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Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Forget the GPS; I’m Going My Way

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 12, 2011| 2 Comments »

 “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” — Lao Tzu

 

If I had turned right, as planned, I would have missed Chama, New Mexico, and a quick visit to this quaint art gallery. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

Travels With Maggie

 I drove my son-in-law to work in my daughter’s new SUV, which came equipped with a fancy GPS system. It was a 45-minute commute across Dallas in rush hour. To make sure I wouldn’t get lost on the return trip, my daughter programmed her GPS for me.

All well and good – until I foolishly fiddled with it halfway back home. The map screen went blank and I had no idea how to reset it – and definitely no idea where I was. Needless to say the trip home took a lot longer than 45 minutes.

That was my first and only experience with a GPS. Instead, I continue to use my Microsoft Streets and Trip program – but I do it my way.

Maggie: Have you got us lost again?

While the computer mapping program likes major highways, I prefer backroads. So I manipulate the route planner to take smaller highways instead of interstates, or to take me through Santa Fe instead of Denver when I’m driving between Texas and Utah.

I carefully plot out each leg of a trip before beginning a journey, going so far as to distinguish between left and right turns on a cheat sheet for the dashboard. One would think I would never get lost.

But I do. And I’m thankful for it.

Of course, if I am going to get lost, I’d rather it be on a scenic backroad in New Mexico instead of rush hour on a Dallas freeway.

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Uluru, The Great Wall and Yosemite are Tweeting Me

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 8, 2011| 5 Comments »

 “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on you own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” Dr. Seuss

Ayers/Uluru Rock in Australia Calls to Me -- Five photos stitched together by Stuart Edwards

 

 Travels With Maggie

 I was on the road yesterday, traveling from my oldest son’s home in Harker Heights to my oldest daughter’s home in Rowlett, located just outside Dallas. It was a 170-mile, three-hour drive up Texas’ Highway 35 through Temple, Waco and Waxahatchie, the three cities big enough to be marked in bold on my map.

 I was accompanied by bumper-riding cars and blow-my-small-RV-off-the-road-semis. OK, I exaggerate. Most of the cars allowed a respectable distance between each other and the semis that whizzed past me only created a small crosswind that required me to keep both hands on the wheel. It could have been a monotonous drive.

 Instead I kept myself entertained contemplating the suggestive post to those of us who have taken the pledge to blog daily during 2011. The WordPress moderator asked: What places would you like to visit and why?

First on my list would be Australia, and more specifically, Ayers/Uluru Rock. Located smack dab in the middle of this country that has long fascinated me, I’m not sure exactly why I want to stand beside this huge sandstone monolith that is sacred to the Aborigines. The best I can come up with is that it calls to me. And one of these days soon I intend to answer.

Great Wall of China -- Photo by Jakub Halun

Great Wall of China -- Photo by Jacob Halun

 Second on my list of places I want to visit would be China, where I want to walk on the Great Wall. A designated World Heritage Site, as is Uluru, the wall also calls to me. It’s the man-made equivalent of Australia’s rock island. I’ve long been fascinated with the Mongolian legacy of domination that began with Genghis Khan. The wall failed to keep the nomad hordes out of China and represents, to me, the multitude of guarded borders of today’s world that are proving to be just as ineffective.

 One of these days we’re going to have to accept that we all live on the same planet and if we ever are going to have peace, we’re going to have to learn how to play nicely in the sandbox.

Mirror Lake at Yosemite National Park -- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

 The third place that sits at the top of my list of must-see places is Yosemite National Park. It’s the only western park of significance that I haven’t visited. It’s magnificent scenery calls to me, and this call I plan to answer this fall. I can’t wait to blog about it as one of my daily posts.

 So what places call to you? I would really like to know.

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Imagination Turns Moon Into Cheshire Cat Grin

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2011| 4 Comments »

“Slowly, the grin disappeared, until nothing was left but the cat. This is nearly as scary as the other way around.” — From Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” 

Disney's version of the Cheshire Cat

Travels With Maggie

Early last night I was riding in the car with my granddaughter, Jennifer, and her best friend, Ellen. I had spent the afternoon with the two of them at their home in Temple, Texas, and they were driving me back to my RV in Harker Heights.

 As I looked up at the night sky, I saw the glowing grin of a Cheshire cat. Jennifer and Ellen saw it too. And if you were looking up at the sky last night you probably also saw it. But only if your imagination allowed a glowing sliver of crescent moon to morph into the smile of Lewis Caroll’s fictional cat. Its smile followed us during the entire 30-minute journey.

How John Tenniel envisioned the Cheshire Cat

 Later, as I’m apt to do when I’ve seen something interesting in my travels, I did a bit of research to learn more. My mind, however, was not on phases of the moon but on the cat.

The grin I remembered was a Disney creation. I thought it captured, in a Pollyannish way, the mischievousness of Carroll’s disappearing cat. I saw that the original cat, as envisioned by John Tenniel in the 1860 “Alice in Wonderland” publication, had a more wicked appearance.

Good old Wikipedia said one of Carrol’s inspirations for the cat might have been a smiling gargoyle pillar in St. Nicolas Church in Cranleigh. Looking at a photo of the gargoyle, I saw the resemblance.

St. Nicolas Church gargoyle that might have been Lewis Carroll's inspiration for the Cheshire cat

My research then took me to Cranleigh, about which I knew nothing. I discovered it was a large village in England and that St. Nicolas Church with the gargoyle head is still there, as is a crane-adorned fountain built in 1874.

 Imagination and arm-chair travel: What a great way to spend an evening, When I finally turned out the lights and curled up next to my dog, Maggie, I took one last look out the vent above my bed to see that the moon was still wearing its Cheshire cat grin.

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Fascination Overrides Fear in Longhorn Caverns

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

  “I don’t know anyone who actually likes the dark .. I don’t care how much they say it doesn’t bother them. That’s why we used to huddle in caves and light fires when the sun went down.” — Paul Kane

The entrance to Longhorn Caverns and a journey down dimly lit tunnels. -- Photo by Larry Moore

Travels With Maggie

Just 70 miles away from Harker Heights, where my RV has been parked at my son’s house for almost a month, is Longhorn Caverns State Park. It’s perfect for a getaway day trip. I visited it during an earlier visit with my son, and was glad to have the company.

While I’m quite comfortable doing most things alone, I’m never comfortable in a cave. I have claustrophobia. I can’t even stand to be in a bird blind for more than a few moments before I make a dash for a sky ceiling. I need windows to the outdoor world, preferably with sunlight shinning through them.

And yet caves intrigue me. I seldom pass up an opportunity to go deep into the bowels of the earth where the air smells musky and feels primal. I attribute my ability to overcome my claustrophobia to my stubborn unwillingness to give into fear, a trait that serves me well in my solo travels.

But I’ve also discovered that as long as I keep moving through the dimly lit tunnels with my eyes seeking out the alien underworld formations created by water and time, I can put my claustrophobia temporarily on hold.

Comanches, Confederates and Texas legendary outlaw Sam Bass are said to have used Longhorn Caverns as their hideouts. I guess they weren’t afraid of the dark. As for me, I realized early on that I had to be law-abiding because I would go crazy if someone locked me up.

When my son and I exited the cavern, I drank in the hot Texas air with a feeling of relief.

“Come on,” I told my son. “Let’s go hike the nature trail.” And we did.

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Winter Bares Ink Lake State Park’s Soul

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2011| 1 Comment »

“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man (or woman) contemplates it, bearing with him (her) the image of a cathedral.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Devil's Waterhole at Inks Lake State Park. -- Photo by Benjamin Bruce

 

Travels With Maggie

When I sit for awhile, I check out nearby scenic landscapes and interesting places to visit. One of these within easy driving distance of Harker Heights, Texas, where my RV is now resting up, is Inks Lake State Park. It’s just 69 miles away, perfect for a day’s get-away when wanderlust gets the best of Maggie and me.

It’s a special place to me because I camped there with my children in the 1960s. The park was very undeveloped at that time, as were we as campers. Instead of the high-tech tents and camping equipment that eventually found their way among my possessions, we used blankets as sleeping bags and tin foil as cooking equipment.

The park today is quite amenable to campers, with electrical hookups for RV-ers like me and a few cabins for those who are not into tents and sleeping on the ground. It also has nearly eight miles of developed trails which I love to explore.

In spring, this Texas recreation spot park is filled with wildflowers, including Texas’ famous bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, and twittering birds. In winter, I found it a peaceful place where the landscape’s pink, granite rock formations bared their soul.

It’s reasonable to say that both the park and I have come a long way in the passing years.

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Birds and Travel Go Together

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

 

A northern mockingbird was my first bird of the new year. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.” — Henry Van Dyke

Travels With Maggie

I’m a passionate birdwatcher, who keeps a list of birds I’ve seen. My life list now totals 696 bird species. It’s a respectable number for this late-blooming birder, but far from spectacular.

If you want to know more about the birding numbers game you should read “The Big Year” by Mark Obmascik. It’s a great read even if you aren’t a birder. It’s about three guys who spend a year chasing birds all across North America. At the whisper of a rare bird alert, they would fly thousands of miles on a minute’s notice.

Although I did once drive 400 miles to see one particular bird, these days I usually just bird where my travels take me. I check out bird festivals going on while I’m in the vicinity, and hook up with local Audubon chapters for birding field trips. This past year these efforts, including one day when I hired a guide to help me find the golden-cheeked warbler that I had been trying to find for three years, earned me 12 new life birds. And yes, the warbler was one of them.

I spotted this yellow-crowned night heron at the Sea Center in Lake Jackson, Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

This year’s birding efforts, meanwhile, have begun slower than normal. I’ve been parked in my son’s driveway here in Harker Heights all this week and a cold front moving through the area seems to have kept the birds tucked away.

At least they’re not falling out of the sky dead, as red-winged blackbirds and starlings have been doing in Arkansas the past couple of days. That’s a scary thing because birds, like the canaries coal miners carried into the tunnels with them as their bad air detectors, are indicators of an environment’s health.

My first bird of this new year was a northern mockingbird, appropriate since it’s Texas’ state bird. It was a brilliant gray and white fellow with yellow eyes that landed on a fence about eight feet from my RV window. As I watched, it flashed its long tail in the air – then pooped.

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A Cold Walk Beneath a Warm Sky

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere, the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling, vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming on sea and continents and islands, each it its turn, as the round earth rolls.” — John Muir

Harker Heights, Texas, sunrise, Jan. 3, 2011. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Maggie, who normally likes to sleep in, woke up early this morning and spoke loudly to me with demanding eyes. I am ready for my walk now.

Yes your majesty, I told her as I put on my shoes and bundled up. My MSN home page said it was 35 degrees outside here in Harker Heights, Texas, where my RV is parked in my son’s driveway for the coming week.

A chill went through my body when, with Maggie on her leash, I stepped down from my RV. It wasn’t from the cold, however. It was from the thrill of seeing this morning’s glowing sunrise. I quickly grabbed my camera and captured its warm brilliance  so I could share. 

John Muir has it so right. We don’t have to travel to see the wonders of Mother Nature.

When we got back from our walk, I gave Maggie extra treats for dragging me out into the cold so early. She gobbled them down, then retreated to her favorite spot on our shared bed. She is now serenading me with her funny, soft snores. Life is good.

Travels With Maggie

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The Magic of Planning a Journey

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Reading for my upcoming adventures on the Blue Ridge Parkway -- Photo by Pat Bean

  “Let your mind start a journey thru a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be … Close your eyes and let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.” Erich Fromm

Travels With Maggie

There’s something magical about getting on the road with no destination in mind and stopping whenever and wherever fancy strikes . That was the ideal for my travels before I actually got on the road. It worked – sometimes.

Today I spend endless hours plotting my journeys, like the one I plan to take this spring driving the Blue Ridge Parkway between Smokey Mountain and Shenandoah national parks.

For my upcoming Blue Ridge Parkway adventure, I purchased mile-marker guides of the parkway (Rockfish Gap to Grandfather Mountain and Grandfather Mountain to Great Smokey Mountain NP) by William Lord. I learned from Lord that plans for the Parkway begin in the early 1930s and that upon hearing such news Aunt Caroline Brinegar, a-sittin’ and a-rockin’ in her cabin high in the Blue Ridge by Air Bellows Gap slapped her knee and laughed at the notion. “Why Lord have mercy, no body a-living’ could put one of them through here.”

This is an actual page from my Blue Ridge Parkway plans. I note the campground where I expect to stay for the night with a telephone number so I can either make a reservation or cancel one. Occasionally I even insert pictures. -- Photo by Pat Bean

As part of my planning routine, I plot the proposed route out on my Microsoft Streets & Trips computer software, which I use as my road atlas. I then go online to research the sights along the way, Finally, I use my Trailer Life Directory to find convenient campgrounds for each night’s stop.

This kind of detailed planning takes days and days, but I enjoy doing it. Besides, I’ve discovered that such planning allows me the security of knowing I will have a safe place to stay the night, assures me I won’t overlook interesting places, and provides directions to trails I want to hike.

There are still unexpected rainbows, the shimmer of sun shining down on a field of poppies, and the people whose paths I cross to keep the journey interesting.

There are also days when I trash the plan on a whim so Maggie and I can stay in place for awhile, or take an unplanned side trip. Just because I have a plan doesn’t mean it has to be followed. That’s the magic I allow to remain in my plans.

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The Badlands: Steeples and Ripples of Striated Color

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on January 1, 2011| 6 Comments »

A landscape with more appeal to nature lovers than farmers. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Note: Since I have taken the pledge to blog daily, this is the first of 365 blogs for 2011. Maggie, my 13-year-old cocker spaniel co-pilot, and I are now in our seventh year of traveling across America. We live and roll down the road in Gypsy Lee, a 22-foot RV that now has 115,000 miles on her. I hope you join us for the ride.

Travels With Maggie

The Badlands “are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.” Theodore Roosevelt

 My RV rocked and rolled for three days in up to 45 mph wind gusts that blew sand down through my air conditioner and into my tiny RV home as I sat out a South Dakota September wind storm just outside of Badlands National Park.

Once an ocean, then a jungle, now bad lands. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 Finally the wind broke – thankfully before my sanity – and I took the opportunity to go exploring. Why, I soon wanted to know was this land called bad. I found its steeples and ripples of striated red and white rocks that reeked with fossil evidence of an ocean, and even a jungle, in its past fascinating. Seeing it for the first time as a I drove through the park was awesome.

 Probably because it was a week day and also because the wind was still haughtily showing off its power in occasional bursts, it seemed as if Maggie and I, and the prairie dogs and rattlesnakes, had the park all to ourselves. Later that night, with the wind still jiggling my RV, I researched the origin of the land’s naming. It was, I discovered, a Sioux thing.

W

Watch where you step. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 The Indians had called it bad land because its formidable terrain was difficult to travel through and because the land was no good for growing things, As one who had traveled the awesome ground on pavement and who didn’t have to grow her own food, I realized my way of loving a land merely for the pleasure it gave me might be considered selfish.

 The thought brought me back to my days as an environmental reporter and my efforts to fairly cover the polarized issues of conservation and economic survival. I had realized back then that neither side was wrong and that compromise was usually the only answer.

 Thankfully, the act turning the Badlands into a national park was a win-win situation for both sides. The land is protected for nature lovers like me while our tourist dollars help keep food on the table for South Dakotans.

The wind was still blowing the next morning when Maggie and I continued our journey down the road. I wondered why someone hadn’t called this place Windyland

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The Magic of Free Ice Water

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

Follow the signs to Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota

“One travels so as to learn once more how to marvel at life in the way a child does.” Ella Maillart

 Travels With Maggie: South Dakota Adventures

Who could have guessed that a free glass of ice water offered to travelers on their way to Mount Rushmore back in the 1930s would turn into a sprawling mall that today attracts tourists from all over the world?

The Jackalope in the Backyard -- Photo by Pat Bean

The Jackalope in the backyard -- Photo by Pat Bean

You can still get that free glass of water, also a free bumper sticker and a cup of coffee for five cents. Named after the small town where pharmacist Ted Hustead opened a small drug store in 1931, Wall Drug suffered hard times in the beginning. It was, after all, the time of The Great Depression. Then wife, Dorothy, suggested they offer free ice water to travelers on their way to the newly opened Mount Rushmore Monument just 60 miles away.

Soon Highway 90 was littered with billboard signs touting the free water, and tourists found the offer too good to pass by. Today, they have many more reasons to stop. The huge Wall Drug complex, which has been written about in Time magazine, talked about on Good Morning America and touted on the Paris (France not Texas) Metro, includes a western art museum, cowboy themed shops, a quiet chapel, huge dinosaur and jackalope sculptures, and of course a small pharmacy.

A third of the town’s population today is employed by Wall Drug and up to 20,000 visitors drop by on a summer day.

This T-Rex roars every 12 minutes -- Photo by Pat Bean

What Ted, and then his son, Bill, have done to create this down-the-rabbit-hole Wonderland would turn Barnum and Bailey green with envy. What they did kept me smiling until my face muscles ached. And once again, as was becoming so common in my travels, Dr. Seuss’ words: “Oh the places you’ll go and the things you’ll see,” rang joyfully through my head.

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