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Posts Tagged ‘Travel’

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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What Next After NaNoWriMo

Posted in African Safari, Lakes, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on December 1, 2011| 8 Comments »

  “Than indecision brings its own delays, and days are lost lamenting o’er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

My travel book would include details about my search for Mother Nature in places like the New Hampshire woods where I came across this peaceful creek. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Too Many Unfinished Projects

Writing a first draft of a 50,000 word novel in 30 days has given me confidence for the old-broad writing days that still remain to me. There’s no question that I will write, for doing so is for me the same as breathing. I was fortunate that I found a way as a journalist to do it almost daily and get paid for it for 37 years.

When I retired from the job, however, I never saw myself retiring as a writer. I thought I would continue as a free-lance writer of travel and birding articles.

The Internet changed all that, however. The sources I had, including writing for my own former newspaper, dried up after a couple of years.

Suddenly it was a whole new world out there, and I faced either changing or being satisfied with writing only for myself. But it’s never worked that way for me. I both want to be read and to be paid for my writing as a way of personal validation

 

The photo of this hippo I took while on my African safari appears in Fodor's recently released "African Safari Guidebook." -- Photo by Pat Bean

The other change in the world of writing has been that self-publication is no longer considered a vanity, as it was during earlier days. In fact, many writing guides and teachers are encouraging wanna-be authors to go this route.

I’m seriously considering the possibility.

My immediate problem, however, is which project should I tackle first. Until NaNo, I failed to complete any major projects that didn’t have a pay-off deadline. The reasons are many, beginning with my own self doubts about a project’s worth. As former NaNo winners predicted, this inner questioning hit during my second week of the novel challenge. Working past it felt great.

 

The bear at Lake Walcott State Park in Idaho -- Photo by Pat Bean

So, with this said, let me explain my options – at least as I see them. Actually, I think I’m writing this blog as a way to get my own head straight.

First, there is the NaNo novel, which my ego says has good possibilities. Ever since I was a teenager reading Nancy Drew, I’ve wanted to write a mystery. The NaNo one is my second. The first is one of those uncompleted projects that never went beyond the first draft.

Then there’s the travel book I’ve already written, which needs a bit of rewriting. It has been read by critics who gave it mostly thumbs up, although all said it needed my voice. I now think I’ve developed my voice.

It would be the quickest project to finish. It’s called “Travels With Maggie.” I said in an earlier hunt for an agent that I thought it would fit nicely on the book shelf between Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley” and Kuralt’s “On the Road” with a little bit of Tim Cahill thrown in and written with a feminine voice. .

Then there is the African safari travel/picture book that I started and which now begs to be finished.

Then there is a commitment to put together a nature book about Lake Walcott State Park in Idaho, where I spent last summer as a campground host and where I will return again this coming summer.

And finally there is a the memoir that is beginning to demand I write. It would be a story of a high school honor roll student who dropped out of school at 16 to get married and who had four children by the time she was 21, and who went on to become a reporter, city editor and finally associate editor of a 66,000 circulation newspaper. There’s a lot of skeletons, heartache, joys and growing up in between.

I’m giving myself a break until Monday to come up with an answer, after which I’m counting on the discipline of NaNo to help keep me to whatever deadline I set for myself.

I’m leaning toward the travel book as my next project.. What do you think? I really want to know.

 

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Chicken, Smart Phone and Too-Little Writing

Posted in Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , on November 23, 2011| 7 Comments »

NaNoWriMo Update: 35,353 words

Sadly this abandoned ship off Jamaica's coastline reminded me of the state of my NaNo goal the past two days. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I’ve been on sabbatical for two days. 

 I cut short my writing yesterday to spend the day with my granddaughter Jennifer. She’s 28 and a nurse. I spent the day at her house fulfilling her request for Nana’s chicken and rice. My grandkids usually want me to cook it whenever I visit. We visited and watched animated films while it cooked. it was a great day.
 
Here’s the recipe: From a writer’s perspective
 
Cook a whole, fat chicken in a pot full of water with salt added to taste until the meat falls off the bones. Cook it on low with a top on the pot. You’ll have about an hour and a half to write while it cooks.
Take the chicken out of the water and put it in a large bowl to cool. Don’t throw out the broth. Write for at least one more hour

Skin and debone the chicken, adding all of the meat (in bite size pieces) back into the pot of broth (make sure there is at least 8 cups of liquid}
Add two cups of uncooked rice, a generous amount of poultry seasoning and pepper to taste.

 Cook on low until rice is done. Here’s about another half hour in which to write. When done, eat and enjoy. 

Today my son bought me a smart  phone for an early Christmas present. He wants to be able to track my location as I travel the country in my RV.

So of course I spent too much time playing on it and not enough time NaNo-ing.

 But if I get in 2,000 words a day for the next eight days, I’ll still meet my goal. And I’ve come too far at this point not to finish.

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Seven “Big Years” Chasing Birds

Posted in Birds, Books, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2011| 6 Comments »

“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.” Anais Nin

Snowy egret at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

The landscape around the Texas Gulf Coast home of my son, Lewis, is always full of birds. It is why my binoculars are always sitting beside me when my RV, Gypsy Lee, is parked in his driveway.

Wrens, woodpeckers, warblers, hawks and ducks all visit or pass through his yard.

This morning, Carolina wrens inspected the gutters over his garage, a pair of cardinals sat on the utility wires attached to his roof and a flock of black-bellied whistling ducks flew overhead, alerting me to their presence with their high-pitched chorus as they winged past in V-formation.

Is this a photographer taking picture of birds, or a birdwatcher photographing birds? -- Photo by Pat Bean

The park directly across the street from my son’s home offers even more entertainment for this passionate birder: Logger-head shrikes hang out in the trees, mockingbirds frequently chase away a red-tailed hawk when it comes around and goldfinches hang around the feeders in the yard next to the park.

I sometimes think I might be mistaken for a peeping Tom, or in my case a Jane, because I might appear to be looking in someone’s window when I’m simply watching a ruby-throated hummingbird flitting around the flowers.

If you really want to know how crazy we avid birders are, you should go see the movie, “The Big Year.” It’s about competitive bird watching. Or you can read the book, “The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession,” written by Mark Obmascik. It’s actually a true story and I couldn’t put it down once I started reading.

 

Great-tailed grackles near Surfside, Texas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Recently, when I was down at the beach – to watch birds of course – I watched another bird watcher as he tried to take a picture of some skimmers. Watching him was almost as much fun as watching the skimmers myself. I wondered if he was more photographer than birder, or more birder than photographer, like me.

We birders are actually a funny, but much blessed lot. The day I realized I had joined the craziness was the day I took a 440-mile, one-day, round-trip drive just to see nesting ospreys.

In fact, many of the 122,000 miles I’ve put on Gypsy Lee the past seven years have been in pursuit of birds – from the elegant trogons in Southeast Arizona, to the marbled murrelets on the Oregon Coast, to the Atlantic puffins in Maine, and the Florida scrub jays in the Everglades.

It’s been one great feathered adventure after feathered adventure.

Perhaps that’s why, at least for a little while, I’m content to simply watch birds from the comfort of my RV that is parked in the driveway of my son.  

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Comfort

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

“You may have a dog that won’t sit up, roll over or even cook breakfast, not because she’s too stupid to learn how but because she’s too smart to bother.” — Rick Horowitz

Travels With Maggie

Maggie lives a most comfortable life -- and she gives me comfort. And this was the most comforting think I could thing of to illustrate this week's photo challenge. -- Photo by Pat Bean

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A Greener Landscape and a Wandering Mind

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2011| 3 Comments »

 “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

My wandering mind waa on green jays as i drove Highway 36 toward Lake Jackson. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

With my canine traveling companion, Maggie, snoozing away in her co-pilot seat, I left Harker Heights, and my oldest son’s home, early for our drive to Lake Jackson, and my middle son’s home 250 miles away. It’s a very familiar drive for me, one I’ve made many times.

As I passed oil rigs, grazing cattle, cotton fields, mesquite trees and roadside sunflowers that let me know I was in Texas, I was glad to see the color green still existed. It had been missing on my drive two days earlier down Highway 190, clear evidence of the dastardly drought the state has been suffering. .

To all Texans living where heat and drought has scorched the landscape, I just wanted to show that green does still exist. This is the view from my RV window in Lake Jackson. -- Photo by Pat Bean

While admittedly things weren’t quite as lush as I remembered from past drives down Highway 36, the landscape was still a far cry from the brown and dying cedar trees, lack of grass and stunted and yellow cactus that had dominated my entry back into the Lone Star state on Tuesday.

The driving this day was easy with little traffic. As usual under such circumstances, my mind begins to wander. This day, it went south to the Rio Grande Valley, perhaps because I was thinking about when I would be able to go there and do some winter birding.

From Lake Jackson, where I was headed, it’s only a half day’s drive. I would have to see what bird festivals were going on down there in the coming months, I thought as I drove.

My mind must have still been with the fantastic green jays down there when I came to the Highway 35 turnoff, because I took it. I was looking for it in fact.

Oops!

I then realized that what I had actually been looking for was the Highway 36 turnoff that I always took when I returned from the valley. But then I had already been on Highway 36.
I guess I should have been paying more attention to where I was than where I wanted to go.

Anybody else out there have a mind that plays tricks on them like that?

If so, I hope you have a traveling companion like Maggie. She never yells at me when I take a wrong turn.

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Texas’ Hard Summer Brought Home to Me

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, Wildflowers, tagged , , , , , , on October 6, 2011| 6 Comments »

“I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there’s a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.” Alice Hoffman

This isn't how a willow tree is supposed to look. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

From the heights of the morning’s glorious Texas sunrise, my first since mid-April, my journey to just north of Austin descended into horrifying reality of the drought the state has been suffering.

The sights hit me especially hard when I left Interstate 10 to follow Highway 190 for over 200 miles.

The scorched earth, brown and dying cedar trees, total lack of grass and yellow and stunted cactus were hard to stomach.. While I had been luxuriating beside a lake enjoying a mild Idaho summer, my native Texas had been suffering record temperatures without rain.

My Texas family had frequently informed me that this was so, but seeing it still broke my heart, especially when I saw skinny deer wandering the roadside huddled around one small patch of grass. It was very close to the road, and the deer stayed nearby instead of scampering away as my RV approached.

Laughter is not a bad thing when faced with hard times.

It made me glad I was traveling a lonely stretch of highway, especially since a bit farther on I passed two deer that had given their life for staying too close to the road. The turkey vultures seemed to be the only ones prospering on the landscape.

At my oldest son’s home in Harker Heights, I found his usual green lawn brown, and the limbs of the vibrant willow tree in his back yard scantily clad. And today, the water pipes buried in his front yard sprung a gigantic leak.

“It’s happening a lot all over the place,” said the plumber, who was too busy to come until the next day. As the landscape dries, it shifts around, often breaking things in the process.

Even Maggie noticed how things were different. A bit of a tenderfoot, she found the stiff dry grass on the edges of the road we walked not to her liking.

I watched as she carefully place one paw down, and then looked for a softer spot to place her next step. When she didn’t find it, she quickly came back onto the paved road to continue our evening walk.

In some places, this beautiful lantana plant is considered an invasive weed. It looked awfully good to me, however, when all else was suffering from the drought. -- Pat Bean

My daughter-in-law, meanwhile, has still managed to maintain a bit of color around their house. Her backyard flower bed , filled with what she called hardy plants, hinted that all was not lost.

 As I looked out on them this morning, I saw house wrens playing among the blossoms, while bright cardinals, finches, mockingbirds and sparrows visited the yard as well.

. I think they liked the color, too. And perhaps the bird feeders scattered about the yard as well.

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Taking Time to Catch My Breath

Posted in Birds, Favorite Hikes, Lakes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

 “Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.” Douglas Pagels

Travels With Maggie`

A walk around Silverbell Lake helped clear the cobwebs from my crowded brain. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Life caught up with me this past week. Too many miles in not enough days, too many amazing sights and not enough time to linger among them, and only three days to enjoy loved ones before I’m back on the road.

My preferred style of travel – no more than 150 miles a day with a couple of days sitting in between – has been blown to hell in a hand basket, the same one my grandmother said would take me there if I didn’t shape up.

Something had to give. And it did. I stayed off my computer and missed two days of daily blogging.

Instead, I lazed around my youngest daughter’s Tucson home, took Maggie for short walks, enjoyed the company of three grandsons, hiked around Silverbell Lake while everyone else fished, read a lot, and watched the turkey vulture and red-tailed hawks soar above, and doves, rock wrens, curved-bill thrashers, gila woodpeckers, northern flickers and rabbits play among the saguaro cactus.

My daughter, Trish, lives on the outskirts of the city and coyotes and bobcats often visit, she said. As do quail that usually trot past their back porch daily.

My son-in-law, Joe, described them for me, and I suspect they’re Gambel’s quail, although they could just as easily be California quail. Both species have the C-shaped plume dangling forward over the front of their heads.

 

A landscaped yard without grass. Drought-stricken area residents should take note. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I haven’t seen them yet. I think they’re taking a break from their daily routine – like me.

It’s back on the road tomorrow. I’m heading to Texas’ Gulf Coast and a grandson’s wedding. It will be another four days of 300-mile a day drives, although thankfully, well except for the first 50 miles, it will not be freeway driving.

Interstates were something I could not avoid for two entire days on my way from Yosemite to Tucson. It made me never want to go back to California, that and the fact I was paying $4.15 a gallon for gas there. The cost immediately dropped to $3,39 a gallon once I crossed the border into Arizona.

I’ll post pictures nightly of my next four days of driving so you can enjoy the road with me. Just don’t expect me to be too wordy. I’ll save those for later when life has once again slowed down.  

 

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Maggie’s Learned the Reward of Smoozing

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on September 25, 2011| 5 Comments »

 “If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket then giving Fido only two of them.” Edward Jesse

Travels With Maggie

This is the look I get when Maggie wants something and expects me to know what it is. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Maggie, my black cocker spaniel traveling companion, wormed her way into the heart of my friend, Sherry, when we visited her in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, last week. So much so that Sherry turned up at my RV with treats for her.

Now we’re not talking your usually doggie bone, we’re talking a whole cheeseburger without any condiments one day, and a sausage and egg breakfast sandwich the next day. Admittedly she asked first if Maggie was allowed people food.

Now if you’ve ever read the ingredients in most dog food, which I carefully began doing after the dog-food fiasco a few years back that killed people’s pets, you’ll understand why I replied:

“Yes.”

I think this is Maggie's way of saying "Let's rest a bit before going on." -- Photo taken by Pat Bean at Clyde Holliday State Park in Southern Oregon.

In fact, Maggie always gets the last bite of anything I eat. It was the way Maggie, whom I rescued from an abusive first year of her life, and I bonded, As long as it isn’t junk food, I figure real food is as good or even better for her as dog food.

I didn’t know, however, that my answer would reap Maggie such a generous reward, although I must admit Maggie was on especially good behavior with Sherry, her teenage son and their cats.

Maggie, who is more cat-like than dog-like, has never had a problem with felines, just other dogs, which all of my children have. It’s not that she’s mean beyond growling a bit at the bigger ones, but just that she likes to mark her territory to let them know she considers herself the alpha dog.

And that means that although she will cross her legs all day to keep from peeing in our RV home, she’s not as considerate when she’s in another dog’s territory, even if that territory is indoors.

Maggie with her pet, me, at Lake Walcott State Park in Idaho

It was like going back to the days when my children were always doing something to embarrass me.

The reason I decided to tell you a bit about my spoiled dog this morning is that I think Sherry got Maggie thinking that cozying up to people might have its rewards. So she smoozed her way into the heart of my RV neighbor here at the Bordertown RV Park just outside Reno, where I spent the past two days. .

This morning the neighbor came over with two pieces of left-over chicken from her dinner last night.

“Can Maggie have some chicken,” she asked.

“Yes.”

She then patiently stood there and picked the meat off the bone and fed it to her.

Afterward, Maggie grinned up at me. I swear she did.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Texture

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , on September 15, 2011| 3 Comments »

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go’” —  Maya Angelou

Collage of cowgirls hanging in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

I was looking through my photos for a picture to illustrate texture and came across this. Certainly the textures found in the lives of these strong women qualify. I find it awesome to just think about the softness of their hearts, the hardness of the steel  fueling their gumption, the kindness of their hands on a child’s feverish face, the hot rash of passion in their lives and the rough calluses of their ranch worn hands. And it’s all beautiful.

 

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