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Archive for the ‘Travels With Maggie’ Category

Favorite Places: Pine Island, Florida

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Travel, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , , , on February 6, 2012| 8 Comments »

“All things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man … the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.” Chief Seattle

Travels With Maggie

If you want to see wood storks, Pine Island is the place to go. One of these, perhaps the same one, sat in the top of the tree that help shade my RV from the Florida sun. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I spent a month on Pine Island, exploring such nearby places as the west side of the Everglades, Audubon’s Corkscrew Sanctuary and Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, which were all wonderful places.

But if I wanted to see birds, which of course I always want to do, all I had to do was look out my RV window.

I was especially fond of the word storks that haunted the Dumpster area of the large RV park where I stayed. The also visited me and Maggie at our RV site.

Bean’s Pat: Ruthless Scribblings: 12 (and a half) rules for writing http://tinyurl.com/7bmd3d7 Some good things for writers to remember.

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Thankfulness: A Habit I Try to Exercise Daily

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , on February 1, 2012| 12 Comments »

 “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.” William Faulkner

Travels With Maggie

A misty morning in Zion National Park also let my imagination roam free. -- Photo by Pat Bean

When I stepped outside with Maggie this morning, the landscape was heavy with wet, gray fog. It felt like I had stepped back in time to the Land of the Lost. My imagination could even picture a dinosaur emerging from between the two large, moss-laden live oak trees that sit in the park across from where my RV is parked. The fog was that thick.

I was glad it was just my imagination that took me back in time because I am most grateful for the age in which I was born.

I first thought about this when I heard the story of my mother almost dying from diphtheria, a disease that took many children before the 20th century was out of its teens. If not diphtheria, then it was polio, measles or even mumps, all diseases for which there are now vaccines. It was a rare family back then that didn’t lose at least one child.

The thought of that, after I had my own children, was just too horrible to think about.

As the years went by, the miracle of vaccines was joined by the miracle of automatic washing machines to replace the scrub boards and wringer washers which I saw my grandmother and mother use every Monday.

Other time-saving devices freed women even more, well until they joined the work force and found themselves, at least the women of my generation, both bringing home the bacon and continuing as full-time homemakers without help.

Lake's End Park, Morgan, Louisiana: The landscape and cormorants here have a Lost World look about them. Don't you agree? -- Photo by Pat Bean

Thankfully, my granddaughters won’t put up with male partners who don’t change diapers or wash at least a dish or two.

The past 10 years, meanwhile, have brought another modern miracle. The Internet.

While I lived my life mostly without it, I can’t imagine going back to such a time. I love being connected to the world, being able to find an answer to a question within minutes and the new friends it’s brought me.

I try, each day, to find something to be thankful for in my life. Today, I’m grateful it was only my imagination that took me back to a time before labor-saving devices, vaccines and of course Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and plentiful books to enrich my life.

What do you value most that your ancestors didn’t enjoy?

Bean’s Pat: Portrait of Wildflowers: Seasonal Leaf Color http://tinyurl.com/82gq8np Everything you ever wanted to know about wildflowers. This is a great blog for someone like me who wants to know the name of everything in nature.

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Favorite Places: Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

Posted in Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , on January 30, 2012| 4 Comments »

 “Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.” – Terry Tempest Williams

Travels With Maggie

Yellow-headed blackbirds are common sights at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. -- Photo by Pat Beans

I first visited the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge east of the Great Salt Lake in Northern Utah in the 1970s. It was lush with vegetation and full of twittering birds.

Then came the early 1980s, when the lake reached a historical high and its briny waters took out roads, causeways and buried the refuge. It killed all the sanctuary’s green-growing plants and took out the visitor center as a warning of Mother Nature’s fickleness. .

It took a long time for the refuge to recharge itself, a period in which Terry Tempest Williams wrote “Refuge,” a book published in 1991 that was written when Williams’ mother was dying. The book weaves the landscape of the refuge and nature into a tangled web with the author’s struggle to come to grips with her own life. A very good read, in case you’re interested.

Another common refuge inhabitant is the snowy egret. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Since both the refuge and I existed at that time in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains, the refuge drew me to it – often. I enjoyed its quiet sanctuary from the chaotic and stressful world of journalism, and also wrote about the refuge’s recovery for my newspaper readers.

I still vividly remember the first green-growing thing that returned. It was pickleweed, a salt loving plant that would help heal the soil for other plants. Those tiny nubs of green poking up seemed like a miracle.

Today, the refuge,is once again lush and a thriving habitat for birds and other wildlife. It’s there for anyone willing to endure a drive down a 10-mile, bumpy unpaved road from Interstate 15.

Maggie and I’ve driven the slow-going, rough miles several times in Gypsy Lee, who shakes, rattles and rolls over the bumpier spots. She’s used to such detours, however, and so far has not complained.

For those less passionate nature lovers, there is now a new Visitor’s Center just a few hundred yards off the freeway. It was built there instead of on the refuge proper just in case Mother Nature decided to get a wild hair again.

It’s really a nice center, with a created wetlands through which a boardwalk winds to give visitors a chance to see Mother Nature at her best. If you’re ever in Northern Utah, you might like to check it out. Perhaps you’d even like to take the 10-mile bumpy drive.

Bean’s Pat: Travel Photography: Most Unexpected Rainbow http://tinyurl.com/867pogm Have you ever seen a full rainbow? I haven’t. But this photographer did.

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Travels With Maggie: The Beginning

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , on January 27, 2012| 13 Comments »

 “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”–Neale Donald Walsch

Here’s How It All Began

Balcony House: Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Not only have my travels taken me all across the country, they have also taken me back in time. -- Photo by Pat Bean

It was a sunny day in 2004, just three weeks before I would retire from a 37-year career as a journalist, when I drove a brand new RV off an Ogden, Utah, sales lot. It felt like the butterflies in my stomach had developed thorns on their fragile wings.

Everything that had been a part of my past life was about to change. I had just blocked off all chances of remaining rooted in my small, but cozy home that sat in the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains I loved. There simply was not enough money in my future to both fulfill my lifelong dream of living and traveling on the road while maintaining fixed roots within a circle of friends that had taken over 20 years to acquire.

This day I had not only chosen the unknown road that lay ahead, but had wrapped my choice in cement. I had even traded in my Honda Odyssey as part payment for the undersized, 22-foot RV that was now my only form of transportation, and soon would be my only home.
By the time all the paper work giving me title to the 2004 Volkswagen Vista/Winnebago had been scrutinized, signed and finalized, it was early evening. I was too unsettled to take my purchase for a check-out spin. So, feeling tall and strange sitting behind the wheel with my new living, dining, sleeping, cooking and bathroom facilities behind me, I drove home. Emotional turmoil, good or bad, always sapped my energy.

When Maggie and I began our travels, her muzzle was still solid black. -- Photo by Pat Bean

On carefully pulling into my driveway, testing the wideness needed to turn my new RV, I heard frenzied barking from inside the house. It was how my dog, Maggie, reacted to the sound of strange vehicles invading her territory. She never barked when I returned home, nor did she at any of my frequent visitors. But she did not recognize this new vehicle.
When I opened the door, Maggie gave me a quizzical look of surprise. Then, realizing in a split second that something new was parked in the driveway, she dashed between my legs and ran out to explore.

I opened the RV’s side door and she eagerly hopped in. She slowly sniffed every surface she could get at, then finally hopped up onto the couch and gave me a look that I easily interpreted as: So where are we going? To explore America, the beautiful, I reply. I always answer my dog’s inquiring looks. .

And that’s how my travels with Maggie began. It’s been a journey that’s covered over 125,000 miles and heading into its eighth year.  I have nary a regret.

*This post was published today as part of Story Circle Network’s One Woman’s Day blog at: http://tinyurl.com/5tevft5  

Bean’s Pat: Birding on the Cheap: Rio Grande Valley http://tinyurl.com/riograndebirds Great birding blog with photos about a  place to escape for the winter.

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Technology Miracles and Boo-Boos

Posted in Birds, Books, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , , on January 26, 2012| 6 Comments »

“If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

I found Estero Llano State Park in Welasco, Texas, the old-fashioned-way, with a map. I'm not sure how the anhinga found its way here. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

I was in Dallas, returning from taking my daughter to work so I could use her car for the day. All I had to do to get back home was follow the GPS map installed on the dashboard of her Toyota Highlander.

But I decided I wanted to get a different view of the map. Silly me. As I’m sure you have already guessed, I pressed the wrong button and lost everything on the screen — and couldn’t get it back.

Because I had depended solely on the GPS to get me from one place to the next, I was confusingly lost with morning rush-hour traffic zooming all around me.

I was fortunate that I eventually came to a landmark I recognized and, although it took an extra 40 minutes, I did eventually get back to my daughter’s house.

I then used a map, and my own handcrafted cheat-sheet of right and left turns, to complete the day’s errands and to find my place back to pick up my daughter from work later that day.

The truth is that I’ve had to be pulled, while screaming, into most technological changes. I was one of the last to finally get a cell phone, and it was only this past Christmas, and only because it was a gift from my son, that I got a “smart” phone.

On the other hand, I was one of the first to get a home computer. After using one at work to write my newspaper stories, I found using a typewriter for my personal writings impossible.

Without GPS, Monarch butterflies, like this one I found at Quintana Neotropic Bird Sanctuary on Texas' Gulf Coast, migrate annually between Mexico and Canada, although it may take three generations to complete the journey. -- Photo by Pat Bean

My first computer didn’t even have a hard drive. Everything ran from floppy disks. And the word-processing program on it came with a black screen and green type, or you could make the type orange.

Today, I can’t imagine life without my computer and the Internet. Such a thought sounds barbaric.

Ditto life without my Kindle, which was also a gift and which I’ve now had for a year. I thought I would miss the feel of a real book in my hand, but I haven’t. I think the fact I can be reading almost any book I want almost instantly is a miracle – well until I discover how much I’ve spent at Amazon each month.

I still haven’t got a GPS, however. My canine traveling companion, Maggie, and I still use maps, albeit it computer ones, to find our way across the country.  It seems a GPS might be as difficult for me to use as an electric can opener, which is why I still use a manual one. 

But I’ve got a Twitter account, maggieandpat. And when I announced it, my oldest granddaughter laughed and said: “Who would have thought it would take my Nana to make me get a Twitter account?” 

Her comment made this wandering/wondering old broad feel young – well at least until a pain in one of my joints announced a change in the weather.

Bean’s Pat: Vimeo: My Friend Maia by Julie Warr http://vimeo.com/31733784 A video to inspire all us old broads, and perhaps those still young among us, too.

 

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Custer State Park: One of the Beautiful Unlisted Places

Posted in Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travel, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , , on January 20, 2012| 5 Comments »

 “A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.” – Hal Borland

Travels With Maggie

I came across an awesome blog this week. The Cool Hunter, http://tinyurl.com/7uop6kk .

Sylvan Lake in Custer State Park located in South Dakota's Black Hills. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 It’s creator listed, with photos, some of the places he thought most beautiful in the world. I was delightedly satisfied that I had seen four of the five places that were on the North American continent, and thrilled that the fifth, The Hamilton Nature Preserve, is located in Texas’ Hill Country near Austin. .

I’ve added it to my travel agenda for April, when I will be attending Story Circle Network’s “Stories from the Heart” http://tinyurl.com/yzc585o memoir writing conference for women in the city.

A nursing buffalo calf halted traffic when I visited Custer State Park. I thought it was a "beautiful" sight. -- Photo by Pat Bean, taken through the front windshield of Gypsy Lee as rain drops began to fall.

The other four awesome places in North America favored by the Cool Hunter are Lake Moraine’s Valley of the Ten Peaks in Alberta, Canada; Multnomah Falls east of Portland in Oregon; The Wave in Arizona’s Vermillion Cliffs; and the Lower Lewis River Falls in Washington.

I agree 110 percent with Cool Hunter’s choices, but I could also name a hundred plus other places in America that are just as beautiful. If I could, I would make “America, the Beautiful,” this country’s national anthem. The lyrics move me every time I hear them.

While I would love to visit some of the many places around the globe whose photos I drooled over when I read Cool Hunter’s blog, I do know that my own backyard is every bit as beautiful – and I’m thankful that I can still hear Dr. Seuss’ words – “Oh the places you’ll go and the things you’ll see” — singing in my mind every time Maggie and I take off down the road in our RV, Gypsy Lee.

Like Custer State Park in South Dakota’s Black Hills, located not far from Mount Rushmore.

 

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Nature and Pancho Villa History Out My RV Window

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , on January 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. Take one step. Do one thing. Move, even if you don’t feel like it.” Katherine Misegades

Gypsy Lee parked among the cacti at Pancho Villa State Park in New Mexico

Travels With Maggie

I’m going into my eighth year of full-time living and traveling in Gypsy Lee, my 22-foot RV that I bought in 2004 when I retired and sold my home.

My rootless life has allowed me to get to better know my five grown children, who scattered far and wide when they left home, including Japan, Korea, Canada, Egypt and Hawaii. There’s no question in my mind but that they inherited my want-to-see-the-world gene.

Jobs and financial realities meant we saw little of each other before I became rootless and could visit them, although not too long at any one place so as not to wear out my welcome. I mostly spend winters in Texas, where three of my children and nine grandchildren live. Summer, however, finds me heading north to both escape the heat and for a little bit of solitude, which I’ve discovered I need as much as I need people.

Curved-bill thrashers were plentiful at the park. -- Wikipedia photo

One of the other things I’ve come to appreciate most about my rootless lifestyle the past seven years has been the changing, always scenic and educational view out my RV window. I’ve found something awesome everywhere I’ve traveled, even in a crowded, cement-landscaped RV park in El Paso that was located right next to Highway 10’s whizzing traffic roar.

This campground was the first place I stayed in which I thought there was no hope to feel nature’s presence. But then I looked out my window and saw a family of Gambel’s quail parading past. It felt like Mother Nature had turned into Santa Claus and could find me anywhere I went.

My traveling companion, Maggie, and I spent the next night 85 miles west of El Paso at New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park, where Mother Nature’s presence was expected. She did not disappoint either Maggie, who had lizards to chase, or me, who had birds to watch.

Quail, thrashers, red-winged blackbirds and doves twitted about the park’s historical ruins and large blooming cacti.

And before I left the next morning, I had also made a new friend, another wandering/wondering old broad like myself; had learned that the park was located where Gen. Black Jack Pershing had launched 10,000 soldiers to chase insurgent Pancho Villa back to Mexico; and had glimpsed a bobcat lurking under a picnic table.

I wonder what the sights will be out the RV window as Maggie and I continue into our eighth year of rootlessness? Wouldn’t you?

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Posted in Favorite Places, Nature, Travels With Maggie, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , on January 14, 2012| 4 Comments »

 Weekly Photo Challenge: Peaceful

Mother Nature's art stirs my soul and makes my mind peaceful. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God’s dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnakes and the screech-owl amuse your reverie, may the great sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.” – Edward Abbey

Southern Utah Canyonlands

I’ve long been an Edward Abby fan and I was delighted when I came across the above quote in a newsy annual Christmas letter from an old boyfriend. He and I, while we split from a romantic relationship, promised to be forever friends. I really like that. It’s the “peaceful” way to live.

While I find most of Abby’s writing anything but peaceful, I do find a sense of calmness in the places he writes about with such passion, especially the places in Southern Utah where I’ve spent a lot of time.

So that’s where I’m taking you today.

Who could not agree with Abbey, that lands like these need no human meddling. -- Photo by Pat Bean

P.S. My canine traveling companion, Maggie, and I had a fantastic day yesterday driving and hiking in Texas’ Hill Country. The drive continues today. I’ll tell you all about it soon.

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On the Road Again — The End

Posted in Birds, Travel, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , , on January 13, 2012| 4 Comments »

The "Road" is calling. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Not all those who wander are lost.” JRR Tolkien

Travels With Maggie

“Just can’t wait to get on the road again.”

If you’re a Willie Nelson fan and avid traveler like me, the above words should send a tune rolling through your head. The melody always begins rippling though mine when I start packing up my RV – which I’m doing this morning.

There’s few things that make me giddier than knowing I have “miles to go before I sleep.”

While I’ll just be traveling a short distance across the big state of Texas – from one child’s driveway to another child’s driveway – I ‘m going to take two days to do it.

A trio of web-footed friends -- Photo by Pat Bean

Better yet, I have a sight-seeing agenda of places I haven’t seen before planned for the drive. I could care less that I will be taking a 150-mile detour on what would have been just a 240-mile trip.

Maggie, familiar with the packing up routine, is already claiming her co-pilot’s seat.

So since she and I “just can’t wait to get on the road again,” today’s blog is going to end now. like the song I sang as a kid to the tune of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Remember?

“Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mother. Be kind to your friends in the swamp, where the weather is always damp. You may think that this is the end. Well it is.”

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Merritt Island: Where It’s a Warm Day

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Travels With Maggie, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2012| 3 Comments »

 “It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.” – Teilhard de Chardin

 

A gathering of storks, egret and ibis at a pond on Merritt island in Florida. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

It’s cold and windy today here in Harker Heights, Texas, where Maggie and I are parked in my oldest son’s driveway.

And it’s snowing in Chicago, my youngest son said in an e-mail he sent me today.

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, to be bird watching on Merritt Island in Florida. When I checked out the weather there, I discovered it was a balmy 78 degrees.

"I'll just lay here and sleep until it warms up if you don't mind." -- Photo by Pat Bean

My thoughts went back a couple of years to the winter day I actually did spend watching birds on the island, which is located near Cape Canaveral.

I can dream can’t I?

But there’s no getting around bundling up and taking my daily walks with Maggie. Even if she doesn’t care for the idea any more than I do.

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