Two in a Tent

Westward Ho!

2009-04-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

Monday morning, January 5, we left Brian’s parents’ house and set off westward, back home to Seattle. One last time, we wiggled and jiggled, shuffled and crammed, and managed to fit everything in to poor Caroline, who was about ready to bust at the seams. In addition to all the stuff we’d been traveling with, we’d picked up items that had been stored at our parents’ houses as well as Christmas presents. Whew – it was amazing that it fit. The car hadn’t been that full since we left Seattle originally.

The morning was frigid but the skies were clear. Our first couple hours of driving were spent navigating around the southwest side of Chicago until we got to I-90. From that point, the way back to Seattle was all interstate; we’d be on I-90 or I-94 for the rest of our trip. We stopped for a late lunch and to stretch our legs in Madison, Wisconsin. We found a cute little Asian place on State Street named Chin’s Asia Fresh and split a plate of noodles. After lunch, we walked a bit before deciding we were freezing and it was time to be on our way. The rest of the day passed uneventfully and we spent the night in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Tuesday, the weather continued to hold clear and very cold – good weather for driving with the heat blowing full blast. It was an exciting day – we made it to North Dakota, which for each of us was the last state that we hadn’t been in before. Brian had claimed when we got to Vermont that he had seen all 50 states, but in talking to his father over the holidays, he’d determined that he hadn’t actually ever been to North Dakota. There’s not a whole lot of scenery driving across most of North Dakota in the winter. It was pretty flat and windy. Nonetheless, we were excited to complete our lifetime tour of the U.S.

Since Tuesday was a short day of driving, we stopped for several hours in Bismarck. Our first stop was the North Dakota Heritage Center. The Heritage Center is a sizeable (and free) look at North Dakota’s history, from the Cretaceous Period through the early 1900s. Some of the most interesting exhibits were about the various Indian tribes who once inhabited North Dakota and their way of life as well as the exhibits depicting life for the early European settlers. The museum was light on exhibit cases and instead had numerous full-scale recreations of scenes from various eras. It was quite fascinating.

We’d worked up an appetite while at the museum, so we asked at the front desk where we’d find restaurants nearby. We were excited to discover a BW-3. We got our last good wing fix for a while (Seattle doesn’t have any great wing places like BW-3) and eventually continued on our way to Dickinson, where we planned to stop for the night.

We choose Dickinson because it is conveniently located just east of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Since the park is practically on the highway, we figured we’d stop for one last national park visit of our trip. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for the next day didn’t look as nice as the previous couple of days had been.

The next morning, we were up bright and early and the skies still looked good, so we decided to chance it and stop at the park despite the ominous forecast. We got to the visitors center in the South Unit of the park just as it was opening. The place was deserted except for a couple of rangers who pointed us to the 13-miles of the south scenic drive that was open.

The best light of the morning was while we were still on the highway, but as we drove along the scenic loop, the sky still had hints of pink.

Here’s Sarah, fiddling with her camera and freezing:

We saw lots of buffalo along the drive.

And some more snow-covered badlands:

There was also a field full of elk.

This bird was perched by the road. We couldn’t identify it, but had fun watching for the few minutes he stuck around.

Near the end, we saw more elk just barely visible on a hill. It took a lot of zoom to tell them from the trees.

Though much of the park was closed, it was fun to experience it in the winter. We saw a grand total of two other cars our entire time there, which is practically unheard of for a national park. The scenery was good and the wildlife was abundant. Grudgingly, we left the park behind and continued west.

Shortly, we cross the border into Montana. At that point, the weather deteriorated rapidly, which was particularly unfortunate since we still had a long way to go for the day. The wind was howling and snow was blowing – not much fun for driving. It definitely made for slow going. Eventually, visibility improved but the roads remained snowy for the rest of our trip into Missoula. The mountains in Montana are stunning in the winter, but you don’t really want to be driving through them during or right after a snow storm.

It was early evening by the time we finally reached Missoula and we were both beat. We checked into the accommodations for the night, which were significantly nicer than the unexciting cheap chain motels we’d been in the previous couple of nights. We were happy to discover that there was a MacKenzie River Pizza place just a few blocks away. We’d eaten at a MacKenzie River Pizza in Bozeman earlier in the year and had hoped to stop there on the way to Missoula. The weather had deterred us though and we’d continued driving straight through to Missoula.

Refueled with pizza, we headed back to the motel where we discovered that massive storms and flooding had turned Seattle in to a virtual island. Of all the aspects of our trip back across the northern U.S. in the middle of the winter, Washington had not been the part we were concerned about. Eventually, we decided that we’d better get some sleep and we’d check conditions again in the morning and figure out what to do then.

The next morning, all reports were that both east-west passes were still closed due to flooding, mudslides, and avalanches. Nobody seemed sure of exactly when they’d reopen. We decided that we should cover some ground early in the day though, in the hopes that at least one pass would open in the afternoon.

We got to Spokane in the late morning and found a Starbucks so we could check the conditions. The passes were still closed, so we spent a couple hours hanging out there then went to Applebees for lunch to use a gift card we had. Still unable to get home, we decided to go shop the REI super-clearance sale. That was good fun – we found a couple of new three-person tents and some other random stuff. Periodically, Sarah would call the traffic hotline and hear that the passes were still closed. We’d driven 1750 miles from Chicago and were now stuck in Spokane with a mere 250 miles to go, over 100 miles of which was closed highway.

Eventually, we decided to get a place to stay in Spokane for the night. When we arrived at the motel and checked in, we discovered Highway 2, over Stevens Pass, had reopened a couple of hours earlier. We were annoyed that the website had been updated but the phone message hadn’t, though it was probably for the best anyway because it would have been quite late by the time we made it back to Seattle if we’d left when the pass opened.

The next morning, we got up around 4 AM, hoping to beat the rush of traffic we expected over the pass. With both passes closed since Tuesday, it seemed like traffic could be a nightmare. Surprisingly enough, traffic was good until we hit the Monroe area, where it came to a grinding halt. It took us an hour just to get through Monroe. Ugh.

Finally, we arrived back home in Seattle. Our fifteen months on the road was at an end. All in all, we drove 38,648 miles, making nearly two complete loops around the country. We saw 32 National Parks, 14 National Monuments, 44 states, and countless National Forests and lands of assorted other “national” designations. What an amazing adventure it was!

Christmas

2009-04-27T21:08:00.001-07:00

We had a nice relaxing visit with Brian’s parents over Christmas. Brian got to play lots of games of pool with his dad, and many games of rummy with his mom.

Early on, the weather was a bit sketchy – biting cold and rain freezing rain, and Brian and his dad got to spend time bonding while breaking up the ice in the driveway. We started using the treadmill in the basement for exercise because it was just too cold to run outside.

Brian’s sister Christie came home a few days after we got there, and by Christmas everyone was ready for the big day. We woke before dawn and lit the tree.

Our stockings sat waiting for us to dig in.

Sarah curled up with a blanket while she waited for the rest of the family to wake up.

It wasn’t long before Christie was ready for her morning coffee, and of course we had to add a little Christmas spirit to it in the form of Bailey’s.

Before opening presents, we took a few family pictures by the tree. Christie and us:

Brian’s parents:

Then we opened our Christmas cards. Christie liked her card comparing George Bush to a monkey.

Finally, the time had come! Time to open the gifts! We’ve become more orderly in our gift unwrapping than we used to be – generally taking turns instead of all tearing into the wrapping paper madly. Brian gave Sarah a classic book of Washington hikes.

Christie got a package of “Christie”-brand cookies, which we picked up for her while we were in Canada.

Sarah gave Brian a book that perfectly fit our year of traveling.

Brian also got some Toasted Oats. We think there was a present inside the box, but we’re not sure anymore.

Christie was apparently a mad knitter in the months leading up to Christmas. She made golf club head covers for Dad.

A hat for Mom.

A sweater for Dad.

A sweater for Mom.

Here’s Dad with his ensemble of knitted items.

After we had opened our gifts, drunk too much Bailey’s, and eaten way too many Turtles, Brian’s grandparents arrived. Here’s Brian with his grandfather.

Brian’s aunt Pam and uncle Ron also came over.

Grammy enjoyed opening her presents.

And Grampy made out well, as always.

The unwrapping of knitted items continued unabated.

Sarah took advantage of breaks in the action to take some close-up photos of the ornaments on the tree.

After opening this second round of presents, everyone was famished when we finally ate Christmas brunch around 1:00 in the afternoon, so we all agreed it was the best Christmas brunch ever.

We stayed with Brian’s parents through the end of the month to celebrate Brian’s dad’s birthday. One day, we all drove out to Starved Rock State Park, where we were supposed to be able to see bald eagles. We did see a couple, but spent most of our time looking out over the flooded Illinois River.

After a restful stay in Illinois, we finally set out on Monday, January 5, to begin our final drive across the country to Seattle.

Ottawa

2008-12-27T07:19:00.001-08:00

On Saturday morning, December 13, we set out from Maine to begin the final cross-country journey of our long adventure, which would eventually land us in Seattle in January. The backroads driving through Maine and New Hampshire was beautiful and just a little sketchy, with some snow still piled on the roads. As we neared Canada, we drove through a couple miles of Vermont, which would have been unremarkable, except for the fact that Brian had been in all of the other 49 states at one time or another in his life, so now, after 30 years of occasional traveling and a bit over a year of constant traveling, he had completed his lifetime traversal of the U.S.! Sarah was close, with just two to go: Michigan and North Dakota.

The border crossing turned out to be a small-time affair, with only one lane. That’s one lane, total – not even one lane in each direction. We weren’t sure what would happen if someone tried to cross in the other direction while we were occupying the lane, but in the 10 minutes or so that we were there, we didn’t find out – no one else arrived to cross the border, in either direction. When we first arrived, we weren’t even sure what to do – there were no border guards in sight, just a little warming hut. Were we even supposed to stop? Should we pull in to the left of the stop sign or to the right? But as we slowly pulled up, a guard emerged from the hut to talk to us. He turned out to be very friendly and had a great French Canadian accent. We chatted for a bit, he scanned our passports, and we were on our way. It was actually a pleasant border crossing experience – a far cry from the major crossings where you wait in line for half an hour, only to be greeted by a gruff crossing guard who’s probably been trained to intimidate your deep dark secrets out of you. (“Oh, OK, you win – I really do have 26 cans of beer in the cooler, not my allotted 24. And fine, you can have the orange that I bought in Canada and was going to smuggle back to the States!”) The Canadian guards always seem friendlier than the American guards, but still, this small-time crossing may have been our nicest ever.

Covered in snow, Quebec was simply gorgeous, although its roads were even less well-plowed than those in the U.S. Eventually, we made it to a major highway and continued on our way, making faster time with lower-stress driving but without anywhere near the same scenery.

We were planning to meet Brian’s cousin in Ottawa at 5 PM, but we arrived a bit earlier than expected, so we decided to check out the Parliament buildings. As we drove through, we found that Canada’s government buildings look nothing like America’s – no white stone or neoclassical architecture.

We found a parking place and walked through the bracing cold to check out the buildings up close. Unfortunately, the Parliament building was closed to visitors for the day, but we stood inside for a few minutes anyway to warm up before making the trek through the cold back to our car.

Brian hadn’t seen his cousin Nicole in years, and he’d never met her husband Marcel or their two-and-a-half-year-old son Niko. Even better, Nicole’s father Ulysses was visiting from Greece for the holidays, and Brian couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his uncle – Brian was probably only a few years old. We arrived at their house just after five to a warm welcome from all, especially Niko, who was clearly not at all shy around new people. Soon, we headed out to Nicole and Marcel’s favorite Greek restaurant for a fantastic dinner of many shared plates of Greek appetizers. Cheese was set on fire, much to Niko’s delight, as we all shouted “Opa!” It was a lovely meal in a cozy restaurant with warm company – a perfect antidote to the day’s disagreeable weather and long drive.

Nicole and Marcel took us out for breakfast the next morning as well. They were on a first-name basis with the wait staff at the restaurant, and when Niko’s favorite waitress showed up for her shift, she was carrying a wrapped present – a Tonka truck for Niko! We ate another good meal with great conversation, and learned that when you’re the guests of a Greek family, you don’t pay for anything. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Ottawa and wished we could have stayed longer, but after thanking Nicole and Marcel profusely for their hospitality, we headed back out on the road, planning to stay somewhere in Michigan for the night before finishing our trip to the Chicago area for Christmas.

The drive was long, but we did manage to take a few breaks. At a bathroom break somewhere in Ontario, we happened upon a Wal-Mart and decided to do some shopping for Canadian Christmas presents – Christie cookies (maple cookies) for Brian’s sister Christie and Caramilk bars for all. Some may think that the American version, Caramello, is the same thing, but Caramilk always tastes better for some reason.

When we arrived at the border, we crossed the Blue Water Bridge, from Sarnia, Ontario, to Port Huron, Michigan, and atop the bridge, we got a great view of Lake Huron. On the American side of the bridge, we wandered through the duty-free store and acquired a bottle of Bailey’s, then waited the requisite half hour or more in line before finally making it to the front of the customs and immigration line. We were a bit fearful when the guard asked Brian to roll down the back window so he could peer inside, and Brian had to warn him that our cargo, piled floor to ceiling behind the front seats, might spill out. The guard asked why we were carrying so much stuff, and Brian explained. Satisfied, the guard let us through. Whew! If he had decided to search our car, we could have been stuck there for days!

It was getting dark, but we still felt pretty good, so we decided to try to charge through to Illinois tonight, rather than staying in a cheap motel and finishing our drive the next day. We recharged with value-menu items at a Wendy’s and called up Brian’s parents to ask if we could arrive around 10:30 PM. They were surprised but said it was no problem. This day was much warmer than the previous one, so the roads were good, and the only hazard to deal with was rain, which got harder as we entered Illinois. But after a long, exhausting drive, we finally made it to Brian’s parents’ house and snuggled up in bed, happy that we wouldn’t have to get up and drive again the next day.

Maine

2008-12-18T16:35:00.001-08:00

We stayed in Maine from just before Thanksgiving until December 13, hanging out with Sarah’s family. After Thanksgiving, it was a pretty quiet couple of weeks.

The day after Thanksgiving, Sarah, Mom, and Amy went to a Peacox Productions holiday show. The show was a charity fundraiser that consisted of a series of numbers with men dressed in drag, lip-synching to holiday or oldies songs. The first few numbers were entertaining, but after a while the numbers started to look awfully similar. We were glad that we left Dad and Brian at home – there were only a few men in the audience and without exception, they got harassed by the “ladies”.

On Sunday, Amy went back to school. She had a couple of weeks to go to finish up the semester.

During the week while Sarah’s parents were at work, Sarah caught up on some reading. She read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. It wasn’t as good as his more popular work The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but it did offer some interesting insights into how America got into its present food mess and some practical suggestions for how to avoid the worst of the American diet.

While Sarah was reading, Brian was alternating between doing sudokus and fighting with the internet. Sarah’s parents have dial-up, which is painfully to use because it is so slow. We also went running a few times when the weather was decent.

We spent a couple afternoons at the local library using their wireless internet because that was the only way to really get anything done online. The library is essentially one room, but the librarian, Penny, has worked hard over the years to get grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups. As a result, it’s amazingly technologically advanced for such a tiny library. The library always brings back good memories for Sarah, as she spent a lot of time there as a kid.

Sarah did lots of cooking since both her parents were working. Since we haven’t had a kitchen in over a year, she didn’t really mind. She tried out some new recipes, some of which were tasty and others of which were questionable. Oh well, that’s always the way with experimental recipes. On two nights, Sarah and her Mom had lobster while Brian tried out Avinash’s steak cooking process and cooked steak for him and Sarah’s Dad. The steak turned out perfect and Sarah was delighted to get lobster, which is one of her favorites and a rare treat.

On Saturday, Brian and Sarah went to the Norlands Christmas celebration. The Norlands is a living history center that’s comprised of an old farmhouse, church, library, one-room schoolhouse, and a few other farm buildings. Today, it’s preserved and run as an education center.

Earlier this year, the barn burnt to the ground. Fortunately, they were able to save the attached farmhouse. Here’s where the barn used to be.

Here’s the farmhouse.

Nearly all of the furnishings were moved out of the house during the fire in order to save them. Some of the furniture was damaged by smoke or water so much of it is still in storage or being restored. The only piece of furniture that didn’t get moved out of the house was a piano that was too heavy to move on short notice. Playing carols on the piano was our friend, Jerry, who was the minister at our wedding.

We hadn’t seen him in years, and he wasn’t expecting to see us – he looked quite shocked when we walked in.

We listened to carols for a while then continued on to another room where they were playing old-fashioned games. The kitchen had cookies and cocoa, and another room displayed plans for rebuilding the barn. After our tour of the farmhouse, we drove down the road to the one-room schoolhouse where we learned about school in the 19th century. We were surprised to learn that children didn’t get Christmas off if it fell on a weekday.

That afternoon, we went to a ceremony celebrating Sarah’s cousin, Brandon, becoming an Eagle Scout. Sarah sat behind several Boy Scouts wearing ties that said “cook, camp, hike” on the back. Sarah couldn’t help but wonder if she was qualified to be a Boy Scout after her year of experience. Joking aside, becoming an Eagle Scout is an impressive accomplishment, and we were glad to have a chance to attend the ceremony.

During the week, we visited with some more friends and family. Sarah went to see her high-school friend, Terri, and got to see her impressive collection of Christmas lights. We had breakfast with Jerry. He’s an armchair traveler and peppered us with questions about all the places we’ve been. We also visited Sarah’s Aunt Norma. When we arrived, she was baking as usual. On this day there was a chocolate cake in the oven and a cheesecake and sheet of cookies sitting on the counter waiting for the oven to free up. You’d never know to look at her that she’s such a baking fanatic. Apparently she owes her slender figure to the fact that even at 74 she still runs six miles on the treadmill several times a week.

On Thursday, we began the process of repacking our car. In addition to all the stuff that we’d brought with us, we had multiple boxes of stuff that had collected at Sarah’s parents’ house, Brian’s skis (which Amy lugged back from Colorado last winter), a huge box of Sarah’s clothes that Amy had borrowed for the year, and Sarah’s toy box that somehow didn’t go with her when she moved out of the house. Sarah’s dad just shook his head and said that there was no way this stuff was ever going to fit. Sarah’s a master packer though, and with some creative shuffling, everything fit back in the car, though admittedly not with much room to spare.

At lunchtime on Thursday, we went to Grammy’s house and cut a Christmas tree that Dad had scoped out earlier in the year. We’d heard it was a little spindly, but it really didn’t look bad. We practically drove right up to it – it must have been the shortest Christmas-tree expedition ever. The entire excursion only lasted 35 minutes.

Overnight, it snowed then rained then rained some more, leaving a nasty slushy, icy mess on the ground. We were glad we weren’t leaving that morning. Sarah’s mom had taken the day off to hang out with us and was also glad she didn’t have to drive to work.

We put up the Christmas tree after lunch, stringing lights and an old string of popcorn that Sarah and her Mom made when she was little. After that came all the ornaments. It’s always fun to look at the ornaments that have been collected through the years. After we had the tree decorated, Brian did a little pruning here and there (a natural tree isn’t as symmetric as a farmed tree) and we called it done. Sarah’s Mom would probably spend a few days adjusting decorations to get it just perfect, but we all thought it looked nice.

That evening, we watched The Grinch, which is somewhat of a tradition for Sarah’s family, and then called it a night early since we had a long day of driving ahead of us in the morning. Next, we were heading to Ottawa to visit Brian’s cousin then on to Chicago for Christmas with his family.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

We celebrated Thanksgiving with Sarah’s extended family on her aunt and uncle’s farm in Albion, Maine. The farmhouse kitchen was bustling when we arrived.

Sarah’s cousin, Ellen, had her Thanksgiving chef’s hat on.

Ervin also tried out the hat.

Squash, fruit, and potatoes got chopped and cooked by a number of helping hands.

Emily stirred up the topping for a gooey sweet potato dish that was promptly dubbed sweet potato candy.

Somehow, the guys managed to relax and avoid the cooking frenzy.

Laurie and Amy took a break from chopping for a photo.

Fresh out of the oven, the turkey looks delicious.

And, of course, there were multiple muffin tins of the requisite yeast rolls that Sarah’s grandmother always made. Here they are before they went in the oven.

And here they are about 30 seconds after coming out of the oven.

Nobody can resist the hot yeast rolls.

We started piling the food on the table and wondering how many additional busloads of people were showing up for the meal. Nobody was going to go hungry.

Everyone started gathering around the table.

Meanwhile, last-minute preparations were being made in the kitchen.

Finally, we all sat (cozily) down to eat.

After dinner, the food coma kicked in.

A little later, we went outside to decorate the tree. The late afternoon light on the farm was very pretty.

A game of Frisbee quickly started.

Here’s the tree that was about to be strung with lights.

Amy holds a ladder while Uncle Gary climbs into the tree to hang the lights.

The ground crew lends a hand under the direction/abuse of taskmaster, Uncle Gary…

...while others watch from the sidelines.

Here come the reinforcements.

Yikes, this looks dicey.

With the tree decorated, a rousing game of whiffleball ensued.

Since this was the next-to-last day of deer hunting season, Sarah’s Dad snuck off to go hunting, but not before Sarah got his photo.

It was a great holiday on the farm.

Boston

2008-12-18T15:02:00.001-08:00

The drive from Virginia to Boston was long but uneventful. Our mapping software claimed it was a seven-hour drive but it took us nearly nine hours. Unfortunately, we were back in the land of toll highways. Most of the trip was along I-95 and we managed to shell out $25 in tolls over the course of the day. By the time we got to Randolph, Massachusetts, where we were staying with friends for the night, we were both exhausted and very glad to be getting out of the car.

We got to meet Kristen and Matt’s little girl Rose. She’s about six months old and adorable. She was also very good-natured, though Kristen insisted that she had just started teething and was much grumpier than usual.

Since it was nearly Rose’s bedtime, Matt stayed home with her while Brian and Kristen went out for dinner. Meanwhile, Sarah drove into Boston to meet a couple of college friends for dinner.

Despite growing up in New England, Sarah had never driven in Boston. She had detailed directions but nobody with her to navigate and read a map. Thankfully, the traffic was very light because navigating through Boston’s maze of poorly marked streets was a mess. It seemed that half the streets weren’t signed and the other half had signs so small that they were impossible to see until it was too late to turn. Eventually, Sarah started using the odometer and turning when the appropriate distance had passed even if she couldn’t see the street sign. Amazingly enough, this tactic worked, and Sarah found her way to her destination.

Sarah met up with Erin and Suzanne, whom she hadn’t seen since graduation, for dinner on Beacon Street and they had a great time catching up.

Finding the way back to the highway turned out to be easier than getting to Suzanne’s place had been. However, when she was almost back to Kristen and Matt’s, a road was closed due to an apartment fire. Luckily, after a couple of tries she found a road that went around the closed area.

The next morning was cold and raining. Unpleasant! Sarah and Brian hung out with Kristen and Rose for a while and then drove to Wellesley where they had lunch at a Thai restaurant in the ville. Then they went to Wellesley College and spent a half hour or so rearranging the car so that Sarah’s sister Amy would have a place to sit. When Amy got out of work for the day, we picked her up at her dorm and shoehorned her into the tiny space that we’d cleared out in the back.

Next stop, Maine for Thanksgiving…

Washington DC

2008-12-17T12:09:00.000-08:00

On Thursday night, November 20, we arrived in the DC area where we planned to spend a few days hanging out with friends and seeing the sights.

Friday morning, we took the bus and then the Metro into DC. Along the way, we read in a newspaper that the National Museum of American History was reopening that day after being closed for two years of renovations. We’d decided the night before that that was one of the places we wanted to see, not realizing that it had been closed. We hoped the crowds wouldn’t be too bad.

When we got out of the Metro station, we realized it was absolutely freezing outside. A biting wind was howling across the Mall. We wanted to go up the Washington Monument, but just as we got in line to get tickets a guard came over and announced that they were shutting the monument down because the elevator was broken again. We had to settle for the view looking up at the monument instead of getting the view looking down from the top.

We quickly took a few more photos, first looking back at the Capitol Building…

…and then looking the other direction to the Lincoln Memorial.

In this photo, you can see the World War II memorial in the foreground.

We’d planned to spend more time walking around the mall and checking out the monuments, but the wind was so bad that it was hard to stand up straight and it was unpleasantly cold so we decided we’d seen enough for now. Our next stop was the National Archives.

This is one of the statues adorning the building.

Happy to be warmly inside, our first stop in the National Archives was to see the Magna Carta.

This particular document was the 1297 version of the Magna Carta. After an assembly of barons in England demanded that the king recognize their rights, the Magna Carta was originally written in 1215, and then it was revised over time. This version is one of only four original copies remaining and represents the foundation of English law.

Next we stopped in the large rotunda that houses the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, as well as a series of displays on the history of the US fight for independence that explain the impact of these documents. As preservation of these precious national documents is taken very seriously, the only document that was lit enough to get a photo was the Constitution.

We learned that the originally proposed Bill of Rights had 12 amendments, not 10. The first two amendments were not originally ratified. The first concerned the number of constituents per congressional representative. The other amendment that didn’t make the cut related to congressional pay. This amendment was finally ratified in 1992 as the 27th amendment.

The documents were the highlight of the National Archives, but we also spent some time wandering around their other exhibit galleries, the Public Vaults. These displays housed a wide variety of items, from video footage of the presidents to a letter from a seven-year old asking the president to declare his room a national disaster area and send funds for its cleanup, to a series of maps showing how the US expanded. There were also displays on family history research and patent applications. The dizzying array of documents represents only a very tiny fraction of all of the material housed at the archives.

By this point, it was past lunchtime and we were quite hungry. We asked at the gift shop and discovered there was a café in the basement of the National Archives. The café was small and appeared to be geared more towards people working there than towards tourists. They had run out of a bunch of things because it was past lunchtime, but the food was cheap and we didn’t have to go wandering around looking for a place to eat. The sitting area displayed a number of historic posters that provided an interesting glimpse into national nutritional policy over the years. Given how prevalent corn and corn products are in the national diet today, the goal of this poster was certainly achieved.

Appallingly, this poster suggests that butter is one of the food groups that should be eaten at lunch and dinner.

Refueled, we walked back down the street to the National Museum of American History. This huge and eclectic collection of items is often referred to as the nation’s attic. Our first stop was at Julia Child’s kitchen.

When Julia died, the museum actually moved her entire kitchen and its contents from her house in New England. The kitchen was designed by her husband to fit her tall stature (she was 6’2”). Pots, pans, and utensils were neatly arranged on pegboard covering the walls, with the outline of objects sketched in their place so they would always be returned to the correct place on the wall. The kitchen contained a variety of everyday kitchen items as well as some for the professional chef (such as the magnetic knife board on the wall and the professional range and oven). The kitchen also included Julia’s collection of cookbooks.

Moving along to the third floor, we browsed through the pop culture galleries. Dumbo came from a ride at Disneyland.

The most famous article in the National Museum of American History is probably Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. The slippers were originally silver but were changed to red during filming because the red showed up better on the Technicolor film.

Kermit the Frog and Oscar the Grouch also found homes in the gallery.

We learned that Oscar the Grouch wasn’t always green. In early episodes of Sesame Street, he was yellow and then orange.

Looking down from the center of the third floor, we could see the long line waiting to see the newly restored Star Spangled Banner.

This was the original flag that inspired the national anthem during the War of 1812. Today the flag is in pretty bad shape and is displayed under low light conditions. The displays surrounding the flag told the story of the national anthem as well as the early history of the flag. The flag was owned privately for many years and at times sections of it were cut out and given away as souvenirs. How American, yet how unfortunate…

Outside the exhibit were a number of people dressed in period garb in honor of the reopening of the museum.

The museum was too large to take the whole thing in during a single afternoon, but we spent awhile longer wandering through the exhibits, particularly those about presidential life. The hat the Lincoln was wearing when he was shot was among the historical artifacts on display.

At this point, we’d had a pretty full day of sightseeing. We hopped on the train to Bethesda where we planned to meet our friends Avinash and Marketa for dinner. We were there a little early so we spent some time browsing in a Barnes and Noble before Avinash picked us up. Dinner was at a yummy Spanish tapas restaurant.

Saturday morning, Sarah got up and drove into DC to meet her friend Jen for brunch. Having never driven in DC before and not having a navigator, Sarah was quite proud of herself to make it to the restaurant without much hassle (only one wrong turn from a roundabout that was fairly easily corrected). The mostly grid arrangement of roads in DC is a big help when navigating in an unfamiliar area. Sarah and Jen had fun catching up and reminiscing about their days in France.

That afternoon, we went with Avinash and Marketa to a Czech movie called The Country Teacher. After the movie, we ate at a Lebanese restaurant.

Sunday, we drove out to Harpers Ferry. Sarah wanted to go to West Virginia, since it was one of the few states in the US that she hadn’t been to previously. As it happens, Harpers Ferry was about the closest point in West Virginia from where we were staying, and it is the site of a really interesting National Historical Park.

We parked at the visitors center and took the bus down to the historic townsite. The strategic location at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers made the area important through much of the early history of the US.

Looking up from the bus stop, we saw a well preserved church.

Much of the town is now owned and preserved by the National Park Service, but there are still some private buildings and businesses. This is one of the main streets in the area owned by the park system. Some of these buildings have been turned into museums.

It was a peaceful afternoon with only a few other people wandering around as we strolled through town taking in the sights.

We crossed the Potomac on a walking bridge beside the railroad tracks.

From there, we climbed a couple of miles on a pleasant hike through the woods, enjoying the fresh air and exercise. At the top, we were rewarded with views looking down on Harpers Ferry and the rivers.

After our hike, we continued exploring the old buildings and streets. Here’s a glimpse inside the local tavern.

Numerous old structures were beautifully preserved.

We finally dragged ourselves away around late afternoon and started the drive back to Virginia. Even the drive was pretty.

The next morning, we took a picture with Avinash and Marketa before continuing on our way up to Boston.

Richmond, Virginia

2008-12-16T07:29:00.001-08:00

Richmond, Virginia, turned out to be directly on the way from Myrtle Beach to Washington, D.C., so we decided to stop. As not only the state capital of Virginia but also the capital of the Confederate States of America (CSA), Richmond turned out to have some interesting history.

Across the street from Richmond’s Capitol Square was this gorgeous old government building:

Inside the square was this plaque, commemorating the CSA’s 1862 inauguration ceremony, where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as the first and only president of the Confederacy:

Also in Capitol Square was this monument to George Washington, the first of eight Virginia-born U.S. presidents.

Thomas Jefferson designed the Capitol building in 1785, based on classical Roman temple design. The initial Capitol was just the central building – the east and west wings weren’t added until 1906. Today, Virginia’s Capitol is the second-oldest still in use, next to the one in Annapolis, Maryland.

Oddly, you don’t enter the Capitol building directly. Instead, you enter what looks like a detached structure which is some distance away and built into the hillside. It turns out that this entrance leads to the Capitol’s underground extension, built in 2007 to add meeting, reception, and media space to the Capitol. As seems to be typical with construction projects, the project dragged on longer than expected, but was completed in time for its hard deadline, a visit by Queen Elizabeth for the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown.

The Roman temple architecture makes Virginia’s Capitol look very different from the typical domed capitols found in most other states. As it turns out, Virginia’s Capitol also has a dome, but it’s hidden from view from the outside.

In the Capitol’s rotunda is Jean-Antoine Houdon’s life-sized marble statue of George Washington, based on body measurements, sketches, and a mask made by the sculptor in 1785 at Mt. Vernon.

Surrounding Washington in the rotunda are busts of the other seven American presidents born in Virginia, including Thomas Jefferson.

This plate describes what’s known as the “Capitol Disaster,” which killed 62 people. The Capitol’s third floor couldn’t support the weight of the crowd drawn by a particularly popular court case, and collapsed into the House of Delegates’ chamber.

Patrick Henry was the seventh governor of Virginia when the Capitol’s first stone was laid in 1785.

Robert E. Lee accepted control of the Confederate troops in the Capitol building when Richmond was the capital of the CSA.

Another good outside view of the Capitol building.

Also in Capitol Square is the Executive Mansion, home of the governor of Virginia.

We’ve seen a few capitol buildings on our travels, but this one, due to its extensive history, may have been the best yet. After our stop, we continued on to D.C.!

Myrtle Beach

2008-12-16T06:02:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, November 13 we headed to Myrtle Beach. Along the way, we stopped at Murrell’s Inlet, where we walked on a boardwalk through a marshy area that was good bird habitat.

In Myrtle Beach, we checked into the Compass Cove resort, where we would be staying for the next three nights. We were overjoyed with our room – it had a gorgeous ocean view, and the resort had a wide variety of activities. We took advantage of a lot of them while we were there. We swam in the pool and floated the lazy river. The resort advertised that they had three different lazy rivers, to differentiate themselves from all the other resorts, many of which had their own lazy river. We’d never heard of a lazy river at a hotel, only at water parks. The lazy rivers at Compass Cove were nothing to write home about – just small rings of water with a current running so you could float in a tube. There wasn’t even enough room to pass people. It was still novel and fun, though.

We also played shuffleboard a few times. Brian won the first game, but Sarah quickly caught on, and by the end of our stay, she was a dominating shuffleboard force.

But the best amenity was the easy beach access. Each day, we walked out to the beach for our daily jogs. The beach here was a lot more populated than the section of Daytona Beach where we stayed – particularly on Saturday, when some sort of charity horse ride was going on. Still, we love jogging on the beach, so that was a lot of fun.

On Friday, we went to Broadway on the Beach, a massive entertainment complex consisting of a lake surrounded by lots of stores and restaurants, rides, an I-Max theater, and more. We walked all around, visited lots of the stores, sampled fudge, and partook of happy hour at one of the many bars.

In the lobby of our hotel, the concierge was offering free Medieval Times tickets, so we inquired about that. The concierge told us that a new resort had just opened, and they would give us Medieval Times tickets just for stopping by and checking it out, in the hopes that we’d tell our friends about it. Of course, we knew that this would be a timeshare sales pitch, but for free Medieval Times tickets, why not. We didn’t really have anywhere to be until the next weekend anyway, and the weather was turning colder, so we decided to stay in Myrtle Beach for another three days beyond our initial three, meaning we’d have plenty of time to do a timeshare presentation and take in a showing of Medieval Times. So we signed up.

We went to the timeshare presentation on Sunday. The salesman who was assigned to us could immediately see that we weren’t interested in a timeshare and tried to convince not to waste our time. We politely told him that no, it wasn’t a waste of our time – we’d be happy to sit through the sales pitch for our Medieval Times tickets. Then he questioned our income and even threatened that he’d look it up online, and if we were lying, we’d sit through the whole two-hour sales presentation and wouldn’t get our tickets. Knowing that he was bluffing (how on earth was he going to verify our income online) and also that we hadn’t lied about our income, we told him he could go right ahead. Then he disappeared for a bit, and eventually pulled us into a group sales presentation. When that was over, our salesman was required to give us a tour of the property. He didn’t give us a ride over there, and when we got there, we blew through the property in – no joke – 30 seconds. The tour consisted of, “Here’s the one-bedroom unit… Here’s the two-bedroom… Done.” He would barely even talk to us. Back at the sales center, we got our Medieval Times tickets, along with two free passes to the I-Max theater and a free photography sitting including an 8x12 portrait. Score!

We weren’t able to get another three-night stay at Compass Cove for the same price, so on Monday we checked into another resort further north. This one was also on the beach, and although we only had an ocean view room (rather than oceanfront), it also had a full kitchen, so we were able to cook our own meals. And in the lobby, there was another concierge who wanted us to check out a new resort and tell our friends about it. This one was offering $100 cash, so we signed up.

Tuesday morning, we went to the timeshare sales center, and this time, we got a much nicer salesman. He also realized that we weren’t interested, but he gave us the whole sales pitch anyway and a thorough tour of the property. It turned out to be the most reasonably priced timeshare deal we’ve seen yet, but we still turned him down and walked away with our $100. When the salesman walked away, he said, “Do me a favor and don’t sign up for any more of these. We work on straight commission.”

We’d feel guilty about wasting these guys’ time if their pre-sales model were more honest. If the concierge had said, “Now, you have to be willing to consider buying a timeshare to sign up for the tour,” we would have turned him down – we wouldn’t lie and say we were interested. But of course, they don’t mention timeshares at all when they sign you up – after all, they prey on people who have no interest whatsoever in timeshares, then get sucked in by the allure of “owning your own vacation,” the hard sell, the “today-only” pricing, etc. We have no qualms at all about committing to “come down and check out a new resort” in exchange for $100, free Medieval Times tickets, or whatever.

On Tuesday night, we went to Medieval Times. We got there early and were greeted by a knight in shining armor.

We had a coupon for free entry to the dungeon, which turned out to be a small room full of gruesome medieval torture devices for stretching, piercing, or crushing a confession out of the accused, guilty or not.

A knighting ceremony preceded the main show, in which the king and princess “knighted” customers who were celebrating special occasions like birthdays.

We weren’t celebrating anything in particular, other than our escape from the disgruntled timeshare salesman, so neither of us got knighted, but Sarah still got to sit in a throne.

In the main event, we were rooting for the red knight.

Every time he accomplished one of the assigned tasks, like sticking his lance through a small ring at high speed, he’d get flowers from the princess and throw them to his adoring female fans, including Sarah. But the main attraction was the food – a half chicken, ribs, soup, and more, all eaten without utensils. Mmm! In the end, the enemy was vanquished, peace returned to the kingdom, and we went home with full stomachs.

The next day, we went to the I-Max theater and saw The Dark Knight. It was fantastic – Heath Ledger was truly creepy on a screen that’s like eight stories tall.

Finally, we went for our photo sitting on Wednesday. We met the photographer at a specific spot on the beach, and he took dozens and dozens of photos of us in all different poses. He had a great demeanor, joking around, putting us at ease, and making us smile, and as we found out later when the photos were available online, they turned out quite well.

On Thursday, we left Myrtle Beach and headed north toward Washington, D.C.

Charleston

2008-12-16T06:00:00.001-08:00

Monday, November 10, we drove north from Savannah to Charleston. Along the way, we decided to stop at a wildlife refuge and Hilton Head Island.

The Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge is on the island before Hilton Head. It was supposed to have a dirt road where you could drive most of the length of the island. The road was closed though, so we parked and took a short stroll. We wished we had bikes with us so we could easily explore more of the island. The tide was out and it was almost noon, so the bird watching wasn’t especially good. After wandering for an hour or so, we decided to continue on to Hilton Head Island.

Hilton Head is known for being a vacation and retirement retreat for the well-off. Much of the island is covered with large, private gated communities. We’d picked up a guide to the historic sites on the island, so we set off to explore. The first site we tried to locate was Fort Howell. No road signs marked the entrance. After driving past the fort once, we finally found a tiny sign overgrown with weeds indicating the entrance. There wasn’t a parking lot to speak of – just a clearing in the woods – and a short walk took you to the “fort”. It would take a good deal of imagination to transform the few remaining overgrown earthen works sitting beside a housing development into a fort. Deciding we were lacking the necessary creativity, we headed back to the car.

Next we planned to stop at the Zion Chapel of Ease Cemetery. We also drove right by this site, since it was just a tiny parcel of land with a few gravestones on the side of the road. Several other historic sites turned out to be nothing more than markers. Bored by the historic tour, we decided we stop briefly at Shelter Cove and then continue our journey to Charleston.

Shelter Cove was a collection of upscale shops and dining establishments surrounding a marina. The centerpiece of the area was a large statue that functioned as a sundial.

We strolled around the marina before retreating to the car again.

That evening, we stayed in a hotel in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, just across the river from Charleston. In the morning, we drove back to the historic downtown area to explore.

Charleston doesn’t have the plethora of parks that Savannah does, but it does have an equally walkable and interesting historic downtown area. Our first stop was the market. The market stretched through several brick buildings with vendors selling all manner of goods. Many were similar to products seen at markets anywhere in the country. However, there were also a number of people selling pretty woven baskets.

This woman looked like she’d had a tough day already, though it was only mid-morning.

We later learned that the baskets were woven using a technique that West African slaves brought with them. The technique had been adapted to use local grasses, but the construction was very similar. Slaves used baskets made this way to separate rice from its hull.

Having made our way through the market, we had an early lunch at Jestine’s Kitchen, which came highly recommended by our guidebook as well as by the locals streaming out of it. Jestine’s served a number of southern dishes, including fried okra and fried green tomatoes. We decided to split a plate of pork chops with black-eyed peas and okra gumbo on the side. Yummy.

After lunch, we walked back to the waterfront. From there, we could see the Patriots Point Museum on the other side of the river.

There was also a cruise shipped docked. The town seemed too quiet for there to be a cruise ship in port. The impressive bridge behind the ship connects Charleston and Mt. Pleasant.

Our next stop was the Fort Sumter Visitors Center. To see the actual fort, you have to take a concessionaire boat trip an island in the harbor. We decided to skip the boat trip but did spend an hour or more browsing the extensive displays at the Visitors Center.

Fort Sumter was built in the 1820s as one of the series of coastal fortifications that included Fort Pulaski. It had an unremarkable first few decades of existence until, on April 12, 1861, it became the site where the first shot of the Civil War was fired. The fort was captured by the Confederates the next day and remained in Confederate hands until nearly the end of the Civil War. This was a major hole in the Union’s blockade of southern ports.

When we’d had our fill of the Fort Sumter Visitors Center, we took a walk around the Waterfront Park. The park has a long pier with shaded swings.

Here’s the view looking back at the park.

This funky pineapple fountain adorned the center of the park.

By now it was late afternoon and we were tired from all the walking we’d done, so we got in the car and drove around the southern part of the Charleston peninsula, taking in the narrow cobblestone roads and historic homes.

On Wednesday, we got up and used the gym that was free with our hotel stay. We’d expected the “gym” to be a small exercise room at the hotel, but it was actually a full offsite fitness center where we could show our room key to get in for free. It was a little bit of a drive but they had an impressive array of equipment and a class going on that we were welcome to join.

Our big activity of the day was visiting Drayton Hall. Drayton Hall is on of the major plantations in the Charleston area. The house is the oldest preserved plantation house in the US that is open to the public. The Drayton family used the house as a vacation property until the 1970s. They finally decided that the upkeep was too costly and turned the property over to a preservation society. Today the Draytons still return for Thanksgiving but otherwise the house is unoccupied.

Our tour started with a 45-minute program called “Connections” that described the life of the plantation’s slaves. Many of the plantations in the area produced rice. This plantation was one of a series of plantations owned by the Drayton family and was used more as a place to test new ideas than for full-scale rice production. The presentation detailed the horrifying conditions that slaves were forced to endure on the trip from Africa to America. In some cases, the conditions were so abysmal that fewer than half of the people who started the voyage survived.

The plantation was run on a task-based system. Each slave was assigned a task to complete for the day. Once his or her task was completed, the slave was free to spend time on personal ventures, such as planting small gardens for supplemental food. All the slaves lived in a set of huts set apart from the mansion. These buildings were originally thatched huts, as that was what the African slaves knew how to build. Later, they were replaced with wooden structures.

The mansion tour itself was very different than what we’d expected. Instead of being a fully furnished building, it was completely empty. The caretakers of the building have chosen not to have a climate control system installed, so they had to remove the furniture to preserve it. Rather than focusing on the family and their life at the plantation, much of the tour focused on the architecture of the house.

The symmetry of the building was very important as you can see from the front of the building.

Looking off the front porch, there is a reflecting pool.

Inside the house were elaborate plaster ceilings, the originals of which were all hand crafted.

The original fireplace mantels were not done with marble because of the cost of procuring that material.

There were several quirky features in the house including doors that didn’t open (and never had) that served only to make a room symmetrical, and a tiny spiral staircase that allowed servants to access the two main floors from the basement area.

Looking off the back porch was a large expanse of lawn sloping towards the Ashley River.

Here’s the back of the house.

And the front of the house from the reflecting pool.

We took the marsh walk past some old rice fields and then took a couple more photos of the house on our way back to the car.

That evening, we used a Dining Dough coupon that we’d gotten at a timeshare presentation awhile ago, and we went to the Swamp Fox restaurant. The restaurant was in a hotel and was nearly empty. The food did not disappoint, though. Dinner started with a cheese spread and crostinis followed by delicious warm bread and butter. For the main course, Sarah had crab cakes and Brian had lamb in a really yummy sauce. There was also mac ‘n cheese, Carolina red rice, and pepper jack grits. Needless to say, we were stuffed by the time we left.

Tomorrow, on to Myrtle Beach.

Savannah

2008-12-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

From Jacksonville, we drove north into Georgia. Stopping at a visitor information center along the highway, we realized that the southern Georgia coast had a bunch of cool things to see, such as Jekyll and Cumberland Islands. However, it was already late afternoon, so we decided it was best to continue along the highway towards Skidaway Island State Park, near Savannah, where we’d camp the next few nights.

Along the way, we stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel, since Sarah had never been there before and it seems to be a southern institution. The biscuits and gravy were yummy but the chicken and dumplings had an odd and unexpected slimy consistency. How unfortunate!

We arrived at Skidaway Island after dark (which, granted, is early these days), set up camp, and fell asleep to the sound of fireworks in the distance. We’d seen that Savannah has fireworks on the first Friday of the month, but given that we didn’t know when or where they were, we hadn’t bothered to drive into town to find them.

The next morning dawned bright and chilly. Sarah went for a jog along the park trails while Brian hung out at the campsite. The trail took her by a marsh with an observation tower, some old liquor stills, earthen works, and a strange-looking group that was apparently making a movie. At least, that was Sarah’s best guess as to why someone was dressed in a fuzzy bear costume, along with a bed and full living room (including rug, love seat, and TV) set up along the trail. It was rather strange.

After breakfast, we went into Savannah for the rest of the day. Sarah had been to Savannah once in college, but this was Brian’s first time there.

Savannah is a charming city, with an easily walkable historic downtown punctuated frequently by 21 city-block-sized squares in the center of town. Refreshingly, most of the historic section was free of omnipresent chain restaurants and touristy shops. The few shops and markets that did cater to tourists were clustered around River Street rather than spreading out to mar the entire historic district.

As we started our walk, we were drawn to a busy-looking square just north of the visitors center. It turned out that the Telfair Museum of Art was having its annual art festival. A wide assortment of work from local artists was on display, ranging from photos and paintings to thought-provoking multimedia collages.

From Telfair Square, we continued along to Bull Street, which boasts a square every few blocks and a large park at the end. The squares are lovely to stroll around. Most are shaded by stately live oaks draped with Spanish moss and surrounded by historic homes.

Most of the squares’ centers contained monuments, many of which honored American Revolution heroes, Civil War heroes, and other prominent figures from Savannah’s early history.

We also passed some historic buildings, including the Independent Presbyterian Church.

This building had interesting writing on the side, though we aren’t sure what it was.

Continuing along, we saw more monuments, moss-shaded streets, and well-preserved historic buildings.

Monterey Square boasted another large monument.

At the end of Bull Street, we finally reached Forsyth Park. The highlight of the park is a large fountain.

Given that it was a sunny Saturday afternoon, the park was full of people – there was a soccer game, a kid’s birthday party, and numerous people just out for a walk. It’s nice that Savannah has so much open space right in the city.

From Forsyth Park, we walked along historic Gaston Street.

Then we proceeded north towards the river along Abercorn Street. Abercorn Street had nearly as many squares as Bull Street. The highlight, though, was the Colonial Park Cemetery, which contained graves from as early as the 1700s.

By this point, we were tired from all the walking and lack of food, so we sat under a tree in the cemetery and had a snack to refuel.

Next we stopped briefly at the Owens-Thomas House. This is one of the well known historic homes that offer tours. We decided there was enough else to see in town that we’d pass on the tour, so we just took a photo of the outside of the building.

Eventually, we made our way to River Street, which, not surprisingly, runs along the Savannah River. The street has a collection of fun and funky touristy shops and a small market. Our favorite place was River Street Sweets. We’ve seen more than our share of fudge shops throughout our travels, but this one had all the others beat. To start with, there was an abundance of hot pralines (and, of course, free samples). Yum!

They were making their own taffy with this odd-looking contraption that pulled the taffy, wrapped it, and spit it out the bottom. From there, it was funneled into a cart and pulley system that delivered it to barrels in another part of the store.

We found a number of other delectable-looking homemade goodies and barrel upon barrel of vintage candies.

Back outside, a street performer entertained people and a trolley tour passed by on the cobblestone streets.

Further down the street, past most of the bustle, we took a break at a tavern offering cheap happy hour specials. From there, we walked through City Market and eventually back to our car, which was parked near the visitors center. We’d definitely gotten our exercise for the day.

Sunday, November 9, after our morning run, we drove out to Fort Pulaski. Fort Pulaski was built by order of James Madison after the war of 1812 as part of a coastal protection system. Before the fort was ever used to defend against foreigners, Georgia seceded from the union and the Civil War broke out. The Confederates took the fort without any resistance, which set the stage for a battle that would change military history.

One day, the Confederates saw Union troops positioning themselves on Tybee Island, a mile away from the fort – too far to mount an artillery attack, or so they thought. The union used a new type of cannon, however – a rifled cannon, which could shoot farther and more accurately than a traditional cannon, due to the addition of grooves on the inside. Worse, since the fort was U.S. property before the South took it, the Union troops had its blueprint, so they knew exactly which section of wall to target to give them access to the powder magazine on the northwest side of the fort, where 40,000 pounds of gunpowder was stored. Once the Union cannons blasted through the wall and started lobbing cannonballs very close to the powder magazine, the Confederate commander surrendered, rather than wait till the powder magazine exploded and took the lives of all of his troops. With the fort in Union hands, the Savannah port was shut down for the rest of the war. And the innovation of rifled cannons had made forts all along the coast obsolete.

As it turns out, the fort was hosting a historical reenactment in honor of Veterans’ Day. There were a number of people who’d spent the weekend there dressed in period costume and giving weapons demonstrations. Here, the soldier on the right demonstrates proper form when using a bayonet while the soldier on the left calls out commands.

Death by bayonet seemed like a particularly gruesome way to go, but as it turns out, the most common use for a bayonet during the war was as a candle holder (pointed tip stuck in the ground, candle in the rounded end that attaches to the gun).

Next was a demo of a firearm of the time.

The big finale was the demo of the cannons.

Here the crew demonstrates how these large weapons were moved into place using long poles.

The blast from the canon was earsplitting, even though they used only half as much gunpowder as would have been used in war.

Here, the entire group of soldiers is assembled to tell the crowd about themselves. The women who’d come along to cook for the weekend looked on.

After the demonstrations, we wandered around the rest of the fort. This cannon is pointed out toward the entranceway of the fort.

From the top of the fort, there was a clear view of the marsh and river beyond it.

Here’s the view looking back towards the courtyard of the fort.

Outside the fort, much of the damage was still visible, including some cannonballs that were still lodged in the walls. The lighter brick is an area where the entire wall was rebuilt.

After our visit to the fort, we drove out to Tybee Island. A large public beach there is apparently very popular with locals, though in the off-season, it was looking quite uninspiring. A bunch of construction was going on, and the part of the beach that wasn’t blocked off had an enormous pipe running across it.

After the full day of sight-seeing, we went back to Skidaway Island for one more night before continuing up the coast to Charleston, South Carolina.

St. Augustine and Jacksonville

2008-11-21T04:44:00.001-08:00

On November 7, we left Daytona Beach and drove up to St. Augustine, originally settled in 1565 and the oldest continuously settled city in the U.S. We found out that there’s a national monument there, Castillo de San Marcos, and being fans of National Park Service sites, we decided to check it out and learn the history of the area.

The Atlantic coast of Florida was strategically important because the Gulf Stream, the best shipping route to carry products from the New World back to Europe, flows right by Florida. The French established the first fort there, but the Spanish, under Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, ousted the French and took control of Florida. British pirates were the new threat, and with the establishment of a settlement at Charleston, the English were encroaching on the Spanish space, so they built a fort to protect St. Augustine. Begun in 1672, Castillo de San Marcos was completed in 1695. In 1702, the English burned all of St. Augustine, but even a 50-day siege failed to take the fort.

The Spanish held Florida until 1763 and then, in the treaty that ended the French and Indian War, traded Florida to Great Britain for Cuba. With the end of the Revolutionary War, the Treaty of Paris gave Florida back to Spain, which then gave it to the United States in 1821. Finally, in 1935 it became a national monument.

The walls of the fort were constructed of Coquina, a sedimentary rock mixed with small shells that was used because it was readily available but turned out to have the happy property that cannonballs bored into the walls but didn’t break them.

Here’s the bridge over the moat to the inner entrance of the fort.

The top of the fort afforded nice views of the bay.

Some of the artillery atop the fort was museum-quality, including this mortar.

After touring the fort, we walked around the old center of St. Augustine. It turned out to be disappointingly touristy, but it did have some nice sights, including this steeple.

Here’s the view looking down George Street, the main pedestrian street in St. Augustine.

And the self-proclaimed oldest wooden schoolhouse in the U.S.

We left St. Augustine in the early afternoon and discovered in our guidebook that one of Anheuser-Busch’s 12 breweries is in Jacksonville, just an hour north of St. Augustine! We’re not particular fans of Budweiser beer, but we’ve done several microbrewery tours and thought a tour of an industrial brewery would be interesting for comparison.

At the brewery tours are offered every half hour, and we arrived just a few minutes before the next tour was to start – just enough time to admire the wide variety of Anheuser-Busch beers on display.

As it turned out, we were the only people for our timeslot, so we got our own private tour. We got to learn about the history of Anheuser-Busch, in which the money came from Mr. Anheuser and the brewing and marketing expertise came from generation after generation of Busches, starting with Adolphus Busch, who married Mr. Anheuser’s daughter and applied many innovations that allowed for selling Budweiser nationwide, including pasteurization and refrigeration on railroad cars. After Adolphus, the Busches all seemed to be named August, with August Busch IV serving as the most recent CEO and signing off on the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch by InBev after 150 years of family control.

We learned that the difference between lagers like Budweiser and ales is in the yeast. The yeast used for lagers is bottom-fermenting and works at lower temperatures, while ales are fermented with a top-fermenting yeast at higher temperatures.

We found it interesting that Budweiser is made with rice mixed with the barley malt. In fact, we learned that the amount of rice vs. corn is one of the big differences between Michelob (Anheuser-Busch’s premium beer), Budweiser, and Bush (the low-end beer). Another difference is the barley used – Michelob uses all two-row barley, while Busch uses a mixture of two-row and six-row. A third is the hops – Michelob uses imported hops, while Budweiser uses a blend of imported and domestic hops.

Here’s a view of the massive, shiny beer-making equipment:

The tour ended in the bar, where we got to sample our choice of Anheuser-Busch beers. Brian had the Budweiser American Ale and the Michelob Porter, and both were surprisingly good! Anheuser-Busch isn’t just Budweiser – they actually make good beers! This was a major discovery for a microbrew lover.

After the tour, Sarah got her picture taken with a life-size Clydesdale figure.

Orlando and Daytona Beach

2008-11-21T04:39:00.001-08:00

On Halloween, we left Miami after our cruise and headed up the Atlantic Coast of Florida. It was a gray day, with rain threatening, so we didn’t embark on any major outdoor activities, but we did stop in Boca Raton at the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, which turned out to be surprisingly cool. It’s a 20-acre section of a nature park that’s reserved for education and research. First we played a game of matching bird photos to their names in the nature center. We did remarkably well after our weeks in Florida. Then we walked along the nature trail through the tropical hardwood hammock, which was habitat that we’d seen many times before during our Florida travels. Next we headed to the research area where a gender study was being performed on sea turtles. There’s apparently no easy way to tell whether a sea turtle is a boy or a girl, so the study was testing a new technique.

Now it was time for the afternoon fish feeding, which turned out to be the highlight of the whole day. Outside the nature center was a set of large cylindrical tanks holding a variety of sea life. We got to see a pair of loggerhead turtles, Milton and FeeBee, which were soon to be released back into the wild, where they would roam the world, literally – apparently, sea turtles can range over thousands of miles during lives that may last 80 years. As it turns out, they were released within the week, and their tracking devices showed that they swam six miles in their first two days of freedom.

Next we saw a green sea turtle named Wiggie that was extremely lazy – the feeder had to poke it to wake him up, and even then, it would only eat food placed right in front of its face. It had been captured in 1971 and lived most of its 60- or 70-year life in captivity, so we figured it was entitled to be lazy. There were many other interesting sea creatures in the tanks, including several varieties of lobsters, but the turtles were definitely the highlight. The only disappointment was that they didn’t have any leatherbacks on hand – leatherbacks have been found weighing up to a ton! They’re the largest reptiles outside of some crocodilians.

After the fantastic nature center, we continued up the Atlantic to West Palm Beach, where we admired the multimillion-dollar homes and the gorgeous windswept beach. Then we drove on to Kissimmee, where we would spend two nights.

Our plan was to go to one of the Disney water parks, but a check of the weather forecast made clear that it was too cold for an enjoyable trip to the water park. So we played a thrilling game of mini golf whose outcome was decided on the final hole and went to downtown Orlando to check out Fall Fiesta, a weekend art festival at Lake Eola Park. The lake was quite pretty.

After that, we went to the discount theater to see Wall-E, which we found enjoyable but not quite as good as some of the earlier Pixar movies. We had to admit that the filmmakers had done a great job with the difficult task of making a compelling character out of a robot. That night, we went to Giordano’s for dinner. Giordano’s is a chain Chicago deep-dish pizzeria, and Brian’s favorite. We’ve never seen them outside the Chicago area except in Orlando, where there are several. We had a wonderful pizza of cheesy decadence before heading back to our hotel.

The next day we checked out one of several flea markets in Kissimmee. It was an impressive market – hundreds and hundreds of booths, all selling random crap like knock-off sunglasses, three-for-ten-dollars T-shirts, and cheap batteries. We paid a dollar for a sunglasses clip for our car that seems like it’s going to break any day.

After that, we drove to Daytona Beach, where we would stay in an oceanfront room for three nights! We’d found a great deal online, so a room that might be several hundred dollars during one of Daytona’s big tourist times (spring break, biker weeks, or race weeks) was less than $30 a night. Along the way, we stopped at the Southeast Museum of Photography, a small photography museum. It had several exhibits, including one really cool set of behind-the-scenes photos of American presidential life. The photographer was part of the White House press corps, but instead of just taking standard newspaper photos of presidents, advisors, etc., he photographed the entire scene – Secret Service guys, other members of the press – and in doing so, did a great job of capturing the scene.

After spending a long time enjoying the photos, we finally headed to our hotel, which was everything we hoped for and more. The exterior was a gaudy lime-green color, but the room itself was very nicely decorated and cheerful, and the view was absolutely fabulous. We didn’t wind up doing a whole lot in Daytona. The resort had DVD players available to borrow, so we got one and rented a bunch of movies from the nearby Redbox -- Sex and the City, The Bucket List, The Visitor, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The resort also offered water aerobics at the pool of their sister property next door, so we did that a couple of times. The pool was beautiful – it was in a tropically landscaped atrium and had a water temperature somewhere above 90 degrees! We went running on the beach each day, too, which was fun. Daytona was like a ghost town in the off-season, so the beach was lovely. We loved the sound of the ocean so much that when we were in our room, we mostly kept the sliding door to our balcony open so that we could hear the crashing waves.

After three nights in Daytona we hadn’t had enough, so we found a web deal for two more nights. We checked out the Angell & Phelps Chocolate Factory, which offered a free tour. They don’t actually make the chocolate there, but rather make all sorts of confections using chocolate from elsewhere. We were amazed at how labor-intensive the process was – for instance, we watched a guy open a huge bag of potato chips and then dip each potato chip, one by one, in chocolate. What a crummy job! They gave us free samples at the end, though, which were fantastic – then we were grateful for all the employees’ hard work.

We also checked out the downtown pier area, which was a bit disappointing. It was pretty small and, not surprisingly, very quiet. It would probably be an entirely different scene during spring break. But we mostly hung out around the resort. We’d moved to a different room due to some noisy construction work that was going on in a nearby room. Our new room wasn’t officially oceanfront – instead, it had an ocean view – but it also had a full kitchen, so Sarah enjoyed being able to cook real meals without having to use our camp stove. The view was still pretty good too…

After five nights, we finally decided we’d had enough and headed up to our next stop, St. Augustine.

Bahamas cruise

2008-11-19T07:18:00.001-08:00

Although we had a lot of fun on the Gulf Coast of Florida, our drive down the coast was really just a precursor for the end-of-October highlight: a cruise to the Bahamas! We would leave on October 27 from Miami for a four-night cruise, visiting three ports in the Bahamas.

But as we left the Everglades, we had two nights left before the beginning of our cruise, so we headed to Homestead, where we had booked a hotel. The hotel turned out to be a dive, a far cry from the inviting photos online – so much so that Sarah wrote a letter to the hotel to complain. But it was only for two nights, and we survived.

We had a quiet stay in Homestead. We went to the movie theater to see Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, which was cute. And the next day, we went to Biscayne National Park for a picnic lunch. The park was basically a city park – we were joined by lots of groups of Miami-area locals picnicking and hanging out on a Sunday afternoon. A boombox was blasting Latin music while parents and kids tossed balls and snacked.

Monday finally came – the day of our cruise! We got to the cruise terminal right at noon, which was the earliest time we could board our ship, the Norwegian Sky. When we boarded, we were welcomed with champagne. We ate an enjoyable sit-down lunch in one of the ship’s restaurants while we waited for our room to be ready, and then with great anticipation, we went to our room. Although it was tiny, as expected, it was also bright and clean, with a comfortable bed and a TV showing CNN and Fox News so that we could track the final days of the presidential campaign. Particularly after the disappointing Homestead hotel, this was fantastic!

After relaxing in our room awhile, we went back up on deck. A cruise ship was just leaving from another terminal.

The harbor was pretty, packed with boats and backed by the Miami cityscape.

Here’s Sarah, enjoying the sunshine.

And then within half an hour, we were moving! As we crawled out of the port, we got views of how the rich and famous live. This looked like a sweet boat:

Another yacht, with oceanfront mansions behind it, with some palm trees to protect them from prying tourists:

As we left the port, we passed Miami Beach.

And then, just as we were about to enter the open sea, we passed a newlywed couple taking photos.

Way out in the ocean, we passed this surfer, standing on his board and paddling.

It wasn’t long before we were looking back on Miami to the west, and beyond the city was a gorgeous sunset!

And then the sun was gone.

We took each other’s photos in front of the sensational sky.

If anything, the sky just got prettier after the sun had set.

We spied the other cruise ship that had left Miami ahead of us, also making its way to the Bahamas.

As the sun dropped further below the horizon, the clouds burned a brighter and brighter orange.

On the deck of the ship, a few other people were also starting off their cruise by enjoying the sun’s last light.

That night, we sat down for dinner with two other couples. The guy sitting next to Sarah was born in Italy and lived in Africa, and Sarah had a great time talking to him. After dinner, we went to the opening-night cruise show, which was a sampler of the attractions to come. The Broadway-style singers and dancers performed a couple of songs, and the cruise’s comedian/magician did a short show. The cruise director was a little bit lame, but we enjoyed the other acts.

The next morning, we got up early, ate the breakfast buffet, and watched as our ship pulled into Freeport on Grand Bahama Island, our first stop in the Bahamas!

Freeport is a very industrial port with not a lot to do right near the port, so we decided to book a shore excursion for this day. A bus took us to Port Lucaya, where we boarded a catamaran for snorkeling! The seas were a bit choppy, but it was another bright sunny day!

After a short ride out to sea, the crew dropped anchor and told us we could jump in. The seas were so choppy that they made us all wear life vests. Almost immediately, we were looking at coral and brightly colored tropical fish below us. We got so caught up in admiring the fish and following them around that we got too far away, and one of the crew had to swim out and tell us to come back closer to the boat. There was lots of fish action close to the boat, too, in part because the crew threw food into the water to attract the fish.

After a long while of snorkeling, Sarah was cold and finally got out. She shivered violently for a while in the breeze before finally warming up a bit. Brian stayed in for the full 1.5 hours and wound up being the last person out of the water. It was a wonderful excursion!

The catamaran had a water slide that dropped straight into the water, but we were so busy watching the fish that we never used it. The boat also had a climbing wall, though, and on the trip back to shore, Sarah tackled it.

The other passengers, many older, were amazed at her climbing prowess. Here she is, basking in her newfound climbing celebrity, and just a bit wind-blown.

When we got back to our ship, we admired its cheerful paint job.

We took one more photo of the industrial port area before heading back to our stateroom.

In our room, Miss Potter, with Renee Zellweger, was playing, and we had to watch, since it brought back good memories of Beatrix Potter’s children’s book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, for Sarah. After that, we had another nice sit-down dinner before heading to the theater for a Broadway-style show. We were lucky to get seats just a couple rows from the stage for what turned out to be a great show. The Broadway group was really talented – great singing and dancing, lots of enthusiasm, and mostly in sync. They performed songs from a variety of different musicals, including a few from Mama Mia.

On our second full day of the cruise, we were in port at Nassau. The morning started out a bit cloudy, but it was good weather for walking around. Unlike Freeport, the Nassau port is close to town and there is a lot to see within walking distance.

We got off the ship and walked down the pier, dodging the myriad ship photographers who wanted to take our picture with a person in a parrot costume, under a Bahamas sign, in front of the ship, etc. They sure are persistent.

Looking back, here’s our ship, docked in its home port.

We strolled down Bay Street, a major shopping center, and admired the brightly colored buildings and alleys. It was still early, not even 9 am, so the streets were nearly deserted.

We were looking for the straw market, where locals sell their wares, but nearly missed it because it was further down Bay Street than our guidebook indicated. The market burned down several years ago and is now located under a huge tent. There were dozens of vendors with tiny stalls and tons of goods packed under the roof. Some of the vendors weren’t at work yet and their stalls remained covered in tarps. Bags and purses were popular items for sale, as well as lots of touristy trinkets.

We were practically the only tourists in the market. It was hard to imagine maneuvering through the aisles when the place would be filled up with people later in the day.

Right next door was Señor Frog’s.

From there, we continued our walking tour. We found that drivers were quite pedestrian friendly. One actually stopped so that Brian could take this photo of the Government House without having a car in the picture.

Our next stop was the Central Bank of the Bahamas. The lobby area housed a fairly sizeable collection of paintings by several local artists.

Next door, was the Balcony House Museum, which is also run by the Central Bank of the Bahamas.

There, we were given a tour of the house. The house is noteworthy for being the oldest wooden structure in the Bahamas, dating from the 18th century. The house was eclectically decorated from different time periods when it was lived in and included a number of features that were salvaged from wrecked ships, including a beautiful mahogany staircase.

Moving along, we passed the library.

We aren’t sure what this building was, but the red shutters were eye-catching.

Finally, we reached the Queen’s Staircase.

The 65 stairs are carved out of solid limestone and were named in honor of Queen Victoria’s 65-year reign. The staircase originally served as a quicker route to Fort Fincastle, which was located on the highest part of the island and was used as a lookout.

The views from the top were indeed expansive. Among other things, we could see our ship in the port.

There was another straw market at the base of the fort.

From here, we resumed our walk, planning to cross the bridge to Paradise Island and see the Atlantis resort.

Before crossing the bridge, we stopped at Potter’s Cay (pronounced, unintuitively enough, “key”) under the bridge. There we got a look at the third-biggest industry in the area – fishing (the first two are banking and tourism).

Brightly colored market stalls filled the spaces under the bridge, though many of the stalls sat empty.

Conch seemed to be the primary catch this time of year.

The fishermen were very friendly, even though we weren’t interested in buying their fish. This man spent a long time telling us about fishing conchs.

The fishermen dive down to remove the conchs off the bottom of the sea. In the past, some fishermen have dumped the shells overboard where they fished, and that created problems with the conch population because the conchs will not re-inhabit an area strewn with previously used shells.

Another fisherman invited us onto his boat to see the fish stored in the hold below the boat. The entire bottom of the boat was used to store fish and had holes to allow water to circulate.

We took some more pictures of the harbor and then continued along.

We backtracked to one of the bridges and crossed over to Paradise Island, home of the Atlantis resort. From the middle of the bridge, it was easy to get a sense of the enormity of Atlantis.

This is the original Atlantis building. The brightly colored buildings in the foreground are also accommodations associated with the Atlantis resort.

Up closer, here’s the main Atlantis building, the Royal Towers.

Inside, we passed through a huge casino to get to the Great Hall of Waters, where we could see the Ruins Lagoon. We opted to view just the free portion of the aquarium instead of paying $36 each to see the whole thing. The lagoon was fascinating. The best part was the two manta rays.

There were a number of other fish as well.

After spending about a half hour watching the fish, we skipped the upscale shopping and exited the building, hoping to walk around the outdoor lagoons. As it turns out, most of the outside area was off-limits unless you are staying at the hotel or willing to pay $65 to use the pools and beach or $150 to use the water park. We decided to pass.

Right next to the resort was a public beach, Cabbage Beach. It took some walking to get there since the resort itself is so large, but we weren’t disappointed. The sand was bright and clean, there were enormous waves crashing, and it wasn’t too crowded.

Sarah enjoys lounging on the sand.

Here’s Brian nearly being swallowed by a wave even though he’s only about 10 feet from the edge of the water.

For as few people as there were on the beach, there was no shortage of people trying to sell us drinks in coconuts or offering to braid Sarah’s hair.

We hung out and enjoyed the beach for a couple of hours before heading back to the ship.

We’d done a lot of walking in the morning, so instead of walking back, we took the water taxi from Paradise Island back to the main island and the cruise ship terminal.

We spent the rest of the day just hanging out on the ship – using the exercise room, enjoying another sit-down dinner, and watching the comedy show of the evening. We were surprised to see that we were still in port in the evening but later discovered that the ship had stayed late in port for maintenance. We could have gotten back off the ship to take advantage of the local nightlife, but we decided to pass.

We spent the final full day of our cruise at Great Stirrup Cay. Great Stirrup Cay is a private island owned by Norwegian.

The cruise ship anchored off the island, and we were taken over to the island on a tender boat.

The island had a large beach on a lagoon that was set up with beach chairs and umbrellas. There were also numerous picnic tables and hammocks, volleyball, ping pong, and a small straw market.

We took the first tender boat of the morning, so the beach was pleasantly quiet when we arrived and stayed that way for a couple of hours. We lounged in the chairs reading for a while, played some ping pong, and enjoyed the hammocks. Eventually, the beach started to fill up. About this time, a band started playing and they fed us a barbecue on the beach.

After lunch, we took a stroll to the other side of the island where there is a lighthouse and a small, hard-to-find beach. There were only a couple other people on the beach. We finally started back to the main beach area, planning to go for a swim.

By the time we got back, they were loading people onto tender boats to evacuate the island early because the water had gotten so choppy. We were a little disappointed, but since we’d come over early we did get quite a bit of time on the island. Apparently a couple of years ago, a number of cruise ship passengers got stranded overnight on a nearby island when the seas became too rough to get them back to the cruise ship. That sounded like not much fun.

Back on the boat, we enjoyed dinner looking back on the island. As we sailed away, we could see lightning in the distance.

That evening, we watched the final Broadway-style dance show before calling it a night.

Friday morning, we were back in Miami. We took our time eating breakfast and getting off the ship. When we did finally get off, we noticed some oddly dressed port employees. It took us a few minutes to realize it was Halloween. We’d completely forgotten.

Next, we’d start our journey up the east coast.

Everglades - South

2008-11-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

On Friday, October 24, we left the Keys and drove into the southern part of the Everglades. Our first stop was the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center, where we planned the rest of our visit. It sounded like there were several good nature trails to walk.

Next we headed to the Royal Palm Visitor Center, where two trails began. First we walked the Anhinga Trail, where sure enough, we got great views of anhingas.

First we saw a female.

Nearby was a male.

Further along the trail, we saw a tree with lots of air plants in it – plants that grow in the air, rather than out of soil. This particular plant collects blowing debris from the air for nutrients.

Next we saw the most interesting sight yet: a sleeping alligator with a huge bulge in its belly!

It must have eaten something big and swallowed it whole. Now it was sleeping it off as its digestive system went to work. When we asked a ranger about it later, he speculated that it might have been a big bird.

On the way back to the trailhead, we saw another anhinga drying its wings in the breeze.

And then we saw these two bugs, looking quite busy.

Next we walked the Gumbo Limbo Trail through a hardwood hammock. The Pinelands Trial was up next, and here we happened upon a park ranger who was cutting out the poisonwood near the trail to prevent hikers from brushing up against it. The Everglades’ main season starts in November, so the once-a-year poisonwood clearing was going on now in preparation for the season.

The ranger was near the end of his workday and nearly finished with his pruning, so he offered to show us some tree snails. As it turned out, he walked us through the entire trail, naming plants along the way, but the most amazing part was definitely the tree snails. We found dozens of them, right about at eye level, with gorgeous colorings and markings. Yellow/brown stripes and pink tips were characteristic of some of the snails in this hammock.

But the ranger said that the coloring is specific to the hammock – in a different hammock, the snails would be colored completely differently. As it gets closer to winter, the snails will climb up higher in the trees, eating lichens that grow on the trees along the way.

We also came across an orb spider, which was enormous – maybe three inches across, including the legs. It looked big and scary, but the ranger said we didn’t need to be too concerned, so Brian got in close for a picture.

Our next trail was the Pa-hay-okee Overlook Trail, where we got an overview of the “river of grass”.

On the Mahogany Hammock Trail, we found more snails. They indeed had different colors – they were far less interesting than those on the Pinelands Trail.

Finally, we reached the Flamingo area at the end of the road. We checked out the visitors center, which was most interesting for the osprey nest on top.

We set up camp in the Flamingo campground, which seemed unexciting but functional. The only disturbing thing was the vultures – there were dozens of them, likely attracted by the many fishermen at work near the campground, or maybe by the several-days-dead rotting-fish smell emanating from the dumpster near our campsite.

After dark, though, it got exciting, and not in a good way – we were soon in a cloud of bugs! Mosquitoes, no-see-ums, and various others swarmed. In our tent, it sounded like it was drizzling outside, but the sound wasn’t raindrops; it was bugs running into the rainfly. Each time we opened the tent to get in or out, we spent the next 15 minutes killing the dozens of bugs that came in uninvited.

The next morning, we set a new speed record packing up the tent, and we headed out. We saw some more great birds on the way out, including this red-shouldered hawk.

Caroline climbed up, up, up to the high mountain pass that separated the campground from the park entrance. Finally, with Caroline wheezing, we reached Rock Reef Pass, elevation three feet.

We weren’t sure if the sign was a joke or serious. Can a place really be called a pass if it’s only three feet above sea level? Anyway, Caroline cruised down the other side of the pass and we left the park.

Florida Keys

2008-11-01T12:46:00.002-07:00

After our day in the Everglades, we drove down to Key Largo, where we would camp at John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park for two nights. When we arrived, we found that the sites were almost as close together as those at Myakka River, but fortunately, none of our neighbors watched TV all night long.

On Tuesday morning, our campsite was teeming with ibises! Unfortunately, we didn’t take any pictures. That afternoon, we went to the Key Largo Conch House for key lime pie, which was deliciously tart. Apparently, the way to tell real key lime pie is by the color. Pale yellow indicates authenticity, while green indicates that food coloring has been added to enhance tourist appeal.

Back at the campsite, we found a large – probably five or six feet long – iguana! It was extremely colorful, too – what an odd mix of ugly features and gorgeous coloring.

The next day, we packed up and headed further south along the keys. We stopped at Robbie’s of Islamorada, where visitors can go out on the docks and look at the tarpon for a dollar, or buy a bucket of fish to feed them for three dollars more. We bought two admissions and a bucket of fish and headed out to the dock.

We were promptly greeted by pelicans, who were clearly quite interested in the bucket of fish we were carrying.

When we looked over the edge of the dock, we could see that the tarpon were practically on top of each other, swarming the dock. They were impressive fish, up to five feet long and averaging about 80 pounds!

We’d bought our bucket of fish, so now it was time to feed the tarpon.

When one of us would hold a fish above the water, it was clear that the tarpon could see it or at least sense it. They would swim right to where the fish was. Then when we’d throw it into the water, the tarpon would attack it, splashing the water in a vicious race for food.

At one point, Sarah held a fish just two feet above the water, and a tarpon came shooting out of the water, mouth gaping open, pointy teeth glistening. If Sarah hadn’t jumped back, that tarpon might have gotten both the fish and her hand! She thought that holding the fish two feet above the water was safe, but apparently not – those tarpon can jump!

Eventually, we exhausted our supply of fish. The disappointed pelicans had to go hungry, at least until the next group of tarpon-feeding tourists arrived.

We continued driving south along the keys and stopped at Sombrero Beach, near Marathon. It turned out to be a pretty, relatively wild-looking beach, and we had it all to ourselves. We walked the length of the small beach, enjoying the views.

The highway that connects the keys is an engineering marvel. In one place, there is a seven-mile long bridge. In many places, sections of bridge had been rebuilt and the old bridge was left and is now used by fisherman. Here is one small section of bridge connecting the keys.

By the time we arrived at Bahia Honda State Park, where we would be staying for the night, it was raining, so rather than setting up camp, we continued to Coco’s Kitchen for lunch. Our guidebook recommended it as a good place to get authentic Cuban food, and we ordered yellow rice and beans, Cuban break, and conch fritters, along with a shot of espresso. The conch fritters weren’t quite what we were expecting, but it was all quite good. While we were eating, the rain outside became a deluge, and we were glad we hadn’t set up our tent yet.

After eating lunch, we reluctantly went back outside into the rain and struggled to figure out what to do next. We hung out at the library for a while, went to the National Key Deer Refuge visitors center, and eventually set up our tent during what turned out to be a very brief dry period. We huddled in the tent and played a game of Scrabble while the rain pounded down on our tent, and we realized that water was soaking through our floor. We grabbed some plastic garbage bags and laid our Therm-a-rests on top of those in the hopes of staying relatively dry and went to bed.

It poured for much of the night, but the garbage bags did their job – we didn’t wind up swimming inside the tent during the night. It wasn’t raining when we woke up, so we did what we could to dry out the tent and the stuff inside before heading to Key West.

Along the way, we stopped at the National Key Deer Refuge to see if we could get a look at the elusive key deer. The key deer is a subspecies of white-tailed deer that only lives in the Florida Keys. They’re the smallest of the white-tailed deer – a full-grown adult male only stands 2.5 feet tall at the shoulder. And they’re endangered, numbering only a few hundred animals, so they’re not easy to find.

We drove to Blue Hole, supposedly a good place to see them. Well, we didn’t find any deer, but we did see a small gator.

Then, as we drove further, we saw a deer right at the side of the road! Based on his size and the size of his antlers, he looked young, but he was probably a full-grown deer.

He wasn’t at all shy. He looked right at us and then came up closer to the car.

Our key deer-sighting quest complete, we continued on toward Key West. There, we first visited a cemetery, which was notable for its elaborate above-ground structures, probably partially a reflection of the relative wealth of Key West residents but more so an adaptation to the environment – bury a body underground, and it might wash away in the next major flood, but put it in a massive concrete box above ground and it will stay put.

An area of the cemetery was devoted to sailors who died in the 1898 sinking of the battleship USS Maine, which triggered the Spanish-American War.

Next we headed to the Eco-Discovery Center, a small but fascinating free museum. Immediately west of Key West, the ocean and small islands are protected as the Key West National Wildlife Refuge, and this museum seemed to act as a visitors center for that wildlife refuge. It seemed quite new and did a nice job of explaining the different habitats of southern Florida, from hardwood hammock and mangrove to patch reef and deep shelf.

After that, we went to the southernmost point in the U.S., marked by a large block of concrete resembling a buoy. It turns out that Hawaii is further south, so the point can only claim to be the southernmost point in the continental U.S., and even then, there are points further south. A Wikipedia entry does a nice job of cataloging the U.S.’s extreme points, and according to that entry, Key West can only claim to be the southernmost city in the contiguous states.

Nevertheless, there was a large crowd of tourists around the marker, and we got our picture taken like everyone else.

As it turned out, we were in Key West during Fantasy Fest, a weeklong Halloween celebration. As we heard one person say, Fantasy Fest is the week when people come to Key West to go crazy, and the local Key West crazies seem normal. First and foremost, it’s a week of debauchery, with public drinking and nudity the norm. But it’s also a non-stop costume party, with many different dress-up events held throughout the week, from a Pirate’s Bash to a Toga Party to a Pajama & Lingerie Party. There’s even a Pet Parade, where people dress up their dogs, cats, iguanas, etc. Local stores sell elaborate costumes and for those who don’t want to be free of fabric, body painters will paint amazing costumes right on your naked body.

We went to a pool party at Dante’s, a local bar and restaurant.

Around sunset, we walked to Mallory Square, which was full of street performers. We’ve never seen such competition among performers – as soon as one show finished, five performers would start shouting, trying to draw crowds over to their areas of the square. After a few minutes of this, it would become clear that one performer had gained the majority of the audience, and the other performers would accept defeat this time, only to try again the next time there was a break in the action.

We watched a gymnast’s street show. He did handstand push-ups as his opening trick. Then he set up some soda cans with crumpled dollar bills on top and did flips, grabbing the dollar bills while flying over the cans, upside down. For his final trick, he jumped through a hoop barely wider than his body and held at about his eye level. He dove headfirst through the hoop, landing on the concrete in a somersault. He was quite amazing.

Walking back through downtown Key West after dark, the costumed revelers were out in force, including a vulgar version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and a fantastic Egyptian pharaoh and his queen.

After a fun day in Key West, we headed back to our soggy campsite at Bahia Honda. Thankfully, our tent was still there and not as wet as it had been the night before.

In the morning, the sky was briefly clearer then quickly clouded up again. We drove back to the Bahia Honda beaches to get a few photos before leaving. First we stopped at Calusa Beach. From there, two sections of bridge were visible. This is the new bridge.

This is the old bridge.

Then we drove to the other end of the park to the Sandspur beach. The Keys are not known for their beaches. Bahia Honda is considered to have the nicest beaches in the Keys. However, it was near high tide and there wasn’t a lot of beach. The vistas were still pleasant though.

The stormy clouds were quickly rolling back in so we took a few more pictures than continued on our way.

Next stop, the southern part of the Everglades.

Everglades - North

2008-11-01T12:46:00.001-07:00

On Monday, October 20, we would drive to the Florida Keys, but along the way, we drove the Tamiami Trail across Big Cypress National Preserve, along the north side of Everglades National Park. Our first stop was the Gulf Coast Visitor Center in Everglades City, in the northwest corner of Everglades National Park. Other than a boat tour which we weren’t planning to take, there wasn’t much going on there so we continued along after a quick stop.

Our next stop was the Big Cypress National Preserve Visitor Center. At the visitor center there was a stream that hosted several alligators.

Next, we checked out Clyde Butcher’s gallery in Ochopee. Sometimes called the “Ansel Adams of the Everglades,” Butcher has devoted his life to photographing the Everglades in black and white. He uses large-format cameras that allow him to produce prints up to five feet by eight feet, beautifully capturing the landscapes of the Glades. We were surprised at how well the Everglades photograph in black and white – perhaps the lack of color helps simplify the complex interplay of vegetation, water, and clouds, making the landscapes more accessible to viewers. The price points weren’t accessible to us, though – one photo was over $20,000 – but we nevertheless enjoyed looking through the gallery.

After admiring Butcher’s photos, we continued east along the Tamiami Trail to the Shark Valley Visitor Center, where visitors can take a tram tour around a 15-mile loop road. We’d read that if you only do one thing in the Everglades, you should do this, so we got on the 3:00 tour. We quickly discovered why Marjorie Stoneman Douglas called the Glades a “River of Grass”.

Sawgrass is the predominant habitat in the Glades, and in some places where the water is less evident, it looks as much like bison habitat as anything. Then a great blue heron or great egret flies by, jolting you back to the reality that despite grassy appearances, the entire area is covered in water.

We saw a few gators along the way.

We even got to see some juvenile gators that were only a couple feet long. The adults are awfully scary-looking, but the kids are almost cute.

The past couple of years had been very dry in the Glades, but this year, there was an abundance of water. South Florida’s water management policy results in a feast-or-famine phenomenon for the Glades. In dry years, nearly all of the precious rainfall gets distributed via a complex system of canals to Miami and other population centers, with little left over for the glades. In wet years, like this one, the Glades get flooded, and a lot of water is also diverted straight to the ocean, wasted.

At times, the road was a lake, and riders on the open-sided tram got wet when the driver went too fast.

At the halfway point of the tour, we reached an observation tower.

Because the high point in the Everglades is only about 10 feet above sea level, the tower provided a unique bird’s-eye view of our surroundings.

As we got back on the tram for the second half of our tour, we again wondered at the lake that passed for a road in this wet year.

The best part of the tour was the near-constant display of waterfowl. Our tour guide was an enthusiastic identifier of birds, so during the course of the trip, we learned how to identify many of them.

We saw little blue herons and tricolor herons, but most impressive is still the great blue heron, especially in flight, when its six-foot wingspan is on full display.

We also got a look at our first anhinga, the “snake bird”. They’re funny, awkward things.

The red-shouldered hawk is majestic.

Our tour over, we got back into Caroline and drove through one final lake as we left the park to continue toward the Keys.

Nokomis Beach to Sanibel Island

2008-10-26T05:13:00.001-07:00

Oscar Scherer State Park turned out to have very nice campsites – they were well spaced with dense vegetation between them. The mosquito population was also significantly smaller than in other places we’d stayed. We were glad we were there instead of at Myakka River for another night.

We spent the rest of the afternoon kicking around our campsite before driving south to Nokomis Beach for the evening. We’d read about a drum circle at sunset on Nokomis Beach which sounded intriguing.

When we arrived about an hour before sunset, there were lots of people there already and they just kept coming. Soon there were a couple hundred people spectating and participating.

The crowd was an eclectic mix of locals and tourists, young and old.

There were numerous drummers.

Some of them had elaborately painted drums.

Soon, the dancers joined in.

This guy had his own unique martial-arts-inspired style.

The kids joined in, running around the circle and laughing, adding their voices to the mix of the music.

The looming rain clouds held off, and as it got dark, several people brought out lighted balls or hula hoops.

We found our way back to the car when there was just barely enough light to still see our way. From there, we went to a local joint called Pelican Alley in search of Game 6 of the American League Championship Series between Tampa Bay and the Red Sox game. Sadly, TBS was having “technical difficulties,” so for the first half hour what we saw instead was a rerun of some old sitcom. We were about to leave when the baseball game finally came on.

There were about a dozen people in the bar watching the game, and everyone was very friendly, though in rooting for the Red Sox, we were clearly not in the majority. We chatted with a local named Ardie for quite some time and learned the history behind all his tattoos, how much the area had changed in the last fifteen years, and why he’ll never live away from the water.

At 10 pm, the bar closed. Though the game was far from finished we headed back to our campsite for the night. We cheered the Red Sox on to victory from our tent.

In the morning, we took a nice run through one of the park’s nature trails, getting completely lost along the way. The map made the trail system look straightforward but in reality there were oodles of bulldozer paths that made it very confusing. We decided that “hiking” in Florida is not very exciting. Given that Florida is so flat, the vistas aren’t generally that interesting.

Our next stop was Sanibel Island. We’d read that Sanibel and its sibling island, Captiva, were “paradise”. After paying the hefty $6 toll to drive across to Sanibel, we forked over our parking fee and walked to the historic lighthouse.

Continuing along the nature trail, we found the fishing pier on the bayside of the island. Kiteboarding was popular.

Fishing was very popular, along the pier and along the beach.

We went back to the beach and played in the water until our parking ticket was about to expire. It was a nice beach, but didn’t compare to some of the other beaches we’d been at in the past month. It was also way more crowded, probably because it was a Sunday and the beach is quite close to Fort Myers.

From there, we drove north across the rest of Sanibel and onto Captiva Island. Captiva had numerous excessively large beachfront houses. The beach there was much nicer than on the southern tip of Sanibel but it was also harder to find parking. For a while, we thought that only residents actually got beach access. Finally, we found a tiny parking lot.

We spent the next hour wandering along the beach and playing in the waves. The waves were enormous and lots of fun to bodysurf on. Sarah wished she had a boogie board.

After our day on Sanibel and Captiva, we drove off the islands to the local La Quinta where we’d spend the night. After a week of camping, we were ready for a night indoors. We watched the sad finale to the American League playoffs, where Tampa Bay ousted the Red Sox. This was supposed to be the year that the lovable losers from each league, the Cubs and the Red Sox, met in the World Series. But it was not to be. Tomorrow, we would head to the Everglades.

Myakka River State Park

2008-10-26T04:55:00.001-07:00

Myakka River State Park is one of the largest state parks in Florida, and our guidebook claimed that it had “primo” camping. Sadly, it seemed that the guidebook author was quite mistaken. The campsites were tiny and had virtually no space between them. On top of that, the majority of them were packed with people and multiple tents per site. By the time we arrived, it was dark and there were swarms of mosquitoes (not surprising, since we were effectively in a swamp), so we threw up our tent and had a quick dinner before retiring for the night.

Unfortunately, our neighbors in one side didn’t want us to get a sound night’s sleep. They had a soft-sided pop-up camper and a small TV running the entire night! We thought they’d turn it off and go to bed, but apparently they slept with it on. Who takes a TV camping anyway? In fairness, we’ve seen stranger things recently, like the group at Fort De Soto that had a microwave. Still, unless you are in a hard-sided RV, running a TV in a campground is pretty rude. It’s especially rude when your neighbors are all of ten feet away due to poorly spaced campsites.

After a poor night’s sleep, we got a slow start in the morning. Sarah went for a jog down one of the nearby bike paths. It was a pleasant run through forests and dry prairie and there was virtually nobody else out. Sarah even saw a small deer along the way. Meanwhile, Brian drank coffee to try to clear the cobwebs from his head.

We packed up the tent since the campground was already full for Saturday when we made our reservations. After the previous night, we were happy that we didn’t have to stay another night.

Later in the morning, we checked out the bird boardwalk and some of the viewpoints along the way. The boardwalk wasn’t especially exciting though we did get a distant alligator view and there was a single blue heron hanging out.

On the way back to the car, we saw this butterfly.

The water was ringed with palm trees.

In the parking lot was a huge tree that was decorated with Spanish moss.

Our next stop was the boat ramp. The park has quite an array of boating options as well as bike rentals and a packed little concession shop at the boat ramp. More interesting though was the walk out to the fishing pier. There were more birds there than along the bird walk. We aren’t sure what this bird was but we took lots of photos anyway.

We also had our first gator sighting in the wild. There were two alligators hanging out at the base of the pier.

There were also several different types of birds hanging out on the old earthen dam. The closest one is a tricolor heron and the next one back is a snowy egret.

Our last stop in the park was the canopy walk. A large tower and suspension bridge were built in the tree tops for research purposes and are now open as a nature walk.

From the bridge, we got good views of the air plants living in the tree canopies.

The tower provided a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding landscape.

Having exhausted the nature walks in Myakka State Park, we left for Oscar Scherer State Park.

Sarasota

2008-10-26T04:46:00.001-07:00

On October 17, we spent all afternoon at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. The museum was a tribute to John Ringling, one of the five Ringling Brothers of circus fame, and his wife Mable. When Ringling died, he left his art collection and estate to the city of Florida, and the impressive complex is now run by the Florida State University.

The museum grounds contained multiple buildings. The first one that we explored had an enormous scale model of the circus, done in 3/4-inch-to-the-foot scale. This model is the lifelong work of a circus lover named Howard Tibbals. It was impressive in its scope and detail – from the train cars that the circus traveled on to the replica town it traveled to and the full layout of the circus grounds and big top, it seems that no detail was missed. Apparently, the ticket booths even have cash tills inside that contain coins, though nobody could actually see that part of the model. These photos are just a small sampling of the overall model.

This is one of the 59 train cars of the exhibit.

The town that the circus was visiting:

Feeding the crew of 1,300 performers and workers was no small feat:

The model continued on with the animal menagerie display, the sideshows, and a full big top with numerous acts in progress, all with the same intricate detail as the rest of the display. Along with the model were information placards describing the comings and goings of the circus. The sheer logistics of moving that many people and animals and that much equipment around are amazing. The big top, which was larger than a football field, could be put up in a few hours. The whole circus “city” would come and go in a day’s time, including setup and takedown. Amazing!

After viewing the model, we moved on to Ca d’Zan. This is the house that John and Mabel built overlooking the bay. John and Mabel were ardent travelers and collectors of art, and many pieces were on display in their house. We took the hour-long tour through the house with a knowledgeable docent. The house was completed in 1926 and was built to be worthy of entertaining numerous important guests.

Here’s the front of the house:

The attention to detail throughout the house was striking. This room was an entertaining room with a fully painted wooden relief ceiling.

The ceiling also contained colorful glass panels which, along with the large windows, gave the room a bright, airy feeling.

We didn’t hear the story of this birdcage but thought it looked cool. In the background is an organ that had thousands of pipes.

Upstairs was John’s lavish room, complete with a bathroom sporting a marble bathtub. The furniture was a replica of Napoleon’s furniture.

While still quite nice, Mable’s room wasn’t nearly as stately as John’s. It also lacked the beautiful ocean view.

Outside the house, the Venetian influence was quite evident.

We both really liked the patio.

Continuing around the house, we thought this statue was interesting.

Walking back towards the other museum buildings, there was a tree that had nearly taken over the driveway with its roots.

This tree had grown over one of the statues lining the driveway.

We briefly toured the rose garden. Mabel was known for her love of plants and had an enormous rose garden. Unfortunately, they must have recently sprayed some sort of pesticide on the plants, so the smell was unpleasant. We didn’t dally, but did stop to photograph one of the many unique cement statues in the garden.

Next, it was on to the building that contained the circus artifacts, including costumes, train cars, and various props. It also displayed bios on some of the famous circus performers.

After that, it was about 5 pm and the museum closed at 5:30, so we didn’t get to see much of the art museum. John Ringling had a huge personal art collection which is housed in a museum on the property that he built. The museum also houses several visiting exhibits. We wanted to see the Egyptian exhibit so we breezed through about half of the museum just to get to the back where the exhibit was housed. The sheer size of the collection was impressive.

We didn’t get much time to see the Egyptian exhibit, which compared funeral artifacts and ceremonies of the rich and poor in ancient Egypt. Many of the artifacts were similar but made out of different, less expensive materials, or they were borrowed and reused.

After the museum kicked us out at closing time, we killed another hour or so in town before driving to Myakka River State Park where we’d camp for the night.

Tampa Bay Area

2008-10-25T17:45:00.001-07:00

On October 14, we traveled south from Clearwater to Tampa. Our first stop of the day was Ybor City (pronounced ee-bor) which is the Cuban district. It was mid-morning, so the streets were pretty quiet – Ybor City is known more for its nightlife than its daytime activities.

We parked and wandered up and down what seemed like the main drag. There were a number of cool-looking buildings, many of which were somewhat reminiscent of New Orleans with their brick facades and wrought-iron fences.

We also saw a number of stores selling cigars, and in one they were even rolling cigars. We had a nice stroll but felt like we were missing the history of the place. Finally, we stumbled upon the visitors center (the signage was absolutely horrible so we’d given up on finding it). The center had several informative displays and a movie about the area.

We learned that Ybor City was known as a big cigar manufacturing town in the late 1880s. Men and women as well as people from multiple ethnicities worked side-by-side in the cigar factories, each earning equal pay for equal work. In that sense, Ybor City was well ahead of its time. Another interesting fact about the factories was that they all employed lecturers. The lecturer’s job was to read newspapers and books and give talks to the people working making cigars. In this way, the population of the city became quite well educated, and that education led to Ybor City’s residents taking an interest in world politics and heavily supporting the Cuban Revolution. In one fundraising campaign, many cigar makers donated a day’s wages to the cause.

By the time we were finished at the visitors center, it was after 1 pm and we were hungry. The woman working there recommended a restaurant called the Columbia to us so we could try Cuban food.

On our way there, we passed this building, which was once the social hall for Cubans in town. There were similar halls for the Italians, Spanish, etc.

The Columbia is a family restaurant that is about 100 years old. The building that houses the restaurant today takes up an entire city block and has something like 15 dining rooms. The outside of the building is covered in tile murals.

Inside, we were seated in a lovely enclosed courtyard with a fountain in the middle. We choose to split a combo plate so that we’d get to try several different specialties. We were not disappointed – the huge plate of food contained black beans and rice, pork, beef with chorizo in the center, fried plantains, and an empanada covered with salsa. It was all delicious.

After our lunch, we drove around Tampa a bit more. It was mid-afternoon and hot so we were looking for an air-conditioned place to hang out for a while. We thought we’d hang out at a bookstore, but the one we choose turned out to be quite small and had only old, expensive used books. Then we drove through the neighborhoods of south Tampa, which were well manicured and vegetated and really quite lovely.

Eventually, we found our way over to St. Petersburg where we spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out at a large bookstore called Haslam’s. It was just what we were looking for.

For the next three days, we’d be staying at Fort De Soto, just outside of St. Petersburg. Our guidebook and multiple people that we talked to had raved about Fort De Soto. It was rumored to have some of the best campsites in the state.

The campsites lived up to our expectations – they were palm-tree-shaded, reasonably spaced, and had an ocean view.

Even better, there was a nice breeze that kept the bugs at bay. The campsites might have been missing bugs, but they did have several other unusual critters. A couple of very brazen raccoons wandered around at all hours of the day (so much for raccoons being nocturnal). Sarah was also very surprised to find this guy floating in her water bottle after she refilled it.

Apparently, he was hanging out in the water spigot.

We got our campsite set up in time to see another great sunset.

We spent the next day relaxing around the campsite and at one of the park’s beaches. The water was really warm so we played Frisbee in it for a while. It’s fun to lay out for a Frisbee in the water. We also went to the fishing pier where we saw a couple of dolphins jumping nearby.

The next morning, we had to move our campsite because our first campsite wasn’t available for all three nights. We shuffled our tent down a few sites and then decided to drive into town for a while.

Our first stop was to vacuum out the car, which had been invaded by the Argentinean ants that were everywhere at the campground. Luckily, they don’t bite and vacuuming seemed to pretty much get rid of them. Then we spent the heat of the day at Starbucks, getting caught up on a few things. After that, we headed back to the beach at the park.

That evening, the wind died down, which sadly meant that the bugs were back. We took a couple pictures of sunset before jumping in the tent.

Our final morning at Fort De Soto, we packed up and then took a quick tour around the actual fort. Part of the structure of the fort remains near the fishing pier and it houses several exhibits about the fort from years past. Not surprisingly, it was not a popular place to be stationed due to the mosquitoes and the heat.

Finishing our quick tour, we were off to Sarasota.

Homossasa Springs Wildlife Park

2008-10-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

On Monday, October 13, we headed to Crystal River, where Sarah went on a “swim with the manatees” boat excursion. Brian hung out at a hotel and surfed the web, thinking that swimming with the manatees sounded pretty gimmicky. Sarah really enjoyed the trip though. It turns out that it isn’t a great time of the year to swim with the manatees -- there aren’t that many of them in the bay this time of the year -- but she did get to see several manatees from the boat. There was also plenty of other wildlife to watch including two raccoons and a bunch of neat birds.

She also got to swim in to the Crystal River spring, which, unlike the river, was very clear. The tour boat stopped outside the spring area and Sarah snorkeled through a narrow channel of mangroves into the spring. On the way, a large black bird swam by her under the water. She was so startled to see it that she didn’t get a good enough look to know what it was. At the end of the channel, there were three springs bubbling up from the bottom of the river. This is the area where the manatees hang out in the winter.

After that, we went to Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. It was a privately run wildlife park until the state acquired it. Now, it’s still run as a wildlife park, complete with a slow boat ride down a man-made river to the main area where the animals are housed, but two changes have been made. First, all but one of the non-native animals have been removed and sold to other parks and zoos. Second, the park is now run with the primary goal of saving injured and abandoned animals, with human visitation a lower priority.

The initial boat ride down Pepper Creek was peaceful.

We saw lots of turtles along the way and some huge, gorgeous birds. First, we saw a great egret.

Then a great blue heron.

Once we arrived at the park, we first checked out the manatees. They’re hard to see when they’re underwater.

Then we visited the one non-Florida-native creature in the park: Lu the hippo. By proclamation of the governor at the time Homosassa became a state park – no kidding – Lu will be allowed to live out the rest of his life in the park. He’s a Florida fixture, after all – he’s many decades old and a movie star, too! Here he is:

Next we came to a large area that housed the park’s injured waterfowl. We got fantastic up-close views of all sorts of beautiful birds. We saw several more egrets:

Here’s a roseate spoonbill:

And a wood duck:

Some pelicans:

An ibis:

And another great blue heron:

Bird viewing in this park was fantastic. After all, the birds are used to humans – more than that, they’re dependent on humans, since they’re generally injured birds that can’t be released. But the park was better than a zoo, in that the birds’ environment seemed more natural, and they had a large open area to roam, although that area was pretty crowded with a huge bird population.

The park’s one bear looked a little sad, even though he, too, got a pretty large area to rove. And yes, the bear is allowed because black bears are native to Florida. For some reason, we think of them more as cold-weather creatures or maybe mountain inhabitants – you’ll find them in the Rockies, the Cascades, the Sierras. But they can apparently be found in Florida as well.

Next up were the birds of prey. Bald eagles look most majestic when they’re soaring through the air, but these two were still quite impressive.

We forgot the names of a couple of other big birds.

Back on the water, we reached the area where the flamingos were hanging out, all perched on one foot.

As flexible as most birds are, flamingos take the cake for contortionism.

We especially liked how they burrowed their beaks under their feathers.

As we walked away from the waterfowl area, we happened upon a beautiful butterfly.

Next up were the owls. This one seemed to be waking up from a nap.

But this one was totally alert, and staring right at us.

Next we checked out the gators. They look sinister swimming in the water.

But when they smile at you with their big sharp teeth, they look downright frightening. We wouldn’t want to meet this guy in a dark alley.

Now it was time for a manatee show. The park has six manatees, most of which were abandoned as babies. Manatees need their mothers around for several years before they can fend for themselves. A baby manatee whose mother dies or otherwise disappears is going to die, so the park saved a few of these orphans. They’re large mammals most closely related to elephants, and although they have no natural predators, they’re endangered, largely due to man. They can live in freshwater or saltwater. We learned all of this from a park ranger who walked right into the water in his ranger uniform. Here he is with one manatee in front of him.

Then one came up behind him.

This wasn’t a manatee feeding – apparently manatees eat truckloads of food. This was just a chance for park visitors to get a little better view of the manatees. We watched them feeding later, and the pool was basically covered with heads of lettuce and other vegetables, which the manatees grabbed and ate whole.

We wandered by the Florida panther after the manatee show. Like the bear, he had a large area to wander, but he still seemed a little sad. What a beautiful animal, though.

Finally, we walked by the river again, where we got some more good views of wood ducks in their natural habitat.

What a fun day of wildlife viewing! That night, we stayed in a hotel in Clearwater on our way toward Tampa / St. Pete.

Florida Panhandle

2008-10-25T08:08:00.000-07:00

By the time we got to Pensacola, Florida, mid-afternoon on October 7, the weather was looking ominous. We aren’t used to heat and humidity, so we decided it was a good night to stay in a motel. We found a coupon for the Knight’s Inn in our hotel coupon book and after some driving around finally found it. When we arrived, a large, friendly man came walking around from behind the motel telling us that he’d be happy to rent us a room but he wanted us to see the rooms first. Apparently, the place had been recently foreclosed by a bank and was in terrible shape. The whole office was torn apart and there was a guy in the back working on wiring and internet. The rooms had broken furniture, dirty carpets, and peeling paint, and there was mold in the hallway. Yuck! We decided that cheap or not, we weren’t staying there for the evening.

Discouraged, we tracked down the local Barnes and Noble and sat in their café for several hours using the internet and escaping from the weather. The constant heat and humidity is really draining when you aren’t used to it.

Finally, we decided to move on to a state park where we would stay instead of the motel. On the way, we stopped at Jerry’s Drive-In since it had been recommended by every guidebook we’d read. The name is a bit of a misnomer, as it is really more of a diner than a drive-in, but the food lived up to the promises. For $8, we shared a double bacon cheeseburger, hush puppies, a beer, and a yummy banana shake. It was quite satisfying.

By the time we arrived at Big Lagoon State Park, it was after dark (which isn’t really that late given that the sun was setting at about 6:45). Much to our chagrin, we found a gate blocking access to the park and the camping. We scoured our maps and guidebooks for another nearby camping option to no avail. Eventually, Brian walked in past the gates to the ranger station where he found a phone number for the campground manager. Sarah called and talked to a very nice ranger who gave her the gate code and told her to come by the office and pay in the morning. Phew! That could have been a lot worse. It turns out that all Florida state parks close at sunset – that would have been a good detail for one of our guidebooks to mention.

There were plenty of campsites to choose from. We set up our tent and sat in the car listening to the second presidential debate on our satellite radio to avoid the bugs. Then we settled in for a night of pounding rain. Apparently the area hadn’t had rain in a month and then got five inches of it in two days.

When we got up in the morning, the skies actually looked reasonably promising. We went for a run around the lagoon, getting our brief tour of the park. We had barely gotten back to our campsite when suddenly the sky turned dark and opened up, soaking our half-disassembled tent. We hurriedly threw all the wet stuff in the car and decided we’d skip cooking breakfast.

On the way out of Big Lagoon State Park, we drove by the big naval base in town. The naval base has a free Naval Air Museum, so we decided to check it out. On the base we drove by the lighthouse just before the museum. It was closed, but we stopped and walked around the outside.

The Naval Air Museum was huge! We spent over three hours there and didn’t come close to seeing it all. First, we took a guided tour of the main museum. The museum is mostly run by volunteers, and the guides were no exception. Most were retired military personnel. The gentleman who gave our tour had over 2000 hours of volunteer service. He definitely knew his stuff and told a lot of interesting stories. He managed to fill over an hour and a half and was still going strong.

This plane was interesting for two reasons. First, look at the bungee cords around the wheels. Those were the plane’s shocks. Yikes! Also, note the positioning of the guns and the propeller. The guns had to be perfectly synchronized with the propeller so that they wouldn’t shoot the propeller off. Double yikes!

This plane was the first to make a transatlantic flight, which was in 1919.

The flight started with four of these amphibious planes attempting the crossing. Two of the planes ended up having to be cannibalized for parts to keep the other two planes going. One of the planes got lost. The fourth plane actually made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean (albeit, with a couple of strategic stops along the way). The plane was then crated up and shipped back to the US.

Navigation in those days was an interesting proposition, usually accomplished with binoculars. Binoculars alone wouldn’t work for an ocean crossing, though, because of the lack of distinct features to serve as a guide. To solve this problem, the Navy positioned large boats at fifty-mile intervals all the way across the ocean.

A number of the planes in the museum, including these two, were restored after being raised from the bottom of the ocean or from Lake Michigan.

You might wonder why there were planes from Lake Michigan. In the WWII days, Lake Michigan was used as a training base to certify pilots for landing on aircraft carriers, which is said to be one of the most difficult tasks a pilot can perform. Combine the precision required with the young, inexperienced pilots, and you end up with over 300 planes at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Moving along, we got to see some of the early planes that were used by the Blue Angels.

The Blue Angels are based in Pensacola and normally have practice sessions during the week that are free to the public, but they were out of town for a performance when we were there.

This plane was used as a training plane in WWII. Thousands of them were produced during the war. After the war, many of them were sold to Hollywood for use in war movies. They look similar enough to the Japanese Zeroes that with a new paint job they were hard to tell apart.

Other cool planes included this one, which has folding wings for ease of storage on an aircraft carrier.

This plane was a Russian Mig.

Outside, they had the Tomcat. This is the plane used in the movie, Top Gun.

After our walking tour, we jumped on the trolley for the tour of the planes on the airstrip. There were dozens more planes stored there, all with various historical significance. Unfortunately, our tour guide for that tour talked a mile a minute so it was hard to really understand and absorb it all.

Having exhausted our enthusiasm for plane viewing for one day, we made our way back to downtown Pensacola and then eventually continued along the coast to Grayton Beach State Park. Grayton Beach was lauded by our guidebook as one of the most beautiful beaches in Florida and it didn’t disappoint. We got there just in time for a beach stroll at sunset.

The beach sits between two developed areas, Destin and Seaside, but is refreshingly undeveloped itself.

The beach was fine white sand bordered by dunes.

There were a number of little birds on the beach scurrying around. Sarah thinks they are plovers, but Brian disagrees.

There was a blue heron standing in the surf that we watched for a while.

He was checking out a fishing lure that someone had left on the beach.

Here are Brian and Sarah enjoying the beach.

At this point, the heron had moved around to the dunes. He was surprisingly not skittish.

The beach was a lovely place to watch the sunset, with unimpeded views.

The colors on the clouds were quite beautiful.

After sunset, we cooked our dinner under a picnic shelter since it had rained a lot in the last few days. Then we went back to our campsite, about a mile away.

The next morning, we went for a run on the beach. After hanging out at the park for a while longer, we continued the drive along the coast of the Panhandle. Next up was Seaside.

Seaside is a meticulous master-planned community that was built starting in 1981 and consists of adorable sherbet-colored houses. This town is so perfect-looking, in fact, that it was used as the set for the movie, The Truman Show. We could see why.

Continuing down the coast, we passed through Panama City and Port St. Joe without stopping much. We were staying at St. Joseph Peninsula State Park for the next two nights. When we arrived on the peninsula, we found ourselves in the Eastern Time zone for the first time since last Christmas.

The state park had a large campground with reasonable shade but one significant downfall – it was very buggy! I guess that’s what we get for coming to Florida this time of the year.

We were treated to another beach sunset, though this one wasn’t quite as stunning as the night before due to the lack of clouds.

Here, Sarah checks out her sandy feet.

Sea oats lined the dunes along the beach.

The last seven miles of the peninsula are a nature preserve with no roads, so the next day, we went for a long walk down toward the preserve. There were tons of birds along the beach. Our favorites were the pelicans which were feeding. To fish, they’d fly up high then dive-bomb into the water. It was pretty funny to watch. We also saw a number of egrets. The tide was out, so we looked for shells as we walked. Eventually, the cloudy morning gave way to a clear afternoon and Brian decided it was too hot, so we turned around and went back to camp.

After St. Joseph Peninsula, our plan was to drive north toward Tallahassee and then spend several days paddling the Suwannee River (of the Stephen Foster song about the “Swanee River”). It supposed to be one of the best canoe trips in Florida, but we backed out fearing that the mosquitoes and other biting critters would make it miserable.

Instead, we continued driving along the coast. Along the way, we noticed that practically ever other house, or even more in some places, was for sale. There’s definitely no short of real estate on the market in Florida, which isn’t entirely surprisingly since Florida is one of the worst markets in the country right now. Many of the houses looked like they’d never been lived in. They lined mile upon mile of coastline, standing tall on cement pillars to avoid flood waters.

Next, we passed through Apalachicola, a cute historic fishing town that still has an active oyster fishing fleet. We walked around town and the waterfront and took pictures of the historic inn. The front porch looks like a lovely place to spend a warm afternoon.

We also stopped in the Richard Biddle gallery. He’s a photojournalist that came to town for an assignment and never left. His work was mostly black-and-white shots showing the working waterfront and the people of the area. The photos were fascinating.

Back on the road, we stopped at a little fresh seafood stand and bought a pound of fresh shrimp. Yum!

For the evening, we decided to stop in Perry and stay in a hotel for a break from the weather. Sarah did laundry and then we watched the Red Sox vs. Tampa Bay game in the evening (well, for a while anyway – the game lasted over five hours).

On the morning of October 12, we hung out at the motel until checkout time, enjoying the air conditioning. Then we drove out to Cedar Key.

Cedar Key is a sleepy little island town that was once home to, of all things, a large pencil factory – the cedar wood apparently makes great pencils. The town has also supported itself with various other endeavors, including commercial fishing, acting as a seaport and rail terminal, and manufacturing products made from palm fronds. Over time, the cedar and timber resources of the island were overused and exploited, as were oysters. Also, functioning as a seaport became less viable as ships became larger. Today, the town supports itself on tourism and clam farming.

Our first stop on Cedar Key was the Cedar Key Museum State Park. The park had a room of displays about the area’s early history and collections of seashells from an early 1900s resident, St. Clair Whitman. The museum grounds also contained Whitman’s house which has been restored to look as it did in the 1920s and 1930s.

Behind the museum, there was a short walk out to the water.

Having dallied to make the most of the air conditioning at the museum in the mid-afternoon heat, we drove back into town and to the waterfront. There were a couple of ships in the harbor and a row of restaurants on stilts.

The primary attraction was bird watching. There were cool birds everywhere, including tons of pelicans.

This bird had a fish in its mouth. We watched him juggle the flopping fish several times before finally losing it back into the water.

This egret was fishing under one of the docks in the marina.

Having explored the waterfront, we set up under a picnic shelter for a game of Scrabble. In a rare turn of events, Sarah was actually winning. Sadly, we had to stop before the game was finished because a storm came in and was blowing the pieces away. Sarah decided that we had made it far enough into the game that it was official, and she had won.

We spent the night at a private RV park on the island. The sites weren’t very big or nice and the no-see-ums were atrocious, but it was a fabulous spot to see the sunset.

The next day, we’d continue away from the Florida Panhandle and down the Gulf Coast.

Mississippi and Alabama

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On Saturday, October 4, we bid farewell to Debbie and Mike and headed toward Mississippi. We drove across Louisiana to Natchez, Mississippi, famous as the start of the Natchez Trace. The Trace was an old Indian trail, but by the late 1700s, farmers from the Ohio River Valley were its main users. They would build flatboats to float their crops down the Mississippi, sell their boats for lumber, and then hike back north.

In the early 1800s, Natchez became strategically important as the southwestern corner of the United States, and Thomas Jefferson ordered that the road be widened to allow for wagons. Then came the steamboat era, during which Natchez prospered, and for a time, it was home to the most millionaires of any town in the U.S.

Today, the Natchez Trace Parkway is a scenic drive running from Natchez to Nashville, administered by the National Park Service. We wanted to drive part of the parkway, but first, we thought we’d check out Natchez itself. As in many southern towns, we found that one of the main tourist activities is to tour antebellum homes. We arbitrarily picked a home named Rosalie to tour.

The home turns out to be owned by the Daughters of the Revolution, an organization of female descendants of American soldiers of the Revolution. Inside the house, we had a different tour guide for practically every room, all DAR members and all wearing period dresses.

Here’s the ladies’ sitting area, viewed from the men’s sitting area:

The china was quite beautiful. Each piece had a different design.

From the second-floor deck, we could see the Mississippi.

The home and furnishings were extremely well preserved. Most other antebellum homes in Natchez were destroyed by Union troops during the Civil War (or the “War Between the States” as it’s known in the South). But a Union general took a special interest in Rosalie, and when he and his troops moved in, he packed up the house’s furnishings and stored them in the attic, making sure that the troops didn’t do much damage. Indeed, the only place with visible damage was a fireplace that the soldiers used for cooking.

After the tour, we took one last photo of the front entrance.

After the tour, we visited the William Johnson house, which is administered by the Park Service. William Johnson was a barber and businessman who ran several barber shops in Natchez. He was also a black man, freed by his owner who is also widely presumed to have been his father. Johnson and his wife raised 10 kids in the house, and as Johnson became successful, he owned his own slaves. The home itself wasn’t especially interesting, but the Park Service visitor center provided fascinating insight into the life of a free black man, in part through Johnson’s own diary.

Then we parked in downtown Natchez and walked around a bit. Our parking spot was right next to the Mississippi.

Stanton Hall is another famous Natchez home, but it was closed today for a wedding.

We passed various other historic buildings as we wandered around.

People in Natchez were amazingly friendly, greeting us from their porches as we wandered around. It seems that southern hospitality is alive and well.

After our tour, we went to the Pig Out Inn barbecue and shared a pulled-pork sandwich, just to see what Mississippi barbecue was like. It turned out not to be much different from Texas barbecue, but it was quite tasty. We stayed at Natchez State Park for the night.

The next day, we drove the Natchez Trace Parkway to the Windsor Ruins, the remains of the largest antebellum mansion in Mississippi. It survived the war, but ironically burned down shortly thereafter when a fire was ignited by a careless smoker. Now all that’s left are some brick columns and ironwork.

Next we headed to Port Gibson. During the war, General Grant said it was too beautiful to burn, so it was spared and many of its antebellum homes are nicely preserved.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a paved road that closely follows the old Trace route. At a few places along the parkway, you can get out of your car and walk the actual Trace. It turns out to be an extremely well-worn route, a wide rut perhaps 10 feet deep.

Our next destination was Vicksburg. Our first stop in Vicksburg was the Corner Drugstore, which unfortunately happened to be closed because it was Sunday. We walked down to the river from the drugstore, though, and found some interesting sights.

First was a restored historic railroad station:

Then we walked through a seemingly very new park, with music playing and beautiful murals in front of the river.

That’s a casino boat behind the murals in the second picture.

The buildings in the historic downtown area were reminiscent on New Orleans, with the brick construction and wrought-iron railings.

Our next stop was Walnut Hill for lunch. We read about it in our Let’s Go USA travel guide – excellent, authentic down-home Southern cooking. Customers get two choices: the blue plate, which is a meat and three vegetables, or the “round table,” which is all you can eat from a dozen or so different items. The menu looked fantastic:

We chose the round table – we were only going to do this once, so why not go all out. We were there right at the restaurant’s opening time of 11:00, along with four older women from Texas who come to Vicksburg together once or twice a year to gamble on the riverboats and eat at Walnut Hill. Shortly after the six of us sat down, servers started bringing out food – cornbread, coleslaw, roast beef, two kinds of chicken, yams, corn pudding, and on and on. We tried everything and it was all delicious. Here’s a photo of what was left after we finished eating, but it doesn’t quite do justice to the enormity of the feast.

After we ate our desserts, we waddled out of the restaurant and headed to the Vicksburg battlefield. During the Civil War, Vicksburg was regarded by Union troops as “the key” to the war. Capturing Vicksburg and gaining control of the Mississippi would mean cutting off supplies to several Confederate states, including Texas and Louisana, and would allow the Union army to move men and supplies freely down the river.

At the battlefield, we watched the park video and drove the main road through the battlefield. By this point, it was afternoon and very hot. Given the heat and our full bellies, we weren’t as appreciative as we probably could have or should have been of what we were seeing. Despite feeling sluggish, we made a number of stops, including at the Illinois memorial, which was an impressive building.

Here’s the seal inside the building.

Similar to the battlefield at Gettysburg, there were monuments and memorials everywhere. Some were just small stone markers; others were enormous elaborate buildings like the Illinois memorial.

Here is one of the Civil War era canons:

The coolest thing at the battlefield was the reconstructed USS Cairo. This was an early ironclad ship that was sunk during the war. It was recovered in the 1960s and put back together under a huge awning.

The ship was accompanied by a museum with a large array of items that were recovered with the ship, ranging from kitchen supplies to soldiers personal items.

Next, we went to the Coca-Cola Museum. As it turns out, Vicksburg is where Coke was bottled for the first time. Joseph A. Biedenharn ran a soda fountain, and Coke was a very popular drink at the fountain. But Biedenharn also had rural delivery customers who didn’t make it into the fountain, and he thought they would be good Coke customers, too. He proposed bottling Coke, and although the Coca-Cola company was skeptical, they gave their blessing. Biedenharn was on his way, and needless to say, Coke – which contained actual cocaine in those days – turned out to sell even more in bottles than at the fountain.

Upon entering the building, we encountered a gorgeous marble soda fountain.

Coke was just one of the 10 flavors that could be served from the fountain – sarsaparilla, root beer, grape, and peach were others.

Opposite the fountain was a large collection of coke bottles commemorating special events, sports teams, NASCAR drivers, and more.

Inside the museum proper were various displays of Coke memorabilia.

Finally, in a separate building behind the museum, was an old soda fountain.

We discovered there was a state park called LaFleur’s Bluff in Jackson, so we decided to camp there for the night. The campground was almost full, but we managed to snag a waterfront site on a pretty bayou.

Egrets wandered around the water, looking for dinner.

The bathhouse was an elaborate affair, a log house built up on stilts.

We took an evening jog and passed another swamp that was even prettier.

The next morning, we went to the Mississippi capitol building. During our travels, we’ve found that state capitol buildings are pretty to look at, historically interesting, and free entertainment. So we stop in when we can – Salt Lake City, Denver, and now Jackson. We suppose the British Columbia parliament building in Victoria counts, too.

The building had the characteristic central dome, this one with a huge golden eagle on top that’s eight feet high and has a 15-foot wingspan.

Once inside, we did the typical tourist thing – we went to the center of the building and stared up at the inside of the dome.

A relief of “blind justice” decorated each of the four sides of the central area.

We ascended to the second floor in an antique elevator, complete with an operator who opens and closes the doors and pushes the buttons.

Mother Mississippi looked down on us as we ascended the grand staircase to the next floor.

The Senate and House chambers were very ornate and had their own mini-domes of stained glass.

Rebel pride is still alive and well, in the artwork of the capitol and even in the state flag.

We saw these marble water spigots all over the place. They weren’t working, and we never found out the story behind them.

The most interesting decorative element of the capitol was the huge variety of marble, both in normal colors like black and white and in exotic shades of pink and green. Much of the marble is scagliola (man-made). Also interesting was the heavy decorative use of bare light bulbs, which we thought gave the interior a bit of a circus feel.

After Jackson, we headed back south to the Gulf and Biloxi. As we were driving along the coast, we reached a section of beach with hundreds of classic cars, so we stopped. It turned out to be opening day of Cruisin’ the Coast, an annual get-together for thousands of owners of old cars.

There were all sorts of neat cars:

A couple drove by in a pink boat of a car.

After getting our fill of cars, we headed to Beauvoir, home of Jefferson Davis late in his life. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, turns out to be the answer to a trivia question: Who was the only citizen of the Confederacy who wasn’t offered American citizenship after Reconstruction? Yep, Davis lived out the rest of his life as a man without a country. After the defeat of the Confederacy, Davis supposedly lived the rest of his life in poverty, but he still had a lovely house and servants, and he still traveled far and wide to give speeches.

Here’s a statue of Davis:

Here’s his home:

The most interesting thing about the home architecturally was the use of indoor and outdoor living space. The house had nearly as much porch space as it did indoor living space. Also, the space underneath the house was used for hanging hammocks for the children to sleep on and for sitting during hot days. In the Mississippi heat in the days before air conditioning, such fluidity of indoor and outdoor spaces was necessary for comfort.

The home was heavily damaged during Hurricane Katrina so there weren’t many people visiting. We got a private tour from a docent at the museum and while we toured, a couple of artists were restoring the elaborate paint jobs on the walls and ceiling. Given that the porch and much of the roof was ripped off the building during Katrina, the building was in quite good shape. Two other nearby cottages had to be torn down and were being completely rebuilt.

On the grounds was the Tomb of the Unknown Confederate Soldier.

That night, we stayed at the Gulf Islands National Seashore. Of the hundreds of nights we’ve spent in our tent, this one turned out to be the rainiest. The tent got literally pounded for hours on end. It held up admirably, though, and we stayed dry.

The next day, we headed to Mobile, Alabama, where we walked around the historic downtown area. In some places, the juxtaposition of old and new was surprising.

Several pretty parks dotted the downtown.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, dedicated in 1850, is the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile.

After a brief tour of Mobile, we moved along to Florida.

Texas

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After arriving in Austin and finally finding a campsite, we met our friends Debbie and Mike and their little guy, Josh. We hadn’t seen them since our trip to Houston at the beginning of our big adventure, so it was fun to catch up with them and to meet Josh. We met for dinner at The Oasis, a well-known restaurant on Lake Travis with great views (at least by Texas standards).

The next day, we caught up with more friends from our Texas days, meeting Denny and Lee for coffee. They filled us in our where many of our Houston work friends are now at.

At the end of the day, our friends Elizabeth and Gus were married in a ceremony overlooking Lake Travis. The evening light was quite beautiful.

Here are the happy couple and the bride’s family:

The bride and groom cut the cake.

The groom’s cake looked and tasted yummy.

We got to visit with our friend, Tim, who was also at the wedding.

Later on in the evening, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Debbie pose for a photo.

The next day, Gus and Elizabeth had a Greek Orthodox ceremony. The church was colorful.

Gus and Elizabeth entered with the priest.

Gus and Elizabeth wore crowns, which they swapped back and forth, like to the garlands that were swapped at the Indian wedding we attended early in the summer.

After the ceremony, Debbie, Mike and Josh were hanging out and posing for pictures.

Sarah got to play with Josh, who liked the buttons on Sarah’s dress.

After the wedding, we went to Chuy’s, our favorite Tex-Mex place of all time. They have this amazing creamy jalapeno dip. It’s to die for. We split the Elvis Presley Memorial Dinner – an enormous plate of enchiladas with different sauces, beans, and rice. Yum!

From there, we drove to Houston where we’d spend the rest of the week visiting friends. First we stayed with Michael and Liberty. We got to meet their five-month-old, Aliki. She’s a cutie.

Then we spent the night at Gene’s house. His daughters Charlotte and Audrey have gotten a lot bigger in the year since we last saw them. Sadly, we never got the camera out to take photos.

Finally, we spent a couple days at Debbie and Mike’s place in Beaumont. Sarah had fun taking photos of Josh, who is very good-natured and quite photogenic.

Mealtimes were lots of fun. Sarah got to feed Josh, though really she just succeeded in making a big mess. It’s hard to hit a moving target.

Bath time was also lots of fun.

On Saturday, after two weeks of visiting friends and family, “renting” pets and kids, we continued east with our travels. On to the Gulf Coast!

Capulin National Monument

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On Friday, September 26, we left Denver for the two-day drive to Austin, Texas, for a friend’s wedding. We had an uneventful drive south through Colorado on I-25. As we turned east in New Mexico, we started seeing signs for Capulin Volcano National Monument. We’d never heard of Capulin Volcano before, but we’d been driving for a while and decided we’d stop to check it out and stretch our legs.

Northeast New Mexico was fairly flat, except for a few volcanic peaks of the Raton-Clayton volcanic field sticking up, one of which is the extinct cinder cone, Capulin. We made a quick stop at the visitors center, which was swarming with a busload of kids from Texas who were visiting the volcano. Then we drove the short road to the top of the volcano. From there, we walked the one-mile trail around the rim of the volcano.

Here’s a look at the highest point of the volcano rim.

The hike offered expansive views in all directions, since there weren’t many other mountains to block the view.

We also got a view of the Sierra Grande, which is the largest of the Raton-Clayton volcanoes.

As we hiked, it got cloudier and cloudier. This tree looked cool set against the clouds.

After our quick stop at Capulin, we were back on our way to Amarillo, Texas, where we’d stay for the night. Our brief stay in Amarillo was unexciting except for a trip to a very tasty Tex-Mex place named Taco Garcia. We both miss Tex-Mex and hadn’t had good Tex-Mex since our last trip to Texas for a wedding, so we were quite pleased. We spent the rest of the night watching the first presidential debate.

In the morning, we were back on our way to Austin. Anyone who’s ever driven across Texas knows that it’s horribly boring, no matter what direction you come from. Driving more than 700 miles across I-10 is hours of agony, and driving south through Amarillo is really not much better. It’s just hours and hours of flat nothingness.

We arrived in Austin just before dinner to find that the campground where we’d planned to stay was only available to registered divers by reservation. Ugh! You’d think that they might have told us that when we’d called a couple of weeks before to inquire about their camping. After some driving around, we found another campground on Lake Travis that was sub-optimally located but would work. It was a long day, but we’d made it to Austin.

Denver and Colorado Springs

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In Denver, we got to meet Lisa’s new puppy, Banjo. He is cute, cute, cute!

Lisa and her boyfriend John had just gotten Banjo a week ago. He’s three months old, part Labrador and they’re not sure what else. Banjo thought the camera was a fun toy. Here he is just before putting his nose right in the middle of Sarah’s camera lens.

And just after, trying to look innocent…

We spent a lot of the week just hanging out with Lisa, John, and puppy. On Sunday, we went downtown to Octoberfest. It wasn’t all that large, but we had fun walking around and hanging out in a nearby pub for awhile.

As we left Octoberfest, we walked by Coors Field, which is where the Rockies play. Their final home game of the season had just started. Since the Rockies are terrible this year, there were plenty of tickets to be found twenty minutes after the game had started. We ended up finding four free tickets from people who were just trying to get rid of them, including two tickets that were in the 8th row. They were amazing seats.

On Tuesday, we took Lisa down to Colorado Springs for the day (or more accurately, she took us, since we couldn’t fit her in our car). Our first stop was Garden of the Gods.

Garden of the Gods is a really cool city park where the red rocks jut out of the surrounding landscape. On a network of short trails, you can walk around and see the formations up close.

Some of the formations had cute names, like this one, the “kissing camels”.

The park is really popular with rock climbers, though we only saw one group climbing while we were there.

We walked past some more cool formations.

Here’s Lisa taking a break.

Lisa and Brian goofing around.

This formation is called the fins.

On our way out of the park, we stopped by Balanced Rock and took a few more photos.

After that, we stopped in Manitou Springs and walked around for a bit. The town was a touristy, but had a great mountain backdrop. The famous springs had surprisingly foul-tasting water though, which was a disappointment. We also chuckled at this sign.

From there, we went to the Olympic Training Center in downtown Colorado Springs. There were several statues out front.

We took the tour, given by one of the resident athletes. Unfortunately, due to the time of day, there wasn’t much training going on. The only athletes we actually got to see training were the wrestlers. Nonetheless, it was an interesting tour and worth the hour-long stop.

The rest of the week, we spent more time hanging out with Banjo in various parks. Here he’s checking out a tree that a squirrel just ran up.

We also brought Banjo to a playground in Stapleton. The kids loved him. Here are some pictures of him and Lisa playing.

And a few more photos, just because he’s cute.

On Thursday, we went downtown while Lisa and John were working. First, we toured the US mint. We’d tried to go earlier in the week but had missed the last tour of the day. This morning, we were easily able to get standby tickets for the tour. Unfortunately, cameras aren’t allowed inside the mint, but we did get to see pennies being made, and we bought a few of the latest coins in the state quarters and presidential dollars series – the Alaska quarter and the Andrew Jackson dollar.

Next, we went toured the Capitol building, where we were able to walk up in the dome. Here are views of the city and surrounding mountains.

This is one of the stained glass windows in the dome.

There was also a small museum in the Capitol building, which had among other things a miniature capitol building made out of Kroger cans. How strange.

Here’s the view from outside the building.

There’s also a lovely park spanning several city blocks in front of the Capitol.

We spent most of the rest of the day wandering around Louisville, a suburb of Denver, in our quest to check out places that might be cool to live. The location certainly was nice – right between Denver and Boulder – but the town itself was pretty generic.

In the evening, we went to the Global Travel Network (GTN) for a timeshare-ish presentation that we’d gotten talked into a week earlier at the Utah State Fair. We’d signed up because the gift for going to this presentation was supposed to be a four-day, three-night all-inclusive trip to one of several Mexican beach destinations. We asked a bunch of questions before signing up about all the fees, gotchas, restrictions, etc., and it seemed like a great deal. They had told us we’d pay approximately $100 in taxes. Of course, it had to be too good to be true.

We discovered at the end of the presentation that we had to pay almost $200 just to get the information about how to book the trip. Who knows what other restrictions or fees we would have learned about after sending in our money. Disappointed, we complained that the marketing was deceptive, so we were given a different gift instead – a two-night hotel stay, a $50 Visa gift card, and some restaurant vouchers. This gift turned out to be equally disappointing, as we discovered when we tried to book the hotel stay – what we’d actually gotten was a coupon for a two-night stay if we did another timeshare presentation. Ugh! And the gift card was only valid after we’d booked the hotel stay. How annoying – either this company does a lousy job of training its employees and doesn’t vet their “gifts” or they are just downright deceptive. They were very proud of their perfect Better Business Bureau record, which after dealing with them seems like it could only be attributed to people being too lazy to bother filing complaints.

Sadly, our week in Denver went too quickly and Friday morning we said goodbye to Lisa, John, and Banjo and were on our way to Texas.

Indian Peaks Wilderness

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On Thursday evening, we set up camp at the Peaceful Valley campground. The skies looked threatening, though rain never did materialize. It was definitely cold though! Eventually, Brian climbed in the tent to keep warm while Sarah sat up to wait for her sister, Lisa, who would be joining us. It’s a good thing we all had warm sleeping bags!

As it turned out, we had the whole campground to ourselves. There was another campground about a mile up the road just before the road dead-ended, and that campground had a decent number of campers. It wasn’t clear why nobody else stopped at the first campground. We had a pleasant site by a creek.

The next morning, we set off to find the Pawnee Pass trailhead in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. The wilderness is just south of Rocky Mountain National Park and quite close to Denver and Boulder. We’d never heard of it before but we found it in our book of best hikes in the US. After a couple wrong turns, we finally located the trailhead, which was packed even though it was only about 9:30 AM on a weekday.

The hike lived up to its billing as a best hike, even though the weather was less than stellar. The first part of the hike was through the woods. We passed the outlet of Long Lake.

Here’s Long Lake.

The fresh snow on the peaks was quite beautiful.

We continued to climb, quickly getting above treeline, and had more great views.

Eventually, we started leveling off.

By the time we reached the pass, at 12,550 feet, it was very cloudy.

We took a quick snack break but didn’t hang around long at the pass because the weather was looking increasingly threatening. Sure enough, as we were nearing treeline on the way back down, we could see a thunder and lightning storm in the distance. We also got snowed on a bit.

After our hike, we headed back to Lisa’s place in Denver, where we planned to hang out for a week.

Fort Collins

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Wednesday, September 17, we set out to check out Loveland and Fort Collins as potential places to live after we wrap up our travels. We first headed to Boyd Lake State Park in Loveland to set up our tent. We drove into the park to see the campground and decide whether we wanted to stay, but a ranger stopped us, angrily informing us that we had to pay an entrance fee just to get into the park to see the campground. What a ridiculous policy! The ranger was awfully mean, too, so that made up our minds – we wouldn’t be staying there.

We drove up to Fort Collins, where the prime attraction is New Belgium Brewery. Colorado State University is there, too, but for as avid a Fat Tire lover as Brian, nothing compares to New Belgium.

We’d been through Fort Collins last October, but we were in a hurry at the time so we didn’t stop. Ever since, Brian has been anxiously awaiting the day he’d get to see where his favorite beer is born. We entered the hallowed doors.

Inside was a tasting room decorated with Fat Tire and bicycling memorabilia. We sat down at the bar, where we would each be allowed to sample four New Belgium beers out of the dozen or so on tap.

Between us, then, we were able to sample most of the New Belgium line-up. Since Sarah doesn’t really like beer, that meant that Brian got to sample most of the New Belgium line-up. He passed on the Fat Tire in favor of other beers, finding that Abbey Ale was his favorite of those he sampled but ultimately deciding that Fat Tire was still his favorite. Sarah actually liked an ale called Giddy Up, made with espresso. A couple of the beers had a taste and smell of banana, which was definitely novel but didn’t seem to make for a great beer.

Then we went on a tour, where we heard the story of Jeff, a beer aficionado who went on a bicycle tour of Belgium to try to learn the secrets of Belgian brewers. He came back to the U.S. and started his brewery, naming its signature beer Fat Tire in honor of his bike trip. New Belgium is heavily involved in sponsoring bicycle events in Colorado and beyond, and employees even get a free New Belgium bike!

Enough talk, though. Here’s where it all gets done:

Mmm, wurt:

We got yet another sample on the tour, this one a 9%-alcohol brew. Sarah didn’t like it, so Brian had to take one for the team and drink hers as well as his own. By this point, he was feeling a bit loopy.

Speaking of loopy, the tour ended with this curly-cue slide. Its tight curves made for a slow ride, but we both enjoyed it.

We stepped inside the New Belgium Airstream before heading out.

We also did some driving around, admiring areas of Fort Collins. We were impressed with the preponderance of bike lanes and decided that Fort Collins would be a pretty nice place to live.

The next day, we headed south toward the Indian Peaks Wilderness, where we would meet Sarah’s sister Lisa for camping and hiking. On the way, we stopped in Boulder. We decided to visit the Dushanbe tea house, which is an authentic Tajikistani teahouse that was shipped to Boulder in pieces. It turns out that Boulder has a sister city in Tajikistan, and in exchange for the teahouse, Boulder built an authentic American internet café and shipped it over there. The tea was excellent, particularly Brian’s spiced chai, which tasjavascript:void(0)ted like pumpkin pie.

Brian was fully recovered from his New Belgium sampling experience, so after the tea, Brian enjoyed a beer at another favorite brewery, the Midnight Sun, which makes standout stouts. Then we headed to the Indian Peaks.

Rocky Mountain National Park

2008-10-11T17:30:00.001-07:00

Friday, September 12, was another cold, cloudy day. We packed up our wet tent at the campground in Steamboat Springs and headed to Rocky. The only campground on the west side of the park is Timber Creek, and most of that campground has been closed all year. The mountain pine beetle epidemic is so bad on the west side of the park that park management embarked on a project to cut down most of the trees in the campground and reduce the likelihood of injuries to campers from falling trees. They cleared the A loop this past spring, so that’s the only loop that’s open. The other loops are scheduled to be cleared sometime this fall, and due to the danger, they’ve been closed all year.

Because it was Friday and the campground had only 18 sites available, we tried to get there early in the day. As it turned out, we didn’t need to worry – there were plenty of sites available. We picked a nice one and set up our wet tent. The lack of tree cover made for nice views from the campsite of mountains covered with snow that had fallen the past couple of days.

We had seen some elk in Holzwarth Meadow on the drive in, so after setting up our tent, we drove back. Sure enough, a bull was herding his harem.

September is elk rutting season. That means the biggest, baddest bull elk are rounding up their herds of females to impregnate. Herds of 20 females weren’t uncommon. The bulls are busy! Of course, when one bull takes possession of 20 females, that leaves a bunch of other boy elk out in the cold, and sure enough, we saw plenty of lone younger boy elk who didn’t have racks as big as the big bad bulls.

What’s most amazing about the rut is the sound that the bulls make. It’s called “bugling,” and in various forms, it seems to serve to round up the women and to call out to other bull elk, perhaps as a challenge or to tell others to stay away. But it’s hardly a bugle. It’s more like a scream from a horror film, and as we stood next to the meadow, listening to bulls all around us bugling to their women and to each other, it was very eerie.

Next we went to the visitors center, and while we were there, it started hailing outside! The hail balls weren’t golf-ball-sized, by any means, but they were still pretty substantial. The hail went on for quite a while before turning to rain. Then we drove out to the town of Grand Lake, just outside the west entrance, where we made dinner at a covered picnic area, waited out the rain, and then walked around the town when the skies cleared.

As we headed back into the park toward our campsite, the sunset was amazing.

As we lay in our tent, we could hear the bull elk bugling all around us. It was cold, so we occasionally woke up during the night and to bundle ourselves tighter in our sleeping bags, and each time, we could hear the elk bugling.

We woke up to a chilly morning, but the skies had mostly cleared.

Soon after we got out of our tent, a few cow elk showed up in the campground. Some had radio collars for tracking.

Sarah was enjoying the elk show.

We counted a dozen or more women elk. They were very interested in the fire rings in each campsite, probably attracted by food and trash left behind by previous campers.

Then, off at the edge of the forest, we saw their man. The bull was rubbing his antlers on the trees.

Eventually, he emerged from the forest and posed for some pictures in the sunlight.

He walked across the campground into a forested area by the road.

Here he is in a campsite near ours, in his “herding” pose. It looks odd, but it’s the way they round up the ladies.

Then he went back to his favorite tree to rub his antlers a little longer. We went to the tree afterwards and found that a three-foot section of bark was raggedly stripped off.

Here’s Sarah, pleased with her morning of elk viewing. The sky was looking clearer and clearer – it was going to be a lovely day!

Our first destination for the day was the Holzwarth Historic Site. It was an early guest ranch that was eventually gifted to the park. The Park Service removed some newer buildings and rehabilitated the meadow, where we’d seen the elk the day before. But they preserved the older buildings and some farm implements.

From the meadow, we could see snowy peaks in the Never Summer mountain range.

That afternoon, we hiked the Green Mountain Loop, a seven-mile loop. Most of it was in the trees, and we continuously marveled at how much damage the pine beetles had done. Big Meadow afforded some mountain views.

That evening, the visitors center had a slide show by a man who climbed Mt. Everest this year. Along the way, we reached a big group of people who had parked their cars and were looking at something off in the brush, so naturally, we stopped, too. It turned out to be three moose – two young males and a female. The males were horsing around, kind of gently butting heads and clacking their antlers against each other’s. Very cool! We stayed for a few minutes and then continued on to the Everest presentation.

Surprisingly, the Everest climber was an older guy with a paunch – he didn’t look like someone who could climb Everest. But as we listened to his presentation, it became clear that climbing Everest requires much more than physical fitness. Ability to withstand insanely cold temperatures, general mental fortitude, optimism, ability to follow a rigid set of rules that keep you and your team safe – it seems that these are just as important as fitness.

The most horrifying part of the climb sounded like a place near the top, where climbers have to cross a narrow ledge, with drop-offs of hundreds or thousands of feet on either side. Climbers are roped up when they traverse the ledge, of course, but what happens if one slips and falls off? He’d take the whole team down with him. So if you see the climber immediately in front of you slip off the ledge to one side, then you jump off the other side to balance the weight! Then if all went well, the other climbers on your rope haul you both back up. Crazy! It must be terrifying to take this “leap of faith,” but if the alternative is death, maybe you get over it.

It was pretty dark by the time we left the presentation. As we were driving back toward our campsite, we saw a herd of elk in the road. We stopped to let them pass and noticed that the bull of the herd was calling out to another bull somewhere nearby. We decided to park and see what would happen. Shortly, the second bull and his harem also crossed the road, coming out of the hills to the east of the road and heading to the meadow to the west. The two bulls sized each other up, bugling at each other, and eventually, one of the bulls just walked away, apparently relinquishing his harem to the bigger, badder bull. We were a little disappointed that no physical confrontation was involved, but at the same time, we were amazed at how simply the transaction took place.

That evening, the campground’s 18 sites filled up. It was another chilly night, filled with the near-constant bugling of bull elk. The next morning, when we got out of our tent, the elk were already in the campground.

They didn’t stay as long today, probably because the campsites were full, so there was less area to explore unimpeded. We made breakfast and noticed that our water bottles created an interesting pattern on the picnic table as the frost melted.

We wanted to drive across to the east side of the park, but the road had been closed since Thursday, when eight inches of snow fell at the higher elevations, drifting up to two to five feet. We’d heard a rumor that the road would open today, so late in the morning, we packed up our tent and started driving to see how far we could make it. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find our tent bag – it seemed that we had misplaced it when we were setting up our tent. Oh well.

As we drove up, we got great views of the Never Summer Mountains.

We made it up to Milner Pass at 10,758’. By this point, it seemed like the road was open the whole way through

Then, up by the Alpine Visitor Center at 11,796’, we were looking down on the snowy slopes.

We thought of doing a short hike in the alpine area, but we wanted to make sure that we got a campsite on the east side of the park, so we kept driving. At Aspenglen campground, we found that there were plenty of sites available, and we picked a lovely one that had great privacy and a nice stock of firewood left behind by its previous occupant. We were right by a creek, too, which made a peaceful sound – quite different from the bugling elk in our previous campsite.

Although we didn’t have elk right in our campsite, we didn’t have to drive far to find elk-filled meadows.

It was getting late in the day when we decided to do a short hike – a six-mile round-trip hike to the top of Deer Mountain. On the way up, a woman warned us that it was getting late in the day – we weren’t going all the way to the top, were we? (In fact, we had plenty of time – the hike took about three hours.) She also warned us that about the large piles of bear scat on the trail. They looked really fresh, she said. We hadn’t seen any yet, but we promised her that we’d be on the lookout for bears.

As it turned out, we never did see bear scat. We did see some large, fresh piles of horse manure, which must have been what she was talking about. We found it hilarious that she couldn’t tell the difference between horse manure and bear scat, and joked for the rest of the hike about these strange hay-eating bears that seemed to be everywhere!

Anyway, near the top, we met a bird.

We made it to the top and got a nice view of the surrounding area.

After hiking, we headed to town for beer and burgers at Estes Park Brewery. They also have a free tasting, so Brian got to try several of their beers, settling on the stout as the best.

The next day, we were about to head out from the campground when a fox ran right in front of our car and through our campsite!

We planned a big loop hike that would take us to some of the picturesque lakes in the Bear Lake area. We started our hike at the Glacier Gorge trailhead and hiked to Alberta Falls.

As we continued to ascend, we got nice mountain views.

The subalpine creeks and vegetation were very pretty, too.

Soon we reached Mills Lake.

Ascending from Mills Lake, we reached a steep, rocky area with a creek tumbling down.

Here’s Brian, taking a break from the climb.

Above the cascade, we could tell we were approaching the next lake.

Black Lake turned out to have a beautiful mountain backdrop.

At Black Lake, the trail ended, so we retraced our steps, taking a snack break at Mills Lake.

Then we headed down another trail to The Loch, from which we could see Andrews Glacier in the distance.

We retraced our steps from The Loch and then took a rough trail to Lake Hiayaha.

From there, we hiked toward Dream Lake. The views opened up, and Longs Peak stood out prominently as the only fourteener (14,000’ peak) in the national park. We had hoped to climb Longs Peak while we were in the park, but several rangers had warned us that it would be dangerously icy near the top, so they recommended ice axes and crampons.

As we hiked down toward the next lakes on our route, we passed some aspens that were turning yellow.

We passed Dream Lake and hiked to Nymph Lake, which offered a nice reflection of Longs.

A couple of ducks approached us, clearly looking for food.

When they figured out that we weren’t going to give them any, they curled up for a nap.

Finally, we hiked down to the Bear Lake trailhead, where we took a shuttle back to our car. On the shuttle ride, we saw a big bull moose just off the road. Back at the campsite, we ate dinner and made a nice campfire.

The next day, we went back to Bear Lake for a walk around the lake.

Longs Peak still beckoned, but according to the rangers, it was still as inaccessible as ever without at least ice axes.

Just above Bear Lake, we got a great view of the aspens changing color.

Then we hiked down to Bierstadt Lake.

The next day, Wednesday, we left Rocky for Fort Collins.

Dinosaur National Monument

2008-10-03T08:57:00.001-07:00

After leaving Salt Lake City on Tuesday, September 9, we went to Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the border of northeast Utah and northwest Colorado. We didn’t really know much about it, but national monuments are generally cool and it was on our way.

We arrived around dinnertime and settled into the Green River Campground, on the Utah side of the park, for the evening. The campground itself was unremarkable, but its occupants were noteworthy. First, we met a snake that had to be at least five feet long and hung out around our campsite for a half hour or more. We later learned from a ranger that it was “George” the bull snake – he’s a well-known fixture of the campground. He’s not venomous, though his sheer size was a bit disconcerting.

The next campground-dweller that we met was more disconcerting than George. He was an older, kind of creepy guy, who appeared seemingly out of nowhere to ask if we’d ever pitched our tent in the rain before (why, yes, thanks…) and then gave us some unhelpful and unsolicited advice about tents and rain. We met his mother the next morning; she was equally strange and unfortunately interested in talking at length.

Our first sightseeing stop of the morning was the Sound of Silence hiking trail, which wound through a desert landscape.

Very quickly, the trail became dominated by bright red rocks.

This little guy poked his head up at us along the way.

There were occasional broad vistas, which were reminiscent of parts of Capitol Reef National Park.

The hike was listed in the park information as a strenuous hike, but it was only three miles long and after all of our recent hiking, we breezed through it easily. Next, we stopped by the visitors center for some info. There a ranger recommended a hike where we could see some dinosaur bones. This was exciting because we’d thought all the fossils in the monument were housed in the main visitors center, which we’d learned the day before was closed due to structural damage.

After a short hike, we came upon the first obvious fossil embedded in the rock wall.

There were several other large fossils as well as some smaller fossils.

It was very cool to see the dinosaur bones up close, though quite surprising that they weren’t protected in any way.

Along the way, we got a view of the Dinosaur Quarry Visitors Center which houses most of the park’s bone collection.

There were large, colorful rocks along this hike as well.

Continuing along, there was a rock with several petroglyphs, the first of many we’d see.

After the dinosaur bone hike, our next stop was the “Swelter Shelter”. This was a small dwelling that was named by researchers who excavated it in the heat of the summer. There were a number of petroglyphs and pictographs on the walls, drawn about 1000 years ago by the Fremont people. We thought some of them looked like little aliens.

Continuing along the scenic drive, we went through Split Mountain and down to the Green River. The colors of the mountain behind the river were brilliant even in the midday sun.

By now, afternoon clouds were rolling in, but we continued along our tour undeterred.

Near the end of the road, two more short hikes led to more petroglyphs and pictographs. The first group of petroglyphs was on a rock right beside the road.

Many of them were in surprisingly good condition, like this bighorn sheep.

Walking just a little further revealed a bunch more petroglyphs.

The second hike was famous for the clearly visible lizards carved in the dark “desert varnish” of the rock.

This area also had a flute player and another interesting face-like shape.

At the end of the road was the Josie Morris cabin area (oddly named, since our brochure indicates that Josie’s last name was really Bassett). Josie lived there without modern amenities until her death in the 1960s at age 90.

Josie used the nearby slot canyons as animal pens, fencing just the opening.

By this point, a storm was threatening, so we only walked briefly into the canyon.

Back at our campsite, the storm had definitely rolled in.

We sat in the car and watched an impressive lightning display all around before we were treated to a huge rainbow.

The light was amazing and we spent quite awhile taking photos.

Then we realized a second rainbow had appeared.

The lightning and rainbow were quite a show, but the sky wasn’t done changing, as it moved through a range of deep reds and purples in the setting sun.

After an amazing hour or so watching the sky, the rest of the night was uneventful except for the fact that we managed to kill our car battery blogging. We had the laptop connected to the car through an inverter and the radio on listening to a baseball game. Eventually, the inverter started beeping, signaling a low battery. We shut the computer down but didn’t immediately turn off the radio. Soon, the radio turned itself off, at which point we realized the battery was dead. Oops. Luckily, we carry jumper cables and the next morning found a nice lady to give us a boost.

After we got our car going in the morning, we started driving toward Rocky Mountain National Park. Our plan was to camp in the park that night, but the weather deteriorated quickly and it was soon pouring rain and freezing. Heading into the park in that weather didn’t seem like much fun, so we spent a lot of the day hanging out in Steamboat Springs, reading and catching up on blogging about the John Muir Trail. We spent a soggy night camped in Steamboat (the tent is fine in the rain if it’s left up, but everything gets wet quickly when you are putting it up and taking it down repeatedly in the rain, like we had the past couple days), and in the morning we continued to the west entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Salt Lake City

2008-10-01T05:41:00.001-07:00

In the afternoon on Friday, September 5, we left Reno on our way east toward Denver, where we’d visit Sarah’s sister Lisa in a week or two. We had planned to take a southerly route, perhaps visiting Capitol Reef National Park and Hovenweep National Monument along the way. As Sarah drove, Brian fired up the laptop, and using our mapping software (Microsoft Streets & Trips), found out that a more northerly route through Salt Lake City was quite a bit shorter. On that route, we could explore Salt Lake City and visit Dinosaur National Monument, and then we could drive across Rocky Mountain National Park from the west entrance to the east. This new plan seemed just as good as the old one, so we switched plans.

In the road atlas, Brian found a national forest campground called Angel Creek that was just a few miles off I-70 and seemed like a good place to stop for the night. After a few hours of driving, we got off the highway and followed Streets & Trips’ recommended route to the campground. The forest road that the software said to follow for five miles turned out to be just a tire track through grazing land. The route was level, though, and easily passable by Caroline, so we kept going. We got to a closed gate, and in hindsight, that’s where we should have turned around. But we didn’t. We opened the gate, which we assumed was there just to fence off grazing land, rather than to demarcate private property, and drove on through. We went through several more gates, and then the road started getting worse. The tire tracks got deeper, to the point where the middle of the road was a foot to two feet above the bottoms of the ruts. Caroline doesn’t have that kind of ground clearance, but still we pressed onward, driving with Caroline’s left wheels in the middle of the road and her right wheels on the “shoulder,” if you could call it that, on the right of the road, so she was straddling the right tire track.

Of course, a track like this doesn’t really have a “shoulder,” so really, Caroline’s right side was off in the weeds. The plants in the desert of Colorado are quite a bit hardier than those in, say, the forests in the Northwest, and every so often, we’d hear this piercing screech as some spiny or thorny plant raked Caroline’s right side.

After driving about four miles, we started to lose track of the road. We had driven into a more fertile area, and our track just seemed to dead-end in a grassy field. By now, the sun was long past set, and we couldn’t see anything beyond our headlight beams, but after some searching, we found a faint track through the field. We followed that and quickly found the reason that the vegetation had changed: a creek bed that ran straight across the road. The good news: It was dry. The bad news: It looked like about a two-foot sheer drop-off to get down into the creek bed, and we couldn’t see the opposite side in the dark.

At this point, we were only a mile away from the end of this crazy road, so we really wanted to get past this creek bed. Brian got out of the car with his headlamp and scouted for a route. As it turned out, the drop-off into the creek bed wasn’t as severe as it looked on our initial approach. And after some careful navigation through large rocks at the bottom of the creek bed, it looked like the climb out on the opposite side wasn’t too bad. So Brian took the wheel and managed to successfully navigate the creek bed without bottoming out. A few more scrapes of the right side of the car and one scrape of Caroline’s undercarriage, and we made it to the end of the track. Our directions told us to turn right onto another forest road, which didn’t look appreciably different in Streets & Trips but turned out to be a paved highway! After the first five miles took us over an hour, the last two to the campground took less than five minutes.

Surveying the damage proved difficult because Caroline was so covered in dust. She had lots of lines on her right side, but many of those were just lines through the dust, while others were scratches through the clearcoat. After our next carwash, we would do another survey and discover that Caroline had quite a few new scratches. Her abusive parents force her to lead a tough life. At least her brand-new driver’s door came out unscathed.

After a pleasant night, we headed out the next morning. The route back to the interstate took us further east and was entirely on paved roads – we definitely should have taken that route into the campground. It would have been five miles longer, at least half an hour faster, and way less painful for Caroline.

In any case, we continued east to Salt Lake City, where we’d gotten a deal for another three-night hotel stay in Draper, Utah, a little ways south of Salt Lake. We figured we’d enjoy being indoors for a few more days, catch up further on our blog, run errands, etc. On Friday, we visited the SLC farmers market and then headed to a visitor information center, which happened to be right across from the capitol building.

On the front steps of the visitor information building was a bison with cartoons of various Utah sights plastered all over it and a bizarre handle on top.

After that, we headed to Temple Square to take in the sights there. The Mormon Temple was very photogenic, with the gold statue of the angel Moroni on top.

We went into the Mormon Tabernacle, where the famous choir performs every Sunday. The organ, with its 11,623 pipes, was impressive.

While we were in the tabernacle, they did an acoustics demonstration. Even though the building was huge, we could clearly hear a person speaking in a normal voice. Amazing!

Our hotel was the Ramada Limited, which turned out to be an older hotel with fantastic amenities: free wireless internet, a refrigerator and microwave in our room, HBO, and a continental breakfast with Belgian waffles, bagels, yogurt, fruit, and lots more. But the best feature for Sarah was the bed – weeks later, she was still talking about how comfortable the bed was. It was a great place to stay for three nights.

Draper turned out to be a great base for outdoor recreation, since a lot of the good hiking is to the southeast of Salt Lake. On Sunday, we headed up the Little Cottonwood Canyon Road to hike up to the Red Pine Lakes. It was quite a pretty hike, and just a short drive from the city.

After we’d ascended a ways, we took a photo looking back down the canyon.

Lower Red Pine Lake provided a nice stopping point for a snack.

The trail continued past the lake but quickly became steep and then hard-to-follow as it led over a big boulder field to Upper Red Pine Lake. We got good views looking back at the lower lake.

The surrounding reddish peaks completed the landscape.

After the hike, we went to a discount movie theater in Sandy and watched Iron Man, which Brian was excited to see. Sarah was indifferent, but she admitted afterwards that she’d really liked it. We agreed that it was far better than the Indiana Jones movie.

The next day, we went to the Utah State Fair, which is surprisingly right by downtown Salt Lake City. We decided to go because Chris Cagle, a popular country singer was performing in the evening, but then we found out that the fair also had all-you-can-eat ice cream! We arrived at the ice-cream tent around 3:30, and it was already jam-packed with people – apparently, the all-you-can-eat ice cream isn’t a secret. It’s sponsored by the dairy farmers of Utah, and half a dozen or more different ice cream makers had 5-10 different varieties each that we could sample. So it was nearly impossible to try them all, but Brian, an ice cream aficionado, did his best – he ate 18 scoops! Here he is, far along in gorging himself but still smiling:

The competitions in state fairs are always fun – you can win a blue ribbon in everything from hog raising to needlework to pickle canning. The homemade candies looked especially enticing, but sampling was prohibited.

Passing time until the Chris Cagle show and letting our ice cream settle, we also checked out the photography competition and watched a cooking exhibition where we learned how to make a tasty breakfast from Malt-o-Meal.

Chris Cagle put on an enjoyable show. He actually got choked up during one of his songs, stopped the music, and explained that he was thinking about his dog, which he really missed after nearly a month on the road. Then he started singing again. He seemed like a very genuine guy, and the crowd loved him.

After the concert, we walked around the rides and ate some fried dough, a state fair staple, now that five hours had passed since our colossal ice cream binge.

The next morning, we left Salt Lake City and headed east to Dinosaur National Monument.

Reno, Take II

2008-10-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

In Lone Pine after our JMT hike, we hung out at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to Bishop. It was Labor Day, so we wouldn’t be able to pick our car up until the next day, but we planned to camp in Bishop and go to the body shop first thing the next morning. When 5:00 pm passed and the scheduled bus hadn’t arrived, we realized something was wrong. Sure enough, when we looked at the bus schedule again, we noticed a hard-to-see paragraph saying that the bus system shut down on major holidays, including Labor Day.

Dejected, we set out to find a campground in Lone Pine, and as it turned out, Portagee Joe campground was less than a mile from town. So we hiked down there and set up camp for the night.

The next morning, the 6:30 bus showed up right on time, and we were on our way to Bishop. We were a bit nervous to pick up Caroline. First of all, we hoped that all of our possessions would still be in the back of Caroline – the vehicle hadn’t been at all secure with the door frame ripped open, and Caroline had changed hands from us to the tow company to the body shop. Second, we really had no idea whether the body shop did good work. And third, we wondered if a newly painted door would look out of place, given all the dings and scratches on the rest of Caroline.

As it turned out, we had nothing to fear. The Inyo-Mono Body Shop had taken good care of Caroline -- she had a brand-new-looking door with a perfect paint job! Everything was still in the car, and we gratefully changed out of our filthy hiking clothes into clean clothes. We paid our bill and headed across town to Schat’s Bakery, which other hikers had recommended to us. We got some jalapeno cheese bread and ate on their patio before beginning the long drive up to Reno.

In Reno, we checked back into the Sands hotel and casino for another three-night stay. The Sands isn’t a fancy hotel, but our room was spacious, with a nice sitting area, and had a bed and a hot shower – all of this seemed over-the-top luxurious after our 17 days on the trail. We enjoyed long showers, and Brian shaved his three-weeks-old beard.

Over the next few days, we didn’t really do a whole lot. We ate at Mel’s Diner on the first floor of the casino, and we went to the town of Sparks, right next to Reno, for Rail City Casino’s $5.55 dinner buffet, which was quite acceptable given the price. We headed to the second-run theater at the Grand Sierra Resort to watch Indiana Jones, and we vegged out in the Sands’ 16th-floor hot tub twice. We watched a lot of TV, too, with the Republican National Convention providing nightly entertainment. And we visited Starbucks several times to drink coffee and blog about our hike.

On Friday morning, we woke up around sunrise and headed to Rancho San Rafael Park to watch the opening of the Great Reno Balloon Race. We’d overslept our alarm and were afraid that we’d woken up too late, but the race got started late, too, so it turned out that we hadn’t missed anything.

We picked a spot on a hill overlooking the balloon staging area and enjoyed the early morning light.

A bird was the first balloon to rise. There was initially some debate about whether it was a turkey or an eagle, but as the balloon inflated, it quickly became clear that it was an eagle.

Soon there was a cornucopia of color as dozens of other balloons began inflating.

A bee and the race logo balloon were the next off the ground.

The little pond between us and the balloons made for some interesting reflections.

Soon still more balloons were in the air.

Smokey the Bear even made an appearance.

He looked out over the forest, watching for fires.

The hills west of Reno made for a pretty backdrop.

Sands, our new favorite place to stay in Reno, even had a balloon.

Then a pink balloon started inflating. It turned out to be the Energizer Hot-Air Hare!

Eventually, all the balloons were inflated and in the air or taking off. We counted about 80 of them. It was amazing that they could all set up and lift off in such a small space!

We walked down to the festival area, next to where the balloons had taken off, and wandered around the tents. We went to a radio station’s booth and spun their prize wheel. We’d never done this before because the lines are usually long, and people hardly ever seem to win. But this time, the line was short, and Brian actually won $10 in gift certificates to a local BBQ place. Score! We headed back to the casino, reluctantly checked out, and then drove to the BBQ place for lunch before heading out of town, on our way east toward Utah.

JMT - Bears

2008-09-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

The next topic that we wanted to cover for the benefit of future JMT hikers is bear safety. If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you may recall that we had a run-in with a bear in the San Gorgonio Wilderness back in May, and then of course, in Yosemite, a bear ripped our car open. So we have some experience dealing with California bears, and hope that others can learn from our mishaps.

When we arrived in Yosemite, we knew that bears there are notorious for bad behavior, and we were repeatedly warned about how to protect ourselves and our property. The park entrance station, the park newspaper, and signs in the campgrounds all told us that when we parked overnight, we needed to remove everything from our car that had any smell – all food and toiletries had to go.

When we got our wilderness permit, the ranger at the wilderness station reiterated the warning, saying that we needed to make sure that we transferred anything with a taste into the bear-proof lockers in the trailhead parking lots. She used the same examples – food, toothpaste, lotions, deodorant, baby wipes, etc. At the desk in the wilderness office, they showed a photo of a car that a bear had broken into, with its door frame bent down. We asked about our cooler, which was empty, and the ranger said we should be OK to leave it in the car if we cleaned it out well and made sure it wasn’t visible. She explained that bears don’t just smell for food – they also look into cars, and if they see something like a cooler that looks like a food source, they may break in even if they can’t smell anything.

We spent much of the rest of the day clearing out our car lest it suffer the fate of the car in the photo. We consolidated all of our smelly items into a couple of bins. We noticed that some of our blankets smelled from being packed in a bin near toiletries, so we laundered those. We washed out our empty cooler with soap and water. When we felt like we’d done everything we could to make our car unattractive to a bear, we parked it in the overnight parking lot. After opening and closing several lockers, we found an empty locker and put our smelly stuff inside. We were uncomfortable leaving some of our stuff, including dishes and cookware that would be expensive to replace, in a locker that was bear-proof but hardly people-proof, but we did it anyway. We also noticed that visitors had locked several of the lockers, despite warnings that the lockers were to be shared and locks would be cut off.

After transferring our food and toiletries to the locker, we still had duffel bags of clothing and other gear in the car – after all, we’ve been living out of our car. None of this stuff seemed like it would be interesting to a bear, but to be extra-safe, we put a bed sheet over everything, to reduce the appearance of clutter.

On the way to the trailhead the next morning, we stopped at our car to drop off a few things that we wouldn’t be carrying them with us on our hike. When we got to our car, a park vehicle was already there, and two park officials were writing up an incident report. Despite all our hard work the previous day, our car had been attacked by a bear! The door frame was bent down at a 45-degree angle, and the window was sitting in shards on the ground. Interestingly, the interior of the car was hardly disrupted – the sheet that we’d used to cover our bags was tossed aside, and a duffel bag was moved to the front seat from the back of the car. The cooler was moved, too. But the bear didn’t open any bags or make any other mess. It looked like a very quick job – break in, sniff around for food for a minute or two, and leave to try his luck on another car.

The male official did most of the talking, and he said we were lucky that he wasn’t a ranger. He pointed at the stuff in the back of our car – the duffel bags, bins, and cooler that were now plainly visible, given that the bear had removed the bed sheet that had been covering them – and said that if he was a ranger, he would have impounded our car and we would have been fined thousands of dollars. We didn’t understand what we had done wrong, given that we’d followed all the regulations and then some, but we were in such a state of shock that we were actually a bit grateful – at least the official wasn’t going to fine us! The officials told us that we should take our car to the Yosemite Valley garage, where they could tape or board up our door for us, and then we could head out on our trip. They didn’t ask us any questions about what we had done to bear-proof our car; they just completed writing up their incident report and gave us a report number and a phone number that we could call.

We weren’t comfortable with leaving our car in the parking lot with just tape over the door, but we headed over to the garage anyway. The staff turned out to be extremely friendly and helped us find a towing company and a body shop that could fix up our door for us while we hiked. After that, we settled in to wait for the tow truck to arrive.

The incident report card that the official had provided indicated that we should call the park office to complete our report. Since he hadn’t asked us any questions about the bear-proofing we had done, we felt it was our responsibility to call the office to let them know the details of what had happened. They would probably want to know exactly what was in our car and what state of organization it was in, so that they could understand the behavioral patterns of this particular bear and reduce the likelihood of negative bear/people interactions in the future.

So while we were waiting for the tow truck to arrive, Brian called the office. The person who answered the phone was the same park official who had taken the report. Brian started a conversation, and after a few minutes, it became clear that the official thought the report was complete – there was nothing more that would be useful for the park service to know. The official said once, “Well, at least you’ve learned a lesson.” When he repeated that comment a second time, Brian asked, “What lesson were we supposed to learn?” The official said that we couldn’t leave anything at all in our car. When Brian pointed out that the park guidelines were not consistent with this, explicitly stating that park visitors should remove items with a smell from their cars, the official said, “Those people who write the guidelines, they don’t know the bears like I do.”

Later in the conversation, Brian asked what would be done about this particular bear. After all, it was pretty clearly a problem bear, breaking into a car without provocation. Surely, the park service would do something to deter this bear from attacking cars in the future. The official said, “The bear’s not the problem. You’re the problem.” He said that the bears were in Yosemite first, before people, and we were encroaching on their territory. The bear was just being a bear, and after all, we’d left all that stuff in the car to entice it.

So let’s see… Park officials blame all negative bear/people encounters on the people – the bears are immune from any responsibility. Park officials display no interest in asking questions to gather information about the details of a particular bear/people encounter that might be useful to prevent future such encounters – after all, the people are always at fault, so there’s nothing more to learn. The park’s guidelines – published in the park newspaper, at the entrance stations, and at campgrounds, and espoused by rangers – aren’t written by people who know the bears, and are woefully inadequate to protect people and their property from the bears.

After our car was on its way to the body shop, we headed back to the wilderness office to talk to a ranger, to try to square the park official’s admonition that we could have nothing in our car with the wilderness office’s guidance that we just remove items with smell and taste. The ranger who had issued our permit the previous day wasn’t there, so we talked to another ranger. He admitted that yes, our car would have been safer if it had been completely empty, but unfortunately, the park doesn’t have enough bear lockers in the parking lots to support such a policy, and the lockers aren’t secure from theft, so recommending that cars be completely emptied would just trade a bear problem for a theft problem. Besides, he said, even completely emptying a car might not be enough. A bear may break into a Honda CR-V once and get some tasty food out of it and decide that CR-Vs are yummy food sources, so it may break into a few more CR-Vs in the hope of getting more food. Yes, bears are apparently that smart – they can recognize the make and model of a car! Or maybe a bear learns that CR-Vs are relatively easy to break into, and that encourages future CR-V break-ins. Or a bear may see color as a sign – the bear breaks into a green vehicle and gets some food, and then continues to break into other green vehicles, without any provocation. So parking an empty car overnight is better than parking a car with a bunch of duffel bags in it like we did, and that’s definitely better than leaving food and toiletries in your car, but the bears are so bold and so smart that even emptying your car isn’t fool-proof.

And of course, this wasn’t our first negative bear encounter in California. The bear that stalked us near L.A., after all, was descended from Yosemite problem bears. In the 1970s, back in the day when the park service actually fed garbage to the bears to bring them into the frontcountry so that visitors could see them, problem bears were relocated. Now, though, relocation has fallen out of favor as a management practice – it just spreads out the problem, and oftentimes, the relocated bear will find its way back anyway. Nowadays, the only way of dealing with a problem bear is to kill it. As the National Forest rangers in California told us, they couldn’t do anything at all about the bear that had stalked us – if they reported the incident to Fish and Wildlife, that department would kill the bear. And the rangers didn’t want that. After all, the bear had just stalked us – it hadn’t even bluff-charged us to try to get us to drop our packs! It could have been worse!

Based on these incidents, it seems that California park management has adopted a consistent policy of ignoring, and therefore enabling, bad bear behavior. If your kid stalks another kid, you punish your kid to deter such behavior in the future. If your kid rips apart your car, causing over $1000 worth of damage, you definitely punish your kid. But if a bear does the same thing, park management turns the other way, either admitting that the bear has done wrong but claiming their hands are tied or, in the case of the park official who took our incident report, projecting blame onto us.

Contrast this with the policies of park management outside California. Brian’s sister, once a park ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, was appalled at the story of the bear near L.A. – if a bear behaved that way in Rocky, she said, it would be shot, not punitively, but rather to protect the rest of the bear population. We’ve seen plenty of bears in other national parks – Rainier, Yellowstone, Glacier – and they all keep their distance. When we’ve met bears in the backcountry in Rainier, for instance, they’ve most commonly run away from us. The few that didn’t simply ignored us and went about their business while we went about ours. No bear outside California has ever displayed the remotest interest in us, much less stalked us. And in all of those parks, keeping your food and toiletries in a hard-sided vehicle is totally sufficient to protect those items – and your vehicle – from bears.

In California, on the other hand, a bear attacks a car, and regardless of what the owner of the car has done to follow park guidelines, it’s the human’s fault. The bear is free to come back the next night and attack a different car, becoming increasingly bold, knowing that the risk that it’s taking is low. The reward may also be low – maybe only one in ten cars has some tasty morsel inside, given park visitors’ efforts to bear-proof their cars – but given zero consequences, that reward is enough for the bear to keep trying, doing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of damage with each attack. Worse, what if that bear is a female and gives birth to baby bears? How do those babies learn to forage for food? From their mother, of course, who not only teaches them which berries are good to eat, but which types of cars are good to break into, and how to break into them.

As vehicle break-ins become more socialized into the bear population, the overnight parking lots, jokingly known as “bear buffets,” become a reliable food source. Bears don’t have predators in the area, so what limits their population? It’s the food supply. Increase the food supply by augmenting the berry bushes with overnight parking lots, and the park can support more bears. As the bear population grows, given its increased food supply, it becomes dependent on that food supply, and if the supply becomes more difficult to access – perhaps due to stricter park regulations that result in less food left in cars – the bears become increasingly aggressive in their fight for survival.

Ironically, the park official that took our incident report, who refused to hear any evidence that the bear that had attacked our car might be a problem, said his job was to “protect the bears” when in fact, he was saving one bear but destroying the population. Killing a single badly behaved bear is a widely accepted practice on public lands outside California – rather than being the cruel practice that some would make it out to be, it’s the only known way to save the population from developing habits that endanger the entire group. Bad behaviors may be so socialized into the Yosemite bear population at this point, though, that bear management practices used outside California would be ineffective.

The lesson for California’s public-lands management is clear: Admit the problem, and start to work on correcting it, rather than continuing to protect one bear at the expense of the population.

What’s the lesson for JMT hikers, or Yosemite backpackers in general? The best thing to do is simply not to bring your car into the park. There’s a surprisingly good public transportation system around Yosemite, so parking outside the park and taking buses into Yosemite is actually a viable option. If you’re thru-hiking the JMT, you need to take a shuttle at the beginning or end of your hike anyway to get back to your vehicle, so leaving your car in Mammoth or Bishop rather than inside the park isn’t really an inconvenience.

If you really want to take your car into the park and you’re going to park it in a “bear buffet,” then make sure that there’s nothing at all inside the car, but know that even that might not be enough.

All in all, after our experience, we wouldn’t go back to Yosemite just for a weekend backpacking trip – it’s just not worth it, given the risk and/or inconvenience. For a longer trip, like the JMT, we would park outside the park. The trip was fantastic enough that even after spending $1000 to replace our door, it was worth it, but if we were to do it again, we’d avoid that expense by parking outside the park and not serving up our car for dinner.

JMT - Planning Food

2008-09-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

Next we’ll discuss planning and packing food for the John Muir Trail. Attitudes regarding food on the trail were about as diverse as gear styles. Some people were way short on food due to what appeared to be inappropriate planning. For example, one couple ate only one meal a day for several days while doing 20-mile days, and Doug, despite having underpacked food on two previous JMT thru-hikes, still failed to pack enough snacks for mid-day calories. Then there were people like Isaac who planned on eating 2400 calories a day, knowing full well that he’d lose about 20 pounds over the course of the trip. Packing insufficient food, whether intentionally or unintentionally, seemed quite common. Also, some people chose not to carry a stove, and others carried a stove.

In addition to style, there are a number of other constraints that can make planning a challenge. You have to think about variety of taste and texture, calorie distribution (i.e. balancing carbs, fats, and proteins), size of food and calorie density (all this food needs to fit in the bear canister you’ll be carrying), cooking time (to minimize fuel usage), durability (some crackers will just turn to dust after being in a pack for a while), perishableness, balance of food groups, etc.

Calculating Calories
We’ve done a lot of backpacking and have plenty of experience packing for two-to-three-day trips. However, we’ve never actually calculated how many calories we carry, so determining a target calorie count was a bit of a guesstimate. If you read several different discussions of backpacking calorie requirements in books or magazines, you will undoubtedly get several very different calculation techniques and recommendations. One thing to keep in mind is that even though you may need a certain number of calories to replace the calories you’re burning, it may actually be a physical challenge to consume all those calories, even if the food is available.

We ultimately decided on 3000 calories per day for Sarah and 4000 calories per day for Brian. In hindsight, we definitely could have survived on fewer calories and lightened our loads. On the other hand, Sarah lost weight, so maybe she should have eaten more. All in all, we came pretty close to packing an optimal quantity of food.

We took a very analytical approach to our food planning. Between the two of us, we needed 7000 calories a day. For 17 days, that would be 119,000 calories. Then we broke those down by meals. For breakfast, we planned on eating an oatmeal concoction daily. We chose a variety of dinner entrees and for planning, averaged the number of calories in those dinners. Then we needed to get the rest of our 119,000 calories from lunch and snacks. Here’s the math:

Total calories – 7000 calories per day x 17 days = 119,000 calories
Breakfast calories – 1100 calories per day x 17 days = 18,700 calories
Dinner calories – 1000 calories per day x 17 days = 17,000 calories
Snack/lunch calories – 5000 calories per day x 17 days = 85,000 calories
(Yes, there is a bit of rounding here.)

Furthermore, we figured we could eat large meals at the cafés at Tuolomne Meadows and Reds Meadow, so on those two resupply days, we planned to get our 5000 snack/lunch calories at the cafés. So instead of packing 85,000 snack/lunch calories, we packed 75,000.

Once we’d determined how many snack/lunch calories to pack, we made a big table listing all of the different snack/lunch foods we could think of packing – granola, trail mix, M&Ms, fig bars, Clif and Luna bars, etc. For each item, we wrote down the number of calories per serving, the number of servings we’d pack, and then the total calories represented by each food item. For instance, we brought some Gatorade powder, which is 200 calories a serving. We brought 18 servings, for a total of 3600 calories. All right – only 71,400 snack/lunch calories to go!

We needed to calculate the calories in each resupply, too, so the table also had columns for each of the resupplies. We brought two servings of Gatorade with us at the beginning of the trip and packed three servings into the Tuolomne Meadows resupply, five into the Reds Meadow resupply, and eight into the Muir Trail Ranch resupply. Whether you use a table or some other organizational system, definitely make sure you have a system to make sure the right items are getting into the right resupplies. 119,000 calories is a lot of food and it’s easy to miscalculate or mispack items without a good tracking system in place.

Also, it may seem obvious, but keep in mind that packing for a hike like the JMT is not the same as packing for an overnight trip. An overnight trip is really a day and a half trip. If you are like us, you get home on the second night and have a huge dinner, so during the trip, we’ve actually run a calorie deficit, to be replenished at home. A calorie deficit is fine on a short trip, but if you continue with such a deficit, in several days you’ll likely be hungry, lacking energy, and spending your time dreaming of food instead of enjoying the scenery.

Shopping and Other Preparation Tips
Backpacking dinners, such as Mountain House or Backpackers’ Pantry, are easy to find at most any sporting goods store. REI has a particularly large selection of these sorts of dinners. If you plan ahead and watch their sales, you can sometimes get a deal.

Any store that sells bulk foods is a great place to get snacks or buy ingredients to make your own meals. Bulk foods are often cheaper than packaged alternatives, and with bulk foods, you can buy just the amount you actually need. If you are in the Northwest and near a WinCo Foods store, take advantage of their great bulk selection. Sometimes your regular grocery store (places like Safeway, Kroger, etc.) will have a bulk foods section, though in our experience, these places have a fairly limited selection. Natural food stores are also a good place to try. Online, Harmony House Foods has a great selection of natural dehydrated foods at a reasonable price (especially their backpacker sampler).

Packing your own meals instead of buying dehydrated meals can be quite economical and gives you more control over what you are eating. We find that these meals often feel more like “real” meals than dehydrated meals do, and we like that our own meals don’t have as many preservatives and other additives. We got most of our recipes from two cookbooks put out by The Mountaineers – Backcountry Cooking and More Backcountry Cooking. (Incidentally, these are great resources for general camping as well, though if we aren’t backpacking, we’ll often substitute fresh food wherever possible.) One thing to keep in mind, especially when packing your own meals, is that it’s always good to try the meals before you go. It stinks to sit down at the end of a long day of hiking, ravenous, only to find that dinner is an unappealing pot of sludge.

Definitely take the time to remove extra packaging and put things in Ziplocs instead. The packaging for store-bought backpacking dinners is especially inefficient. While cooking right in the packet is convenient and avoids dirty dishes, heavy reliance on these types of meals will almost certainly mean you’ll need to repackage them to get everything to fit in your bear canister. Real Ziploc bags are more durable and have better zippers than generic bags – save yourself the hassle of cleaning messes out of your pack and spend the extra money on Ziplocs. This is especially true in bear country, where you really don’t want your pack smelling like dinner. But remember that Ziplocs are not odor-proof. We packed several meals with curry in them and found that anything that was stored nearby – from M&Ms to fig bars – took on a slight curry flavor.

We think variety is important for a trip this long. There are definitely people who can pack the most efficient calories regardless of taste and force themselves to eat it. However, if you’re like most people and you get completely sick of eating too much of one thing – ramen noodles/trail mix/<insert overpacked food here> – then you probably won’t end up eating it. Then instead of getting the calories you need, you just have dead weight in your pack of undesirable food that you have to pack out. Variety is also key in deciding whether to carry a stove or not. If you have a lot of variety in your snacks, a stove may not be necessary. However, if you are eating a lot of the same thing, a hot meal at the end of the day can provide welcome relief from the monotony.

Remember to give yourself plenty of time to plan, shop for, and pack your meals. We spent multiple afternoons over the course of the summer getting everything ready.

Breakfast
Our standard breakfast is 1 1/2 cups of oatmeal, 1/2 cup powdered milk, and a couple tablespoons each of wheat germ, flaxseed meal, brown sugar, nuts, and dried fruit. For nuts, we used sliced almonds, chopped walnuts, or chopped pecans. For dried fruit, we used cranberries, raisins, or dates. Dried blueberries or apples are also yummy options. We usually use whole oats, but for this trip we used instant oats so that “cooking” was as simple as boiling two cups of water and adding our mix. This recipe made two servings.

Dinner
For dinner, we chose several meals that we like and rotated through them several times. The meals were barley and curry, red lentils and rice, red beans and rice, and pre-packaged dehydrated dinners.

For dehydrated dinners, we brought Jose’s Chicken Mole, Wild West Chili, Katmandu Curry, and Chana Masala, all from Backpackers Pantry. Since backpacking dinners tend to be low in calories (on average they contain roughly 350 calories per serving), we also packed soups and smoothies for nights when we were eating these meals to boost our dinner calorie count. As it turned out, the smoothies were really foul and we ended up tossing most of them – that was the one case where we didn’t heed our own advice of trying a meal before bringing it on the trip.

For beans and rice, we brought Zattarain’s brand mix. This mix has the disadvantage of being slower to cook than the dehydrated beans-and-rice dinners made especially for backpacking, but we think the texture and flavor is better.

We made the other meals – barley with curry and red lentils with rice – from recipes in the previously mentioned cookbooks. The curry in both of these recipes provided a nice contrast to our daily snacks, and curry is supposed to be an anti-inflammatory, which is good for a hike this long. The downside, as mentioned, is that curry flavor tends to ooze into all your other food. Curry M&Ms aren’t bad, but weren’t quite what we were expecting.

We also brought eight or so tea bags to go with breakfast or dinner. Given the weather we had, these were entirely dispensable. They probably would have been really nice if we’d had colder or wetter weather though.

Lunch and Snacks
On the trail, “lunch” for us is really a series of snacks, starting shortly after breakfast and ending about dinner time. We packed a large variety of items for snacks.

Trail mix – We brought several different kinds of trail mix, totaling 24,000 calories. In general, trail mix is a good, dense source of calories.
Granola – Another major source of calories was granola, which accounted for 17,000 calories. We used our mug to eat it since picking it up with your hands is messy (and your hands are often too dirty to eat from). We also used the granola for breakfast on mornings when we wanted to get on the trail quickly. Then we’d wait until later in the day to cook oatmeal.
Bars – The third major component of our calories was an assortment of Cliif, Luna, and Odwalla bars. We normally don’t eat these sorts of bars while backpacking, but they are convenient to pack. We budgeted about 1 1/2 bars per person per day.
Bagels and peanut butter, hummus and tortillas – We used these items in early resupplies where the bread wouldn’t spoil. Powdered hummus rehydrates easily with the addition of cold water. It’s not quite as good as the real thing, but not bad either.
Triscuits – These worked well because they are fairly sturdy crackers. We put them in our last resupply because we were concerned that any other bread product wouldn’t be good by the time we picked the package up.
M&Ms – Mmm, chocolate! M&Ms were great for dessert or for a pick-me-up.
Gatorade – We packed enough Gatorade powder for a quart a day. We find that Gatorade can provide a much-needed pickup in the middle of a hot afternoon.
Other – We packed a number of items that weren’t a significant portion of our calories but provided some welcome variety. These included dried fruits (cherries, apricots, and cranberries), jerky, fig bars, banana chips, and veggie chips.
Food at resupplies – At both Tuolumne Meadows and Reds Meadow, we took advantage of the restaurant and general store to have a hot meal and get some calories from fresh foods.

Of all the different aspects of a JMT trip that need planning – transportation, permits, gear, etc. – food may be the most difficult to get right. The consequences of getting it wrong may be the most severe as well, in terms of discomfort and unhappiness on the trail. There are lots of different valid approaches, but ours worked well for us, and we hope future hikers can use it or adapt it for their own needs.

JMT - Gear

2008-09-21T06:31:00.000-07:00

Now that we’ve caught up on our trip log from the JMT, we thought we’d write a few posts about our experience planning for the trip, in the hope that the information we provide will help other people plan for similar backpacking trips.

First up are our thoughts on gear and the lessons that we learned along the way. Different people have different preferences, but we’ll explain what worked (and what didn’t) for us. We won’t provide a comprehensive list of everything that we packed but will touch on the more interesting areas.

On the trail, we met people carrying a huge range of loads. On one end of the spectrum were Minnesota Ken with his GoLite rucksack and 16-pound base pack weight, and a guy who was planning to hike the whole trail in six days, whose pack, including food and water, weighed a mere 20 pounds. Then there were people like Colleen and Jeremy, who had seemingly huge packs. Jeremy was carrying an Arc’teryx Bora 90-liter pack that he claimed weighed 55 pounds at its heaviest, though we suspect that might have been an understatement. In the middle of the spectrum were people like Doug and Mike, who had mid-weight packs and some interesting luxuries such as a two-ounce showerhead attached to a water bottle.

One thing we noticed was that the middle-aged and older hikers on the trail were universally carrying less gear and lighter gear than the younger hikers. We aren’t sure if that was a result of experience on the trail or simple inability to carry any more weight. At any rate, carrying less weight is definitely a desirable goal. We were glad we whittled down our pack weight before the trip and wished we’d done even more to reduce it. 220 miles is a long way to carry things.

We also noticed that pack weight was inversely proportional to trip length. The weekend backpackers almost all had significantly more stuff than any JMT hiker. Some even had lawn chairs strapped to their backpacks! One novice backpacker camped at Outpost Camp initially thought we were joking about having hiked all the way from Yosemite Valley. Once he realized that we were serious, his first question was, “How can you possibly carry enough stuff for a trip that long?” He was astounded to see how small our packs were. Our packs weren’t especially small by thru-hiker standards – they weighed 25-30 pounds on average, including food and water, though they were heavier immediately after resupplies.

We speculate that some of the increase in gear for a shorter trip has to do with backpacking inexperience. The less you’ve backpacked, the more you think you need to bring with you to be safe and comfortable. Another factor is that the longer you hike in a day, the less important comfort in camp becomes. If you’re taking a three-day weekend to hike 20 miles and spending a lot of time at camp, you may find it worthwhile to carry that lawn chair. If you’re hiking 220 miles and spending little time in camp, though, lightening your load is more important. We were surprised by the number of hours we spent on the trail each day – typically close to 12. We took lots of breaks along the way and hiked slowly to enjoy the scenery. By lightening our loads, we chose comfort on the trail over comfort in camp, since the trail is where we were spending the vast majority of our waking hours.

Here’s what we learned along the way regarding gear.

Clothing:

Hiking clothes - We each had one pair of hiking pants (Brian’s pants have zip-off legs and Sarah’s pants roll up for when pants are too warm) and a lightweight long-sleeved hiking shirt that did double-duty for keeping the sun off and bugs at bay. Brian also brought a short-sleeved athletic shirt. We had brimmed hats to keep the sun off. We also brought wool hiking socks and sock liners. We were both happy with our choices of hiking clothes except that the Patagonia Sol Patrol shirt that Sarah brought proved very hard to wash, as you might have noticed from some of our photos.

Warm clothes - We each brought a fleece hat, gloves, a full set of long underwear (Sarah has Patagonia Capilene 4, and Brian has a Patagonia R1 Flash Pullover and corresponding pants). Sarah also brought a fleece. In addition, we both had raincoats and rain pants that could be used for warmth. All in all, we were really happy with the amount of clothing we brought. We wore everything we brought and didn’t feel like we were lacking in warm clothes.

Rain pants - We spent a while debating after the trip whether rain pants were necessary and are still on the fence about them. We never used them for rain protection, and given the rain patterns in the Sierra it’s unlikely that we would have needed them. In a warm afternoon shower, we could have hiked with our raincoats and dealt with our hiking pants getting wet, since they dry quickly. In a really cold rain, we likely would have just set up our tent and waited out the storm. However, the rain pants were nice for providing warmth a few times, especially in the wind on top of Mt. Whitney.

Boots vs. trail shoes/sneakers - We both wore hiking boots. Sarah didn’t have any problems with them, but Brian had a number of blisters. We met a lot of people hiking in trail shoes or sneakers who thought they were fantastic. Choice of footwear probably varies by the month -- in August the trail was dry, but we’ve heard that in June or July it can be very wet. We are both planning to try trail shoes for backpacking in the future. Ultimately, this choice seems to be a matter of personal preference.

Camp shoes - Neither of us brought camp shoes with us. Sarah didn’t miss them at all, but Brian wished he’d brought a pair of lightweight flip-flops for walking around camp. Flip-flops could also double as shower shoes at Reds Meadow.

Standard backpacking gear:

Cooking gear - We carried the MSR WhisperLite stove, two fuel bottles, and MSR Duralite 2-liter pot. We’ve heard about other lighter stove options, including fuel tabs, which might be worth checking out. The Vargo Outdoors Triad XE Titanium Alcohol/Fuel Tab Stove which weighs 1.5 ounces and uses ½-ounce fuel tabs looks interesting. One hiker told us that he only uses half a fuel tab to heat water for a meal. If that worked out, this would make a pretty lightweight cooking system. We also considered not carrying a stove on a future trip. Having hot meals to start and end the day was nice, but didn’t seem like a requirement given the variety of other food we had. Also, taking the time to cook and clean up sometimes seemed like a pain. Eliminating the stove, pot, and fuel would have saved quite a bit of weight.

Fuel - We definitely carried way too much fuel. We never resupplied fuel at all, and we still had a little fuel left at the end of the trip. We were cooking oatmeal for breakfast and a dinner each night ranging from just-add-boiling-water meals to meals that cooked for up to 10 minutes. We were really careful to boil only the amount of water needed. Given this usage, one fuel bottle that we refilled at Muir Trail Ranch would have been more than sufficient.

Tent - We carried the REI Half Dome HC tent. At nearly 6 pounds, this was the heaviest single item that we carried. This is another area where we’d definitely consider other options to save weight in the future. Lightweight tarps and bivy sacks were popular options among other JMT hikers, and very practical, given the typical clear, dry nighttime weather in the Sierras. Those hikers would generally just sleep out, enjoying the amazing starry skies, but they had their tarp or bivy sack as backup just in case of bad weather. Another interesting option is a tent that sets up with hiking poles.

Sleeping mat - We both carried the short Therm-a-Rest RidgeRests instead of the inflatable Therm-a-Rests that we typically use. The RidgeRests and Therm-a-Rest Z-Lites (another foam Therm-a-Rest model) seemed to make up the vast majority of the sleeping mats that thru-hikers were carrying. The RidgeRests are nowhere near as comfortable or as durable as the inflatable mattresses, but they are a whole lot lighter at a mere nine ounces. Choosing the 3/4 length (four feet long) instead of the full length further reduces weight with very little change in comfort. Even Brian, who’s six feet tall, was fine using the short RidgeRest – as it turns out, you really only need a mat under your head, back, and butt. Most nights, Brian piled some clothing under his feet to prop them up to try to reduce swelling. Overall, given the weight tradeoff, we were both very happy with our decision to take the RidgeRests.

First-aid supplies – Stocking a first-aid kit is a very personal choice. Every hiker has a different set of ailments, and even for a given ailment, two different hikers may have two different remedies that work for them. For instance, Brian always has problems with blisters several days into a trip. His standard remedy is to cover each blister in the morning with a piece ofSpenco 2nd Skin, then with an Equate Corn Cushion (a product from Wal-Mart that’s essentially a piece of Molefoam with a hole cut in the center), and finally athletic tape to hold everything in place. So we brought sufficient blister-treatment supplies with us, and included them in our resupplies as well. But we didn’t adequately account for the unknown. 17 days in the backcountry was nearly three times as long as we’d ever been out before, and, perhaps predictably, we encountered new problems – chiefly, Brian’s Achilles injury. We had some naproxen sodium (brand-name Aleve) with us, but not enough, and we didn’t have an Ace bandage. In hindsight, we should have brought more multipurpose items like those. Naproxen sodium, in particular, is extremely light and has a multitude of uses for relieving pain and reducing swelling. An Ace bandage is heavier, but useful for just about any muscle or joint injury.

Hiking poles - Both of us used hiking poles and were very glad that we had them. We find that they help a lot for balance when crossing streams and other places with tricky footing, and they reduce strain on the knees, especially going downhill.

Books and maps - The book, John Muir Trail: The Essential Guide to Hiking America's Most Famous Trail by Elizabeth Wenk and Kathy More was invaluable in planning the trip. It contains trail descriptions from north to south and south to north, mileage charts, campsite listings, and a bunch of other logistical information. It also contains descriptions of the flora, fauna, and history of the areas that the JMT passes through. We cut relevant sections out of the book and carried them with us on the hike so that we could read them during our rest breaks to learn more about the areas we were hiking through. For maps, we used the John Muir Trail Map-Pack: Shaded Relief Topo Maps by Tom Harrison. The maps are printed on lightweight, tear-resistant, and waterproof paper, and they have the JMT route highlighted. The JMT covers a large area, so buying the map pack was much more practical than trying to find all the necessary USGS maps.

Bug spray/headnets - We didn’t carry bug spray but we did carry headnets. Brian used his headnet once; Sarah didn’t use hers at all. The headnets are super-light, so we’d pack them again, just in case. We never missed the bug spray. There were rarely bugs (only for a few short periods several evenings) and covering up with long sleeves and pants did the trick to keep them at bay. If we were hiking the trail earlier in the season, we’d definitely bring bug spray. We heard from other hikers that the bugs were voracious in June, July, and even earlier in August.

Bear cans - We carried both a BearVault BV400 (similar to the BV500) and the Garcia bear-resistant canister. Yosemite National Park requires bear cans throughout the park. Bear cans are heavy, though – about 2.5 pounds each – so it’s worth doing some creative planning and packing to minimize the number of cans you carry. For instance, on our first night, we planned to stay at Sunrise camp, which has bear lockers at the campground. That way, we wouldn’t have to carry a bear can on the first day’s long climb out of Yosemite Valley. Instead, we picked up our bear can at the Tuolumne Meadows post office on our second day. We didn’t pick up a second bear can until Muir Trail Ranch. Because our food was so compact, we were generally able to fit it all into one bear can for the first half of the trip and two bear cans for the second half. Immediately after the Reds Meadow and Muir Trail Ranch resupplies, though, we expected to have a little bit more food than would fit in our bear cans, so we investigated food storage regulations and determined that we were allowed to hang our food in the places that we’d camp immediately after those resupplies. Given that, we brought a rope to hang our extra food those days, rather than carrying a third bear can that would be empty the rest of the time. We did see other pairs of hikers with up to three bear cans between them, some very early in the trip. We’d definitely recommend waiting as long as possible to start carrying the bear cans – though necessary and a good thing to help protect the bears and people, they are heavy. As for which we liked better, we definitely preferred the BearVault. The wider lid made it easier than the Garcia to get food into and out of the can. Also, the Garcia requires a small tool to open it. This isn’t a big deal, but simply twisting off the lid of the BearVault was more convenient. A final nice feature of the BearVault is that the plastic is transparent, making it easier to find what you are looking for, especially right after resupplies when the can is jammed full.

Sleeping bags - We both carried 20-degree down sleeping bags. They are under two pounds each and quite true to their ratings. We were never cold at night and could have been comfortable in much cooler temperatures if the need had arisen.

Filtering water - We carried the MSR SweetWater filter. The filter is rather heavy, but we prefer it to iodine. We talked to a number of people who didn’t treat their water at all. However, given the prevalence of mule manure on the trail, we weren’t comfortable with that approach.

Electronic gadgets and such:

Cell phone - We carried our cell phone primarily because we needed to be able to get in touch with the body shop that was replacing our bear-ravaged car door. We did have cell service at Tuolumne Meadows and at Reds Meadow. After Reds Meadow, there wasn’t service until the top of Mt. Whitney (reportedly – we didn’t try this ourselves) and then in the town of Lone Pine, which is 13 miles from the Whitney Portal trailhead. If it weren’t for the car repairs, we wouldn’t have bothered to carry a cell phone, since it’s heavy and useless for the vast majority of the trip.

GPS - We debated about carrying a GPS and ultimately decided to leave it at home. Unless you are doing off-trail side-trips, a good map is perfectly sufficient for navigational purposes. The trail is well-traveled and virtually all of the junctions are very well-marked.

Extra memory card - Sarah wishes she’d brought an extra memory card for her camera. Almost 500 photos (the capacity of her memory card) may sound like a lot, but on a 17-day trip through such amazing scenery, it wasn’t nearly enough.

Batteries - We saw one group with a small solar charger attached to the top of a backpack. This allowed them to reduce the number of batteries they carried. Since they were using a SteriPEN and a GPS and needed a number of batteries, this seemed like it could end up being a huge weight savings over the course of the trip. Also in the battery department, Brian discovered that lithium AA batteries are significantly lighter than rechargeable AA batteries, and they last a lot longer, too. One set of Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries lasted Brian the whole trip and then some – he wound up taking over 2000 photos on that single set of batteries before they finally ran out of juice. The only drawback is price – they cost about $16 for a pack of eight.

Other:

Comb - On a couple-day backpacking trip, Sarah will often tie up her hair and not bother to bring a comb. At the Reds Meadow resupply, though, she broke down and bought a small, light comb, fearing that her normal tactic would result in dreadlocks after so many days.

Toilet paper - We had a hard time figuring out how much toilet paper to pack, but heard that one roll per person per week is the rule. In the end, we had a partial roll left. This was about as close as we would have wanted to cut it anyway, so the roll-a-week rule seems like a good one…

Next up, we’ll talk about planning food for the trip.