September 13, 2016 Car Camping Mode, Aspenglen Base Camp How we love crisp mountain air! Our reservations were for 3 nights on east side of the park in Aspenglen Campground. Campsites were about 200 yards from a parking lot and restroom area. Lovely setup complete with bear boxes. Just as we arrived the ranger and … More West: Rocky Mountain National Park
September 11, 2016 From the Grand Canyon South Rim, we took US-160E and US-191N to Moab, Utah. Loved seeing the landscape change over the course of 320 miles and all of that sky. We arrived late afternoon and checked into Hotel Moab downtown and then took off for Arches National Park just north of town. … More West: Moab & Arches
Days 2 and 3 in the Grand Canyon – September 9th and 10th 2016 SHADE N’ SNAKE We packed up and left Bright Angel Campground well before sunrise for our next destination, Indian Gardens Campground ~3.5 miles away on the Bright Angel Trail. Pretty gentle hike relative to first day. Bats still flying prior to … More West: Indian Garden to South Rim
Our trail experience and lessons learned. EARLY BIRDS On 7 September, via Highway 64 west of Flagstaff, we arrived at the Grand Canyon South Rim entry at noon the day before our hike. We setup our tent at Mather campground and then went to the backcountry office to find out which bus to catch for the earliest … More West: New Rhythm, South Kaibab to Bright Angel
Highlights of things Floridians don’t often get to appreciate. Notes from our time with family in Roswell, New Mexico, and stops along the way to the Grand Canyon 2016. NIGHT MOVES: STUPID TIRED 9/3: We left Pensacola, FL, at 12:30 am after Mike got off work; he likes to drive at night and knew he would be too excited to sleep. … More West: Time and Space
Where did we go and why? Hiking and camping in the Grand Canyon was the centerpiece of a 3-week road trip to New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and Texas – a combo of camping, hoteling, hiking, and visits with family and friends. I had fond summer and winter memories in New Mexico as a kid and across all of those … More West: The Canyon Come Up
Dedication: Thank you, Mom, for teaching me how to float on my back and swim, and for smartly sending me to private swim lessons to make sure I could handle the open water. I Love You. I don’t bother to count laps or rhythmic strokes. Bilateral moves dissolve those silly notions. Time stretches out here. A clarity … More Swim
Show her you are the boss. Don’t let that ornery thing scare you. Get back on that horse. That’s what my parents said to me multiple times in the 1980’s whenever our cantankerous horse tested me. The 1st incident was one spring morning in south Alabama when I was elementary school age. I sat in … More Get Back on that Horse
“Hello there,” I said as I slipped past the smelly plastic shower curtain blocking the doorway view of the local college aquatics center locker room last Saturday morning. The smiling white-haired lady seated on the bench was taking off her shoes. As I was about to warm up the shower to partake of my chlorine removal ritual… “Excuse me, can you … More Twinkly-eyed Ladies
Reverence. This is the word that best describes the tone of Annie Dillard’s collection of 14 essays spanning 173 pages in Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters. In the author’s note, she refers to these as her real work. The clarity of her approach to her subjects appeals to the side of me that enjoys comparative … More Book Review: Teaching a Stone to Talk
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