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Travels With Maggie: The Devil’s Highway

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” — Bill Bryson

Day 20 

My drive today took me onto the Devil’s Highway, a route whose New Mexico portion includes steep, twisting sections. The high number of fatalities along the southern portion — along with the road’s original, satanic-mark-of-the-beast 666 numbered designation — earned it the nickname.

In 2003, transportation officials came up with the bright idea of renaming it Highway 491, their thinking being to end its cursed reputation. I guess they never read Shakespeare’s “… that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The 53-mile section I drove – from Cortez, Colorado, to Monticello, Utah – was not devilish at all, just hilly and lonely, giving one ample opportunity to drink in the high desert landscape from various vantages. I’ve driven it many times and always have found it a relaxing stretch of road.

At Monticello I turned north onto Highway 191, which I would follow this day into Moab. Western kingbirds and kestrels watched me go past as the drive took me through a landscape of red rock gardens set off by the snow-covered peaks of the La Salle Mountains in the background.

That night, from my RV window, I watched those same snow-clad mountain fade into pink as the sun set opposite them behind yet more red rocks.

It was yet another perfect day.

Wilson's Arch as seen from Highway 191 20 miles south of Moab -- Photo by Pat Bean

 

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Travels With Maggie: My Name is Pat Bean and I’ve Reached My Mountains

Posted in Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Through the window of my RV, which was parked about 10 miles south of Durango, Colo., I had a magnificent view of the Rocky Mountains' San Juan Range. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places. Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So … get on your way.” — Dr. Seuss

 

Day 17

It was with eagerness that I finally said good-bye to the dreaded Interstate 40, which I would never have driven except for Mother Nature’s tantrums. Not knowing when I would have to stop because of her semi-toppling winds, I wisely, if sorrowfully, chose to avoid my usual backroad routes where RV parks were few and far between.

But today I left Albuquerque, New Mexico, and its gentle Sandia Mountains behind me as I traveled down Highway 550 toward Durango, Colorado — and the more rugged Rockies. These are the mountains that stir my soul to exhilaration.

 Highway 550 is a easy-going four-lane, lightly traveled road that passes through the Santa Ana, Jemez, Zia, Jicarilla Apache, and Southern Ute Indian reservations. It took me from Albuquerque’s 5,314 feet to above 7,300 feet, and across the Continental Divide a couple of times. Sagebrush, juniper and oil wells dotted the landscape. If not for the shape of the landscape, steep hills and high mesas, it would have echoed my drive through West Texas.

I stopped for the night about 10 miles south of Durango, and drooled for awhile out my RV window at my first impressive sight of the Rockies. Corny as it may sound, tears come to my eyes every time I meet them again after an absence.

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Travels With Maggie: Windy Kicks on Route 66

Posted in Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »

On the Road: The past and the present side by side on Route 66's Enchanted Trails RV Park. -- Photo by Pat Bean

  “A person has to do what a person has to do.” — Pat Bean

Days 13-16

I was on the road for only about 20 minutes before yesterday’s wind resumed. It tricked me into thinking it was going to be a calm day. My RV and I wrestled with while headed west on Interstate 40 for 125 miles. In Tucumcari, New Mexico, I surrendered to a roadside KOA. The place quickly filled with other RV-ers who also hollered “Uncle!”

The next day again started calm, but once again the wind picked up before I had traveled far. This time I gave up after 85 miles, stopping at the Enchanted Trails RV Park on the west side of Albuquerque. A look at the upcoming weather forecast convinced me I needed to stay put for the next three days.

It was a good thing I did because my revered Mother Nature rained, snowed, hailed and blew over semis all around me for the next couple of days. Fortunately, my camp site only experienced an hour or so lightning show and 15 minutes of a light rain. The wind, however, rudely shook my RV around for the full three days.

Leftover Route 66 memories -- Photo by Pat Bean

Interstate 40, roughly follows the colorful and historic Route 66, where business such as reptile zoos, Indian trading posts and old-fashioned ice cream shoppes made traveling an adventure. Enchanted Trails is one of those businesses that survived by catering to present day travelers. The former trading post sits on the original 66 highway in view of today’s Interstate 40, where travelers have forgotten the journey in the rush to reach the destination.

 

Walks around the camp to take care of Maggie’s business — and fill my ears up with blowing sand — revealed bits of Route 66’s colorful past. I’m glad I got to travel the original route in its heyday. What you didn’t miss is the up side of aging. I’m also glad that I still understand the importance of the journey.

Life is good, even when one finally gives in and screams at the noisy wind rattling their tiny home to “Just stop it already!” Sometime you have to do what you have to do, even if your canine companion looks at you as if you’re crazy.

Copyrighted by Pat Bean

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Travels With Maggie: Big Steak, Bad Haircut and a Bodacious Wind

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

 

Y'all come for dinner, Big Tex says to visitors headed west on Interstate 40. He was the landmark just before my exit to the Amarillo Ranch RV Park

 “Botanists say that trees need the powerful March winds to flex their trunks and main branches, so the sap is drawn up to nourish the budding leaves. Perhaps we need the gales of life in the same way, though we dislike enduring them.” — Jane Truax

 Days 10-11

The first thing I saw on hitting Interstate 40 heading east into Amarillo was Big Tex, urging y’all to drop by the Big Texan Steak Ranch. It was one of the numerous billboards advertising this restaurant that I had seen as soon as I reached the Panhandle. The restaurant’s gimmick is a free 72-ounce steak if you can eat the whole thing in an hour. The odds, like in Vegas, are in the establishment’s favor. If you lose the cost of the steak is $72.

 I kept my money and fixed myself a bowl of my homemade crab and shrimp gumbo soon after I checked into the Amarillo Ranch RV Park – they throw the word ranch around a lot in this part of Texas. I planned to stay two nights so I could catch up on chores, but ended up staying three because of a wind storm.

 The next day, the only good one weatherwise,  I did  laundry, grocery shopping and got a haircut. I now had clothes that once again were lavender-smelling clean, a full  food cupboard, an overflowing tiny refrigerator – and bad hair.

“I want my bangs to touch my eyebrows and leave some fullness on the side,” I told the stylist.

 She was either deaf, unskilled or mad at the world and wanted to take it out on me. I left the beauty shop with too much forehead in front and too little hair above my ears. Thankfully my hair grows fast.

Cadillac Ranch, another I-40 landmark. This one a public art installation that says much about Texas. Photo by Richie Diesterheft, Wikipedia

 My plans to get back on the road the next morning were then thwarted by Texas-sized winds that kept my motor home rocking and rolling all day even though it stayed parked. They also took me down.

I was going out to walk Maggie when the wind grabbed control of the door, slamming it up against the side of my RV and tossing me 20 feet across the grass when I didn’t let go of the handle quick enough.  I landed, thankfully, on my padded bum but still with a  clumsy kid’s scratched knee.  Maggie nuzzled me, then gave me a look that said,  I thought we were going for a walk.

 Amarillo in my rear-view mirror the next morning wasn’t a bad sight.

Copyrighted by Pat Bean

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Travels With Maggie: A Golden-Fronted Woodpecker

Posted in Uncategorized on May 2, 2010| 4 Comments »

A golden-fronted woodpecker visit to my Palo Duro Canyon camp site -- Photo by Pat Bean

“I don’t ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.” — Pete Hamill

 Day 10

 As I was getting my RV travel ready for my trip to Amarillo, I glanced out my window – and then did the thing I so often forget to do. I grabbed my camera. Luck was with me this day for I actually captured the image of the golden-fronted woodpecker visitor through a window from inside my tiny home.

 I once was in a canoe coming around a bend on the Green River when what sounded like a loud shotgun blast drew my attention shoreward. Before my very eyes a cliff-side avalanche was taking place. I watched in awe, totally forgetting the camera hanging around my neck.

Such has been my relationship with so many awesome events in my life. The truth is, I carry a tiny even-dummies-can-do-it digital camera with me almost everywhere I go. For those who need to know, it’s a Canon PowerShot SD850.

The canyon has her secrets -- Photo by Pat Bean

I purposely leave it in my pocket most of the time. When I do take it out, I quickly snap a picture and put it back. Having worked often with journalistic photographers, I know it’s not the way to capture award-winning shots. It is, however, my chosen way of seeing the world.

 Looking through a camera lens, at least for me, dims the world around me. Mostly, when I think of taking a photograph, I’ve missed the perfect action moment. This time I didn’t.

Copyrighted by Pat Bean

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Travels With Maggie: San Angelo to Lake Colorado City State Park

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , on April 26, 2010| 1 Comment »

A perfect place to end the day: Lake Colorado City State Park ... Photo by Pat Bean

A perfect place to end the day: Lake Colorado City State Park ... Photo by Pat Bean

“Stand still. The trees ahead and bush beside you are not lost.” — Albert Einstein.

Day Five

 I needed to stock up on supplies, including chemicals to keep my RV holding tank smelling like honeysuckle or the close approximation, so before leaving San Angelo I needed a Wal-Mart. I looked up the nearest one on my computer mapping program and wrote down the directions. Somewhere between the park and the store, however, my missing sense of direction had me zigging instead of zagging.

My planned 10-minute side trip into town ended up taking over an hour. The up side – I always try to find one when horse pucky happens — was that I now had a more personalized feel for San Angelo.

This Central Texas city of 100,000 is dissected by the Concho River, a fact that made itself known as I crossed it several times in my efforts to get unlost. The twisting river flows between O.C. Fisher Lake to the north of town and Lake Nasworthy to the south, where I had spent the night.

Depending on the section of town in which I was lost, I could describe San Angelo as a progressive town or a decaying one, a place of manicured lawns or junky shacks, and its residents as rich or poor. Actually most of it looked pretty middle class, which gave it a distinction of being just about like any other city of its size I’ve explored. ations. The flat see-for-miles landscape was dotted with sagebrush, cactus and clunky mesquite and cedar trees. Adding color to the otherwise dull landscape were the roadside wildflowers Texas is known for: purple verbena, bluebonnets, pink primroses, and yellow blossoms too numerous (and difficult) to identify. Oil rigs, cattle, spring-plowed fields and huge windmills completed the picture. The latter was a recent addition to a landscape that was etched on my Texas memory.

The oil rigs pumping on one side and windmills turning on the other spoke of this country’s over-weight dependency on energy. I was glad to see the cleaner fuel source addition, but wondered if it would be enough. I, however, couldn’t cast stones. My RV was my glass house. My holding tank deodorizer, however, was organic and non-toxic.

 
 

Red-winged blackbird

A red-winged blackbird with shoulder epaulettes as bright as a shiny fire engine brought my attention back to nature. It stayed there until I drove into Lake Colorado City State Park, where I would spend the next two nights in a campground full of mesquite trees just coming into bloom. Both the trees and the ground beneath them was atwitter with birds. Life is good.

Photos and prose copyrighted by Pat Bean. Do not use without permission.

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Travels With Maggie: Lazing Around at Garner State Park

Posted in Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , on April 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

A good spot to sit and watch nature flow past on the Frio River in Garner State Park in Garner State Park ... Photo by Pat Bean

“Rest is not idleness and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. — John Lubbock

Day Three

Staying put a day or so while traveling has multiple advantages. More time to enjoy an area, a time to rest from driving and sight-seeing, and a means to balance the budget. My goal when traveling is to live on $50 a day. Ideally that means spending $20 on gas, $20 on campground fees and $10 on food.

It never works out exactly like that. State parks and other public campgrounds usually meet the nightly lodging fee criteria, but commercial parks can run up to $35 a night. Some cost even more, but those I avoid. A longer day’s drive means more spent on gas, but a multiple day stop averages that back to my budget restriction. Ramen noodles and free parking in my kids or a friend’s driveway help cover overages and things like museum fees, trolly tours, books and an occasional restaurant splurge. Volunteering for a month or two at a state park, where I get a free camp site and don’t drive, covers emergencies like an unexpected dentist bill or new tires for my RV. It’s a balancing act I’ve worked out in the six years I’ve lived in my RV. It mostly works, although red is not an uncommon color on my accounting sheet.

Maggie took the rest day seriously ... Photo by Pat Bean

Today was one of those rest and budget-catch-up days, my only expense being the $15 camping fee. Exploring the park with Maggie and Mother Nature’s wildflower landscape were free.

Garner sits by the cool, clear Frio River, mentioned by George Strait in his “All My Exes Live in Texas,” recording. The park itself is named for former Vice President John Nance Garner, also known as Cactus Jack in his hometown of Uvalde.

A popular get-away for Houstonians, many a youngster has taken his first dance steps to a jukebox tune on the concrete slab at the park’s lodge. It’s where campers hang out in summer after a day of fishing, tubing, birdwatching or kayaking. Me, I took short walks with Maggie down by the river, watched the birds from my RV, and read a China Bayles mystery.

Photos and prose copyrighted by Pat Bean … Do not use without permission

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It’s Bluebonnet Time in Texas

Posted in Nature, Uncategorized, tagged , on April 15, 2010| 3 Comments »

A field of bluebonnets at Goose Island State Park in Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.”  — John Burrough 

A drive past a field of bluebonnets, or even just a roadside ditch colored by their blue intensity, calms my soul. It’s my alternative to a psychiatrist’s couch. And when I get to walk through a field of them, as I did this past week at Goose Island State Park outside of Rockport, Texas, the chaos of today’s world briefly disappears.

Bluebonnets represent Mother Nature at her finest. And Texas has adopted them, all five species, as its state flower. Yes, I said. five. It’s as if the goddess of beauty couldn’t just create one.

There’s Lupinius subcarnosus (the original state flower title holder that prefers sandy soil), Lupinus texensis (the favorite of artists because of its fanciful white-tip), Lupinius Havardii (the Big Bend variety whose flowering spikes grow up to three feet tall), Lupinus concinnus (a smaller plant whose blooms are more rosy and lavender than blue), and finally Lupinus plattensis (which favors the Texas Panhandle as habitat).

While I find these botanical facts fascinating, and thank Texas Cooperative Extension experts for educating me about bluebonnets, the true joy comes from being able to stand beside a patch of these blooms and breath in their beauty. They make me proud to say I’m a Texan.

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Writing Contest

Posted in Uncategorized on January 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

If you have written a  book and are looking for an agent, you might be interested in checking out this blog.  www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog. It details rules of upcoming contests involving the first 200 words of your project. Check it out.

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How the Magpie Became My Animal Totem

Posted in Uncategorized on January 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

 

Black-billed magpie ... Photo by Stephen S. Skrzdlo

Back in the 1980s, and a few years before I noticed birds lived among us, I was visiting a friend who lived alongside the Snake River.  As she was showing me her farm, I spotted some long-tailed black and white birds flying over the water. I thought they were magnificent.

My friend laughed, and said the birds were pesky magpies, cousins to crows, and that farmers despised them.

This was the first magpie I could recall seeing. And never had I watched such a sight as the one before me. The magpies, their dark feathers glistening with an iridescent sheen in the sunlight, were swooping, circling and diving above the water with a winged grace that astounded me.

A few weeks later, I found myself hanging out with a group of New Agers at a “Back to the Goddess Worship.” As a feet-on-the-ground, cynical journalist I wasn’t a believer, but these people were my friends. Besides there there wasn’t much else to do in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Night found me sitting beneath a starry sky and a blazing campfire on the rim of the Snake River Gorge when the workshop leader asked each of us to tell us what animal was their totem. She began by divulging that hers was a mountain lion, and then passed the talking stick to the next person in the circle. I listened in amazement as the women talked about bears, foxes, golden eagles and wolves.

I didn’t have an animal totem and decided when it was my turn to speak, I would simply say so and pass the stick along.

As soon as the wooden rod touched my hand, however, this voice from out of nowhere said: “Magpie.” It took a minute for me to realize the words were coming from my own mouth, and that I was continuing to speak.

“… because the magpie is loud and raucous like a Texan which I am and can be, is playful and intelligent as I hope I am, and its black and white colors range across the entire color spectrum, which to me represents a broadminded way of thinking, which I like to think is one of my better traits.” I was certainly broadening my thinking now I thought as I numbly handed the stick to the person on my left.

And that’s how the black-billed magpie, pica hudsonia, became my animal totem. True story.

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