Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘travels’

Travel Today Was Like Riding a Time Machine

Posted in Birds, Lakes, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2011| 3 Comments »

I named the upper one Peter, as in Cottontail. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The view out my rear window looking toward the John Martin Reservoir Dam. — Photo by Pat Bean

 

NOTE: I’ve been taking my blog readers on a journey from Texas to Idaho with me as Maggie and I go down the road. But while I’m writing a mile-by-mile travelogue so readers can actually follow me on a map or Google Earth, I may take three days of blogging to describe one day.

The result is that I’m farther down the road than my blog, which has confused readers. I know because they’ve told me. To solve that problem, I’m now adding a footnote to any blogs that are about a specific day of travel that happened earlier in time.

For example, today’s blog is about happenings that took place this past Sunday, and the footnote reads: April 24, Day 6 of the journey.

Travels With Maggie*

I realized when I woke this morning at John Martin Reservoir State Park in Colorado that it was Easter.

And a lovely one it was. Hasty Lake was winking at me in the morning light, robins were searching for worms beside my RV and a pair of mallards were floating and quacking among the reeds along the shoreline. Did you know that the mallard is the only duck that actually quacks.

As I sat, drinking my coffee and reading the news, or as much of it as I could handle for the day, I had a couple of visitors. Most appropriate ones, I might add.

Two small cottontails spent about 10 minutes roaming around my RV. I named the larger of the two Peter, and thought about Thornton Burgess’ “Adventures of Peter Cottontail” that I had so loved as a child. He wrote 26 books about the beloved rabbit, and while I’m sure I didn’t read all of them, I certainly read quite a few.

And now, since I was alone, I sang as much as I could remember of “Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail, hippity hop ….”  I suddenly felt like a child again, and at my age that’s a good way to feel.

The tune was still going through my head when Maggie and I got back on Highway 50, which we followed west through several small rural towns to La Junta. Along the way, I noticed quite a few redbud trees just popping with brand new hot-pink buds

They looked exactly like the blossoms of the redbud trees that I had photographed in early March in Harker Heights, Texas. I laughed, thinking that summer was just around the corner when I had left Texas.

It was sort of like being transported in a time machine. First remembering my childhood reading habits and now here I was enjoying spring all over again.

Pat Conroy, one of my favorite authors, sums it up: “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”

Read Full Post »

Kalachandji’s: Where One Can Feed Stomach and Soul

Posted in Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2011| 4 Comments »

A stained-glass peacock adorns a side panel at the entrance to Kalachandji's.

Towers of the Hare Krishna Temple overlook an East Dallas neighborhood. -- Photos by Pat Bean

 

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” Maya Angelou

Eating Out

While I’m most comfortable and peaceful surrounded by Mother Nature’s awesome bounties of streams, lakes, trees, mountains, gorges, and fields of grasses and wildflowers where birds, butterflies and larger wildlife find refuge, I occasionally enjoy a few days stay in a large city.

Such skyscraper metroplexes offer awesome museums to visit, live performances to attend, dozens of art galleries to pursue and intriguing new places to eat.

A tree in the center of the open-sky courtyard restaurant helped me feel as if Mother Nature was enjoying the meal, too. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The one big city I visit most is Dallas. It’s where I was born, and where my oldest daughter and oldest grandson both live. I came here specifically this time to see the grandson, David, get married, but spending time with my daughter, Deborah, and Shanna, her daughter and my granddaughter who came up from Argentina for her brother’s big event, has been a big bonus.

Shanna inherited my love of travel and exploring new things in life. So when she asked if I was: “Up to a temple visit and then a vegetarian dinner,” the answer was a quick yes, even though I had no idea where she would be taking me.

It was to a modest, sometimes rundown, section of East Dallas, where the Sri Sri Radha Kalachandji Mandi Hare Krishna Temple’s tall towers overlook an ethic neighborhood of East Indians.

I was fascinated.

The first thing we did on entering the building was to go to a back room where we took off our shoes. Shanna was familiar with the place from her earlier Dallas yoga study days. We then went into a large, long room with a glossy wood floor and a stage full of Indian gods. A monk was leading a few devotees in chanting as they stared ahead at the stage, or as one young man did, danced to the chanting. Shanna and I sat on a side bench and watched and listened as the room slowly began to fill.

My granddaughter, Shanna, getting ready to chow down. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The women who came into the room were all dressed in colorful saris, while the men’s clothing ranged from pajama looking outfits to a just-got-off-from work American business look. One woman carried a small child and beside her walked a sweet-faced imp of a girl, perhaps 4, who came over and played high-fives with us. We smiled at the mother to let her know that the child was not bothering us.

A bit later, when our stomachs started protesting, we retrieved our shoes and went across the hallway to Kalachandji’s, This small, buffet style, eating place inside the Hare Krishna Temple was voted the best vegetarian restaurant in Dallas in 2010.

I have to admit healthy food never tasted so good, and the rice pudding with which I ended the meal was heavenly. And since we ate our meal in a courtyard open to a sky with a tree in the middle, I even felt Mother Nature’s presence a little bit.

Life is good.

Read Full Post »

High Cost of Going to the Bathroom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

 

Utah's new Tie Fork Rest Stop near Soldier Summit on Highway 6. --Photo by Pat Bean

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.” — Charles Dickens

Travels With Maggie

My first day back on the road after leaving Ogden took me to Moab on Utah roads I had traveled many times before. Traffic, as usual, was horrid until I turned off Interstate 15 and began winding my way up Spanish Fork Canyon on Highway 6.

Winter sunset on Mount Timpanogas. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

I had passed this same way in April, Then the mountains had been dressed in snow. Now, in late September, they look naked, especially the 11,749-foot Mount Timpanogas. Its profile is said to be that of a sleeping Indian maiden, the legend of which is yet another version of the Romeo and Juliet story.

A cave sits within the mountain that contains a geological feature, enhanced by red lights, that is said to be the maiden’s heart.

Recollections of that powerful image, along with the effort of the steep mile and a half hike up the mountain to see it, tickled my brain as I drove past Provo this day. I prefer driving to the sound of silence instead of music to better focus on such memories and the current passing landscape.

Near Soldier Summit, which marks the end or beginning of Spanish Fork Canyon depending on which way you’re headed, a new sight greeted me, one that hadn’t been there when I had passed this way earlier. Now sitting at Milepost 202 on Highway 6 was the new Tie Fork Rest Stop.

Shiny and bright but going nowhere. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Dedicated just a month earlier, it was not just any old rest stop.Its place to do business looked more like a cathedral than an outhouse.

A high two-story building enclosed the restrooms and the pit stop was designed like a railroad roundhouse, complete with a shiny red and black engine with No. 435 emblazoned on its sides. The site was well landscaped with plenty of picnic tables scattered around for the outdoor dining pleasure of visitors, of which this day there were quite a few. I suspected it was the actual destination for some curious locals as well as a rest stop for us travelers.

Maggie got to enjoy the stop, too, as there was an area marked off just for pets.

The project is supposed to be in remembrance of the old railroad town of Tucker located just two miles away. I think I would have enjoyed it more if my thoughts hadn’t strayed to its cost.

Tie Fork's cathedral ceiling restroom

It seemed a bit too extravagant for me when our country is going through such economic woes. I suspected the money spent here could have been more thoughtfully spent reducing the country’s debt or better educating its children.

Read Full Post »