The Badlands

I have been to the Badlands in South Dakota a few times now, and with each visit I enjoy the area even more. My previous trips were just quick "through-visits" on my way home from other travels out west. This time, however, I was able to spend almost two full days in the area. I arrived in Badlands National Park after spending the day traveling through the Pine Ridge Reservation and visiting Wounded Knee. The whole area is beautiful and I can only imagine what it must look like in the summer, when things are a little 'greener'. The grasses everywhere were still quite brown, nothing had really greened up yet.

As I arrived in the Badlands I started noticing a lot of standing water in the low-lying areas along the side of the road, and some patches of snow here and there. When I got to the park's visitor center the staff informed me that they had quite a bit of moisture in the past couple of weeks, in the form of both rain and snow. Consequently, there were lots of puddles and in some places larger pools of water. In the larger pools, choruses of frogs were croaking and singing to their heart's content. These pockets of water really made the visit interesting for photographs, as I was able to make several exposures of the hills of the badlands reflected in these pools of water.

While making the image above, about half an hour after sunset, a car pulled up alongside mine on the side of the road. A voice came from the window... "Great spot, huh?" I turned and voiced my agreement, then got up (I had been sitting on the ground with my tripod set low to get the above shot) and walked over to the car to chat some more. The friendly voice in the car belonged to Carl Johnson, who is currently the artist-in-residence at Badlands National Park. As it turned out, he's a photographer, too. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska but explained that he was a guide for a while in the Boundary Waters, up the Gunflint Trail. I said "No kidding... I'm from Grand Portage." To which he responded "I used to work as a security guard in the Grand Portage Casino during the winter, in between my summer guiding job." What a small world! It turns out he worked at the casino back when I was managing the marina in Grand Portage. At any rate, we had a nice visit and we swapped website information. If you'd like to visit Carl's site, go to http://www.carljohnsonphoto.com/ and if you'd like to see his work from the Badlands, click on the "Blog" link at the top of his main website page. He has some nice work, and its worth a bit of your time to visit his site.

(Above: My car's shadow on the painted hills of the Badlands....)
Tomorrow, I head for home. The Badlands marks the last of my "tourist" stops for this trip. I am staying in Duluth tomorrow night, and tuesday night I am scheduled to give a slide show and a talk about my trip and my photography in general to the Duluth-Superior Camera Club. Hopefully they will like what I have to share!

Sun Beams over Isle Royale

This morning's sunrise was pretty sweet, although at first it didn't look too promising due to the cloud cover. As we drove to our planned location, however, things were looking better. The actual sunrise itself was okay, but once the sun got up into the clouds we were treated to an incredible display of sun beams protruding down through the clouds. The piece of land that you see in this photo is Isle Royale National Park, which is in Michigan but lies only 20 miles offshore from Minnesota, where this photo was taken from. If you look closely in the lower right corner of the photo you can see Rock of Ages Lighthouse, which lies just a few miles off the eastern tip of Isle Royale.

Visitation Totals for Mount Rainier Park

The last graph got me wondering, what was the general visitation totals for Mount Rainier during the same period, 1991 to 2005. As you can see, there has been a decline overall. I gathered these stats from here.

Summer Heat and Movie Reviews

Monday, in the heat of the day, laundry chores were completed. Spoiler alert re: The Bachelorette. At night, I watched The Bachelorette and was completely disgusted by the show. Normally I love watching, but Brooks, her runaway favorite, all of a sudden in Antigua decides he "doesn't know how" he feels about Desiree. Chris Harrison talks to Brooks about his feelings and draws out the maudlin conversation to ten or more minutes. Then Brooks has to tell Desiree that he's just not feeling right about their relationship. The show devolved into Desiree having a blubbering, sniffling pity party. Again, this part of the "drama" was stretched like Silly Putty to its breaking point. Talk about time fillers. The show could have been over in an hour instead of two. Sheesh.

Movie review: Tuesday I went to see The Wolverine in the middle of the afternoon. The reviews I read in Entertainment Weekly and The Oregonian were good. Even though I was skeptical about going, I went because of the reviews. I should say here that I totally enjoyed the X-men movies. However, I did not enjoy this movie. It had moments of exciting storyline and a couple of interesting characters, but overall, just another angst-ridden comic-book character. My favorite character was Yukio (Rila Fukushima) who brought an element of the unknown into the movie. I liked her verve and stick-to-it-iveness. Otherwise there was a lot of gratuitous violence and preposterousness (is that a word?).

In the parking lot at the movie theater, I saw the coolest car grille...looks Spiderman-ish.



Tuesday night, Bob and I went to see San Antonio Mission baseball against the Corpus Christi Hooks. It was a pleasant night at the ballpark...not too hot and a nice breeze blowing. The Missions won the game. Yay! Afterwards we went to Sonic for their half-price shakes. Bob had peanut butter fudge and I had strawberry cream pie. So delicious! It was a very nice date night.

Movie review: Wednesday, Paycheck, our Netflix selection, arrived. The movie stars Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman. I watched the movie in the afternoon and boy did I love this movie. How I missed it at the theaters is beyond me. The story is about a man who, in the not-too-distant future, works at reverse engineering high-tech products to make them better and cooler than the competitor's products. To do the work, he goes into seclusion at a company for four to eight weeks. At the end of that time, when the product is ready, his memory of the weeks he worked on the project is erased and he then collects his paycheck. Erasing his memory is done at great risk to his health. For his next assignment, he is asked to do a very top-secret project which will take three years. Impossible, he says, no one has ever done an assignment over eight weeks (and that was him). Eventually they talk him into it with the offer of stock options that are "guaranteed" to be six figures. He accepts the assignment. His memory is erased. When he goes to collect his paycheck, he is told he signed away his rights to the stock options. Then his belongings are given back to him (they were collected when he started his three-year assignment). Only thing is, the items aren't his. Or are they? From this point on, the movie really gets moving and becomes a thriller in which he has to figure out what the items are to be used for to save his life. Very exciting and a whopping good puzzle. I highly recommend this. The DVD also had "extras" which were very well done, including an alternate ending. I gave it five out of five stars.

When Bob got home Wednesday night, he watched Paycheck and enjoyed it too.

Today, I went back to work at the RV park office to start my two days for this week. August is our slowest month of the year. We had one check-in and four departures. We also made four future reservations.

That's all from here. Safe travels to you.

Travel Bug out.

Our Best Day in Pensacola

Tuesday, September 11
High Temp: 84F (29C); low humidity

Without a doubt this was our best day in Pensacola. Not just because the weather was simply gorgeous, but also because of the treats we had in store for us. In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that we had two special events that we were looking forward to. Well, it turns out that our afternoon outing made for a perfect trifecta.

An afternoon outing to Fort Pickens (Tent/camera markers) makes for a perfect trifecta.
The fork & knife marker shows the location of McGuire’s Irish Pub, where we had lunch.

We woke up to another beautiful, low-humidity day. I don’t know how we got so lucky with the weather, but we’re not questioning it … just enjoying it while it lasts. The early morning temp was warmer than yesterday; no need for sweaters for our on-the-balcony breakfast. An added advantage to the cooler temps has been that the A/C that was working constantly below us has stopped droning on and we can actually hear the birds chirping in the treeline.

Around 7:30a, we headed off for a walk on the beach. Again, the biting black flies were non-existent. Perhaps the sudden cooling of the temps has something to do with their disappearance. As long as they’re not pestering us, that’s what matters :-)

Another gorgeous day on the beach!

After Mui took a quick dip in the ocean, we didn’t return to the room as usual. Instead, we headed to the deck of the Chiefs’ Club a little further down the beach for our first treat of the day — the weekly practice session of the Navy’s elite flight demonstration squadron — the Blue Angels. The schedule said the show would start at 8:30a, but it was shortly after 9:00a that we heard the unmistakable rumble of the jets taking off from the runway. No problem, we managed to entertain ourselves while we waited.

The Chiefs sure know how to treat themselves right!

Mui’s got his camera set up; let’s get the show rolling.

We’d been told we could watch the show from the beach, but that the best views would be from the lighthouse or the bleachers at the museum. Since I didn’t have proper footwear to climb the lighthouse, that was out. We didn’t want to give up our beach time on this short trip, so we nixed going to the bleachers. Besides, we didn’t have the proper camera equipment with us anyway. We got an eyeful during the flyovers, but missed out on the low-flying aerobatics this time. Next time, it will be a different story.

(In addition to the photos I took — which aren’t half bad considering they were taken with a P&S that has a shutter lag and I had to crop them a bit — I’m posting a short video that Mui took with his P&S camera.)

Formed in 1946, today’s Blue Angels fly the F/A-18 Hornets.

The planes started out with four of them flying the diamond formation and two of them flying solo. At one point, one of the solos came out of nowhere, flying upside down and buzzing us so close I felt like I could reach out and touch the plane. I swear the pilot was laughing at how he managed to startle us :-) Eventually all six of the aircraft joined up for the finale, which was quite a sight to see as they flew by the lighthouse.

This is the Blue Angel that scared the you-know-what out of us when it flew
low over our position on the beach.

Folks, don’t try the diamond formation maneuver at home!
It sure looks like they’re flying within inches of each other.

The people watching from the lighthouse get a thrill.

The Solos join the Diamond Formation to perform maneuvers in the Delta Formation.

A 1½-minute video of the Blue Angels’ 45-minute practice session.

It was especially moving to watch the Blue Angels on this date — September 11; a day that we shall not forget. If there were other remembrance ceremonies elsewhere on base, we did not hear about them, but someone did say there was a moment of silence before the F/A 18s took off from the runway this morning.

We returned to our room around 10:30a and relaxed on the balcony until it was time to drive downtown to meet up at noon with Chuck and Anneke (Goldenshoe RV Trip) at McGuire’s Irish Pub on Gregory Street.

No imbibery or debauchery, but we feasted well today.

We arrived a few minutes early and were seated in a booth not far from the on-premise brewery. Although we left our name with the hostess, Chuck and Anneke were seated elsewhere when they arrived. We had Chuck’s cell phone, though, and after a quick call, they were led back to our booth. As other bloggers and RVers will all attest, there was no awkward getting to know you time. The conversation and camaraderie was instantaneous, and the laughter was spontaneous — the food was really good, too.

And yes, Paul and Marti; if your ears were ringing … your names did come up once or twice :-)

Collage from the McGuire’s menu explains the genesis of the 18¢ Senate Bean Soup and
the story of the dollar bills that cover the ceilings of the various rooms at McGuire’s.

We ordered a round of McGuire’s exceptionally good Senate Bean Soup — at 18¢ a cup, a bargain that can’t be had anywhere else, including in the US Senate dining room. The “naked” fish and chips that Mui and I opted for as our entrées was not only very tasty, but since the fish was chargrilled instead of battered and deep-fried, it was also better for us … just overlook the fact that the “chips” were fried and simply too good to be left on the plate; as was the homemade slaw :-)

Nothing like being seated under a million dollars in $1 bills!

If the smiles are anything to go by, we all enjoyed this get together.

Thanks to Chuck and Anneke’s recommendation, we now have another favorite restaurant in Pensacola. We will return — if for no other reason than to have some of McGuire’s “lucky chocolate brownie a la mode.” The story goes that it is baked daily based on the recipe of their former kitchen manager, who won $3.5 million in the Florida lottery in 1991. Perhaps a little bit of her luck will rub off on us :-)

When we drove out to Pensacola Beach on Saturday, the road to Fort Pickens was closed in the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac. After Gail (of Gypsy Turtles fame) left a comment about how much they enjoyed their stay there, I checked the National Park Service website for more info. Lo and behold, the road was due to open today! Well, that clinched it for our afternoon plans. Crossing first the Pensacola Bay Bridge to Gulf Breeze, and then paying the $1 toll on the Bob Sikes Bridge (aka Pensacola Beach Bridge), we crossed over to Santa Rosa and headed to the western tip of the island.

Fort Pickens is not only the largest of the four forts built to defend Pensacola Bay in the 1830s, but it has a great campground that can accommodate big rigs. Since the ranger-led tour of the fort was already well underway when we arrived at the gate, we opted to check out the campground first.

Map of the Fort Pickens area shows the layout of the batteries and the campground.
[courtesy of the NPS website]

Picking up a map — and more importantly, a listing showing the length of each site — we headed off to the campground to figure out which of the sites would work best for us. We found plenty. We hope to return to the area early next year, either before or after our appointment at the Tiffin factory in Red Bay, Alabama.

From the campground, we drove over to the fort. The extensive grounds begged for a ranger-led tour to really understand what we were seeing. We will need things to do when we return anyway, so we didn’t dally long this time — at least not around the fortifications; the beach is a different story.

Batteries Cullum and Sevier date back to the late 1890s.

Glimpse of the ramparts of Fort Pickens.

Battery Langdon was Fort Pickett’s most powerful gun emplacement; it dates back to 1923.

Parking the car at Battery Langdon, we could not resist walking across the street to the beach. Oh wow! Simply spectacular. Now there’s no doubt we’ll be coming back. It might be a little too chilly to swim in January or February, but I can see long, long beach walks in our future.

How can Two to Travel resist a photo op on this gorgeous beach? They can’t!

Reminded of the beaches of Cancun, Mexico, Mui simply could not resist a dip in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. That he didn’t have swimwear with him was not a deterrent; his quick-dry trekking shorts served nicely as swim trunks. As for me; well I just played in the shallows. You don't believe me ... just check out the video that follows the still shots.

Those trekking shorts sure make nice swim trunks.

Yes, that’s Mui out there on the sandbar.
Having swum out there, he’s decided to go for a walk in the waves …

… while I make do with a walk in the waves coming ashore.
yes, I got a bit wet; but it was so much fun.

A 59-second video shows I have a playful side to my nature!

Regretfully, our play-time on the beach had to come to an end. On the return drive, spying a Hershey shop at the fishing pier on Pensacola Beach, we stopped for a sweet treat before finally heading back to the lodge. We would have walked out to the end of the pier, but there was a $1.25/person fee to just walk on. These fees have never made sense to me, so I refuse to pay up.

We enjoy our ice cream in view of Pensacola Beach.

Back in our room, we had dinner on the balcony again. On the menu was another frozen entrée — golden crusted whitefish with steamed green beans and brown rice in a cheesy Chardonnay sauce. I wouldn’t buy these frozen dinners to eat at home, but they served nicely for our self-catered meals here at the lodge.

All set to have another al fresco dinner on our balcony.

What we’re eating isn’t nearly as important as where we’re eating it :-)

This time Mother Nature cooperated with my plans for taking sunset photos. While Mui did the dishes (thank you, Mui), I ran down to the beach to catch the glorious colors that filled the sky and painted the sand along the shoreline.

At 7:04p ...

... At 7:07p ...

… and the grand finale at 7:09p.

On my way back to the room, I finally got my chance to photograph a ghost crab. It was well camouflaged until I almost stepped on it and sent it scurrying across the access path. The poor thing wasn’t near a burrow, so it went dead-still … probably thinking I wouldn’t see it if it wasn’t moving. Well, I probably would have missed it entirely except for the little flashlight I had with me; it provided just enough light for me to capture a photo.

The name "ghost crab" derives from the Crab’s nocturnality and its pale coloration.

What a great last day of fun in the sun this was. We’ll have some free time tomorrow, but our priority will be getting our driver’s licenses and officially becoming Florida residents.

Leaves

I've been harvesting and drying leaves for various purposes.
The raspberry leaves in the blue bowl will be dried and used in tea for PMS symptoms. A good friend of mine gets them to use for her teenage daughter. They are also used to treat diarrhea.
The leaves on the red-checked towel are basil and will be used in spaghetti and lasagna. Basil kills intestinal parasites and stimulates the immune system.
I've also been drying oregano to use in my Italian dishes. I also dry rosemary and sweet bay leaves. In fact, I've got a ton of those two. Anyone who wants some, please come and get it!

Frozen Lemon Custard

Frozen Lemon Custard, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

Here's a delicious dessert that I made earlier this summer. It's great for a hot day, when you just don't feel like you can stand the heat anymore. The graham cracker crust is tasty...

A very interesting journey through Hillsboro to Lake Valley, NM

We had planned on going up to the Camino Real Cultural Center but it was getting later in the morning and we were afraid that the car would get too hot for Tucson while we did the Museum so we headed to Hillsboro and the Ghost Town of Lake Valley instead.

We have passed through Hillsboro a couple of times but could never find the Museum open. This time we finally made it in. Quite interesting with 7 rooms chock full of stuff. The Museum wasbuilt before 1893and wasthe Ocean Grove Hotel (and brothel) owned and run by Sadie Orchard and Tom Ying,a Chinaman she hired to run the restaurant

Here is the the largest electric freezer purchased by Ying for $600 cash. Electricity was finally brought to the Town to bring in the powerto run it.



Jim the guy in charge of the Museum gave us a personal tour. We also got to see some of the planters he makes from plastic. Here is a piece made to look likeweather wood.

This one looks like a rock.They are really amazing. Inside the museum he had asked Gary to pick up a mold for silver bars to see how heavy it was - Gary was ready to pick up something weighing 75lbs or so but it was one of hiscast plastic pieces and was very lightweight.

We stopped at the park across the street for a picnic lunch before continuing on to Lake Valley. There was a couple camping there in a tent with 4 horses.

We got to talking to them and found out that they were traveling across the country on Horseback.Here's an excerpt from a Fox News Story:

The story of Art Lamely, Sue Hemming, and four horses started in Broken Bow, Nebraska several years ago."After a 30-year marriage went south, I had two horses left and Horace Greeley said go west young man, so I figured I would," says Art.Art was riding his horse Big John through Pine Bluffs, Wyoming when he met Sue. He stopped to get the horse a drink of water while Sue was watering her flowers.Sue was widowed and about to lose her house. So she bought a couple of horses and hit the trail with Art. Destination: AmericaAs you go on horseback you'll see the scenery change at three miles an hour you see things people just don't see," says Art. They've crisscrossed the west, working odd jobs, living in a tent



We stayed and talked to them for a while and gave some apples to Big John, Josie, Lucky and Benjamin their horses. They mentioned that they were coming through T or C in a few days so we said we'd check around to see where they might be able to stay with their horses.We bid Happy Trails and continued on to Lake Valley.

On the way out we viewed the remains of the Old Courthouse.



Here is a picture of what it looked like originally. When the County Seat was moved to T or C the records kept getting stolen and returned to the Courthouse in Hillsboro. The Courthouse in Hillsboro was eventually condemned and closed. With the county seat moved to T or C, Hillsboro did not become the boom town as it had been foreseen and the courthouse fell into ruins.



Next we arrive at Lake Valley

Lake Valley was a silver-mining town it had its heyday from 1881 to 1893. The last resident left in 1994.

The mines produced well for a few years after miners tunneled into a silver-lined cavity they named the “bridal chamber” that alone yielded 2.5 million troy ounces (78 tonnes) of silver

We parked at the old School House where the visitors center was. Thetown is now privatelyowned andmanaged by the Bureau of Land Management and open for walking tours. The door was locked and there were signs warning of rattlesnakes in the area.Gary got Tucson out of the car and I was getting some water for himand us when I heard Garyyell "HOLY COW"andI looked up and saw him running backwards.

This is what caused such a reaction - he was walking in the parking lot looking at the buildings when he heard the rattlesnake, looked down and saw it crossing in front of him!

I kept my distance with the zoom lens and caught it going into the foundation holes of the School House. We decided at that point not to do the trails!

I guess we made enough noise to wake up someone from the BLM and they came over and opened the museum for us. It was quite a good size one room schoolhouse. The ranger told us that when she asked young children what the hole in the school desk was for their answer was not inkwells, but 'obviously a hole for the computer cords'.

Here are the remains of the old Jail. The building you see in the back ground, ironically,was whereit is saidsome cattle rustlers lived.

an old car

and the remains of one of the mines.A very interesting place in spite of the rattler!

Till Later!

Meanwhile, we keep on Trek'n

Melissa, Gary & Tucson