Tag Archives: traveling

Weekly Photo Challenge: Collage

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Here is a gallery collage of photos from my recent series, An American Adventure. In a two-week road trip, I visited eight National Parks and Monuments in Colorado, Utah, and South Dakota. If you would like to see the entire collection of 17 blog posts, click on the banner headline An American Adventure. 

Canyonlands National Park, Utah
The Green River flows through Dinosaur National Monument

Collage

An American Adventure: Part Four

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Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

I was 9 years old and seeing the mountains of Colorado for the first time the last time I was here. Frankly, the only thing I remember of it from back then is the name. It kind of scared me.

 

It is a National Park, a deep gorge, a wild river, a cross-section of geography, and a wilderness where humans are temporary visitors at best. From the Visitor Center parking lot, a glimpse of the scale of  its depth is merely a tease. 

 

After a good night’s sleep, we walked the canyon rim from the campgrounds to the Visitor Center and got a closer look. 

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado

The early morning silence, the delicate frost in the shadows, the warm fragrance of juniper and sage, the glimmer of rushing water at the canyon floor…I had stepped into a holy sanctuary that Sunday morning and wept with awe and joy…and sadness.I feel the threat to wild land as a pain deep in my gut. The river that carved this place is running high this year and being “managed” and diverted and manipulated to provide irrigation and recreation and serve a host of human needs. I don’t know how all the demands are weighed on this issue. My desire is to listen to the place itself, to let it simply Be, and to learn what I can with my brain, my heart, and my soul. 

A volunteer guided us on a wildflower walk later that afternoon and introduced us to Western species new to us. Many of the Gambel oaks had just budded when that late snowstorm hit, and their tiny, crisp, shriveled leaves looked woefully sad. They are a hardy bunch and will hopefully recover, but the acorn yield in the fall will likely be diminished. The colorful blooms along the trail seemed to be not at all harmed. 

This plant tour proved very useful. We saw a lot of Oregon grape, which is quite common and looks a lot like poison oak when it shows up as just three leaves with a reddish tinge. However, it does get additional leaves and yellow flowers which make it obviously distinct.

The campsite we found later in the Manti-La Sal National Forest was covered with it. I was glad to know I wasn’t risking a poison oak rash every time I went in the brush to pee!

An American Adventure: Part One

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We set out Friday, May 19 from Wisconsin at 5:00 a.m., sunrise behind us, tornadoes ahead. Crossing Kansas, the sky sat heavy and dark all around; the radio announced storm details for counties we couldn’t identify on our general road map. We drove perpendicular to them, it turns out, and emerged awed and unscathed into nighttime in Colorado. After two brief naps in the car at the side of the road, we met the sunshine in Pueblo and stopped for breakfast in Cañon City. The tourist attractions don’t impress us. We choose our town stops based on U.S. Forest Service offices. Picking up maps and asking questions is right up there with filling the gas tank and eating a meal. Although the office was not yet open, the kiosk outside was full of helpful information. After breakfast, we made our way up through Royal Gorge into the mountains toward Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. A late spring storm had dumped record-breaking inches of snow throughout the Rockies just two days before, and some roads were still impassable. We would see more consequences of that storm in the days to come. 

Pike’s Peak and Mt. Pisgah

I try to be mindful of the adventure of traveling. It is so much more than the preparation and packing, the sights out the window and the passage of time. How do I respond to discomfort? To contrast? To expectations and disappointment? What am I looking for? What is important to me? What do I feel?

And then…how do I turn away from my ego and discover what this place is? What is its pace? Its scale? Its history? Its character?

Getting out of the car is a big step. Leaving a computer screen, a phone screen, and a windscreen behind opens up a new world. The Earth smells amazing. Heat and cold feel amazing. Being surrounded by living things is truly amazing. And that’s a good place to begin. I am amazed, humbled, ready to open up to new experience. 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Path

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I can totally relate to Cheri’s picture of taking a boardwalk path through a fragile eco-system. 

I can also relate to my personal path changing dramatically in 2016. I, too, moved to a new place – to be closer to my job – and then experienced an abrupt twist in the path when my boss resigned.  Paths can always lead to the unexpected, even a path you’ve traveled many times before. 

Humans have a strong tendency to try to control and predict, to make crooked paths straight, to eliminate as much random chaos as possible. And that means we can often be frustrated, disappointed, or anxious on the path we’re traveling.  But we don’t have to be. We can be delighted, wonder-filled and accepting. The path is what it is. How you travel and with what baggage is up to you. 

PG hiking
Path

Weekly Photo Challenge: Descent

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I wish I’d taken my camera up to Alcove House at Bandelier National Monument.  I did not.  But those ladders were thrilling! Here’s a shot from tripadvisor.com:

ladder-to-alcove-house

photographer unknown

The descent is about 140 feet.  Not bad.  Another favorite spot is Holy Hill in Wisconsin.  There are 178 steps in the tower.

Holy Hill025030Hiking in New Mexico and Texas this month led us down into some beautiful canyons: Mills Canyon (1000 ft. elevation change)…

Mills Canyon…the Frey Trail down to the Visitor’s Center at Bandelier (484 ft. elevation change)…

frey trail…and our favorite, the ‘strenuous’ 1500 ft. Lost Peak trail that gave us views down into Dog Canyon and to our riparian campground on the other side.

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Of course, in hiking, what goes down frequently also comes up.  Steve turns 50 tomorrow, so we’re working on keeping our knees in shape!  Which way is more difficult depends…he beats me uphill, I beat him downhill.  (‘Course, he’s 6’2″ and I’m just 5’4″ and we’re weighted differently because of gender…and because I carry a pack and he doesn’t.)

May all your ‘down days’ include scenery like this!

(scroll down for another Halloween post ‘treat’!)

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

Historic Before Pre-historic…Trip Phase 4

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Leaving the National Forest and re-entering the 21st century was a bit of an adjustment.  How ironic that we fled from a generator only to find ourselves in a modern hotel room with no less than 14 electrical appliances to its 60 square feet of space!  I immediately turned off the heater and fan and also a separate air purifier.  I unplugged the refrigerator.  Still, every 15 minutes, something made a punctuated whooshing sound.  Eventually, I figured out it was an air freshener mechanism above the door releasing a neutralizing odor into our “smoking Queen” like clockwork.  I learned how to sleep through it for a few hours. 

Since we had traveled so far north in search of room in the inn, we decided to keep going on into Ohio.  We crossed the Ohio River at Portsmouth and found our way toward Wayne National Forest.  We stopped in at the public library in a light rain to do a bit of research, and there, Steve made a discovery that changed our course.  We had promised ourselves a “splurge” portion on this trip.  Paying more than $100 for a room at a franchised motel off the Interstate did not count.  But now, we were within 2 hours of a bonafide historic hotel in a state that Steve had never visited.   We decided to go east to Parkersburg, West Virginia, to spend the night at the Blennerhassett Hotel and then return to Ohio the next day to visit the Hopewell Culture National Historic Park.  From there, we decided we’d head back home directly.  There comes a time when you know that your adventure has taught you something important and you need to pull back to your interior to focus on that.  It’s like a mythical journey: leaving home, learning, and returning changed.  But every hero needs some time and a place to figure out what he’s learned.  We figured we were close enough to use home base as that place.

Nestled deep in our gear, we found dress shoes, a long skirt for me and a tie for Steve.  We were off to enjoy a dash of historic elegance and some truly fine food, not cooked over  a campfire.  We were not disappointed.

Blannerhasset lantern

Final phase: the Pre-historic.  That’ll be my next post.  Thanks for following so far!

Generating an Odyssey…Trip Phase 3

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After camping for 2 nights at Mammoth Cave, we headed east toward the Daniel Boone National Forest.  We stopped at a public library to use the internet to get directions to a campsite, and were pleased to see that there were free campsites in the area.  This is one of the great ideas from the Forest Service.  Someone had the foresight to save public land through the federal government, meaning that everyone owns it and everyone can use it.  Of course, working out how it’s used and by whom is an art in balance.  There are rules of use intended to foster respect between different parties.  There are hunting seasons, there are trails for ATVs and trails for hikers only.  And there are shared trails, shared lands, shared campgrounds.  Hopefully, we can negotiate and live side by side.  Sometimes, that breaks down.  We got to S-Tree campground and found that it is maintained in part by an ATV club and has many trails where motor-powered All Terrain Vehicles are permitted.  There was no fee to camp there, and aside from two trailers in the campsite on the other hill across the forest road, we had the place to ourselves.  We set up our tent across from the pit toilets, gathered firewood, and went into town for some groceries.  The only thing on my list I couldn’t purchase was beer.  I found out later that Kentucky has 40 “dry” counties and 49 “moist” counties in their total of 120 counties, meaning that the sale of alcohol is not permitted or is restricted in those counties.  In other words, they still practice prohibition.  That doesn’t mean that you don’t find Jack Daniels bottles and cans of Bud Light in the woods.  Still, the weather was warm, only a little damp, and the place was quiet.  The wind, the birds, the rustle of leaves on the ground and in the trees, the starlight and the slim sliver of moon were perfect companions. 

We decided to do an extended hike on Friday, hedging our bets against an onslaught of weekend ATVers.   We did encounter one group of 4 vehicles while we were resting beside a concrete creek crossing.    We were following the Sheltowee Trace (a trail named after Daniel Boone’s native American nickname, meaning Big Turtle) for about 4 miles west along the Racoon Creek, and then planned to take an “unimproved” trail south through the woods, pick up a forest road there and loop back to the east.   The “unimproved trail” was so covered in leaves that it was indistinguishable from an erosion gulley that went straight up to the top of the ridge.  We ended up on top with no trail in sight.  So we did some basic orienteering and blazed south, thinking we’d hit the forest road eventually, which we did, but not before I went through every survival scenario I could imagine.  I was a Girl Scout for 12 years and a leader for 3, so I have practical skills.  Steve has no sense of direction at all, but he also has no anxieties.  Together we actually make a reasonable and happy pair of adventurers.  By the time we got back to camp and started a fire for supper, we were pretty pleased with ourselves and pleased with Kentucky.  We planned to stay one more night and then make camp in a different area of the Forest to hike up the Rockcastle Narrows.  While we sat at the picnic table, we saw an SUV hauling a trailer and a pickup truck following it up the campsite road.  The road was narrow and gutted, so the guy in the trailer had his wife get out of the pickup and help him navigate.  They managed to pull past our site and set up about 100 feet away in another slot.  Then they left in the pickup.  So, we had company, but on a Friday night, that was not unusual.  They looked like an older couple and hadn’t any ATVs with them, so we figured they would be good neighbors.  They returned at about 8pm while we were snuggled up in the tent talking.  A little while later, we heard the noise of a generator coming from their site.  It was impossible to ignore it.  It droned on and on.  Quiet hours in the National Forest are posted for 10pm – 6am.  We figured they were running their generator for a few hours before turning in.  But maybe not.  At 9pm, Steve decided he would go over and ask them how long they intended to keep the machine running, as we were trying to sleep.  The old man was in his pajamas; he said he planned to run the thing all night “for heat”.   Steve tried to suggest that went against the rules for quiet hours, but the man said that he’d never had an issue before and that we could simply move.  Steve is calm and gentle and polite, so he came back to the tent to discuss the situation with me.  We both felt bullied by the man’s refusal to negotiate, and we decided to pack up and head out.  We pulled out at 10pm and waved to the man as we left.  He was standing outside his trailer in his nightclothes.  (How cold was it, then?)

So, we learned some more about Kentucky.  Finding a hotel room along the Interstate on a Friday night is not easy.  In London, they were booked up due to a Civil War Reenactment event.  In Richmond, they were booked up for a University football game.  Finally, in Lexington, we found a “smoking Queen” available.  It was 1 a.m.  The next installment will tell you how we made up for our disappointment.  Here are some photos:

Sheltowee trail marker
Creek crossing

Metaphorical Mammoth…Trip Phase 2

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After two days in Shawnee, we struck camp and headed out south and east.  Steve suggested Mammoth Cave National Park as our next destination.  He’d never been there, and I hadn’t been there in over 40 years.   We took our time getting there, having decided that we would eschew interstate highways as much as possible.  Kentucky countryside in October really took our breath away and just about won us over.  We felt right at home…for a while.  Reminders of Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver colored our interior landscape, but our exterior sightings began to speak urgently in other voices.  Every quarter mile or so, there was a Baptist Church with a slogan on its marquee or a Romney/Ryan sign in someone’s disheveled yard.  The National Park and National Forest boosted our faith.  The rangers were intelligent, articulate, and friendly.  Their awareness is broad-based; they can discuss archaeology, geology, history and the present with ease.  We stopped at two different public libraries to get information as well.  Scanning the “Kentucky Section”, we hit such landmarks as Bluegrass Music, Edgar Cayce, Muhlenberg County, Daniel Boone, and The Kentucky Derby.  As we drove along the Green River valley, I was singing in my head, “Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County/Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay?/ Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in askin’;/ Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”  Gas stations and barns had signs posted: “We Support Coal”.  Questions:  Why are we here?  What are we looking for?  What are we doing?  What do we want to learn on this trip?  More about that later.  For now, some photos of Kentucky…

Steve underground
The Green River, Kentucky

Where in the World Were You?

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Well, our journey to “Metaphorical Maine” has come to a close, I think.  We had set aside 3 weeks and actually came back in 10 days.  We added a day trip after two days of rest, but I think we’re home-based again.  Steve has re-activated his online bookselling business, so that means we’ll be no more than 2 days away from home now.  Did we actually go to Maine?  No.  The weather report for the northeast was predicting “rainy and cold” for the entire first week.  We figured that might dampen our spirits, so we headed south.  We ended up staying the first night in exactly the same spot where we stayed on our first trip together 4 years ago…in the car, pulled into a picnic area in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois.  We slept in the car from 3 a.m. until dawn, then found a proper campsite at the Pound Lake Hollow area.  We enjoyed hiking on Beaver Trail 006 in the forest and the Rim Rock Trail.  There was no moon; the stars were bright enough to guide us on a night hike (no flashlight) the second day down to the lake where we startled a beaver.  At least I think it was a beaver.  We never actually saw him, but either he was pounding the surface of the lake at intervals from different spots with his powerful tail, or someone was throwing bricks into the still, dark water from somewhere very well hidden!  Here’s a little gallery of shots from the Shawnee National Forest.

The reading rock