Monday, June 29, 2009

Traveling with friends



Kayaking in Lake Crescent, falling aslelep to the sounds of the waves, looking across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and seeing the lights from Vancouver Island, taking Winnie for early morning jaunts in a grassy meadow with eagles gliding overhead and the snow capped Olympic Mountains in the background, 70 degree days with blue skies and no humidity is beautiful, but what has really made this week special is pal-ing around with our two camping mentors from Lexington, Grace and Alan P. Alan was our coach in the early days of our camping with a pop-up camper, and if there were an award for most miles in a pop-up cmaper, they would get it. We were delighted to meet up with them here at Dungeness Recreation Area in Sequim, Washington. Lynne cooked up a bison stew to celebrate and we took a twilight hike along the bluffs with them the first evening and a long hike out onto the Dungeness Spit with them Saturday morning. I won't tell you who has won the games of canasta, and Mexican Train dominoes that we have spent the evenings playing--I will just warn you that both Grace and Alan are serious card sharks, and don't coddle their younger friends.

We are leaving the Olympic Peninsula tomorrow to head up to Birch Bay, near Blaine, Washington, where we will meet up with our friends Lucina and Sheryl, who drove our Honda Civic out for us. It will be great to hear about their trip across the country, which apparently involves a list of 17 animals that they have sighted in the Black Hills and Yellowstone.

The friend theme has been strong all this year, when I knew that this was our last year in
Lexington. Coincidentally, we got to spend more special intense time with our friends than usual. It started with our trip to the Inauguration in DC with Pat and Anne, and then continued with David and Ross spontaneously joining our household during the first few days of the ice storm, and was followed by several weeks of getting to know Bobbi and Sydney better when Bobbi's broken leg made them refugees from the ice storm also. Really, every get together since we made the decision to move last August has been special to me--from our regular Indian dinners with Bonnie and Linda and our friend Mary's (one of Winnie's other mothers) as well as our farewell party, and our visits with Sue Anne in Henderson. Lynne's stock club had a farewell for us and lots of friends made a special effort to spend time with us. Lynne and I had a good visit with my family in western NC. I know I am not mentioning all the good times we have had with friends this past year, and also includes emails from those not in Lexington. In Ireland, they used to give "American funerals" to people who were emigrating to America, assuming that they would never see them again.

Luckily, we will see each other again, and in the meantime, can keep in touch with cell phones, emails, and blogs. Still, I felt a poignancy, and heightened importance with every minute that I spent with you all, and I am truly buoyed up by your love.

OK, where are the pictures? I left the USB cable at home and I will have to post them another day. The point of this blog, anyway, is you.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Truly west



Hi friends,
We are camped high on a bluff overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Dungeness Spit Wildlife Refuse in Washington. We can hear the sounds of the waves pounding the shore 100 feet below us. It is, by the way, definitely sweater and hat weather. We have been travelling in spurts and now are planning to rest here for 5 days before heading up to the Bellingham area.




Spokane was a welcome resting spot for us as our first stop in Washington. We have found a great park, Riverside State Park which overlooks the fast moving Spokane River. An osprey was building her nest directly across the river from our site, and Winnie enjoyed some early morning jaunts along the trails on the park. We did put our kayak in Long Lake nearby, and enjoyed an afternoon floating around in the water expressing our inner sea otter nature.
Driving through eastern Washington, we were again in vast dry scrubby plains. I keep wondering how the earliest people had the strength to walk this whole way. The vastness of the whole thing is incredible. We have driven and driven and driven, and still aren't to Bellingham. I mean, endless miles of plains, rolling hills, mountain passes and infinite vistas, and we still haven't reached the end. it makes me think of how vast God must be also. Really vast. This is just one part of one country on one planet in one constellation. Here's a picture of some windmills on the horizon.


I digress. We did get some sneak views of Mt. St. Helens as we drove west. Lynne and I have visited Mt. St. Helens two times before but never got to see "her--she was always hidden in clouds. I was glad to get to western Washington and be among the big trees again--the beautiful tall Douglas firs that make you tilt your head way back to see the top. We also love to hear the Swainson's thrush sing, a hallmark of these forests.


We had a beautiful drive along the Hood Canal on the way here from Olympia, where I finally got a set of fingerprints done to satisfy the Washington State Police. Many of you know that I have sent four different fingerprint cards from three Kentucky law enforcement agencies as part of my attempt to complete my application for Washington Teacher Certification. I started in October. All of them were rejected for various shortcomings (not enough ridge detail, slap prints not in correct order, etc.) So this morning, we went to the mother lode, Washington State Patrol in the capital, Olympia, and the very efficient fingerprint technician had an outstanding set of prints and sent me on my way in 15 minutes.



We are hoping to meet up with our friends Grace and Alan here on the Olympic Peninsula.



We are out of touch again--our cell phones have spotty reception and we have to visit the local Safeway here in Sequim to get internet access (take that, Krogers!)



I love hearing from you all, and as always, miss you dearly.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Yellowstone days

Hi all!
We wish you all were here having fun with us!
We are in Butte, Montana (think copper mines), nestled in a KOA, enjoying the comforts of electricity and running water. We just spent 3 days in the nation of Yellowstone—honestly, its as big as some countries. For most of that time, we had no cell phone service, not to mention internet access, hot water, heat, access to newspapers. USA Today is delivered there once a week. Here's a picture of me when we stopped high on a mountain to let Winnie play in the snow as we drove west from Cody, WY to Yellowstone.
Yellowstone is an other worldly place, due to the geothermal hot spots—bubbling mud pots, boiling hot springs, fumaroles billowing with steam and of course, the geysers. We did get to see Old Faithful spout—it was fun, shooting about 75 feet up in the air. At the time, however, it was raining. Lynne and I had been walking out on the boardwalk trail among the other geysers and fumaroles, some aqua, some burnt orange, some with crusty grey mineral deposits built up in the shape of a cone, each one unique. We were sharing a big umbrella (that Sue and Sandy had given us as a present a few years ago) because the rain was intense, when all of the sudden it started thunder and lightning. We were about ½ mile from the lodges (built in the 1930’s, beautiful grand wood buildings) when BOOM!! went the thunder and FLASH went the lightning right over our heads. It was a little too much excitement.

Yellowstone is in a big wide valley with snow capped mountains (Absoroka Mts.) in the distance. The valley is actually a caldera, (a collapsed volcano) formed hundreds of thousands of years ago. The earth’s magma is just a few miles under the surface and the cracks and fissures of the earth allow water to reach the magma, and then send it back up to the surface super hot. Yellowstone Lake is the highest big lake in the world—we were almost at 8000 feet most of the time in the park. Both Lynne and I felt the altitude—we were short of breath going up hills and I felt a little headachy. We spent part on one day along the rim of the Yellowstone Canyon, formed by the Yellowstone River. This is just one of several magnificent pictures we took there.

Yellowstone is also home to lots of wildlife and you can see it all. For the first time, I saw two wolves—one grey and one black. It was from a lookout over a vast meadow. That night we could also see elk grazing, and it was nothing to see bison anyplace. In fact, our campground was covered with bison plops (very interesting to Winnie, who takes everything in stride.) It was cold—we had thought to put our kayak into the lake until the ranger told us that the water temperature was in the 30’s and we would only survive 10 minutes if we ended up in the water.
Anyway, there is plenty more to tell about Yellowstone, and more that we didn’t get to see. It rained hard all night last night, and the forecast was for more rain today, so we headed west into Montana. Here's a picture of Montana countryside.
Tomorrow, we will get to Spokane, WA.
Lynne and Winnie are curled up on the bed as I write. I can hear the distant sounds of cars and trucks on I-90, but it’s fun to be back in civilization.

Monday, June 15, 2009

On the road: Custer State Park, SD





















Beauty is everywhere. Here are some of my favorite pictures from our trip so far. This morning, we are in Custer State Park in South Dakota. A bison as big as a cabin was standing in the road glaring at us when I took Winnie (our dog) for a walk this morning.