From Texas, and LouisianaMississippiAlabamaTennesseeKentuckyWestVirginiaMaryland, to Virginia! - Pt 2 AlabamaTennesseeKentuckyWestVirginia

Last time we talked about the beginning of the trip - Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving off with Moss Point, MS on the Gulf Coast...

We crossed through Mobile (which has the COOLEST tunnel under their port.... or so I thought until I drove under Baltimore's bay in the COOLEST tunnel ever!) and headed up to Montgomery, or Birmingham (i don't remember) to crash for the night at a campground. This was back in the day when I needed showers and flush toilets and was willing to pay for them, like a CHUMP, at a private campground. Nowadays I am willing to forgo those niceties for a FREE campground :-).

The next day we headed up to Lynchburg, TN to visit the Jack Daniels Distillery. Neither R or myself is in to whiskey but why not visit anyway. The distillery is set in the hills and is a gorgeous ride... much like the Maker's Mark Distillery visit of my youth. It was a great way to be introduced to the Appalachians. After that stop, we continued north to visit Mammoth Cave National Park. On a previous road trip, R and I went to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and we liked it so much, we decided to check out another one. This cave was very very different from Carlsbad. No huge rooms like "the Big Room", but with over 300 miles of underground riverway, there was plenty to explore.

We chose to hit a ranger-guided tour that involved a bus ride to a more remote part of the cave. There, in a wooded dirt parking lot, was a pad-locked metal doorway into the side of a small hill. Only slightly creepy. The guide warned us that there were over 100 metal steps to go down right at the beginning to get into the main chambers, and they were slippery. Slightly more creepy. He failed to mention the THOUSANDS of SPIDERS that were living at the entrance on the roof overhead, waiting for the door to open and admit the tiniest amount of light. Once they see the light, they begin to bounce. OMG way more creepy!
(If you need a refresher on my history with spiders.... here, and here.) And you can't run, NO, not with the slippery steps of death or the line of 30 people who all want to run with you. NO! I spent the whole walk down the steps alternatively pushing the old man in front of me and squealing "get them off of me!". In actuality, there were no spiders on me. It's a mind-fuck.

Once we got down to the bottom, everyone chilled out. The place was cool and damp, dark and long. Its not overly decorated like Carlsbad but it has some fantastic history. The locals used it as a tuberculosis ward back during the Civil War and up to the turn of the century. Awesome! Survive the spiders to die by TB...

We did survive, and drove on up to Louisville and headed west to West Virginia. In all honesty, I don't remember West Virginia on that trip.... sorry West Virginians. Here - interesting fact to make up for lack of being memorable - If you ironed West Virginia flat, it'd be larger than Texas.

Ok, moving on to Maryland and Baltimore next time!

*If you took nothing else away from this piece, remember to always ask if there will be spiders on your cave tours....

My Happy Place

Whenever I'm stressed, sad, bored, or lonely, I think of my happy place. We all have one. That special place in the world - real or imaginary - where everything is right.

My happy place is southeast Utah. I spent many months living in SE Utah, at both Capitol Reef & Canyonlands national parks. This isn't my happy place because I was happiest there. No, in fact sometimes I was downright miserable & making the best of a poor situation. However, SE Utah was always there to soothe me, refresh me, & rejuvenate my soul.

When I think of SE Utah, I remember the following:

- the redness of the Wingate sandstone against the white Navajo sandstone & impossibly blue skies
- breath-taking vistas as far as the eye can see of mostly unpopulated areas
- the smell of pinion pine ( my soul aches every time I smell a pinion tree)
- the sound wind makes as it soars across, through, beneath, & between the fantastic rock formations of the region
- the feel of the sun soaking into my sink, just as it soaks it the rocks I walk upon
- the indescribable feeling of being alone & completely at home in the Utah wilderness
- canyon wrens
- the ability to 4-wheel drive & camp across most of the area & rarely see another vehicle
- 8 national park areas within a days drive. Yes- EIGHT!
- The ever- constant feeling of walking in an ancient civilizations' footsteps
- the tingly spidey- sense I get when petroglyphs & pictographs are near

I cannot wait to share my happy place with M. I know he'll love it as much as I do.

Where is your happy place? If you don't have one, feel free to share mine.

The Messed Up Decision that Changed My Life Forever... In a Good Way

Ok - lets go back to the beginning. I've discussed my childhood spent driving the highways of the US, my parents instilling in me the deep desire for frequent road trips. I've also discussed many of my more recent adventures. But how did I get from there to here? Good question...

Like most messed up decisions, this one started the spring before I graduated college. I was graduating soon, didn't really know what career path I wanted, wasn't really getting anywhere with interviews, and didn't want to be one of those people who stayed around my college town long after graduation. So I did what any recent graduate would do - no, not move back home with mom and dad. I ran away to the east coast - to live and work at a resort in a national park. (Listen up, recent graduates! Super-cheap rent, interesting coworkers, good money.) This decision wouldn't have been possible without the support and accompaniment of my roommate and bestie, R. She was in the same predicament as me and therefore, ready to hit the road!

The plan was to go as far north along the east coast as possible - to Acadia National Park!

Gorgeous, right? Yes it is. I STILL haven't been there.

Acadia was quickly pulled as a possibility due to the lack of housing in the park for workers at the concessions. (Quick note - most national park sites have different kinds of workers - National Park Rangers mostly wear badges, get paid by your tax dollars, and must be US citizens - Concession workers are the people who work at the resorts, the campgrounds, the camp stores, the restaurants, etc, - no badges, get paid by a private company, and are mostly NOT US citizens.) So R and I quickly pulled out the US map and searched for the next northernmost national park that may have housing... This is how we ended up with Shenandoah National Park.

Just as gorgeous as Acadia, but in a very different way.

No R and I were not hikers or outdoorsy. That bears repeating. R AND I WERE NOT OUTDOORSY! Ok, keep that in mind over the next few posts as I describe our new-found lifestyle.

But first, we had to road trip our way up to Virginia.

to be continued.....

McKittrick Canyon in Fall Color; a Texas Tradition

I spent my Veteran's Day hiking in Guadalupe Mountains NP with M and his two boys. The weather was absolutely perfect! 70 degrees, sunny, slight breeze.... Amazing day. The fall colors were too beautiful for words, so here's a photo essay.

View of McKittrick from the visitor center

The big rock on top-right is the ancient reef, the cliffs to the left are part of the back reef

1st sight of COLOR!

And then it got amazing!!!!

E poses on a rock... This happened alot.

The ever-necessary selfie

The canyon flooded in September. The trail crew spent a month busting ass to get it into great shape!

Tarantula! So cute!

Pratt Cabin is a perfect summer home

The Texas Madrones are huge in here!

I love the madrone bark. It looks like dripping paint

I tested out my new waterproof trail-rated camera. Look at the tiny fish!

Video of the camera's first dunking - sorry its sideways... cold water!

Look at the flood debris! This was at least 2.5 miles up the canyon

The most fantastic lighting is fall color lighting

More rocks to climb....

A doesn't climb rocks; he sleeps on them

End of the line - Hunters Cabin just past the Grotto!
Fantastic, highly recommended hike!

For more info on Guadalupe Mtns NP, check out their website!

How I Spent My Unplanned Furlough (or What I Did While the Government Sucked) - Week 1

Week 1 (let's hope there's no Week 2...)

Day 1 - spent most of the morning kinda freaking out with M, thought a lot about money and missing paychecks, etc. I then made mental lists of all the places we should go since we now 'have the time'. Thank you Congress :-(
Oh, then crossed off half the places in my mental list because they've got the word "National" in their name and that means they're CLOSED! Then made mental list of all the things that needed to be done at home (cheap and/or free).

Day 2 - Marathoned Parks and Recreation, Season 5 - Thank you Netflix for releasing this on October 1st. I totally feel that it was done to help all of us in the NPS... I might be overthinking that but whatever. Oh! I also spent some time cleaning the house... Maybe if I had a furlough once a year, the house would be cleaned once a year? M came in late in the evening and was wrecked from a long day. To end our first official "furlough day" (yesterday was technically our day off), we watched some stand-up comedy and fell into blissful, allergy-pill enhanced sleep.

Day 3 - M worked on his book, so I Facebooked. Reading all the NPS friends and family posts about whats happening to them kinda got me down, and pissed. So M and I went for a nice long walk by the Rio Grande with Lennox. The sounds of the riparian area, mixed with the crisp fall breeze really helped. Later, after a lot of Champions of Norrath, we cooked a nice fall dinner of lemon risotto and champagne, and settled into a romantic evening with 28 Days Later. (Fall is the perfect time for scary movies!)

Day 4 - Went hiking in a STATE PARK! Franklin Mountains State Park encompasses the whole mountain that splits El Paso into East and West sides.

Thank you state parks for not shutting down at the same time as our federal parks did... that would incite a riot among hikers. Afterwards, we decided to hit a cheap date spot and went mini-golfing :-)

Day 5 - Woke up early (8am, but for the first time in 7 days) to hit the Saturday Arts & Farmers Market in downtown El Paso. I ALWAYS miss this market. Every Saturday there are posts all over Facebook taunting me about the fun being had at the market while I'm at work. Later that afternoon, M and I caravaned out to Carlsbad to spend the weekend. Driving through Guadalupe Mountains NP during the shut-down is bittersweet. I know the natural forces aren't shut-down, the indigenous animals don't listen well to our federal government. I'm sure they're enjoying the quiet, peaceful void of humans. I want to be out there with them.

We went to a going away party for a co-worker... of course, she can't move to her new job until the govt reopens...
We closed the day with The Omen. (we're doing all scary movies for October)

Day 6 - Woke up realizing that the boys don't have winter jeans that fit them... Hit Walmart before the church crowd showed up. (i seriously had to remember what day it was. this no-work thing messes up your internal calendar) Played Words with Friends for the first time in several days. I now realize that I mostly play this at work... sorry WWF friends. We went for a family+dogs walk to enjoy the early fall afternoon and play at the playground.
The scary October movie of the evening was Insidious, which scared the crap outta me. I may have hidden my face in a pillow for over half the movie, but that just tells you how scary it was. Fantastic evening flick! (Can't wait for the second one!) We also watched a family-friendly Percy Jackson and the Olympians with the boys. It was pretty good too. :-)

Labor Day Weekend - Fort Davis, Davis Mountains, Alpine, and live music!

M and I headed down to Fort Davis and Alpine for a quick overnighter on our 3-day weekend. We had planned to camp out in the aspens near Ruidoso but then we found out that Labor Day weekend was a favorite of the 3-wheeling ATV crowd. yuck! Soooo we headed south instead.

We drove through some fantastic mountains (yes, Texas has multiple mountains....).

highway running through Davis Mountains State Park

Looking down onto Fort Davis National Historic Site

First we hit Fort Davis National Historic Site, which was crowded and boiling hot. I was hoping it'd be a bit cooler but what can you expect in west Texas in August!

M and I poured over all of Fort Davis's newly upgraded exhibits. You can take the park ranger out of the park, but you can't take the park out of the ranger! My favorite part of the visit was the porch swing. Its been a very long time since I've relaxed on a porch swing. I spent my childhood on the porch swing of our beach house. The sound of the chains creaking, along with the seagulls and the drone of I-10, always lulled me into bliss. M could make me ultimately blissful if he could manage a porch swing at the house.

Fort Davis's most awesome porch swing

blissfully enjoying the swing

weird repetitive view of the officers quarters

My OTHER favorite part of Fort Davis was the hospital. Getting to view all the horrid torturous medical equipment that was "state of the art" in the mid-1800s is fascinating to me, and nauseating to most other people.

After Fort Davis and a quick scenic drive up to Davis Mountains State Park, we drove down to Alpine to check into the cheapest motel Alpine has to offer. I've stayed in some amazingly cheap places, so my standards are pretty low. (There was the place that advertised "Meat Burgers", with "meat" meaning whatever they found along the road; the place where we barricaded the door at night to sleep because the locks didn't work well; and then there was the I-10 truck stop that dad insisted we could get a good nights' sleep in the van) This motel wasn't too bad. It had the basics... the 'ice machine' was an igloo in the check in area that the owner filled each morning with ice from the gas station across the street, the pool had been filled in with concrete and fenced off years before, etc...

M and I went looking for a place to have dinner before hitting the bar for some live music. We tried 3 places that said they were open only to find them closed... I Yelped them properly. The 4th place didn't have any vegan options and was too expensive to have a sub-par meal. We even tried a diner that Yelp warned was constantly out of regular menu items. And yes, they were out of the only thing I could eat... salad. So we finally found ourselves, hungry and grumpy, at McDonald's ordering salads behind some fairly vicious people who were lamenting the broken soda machine.

After a fantastic dinner of McD's salad, we headed to the Railroad Blues for some live music. Talk about a small town - the first person we saw when we walked in recognized M as "Copperhead Guy". M studied snakes in grad school, and worked closely with locals. The band, the Lonesome Heros, was fantastic and very friendly. We're now Facebook friends. :-)
We had a great time and I had too many apricot beers (Shout-out to Corree!).

The next morning we tried our hand with eating in Alpine one last time and hit the no-salad diner. Their waffles completely make up for the lack of any type of vegetable.

We took a different scenic route back up to Carlsbad....

Border Patrol Blimp... who knew?! M says they keep it tethered to the ground. It floats a few hundred feet up in the
air, light up at night for all the illegals and smugs to see.... yay for tax dollars!

Of course we had to hit the Marfa Prada! It was actually crowded with
motorcyclists and other on-lookers

All in all, it was a fun quick getaway.... we'll hit the aspen slopes of Ruidoso next time.



ps - Fort Davis's gardener must be amazing...

I have Rosemary envy... look at the size of this monster!!!

Vacationing in Northern New Mexico... part 3 - Campfires and Pecos history

ok... so we left off with camping and freezing, right?

We drove up into the mountains just outside million dollar homes overlooking Santa Fe, arriving at a gorgeous pine-scented forest service campground with the BEST campsites I've ever seen on public land. At 9,000 feet and with an afternoon storm blowing in (I'm completely convinced that it dumped snow somewhere nearby), it got cold pretty quickly. M went off in search of water (all the spigots were still shut off due to impending May snow), and I quickly put on layers... a long underwear layer, followed by a thermal layer, followed by a fleece skintight layer, followed by a fleece vest layer. To top off my ensemble, I pulled Lennox's Mexican blanket out of the car and wrapped it around me baby-burrito style.

I'm clearly more of a 'sun' person.

When M came back and saw me, he simply laughed and announced that he was heading out into the woods for firewood.... To keep moving, and keep warm, I worked on putting up the tent.

My man and his fire, keeping my feet warm

Reheating his BBQ sandwich from earlier in the day

We spent several hours warming by the fire, reading and talking, while unknown birds made foreign noises above us. M was in charge of keeping the home fires burning while I was in charge of discovering how awesome burning pine cones look. :-) I had leftover cake for dinner - using the theory that Eskimos eat whale blubber and Iditarod dudes eat sticks of butter to keep warm. Denial.... or Genius.....?

Finally the sun went down and I had to add a final layer to my very bulky frame.

Once the fire was out and it was officially too cold, I headed to the bathroom one final time. In this super-awesome campground there was only one issue... the bathroom. Bathroom isn't the term to be used. Latrine is more accurate. A pit-toilet in the freezing cold with spiders and beetles watching can only be described as a latrine. I had girl scout camp flashbacks.... (I should totally tell you guys about my experiences at camp. Another time.) I had taken the flashlight and the lantern with me into the outhouse, but was surprised when I opened the door and a motion-detected light came on. I was more surprised when the fucking light went out 70 seconds later, just as I had pulled my pants (all of my pants) down around my ankles and was hovering (NEVER sit...) over the hole! Before the spiders and beetles could attack, I calmly (re. totally freaked out) ran around, still pants around ankles, trying to find my lantern or flashlight that I had turned off in total confidence of the damn light. I kicked the flashlight into beetle territory and was not going to go fishing for it in the dark. I managed to get the lantern on after what felt like 5 hours. As I stood up, I triggered the motion-light and the room was bright once again.

Note To the Dumb-ass Latrine Designer Guys: Point the fucking motion detector at the toilet, not the corner by the door! OR change the timer for 5 minutes! Who pees, or worse, in 70 seconds from pants down to pants up?!

Anyway, after escaping death in the latrine I headed back to camp to tell M all about my experience. Humility is healthy....


M went right to sleep. I did not. I read until my fingers were frozen then burrowed deep into my 20 degree bag, still in all the layers and the coat, under the Mexican blanket. Throughout the night, as i got warmer and more claustrophobic, I pulled off the layers until I was down to just the one super-sexy electric purple long underwear.

The next morning - I really don't remember the next morning. There was no coffee. I remember that. The plan was to drive back down to spring temperatures and find a breakfast spot with cheap food and tons of coffee.

Once appropriately fueled, we headed to Pecos National Historic Site. M had a friend to see there and I had a passport stamp to acquire.

Ever wonder the difference in quality between a really nice digital camera and an iPhone?  Here....

Top: M's camera with a large battery... mine died. Bottom: my iPhone


Pecos was cool - and by that I mean cold, windy, and truly interesting.

An homage to geology?

I'm totally sure that goofing off for cameras is what the scary evil Conquistadors
had in mind when they built this chapel and killed any natives who wouldn't
submit to the lord.... yep, totally accurate.

heathen!

not to be outdone by the Conquistadors, the natives had their own
ceremonial chambers

heathen squirrel....

totally M's camera, my iPhone wouldn't get this awesome

After hanging with M's friend and touring the grounds, we headed back onto the highway and crossed the most boring section of New Mexico ever created. They really should have tested bombs here, and not in the mountains near the Trinity Site. 5 hours and tons of Todd Snider later, we were back home.

The unpacking took days, but the showering off 5 days of grime took minutes. Nothing feels as good as a shower after a long camping trip!