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Drive Through Downtown Dallas Sharpens the Mind

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 30, 2011| 5 Comments »

Dallas: Crossing through the middle of it in rush-hour traffic stimulates the brain cells. -- Dallas skyline photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Ashes to ashes. Dust to rust. Oil those brains. Before they rust. — From A. Nonny Mouse Writes Again by J. Prelutsky

Working crossword puzzles and riding roller coasters are both supposed to be good for the brain. The first one stimulates the thinking muscles and the second one provides a quick shot of adrenalin to jolt the brain awake.

Even though it's essential to keep one's eyes on the road, one still can't help noticing Texas' famous bluebonnets growing wild alongside Dallas' many freeways. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I came up with another way to enrich those little gray cells yesterday. I drove my RV from my oldest daughter’s home in Rowlett to Irving to have lunch with my grandson. Irving, by the way, is the real home of the Dallas Cowboys.

The round-trip journey took me through the heart of downtown Dallas, beneath underpasses and overpasses stacked up to five lanes high, and across seven lanes of one-way traffic near where Interstate 30 and Interstate 35E meet up. I entered 35’s bumper-to-bumper traffic in the right lane and exited, just a few miles down the road, from the far left lane.

The trip had to have exercised and jolted my brain enough to erase at least the couple of years I aged on the cross-town journey.

Strangely, however, I don’t mind the occasional road trip like this. Such an experience lets me know I can still cope with the modern world. It also makes me appreciate all that much more the rural, little-traveled scenic byways I carefully select for most of my travels.

What gave my soul another delight this time was that the shoulders of the busy freeways were often alive with patches of bluebonnets.  They were the first I’ve seen this season.

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Park Stroll Turns Into a Self-Rescue Adventure

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Lakes, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 24, 2011| 5 Comments »

 

A bit disheveled, but I finally got myself back up from the creek, and Shanna even got a photo of Maggie and I together, which led to my sliding down the cliff. -- Photo by Shanna Lee

“Remember what Bilbo used to say: It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

Travels With Maggie

Rowlett, one of the many suburbs surrounding Dallas and where my oldest daughter lives, has been my home for the past couple of weeks. What with a grandson’s wedding, other family activities and a fenced backyard for Maggie, I haven’t taken my usually daily walks.

So it was with extreme delight yesterday when my granddaughter, Shanna, Maggie and I were able to escape for a stroll in Rowlett’s Springfield Park, which offers walking paths along a creek and around a lake. For the more adventurous, there’s also a narrow path through the woods that runs alongside a creek. Of course this is the one the three of us took.

A butterfly and wildflowers, evidence of spring bursting out all over. -- Photo by Pat Bean

As we hiked, I took photographs of wildflowers, butterflies, budding trees, great-tailed grackles and the creek. At one point along the hike, a huge gnarl of intertwined tree trunks caught my attention. I decided it would be a great spot for Shanna to take a picture of Maggie and me. Since I’m always the photographer, I don’t have any good photos of my canine traveling companion and me together.

Erosion, however, had cut a part of the path away that I needed to cross to get over to the scenic photo site. Over-estimating my athletic skills, I decided I could maneuver past it.

Bad idea!

One step quickly found me sliding down a steep eight-foot drop. Fortunately I was able to grab hold of a tree snag that counteracted gravity just about six inches before I would have ended up in the creek.

Shanna’s immediate response was to nervously ask: “Are you OK Nana. Are you hurt.” I wasn’t. The only casualty was my turquoise pants whose seat and one leg was a dirty brown. Maggie, whose retractable leash I still had in my hand, gave me a look that clearly said: “That was a stupid thing to do. Don’t expect me to rescue you.”

Since Shanna couldn’t reach me, it was a self rescue using snags to slowly haul myself up, always remembering to make sure I had three limbs firmly placed before I reached for a new hold.

The response from my granddaughter when I reached the top was: “You’re awesome Nana.” Her words made my fall well worth the effort.

Shanna also managed to snap a picture of Maggie and I just before I reached the top of the path again. It wasn’t quite the photograph I had pictured earlier, but I decided it was good enough.

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One Day and 21 Centerpieces to Go

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 17, 2011| 5 Comments »

Just for Today

One day, 21 centerpieces for a renaissance wedding with a butterfly theme. -- Photo (and centerpieces) by Pat Bean

 “Don’t Despair. But if you do, work on in despair”

I don’t know who the author of the above quote is. I saw it on a blackboard many years ago. The words struck a chord that resonated with me way back then – and quite a few times since.  I’m a person who works through bad times.

 While today was far from being a bad time in my life, it was one in which despair of getting something done within a restricted time frame could have grabbed my attitude.  Thankfully, I remembered that old quote that has seen me through many a difficult day.

 Just two days before my grandson’s wedding, I took on the task of creating 21 table centerpieces. Yesterday I scrounged the craft departments at Big Lots and Wal-Mart and then went and had dinner and margaritas with my grand-daughter.

 I then went to bed and designed centerpieces while I slept.

With the need to get those centerpieces all done today hanging over my head, I sacrificed my morning writing time when I woke up and went to work.

The good new is that I finished all 21 centerpieces. The bad news is what I’ve written here is all the blog you’re going to get today.

 Have a good evening everybody.

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Favorite Hikes: Surfside/Quintana Jetties

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on March 16, 2011| 5 Comments »

The Quintana Jetty lets me hike out into the ocean. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” Mother Teresa

Travels With Maggie

I made many trips to Surfside Beach when I lived in Lake Jackson, Texas, many years ago. Getting there meant crossing a tall bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, which stretches for 3,000 miles along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Fewer trips were made to Bryan Beach, which is separated from Surfside by a mere 500-foot wide channel that provides access to the waterway and also to the port in Freeport, which calls itself the Shrimp Capital of the World.

In the past, getting to Bryan Beach meant crossing a drawbridge that was raised to allow boats to pass. Water vessels had the right of way, so it often took awhile to make it across.

Access today is provided by a tall duplicate of the Surfside Bridge. And since Bryan Beach is also now also home to the Quintanta Neotropical Bird Sanctuary, it’s the island beach of choice for me these days.

A ruddy turnstone sits on the rocks that line the Quintana Jetty. -- Photo by Pat Bean

A trip to either beach, however, calls for a walk on the jetties that line the shipping channel. Both stretch over half a mile out into the ocean. And while they might not be what one thinks of as a typical hiking trail, that’s how I consider them.

A walk on these narrow cement paths can mean a drenching, especially on a day when the waves are behaving rambunctiously. But the views are worth it.

I love to watch as the sea continually rolls into the shore, creating azure and white patterns of light and shadow that can be hypnotizing. If I’m lucky, I’ll see a string of brown pelicans winging by just above the water’s surface, or a cormorant dive beneath the surface and come up with a fish in its mouth. And I’ve never failed to spot sandpipers hanging out on the rocks beside the jetties.

Passing shrimp boats and dolphins are not rare either.

If there’s time, I add a bit more distance to my hike by strolling down the beach for a while in company of gulls, skimmers, plovers and sandpipers. Since I have a son who lives in the area, it’s a hike I get to take several times a year.

Life is good.

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Traveling With Just an Overnighter

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2011| 4 Comments »

Life's "no problem" when you're cruising Jamaica's Black River. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

“Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” Groucho Marx

Travels With Maggie

Lonely Planet’s lead article in this month’s newsletter (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/us) features one day itineraries for five cities: Barcelona, Toronto, London, Paris and Istanbul.

I wanted to both scream and cry at the audacity of such a notion. The thought of spending so few hours in these fabulous cities, which I’ve not yet visited, made me quite sad.

Then I thought about places I’ve visited when circumstances only allowed me a single day, like Jamaica, Guayaquil, Fairbanks, Glacier National Park and Nairobi. While each of these places deserved more than a mere day to explore, there would be some big holes left in my experiences if I had missed them.

George, the alligator that responded to the Black River boatman's summons. Honest! -- Photo by Pat Bean

In Jamaica, which I visited while on a Caribbean Christmas cruise, I spent several hours in a giggley-jiggly bus with a guide explaining the sights and Jamaica’s “no problem mon” attitude, then took a float trip down the Black River where egrets ganged up in mangrove trees and an alligator named George came at the boatman’s call. Honest.

Guayaquil was the Ecuadorian starting point for my trip to the Galapagos Islands. Here I was served chicken and watermelon for breakfast at the quaint Andaluz Hotel before taking a walk on the city’s beautiful Waterfront Parkway. That night I watched the stars come out from a rooftop restaurant that overlooked the Guayas River.

In Fairbanks, Alaska, I spent a night at a quaint bed-and-breakfast and then the better part of the next day at the fantastic University of Alaska Museum before moving on to Denali National Park .

Glacier National Park in Montana was a detour when I drove the Alaskan Highway. The main event here was simply driving the awesome and scenic 57-mile Going to the Sun Highway. The frosting on the  entrée was a grizzly bear that stopped traffic. Fortunately my halt offered a good view of this magnificent creature.

Nairobi, Kenya, was the starting point for my magnificent two-week African safari. Here I stayed in the same hotel favored by Ernest Hemingway, explored the grounds of the University of Nairobi, which was just next door, and toured the home (now a museum) of Karen Blixen, alias Isek Dineson and author of “Out of Africa.”

I guess if that’s all you have, one day is quite enough. But I sure hope that if I ever get to Lonely Planet’s big five that I have more than 24 hours to linger.

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Who We Were Doesn’t Have To Be Who We Are

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 21, 2011| 3 Comments »

Maya Angelou reading her poetry to the nation during Clinton's 1993 presidential inauguration. -- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

 

“I always love to hear people laugh. I never trust people who don’t laugh … I also like people who love themselves. I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves.” — Maya Angelou

Travels With Maggie

I was asked this week, after I wrote about David Hasselhoff (Feb. 17th blog), who had been my favorite person to interview during my 37 years as a journalist. Without a second’s hesitation, I replied, “Maya Angelou.”

I had the honor of spending an hour with this earthy, acclaimed poet before she gave the 1997 “Familes Alive” address at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Amazingly, I found this very same speech online at http://tinyurl.com/63tg8eo I suggest, if you have time, that you read it.

Angelou had been 69 at the time, She stood six-feet tall and had an ample body that should have made her look grandmotherly. It didn’t. She oozed confidence, and sexuality in a way I had never seen before. I remember thinking back then that if this what age had in store for me, bring it on.

My first introduction to Maya Angelou came in the early 1970s when I read her "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

A huge audience had come to hear Maya speak. I, for one, drank in every word she spoke. Here was a woman who had risen from suffering racial discrimination to reading her poetry before the nation during a presidential inauguration.

Her life is clear evidence for all of us that where we start out in life isn’t where we have to stay.

The newspaper story I wrote from my interview and Angelou’s speech stirred one angry letter, however.

I quoted Anglelou quoting a 1950s’ folk song that had a Black man saying: “The woman I love is fat and chocolate to the bone, and every time she shakes some skinny woman loses her home.” Angelou demonstrated the shaking, and said she loved to make people laugh. And everyone in the audience obliged her.

In response, the letter writer accused me of encouraging discrimination against “skinny women.” I suspected she was a woman who had never laughed at herself. How sad.

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When It Comes to Art, The Eyes Take the Day

Posted in Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 27, 2011| 4 Comments »

   

Poppy by Georgia O'Keeffe

 “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want or not.” Georgia O’Keeffe

Travels With Maggie

 I love art museums. I can wander through them for hours, admiring the miracles created by the likes of O’Keeffe, Monet, Van Gogh and Homer, as well as those in an exhibit of work by second-graders, whose works usually contain a colorful freshness.

Winter never fully comes to the Texas Gulf Coast town of Lake Jackson, where the leaves on a tree in my son's front yard still linger. Its colors reminded me of Georgia O'Keeffe's painting above. -- Photo taken yesterday by Pat Bean

The two most important factors in art are the eyes of the artist and the eyes of the viewer. Anyone who has ever been in an art class, where all the students paint the same subject, know that each of the finished canvases will be different, perhaps even drastically different.

Whether we are creating or viewing, what each of us sees is unique to ourselves.

But one doesn’t have to go to a museum to see art. It’s all around us. Simply pulling my RV into my son’s Lake Jackson, Texas, driveway this week, was almost as good as walking through the doors of the Louvre, which someday I hope to do. But until that day comes, if ever, I’ll happily console myself with beauty closer to home.

I captured some of Mother Nature’s artistic miracles when I went walking with Maggie yesterday. And since this really is one of those times when a picture is worth more than words, I’ll now shut up.

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YIPEE: It’s a Traveling Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2011| 2 Comments »

I can drool over maps for hours in anticipation of an upcoming journey. This is the route I chose for today's drive. I always right up a cheat sheet for my dashboard that includes right and left-turn directions.

 “… On the road again/ Going places that I’ve never been/ Seein’ thing that I may never see again/ And I can’t wait to get on the road again.” — Willie Nelson

 Travels With Maggie

 Willie Nelson and I share this love of being “on the road again.” And today I get to indulge myself. I’ve been up since before dawn, drinking coffee and reviewing the route I will take from my daughter’s home in Camden, Arkansas, to a son’s home in Lake Jackson, Texas.

 My dog, Maggie, is as eager as I am. She started getting excited as soon as I began packing things snugly away in the RV.

The journey is 427 miles long and I’ll be making it in one run, which means most of my sight-seeing will take place from behind the wheel. If it were spring, and I was truly on the road again and not just hiding out the winter catching up with family, it would probably take me two weeks to go this far.

To speed the time along, I’ll probably be listening to my audible copy of Ken Follett’s “Fall of Giants” along the way. But certainly not during the sections of road that will be new to me.

Mike Nomilini captured this picture of the bridge in Coushatta that crosses the Red River at sunset. While I'll be crossing the river today, it's going to be well before noon so my view will be much different.

 I added 15 miles to the shortest route  so I would pass through a few places I’ve never been before. Coushatta, Louisiana, for one. The Red River passes through this rural town. And I’ll be crossing over it on a 900-ton bridge that was  built in 1989 — not crossing it on horseback as John Wayne did in the 1948 film, “Red River.” 

 It was many years ago when I saw the film, but I still remember it.

There’s something in me that also loves river crossings. While the Red River might not compare to the thrill I had crossing the Yukon on a ferry in 1999, I’m still looking forward to it.

 Did I tell you, “I just can’t wait to get on the road again.”

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If Not Now, When? Perhaps Never

Posted in Uncategorized on January 19, 2011| 6 Comments »

 

New Hampshire's "Old Man," seven days before he disappeared in an avalanche. -- Photo by Jeffrey Joseph

 

“Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.”

— Daniel Webster

Travels With Maggie

For years I had read about New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain. But when I finally had the opportunity to meet him in 2006, I discovered he had died in 2003. I’m not sure how I missed the obituary.

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m referring to the former granite profile of a man’s face that looked out over the landscape from high atop Cannon Mountain. It’s the same profile that was used on New Hampshire’s state quarter, issued three years before an avalanche killed off the old man.

I remember standing at the base of Cannon Mountain, binoculars in hand, gazing in disappointment at the spot where the rock that looked like a craggy old man’s face should have been. The one word that burned fiercely through my brain was procrastination. I had been too late, and an opportunity was lost.

I promised myself at that moment in time that I would never procrastinate again. Silly woman. Of course I have. Many times. Most recently about a writing project that I promised myself would be finished by the end of February.

I woke up this morning with an excuse in my head to avoid working on it today. It was a different excuse than the one I used yesterday. Then I thought of New Hampshire’s old man. Guess I had better throw those excuses out my RV window.

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About the Author of This Blog

Posted in Uncategorized on January 2, 2011| 3 Comments »

Pat Bean

 Travels With Maggie

 

Maggie

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters.” — Ursula k. leGuin

 Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul who is beginning her seventh year living and traveling in a small RV with her 13-year-old cocker Spaniel, Maggie, as her only companion.

Gypsy Lee at Oklahoma Natural Falls State Park

 Both of them get antsy if they have to sit in one place too long. Pat is currently putting the finishing touches on a book she has titled, “Travels With Maggie.” She feels it would fit nicely on any book shelf, or on a Kindle, right next to Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charlie.” At least that’s her dream.

Since beginning their travels in the rolling home they call Gypsy Lee, they have gone over 115,000 miles, and are looking forward to doubling that.

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