San Diego, and points North!

After wrapping up a wonderful time in Tucson and the Catalinas, we headed west again towards San Diego to visit with my nephew Chris. We found a fun campground called, Campland on the Bay, and set up our spot for the next couple of nights. Campland on the Bay is like a resort park for campers and RVs. So many things to do with a restaurant and other amenities on site - it was mind-boggling. We took a nice walk around and discovered there's a beach, a bandstand, restaurant, gym, and a game room! I loved the motocross racing game... We then settled back at our camp for a relaxing afternoon.

We met up with Chris, at the campsite and I showed him how to "wrap" a quartz crystal pendant using the peyote stitch beadwork method. I also passed along to him a large majority of the beads and jewelry findings that I had been collecting over the last 40 years or so. It was quite humbling to be able to pass along a craft like this to another family member and to also know that the precious materials that I gave him would not wind up in the dump after I was gone and no longer needed them. We took a beautiful hike on Imperial Beach, which is the last beach on the California coast, going south. The next stop is Tijuana, Mexico! We stopped by Chris' house to pick up his dogs, and get a quick tour of his place, which is very cool, and the backyard is amazing! Completed by a flowering agave plant! We had made plans to have a steak cookout at the campsite later that evening, but were quite tired and decided to just meet him again in the morning.

He came over to the campsite and visited for a while. We had been packing up the campsite before he got there, and when we checked out we all drove to a wonderful place to have breakfast. Then we proceeded to go up to the spot where he is gardening with his students. It's a beautiful spot next to a golf course with chickens and all sorts of vegetables growing. He was having trouble getting his automatic waterer to work and I tried helping, to no avail. He later informed me that it was simply a matter of low batteries. He replace them and it worked fine. We said our goodbyes, and though it was a short visit, and we didn't get to see his husband, Justin (work schedule conflict) we are still totally grateful for the time spent with Chris.

We then headed north to a campground near Morro Bay, California, and landed at the Cerro Alto Campground. This was a lovely change from the congestion and smog we encountered in San Diego. It was very quiet and relaxing. No internet, but under the full moonlight Bernie, Gertie, and I walked down to the bottom of the hill where we had reception to check in on email and Facebook. It was a lovely magical walk in the Los Padres National Forest. The next morning we packed up and drove another for 5 hours north to KOA campground in Petaluma California.

The campground was nice enough, with hot showers and water nearby. The smoke from the fires was still quite visible and we were ready to continue our push north to our final destination of this whole journey, Bridgeville, California, and Dave and Randy's homestead for Thanksgiving. By this time we were quite anxious to get there and though we had planned on getting there the day before Thanksgiving, we decided to just make the final push, and got there on Tuesday. Randy had just gotten back from a 10-day visit with his folks in Washington so when we arrived it was a double homecoming.

Returning to the place where my "journey" (so far) began, was definitely a mixed bag of emotions for me. After we settled, I took a walk around the property in the rain and reconnected with the land and space that I had fallen so deeply in love with so many years ago. It was emotional for sure, and having come full circle after over 30 years, solidified my thoughts of returning to a place where I found myself, and as I mentioned, began my "journey". The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the warmth of a wonderful wood stove in Dave and Randy's new house. We made pies and begin preparation for our Thanksgiving meal the following day.

Thanksgiving Day came, and the kitchen which is a large part of the main part of the house, was above a buzz with all of the activities involved in preparing our meal. We had a beautiful free range turkey broccoli, stuffing, yams and potatoes, roasted squash, gravy a lovely guava Chutney I made from guavas that Justin had sent to us, and other yummy things. I even made some whole wheat and 5 grain serial rolls in our stove top oven the oven!

All in all it was absolutely the most perfect Thanksgiving we have had in so long, with friends we so dearly loved. The next morning, though I woke with great anxiety. I forgot about the fact that I am prone to getting Seasonal Affective Disorder, or S. A. D., and after looking at the forecast and realizing that we were in for another two weeks of bad weather, decided to cut our visit with them short by a day.

We packed up and drove to the coast. I discovered that my anxiety lessons while I'm driving as I am more focused on the driving than I am on anxiety. We headed up to Patrick's Point State Park, and though the weather was still fairly bad and foggy, and we couldn't see much, it was just lovely to be in Humboldt County during the winter around the same time when I first came here so many moons ago.

We found a hotel room for the night and the next morning met up with my friends Akasha, Joanne, and Lori Jean who were some of my original friends when I first landed here. We had breakfast at the Seascape, a favorite place of hours to go so long ago, and then spent a little visit on the beach right there at Trinidad Head. It was so lovely to connect with these people again after so many years in person, and even got to visit with Spring, Akasha's daughter, who the last time I saw her was a mere child of 11 years old!

We then went back to Patrick's Point State Park and hiked The Long Trail down to Agate Beach. We absolutely loved the views of the Wild and ferocious ocean of the Pacific northwest coast. I even found a tiny agate, which I assumed are rare now after so many people pick the beach over. I do remember finding some the size of my fist over 20 years ago, though...

We then headed south again to visit with my longtime friend Tina Garsen who has a house in Eureka California. We had a nice chat with her and then took Gertie to the great dog park nearby. Later we had dinner at wonderful Mexican restaurant nearby. We wrapped up our "drive-by" visit, set our goodbyes and parted ways for now.

We stayed again at the hotel in McKinleyville, and the next day, met up with Susan Combes, who I used to work with at the Salmon Creek Riding School. We visited, and all stacked a cord of firewood that was sitting in her driveway. We also took advantage of her offer to do laundry! Later, we took a nice long walk up and down Main St. in Ferndale, CA, where she lives. Then we went and saw her horse, Jackson, and she did some chores. We then went to the Ferndale Victorian Inn. Be sure to see the pics in the photo album I will link to later. The next morning she made yummy asparagus wrapped with bacon and some fried eggs. We said our goodbyes, and once again, "hit the road"!

Side note: Before we headed to Ferndale to visit with Susan, we stopped by the Arcata Bird Sanctuary.

We were planning to go north to Oregon to visit with dear friend Debbie Lukas, but on the spur of the moment decided we just wanted to go home...

Stay tuned for the next blog which will probably be somewhere on our return trip. Thanks for reading

CLICK HERE FOR A MIXED BAG PHOTO ALBUM

Grand Canyon, Canyon Lake, Superstitions, Catalinas

After wrapping up our time at Arches National Park in Utah, we headed off for points unknown. Bernie had mentioned that he had a lifelong dream of seeing the Grand Canyon, but never imagined that this would be one of the places we stopped on our way to said points unknown.

We arrived at the Grand Canyon area rather late in the day, but it was a perfect time to see the South Rim in the long rays of afternoon light, which was absolutely breathtaking. We stopped at Mary Colter's Desert View Watchtower where they had a snack shop and gift shop in addition to the tower, which you could climb to see the a better view of the canyon. Inside this tower were painted, by a Hopi Indian artist, beautiful images of ancestral icons and other indigenous images of sacred nature. We both were so blown away by the striking visual impact of the place our heads were spinning...

We got some great photos of us with the Grand Canyon in the background that I posted on Facebook, as some of you know already. We made our way through the park to the other side and found a nice hotel room to spend the night in. Again it was very cold and we needed showers which was our excuse to shell out over a hundred bucks for some "creature comforts"... hahaha.

We arose with the sun, as we have been accustomed to doing on the trip so far, and proceeded to do a drive-by tour of the Grand Canyon. Driving back out the way we came, there were stops along the way where you could get out and view the canyon. I felt justified in doing this and getting a complete overview of the south rim, as the views changed at every vista point we stopped at.

CLICK HERE FOR GRAND CANYON AND MORE PHOTO ALBUM

We then proceeded south, once again to points unknown. I did find a State Park at Canyon Lake. Driving to this spot, which was about 4 or 5 hours away from the Grand Canyon, was thrilling and the sites were stunning! When we saw the lake, I had forgotten that we were going to Canyon "Lake", and immediately thought of the I-Ching hexagram of Wooing. Wooing is the image of a lake on the mountain. The Lake, Tui, the youngest daughter, and Ken, Keeping Still, The Mountain, are the two trigrams that create the hexagram of which I speak. Basically, this hexagram denotes wooing, or in layman terms, attracting what you focus your energy on. I thought it was quite appropriate for this part of our trip as we were again immersed in Mother Nature's tapestry in all its glory.

We spent the next morning and early afternoon hiking up Boulder Creek Trail. The trailhead ran adjacent to the campground so it was a no-brainer thought that's what we would do for the day. It's been a challenge not having transportation other than the bike after setting up the tent.

This part of Arizona, is in the Superstition Mountains, which by far was our most favorite spot to hike so far. The light, the rocks, the plants, and the saguaro cactus all blended into a surreal oil painting like scene, that really blew us away! Bernie had commented when we first saw the saguaro cactus that he felt like he was in the Looney Tunes cartoon hahaha and expected Wylie Coyote and the Roadrunner to go zipping by at any moment.

I will not elaborate more on this hike as the photos we took will tell much more then I could describe here in text.

CLICK HERE FOR CANYON LAKE AND THE SUPERSTITIONS PHOTO ALBUM

After our stay in the lovely Superstitions, and still freezing before bed and when we get up in the morning, we decided to head even further south in hopes of finding warmth, and also rerouted our original itinerary to fit in a visit with my nephew Chris, in San Diego.

But not before visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's home, Taliesin West.

CLICK HERE FOR TALIESIN WEST PHOTO ALBUM

It turns out that Tucson was colder than where we were in Canyon Lake! But we found a nice campground at the base of the Catalinas, in Tucson. I used this opportunity to reconnect with some people who I hadn't seen in about 41 years, the Plotners! I chatted with Jill, and Becky, by text message, and we arranged for a visit to their mother and brother, Jonathan. They live about 10 minutes from the campground so for last-minute planning everything came together perfectly. It was definitely emotional for me. And very humbling.

It was so wonderful to see Gladys Plotner, who instilled in me a sense of spirituality in finding my connection with God. Oh! and not to forget to mention a love of growing and providing homegrown food for my family.

So after our lovely visit reconnecting with kindred souls we made our next big push to San Diego.

Thanks for reading

Arches National Park - Moab, UT

Hello again, and apologies for late blog but we've been having so much fun, that writing after a day's travel or hiking seems too much!

After leaving Silverthorne, CO., we headed directly to Arches National Park in Utah. We got there later in the afternoon, and already it was very cold. Probably down into the low 40s.

Reuniting with landscape here was a most beautiful thing. It's hard to describe, but just imagine being put on another planet. The rocks, the sky, the plants and everything, is so, so different then where I call home now.

We got set up and settled in for a cozy night in our wonderful roof-top tent. In the morning we found ice on the dog water bowl hahaha but going to sleep when it's cold and waking up when it's cold is a less than pleasurable experience to put it nicely. But the rising sun, at about 7 a.m., quickly heated the area to a comfortable 50 or so degrees.

The campground (at the end of the park) is well laid out with concrete slabs and nice picnic table and fire pits. There are also bathrooms nearby with good drinking water. The place was full! Seems everyone is crazy like us camping when it's early November.

We found some trails around the campground, which was great, as we can't move the car once the tent to set up...not really... So our first morning here we packed up some water and snacks and hit the trailhead to go visit Tapestry Arch, and Broken Arch, which I had never seen before. There is so much to see here at the park, unless you have two weeks to see it all you miss a lot.

Tapestry Arch was absolutely amazing! The arch formed in front of another rock face so if you looked at the arch straight on the rock behind made a sort of "tapestry". The hiking was relatively easy, and we headed back to the trail fork to go see Broken Arch. This was just as amazing as any other arch, but you could walk up to this one, and through it. Each arch as its own distinct features that we discovered after carefully observing each one.

We encountered a woman heading back to the campground who was quite panicked for some reason, but assured us that the trail was fairly easy-going and looped around back to the main trail. Seems she lost her way getting out and kept calling to us across the canyon to confirm that she was on the right track. Later we discovered her information was not exactly spot on as we tried to find the trail she was talking about, and kept getting lost. Slot canyons here are very confusing and a lot of people who get lost, and did not bring enough water, die from exposure.

We were walking towards what we thought was the main trail and came to a cliff, so we backtracked around and went down, only to find another cliff we backtracked and went down several more times after this, and when I noticed that we were nearing the valley floor. We got scared, and decided to completely backtrack all the way to Broken Arch, which was about a mile on a fairly aggressive hiking path.

We would be doing fine following human footprints, but they would turn into animal footprints, and then completely disappear leaving us quite stumped.  Eventually, we found the right path and safely made our way out. Of course, the sights along the way were spectacular, but we were quite focused on finding our way out, as we didn't want to die of thirst and exposure. Bernie's main concern that we were going to freeze to death.

What should have been a 3 hour hike wound up being more like a 5 hour hike, and by the time we got back to our campsite we were both very tired. After a quick nap and a cup of coffee, I ran Gertie on my bike up the road for her evening exercise. She absolutely loves this part of her day and it makes me happy to be able to provide her with a great workout which she needs or she goes completely stir crazy! After that, I decided to do some exploring on my own as I spotted an arch we had not seen, that was very close to our campsite. This was Skyline Arch. I was told it's very short walk from where I was. I walked to the bottom of the campground and followed the path through Juniper Gorge where a group campsite location was. The path opened into a flat area about a quarter mile square and I walked across it to get the most beautiful sunset view of the Skyline Arch ever! The woman I met who told me how to get to this Arch, whose name was Cecily, was there camping with her husband from Seattle. The lavished attention on Gertie when they visited us and explained that they needed some dog love because there's was at home.

It then started to get very cold, and we begin preparations for the evening portion of our day. This involved setting up, and food items and food preparation items set out strategically, as to be able to not have to fuss much in the dark making dinner. I have been making some camp-style food, in that I would make a pot of rice, (we found a really nice blend of wild and brown rices) sauté some onions, diced up lunch meat, and then scramble in an egg. I then mixed in the rice, grated some cheese on top, sprinkle with some "Adobo" seasoning from Goya. It was quick, easy, and delicious!

We then settled into bed, and I read aloud from the book we've been reading, The Dogs of Bedlam Farm. It's a well-written book and includes Border Collies! What more could you want? hee hee.

The next morning, I was up early (before the sunrise) to walk the dog, and make some coffee. The temp was in the teens, and there was dog ice on the dog water bowl. I later found out it had gotten down to about 15 degrees. As I greeted the rising sun with a stretch and verbal salutation of joy, I noticed our neighbors, Cecily and Duncan, heading out to a small lookout point nearby, to take photographs of the rising sun. I went out to greet them, and had a lovely chat. We became quick friends. We will definitely be staying in touch with these young and beautiful people, and hope to host them next year at our yurt in Truro.

After two nights in the magical Canyonlands of Utah, we broke camp and were off for our next adventure, the Grand Canyon! Bernie expressed a desire to see it as he had always heard about it but again never dreamed he would see it.

Bernie commented on our experience at Arches, and said the things that stood out the most to him were, the contrast in the colors of the rock, the beautiful ravens that complemented these wild sites, and the lushness of the desert, in particular the beautiful juniper trees. He said it was like being injected into a land that he had always wanted to see but never dreamed he would. I told him that I enjoyed making his dreams come true hahaha.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for our next blog post from the Grand Canyon in Arizona!

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PHOTOS FROM ARCHES NATIONAL PARK

Mesa Verde, Boulder, and Silverthorne, CO

We were a little sad about having to leave Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, but the idea of staying in warm hotel room with hot running water sounded really good after two very cold nights in the desert. Some of the other campers that I spoke with had been on the road for a week! I'll bet their laundry smelled REALLY bad!

We found a flea bag hotel in Salida, Colorado that was pretty bad, but we were grateful to have found a place that took pets. This area of the country is teeming with people seeking to reconnect with the land and its long-gone inhabitants. Honestly, I thought for sure, we'd be the only ones out doing this kind of thing at this time of year. Turns out "That is crazy!", "Great minds think alike", and "Water seeks it's own level" comes into play here...

Before heading to Boulder to see one of my dearest friends, Joe Smyth, who works at Colorado University - Boulder in the Geology Dept. we drove up into Mesa Verde, Colorado, specifically to see the cliff dwellings there. We stopped and checked out the Visitor's Center. The weather was absolutely beautiful as it has been on most of our trip, and the long 18 mile drive into the park was very exciting. Lots of vistas and high elevation lookouts to photograph. Seeing as we were there off-season we were not able to get up close and personal to the actual cliff dwellings (only get up close with a guided tour) but we're able to see them from about a quarter mile away. I took some photographs and I'm hoping on a big screen during a slideshow we will get to view them up close and personal.

Other points of interest during the day were lots of short hikes around the park and other cliff dwelling neighborhoods. Gertie came with us and was very well behaved on her short leash, as to not get cactus thorns in her foot. That happened on other previous hikes. At this point, she would look at one and quickly shy away from it. Ouch!

On the way to Boulder, we stopped in Golden, CO to have brunch at Abeja's Bistro - the smoked pastrami sandwich was TO DIE FOR. There, we met up with a sweet teammate from Vail Resorts, and friend extraordinaire, Ambereen. Her husband, Mark, another great friend I met at Breckenridge was off to the Broncos game in Denver, so we'll have to catch up with him on another trip...

We then proceeded to Boulder, found another nice hotel room and got settled in. Later that afternoon we met up with Joe, Doug Graver and his new boyfriend, Mike, and mutual friend of all of ours, Doug Brown, of Reindeer Ranch fame and fortune. We all visited together at Joe's condo on Pearl Street in Boulder, then walked up the Pearl Street Mall to see if we could get seated at the Dushanbe Tea House. This place has an incredible story, as well as being very visually stimulating, please read about it by clicking this link.

The Dushanbe Tea House did not have a table for us, so we went back to Pearl Street Mall and got a table for 7 at SForno Trattoria. The food was excellent, the company second to none, and it was so great to reconnect with so many friends.

Everyone loved Bernie, and he had some wonderful personal connections with each of my friends. As we were leaving all agreed we should not let 5 years ago by again without seeing each other.

After a lovely and restful stay at the Holiday Inn Express in North Boulder, we set out for Joe's cabin in Silverthorne, Colorado, in Summit County. Joe has a lovely log cabin up there, but don't let this fool you it is total luxury for a log cabin!

It was snowing and continue to snow overnight, so Doug Brown came up and spent the night and he and I went to snowboarding and skiing in the morning. Bernie hung out in the lodge and worked on his computer, while Doug and I got several runs in on fresh snow which was so amazing I was dancing 10 ft off the ground with happiness. We called it a short day as the elevation can make us dizzy and short of breath and we headed back to the cabin made a fire, and watched some slide shows of photos we've been taking from our trip so far.

Later that evening excellent friends, who I had not seen for a long time, Phil and Janelle, and Charlie Wrather came over for spaghetti and meatball dinner. We showed them some of our recent trip photos and all had a very warm and engaging time together. So lovely to see my dear friends again.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for the next upcoming blog in Moab, Utah.

Click here to view the photo album

Chaco Canyon

After leaving the lovely Sagebrush Inn in Taos, New Mexico, we proceeded south, then west, then north again to Chaco Canyon. I was very excited about this, as this was the second major interesting place that I wanted to show Bernie, next to Arkansas. I was there 31 years ago when my boyfriend, Yarrow and I traveled there for the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. We camped out for 3 weeks in my old 67 Ford Econoline van. Some of you may remember it as it had purple mountains on the side that my sister Lisa painted. It was an amazing time, and I promised myself I would return some day.

Along the way we ran into some snow, and also saw a cool dam and reservoir.

I had recently read some reviews of the National Park at Chaco Canyon, and what stood out the most was a comment somebody made about the condition of the road. Granted, I do remember the road being very long, to the tune of about 20 miles from the main road into the park, but forgot about how long the stretch of road was that was not maintained. We discovered it was total washboard, and we had to drive less than 2 miles an hour. Any faster would have wiggled our already precariously perched bikes on our less than perfect bike rack completely off, and or shook all the bolts loose that hold our tent on to the top of the car. There were people flying past us in SUVs, but I would not want to be in one of those with any loose fillings in my teeth hahaha.

We finally got to where the campground was and picked out a nice spot near some ruins. We then proceeded to check in at the main office for the park. The staff was less than friendly, and afterwards I heard that this was not done intentionally, or to be rude, but that's "...just the way they are in New Mexico".

There was a steady wind blowing from the north, cold Canadian air, and despite adverse weather conditions, we were very happy to get camp set up and settle in for a few days in this amazing wide open space where ancient indigenous people once lived and thrived. The night air was brisk, and the view of the stars was nothing short of amazing. I saw two BIG shooting stars that stretched the length of my vision field.

We packed up our bikes and took a nice long bike ride up to a lookout that had a beautiful view looking Southwest to Fajada Butte. Back in the late 70s a woman named Anna Sofaer rediscovered a petroglyph carved into a rock on the butte, and noticed that there was a shaft of light going through the middle of it. She thought it was coincidental that it was noon on the solstice, and began a whole series of experiments to see if this was what she speculated was an ancient calendar used for the local peoples' planting and ceremonial purposes. It was later discovered that this indeed was an astronomical calendar of great importance, and is claimed to be the most technologically-advanced rock art found in the whole area. Please follow this link to read more about this fascinating find.

We met up with a couple from Carbondale, Colorado, Bob and Ginny, who allowed us to tag along with them while they toured around some of the ruins in the park. We went to Pueblo Bonito, the largest of the excavations, and our minds were totally blown. Please see photo gallery here. We also got to spend time with them hiking the next day out to the Wijiji Trail. This was really nice because I was able to ride my bike and have Gertie along off leash. It was about a mile and a half out to the ruins. There were also some pictographs on the wall, faint but still amazing to look at. Bob and Ginny brought their sweet pooch, Nellie (a Gertie lookalike!) along and both played until exhausted.

All in all it was an incredible stay here at Chaco Canyon, and though I often feel sad about the fate of these people, know that somehow they wound up in a better place.

CLICK HERE FOR PHOTO GALLERY

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next blog from Mesa Verde and other points in Colorado!

Big push West!

The Cottonwood trees were aglow!

After leaving beautiful and amazing Arkansas, we drove directly to New Mexico. It was about a 12-hour day and by the time we got to Albuquerque we were very ready for a rest. We had spent the previous night in a Days Inn somewhere near where we were crystal mining in Mount Ida, and decided to get another hotel in Albuquerque. We choose to stay at Days Inn because they are dog friendly. The amenities are pretty much the same, but there are big differences in things like the cleanliness of the place, the newness of the furniture, and the surrounding environs.

By the time we got to Albuquerque we needed to do some laundry, and shopping for other necessities which we found nearby. We also got much needed haircuts! The Days Inn we stayed at had a really great hot tub and laundry and the breakfast was very good.

We then drove to Taos, New Mexico. We were hoping to meet up with a virtual friend I made on Facebook, Faith, who is the aunt of one of my sweet friends HeidiHeidi. Unfortunately, Faith was heading out that day to the East Coast, so we just missed her (I admit my timing in connecting with friends along the way was totally haphazard, which resulted in not seeing people I really wanted to see/meet, but oh well...practice makes perfect!). We opted to stay at the Sagebrush Inn, which I had read mixed reviews about, but was willing to give it a shot. We wound up having a wonderful stay there! The rooms and the hotel were very rustic and very much in the theme of old new Mexican style.

I met a nice couple from Australia in the lounge, who took some fun pics of me on an old saddle! Ropin and ridin cowboy!

We had a great rest, and in the morning they had a full breakfast with a plate cooked to our preference like eggs, sausage, potatoes etc. It had snowed earlier in the morning so the cottonwoods, which glow bright yellow and are extremely beautiful for foliage, had a light dusting of snow on them and the whole place was like a picture perfect postcard of the Old West.

After gathering our belongings and packing the car, we then headed off for Chaco Canyon. We were very excited to check out the ruins of the Anasazi Indians who used to inhabit the place over a thousand years ago.

I plotted our course on Google Maps and realized that we could not get to Chaco Canyon from Taos without doing a bunch of extra maneuvering. Either we had to drive north then west then south, or south, west then north hahaha. Either way, it was a beautiful drive through the New Mexican wilderness, and lots of wide open spaces.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next blog, Chaco Canyon. Be sure to enter your e-mail address in the box provided to be notified of when I make new posts. Bye-bye

CLICK HERE FOR THE PHOTOS