations came to mind on how my life was different today than it was that horribly bad day in 2001. I lost no loved ones, although I mourned because of the senselessness that took so many innocent lives and disrupted so many families.

I continued living my life as before. My job went on, as did those of my children. My grandchildren continued graduating from school, marrying and having children of their own.

And then the “what if” questions hit me.

What if there had been no 9-11? Would we have still gone to war with Iraq? How many American soldiers and innocent civilians would still be alive today if 9-11 hadn’t happened?

Would the Patriot Act still have been passed, causing Americans to lose many freedoms on which this country was founded? Would our country’s leaders still have resorted to torture with the excuse of keeping America safe?

9-11 -- The horribly bad day that changed everything.

Nasty questions. Nasty answers.

Yes. I have changed. I’ve lost the mom-and-apple-pie image of America that I grew up believing in. My ever-optimistic attitude toward life has been charred. My trust in human nature has dimmed and my sense of security is dampened.

But life goes on, and I have no intention of giving into fears so as to turn the world over to the bad guys. I live my life as before. Perhaps that’s why on being asked how had 9-11 changed my life, the first thought that popped into my mind was “It didn’t.”

But of course it did.

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Mountains and Bluebonnets Kidnap Pieces of My Soul

Posted in Journeys, Travel, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , on September 8, 2011| 7 Comments »

 “Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!” – William Butler Yeats

Mount Ogden from 25th Street in Ogden. She holds a part of my soul. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

I’m in Ogden, Utah, in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains where I lived for a third of my life. It was a quick trip here from Lake Walcott State Park in Southern Idaho, where I’ve spent a leisurely summer volunteering as a campground host and enjoying Mother Nature’s daily gifts.

I know that when I leave Utah today this range of the great Rockies will be denied me for many months. And my heart is already feeling the loss.

Anywhere bluebonnets grow automatically goes on my favorite places list. Among them is Texas' Lake Colorado City State Park shown above. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I sold my home here, the one that got the Ogden Canyon winds each day as the mountains breathed in and out, seven years ago. I have no regrets. I’ve traveled all over the country half of each year, and spent the other half hopping between my children and grandchildren, most of whom are in Texas.

It’s been both great to spend time with loved ones, and great to travel this beautiful country of ours and take in its wonders. People often ask me what’s my favorite spot.

 It’s a question I find difficult to answer because immediately dozens of places pop into mind. I’ve found beauty in every state I’ve visited, and that now includes 47. My goal, since I’ve already visited Hawaii and Alaska, is to have visited all 50 of our states by the end of next year. 

Meanwhile, when I leave here tomorrow, I will leave a piece of my soul secreted away in the Wasatch Mountains that guard Ogden. .I trust the mountains to guard it well until I return and once again stand in their shadow. Just as I hope the bluebonnets of Texas will still remember me when I gaze upon them once again next spring.

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A Mind Boggling Journey Into the Past

Posted in Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , on August 29, 2011| 6 Comments »

 “A woman is like a tea bag, you can not tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.” – Nancy Reagan.

Travels With Maggie

Photo of my great-grandfather and my great-grandmother with my grandmother, Iva Mae, on the left, and her younger sister on the right. I never met any of these people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandmother, my mother’s mother and the only grandparent I ever knew. She died when I was 11. Now, for some strange reason, all the things I don’t know about this person, the only one in my young life whom I was sure loved me, frustrates me.

The little I do know of Mamie Truesdale Lee, who died in 1950, is that she divorced her first husband, for which the Catholic Church excommunicated her, then later married my grandfather, Charles Forrest Lee, who died when I was only two years old. My mother tells me he was gentle man and that I inherited my love of travel from him, that and my middle name of Lee, which is why I dubbed my RV Gypsy Lee.

But it’s my grandmother’s spirit, the person who they say made bathtub gin during prohibition, and the tiny spitfire of a women who was my mother, Kathryn Lee Joseph, that travel with me and Maggie

The two stuffed birds I've named to remind that I come from strong women stock when Maggie and I are traveling down the road. The condor on the left is Mamie, after my grandmother, and the chickadee on the right is Kathryn after my mother. And yes, it's OK if you want to laugh at my foolishness. I have tough skin. I came by it honestly. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Both of them were strong women who survived tough times and fought the genteel images society expected of them in their days. To remind me of the female strength in my genes, I have reminders on my dashboard to help me through travel emergencies, like a blown tire, or a snowy, slick canyon road.

Laugh if you will, it’s OK. But the reminders are stuffed birds – ones with squeakers that imitate their calls. There’s a condor, purchased at Idaho’s wild Birds of Prey Sanctuary, named Mamie because my grandmother was a large imposing woman. And then there’s a stuffed Chickadee named Kathryn that I found at a Yellowstone National Park gift shop. Chickadees are tiny, but loud, and that is how I best remember my mother.

I started thinking about my grandmother a week or so ago when my son, Lewis, who lives in Texas, sent me a picture of my father’s mother and her mother, both of whom had died before I was born. He’s been researching our family history, and was all excited about the discovery.

I started this blog to tell you about these two women, but then I realized that I had nothing to say because all I know about them is what I can seduce from the photograph my son sent me. While it does stir my imagination, I find the story of the son of a Portuguese sailor who jumped ship in New England and propagated my Texas roots more fascinating.

Tune in tomorrow for that story.

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Memories of My Four-Legged Friends

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on June 9, 2011| 10 Comments »

Travels With Maggie

            “Soon or late, every dog’s master’s memory becomes a graveyard; peopled by wistful little furry ghosts that creep back unbidden, at times, to a semblance of their olden lives.” – Albert Payson  Terhune.          

Maggie on a trail in the Tonto Basin -- Photo by Pat Bean

  When I came across the above quote, it moved me to remember all the dogs that have made my life better.

            There was Curley, my grandmother’s stand-offish white spitz, who once jumped out of a car at a grocery store and wouldn’t let anyone approach him. They came and got me out of my second-grade school class, and he came right up to me.

            Blackie is the second dog I remember, a cocker-mix, who shared my childhood tears of injustice as we hid away in the center of a large hedge in the side yard.

            Tex, a beautiful big gray weimaraner, whom was inherited from my ex-husband’s dying grandfather, came next. Tex could jump the backyard fence from a standing position, and gave my young toddlers horsie rides.  

             Two dogs named Rev, for reveille came next. They were loving family dogs, more attached to my kids than me, although I was the one who fed them.

Albert Payson Terhune with one of his collies

            Then there was a period of time, following a divorce and several moves, when I didn’t have a dog. It was a busy time in my life and I didn’t know how much I missed having a canine companion until Peaches came into my life.

            I got her from a young couple who were moving when she was about five years old. It was instant love and bonding between the two of us. She never wanted out of my sight, and it gave her great joy to watch over and please me.

            She was my hiking companion, instantly by me knee when anyone approached on the trail, but otherwise circling around, seeing the scenery with her nose. And if there was a group of us, she felt it her duty to keep us all together. She would run up to the  leaders and urge them to slow down, and then back she would go to hurry the laggards among us along.

            The last long hike she and I took together was Negro Bill Canyon, a five mile hike to an arch near Moab. It was a very slow hike as I was recovering from foot surgery at the time and Peaches was blind.

            A few weeks later, when she and I were out on a short walk, she gave out. I had to carry her home. I babied her, cooked chicken and rice for her meals, and watched over her for another few months before it came time for me to bid her good-bye.

            Maggie, my current black cocker spaniel traveling companion, came next. I rescued her from a shelter when she was a little over a year old.

 She’s as different from Peaches as a bluebird is from a raven. She’s a whimpy hiker, and she thinks it’s my duty to protect her.

Maggie in her favorite spot in our RV -- Photo by Pat Bean, July 2006

She’s my boss, not the other way around. And everyone knows it

            And now she’s 13, gray around the muzzle and slowed by age. Time has become our enemy. Her life expectancy is shorter than mine. And as I acknowledge this, the tears flow on this page.

            Albert Payson Terhune, whose words inspired this blog, was my favorite author as a child. I read all his books, which are mostly about dogs. He was especially partial to Collies. His first, and probably best known book, is “Lad: A Dog,” published in 1919 and still in print today. .  

Who would have thought that the words of this favorite author from my past would return and now haunt me.

            Thankful the good memories of my pets, while not obliterating the pain of loss, outweigh it.

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