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Posts Tagged ‘favorite places’

Favorite Places: Grand Teton National Park – For One

Posted in Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travels With Maggie, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2012| 13 Comments »

“Give me the comma of imperfect striving, thus to find zest in the immediate living. Ever the reaching but never the gaining, ever the climbing but never the attaining of the mountain top.” — Winston Graham

While this tiny creek is too small to make most maps, it makes it on the list of my favorite places. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

Wyoming's Grand Teton, photographed at the end of a hike to Taggart Lake, makes my long, long list of favorite places. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I get tongue-tied when people ask me what’s my favorite place among those Maggie and I have visited in our RV travels.

How do you name one among so many?

I’ve discovered beauty and awesomeness everywhere I’ve gone, from coast to coast and border to border.

I’ve ridden to the top, in a tiny cramped ball, of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, stood beneath Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln at Mount Rushmore, and gazed down on New York City from the top of the Empire State Building.

All these places were awesome.

But just as grand and beautiful in the eyes of this nature-loving old broad have been all the nature refuges, lakes, mountains, rivers big and small and even the trees, especially the redwoods, that Maggie and I have visited.

Yes. Perhaps that’s the answer. My favorite place is where Mother Nature resides. 

Bean’s Pat: 20 Minutes a Day: Saturday Morning http://tinyurl.com/6w8ce3h A writing prompt that had me laughing all the way through.

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A Gray Rainy Day and Mount Pisgah

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2011| 6 Comments »

 

Mount Pisgah -- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

“And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.” __ Gilbert K. Chesterton.

 Travels With Maggie

 It’s raining, a steady pitter-patter on the metal roof of the RV carport that’s currently sheltering my RV. The world from. my window is tinted with dripping grayness, broadcasting a message for Maggie and I to enjoy the warm coziness inside our tiny home on wheels this morning.

 This travel writer actually enjoys such lazy days. They give me time to make traveling plans, which currently include sheltering from winter in Arkansas for a few more weeks, visiting Texas’ Gulf Coast, squeezing in some bird watching in the state’s Rio Grande Valley, and finally attending a grandson’s wedding in Dallas.

Mount Pisgah from Black Balsam Knob -- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

 These activities should keep me busy until mid-March when Maggie and I begin our real travels for the year. First on our agenda map is to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway between Smokey Mountain and Shenandoah national parks. It’s been a trip long in the planning, and one of the scheduled stops is the Mount Pisgah Campground.

 I mention this because in response to a recent question (Jan. 13 blog) about special places, one reader said hers was North Carolina’s “ Mt. Pisgah, up high where the Rhododendrons grow.”

I did a bit more detailed research about the peak, and learned there’s a “moderately difficult,” 1.6-mile path to the summit from Milepost 407 of the parkway. I think these old broad legs can handle that, especially since reviews of the trail report that the view from the top “is spectacular.”

 Thinking about that landscape almost has me urging March to get here sooner. But I don’t. I know it’s better to continue putting my own color to the magical grayness outside – and to continue listening to the wondrous composition of pinging rain and Maggie’s contented snores as she slumbers on the couch.

Life is too precious to miss one present moment of it.

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