Pat Bean's blog

Bald Eagle Sighting on the Snake River

September 11, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “There are two lasting bequests we can give our children. One is roots, the other is wings.” Hodding Carter.

Bald Eagle in Baytown, Texas. -- Photo by Joanne Kamo

Travels With Maggie

I spotted a bald eagle yesterday. It was just outside the park hanging around the Snake River below the Minidoka Dam in Southern Idaho.

It’s a bird that always makes my heart beat a little faster. It was sitting up on a utility pole, then flew away to the other side of the river as I passed by.

I don’t know whether it was an early migrant from Alaska, where huge numbers of eagle spend the summer, of if it was one that had stuck around the area for the entire year. There’s always a few that do.

It really didn’t matter. Either way it was a magnificent sight. It’s pure white head caught the sunlight as it flew across the water and my breath ceased for a few seconds. The bird’s brilliant white head feathers indicated it was at least four years old. Before that age, bald eagles are ratty brown all over.

Of course there wasn’t time for me to get a picture, as if I even could take a decent shot of a moving target. So I turned to Joanne Kamo’s online art gallery http://www.pbase.com/jitams to illustrate my blog. Joanne, whose bird photos are among the most awesome I’ve ever seen, has given me permission to occasionally use one of her copyrighted pictures. She didn’t fail me.

While bald eagles are beyond my photographic capabilities, even I can take a decent picture of a wild turkey, such as this one in Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Her bald eagle photo took my breath away as quickly as did the real thing. If it doesn’t also cause you to gasp in delight, you’re as cold-hearted as a glacier and not someone I care to meet.

The sight of yesterday’s bald eagle made me grateful Ben Franklin didn’t get his way in having the wild turkey be our nation’s symbol. He thought the bald eagle was too much of a thief to represent our country.

I know he was right because I was once privileged to watch a bald eagle snatch a freshly caught fish from an osprey as it flew. The osprey was so frustrated that it chased the eagle until it came to its senses.

But the bald eagle today is also a symbol of what’s best in humankind. These birds were on the verge of becoming extinct when we Americans acted. Since the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, bald eagles have regained healthy populations.

Sightings of them in the lower 48 states are becoming more common. And so I wish you good luck in having one of them fly your way.

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel | Tagged bald eagles, Ben Franklin, hodding carter, Idaho birds, Minidoka Dam, pat bean, postaday2011, Snake River, wild turkeys | 5 Comments »

What Goes Around Comes Around

September 9, 2011 by Pat Bean

“Life is too short to sleep on low-thread-count sheets.” – Leah Stussy

Travels With Maggie

I suspected raccoons, of which there are too many here at Lake Walcott, of causing the wee-hour disturbance, but she sheriff's deputy said it was a two-legged night wanderer. -- Photo by Pat Bean

A knock on the door in the wee hours of the morning is never good. But if you’re a campground host at a small Idaho park, as I have been all this summer, at least the first thought that runs through your mind is not “Who died?” ‘

Last night’s 1 a.m. knock on my RV, which wasn’t actually necessary because the headlights pulling into my site already had me hopping down from my over-the-cab bed to check out what was going on, was a sheriff’s deputy informing me that he had gotten a 911 call about some man wandering through the campground. The campers in tent site 27, he said, had made the call.

“Perhaps it was raccoons,” I voiced. “They get into everything at night.”

“Nope. I found the man. He’s parked down by the boat docks, drunk as a skunk and loopy as well. Gave me some story about UFOs,” the officer said. “I ran his license plates and he didn’t have any warrants out on him, so I just left him to sleep it off in his truck. But I thought someone should know.”

I thanked him for the information, and he told me to call 911 immediately if the man gave any more trouble.

I went back to bed, but of course not back to sleep. This was the third time this season that I had been awakened because of my campground host duties.

The first one involved me getting dressed and going down to the tent area to tell some idiot he couldn’t run his generator in the middle of the night to power floodlights around his tent.

“Ah. The generator’s going to run out of gas pretty quick,” he said in a “you gonna make me kind of way.”.

Lake Walcott sunrises are worth rising early to see even if sleep was stingy during the night. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Now,” I said in my sternest mommy voice to the large red-faced guy with the paunchy stomach.

“OK,” he said, this time rather meekly, and wandered over to turn the noisy contraption off.

I love that mommy voice.

The second time I was awakened in the middle of the night here at Lake Walcott, it was a young couple with an infant who had been on the road until after midnight. They had forgotten the combination to the cabin they had reserved. Fortunately I knew it, and was soon back in my comfy bed, but of course not back to sleep

Of the many bits of trivia that floated through my head keeping my brain from shutting down last night was the time I had been the one to pound on a campground host’s door at 4 a.m. I was supposed to meet up with a group to hike to a place where we could see rare red-cockaded woodpeckers emerge from their nests at dawn – and had lost the combination to the gate lock.

I sure hope the bleary-eyed guy who gave it to me had an easier time getting back to sleep than I was having, I thought as I listened to Maggie’s snuffling snores beside me, and the yowling of coyotes off in the distance somewhere. Too bad he couldn’t know I was getting paid back for waking him.

Yup! What goes around comes around. It’s the only thing that makes life somewhat fair.

Posted in Nature, Travel | Tagged campground host, coyotes, Idaho state parks, Lake Walcott, night distrubances, pat bean, postaday2011, raccoons | 2 Comments »

Weekly Photo Challenge: Pathways

September 9, 2011 by Pat Bean

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” — Henry David Thoreau

One can walk a pathway through 15-million-year-old lava fields at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho's Snake River Plains. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Posted in Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge | Tagged Craters of the Moon, Idaho, lava henry david thoreau, pat bean, snake river plains, weekly photo challenge: pathways | Leave a Comment »

Mountains and Bluebonnets Kidnap Pieces of My Soul

September 8, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “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.

Posted in Journeys, Travel, Wildflowers | Tagged Bluebonnets, Lake Colorado City State Park, Mount Ogden, Ogden, pat bean, postaday2011, Wasatch Mountains | 7 Comments »

Magic Exists Between Sunrise and Sunset

September 6, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears”

From Fiddler on the Roof

The magic in a day is easy to find when it begins with a golden sunrise photographed from a hot air balloon flying low over Africa's Serengeti.

Travels With Maggie

As I’ve aged and become an old broad, as sadly has my spoiled but faithful dog, Maggie, whose natural years left are fewer than my own life expectancy, I’ve come to view each day as magical.

But the magic also exists in a quiet Southern Idaho park, where one would be a fool not to acknowledge the gift of the hours with every sunset. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The writer in me realized early on that what didn’t get written down one day would never be exactly the same as would be written the next. Age in me has taught me that each day is a gift that vanishes with the sunset. What we’ve done, or not done, is over and ended. We can’t call it back.

All we can do is wake with the sunrise and live the next day through. Be they hours filled with joy or sorrow, they’re still a magical gift not to be tossed away lightly.

Posted in African Safari, Nature, Travel | Tagged fiddler on the roof, hot air balloon, magical gifts, pat bean, postaday2011, Serengeti, sunrise sunset | 4 Comments »

Mother Nature’s Gift of the Seasons

September 4, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.” – Stanley Horowitz

Spring at Lake Walcott, when it arrived in June, brought trees laden with pink blossoms. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Most of Lake Walcott's many trees were still leafless when Maggie and I arrived at the park in mid-May. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Fall is coming to Lake Walcott. It’s early. This Southern Idaho park was still sleepy with the last breaths of winter when I arrived here mid-May. Most of the trees were still leafless and running my heater, at least at night, was a given.

The days, however, slowly begin to warm and before soon foliage blocked my view of the lake, while dandelions dotted the park’s manicured lawns with yellow and pink blossoms colored a tree just outside my RV, Gypsy Lee.

Spring lingered for a long time here. It wasn’t until July that I had to first use my air conditioner, and even then it always went off when the sun went down. August brought with the first days when temperatures reached the 90s, but still most days the mercury’s high only hovered in the mid-80s.

Rarely was there a day that wasn’t perfect for the long walks my dog, Maggie, and I took daily through the park.

` While so many parts of the country have been experiencing record-breaking heat, Lake Walcott has had an unusually mild summer. And now, just a little more than a week before I am leaving, it’s treating me to hints of fall. Within a 120-day period I’ve experiences all four seasons.

As I looked out on the Landscape surrounding Lake Walcott, at the frosty sagebrush now grown tall, and the rabbitbrush all aglow in autumn colors, I remembered to thank Mother Nature for her gifts. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I thought on this as I looked out on a landscape yesterday of frosty sagebrush, now grown tall in this high desert, interspersed with the fall display of golden-topped rabbitbrush.

I give thanks to Mother Nature for the beauty she gifted me. I also give thanks that I have eyes and a heart capable of appreciating her gifts. May it always be so.

Posted in Lakes, Nature, Travel, Wildflowers | Tagged autumn, dogs, Idaho parks, Mother Nature, pat bean, postaday2011, spring, stanley horowitz, summer, Travel, winter | 2 Comments »

September 4, 2011 by Pat Bean

A Sleep-In Day for Maggie and Me

“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~Edward P. Morgan

Books and Authors

I couldn't resist this picture of Maggie, all snuggled up and sleeping in with her Teddy Bear yesterday morning. -- Photo by Pat Bean

It was only 42 degrees when I woke up yesterday morning. I snuggled down into my covers, reluctant to start the day with the sunrise as is my usual mode of operation. Instead I reached for my Kindle. I had read Earlene Fowler’s “Spider Web” after getting into bed, before reluctantly putting it down to get some sleep.

But this morning, since I wanted to stay snuggled up, I begin listing to my audible copy of “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett.. I had a hard time putting it down to finally get up and fix coffee about 10 a.m. Reading is bed is my idea of sleeping in on a cold morning.

By the time I got up, the day had warmed to 70 degrees. Maggie, however, who is the true late riser, was still snuggled up on the couch with her Teddy Bear by her side and the quilt I had thrown over her. I couldn’t resist a picture of her.

A good read

I also couldn’t resist continuing to listen to “The Help,” and did little else yesterday except that. I think I needed a down day – and I’m glad I took it. . I finished the book today when I was working in the entrance kiosk here at Lake Walcott State Park.

The book takes place in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, a time when a lot of history was being made, most of it not good at all. The book took me back to those days as it followed the clandestine activities of a young white women and two older black maids. I highly recommend the book, which I understand was recently made into a movie.

Think about taking a down day to read it. .And then let me know if you had as much trouble putting it down until it was finished as I did.

Posted in Travel | Tagged books, Kathryn stockett, pat bean, postaday2011, the help, Travel | 6 Comments »

Weekly Photo Challenge: Up

September 2, 2011 by Pat Bean

Weeds grown UP tall over the summer. -- Photo by Pat Bean

 “A weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes. ”  — James Russsell Lowe

Posted in Weekly Photo Challenge | Tagged James Russell Lowe, postaday2011, weeds, weekly photo challenge: up | 2 Comments »

A Journey to Come, and One Remembered

September 1, 2011 by Pat Bean

 “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

 

The 121-mile trip from Fairbanks to Denali National Park, followed by an 85-mile bus drive on the Park Road in view of Mt. McKinley is considered a classic road trip by "TravelBudget" magazine. -- Photo by Nic McPhee/Wikipedia

Travels With Maggie

 
I’ve been pouring over maps this past week, in anticipation of getting back on the road after spending the summer as a campground host here at Lake Walcott in Southern Idaho. It’s been a great summer, surrounded by Mother Nature’s gifts and away from this year’s awful Texas heat, where Maggie and I spend our winters.

But the wanderlust in my soul will ease the pain of leaving this serene setting.
The route I’ve planned for my dawdling 3,200-mile return trip will take me to Oregon to meet a new friend and to learn about self-publishing. From there I’ll travel down through Nevada and into California and Yosemite National Park, where I’ve never been.

 
Avoiding interstates as much as possible, I’ll then wind my way to Tucson, Arizona, to spend a week with my youngest daughter, and to sneak in some birdwatching. All too soon, however, I will have to be on the road again, traveling into New Mexico before dropping down to the Texas Gulf Coast so as to arrive there in time for a grandson’s wedding.

It’s an ambitious trip, requiring me to average 300 miles on the road during traveling days, which is twice as far as I prefer. It will take almost $1,000 to keep my RV, Gypsy Lee, fed during the journey, requiring me to sit somewhere for two months to balance the budget, maybe even three given how the cost of everything, not just gas, seems to be on the rise.

 
One of the hot topics of travel articles this summer has been places to visit on one tank of gas. For example, the most recent issue of “BudgetTravel” magazine features an article entitled “One Tank Escapes for 7 Cities.” That kind of thinking meant we had many area Idahoans vacationing at the park this year instead of going elsewhere.

 

Mt. McKinley from the Wonder Lake viewpoint. What a magnificent road trip it was to get here.

But this same issue of the magazine includes a piece on “5 Classic American Drives” that would take travelers far afield.

 
One of these was the 121-mile drive from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Denali National Park, where one catches a bus ($43) to drive another 85 miles to Wonder Lake. You’ve probably seen the lake many times. It’s a photographers favorite as it reflects Mt. McKinley when circumstances are right

.
I made this drive back in 1999. Circumstances weren’t right. McKinley gave us only a very quick view during our day-long bus trip. It took twice as long as usual as our bus broke down twice and finally had to be replaced halfway through our journey, which required us to wait a good long while before continuing on the journey.

Since a sack lunch was all I had taken with me, I was quite famished when we got back to the park headquarters, but all the grizzlies, foxes, birds (my favorite was a gyrfalcon) made the trip well worth it and one I would repeat in a heartbeat given the opportunity.

While I did get pictures of McKinley and Wonder Lake with the mountain’s reflection, they were not very good shots. Certainly not as good as the one of the road and mountain accompanying the “TravelBudget” article. This photo I noted was actually one from Wikipedia, which means I can share it with you, along with another free-use one of the mountain reflected in Wonder Lake.

Now we can all dream about upcoming road trips together.

Posted in Travel | Tagged Alaska, Denali Natinal Park, Lake Walcott, Mt. Mckinley, postaday2011, road trips, Travel, travel routes, Wonder Lake, yosemite | 2 Comments »

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

  Pat Bean is a writer, avid birder, hiker and passionate nature observer with wanderlust in her soul. She spent nine years living and traveling in a small RV. She now lives in Tucson with Scamp, a rescue who was supposed to be a Schnauzer mix but turned out to be a Siberian Husky-Shih Tzu mix who is as stubborn as his owner, her granddaughter says. She was also a journalist for 37 years, and can be reached at patbean@msn.com

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