Crater Lake
The plan had been to bike around crater lake. Then we learned that the road was not open yet. Although it is May 22nd, they had not yet opened the rim road due to heavy snowfall this year. The Rim hike was also closed due to snow, so we ended up walking the part of the road that was open to hikers — Discovery Point to the Wizard Island Overlook.
It was cold! We are not used to temperatures in the 30’s! I personally did not pack well for this trip. I usually bring way too many cold weather clothes and not enough warm weather. But this trip is the opposite. So I have on my biking base layer, a long sleeve T shirt, a vest, a sweatshirt, and my rain jacket! After our hike we did stop at the gift shop and I scored a nice wool camping shirt. That will help, but I think I’m going to miss my puffy jacket.
We did enjoy some great sights on our two mile hike.
After our Crater Lake hiking we stopped at Beckies for lunch. Its amazing how smells bring back memories. Sitting outside this walkup restaurant waiting for my burger I was transported back to the drive-in in Storden Minnesota. Yeah, its just hot grease, but still.
On the way back to the campground there were two more opportunities to see the beauty of the Rogue River.
Meanwhile, back at the campground, the plan was to make some soup for supper in the instant pot. But it seems that the electrical cord has gone missing! Another stop at Wal-Mart or best buy I guess…. I don’t know where it could have gone as it has never really left the camper, and I’ve used it at least once before. But we looked everywhere, and by we I mean both Jane and I so it wasn’t just “man looking”
Tomorrow we have a fairly long day heading North to Cascade Locks.
The Avenue of the Giants
8:00 This morning we are getting an early start and I’ve decided to record this in real time, or at least near real time. We have another 50 miles on Highway 1, so more slow going on twisty winding roads. I’m writing this as we go today. We have left the coast and are amongst the redwoods. The road is super narrow but lined with trees, its just beautiful the way the sunlight filters through creating shadows all around us. There are few turnouts , so no real opportunities for taking photos.
9:25 still a few more miles to go before we get to the 101.
9:39 Just saw our first advertisement for the “Drive Through Tree”! We will not fit, but hopefully we will see it.
9:45 We are on the 101, but a sign advises us that there are sharp curves for the next 9 miles and we are advised to slow down. 😜. Lots of tourist traps for “tree houses” and Confusion Hill House, and the “one log cabin!” An entire log house made out of a single log. It looks like more of a hobbit house or a culvert with a door, but whatever.
9:52 We are on the freeway, at least for a short time…
10:03 - the legend of bigfoot! complete with three highway patrol officers with their lights flashing. I guess we will not stop to buy any bigfoot souveniers.
10:20 We are now on the Avenue of the Giants. We are heading for Founders Grove to make a stop and enjoy the Redwoods for a bit. Some of the Redwoods in founders grove are over 350 feet tall!
Lots of pictures looking straight up today!
11:08 Just finished the nature walk at the visitor center. Amazing! There is no way our pictures are going to capture the size and beauty of these trees!
12:00 Just finished our walk at Founders Grove! Amazing, Amazing, Amazing. The Founders tree is 349 feet tall! More than a soccer pitch! The diameter is over 12 feet and the circumference just over 40
12:10 pull over by some big trees for a picnic lunch along side the road. A most picturesque lunch spot!
12:24 back on the road — 2:17 minutes left to our destination. The rest of the day will be on Hwy 101.
1:30 Gas stop in Eureka! Last stop before our campsite…
2:25 Arrived - Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
2:45 We have determined that our campsite and our camper are incompatible. The site is steep and it is impossible to get our camper anywhere near level. Jane seeks out the Ranger to see if there are any cancellations.
3:00 they have two possibilities for us. After a little walk around the campground we determine that one is super small, and level, but there would be no room for the truck. Luckily the other will work great for one night. Its a bit exposed with the slide hanging right out to the road. But most sites near us are already occupied so we don’t expect much traffic.
3:45 we are finally in our campsite with the trailer leveled up and the solar panels plugged in.
4:00 we take off for a hike, having abandoned the idea of a 20 mile bike ride.
4:20 we arrive at Fern Canyon for our hike. It is for the best that we didn’t try to ride our bikes here after all. Its a steep one lane road with the barest of turnouts for when you meet someone. Thankfully the hike makes it all worth while. Fern canyon is a coastal bluff left behind by the retreating oceans years ago. The steep walls of the bluffs are covered with ferns, and the little steam running down the middle makes for a beautiful hike. Again the pictures surely do not do it justice.
5:25 depart Fern Canyon for Lady Bird Johnson Grove. This is completely different than Founders Grove as it is higher in elevation, on a ridge top where the winds challenge the trees all the time. Its great that this is named after Lady Bird Johnson, who fell in love with this grove when she came to dedicate Redwoods National Park in 1968, but it is pretty humbling to consider that when many of these trees have been here for 1,000 years!
7:00 Back at the campsite! Time to make some dinner and relax. Tomorrow we head to Crater Lake where we will stay for two nights.
El Capitan State Beach - The Adventure Begins
This morning began with Coffee and a quick, but promising, Zoom meeting with the folks from ProjectSTEM.org, about how Runestone and ProjectSTEM can work together. After that energizing call I quickly transitioned to camper loading mode, before heading out for our final nine holes of golf with the couples league at 9AM. In the meantime the guys showed up to start laying the Pavers 
in our new courtyard area! Talk about a busy last day in the desert!
Our latest journey will take us up the california coast following Highway 1 and 101, through Oregon and into Washington state where we will retrace the steps of our honeymoon from 34 years 11 months ago! We’ll call it 35 years. when we finish our visit to the Olympic Peninsula we’ll head east and meet our friends Jim and Karen in Chelan Washington, and then make a beeline for Minnesota across the barren north! We are looking forward to 3 weeks of beautiful scenery, eating seafood out, hiking, biking and our little camper.
We are now experiencing LA traffic, sitting on the Ventura HIghway, going slow., the free wind is not blowing through our hair as we have the AC on. We also haven’t been hit by any purple rain, so we got that going for us. Only 98 miles to go to our campsite but the estimated time of arrival keeps holding steady so I guess all this traffic was anticipated. I’m happy to report that the temperature here on the 101 is a good 20 degrees cooler than when we left Indio just a few hours ago. That is down 20 degrees from 100!
We are now happily in our campsite at El Capitan State Beach! It is only 65 degrees here so its starting to feel like Minnesota, but we are so happy to be on the road and are already enjoying this new adventure! 
We got the camper set up and went for a short hike! 
Next up happy hour, dinner, and then some rest after a very busy day.
Katie Kukulka, an information officer with the California Energy Commission, takes photos during a tour of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert in California near Primm, Nev. Feb. 13, 2014. The project, a partnership of NRG, BrightSource, Google and Bechtel, is the world’s largest solar thermal facility and uses 347,000 sun-facing mirrors to produce 392 megawatts of electricity, enough energy to power more than 140,000 homes.
Glad to see the official announcement of Apple’s “Spring Loaded” event next week. I’ve been living with a cracked screen on my iPad long enough.
A really nice round this afternoon at Heritage Palms!
And yes, I can still put it in the water from here…
A Winter in Indio
I never thought of myself as a Snowbird, but even with COVID-19, our second Winter in Indio is amazing! In college we used to joke about getting condos in the same building when we got old, so we could party together every night and have fun after we had worked hard and raised kids and … But who knew that something like that would actually start to happen?
Here we are in our mid-50’s; living a retirement lifestyle, while still working a balanced workweek. What do I mean by that? Well here is our basic daily schedule. Of course this may vary due to visitors or other events.
- 5:30 AM wakeup, wait 5 minutes for the water to get hot and then get out of bed and make a delicious pour over coffee to start the day. Read the news and do Sudoku or The NY Times crossword until 7:00AM
- 7:00 AM Be productive.
- 8:00 AM play pickleball — unless I have an early tee time on Monday or Friday with my wonderful TGIF group.
- 10:00AM Be Productive
- 2:00 PM If it is Jan — March, take a bike ride (unless I’ve already played pickleball and golf!). If its April or May it may be too hot to ride now.
- 3:00 PM — Occasionally this is happy hour time over zoom with friends back in the midwest.
- 5:00 PM almost always happy hour out here. Unless you are still on the course for a late round of golf.
- 6:00 PM cooking time!!!
- 8:00 PM Done with cooking and dinner time to veg with a movie or TV show. If it was not COVID times we could imagine playing cards with any number of couples we have met! Our favorite shows are:
- Ted Lasso
- Chicago Med/Fire/PD
- The Voice
- Handmaids Tale
- For All Mankind
- Mrs Maizel
- 10:00 PM Bed Time. — read until you can’t anymore, then fall asleep.
Dubuque to Mississippi Palisades
Today was a rough day. The hills were steep, the good people of Galena seem to hate bikers, and I was chased by a goat.
First, the hills. There were a lot of them, and some of them were steep, really steep. 16% grade on one of them steep. This makes for pretty difficult riding if I do say so myself. Overall, today was not very scenic and it was all on roads, sometimes with shoulders and sometimes not.
The people of Galena. So here is the thing, coming into Galena there is no shoulder on the road so I have to ride in the lane. People are in a hurry so rather than waiting to pass me when there is no oncoming traffic as one would do when passing a car, people decide to crowd the center line and see if they can’t get by. This creates a situation that is extremely dangerous for the guy on the bike! The roads are filled with cracks and other obstacles that cause us to swerve that drivers of cars don’t even notice. when you only give me a foot of riding space that is not much room to maneuver.
My strategy is to simply claim the lane, which of course does not win me any new friends. I’ll move over when it is safe for them to pass. Really it is not that much time out of your day to wait for the oncoming traffic to pass so that you can pass me like any other vehicle. And it sure as heck will save you a lot of messy time explaining to the police why you caused an accident.
The goat…. What can I say, I was just coming up a hill, admiring the Halloween decorations at yet another country store, when all of the sudden this big goat comes at me. Where did he come from!?? I guess he escaped his pen, or maybe he was put there to guard the pumpkins? I wish I had our little episode on camera but his horns looked quite nasty so I didn’t hang around to get that Kodak moment!
Despite all of the annoyances, I made it safely to our campground at Mississippi Palisades. The park is huge and our campsite was way back away from everything. We grilled some pork chops from Fareway over an open campfire and had a good night.
AI in the Dominican Republic
This all started a year ago when the government posted a travel warning for the Playa area of Mexico where we had booked a week at an all inclusive resort. Not wanting to take any chances we decided to switch to a cruise at the last minute and book a different resort. This resulted in us booking at the Cofresi Palms in Puerto Plata.
However, coming on the heels of two very long vacations I needed to make this something of a working vacation to make sure the materials for the AC201 course were as good as possible.
The Good
A couple of mornings I worked in our room, which was a really nice two bedroom suite with wonderful views of the beach. But then we discovered these covered beds right on the beach, big enough for all of us to hang out together and in the shade, with good enough WiFi for everything except video conferencing. So I switched — can you blame me?
Traveling with our friends Brian and Holly is always super relaxing. Whether its hanging at the pool bar or playing cards at the beach we always have a great time. We planned absolutely no activities for this week so it was really all about reading, and lounging, which made it easy for me to mix in some work too.
This was our first ever experience at an all inclusive resort, so we had very little in the way of expectations. And mostly they were met.
A few things were a nice surprise. Our room, a “penthouse suite” was very nice. We had a living and kitchen area on the first floor with a fridge full of water, soda and beer. We also really liked the coffee pot in the room. The bedrooms upstairs were huge, each with its own deck and spectacular view of the resort and ocean. Our bathroom was fine, but in serious need of updating and new grout.
The Mexican and the Indian restaurant. We should have eaten all our meals at these two.
The Bad
We had read about the “men in the hats” before we arrived. A small army of high pressure sales people that will try anything to get you into a sales pitch situation, and invest in the timeshare. “Tours”, better breakfasts, free golf cart rides, tokens for upgrades your next time back… They really try to get you the first day, and then came at us again hard towards the end. Dodging them became a kind of sport for us.
The bands. Everyone has to wear a wristband. These identify you and your level. Lots of places are for VIPs only, so if you don’t have the right colored band you are not welcome. We were not VIPs. See the previous paragraph for another part of their sales tactics.
The cups. All of our drinks came in these tiny plastic cups. Brian referred to the beers that came in them as “beer shots”. There was one kind of beer - El Presidenté, All of the drinks were watered down, but hey what they lack in quality they made up for in quantity.
The service. I feel bad writing such negative stuff, but the staff at the restaurants was really apathetic. Sometimes we were so rushed that we could hardly enjoy our food. Other times the service was so slow that we mostly had lost interest by the time it was served. We did learn that a $1 tip could get you a lot of good will and even a smile.
The smell. Running through the middle of the resort is a cement canal with a big sewage pipe suspended in the canal. The pipe leaked. The smell permeated everything downwind, which included one of the largest pool areas in the complex.
But we still had fun
Although I’ve listed a lot of negatives, and that may be because I’m a snob. But in the end we still had a lot of fun, and spent some great time reading and relaxing. I would do an all inclusive again sometime, maybe, but it won’t be this one, and I think I have a lot of other places and things on my list.
Welcome Back to Minneapolis
Well it was bound to happen, and as we like to say, it could have been worse. Landed at MSP just before 9:00 this morning. It was 1 degree Fahrenheit (-17 C) and the snow was just starting to Fall.
The Galapagos cruise was unlike any other we have been on. High on the active scale, high on the learning new things every day scale, and with the small ship very high on the meet interesting people scale. As the hotel manager John Flynn told us, they are very well aware that this cruise is a bucket list trip for most passengers, and they really do their best to make it memorable. And that was just one component of this trip!
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Amazon Rainforest
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Machu Picchu and Inca trail hike
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Cusco and the Sacred Valley
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The Galápagos Islands
Jane and I have had so many interesting experiences on this trip that it seems like we have been gone for months, not just the three weeks.
We left Quito early this morning (12:30AM) and arrived in Atlanta by 5:30. Getting through customs and making the transfer to the domestic gates was a breeze thanks to our Global Entry passes. But neither of us ended up sleeping on that flight and we just dozed a little on the flight to Minneapolis, so we were both beat by the time we got out of the Uber in downtown Minneapolis.
In an attempt to wake up a bit, I went down to use the elliptical in our workout room. As the minutes ticked away I watched the Wells Fargo building and IDS Tower disappear into the increasingly heavy snowfall. We are supposed to get more than four inches today, and you can see that even this afternoon it is still coming down pretty heavily.
As with all good trips, we learned a lot, came to appreciate new cultures, old histories, and new parts of the globe. It’s great to get away and get a new perspective on the business of everyday life, and to evaluate one’s priorities. But as the saying goes, there is no place like home. We are happy to be back, and already looking forward to an exciting weekend of activities including a play at the Guthrie and a broadway series performance!
Darwin Research Center
We started our day today with a visit to the Darwin Research Center. One of the main projects at this center is the preservation of the many different species of tortoises on the islands. Many of which were hunted to near extinction by whalers or pushed out of their habitat by goats, dogs and cats. The tortoise in the image below is a saddle back! A close genetic relative of “Lonesome George” that last true Saddleback that died a few years back. You can see that they have very long necks which is an adaptation for eating the cacti on the desert islands of the Galapagos.
And of course we saw many of the Galapagos Tortoise both at the Darwin center and later on in the wild.
Another highlight of the day was our chance to participate in Celebrity Cruise Lines reforestation project. Many of the native Escalesa trees were choked out by the blackberries that were imported by the settlers on the islands. With a lot of work the blackberries have been culled, but now Celebrity is working to replant many many acres of forrest with native Escalesa trees. To date Celebrity and their guests have planted nearly 40,000 trees, and I’m happy that we got to participate.
As an added bonus we all got to wear the super stylish rubber boots!
I 💙 Boobies
By this time of the trip the routine was well established. Breakfast in the morning, then off to the zodiacs for an adventure / hike on shore. Back to the ship for lunch and a rest during the worst heat of the day, then a late afternoon zodiac to another destination for another hike. This is definitely an adventure not a vacation! This afternoons hike was billed as the most difficult of the trip, because it involved a little rock scrabbling! As usual a few people joined that really shouldn’t have, you would think people would learn their limitations by this time. Anyway, after the rock scrabbling we were rewarded with a beautiful view of the beach.
Along the way we saw a lot of Blue Footed Boobies, we had to leave the trail to keep our distance from them several times as they just sit in the middle of the path looking at us. It was definitely worthwhile as this is probably one of my favorite photos of this whole adventure!
The blue footed boobies take turns on the nest, if you can call it that. It’s barely even a hole in the ground. Further, they don’t really even sit on the eggs, they kind of cradle them with their feet. Here’s a picture of the “changing of the guard”
The reds are not nearly as interesting as the blues. They are arboreal and so you rarely see them on the ground. Their feet are red, but not bright red like the bright blue.
On the beach where we landed to start the hike was a small colony of sea lions.
Galápagos Day 4 — Santa Cruz
The activity of the morning was a “long” walk around Dragon hill on Santa Cruz. The main objective was to see the Land Iguanas. These creatures have been restored to the island after they were endangered by feral dogs and goats that humans brought to the island. Santa Cruz is one of the few islands that is actually inhabited.
The cover picture for this post is actually of a marine iguana that was near the shore by a brackish pool.
You can see a very clear difference in coloration and shape between the marine variety — which can swim using their tails for propulsion — and the land iguanas pictured below.
At one point they moved many of the Land Iguanas to an alternative island without any human habitation for them to come back, while they started a program to eradicate all of the goats and feral dogs. We actually saw a goat along the way, and the guides, who are also park rangers when they are on land, had to call it in so that the goat could be tracked down and captured.
the walk started at 8:00 and already it was really hot. We began the walk on the beach and quickly passed by this beautiful brackish water pool.
The path was very muddy from rain the previous night, and a few people from the group ahead of us called it quits and headed back to the beach. But we kept going, eyes peeled for our first siteing. The first Land Iguana we met was pretty hard to miss as he was right on the trail!
Once we spotted the first one we started to see quite a few of them. Some close to the path, some sitting right outside their burrows, some “lounge lizards” hanging out on a log.
The scenery on the island was also very beautiful and couldn’t have been more different than our hike up the volcano from the day before.
Afternoon Snorkel
In the afternoon we had a beach snorkeling stop. The water was pretty wavy and as a result the visibility was not very good. I was right next to a big sea turtle and I could easily have grabbed onto the shell to go for a ride. But you don’t touch the wild animals so I just followed it and admired it s grace.
The real highlight of the snorkeling trip was the Pelicans. After coming back to shore there were about 3 brown pelicans that decided it was feeding time. They are “shallow plungers” so they swoop up into the air about 15 to 20 feet and then plunge awkwardly into the water to capture a fish! They were definitely not deterred by all of the humans in the water as several swooped right next to people! The pelicans were fine, but the people were a bit shocked!
