AFTER Ecuador heading to San Fracisco

Didn't do a very good job of keeping this journal so instead of trashing it completely, I'll add what I can when I can.

The trip to Ecuador was great.  Despite all the reading (primarily The Beak of the Finch and travel sites online) and research on how to get there, get around and what to see, Ecuador was a bit of a surprise.  It appeared to be more advanced than Peru and, perhaps, even Chile (though we were there 10 years ago.)  There were many people in traditional dress, but also the general feel was of a reasonably dynamic country.

Getting to the Galapagos

This isn't easy.

First of all I finally found the Galapagos venue--a beautiful square-rigged brigantine named Mary Anne.  Of course it's a big motor-sailer but if we get the sails up jus on a passage or two, it'll be worth it.

Now I have the ship so I have to coordinate a trip to the Amazon basin.  Looks like that will come after the Galapagos.  Being the cheapskate that I am, I can get the flight from Quito, Ecuador to the Galapagos airport but the return flight takes 24 hours!!  Seems that the Ecuadorean military operates the flights and squeeze everyone else out of the flight times.   LAN is starting up service but their return trip (about 3 hours) starts before the Mary Anne gets to the airport.  Oh well, I'll keep on lookin'.

My Memphis State Roomie

Before we left on our Retirement Tour 2010 my roommate at Memphis State University found me on FaceBook.  I'm usually the one who searches and finds people, so that tells you that this roomie is special.  We promised to stop on our way through Arkansas.

Now Joe and I had been through Arkansas several times.  As we entered Arkansas this time we each realized we had specific memories of the terrain, sites, cities in AZ, NM, OK, TX, MS, LA....even MO, but neither had a memory of anything in Arkansas.  Nothing.  Zilch.  Best we could come up with is that all of those surrounding states are unique to an East Coast eye.  Arkansas is very much like the mid-Atlantic--Virginia and Tennessee where we grew up.  Must have been that; but this time we found the heart of Arkansas.  A beautiful state with lovely people.

Kay Rose Shurgar was the best roommate I had in college.  We met in a 3-girl room the first semester and moved to a 2-girl room the second.  I had mono the first week of school and Kay, who not surprisingly became a nurse, helped me through that first semester and literally nursed me the through a myriad of maladies that second semester.  She stayed up one night thinking she would have to give me an emergency tracheotomy during one bout of the flu or pneumonia that second semester.  Did I say she "became" a nurse...she didn't know a thing about traches then but she was going to help no matter what!! : )  She still has that same spirit.

After almost half a century, it was like we had not skipped a beat in our mutual admiration since our first meeting.  We regaled Joe and her husband Jerry with some of our crazy, stupid funny, funny antics and winked a couple of times when we knew we could tell more, but some secrets need to be kept.

It also developed that Joe and Jerry, who is retired now, had similar interests and the most incredible thing was talking to someone who had different life experiences but the same understandings of the world around us.  Jerry is a fly fisherman and promised he'd help me the next time we get together.  [To Jerry:  even though we know that I have a terrible memory--Kay was always my memory bank--but this is one promise I will not forget!  PS  Thanks for the flies.]

Their cabin is absolutely perfect and in a beautiful setting with a year-round creek running into the Cadron River at the bottom of their hill.  We met their next door neighbor who was their architect and builder so he could hear first hand the many compliments we had on the innovative features he employed--like corrugated tin and a wonderful metal roof that I kept praying we would be able to enjoy in a storm; first time I've prayed for rain on a vacation.

Occasionally you meet someone who gently tweaks your life and you carry a bit of them with you.  I'm not talking about big changes that come from big events or people.  Just the quiet admiration of a person, or in this case a couple, that after meeting you feel like you have changed a bit for the better.

That's what this visit was like.  The best part of a wonderful vacation.

[To Kay:  Did I summarize the visit?  Didn't even mention that you guys almost froze to death sitting with us outside!! ha]

An Overview for ourselves to help us remember and the last few days of our "Retirement Tour"

So, the standout locations with great memories attached are:

• The hawk? vulture? wing-tip impressions in the snow at Port Tobacco
• The huge bonfire at the top of the sledding hill
• Shield's Tavern in 'olde' Williamsburg with our own minstrel
• Almost deserted Okracoke Island on the Outer Banks, NC in the rain huddled up watching DVD movies
• Charleston and Fort Sumter and some of the best food on the trip
• Exciting Savannah and visiting with my cousin Judy Compton and Fred Maher
• Okefenokee Swamp boat trip
• The infamous Confederate Andersonville Prison in GA where scores of Yankee soldiers died
• The Katrina devastation still evident in Pass Christian, MS and along the Gulf to New Orleans
• Staying in the French Quarter and being at a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, including the characters we met
• The bayou country small-town Mardi Gras parades
• The adamant declaration of a B&B owner that there was no segregation in LA but also admitting that there were a lot of private schools
• TABASCO's Avery Island
• Fast and furious at times airboat ride on Bayou LaFourche seeing baby alligators, beautiful birds, dark bayous overhung with Spanish moss and thousands of nutria skittering across the water..also understanding the saying: "Dumb as a coot" (they tried to outrun the airboat!)
• Visiting with Liz Grubaugh in Rowlett, TX
• Oak Alley Plantation B&B and seeing the tops of tugs across the levee
• Dealy Plaza in Dallas (and the ensuing debates)
• Big Bend as a destination, but marveling at the scenery in the entirety of the gargantuan vistas along deserted roads in West Texas
• Following the Rio Grande along the TexMex border
• El Paso and looking over to the enormous city of Juarez at night
• Carlsbad Caverns
• Fairyland feeling in White Sands, NM.  Pictures do not do it justice.
• Reliving the Manhattan Project and the history of flight at a museum in Alamagordo
• NOT being able to get to the Trinity Test Site...so it's still a bit hot, radioactively, that is
• Globe, AZ a very hard-bitten little town in the coal mining area of AZ...who knew?
• Losing/finding my computer on the casino floor at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas where the room was $29 and the tax was $28.85
• Brunch at the revolving Stratosphere restaurant
• Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon NP in Utah--pictures do them justice
• The Luxor in Vegas and a much better brunch (King Crab, etc. etc.) for a much lower price with my cousin Rachel and Frank Williams off the strip
• Seeing the half-constructed giant bridge across the gorge where the Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona
• The mad dash from Las Vegas to Albuquerque to visit cousin Norma Goodwin and her daughter Janie and Chris' Route 66 Mustang shop..a wonderful step back in time
• Visiting my college roomie whom I hadn't seen since her wedding 46 years ago
• Oak Ridge and a good visit with my brother Bob and Milinda Compton in Oak Ridge, TN

Our trip was essentially a route from DC through MD on 301 to Williamsburg; the swampy area south of Albemarle, NC; Ocrakoke Island; through NC to Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA; across the southern route to Andersonville, GA, the Gulf coast, New Orleans; all around the bayous of Louisiana; up to Dallas; across and down Texas to Big Bend; the Rio Grande; El Paso Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, NM; diagonally across AZ and NM to Las Vegas across Hoover Dam;  Las Vegas where we picked Tim up who was taking a break before starting with a new Utah law firm; Zion and Bryce parks, Utah; Vegas/Hoover Dam again--this time during daylight; Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, Ozarks (the highlight of our trip), Oak Ridge and HOME!

Carlsbad, White Sands, Las Vegas, Hurricane, UT and lost computer

I've finally given up trying to get something written every day. Just not enough time in a day. This will be another general list of our travels since arriving in El Paso.

We spent our first full day in El Paso by going to Carlsbad Caverns in NMex. It's certainly a sight to see but the lighting inside the cavern was so low, you couldn't see as much as I would have liked. It's something like 750 ft underground and the biggest cavern is said to be the size of 14 big football stadiums. I would recommend it but the fun part of the trip was the scenery on the way. Beautiful mountains, absolute isolation (no cars coming/going on the road for over an hour), and you can see for scores of miles in every direction. Just beautiful.

The next day we went to White Sands Proving Ground. I've always wanted to see the Trinity Site since I grew up in Oak Ridge, TN and nuclear bombs were a part of my growing up in a Manhattan Project town. (For you young-uns, I suggest Wikipedia. : ) You can't get a a location to see the site but there was a good museum in Alamogordo (I always thought it was Almagordo) and had seen some nuclear bomb detonation sites years ago on a boondoggle to the Nevada Test Site. Anyway, the White Sands area was beautiful. The sand is actually gypsum and exquisite. Like walking through a fairy desert.

After that foray in mid-New Mexico we had to hurry toward Nevada to pick Tim up yesterday. Made it to Globe, NV for the night and arrive yesterday in Las Vegas only an hour late because of a nail-in-our-tire problem.

Arriving late and tired we walked into the Stratosphere Hotel and were hit by the boings and bells of the casino that, of course, you have to transverse to get anywhere in a Vegas hotel. With the three of us rolling bags, carrying junk, etc. we didn't notice that my computer was left next to the 1-cent slots where I was sitting (playing slots) waiting for Joe and Tim to get back to the car before the valet took it away to retrieve something we forgot. After checking in and going upstairs, through the casino noise, I realized the computer wasn't with us about 30 minutes later.

We rushed downstairs, through the casino noise again, and finally were directed to security where after I explained what I had lost, a computer in an Oracle bag, Denny, the security guard, started asking strange questions: could I identify it? was my name inside? etc. Finally he smiled and said he could help me but I had to do something. I realized he had it and almost crushed him with a big hug. He said the Oracle bag was the kicker but I had to find a picture of myself in the computer before he could give it to me...wouldn't take Face Book, which I can explain why if anyone is interested. Some kind angel is looking over my shoulder. When I asked who turned it in he said he couldn't tell me because "it was security person who he couldn't identify because..." I finished his sentence "because he is one of the security people who just walk around the casino floor." He smiled big and said yes. He didn't know I used to watch "Las Vegas" and knew all about that stuff. Ha!

Just now I realized I had gone through this before when we were in Egypt at the Valley of the Kings. I had slipped my slim passport (AND money wallet) in my purse and apparently it just slipped down the side of the purse. Someone had turned it in. That angel has worked overtime in my life.

So, after lunch at the Stratosphere revolving restaurant above Las Vegas we opted to drive to Utah ready to see Zion tomorrow and Bryce Canyon.

This whole trip makes you realize what a beautiful country we have here. I believe the translation for America in Chinese is "Beautiful Country". Those Chinese are certainly perceptive.

Day 21, Pecos to Big Bend NP and El Paso

Woke up this morning in Pecos at a Swiss clock hotel along Interstate 20. It was our jumping off point to turn south to visit Big Bend National Park tucked into a little triangle in south west Texas. Though the area was dry as a bone, we had to move our car from the parking spot next to our room to keep from water dripping off the roof and getting us wet as we packed up. The drive south was usual as we quickly caught up with the fog that apparently had deposited the water in Pecos. Must have been in it for about 20 miles and 'poof' it was gone. We could look behind us and see the cloud of mist.

The drive was wonderful. We started seeing huge, uninhabited mountains--some were mesa wannabes others were already scraped flat across the top. The flat valleys must have been 30 miles across. There were large vistas wherever you looked. Very few people, a good number of roads to ranches with interesting names and occasionally a very small town. Since I know little of geology, pictures will have to do here to explain the immensity and grandeur of the land. A couple of mountains looked like those we saw in Jordan. Others were definitely made of different rocks. There were places of upheaval of the land and a few places of water erosion like the Grand Canyon. The general area is the Chihuahua Desert that extends to the Copper Canyon in Mexico we visited about 4 years ago. Copper Canyon is primarily canyons so you are on top of the land looking down. Here you had both but mostly looking up at mountains...most about a mile high. Equally exciting was our exit from Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande north through the Big Bend Ranch State Park. We saw only a couple of Border Patrol trucks. Anybody who could make it through the rugged mountains on the Mexican side and the same thing on the US side would have to be very determined, very clever and in excellent shape.

We decided to push on to El Paso late in the afternoon after a pick-me-up at the local laundromat/coffee-shop-with-wifi in Marfa. Starting about 30 miles aways from El Paso we followed the lights from across the Rio Grande in Juarez, population over 1.5 million!! That was a surprise. El Paso has about 800,00 and was voted the safest city in the US while Jaurez is about the most dangerous city in the world right now with horrific drug wars going on. Apparently the drug lords are purposely keeping the war on the Mexican side of the river. Our hotel room looks across to the lights of Juarez.

February 17, 2010 in Rowlett, Texas

I'm not doing to well with my logs/journals, etc. Haven't had an overload yet, but we're working on it. About all I feel I can do right now is list where we have been so far:
Williamsburg
Elizabeth City, NC
Ocracoke Island 4 days
Charleston, NC
Savannah, GA
Okefanokee, GA
Andersonville Prison, GA
Mobile, AL
New Orleans, LA
Raceland and Oak Alley, LA (bayou)
Avery Island, LA
and now near Dallas visiting Liz Grubaugh

We've been gone only two weeks, though it seems longer it also seems as if we have had not enough time to do all we wanted to do--like keeping up a journal. I was able to get on the internet,here and there, but when we realized we were so far behind in the journal, we realized we needed some cheat sheets to figure out the places we had been and the things we had seen.

Since we just arrived in Dallas yesterday Louisiana is on my mind. We hit New Orleans during the Mardi Gras parades and thoroughly enjoyed the milieu but equally happy to get to the bayou country. We started toward the bayou on Saturday. We stayed at a small B&B on the bayou near a very small town called Lockport where we enjoyed a homemade Mardi Gras parade that beat New Orleans in heart.

The airboat ride on LaFourche bayou was a real treat. Our guide found a nest of mother and several baby alligators; he stuck an H-shaped pole in the mud and somehow pulled up a baby alligator. The mother stuck her head out of the muddy bank and hissed the whole time we were there. Birds were thick throughout the open water, cypress swamps and bayou canals lined with Live Oaks heavy with Spanish Moss. The most abundant wildlife was nutria (large rodents) and we got several closeups, TOO close up for me. The birds were everywhere with bald eagles, a red-tailed hawk with a white chest, ducks, a ring necked something (not pheasant) that we'll identify when we get home, beautiful great blue herons, snowy egrets and large white herons. The coots (different coloring than the Potomac coots) were comically dumb as they tried to out- run/fly the airboat. The guide had to slow down often just to let them figure out how to get out of the way.

We also stayed at Oak Alley Plantation right next to the Mississippi levee where from our window we could hear better than see the tugs pushing the barges down river to the Gulf. Oak Alley was the site of several movies (NOT Gone with the Wind as many had told us.) I believe Interview with a Vampire was one that was filmed there.

Today we three (Liz, Joe and me) went to Dealey Plaza so Joe could go to the Book Depository where Oswald alone shot Kennedy [or so they say.] Liz and I had seen it a year ago but we waited for Joe so we could argue the Warren Committee decision with him. Nobody changed their mind. Why am I not surprised? ha

Next week will be the original focus of the trip: Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon, Utah. Right now we have cut out CA in favor of seeing my college roommate whom I haven't seen in over 40 years in Arkansas. We're hoping to make Big Bend, TX; Almagordo, and Albuquerque, NMex before we pick up Tim in Las Vegas. He's changing jobs about March 1 so he has some time off and will go with us to Utah.