Adventures Old and New

Heading Home - Day 15

2011-09-25T13:17:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, September 20th

A brisk start for a very long day...up and in the taxi early to arrive at the airport in plenty of time for a 10:45 flight direct from Barcelona to Philadelphia.

          What can you say about a trans-Atlantic flight?
     We sat.
     It went.
     We watched a movie.
     We dozed.
     We ate.
     We watched another movie.
          Craning my neck to look out the window at 40,000 feet I could see high overhead a lovely waning gibbous moon floating in the dark cobalt blue of the sky.

Landing. Customs. Immigration. My passport gets stamped. A two hour layover in Philadelphia. The final leg from Philadelphia to Richmond.

The angle of the six o'clock sun on the flight from Philadelphia to Richmond is such that it reflects back up to the aircraft from the surface of scattered waters, transforming rivers to silver ribbons, lakes to melted metal, and ponds and puddle to stars that flare and fade. The upper reaches of the Chesapeake Bay becomes and expanse of filigreed gold with traces of eddies, currents and the wakes of ships clearly visible, the marshes and wetlands appearing as glowing complexes of writhing roots and obscure Celtic etchings.

Overhead the gathering clouds send beams down through gaps, a second layer of gray appears below as the plane begins its lurching dance toward a distant runway and home.

Barcelona, Spain - Day 14

2011-09-25T12:37:00.000-04:00

Monday, September 19th

After the included breakfast at the Caldonian Hotel. We took a taxi with Bill and Miriam to Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria, more often referred to simply as La Boqueria. This huge open air market has been a favorite both with tourists and with city residents.

Although there must surely have been open air markets as early as 15 B.C. in the town that was to grow into Spain's second largest city with a population of more than 5 million, the present Boqueria was not completed in its present location just off La Rambla until 1853.

In just the small section we were able to explore we were impressed by the variety of foods artistically arrayed in colorful geometric patterns.

Leaving the market, we rambled down La Rambla, one of Barcelona's most charming features. A broad avenue, shaded by overspreading plane trees, is given over primarily to pedestrian use. Narrow automobile traffic lanes run down each side of the wide central section where vendors' booths sell an incredible range of goods.

News stands, pet supplies and pets, bird vendors, fresh vegetables, books, clothing, shoes, candy, displays of tourist trinkets compete for attention with buskers playing music and performance artists attired in amazing outfits holding as still as statues, waiting for the clink of a coin in their collection to animate them.

We took a side street off La Rambla toward the Barri Gòtic, the oldest part of the city where many of the buildings date from medieval times, and some as far back as the Roman settlement of Barcelona.

Eventually we found a bus stop on the Red Line, and climbed to the upper deck for a ride to La Sagrada Familia, a Roman Catholic church designed by Antoni Gaudí, and perhaps the most famous Barcelona landmark.

The architectural works of Gaudí are known for their modernistic flowing lines, unusual themes taken from his view of nature, the use of broken tile facings and mosaics, and catenary arches - the curve assumed by a hanging rope. When flipped over, the catenary arch distributes any load placed on it evenly over the entire span.

Gaudí was not widely admired or accepted in his time. One of his now appreciated designs, Casa Milà, was disparagingly referred to as "La Padrera"...the rock quarry!

When Gaudí took over the design of La Sagrada Familia in 1883 at the age of 31, he included Gothic, curvilinear, and Modernism forms with impressive structural columns and catenary arches, including a rich variety of Christian symbols. A hundred and twenty eight years later the construction still continues. It is projected to be completed by 2028, 145 years after it was started.

Back on the Red Line we continued our loop, getting off at the waterside stop of Maremagnum. We found a lovely restaurant overlooking the boats, and enjoyed a delicious seafood paella dinner while we watched the sun set behind the hills across the harbor.

After our last dinner in Spain we headed back to the hotel. Passing the statue of Columbus, it seemed that he was pointing the way for tomorrow's flight.

Carcassonne to Barcelona - Day 13

2011-09-24T22:54:00.003-04:00

Sunday, September 18th

Today actually started today about 3:30 a.m. with the passing of a rumbling street sweeper strobing its red lights across the ceiling and loud wake-me-up beep-beep-beeping as it backed up to swish another swath past the room if the first pass hadn't done the job of interrupting sleep.

That was close-followed by a mirthful late-night group calling back and forth to each other as the wove their way down the alley outside the window. The inebriated serenade was succeeded by at least two different garbage trucks, insuring that all the trash was emptied from the dumpster containers by shaking them vigorously.

Soon after that the clattering growl of small European motorcycles preceded the alarm clock, which was set for 6:20. We shrugged into our clothes and hauled our suitcases down the stairs, through the alley, and into the lobby of the hotel, where we found some members of our group already waiting.

Two taxis arrived at 6:50 to load luggage and passengers for the trip through the cobbled streets of old Carcassonne before they were closed to vehicular traffic for the day. It was only about a 15 minute ride to Le Gare Carcassonne, where we had a 45 minute wait for the first leg of today's train trip from Carcassnonne to Narbonne. The route took us smoothly and silently toward the Spanish border along the shoreline of southwestern France, often with water on both sides of us. We were entertained by the sight of windsurfers and kiteboarders taking advantage of the protected bays and strong winds.

The second leg of the ride was on the TGV ( in French: Train a Grande Vitesse, which simply means "high-speed train"), and the scenery close to the windows was a green blur as the countryside rushed by. The precisely laid jointless track made the ride so smooth that except for the view out the windows it would have felt like we were barely moving.

The last hour and forty-five minute segment from Figueras to Barcelona was also a high speed train, reaching speeds up to 140 km/hour, but the track was not nearly as smooth. The cars bumped, lurched, and swayed as we hurtled along, but classical music and Pavarotti singing opera through the speakers soothed the ride.

It was a short ride in heavy traffic from the train station to the Caldonian Hotel on Gran via de les Cortes Catalanes in downtown Barcelona. The taxi driver, who in some earlier incarnation must have been a Le Mans participant, wove in and out between slower vehicles with great finesse, His side view mirrors often only inches from those he was passing on one side and those on the parked cars at the edge of the street. Since I had not observed any dings, scratches, or dents in the taxi while getting in, I only grunted and screamed internally, but was immeasurably relieved when we reached our destination unscathed.

After a short rest we met Bill and Miriam in the lobby, and the four of us took another taxi to the Plaça de Catalunya, one of Barcelona's large squares.

There we caught the double-decker Red Line hop-on-hop-off tourist bus, one of three tourist bus lines that drive loops through the city.

Each passenger is offered a set of ear-bud headphones, and every seat has a place to jack in. You can listen to a narrative about each landmark in your choice of Catalan, Spanish, French, English, Italian, Russian, German, Japanese, Portuguese, or Chinese!

For an hour and a half we rode through the city, passing the famous pedestrian street La Rambla,

along the waterfront and the huge Maremagnum shopping center built out over the water,

marveling at the number of really large sailing and motor yachts at the harbor marinas, out past the different venues for the 1992 Summer Olympics, and up Montjuïc where the neo-baroque Palau Nacional (National Palace) houses the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

Its collection includes Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque art as well as 19th and 20th century works of art.

It was well after dark by the time we got back, and the four of us had a satisfactory dinner at a tapas bar near the hotel before calling it a day.

Day 12 - Carcassonne - Our Last Day in France

2011-09-24T11:42:00.002-04:00

Saturday, September 17th

It's about a half day drive from Beynac through Sarlat, Gordoun, Montauban, and Toulouse to the truly ancient walled city of Carcassonne. The site has been occupied since at least 3500 B.C., and the Romans fortified the hilltop around 100 B.C.

As we approached, our first view of the old city walls was across open green fields, the walls and towers impressive in the late afternoon sun.

Following the turn by turn directions we had been given, we found no way into the old walled section of the city where our hotel was located, but instead found our progress stopped at a modern lift-gate next to a pre-fab booth manned by someone who asked the name of our hotel before raising the gate and told us to park next to the city wall itself.

The attendant called for transportation for Bill and the suitcases, and directed us to walk along the outside of the walls to the ancient main gate, cross the moat, through the inner gate, across the square, though the next gate, and just up the main street ot the top of the hill, where we should turn left for a few yards to find the hotel.

Except for special circumstances, no vehicles are allowed during the daylight hours on any of the very narrow cobblestone streets of the old city. The shop lined streets, the width of alleyways, are crowded elbow to elbow with pedestrian tourists. It reminded me very much of the similar steep streets of Mount St. Michel in Normandy.

Our French friends Christine and Uili, fresh from a week's vacation in Corsica, had made the five hour drive from their home in Upie, France that morning, and were waiting to greet us with big smiles and hugs.They decided to go with Jane and me for a walk though the old town to explore the walls.

We crossed yet another draw bridge and passed through the barbican of the second layer of defenses, exploring a bit of the fortified bastion. We wandered back out and down a side street, finding an old stone stairwell that led to an open area perhaps twenty yards wide between the inner and outer walls of the city. We walked along the ramparts for a way, eyeing the veils of rain approaching across the valley.


Christine and Uili

Making our way in a light drizzle back to the hotel, where we met Bill and Miriam, the six of us found our way to a square in the oldest part of town.

It was edged with restaurants and bistros, tables filling the whole square ... a perfect place for our last dinner in France, including omelet with mushrooms, seafood salad with bread and goat cheese, some vin rose, and creme brulle to top it off.

Doing Dordogne - Day 11 - Sarlat, La Roque Gageac

2011-09-23T13:23:00.004-04:00

Friday, September 16th

This morning the four of us drove to Sarlat, 10 km east of Beynac. We headed for the old town, always the most interesting part of any village or town in the Dordogne. Sarlat is the capital city of this part of the Dordogne, its history stretching back well over a thousand years.

Like many other towns in this region, its location close to the border between the opposing English and French during The Hundred Years War (actually a 116 year series of conflicts between 1337 and 1453) meant that it changed possession a number of times.

We parked near the town center, and walked the narrow streets to the old town square. Off to one side was a life size bronze sculpture of three geese, in honor of the region's reputation for excellent pate foi gras.

Then it was back along forested roads the short distance to the village of La Roque Gageac where we enjoyed a picnic lunch of crusty french bread, cheese, and a bit of wine.

As in Beynac, in La Roque Gageac there are modern versions of the old flat bottomed boats called"gabares", available for sightseeing rides on the Dordogne River.

Mirm and BT cruised off upstream on one of these boats while we climbed the steep village streets, ascending toward the stairs that led to old dwellings visible high on the cliffs above the town.

The west-facing cliffs soak up heat from the afternoon sun, gradually releasing it again late into the evenings, creating an almost tropical sub-climate for this riverside village, and we noticed abundant bougainvillea, colocasia with their big elephant ear leaves, banana plants, bamboo, and various kinds of palm trees all growing in healthy profusion.

We were disappointed when we arrived at the upper end of the street to find a wire mesh barrier blocking access to the stairs up to the troglodyte refuges up on the cliff. In 2010 a big section of the cliff had broken away, destroying several houses. Not long after, part of one of the old masonry walls high up had also fallen through the roof of another house.
After the rock falls, heavy cable netting, supported by large steel I-beams had been erected at the base of the cliff above the village to protect residents from any more falling rocks, and it appears that the cliff-dwellings will not be re-opened any time in the foreseeable future.

The view across the river and the valley was worth the climb, however, and we walked back down via a different path, arriving back at the landing just as the gabarre was tying up at the boat landing.

Since this was our last evening staying in Beynac, we joined everyone in our travel group for dinner at the hotel restaurant for a delicious 4 course dinner on the terrace.

Doing Dordogne - Day 10 - "Les Plus Beaux Villages de France

2011-09-21T12:34:00.003-04:00

Thursday, September 15th

Today is small villages day! We found a map marked with a wandering 150 mile driving circuit labeled "les plus beaux villages de France"...the most beautiful villages in France. Too long by far for a single day's exploration, but we decided to do part of it, and the four of us set off in the car for another adventure.

Belvès, is an ancient town. Early in its history a defensive tower was built, with a deep moat around it. By the 11th century it had been built into a bell tower that can been seen today. There is a cave beneath the tower where village residents could hide in case of attack by marauders.

There were colorful decorations still strung above the intersection in front of the town hall the day we visited, left over from a festival a few days before.

Monpazier is another ancient bastide, a fortified town from thee 1200's. It was home to Eleanor of Aquitane and Richard II of England for a time in the late 1300's.

We strolled down the main street, window shopping in of the old part of town, and discovered a covered market stall and stone arcades with shops surrounding the old town square.

Ken and Gail Tuley, members of our group who were wandering on their own, joined us for a drink and some refreshment under the square canvas umbrellas of an outdoor cafe.

Continuing our explorations, we drove through the villages of Beaumont and Issigeac, and then up a hill through hundreds of acres of grape vines to Chateau Monbazillac.

As we approached the chateau we saw bunches of dark purple grapes ready for picking.

Although both red and white varieties of grapes are grown in this valley, the wine from this region is most famous for its white grapes, which are allowed to stay on the vine until they acquire a fungus that doesn't harm the grapes, but draws the water out of them, concentrating the sugar content. These super-sugared grapes are then harvested and turned into the sweet white wine for which this region is known.

It was late afternoon by the time we neared our starting point, and we stopped for dinner at a sidewalk cafe by the Dordogne River in the village of La Roc Gageac.

Doing Dordogne - Day 9 - 15 km Canoe Paddle

2011-09-19T16:37:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, September 14th

The big adventure for the day today is a 15 km canoe excursion on the Dordogne River from Vitrac downstream back to Beynac. Fueled with a breakfast of muesli and cafe-creme, we joined Charlie and Ellen from our travel group, and walked across the street from the hotel to the canoe office. The sign in the window specified that they expected you to arrive a minimum of twenty minutes before the 10 o'clock first departure. It was only 9:30, so we were not surprised to find that the office was not open yet. Two other women who wanted to rent canoes arrived about a quarter of the hour. However, when nobody had shown up by 9:55 I began to worry that we were supposed to have showed up at Vitrac instead of meeting here in Beynac.

I scurried back across the street to the hotel office, and asked the helpful lady at the desk to call the reservation number for the canoes to see if we were in the wrong place. She assured me that someone would be arriving to pick us up promptly at 10:00. Sure enough, it was 9:59 when a small bus whipped into the parking lot motioning to the six of us to climb aboard.

It was about a 25 minute ride on tree-lined country roads to the riverside canoe livery at Vitrac. An Australian hippy-type guy gave us a cheery greeting, and issued us life jackets and paddles. He slung a couple of canoes to slide down the river bank. Charlie and Ellen were the first to shove off, and Jane and I followed only about a minute later.

Paddling leisurely downstream with the gentle current, we caught up with our fellow river travelers. We passed campgrounds and other canoe rental places along the way as we drifted down the Dordogne.

In some places the banks were low, and flat farmland and vineyards stretched off to rolling hills in the near distance. The river meandered closer to the hills and the low banks became chalky cliffs.

We paddled past the Chateau Castelnaud high on a promontory above us where we could see the reconstructed silhouettes of several trebuchets, looking as if they were ready to hurl skull-sized boulders at us far below.

There were openings and caves visible as we approached the village Roc de Gageac. Sandwiched between the river and the vertical cliffs, the buildings and houses almost seem stacked on top of each other, and those that nestle up against the cliffs used the cliff itself as the rear wall.

High above the last of the houses, a steep stairway juts out from the cliff, ascending to an opening halfway to the top where you can see masonry walls have been erected. We had read that village inhabitants long ago had used ropes, pulleys, and ladders to evacuate people and possessions to these high retreats in times of threat.

We pulled the two canoes up on the gravel bank opposite the village, and sat on our life jackets while we shared sandwiches, fruit, and some wine between us.

With only 8 km to travel, we slid the canoes back into the water and continued our downstream adventure. Rounding a curve we spotted Chateau Feynac, an imposing hilltop castle currently American owned.

Another half hour down the river, traveling in the company of quite a few other canoeists we approached a riffle where much of the span of the river shallowed to a few inches, cascading with small chuckling sounds down across the underlying gravel.

The six canoes in front of us all paddled vigorously toward the right where there appeared to be a spot on the inside of the river curve where the water was a bit smoother. IF I had used my past experience instead of assuming that those ahead of us had spotted an opening I could not yet see, I would have steered toward the outside of the river bend where water is almost always deeper. In a matter of moments I felt the bottom of the canoe scraping the rounded rocks beneath us, and seconds later we ground to a complete stop, joining all those other canoes that had preceded us.

After hunching and crunching, and shoving on the bottom to no avail with our paddles it was obvious that I'd have to get out and wade, dragging the canoe across the shallow patch to deeper water. That was not difficult, but I had soggy shoes for the rest of the trip.

The brochure had indicated that the trip from Vitrac to Beynac would take two and a half hours, but by the time we pulled the two canoes up on the ramp back at Beynac we had been four hours enroute.

Bill and Miriam happened to be looking over the upper wall as we stowed our life jackets and paddles, and we posed as Bill took a picture of us with Charlie and Ellen before saying good-by to them.

After retreating to the room for a short late afternoon siesta (yes, that's a Spanish tradition, not French, but the principal applies well anywhere!), we rejoined Miriam and Bill for an excursion to Les Jardins Suspendu de Chateau Marquessac.

Like other chateaux in the area, Marquessac occupies high ground overlooking the valley of the Dordogne and the river. Its grounds, however, stretch for more than three kilometers along a ridge. The elaborate topiary near the chateau, planted and sculpted in the 1800's had been neglected, overgrown, and virtually abandoned for many years, but in 2001 work began to trim the boxwoods back to their original strange, convoluted shapes. Today they fully restored.

Jane and I wandered up a roughly cobbled path away from the main gardens. Lavender and rosemary, trimmed to form a sinuous waving pattern on both sides of us as we climbed toward a high vista overlooking the river far below. We turned back at that point. Had it been earlier in the day we might have continued on through the woods along the ridge line to another belvedere at the edge of a cliff that commanded a view upsteam all the way to Roc de Gageac.

The four of us headed back to Beynac, and descended the stairs to our favorite bistro to continue our new tradition of ordering scoops of ice cream or fruit sorbet to nibble while watching the sun drift low over the sparkling river.

Doing Dordogne - Day 8

2011-09-19T16:20:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, September 13th

We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast this morning. Just a little way up the street I found a tabac that offered cafe-creme and a croissant. Jane went across the street to a patisserie to get a croissant and a small orange juice, then joined me on the terrace in the bright sunshine that had rapidly dissipated the early morning fog.

We set off up the very steep cobbled lane that we had followed on Sunday, stopping several times to rest and marvel at the vistas across the Dordogne Valley. We finally approached the Chateau de Beynac, and bought admission tickets.

As we wandered past walls within walls and gates beyond gates, and crossed a drawbridge over a 20 foot deep pit whose bottom was covered with sharpened wooden spikes we were impressed with the attention to security.

As early as the 16th century they even had the capability of conducting chemical warfare. Above two inner gates there were protected wooden extensions out from the stone walls to allow defenders to dump buckets of caustic lye on attackers trying to breach the inner defenses..

The oldest part of the fortress was the castle keep, a five story tall tower. Whoever was occupying the chateau could retreat here behind all the layers of defense, and pull up the ladders through a narrow trap door, making it very difficult to reach. The English King Richard the Lionheart used the castle keep as his residence for several years after capturing Chateau de Beynac.

The Dordogne River marked the approximate political boundary between the English and the French during the Hundred Years War, and Chateau de Beynac in spite of its impressive layered defenses had been captured and changed possession back and forth between the English and the French nine different times over the years.

We explored the various levels of the chateau, including the quarters for the soldiers, the spiral staircases, the huge kitchen, the baronial living quarters, and on up to the topmost ramparts. From there it was a dizzying vertical view to the village and river far, far below.

We stopped for lunch at the restaurant "Les Ramparts de Chateau" before heading partway back down the same steep lane we had ascended earlier. We came to an overlook where the path split, and taking the left branch we descended to the old port of Beynac on the riverside, and then walked back to the hotel along a welcome flat path along the edge of the river.

Late in the afternoon we met Bill and Miriam to walk down to the riverside dock across the street from the hotel, where we boarded a "gabarre", a replica of a river boat used here in the 1800's (with the exception that this one was powered by two large, quiet, but powerful Yamaha outboard engines.) The boat, filled to about half its 50 passenger capacity, moved almost silently upstream from Beynac past the port toward the castle of Castelnaud on a fifty minute trip that also provided beautiful views of the castles of Fayrac and Marqueyssac before reaching a shallow part of the river and turning back again.

We turned our evening meal around backwards, eating ice cream and sipping peach wine at a riverside bistro before hopping in the car for a short ride to "Auberge des Chateaux", where all four of us dined on omelets and shared a carafe of nice local red wine.

Our last experience of the evening was seeing Chateau de Beynac silhouetted against a fading orange western sky as a full moon rose above a wooded ridge in the east.

Doing Dordogne - Day Seven

2011-09-18T18:29:00.001-04:00

Monday, September 12th

A fine mist was floating down from low-lying gray clouds this morning, and fog obscured the far side of the river and the hilltop behind the hotel. We ate a light breakfast in the hotel dining room: cafe au lait, granola, and a small glass of orange juice.

Looking across the road, we could see small trailers arriving and canopies being set up along both sides of the parking lot next to the river...a much smaller version of the St. Cyprian Sunday market day. Bill, Miriam, Jane and I spent a little while ambling up one side for a hundred yards and back down the other.

We bought three small 3" wheels of Rocamadour cheese for 60 cents each, one of goat-cheese and two of cow cheese, all of them very soft, almost gooey.

Stashing the cheese, a couple of long, skinny loaves of crusty bread, and a couple of bottles of wine in the car, we drove east along the riverside highway toward the town of Sarlat.

Sarlat is one of the towns of the Perigourd region known for pate-foi-gras, goose-liver-paste, considered a delicious delicacy. Miriam had read that somewhere near the middle of town was a statue of a goose, and she wanted her picture taken beside it, so we turned off the main road toward the old town center.

Passing along the cobbled street we saw many old houses and stores crowding up against narrow sidewalks. Before long I saw ahead a sign blocking all traffic, and an arrow to the left announcing a divertisement...in other words a detour. The left turn was the only option, and it led right past another permanent sign indicating that this road did not allow vehicular traffic. I had no choice. As I drove cautiously along very narrow streets and made several tight turns on the indicated detour I had to be very careful of herds of pedestrians, ambling along. Like flocks of sheep, they parted only slowly and reluctantly as the car crept past.

We came to an open square in the oldest part of town, where tourists and locals alike were shopping, walking, or sitting under large umbrellas in sidewalk cafes sipping coffee, heads turning to see the unexpected car passing through their exclusive domain. Still following the detour arrows, we completed our auto tour of the old town and found our way back to the main road, but never did spot the stone goose we had set out to find.

With Bill consulting his maps and navigating again, we drove south from Sarlat to the town of Domme. Here the town location was plainly chosen with defense in mind. It is high on a very steep sided bluff. A circuitous road climbs the slope at an angle, turning sharply at the top to pass through a massive stone gate in the walls of the bastide, or fortress.

Many of the streets were so narrow that the car would just barely fit between the walls of the stone houses on either side. The center of the town is flat, however, and we found a temporary parking place so that we could look around a bit. Just a block away one side of an airy, tree lined plaza ends at a stone balustrade with a 200 foot drop below. There was a spectacular view out across the valley of the Dordogne. I paused for a few minutes to listen to a Belgian musician playing a hammered dulcimer.

Back down the road from Domme, we traveled a short distance to the edge of the Dordogne River at Vitrac. Opening all of the car doors to enjoy the cool, gentle breeze we nibbled a leisurely lunch of crunchy french bread, Rocamadour cheese, crispy apples, and plastic cups of vin rose.

There is a put-in spot here, and you can rent a canoe or kayak to paddle or float for 15 km down the river to Beynac. I'd like to do that!

We continued our drive at 1:00 pm toward the grotto at Rouffignac to see some cave paintings. As we approached the town of Les Eyzies on the banks of the Moustier River we began to see tall sandstone cliffs, undercut by the river to make strange overhangs and narrow ledges. In many spots there were houses built beneath the overhanging rock and excavated back into the soft stone.

We saw many openings high up on the cliffs that had obviously been cut out from the stone, and probably occupied long ago. At several places it was clear that people long ago had sheltered in these sheer cliffs and caves by pulling up their possessions, food, and even livestock, and then pulling up the ladders to take refuge from marauders traveling up the river.

It was just an hour's drive to the cave at Rouffignac. We bought tickets for admission, and after a short wait joined others on a short walk into the wide, low mouth of the cavern.

There we climbed up and settled onto narrow padded benches facing forward on two small open railroad cars.

Our tour guide hopped on the front, and with a twist of the control lever started the electric engine train moving on the track along an ancient water-carved tunnel that descended gently into the darkness. A single bright bulb on the front lighted the tracks ahead and cast an indirect glow on the limestone walls around us, illuminating layers of strange, small bulbous formations that were suggestive of malformed growths of some exotic fungus.

On and on we traveled, deeper and deeper, while the tour guide kept up a continuous patter of facts about the cave, the formations, the early inhabitants....all in French, of course, which meant that I understood perhaps every twentieth or thirtieth word... not enough to construct any consistent meaning.

Far into the cave he pointed out places where cave bears had dug and scuffed out curved depressions as places to snooze away the cold winters. Nearby were lots and lots of parallel vertical marks on the walls where bears had stretched and scratched with their big claws.

Somewhat over 3 km from the entrance we came to the first prehistoric cave drawings. Here cro-magnon men from 15,000 years ago had scratched beautifully executed outlines of wooly mammoths into the stone walls of the cave.

Farther along we came to animal drawings on the wall, done not in charcoal, but with pieces of manganese dioxide, used like black chalk. There were horses, several rhinoceros outlined, and a whole parade of mammoths.

Continuing even farther we came to a wider place with a low flat ceiling that was covered with the dark outlines of mammoths, bison, horses, and ibex. One horse was amazingly lifelike, drawn full scale. Most of the beautiful profiles were two to three feet from head to tail.

We stayed for awhile, marveling at the detail and accuracy of the beautiful drawings, and wondering about what might have motivated people 15,000 years ago to venture so far into darkness and danger, their way lit only by the dim glow of primitive oil lamps to draw these mysterious outlines.

By the time the electric train had made the long ascending trip back to the mouth of the cave a full hour had past, and the cool air outside the cave felt warm by comparison.

We passed by a goose-farm on the way back, and stopped by the side of the road to watch as several hundred gray geese waddled over to the fence toward us. I guess they were expecting us to give each one of them their several-times-a-day force-feedings. I was happy to disappoint them!

As we waited to get together with Bill and Miriam, Tish, Robert, and Nancy for dinner we saw two colorful hot air balloons, drifting a few hundred feet above the river, glowing brightly in the late afternoon sunlight.

Doing Dordogne - Day Six

2011-09-18T17:41:00.001-04:00

Sunday, September 11th

We woke to the sound of church bells. Oh yeah, it's Sunday! They faded away, but came back a half hour later as if to say, "Yes, we know you went back to sleep and ignored us the first time, but now we're going to continue this melodious clamor until you get up and get ready to observe Sunday properly!"

We decided to skip breakfast. We joined Bill and Miriam in the car, and headed down along the banks of the Dordogne River about 10 km to the town of St. Cyprian where we had heard there was a Sunday market.

We found a parking place at the edge of the town center. The main street was blocked off to vehicular traffic, but there were hundreds and hundreds of people crowded shoulder to shoulder, ambling along congenially, perusing the amazing variety of goods in the vending stalls that were stretched side by side for perhaps a half mile along both sides of the street.

There were Nigerian vendors selling cloth purses, leather belts, incense, key chain charms and hats. There were vendors selling 23 different kinds of olives. There were booths where you could buy ten or twelve kinds of bread, or 15 different kinds of pastry, and others that offered a dozen or more kinds of cheese. We each bought a large cinnamon-raisin roll to eat while strolling.

There were table cloths and meat and fish and baskets and fruit. There were bottles of wine and mounds of exotic spices and shoes and scarves and sweaters.

There were onion sets and fresh carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, beans, corn, and watermelon. There were bananas and peaches and apples and plums strawberries and pomegranates and kiwi.

There were buskers playing guitars and sitars and Peruvian quenas and flutes. There were baskets of flowers, a tinkling fountain, and huge curved pans of paella, and loungers sipping espresso at sidewalk cafes. The market was filled with sounds and smells and sensation. What an amazing morning!

Heading back toward the east, we turned away from the Dordogne River just before reaching Beynac on a one-lane road that wound up through dense woods that formed a leafy green tunnel, emerging high on the open bluffs that overlook the river. We cautiously navigated the narrow lanes that constituted the main streets of the tiny village of Cazenac, then back down again by an alternate route that brought us to Beynac. We took the single street straight up the hill through the town, through woods again, and up to grassy meadows.

Doubling back toward the river, the road ended at the Chateau de Beynac, a forbidding-looking fortified castle at the edge of the cliff overlooking the town and the river far below. It looks impregnable, but in 1199 AD Richard the Lionheart of England captured it by sending his men to scale the 600 foot cliff walls at a spot no one had thought to defend.

We found a nice little cafe just outside the castle keep, with an open terrace where we enjoyed lunch before heading back down to the hotel for a much needed nap.

Feeling refreshed, Jane and I ventured out in the late afternoon to explore the steep, narrow cobblestone streets of Beynac that wend their way upward so sharply that it seems at times as if you would be in danger of sliding back down were it not for the small, rough stones used for paving. Eventually we found ourselves back at the Chateau de Beynac, and spent some time exploring the portcullis gate and the ramparts before heading back again down paths and streets not quite so steep as those we had climbed.

Later we found a small open air bistro overlooking the river. The sun dipped below the gray clouds that had been hovering overhead all day, turning the edges delicate shades of pink that almost matched the color of the vin rose we sipped while dined on delicious, moist fluffy omelets.

Doing Dordogne - Day Five

2011-09-16T12:59:00.002-04:00

Saturday, September 10th

A leisurely start this morning. We ambled across the street from our hotel in Lescar to a large shopping center for cinnamon-raisin rolls and coffee, then back to finish packing. It was close to 10:00 am before we joined Miriam and Bill in the car and headed out.

I had programed the French-speaking GPS to avoid the main highway, opting for country roads that would take us to the town of Roquefort where we hoped to sample some of the famous cheese of the same name.

I quickly got used to the patient French female voice giving instructions about the frequent traffic circles and specifying the first or second or third exit from each. After much driving according to the GPS directions, it appeared that we were trending more and more toward the east instead of north, and getting farther away from our destination in Roquefort.

I kept insisting that the GPS was correct and that we should trust it, but was at last out-voted three to one, and turned off the GPS. Bill and Jane consulted their maps, and giving directions in clear English navigated us back onto a more northerly course, eventually allowing us to arrive around 2:00 pm at the small town of Roquefort (with accompanying jokes about beginning to smell the stinky cheese).

The whole town seemed asleep or deserted, but near the town center we found a Tabac, a combination tobacco shop/bar that was open, and went in to ask about where to find some good Roquefort cheese to buy.

To their dismay and my amusement, the owners informed them that we were not in THAT Roquefort, but one of the other three towns in France that are ALL named Roquefort. Consulting the maps, they showed us that the GPS had been taking us to another one of the spurious Roqueforts, and that "le village de fromage" was at least four or five hours drive away from our present location!

Back in the car again, Bill did a great job of navigating and giving directions from his maps, and we all gave a cheer as we entered the valley of the Dordogne River. An hour later we were pulling into a small public parking lot stretched out along the eastern bank of the Dordogne in the town of Beynac, which lies crowded along the shoreline of the river and clings to precipitous rocky slopes slanted up to the Chateau de Beynac at the highest point above the town.

One cobblestone street climbs up through the village toward the castle. Narrower, steeper streets suitable only for pedestrians branch off in different directions, leading to large stone houses and small cottages built on seemingly impossible slopes.

We have a lovely room with a floor to ceiling window that opens onto a french balcony, which is really not a balcony at all, but merely a railing across the lower part of the window to keep the incautious from falling to the street below. This will be our home for the coming week. Tomorrow we'll visit a country market day about 10 km down the river.

Friday, Day Four

2011-09-15T13:35:00.003-04:00

Friday, September 9th

This morning we walked a few hundred meters to Carrefour, a very large shopping center, where we found a nice patisserie. We each ordered cafe au lait, and small baguette with butter and jam. A perfect light breakfast for a couple of Euros.

This morning we loaded two cars full of people for the day's adventure to Biarritz on the west coast of France near the Spanish border. It's a 116 km trip, and during most of the hour and a half it took we could see the impressively jagged peaks of the Pyrenees off in the distance to our left.

We followed instructions to the main train station and waited a short while to be joined by Helen, a young woman from Richmond, Virginia who came to Biarritz for World Vision to start an outreach program for young people. She has been here for some time, and plans to stay, since she met and married Phillipe, a French civil engineer.

We followed her pumpkin-orange little Renault through the winding streets and around many traffic circles, descending eventually past large elegant homes to a narrow road that skirts the ocean along the bottom of a steep cliff. There is a sea wall along the waterfront here, reinforced with a wide rip-rap of large black boulders. Just beyond the rocks that protect the shoreline there is a sandy bottom that probably forms a narrow beach when the tide is low.

Large, long swells, perhaps three meters from trough to crest came rolling in from the Bay of Biscay, which is merely a slight curve to the western coast of France, really just the Atlantic Ocean. Hundreds of surfers could be seen sitting on their boards, floating up and over each passing swell, waiting for the perfect wave. When it was perceived that an approaching wave had just the right slope and height, surfers would swing around, belly-flop on their boards, paddling as fast as they could with their hands. Those who had timed it just right would be propelled forward down the slope of the wave, and with a quick grab and lurch would leap to their feet, suddenly transformed into darting, swooping dancers on the curling waves.

Appropriately, the place where Helen took us for lunch was "Les Surfers". We all sat at one long table facing the water. The wall closest to the seawall was open to the breezes so we could see the surfers, the waves, and the ocean beyond as we ate lunch.

Jane and I shared Merlu, a plate for two. The English name for this fish is hake. It was both ugly and delicious, the body split into two attached gently broiled fillets drenched in garlic butter and judiciously sprinkled with herbs just behind the dark head with its gray eyes and gaping sharp-toothed mouth.

After lunch Helen and Philippe led the four-car caravan on a wandering tour of Biarritz, past the casinos and cliff-top mansions, along steep curving cobblestone streets lined with shops offering overpriced elegant goods for wealthy customers, down along the waterfront with small beaches nestled in rocky coves, and up again through more modest neighborhoods. We stopped for a short visit at their new church, a small rented space in a building shared with a surfers' hostel.

An almost-full moon rose above the low hills in front of us as we headed back toward our hotel after a long day. Tomorrow is a travel day from Lescar east to Beynac in the valley of the Dordogne.

Thursday, Day Three

2011-09-09T18:47:00.001-04:00

Thursday, September 8

It's dark, and Jane is up and moving about, making too much noise for the middle of the night. I think it's 1:00 am. It IS 1:00 am in Virginia, but it's 7:00 in the morning here in France, and it's dark because the curtains are keeping out the bright sunshine. I stumble out of bed and into some clean clothes, and we head down to the hotel lobby for a continental breakfast of Croissants, cafe au lait, fresh kiwi fruit, orange juice. Price is 7 euros, almost $10.

At 8:30 we meet Robert and several others. We'll all ride together today on a trip to Bilbao, Spain.

This time we stay on track for awhile. We pause from time to time to take toll road tickets or to insert them in toll booth slots and feed Euros into the slot that raises the gate to let us proceed. Since the formation of the European Union, there is no indication of any demarcation between France and Spain, no official border-crossing, no checking of passports, nothing. I'm not sure when we actually left France and entered Spain, but I do notice that all of a sudden all of the signs are in Spanish. Displayed with the Spanish language signs are additional rows of letters that are obviously yet another language, but I don't recognize it at all. It wasn't until later in the day that I learned that more than 600,000 people in north-western Spain and south-western France speak Euskara (yoush-KAR-ah), an ancient, isolated language that is believed to have been spoken in this region since long before the Roman invasions that started in 58 B.C. It doesn't seem to be related to any other known language in the world.

As we approach the coast of the Bay of Biscay and the town of Orio, we exit to try to find restroom facilities. A narrow road winds first along a grassy ridge where we see several groups of hikers with backpacks, and a number of cyclists challenging the steep slopes.

The road dips down between old two story houses. The smooth pavement disappears, replaced by cobblestones, and the street into the oldest part of this old fishing village becomes every steeper and narrower until poor Robert is forced to slow to a crawl, inching between walls that threaten to scrape the car on both sides. Everyone holds their breath as he inches around a very tight corner, hoping we don't get to a point where we can go no farther. It's certainly impossible at this point to back up!

The steep slope lessens a bit and the street widens a bit as we approach the flat bottom of the valley next to the River Oria and enter the newer part of town. We move along a shop-lined street that appears to be only a few hundred year old, then come to several blocks of new apartment buildings. Robert pulls off on a blind side street, and several people scurry off toward the town center a block away to try to find restroom facilities. They later report that the owner of a small shop, not open, has allowed them access to the single toilet in his establishment.

Taking a short walk while the others are away, I find an extended area close to the river where there are numerous small farming plots. I don't know if they are community plots or individually owned. I watch an old lady plucking fruit from the low lying branches of a fig tree near the dirt path.

Turning back toward the car, walking along a side street, I found a poster advertising the upcoming rowing races. Each boat appears to have 15 or 20 men manning the oars. I am amazed at the similarity of these Basque long boats in the picture to the fautasi longboats that are raced on the bay at Pago Pago, Samoa.

In our attempt to get back on the highway to Bilbao we missed a turn somewhere, and spend perhaps 30 minutes wandering small, wooded, winding roads that lead us in a loop back into the lower part of Orio before we finally are able to proceed toward our destination.

Robert has no clear idea of the exact location of the ultra-modern Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, so we get an extended rambling tour of various parts of this city of more than 350,000. Eventually though, we begin to spot signs to the museum, and find space in an underground lot to park the car about a half mile from the museum.

The strange, random metallic curves of the Frank Gehry designed building on the banks of the Nervion River catch the late morning sun and also cast dramatic shadows to create a really fascinating piece of architecture. I had convinced myself ahead of time that I would dislike it, but was surprised that it was so intriguing.

The members of the group wandered off in different directions, promising to meet back at the entrance to the parking garage no later than 4 pm. Jane and I strolled along the riverside and past the museum to view it from different sides, and settled to eat a light lunch of baguettes with thin-sliced ham and pieces of a delicious cheese at an outdoor cafe before heading into the Guggenheim.

There were vast exhibit rooms with large abstract pieces of art and paintings that Sydney and Francis Lewis would have loved for their peculiarity.

I found that the building itself was the only really interesting piece of art, but that alone was worth the trip to Bilbao!

Wednesday ... Day Two

2011-09-09T16:29:00.003-04:00

Wednesday, September 7th

Early indeed!....a few minutes after 11:00 pm the background roar of the turbines slides down to a whisper, and I can feel the subtle change as we sink down into the inky atmosphere.

The clouds break for a few minutes, and glowing tendrils of town lights and shining arteries of highways create a random web of yellow on the ground far below before the clouds close in again and the window fades to black except for the pulsing red and strobe-flash white of the plane's own lights.

The flughaven Frankfurt Main is huge, and the plane taxis for almost ten minutes before reaching the gate as the sky begins to turn light about 6 am. The electric cart that has been arranged for Bill seems to be full of other passengers, so he sits in a wheel chair and I stride along behind the cart pushing him, leaving Jane and Miriam to trail behind us, finding their own way down the long labyrinth of intersecting concourses to Gate A-5.

There is just enough time to take advantage of a free double-shot of espresso laced with plenty of cream and sugar before we are called to board the bus that will take us to the smaller plane that will provide our last hop today. By 7:00 am we are bouncing along through the clear sunny air on the 90 minute flight to Toulouse, France.

It was still early morning when we completed the paperwork to get our four-door Peugeot for the drive from Tolouse to the city of Pau where we are planning to stay until Saturday. I was given the keys, and walked out ot the parking lot to get the car. It had two doors! Back to the check out counter, where I was told that I had to go all the way back to the car rental counter in the airport terminal to get the error corrected. they had no four door cars in the class we had reserved so we go an upgrade that wold have cost a couple of hundred dollars more. It was worth the trouble.

Robert, the tour agent suggested that we follow him out of the airport to the main highway. It soon became apparent that we were heading north on A62 toward Montauban instead of west toward Pau. I sped up, came alongside him and rolled down the window to call out, "Where are we going?"

His shouted reply was, "I have no idea where I'm going!"

      I called back that we were bailing out. We got off at the small town of Grenade, and instead of turning around and going back to the start point, Bill and I agreed to use the maps we had and find country roads that led us in the general direction we wanted to go. We spent a delightful morning wandering across the French countryside to Cadour, Cologne, and other very small villages.
     We crossed the Garonne River on an old arched stone bridge and made our way down to L'isle de Jourdaine, where we took theN214 to the city of Auch, and then the N21 to Tarbes, where we got our first distant views of the jagged peaks of the Pyrenees. The A64 is a smooth four lane divided highway toll road where the speed limit is a bit over 80 mph. Like Interstate highways in the U.S. though, many drivers go faster than the speed limit. We picked up a ticket at an automated tool booth and sailed on west toward Pau.
     When it came time to exit just beyond Pau we couldn't find the toll ticket! We pulled into the automated tollbooth, and hailed an attendant. We were afraid that we would have to pay the maximum fee for traveling from the beginning to the end of the toll road, but the courteous, trusting lady that we talked to believed our story, and only charged us for the section of the road that we had traveled. In spite of printed instructions, se had to stop and ask for directions to the Novotel just beyond Pau in Lescar. After unpacking, several of our group met for an elegant twilight dinner on the terrace at at the hotel.

Doing Dordogne, Day one

2011-09-07T16:25:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, September 6

It rained all night the day I left....

A last minute morning check of the weather shows that Hurricane Katia is veering offshore and will not make landfall while we are on our trip to France...relief!

Our first flight of the day from Richmond to Philadelphia is scheduled for departure at 1:15 pm. Bill and Miriam and Harry arrive in our driveway promptly at 9:30, and we're off to the airport. We unload the luggage at US Air and use the automated check-in kiosk which scans the data on the edge of the passport page to identify and confirm each passenger and print boarding passes. With a chunk and a whirr the machine spits out two boarding passes for each of us, from Richmond to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to Frankfurt, Germany. The boarding pass for the leg from Frankfurt to Toulouse, France doesn't appear.

When we ask the airline representative behind the desk about that she says that normally we would get that at the Frankfurt airport, but that she can issue those boarding passes from her desk if we'd like. We'd like! I hand her the passports, and after a moment of looking at them she says, "If you'd like I can get you on the flight to Philadelphia an hour earlier at 12:16 pm. The weather in New York is beginning to cause delays, and it's my experience that backup often begin to effect the traffic at Philadelphia.

I immediately think it is a good idea, but we are traveling as a group of twelve people, and when I broach the subject, others show considerable agitation and aversion to any change of the plans. The airline rep manages to get the other group members who have already checked in together and explain the advantages of taking an earlier flight to the gateway city for overseas flights, and finally consensus is reached; we'll take the earlier flight. However, within minutes, the rep is back, saying that the dispatcher in Charlotte, NC is telling her that the earlier flight has some minor mechanical problems to be resolved and will be about a half hour late.

OK, so we now are scheduled to leave a half hour before our original plans, and that still seems to be an advantage. We all get booked in, receive our modified boarding passes, and head for the gate.

The flight arrives and the Charlotte passengers get off and go streaming down the concourse toward the luggage claim area. The time for boarding comes, and we hear an announcement on the speakers saying that although the plane is ready to go, there are now no planes landing in Philadelphia due to very heavy rainstorms directly over the airport. Please stand by.

After some considerable time has passed, boarding is announced, and we all make our way down the enclosed ramp to the plane and slowly down the aisles to our seats. The pilot announces on the address system that as soon as he receives clearance from the dispatcher in Philadelphia we'll be on our way. Eventually the doors are closed, the plane is rolled back and taxied to the end of the runway. The pilot pushes the throttles forward, the engines roar, we feel the acceleration as the planes plunges down the runway, and the wheels leave the ground as the plane surges into the air at 2:00 pm, forty-five minutes later than the original scheduled flight.

A few hundred feet above the ground the view out the window quickly fades to a uniform light gray as we climb into the thick cloud layer hanging low over Richmond, and the world disappears. screen. Thin, dark rivulets of water race sideways across the window, giving it the appearance of a malfunctioning LCD screen. The plane lurches and sways its way upward through various air densities and currents for fifteen minutes before the gray begins to lighten as we approach 27,000 feet. We break out of the top of the cloud layer and look down briefly on the misty, soft, sunlit cloud bank below. Soon we enter the cloud layer again, the aircraft doing its best to simulate the rocking, pitching yawing motions of some long-ago stagecoach as we travel our aerial highway to Philadelphia.

In spite of the switches and delays, we arrive a bit more than an hour before the scheduled departure of our flight to Frankfurt. All is well. We'll wake up tomorrow morning (early) descending to land in Germany.

The Lizard, Mount St. Michaels, and Land's End

2011-09-02T11:41:00.002-04:00

Sunday, May 22

It rained during the night, but by breakfast time the clouds were clearing, and by 9:30 we looked out on a bright, windy, chilly, but sunshiny day. We drove along the A-30 highway, hunting The Lizard. The southernmost cape of land in England is called, for some mysterious reason, "The Lizard". It is most probably a corruption of the Cornish name "Lys Ardh", meaning "high court".

A short walk to the point meanders along high, jagged, almost vertical cliffs that drop about 200 feet to jagged rocks awash in the rolling breakers. Fat, succulent three-cornered leaves of iceplant cradle scattered large pale yellow flowers, and ragged carpets of brilliant magenta flowers cascade down the steep slopes as if a mad artist had flung buckets of day-glo paint over the edges of the cliffs.

A wide cobblestone path too steep to be called a road curves down sharply to a rocky spot at sea level where brave souls can launch small boats across surging mats of slippery seaweed to make their way through breaking surf between jagged rocks to open water.

Heading almost due north, we backtracked 10 miles to the town of Helston. Ten miles west brought us to Marazion and a long line of vehicles creeping through the narrow streets of town competing for parking places. After our own unsuccessful reconnaissance we paid the five-pound fee to squeeze into an already jammed parking lot next to the sea wall. A very broad, flat beach sloped gently to the white-capped waters of Mount's Bay where wind surfers and kite boarders swooped across the surface at unbelievable speeds. We joined the general drift of hundreds of other people along the hard sands in the opposite direction, toward the lumpy cobblestone causeway that curved out, barely a foot above water to Saint Michael's Mount a quarter of a mile from the shore.

Saint Michael's Mount, like its larger Normandy namesake Mont Saint Michele, is a triangular mini-mountain that juts up several hundred feet not far from the shore of a very shallow bay where low tides retreat far from the shore, but come rushing in as high tide approaches, turning them into islands.

Saint Michael's Mount was the site of an abbey as early as the eighth century, and was given to the Benedictines of the Norman abbey of Mont Saint Michel in the 1200's which seems to be how it got its name. The old Cornish name for the place was Karrek Loos y'n Koos meaning "grey rock in the woods". It may have been exactly that, for in November of 1099 it is recorded that a huge storm swept the ocean far inland. The backwash may have carried away the woods and the land, leaving only the solid grey rock outcropping remaining close to the new shoreline.

The small walled harbor of Saint Michael's Mount faces away from the sea. As we reached the island end of the causeway and entered the gate to the town we could see a number of boats tilted to the right or tilted to the left, their hulls resting on the sandy bottom of the drained harbor. If we stayed too long the boats, re-floated, would be our only way back to the mainland, since at high tide the causeway is completely submerged.

There was a music festival going on, and we stopped several times on the steep climb up the rough cobblestone path to the castle to listen to different groups. A group of Morris dancers was performing on the roof of the castle itself.

Although part of the castle is under the administration of the National Trust and is open to the public, the island and the castle have been owned by the same family since 1659 when it was sold to Colonel John St. Aubyn. His descendants are still resident on five private floors of the castle.

We found our way back across the causeway long before the incoming tide, navigated our way out of the crowded car park, and turning left, headed toward the town of Penzance.

The harbor there, like the beach at Marazion slopes very gently toward the sea. All of the water drains out of the basin at low tide, leaving all the moored boats sitting on the mud. Consequently many of the boats have two keels, one on each side instead of a single keel, providing a solid two-legged base when the tide is out. Other boats are simply propped up each side of the boat with sticks. Those that have neither simply tip over as the tide goes out.

Navigating toward Lands End without consulting a map, by keeping the ocean on my left and selecting roads that ran close to the shore, I next found my way to the delightful village of Mousehole.

It was aptly named, for the twisting, steep streets between the crowding houses were so narrow that at times there were only inches to spare on both sides of the car, making me feel as if I were climbing through a mouse's burrow. When I mentioned to the barman at the inn where we stayed on Sunday night that we'd driven through Mousehole he looked puzzled for a few seconds and then said, "Oh! You mean MOE-zul!". That made me think of the tale our friends have enjoyed telling about their travels in England many years ago. They were looking for a town with the very French spelling of Beaulieu, and asked for directions, using the French pronunciation bo-leeYUH. After some confusion on the part of the listeners, the reply was, "Oh! You must mean BYOO-lee!"

Leaving Mousehole behind did not mean that the roads suddenly got wider. As I hugged the right side of the road close enough that leaves and stems and the blossoms of small wildflowers tickled that side of the car I could also hear the other side of the car being caressed gently from that side as well. Not as romantic an image as one might think, for directly behind the encroaching greenery was the solid Cornish stone of five foot high walls.

A lucky missed turn brought us along a similar road etched into the side of a steep wooded hill to Lamorna Cove where the few stone houses seemed to blend into the stoney background of rocks surrounding the tiny harbor.

I backtracked, took another turn, and found that the pavement had disappeared, to be replaced with gravel tracks separated with a green high crown down the middle. It seemed to be going in the right direction, so I followed it between the clutching green walls that were beginning to crowd even closer until the point where even the gravel faded away beneath the green overgrowth. Although I could see that the now almost invisible track pointed toward the tops of chimneys only a few hundred yards away, I was concerned that I would actually scratch the sides of the brand-new rental car or get stuck. I backed to the last place wide enough and turned around.

Now on a paved road that was at least wide enough for one and a half cars, it seemed like a proper highway, although it was still narrow enough that meeting a car traveling the opposite direction would be occasion for one or the other backing up until a wider passing spot was found.

I had seen on the map a very tiny, barely noticeable symbol that designated a prehistoric site. Several cars by the side of the road indicated to me that there was something of interest, and on investigation I found a small stone marker labeled "The Merry Maidens". That sounded promising! I inserted, rather than parked the car in the tiny bit of space remaining, and climbing over a stone stile, we walked up a path across a meadow where long grass rippled in the strong wind like waves on a stormy sea.

Less than three hundred yards from the road we found a circle of ancient standing stones. Each of the nineteen stones had rough edges, hewn in prehistoric times into blocks perhaps two and a half feet wide and about a foot thick. I couldn't tell the length, since the blocks that must have weighed a couple of tons each had been transported to this site and then tipped up into holes that were filled in to hold them upright. Each was about twelve feet from its neighboring stones on either side, all of them arranged into a perfect circle. Nobody knows who erected this arrangement of stones nor when, though it had to have been several thousand years ago.

The headland at Land's End has all the dubious charm of Myrtle Beach, North Carolina or Gatlinburg, Tennessee with arcades, 3D movie screens, trinket-filled shops, and a slightly seedy-looking hotel. Land's End for those interested in geology and geography is more interesting.

The westernmost point of land in Great Britain, its dark rocky cliffs and jagged dark outcroppings farther out plunge down into white waves crashing in from the Atlantic Ocean. A quarter mile offshore the Land's End Lighthouse clutches the outermost black rocky reef and flashes a warning to heavy laden ships plowing west and east though big seas that once in awhile send tons of water splashing over their bows.

It was quite late in the afternoon by the time we left Land's End and headed back up the peninsula. We stopped to inquire at several bed and breakfast guest houses before we were successful at finding a place to stay for the night in the village of Lelant near St. Ives.

We settled in to the Badger Inn and pub for dinner just after sunset a little before 9:00 pm, and then made our way upstairs for a good last night's sleep in Cornwall before starting the long drive back across southern England to Gatwick and the flight home.

An old Seaport and Another Planet

2011-09-01T18:26:00.000-04:00

Saturday, May 21

After a leisurely breakfast we left Par to visit an outpost on another planet. At least that's what it seemed like. The Eden Project, an enormous research/educational undertaking has constructed two three-lobed biodomes in an old abandoned china clay quarry.

Thousands of tons of rich soil have been spread on the slopes and terraces, and the scars of excavation have disappeared under inspired landscaping. Hundreds of twenty-foot-wide six-sided plastic panels have been formed into huge bubbles a hundred and fifty feet high, each enclosing a separate ecosystem. One holds the warm, humid atmosphere of a tropical rain forest, with thousands of plants from all over the world growing in wild profusion. The second dome incorporates plants from all over the world that thrive in a Mediterranean climate. The two domes, set in their sunken garden of plants that now fill the old quarry are evocative of a futuristic science-fiction city built on some distant hostile planet.

In the afternoon we drove to the little coastal village of Charlestown, a single cobblestone street plunging down to the tiny harbor. There were fewer than a hundred houses, built of stone, and at least three pubs. Halfway down the hill the street split left and right, one going down one side of the harbor and one down the other. The harbor itself is a bit less than thirty yards wide and perhaps a hundred yards long, with vertical stone walls that drop fifty feet to the surface of the upper harbor. There is also a lower harbor, separated from the upper by a sea gate that can be opened at high tide, and closed so that the water level in the upper harbor doesn't go down when the tide goes out, dropping the sea level in the lower harbor by almost fifteen feet. The lower harbor, itself not much wider than fifty yards, is almost completely surrounded by a thirty foot high sea wall, curving around until there is only a small opening where boats can exit parallel to the shingle beach, dodging the half submerged stone barrier to the port side while swinging to starboard as quickly as possible to head into the waves that come heaving in from open water. Getting either in or out of this tiny walled sheltering harbor in anything but the calmest of weather must have tested the skill and bravery of those steering the ships.

Although almost deserted today, there was a time when ten or fifteen tall masted steamer/sailing ships would crowd in at the same time, rail to rail, waiting to be loaded with the high grade Cornwall clay that was shipped to makers of fine china and porcelain.

A short drive on good roads brought us finally to the town of Truro. Tomorrow is the music festival at Mount Saint Michael.

Bristol and Par

2011-09-01T18:13:00.001-04:00

Friday, May 20

We ate a late breakfast in the hotel dining room, overlooking the turning mill wheel, and then packed our things back in the car for the drive to Bristol in time to eat lunch with the Cunningham-Burleys. Before heading on down the M-4 Motorway Exeter and Cornwall we went to visit their church to see the stained glass window they did.

We stayed that night in the town of Par at the Royal Inn, which was not so royal, but pleasant enough, with good food and a nice, almost empty pub where we drank a pint after dinner .

We watched as people began to drift in, filling the place to crowded by 9:00 pm, coming mainly for drink and discourse, but also to listen to a local band that was loud and enthusiastic and actually pretty good. By the end of the first set the place was jammed, and we were ready to retire to the other wing of the building. Upstairs, it was quiet, and we slept easily.

A ride on the Avon and a Visit to Bath

2011-09-01T17:55:00.006-04:00

Thursday, May 19

Our last morning in Sussex. After a nice breakfast and good-byes, Hugh drove us back to the Gatwick airport to pick up a rental car. We negotiated the roundabouts and straight stretches of the M23, M25, & M4 Highways, comparable to interstate highways in the U.S of the three and a half hour drive west to the town of Batheaston. After cruising the main road through town twice we had to stop for directions to the Old Mill Hotel on the edge of the Avon River.

Our room on first floor overlooked a private toll bridge and weir spanning the river that impounded water for the mill. The mill wheel still turns, but is no longer used for milling. Looking across the river about a hundred yards we could see a second mill on the opposite side of the bridge, and next to that, a floating pier where a ferry boat docks. From here it is only about three miles by ferry boat down the Avon to the town of Bath. We waited about an hour for the next ferry, really more of a motor-launch, and enjoyed the leisurely cruise down the river.

As we approached the town we passed under the main bridge across the river, one of only three in the world that has shops built on both sides of the bridge itself. The weir just downstream of the bridge is shaped like a deep, extended letter U, allowing at least three times the volume of water to flow over during flood stage as a straight-across weir.

The ferry tied up at a wall on the edge of the river, and we hopped off to explore the streets of town. A short walk brought us to the famous Roman baths after which the town is named, and Bath Abbey.

The hot springs were known to Iron Age Britons, who believed the springs inhabited by the Goddess Sulis, and the conquering Romans starting about AD 43 built elaborate baths and a temple dedicated to Minerva, whom they equated with Sulis, naming the town Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis") The temple was constructed in 60–70 AD and the bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years.

During the Roman occupation of Britain engineers drove oak piles into the mud to provide a stable foundation and surrounded the spring with an irregular stone chamber lined with lead. In the 2nd century, the spring was enclosed within a wooden barrel-vaulted building, which housed the calidarium (hot bath), the tepidarium (warm bath), and frigidarium (cold bath). It was fascinating to wander through the different rooms and imagine what they must have been like so long ago.

Exiting the roman baths we walked back a few blocks toward the ferry landing, hurrying toward the bus stop as the bus to Batheaston came down the street less than half a block away. We waved to get the driver's attention. Looking directly at us, but pretending he didn't see, he drove off. The next bus came along in 25 minutes. As it approached, other people came running down the block as the bus started to pull out, but this driver stopped and waited. Batheaston was only a short ride. We got off in the middle of the village.

A short walk along the narrow main street brought us to the Waggon and Horses Pub, where we stopped for a bite to eat. Seated at the at next table was couple from Edmonton, Alberta who were carrying everything the needed in small backpacks, planning their travel itinerary day by day, and traveling by public bus from town to town.

Tomorrow, we'll take a leisurely drive to visit friends in Bristol.

Sheffield Gardens and Giants

2011-07-06T17:15:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, May 18
     Sheffield Park Gardens is one of many parks held by the National Trust, similar to National Parks in the United States. Originally the gardens were part of the Sheffield estate. Today the manor house at the edge of the gardens is still privately owned, but the grounds have been conveyed to and are maintained by the National Trust. They are open for the public to enjoy. The extensive gardens include an incredible variety of plantings that include hundreds and hundreds of rhododendrons of all shades growing in clusters twenty to thirty feet tall along the banks of four lakes. I was startled to discover giant redwood trees! Here is a fascinating connection between the Sheffield Park Gardens and Calaveras County in California.
     In 1853, William Lobb, a salaried "plant hunter" for the Veitch Nurseries in England, was in San Francisco, California, attending a meeting of the newly formed California Academy of Sciences when the Academy’s founder, Dr. Albert Kellogg, introduced a woodsman who had been hunting in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains for game to supply a canal-digging crew. He had shot and wounded a grizzly bear, and while tracking it had discovered a grove of trees that were enormous beyond all belief. The hunter was astounded, and abandoning his pursuit of the bear hurried back to camp with his tale, where he was derided and even accused of drunkenness when he recounted his experience in the forest of giant trees. Luckily the scientific community proved more liberal-minded, and the crowd at the California Academy of Sciences greeted the specimen produced by Dr. Kellogg with excitement.
     The amazing story filled Lobb with the determination to see the remarkable trees in their native habitat, but his hurried flight to the Sierra foothills was largely fueled by thoughts of riches. He knew these "monster trees" would trigger an equally enormous craze in British horticultural circles, and he was determined to provide the owners of the Veitch Nurseries with the plant material needed to corner the market.
     Reaching the grove in Calaveras County, he collected seed, shoots, and seedlings. In fewer than two years’ time these would give rise to thousands of saplings, snatched up by wealthy Victorians to adorn great British estates. The larger-than-life conifer, so symbolic of the vast American wilderness, suddenly became a status symbol, rising boldly from expensive and highly groomed landscapes an ocean away.

In England it was proposed to name the newly discovered species "Wellingtonia" in honor of the Duke of Wellington who had died recently. The name was rejected however, when it was determined that there already was a completely unrelated plant that already had that name, and the botanical name of Sequoiadendron Gigantea was assigned to acknowledge the biological connection to the coast redwood, Sequoia Sempervirens. In England, however, these giant redwoods are still referred to as "Wellingtonia", and the specimens in Sheffield Park Gardens, more than 150 years old now have massive trunks almost 40 feet in circumference.

We ate dinner at the Mark Cross Inn in the village of Mark Cross, Crowborough before calling it a full day and heading back to Heathfield.

Chalk Figures, the White Cliffs, and a Stroll at Eastbourne

2011-07-03T13:40:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, May 17

The South Downs National Park, covering 628 square miles and stretching a hundred miles from Beachy Head west all the way to Winchester is England's newest, having been officially opened on April 1, 2011.

From Heathfield we drove to the Cuckmere Valley along country roads. As we approached the ocean I began to notice that most of the stone in the buildings we passed and in the numerous walls along the roads was flint. I picked up a few pieces of flint and put them in my pocket so that I could try making sparks by striking them with a piece of steel.

Driving through the rolling hills near the village of Wilmington we came on an amazing sight, the white chalk figure of a long man over 200 feet tall etched into the green grass slopes of Windover Hill. Although various archeological studies may disagree on its age it surely dates back at least as far as the 1500's.

A few miles farther we spotted another hillside chalk figure, The White Horse of Litlington. This one is relatively recent. Created in the 1920's, it was painted over with green paint during World War II, as was the Long Man, to prevent these landmarks being used as navigation waypoints by German bombers. Both were scrubbed clean again in 1945.

We parked in a public wayside to hike across the across flat land meadows that lie on either side of the winding oxbow Cuckmere River. It was only a mile or two past flocks of sheep grazing in fields of bright yellow buttercups to the shingle beach at the mouth of the river where the waves coming off the English Channel made a faintly rumbling sound as they crashed on the shore. Three sturdy looking stone houses with white walls perched on the cliffs on the right, and off to the left were towering chalk cliffs of "The Seven Sisters", seven headlands in the chalk cliffs which plunge dramatically from high bluffs straight into the sea.

By the time we had returned to the car along the winding banks of the Cuckmere we had worked up quite an appetite. It was only a few minutes drive to the Beachy Head Pub. We ate and sipped a pint by the windows that overlooked the expanse of the Cuckmere Valley and the chalk cliffs all the way to Beachy Head itself.

Comfortably refueled, we proceeded down to the seaside resort town of Eastbourne, where we found blocks and blocks of walkways paralleling the beach. Next to the paths were rows of wrought iron benches, all fully occupied with people, young and old, all bundled against the slightly chilly air, chatting with each other or just sitting and soaking up a bit of welcome afternoon sunshine.

The Eastbourne Pier is a magnificent, anachronistic Victorian construction that juts out nine hundred feet over the grey water. It is everything you would imagine: electronic arcades with strange machines, a tea room, souvenir shops, a restaurant, and a fishing venue at the very end. there were only two hardy fishermen huddled against the wind and hopefully watching their lines, but no evidence of any catch they could take home with them at the end of the day. The west side of the pier buffeted by the gusty winds off the channel was empty but we saw a few people sunning themselves on the other side, sheltered by the buildings that stretched along the center.

Links to Leeds

2011-06-19T23:12:00.000-04:00

Monday, May 16

It is an hour's drive from Heathfield in Sussex to Leeds Castle in Kent. There is an historic connection between Leeds Castle and Virginia. In the 1600's the Culpeper family owned Leeds Castle, and John, the 1st Lord Culpeper was granted all the land bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers in Virginia; more than five million acres of land in in reward for assisting the escape of the Prince of Wales during the English Civil War.

Thomas Fairfax, the 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, and son of Thomas and Catherine Culpeper, was born at Leeds Castle in 1693, and later settled permanently in the Virginia Colony to oversee the Culpeper estates. Virginia's Culpeper County and Fairfax County owe their names to the link to Leeds Castle. In fact there is a commemorative sundial at Leeds Castle telling the time in Belvoir, VA and a corresponding sundial in Belvoir telling the time at Leeds Castle.

The earliest construction of the present castle was begun in the early 1100's, although a manor house occupied the same site as far back as the 9th century. Eventually the castle was bought in 1926 by an Anglo-American woman who became Lady Baillie. In her will she left the castle and grounds to the National Trust, and it was opened to the public in 1976.

We enjoyed the touring the castle, and the grounds and gardens outside the moat. I had fun walking through the maze that was built in 1988 using 2,400 yew trees to form the impenetrable ten foot high walls of the labyrinth.

The Runt-In-Tun and Ashdown Forest

2011-06-19T22:59:00.000-04:00

Sunday, May 15

Hugh preached the Sunday service at a very small church near Heathfield, accompanied by jackdaws chirping in the attic. The sanctuary provides most of the space in the church, with only a tiny room behind the alter and pulpit. There is no "fellowship hall", so after the service everyone simply stayed more or less in place while a few scurried to the tiny other room to prepare trays of tea and cookies, which they call bisquits.

After a pleasant half hour spent sipping and nibbling and chatting the twenty or so people who make up the entire congregation drifted away by twos and threes, and Hugh and Barbara and Jane and I drove a short distance to the "Runt-In-Tun" pub for our main meal of the day. The place was crowded with extended families and friends, infants, toddlers, young adults, middle aged men and women, and a few 90 year olds, everyone happily chatting, eating, and drinking.

After a big meal a walk seemed like just the thing. A short drive took us to the public paths of Ashdown Forest. Actually there is very little forest. Ther is gently rolling countryside with vistas off into the distance. At first I thought that the hills were covered with green grass, but as we walked along the wide path I realized that I was looking at fields of low growing ferns. In some places there were low patches of heather and and the prickly gorse that always seems to grow in the same places. There were a few sprinkles of light intermittent rain - the first we'd had. In the distance we could see several people riding the trails on horseback. Here and there were wandering clusters of sheep, and several cattle raised their heads to watch as we strolled by.

Burwash and Batemans

2011-06-19T22:48:00.000-04:00

Saturday, May 14

Seven miles east of Heathfield is the village of Burwash, the place where Rudyard Kipling lived for thirty four years at the house he called "Batemans". His widow gave the house and thirty-three acres to the National Trust after Kipling's death in 1936.

We toured the house, built in 1634. It is furnished as it was in the early 1900's when Kipling lived there. The grounds are kept in beautiful condition. Ten foot tall hedges in front are kept trimmed so precisely that they look like solid green walls surrounding grass that looks smooth enough to be a putting green.

A formal walk at the back of the house leads past a large, shallow rectangular pond where bright orange goldfish swim in lazy random patterns. The surface of the water reflects nearby trees and the brilliant yellow and deep blue iris that grow along its edges.

Passing through a wrought iron gate in the stone wall at the back of the garden, the path follows the bank of a meandering stream a short distance, crosses a wooden footbridge, and ends at an old gristmill that is also part of the property.

The mill pond and the mill are kept in working order and operated by volunteers, and as we approached we could hear the water splashing onto the mill wheel, which squeaked faintly as it slowly rotated, and the rhythmic rumbling of the wooden gears inside, turning the big stone wheels of the mill. There was a steady quick-marching cadence clack-clacking coming from the second floor as we entered. That turned out to be wooden cams on the drive shaft that operated a lever designed to vibrate the screen where the corn was placed, shaking the individual kernels through and down between the mill wheels at just the right amount to keep everything grinding at the right speed.

The afternoon was cool and sunny, but pleasant enough that we enjoyed hiking several miles through buttercup-filled meadows near Heathfield.

England - 2011 - the video

2011-06-01T20:50:00.001-04:00

May 9th - May 24th, 2011

...a visit to East Sussex and Kent, SE of London, and a drive to Cornwall in the far SW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98K8Yte_rzw

England Trip Friday the 13th - Rye, Icklsham, Hastings

2011-05-16T04:20:00.003-04:00

Friday, May 13

It has been a lucky day. Once again the weather is clear and sunny with just a couple of small fluffy low floating cotton ball cumulus clouds to punctuate the blue skies. A leisurely breakfast overlooking the garden, and then off down winding roads of Sussex, stopping first at the waterside town of Rye. Its residents were known in the past as fishermen with a talent for smuggling on the side.

In the heart of town bumpy narrow cobblestone streets wind uphill from the old harbor. Many of the old houses are half timbered structures, the gaps between filled with wattle-and-daub covered with plaster and whitewash. At the roof peak of an old pub I see 1762 carved into the beam. Another building has a small plaque reading "rebuilt in 1686". Opposite the Mermaid Pub is a house named "The House Opposite". A block over the street running down the hill is just as narrow, lined with shops and houses just as old, but somehow looking more modern with its asphalt pavement.

The old harbor, really nothing more than bulkheads on either side of a small river no more than sixty feet wide is no longer a point of commerce. Slightly frumpy looking round bottom boats pleasure boats or those with retractable centerboards sit in the mud twenty feet below the quay waiting for the incoming tide to float them again. The active harbor is about three miles downstream where the water is consistently a bit deeper and the river a bit wider.

A short drive from Rye is the town of Iklesham overlooking soft green fields that roll down to the sea. Hidden from the main road, down a side street at the edge of town is "The Queen's Head", an old English Pub built in the early 15th Century. Dryed hops hang in bunches from old hand hewn beams that angle up to a peaked ceiling. An old bar angles across one corner of the main room, and bulls-eye windows transmit a distorted view of the world outside. We step down into a smaller side room where small dark oak beams support a low flat ceiling and take a table next to a wide fireplace. Each of us orders a different mid day dinner from the menu and a pint of nice dark ale to wash it down.

It is another short drive from Iklesham to the town of Hastings. There is still an active fishing fleet here, the only place in England where the clinker-built lapstrake round bottomed boats run directly up onto the gravel beach instead of docking. All was calm on the waterfront today, but when the surf is up it must be cause for considerable tension as each boat runs toward the beach, maintaining enough speed so that the waves will not swing the stern around, resulting in swamping or capsizing. As the bow crunches onto the gravel strand a crewman leaps off the bow with a line that is attached quickly to a cable that leads to the winch that will complete the landing. In order to launch again, a bulldozer with a special padded blade will push against the bow until the boat is re-floated.

A multitude of narrow black net drying houses perhaps twelve feet on a side and two stories tall crowd close together along the beach. There is room for a single road along the beachfront, and directly behind that eroded sandstone cliffs rise up sharply. A steep funicular railway car climbs at a forty-five degree angle up to the top of the cliff, balanced by a second car on the way down. At the top, a broad grassy ridge provides a sweeping view of the coastline to the west, past Bexhill and Eastbourne all the way to the silhouette promontory of Beachy Head jutting out into the English Channel.

Our mid-day meal had been so filling that this evening we skipped a regular dinner, opting instead for tea and a raspberry dessert.

England Trip - Jet Lag, a Steam Train, Bodiam Castle

2011-05-13T13:06:00.002-04:00

Wednesday, May 8

I had staggered off to bed at 9:30 p.m. and fallen asleep right away. After about four hours, my body and brain, acting in concert said," OK, you've had a nice, long nap, and it's time to wake up!" Unfortunately, my half-open scratchy eyeballs confirmed that it was only 1:30 a.m. in Heathfield. I lay awake for some time, lying in bed and looking out the window at the setting first-quarter moon. I finally drifted off again, waking to the coo-COO-coo, co-COO-coo of wood pigeons in the tree outside the window.

After a leisurely breakfast the four of us climbed into the Vauxhall, a medium size British car made by Ford, and with Hugh navigating we set off for the town of Tenterden and a rendezvous with the Kent and East Sussex Railway. Partly funded by The National Trust's lottery dollars, and manned by a multitude of volunteers, a ten and a half mile section of old branch railway has been restored to working condition, complete with a large collection of steam and diesel engines, a variety of passenger cars, village stations, switches, and road crossings.

Nine vintage passenger cars were already hooked to the coal-fired steam engine which sat on the station tracks, softly hissing its steamy breath into the cool morning air. The stubby little locomotive getting ready for the day's work was an American made switch-yard engine, shipped to England in 1943for duty moving strategic materials and supplies during World War II.

We found seats facing each other across a table in one of the cars. The steam whistle gave high-pitched too-whoot, and with a surprisingly soft huff-chuff, huff-chuff and scarcely a lurch, the train glided out of the station.

The scenery was pastoral, the tracks at some points being bounded by willows and in others opening to vistas of fields with silly sheep, some of which stood gazing at the passing train while others bolted in panic from the mechanical monster that seemed to be pursuing them.

The track wound alongside a shallow, flat valley that showed evidence of being channeled long ago in parallel water-filled ditches where reeds were cultivated for use in thatching the roofs of houses. In other places there were expanses of flat flooded areas where we saw ducks and gracefully elegant swans paddling about. In fields that were dryer we frequently spotted brilliantly colored male pheasants strutting about, keeping watchful eyes on their drab mates.

There were green fields, highlighted with patches of yellow buttercups, and fields with acres of brilliant yellow mustard flowers, and off in the distance on the low rolling hills on the far side of the valley vast sky-colored slopes covered with blue flax.

Not being a trunk line railroad, each time we came to a road the train slowed and stopped, the way barred by a gate. The train man would hop out, trot over to the gate, wait until there was a break in the stream of passing cars and trucks, and then swing the gate across the road, opening the way for the train to pass through the intersection. Once across, the train would stop again and the process reversed, the train man opening the road to vehicular traffic while closing the gates across the train tracks. Boarding again, and with another shrill too-whoot!, we would be off again.

A forty-five minute ride through the countryside found us leaving Kent and back in East Sussex, pulling in to the Bodiam train station. We walked down the platform to watch the engine disconnect, back up a ways, and then switch to a parallel track to move forward again, pass the standing rail cars, switch once again and re-attach to the opposite end of the train for the return trip to Tenterden.

Only about four hundred yards away down a narrow, high-crowned road and across a small bridge we saw the towers and ramparts of Bodiam Castle casting reflections of themselves in the wide surrounding moat. A short walk, and soon we were crossing the bridge over the moat, passing under the massive portcullis and into the open grassy center of the castle. Now mostly roofless and floorless, with some walls crumbling, Bodiam Castle was built in 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, characterized as "a soldier of fortune".

We spent several hours exploring the ruins. We scrambled into small outer defensive rooms with narrow slots for firing arrows. We wound our way up high, steep tower staircases that all spiraled to the right, designed to prevent invaders from drawing swords as they might make their way upward. We looked out across the green valley from the highest ramparts, trying to imagine what it must have been like to live here in a castle in the twelfth century or in a thatched hut in 500 B.C. when people were already here.

England Trip - Gatwick, English Roads, Heathfield

2011-05-11T16:24:00.002-04:00

Tuesday, May 10

The Sun has already jumped up from the eastern horizon, although my watch, still on Virginia time indicates that it is not yet 1:00 a.m. The cabin light comes on, and people stir and stretch, seeking relief from the cramped contortions of semi-sleep that afflicts most overnight air travelers. The flock of flight attendants emerge from their hidden nests, pushing carts of juice and coffee down the aisles.

By the time we have nibbled our way through mini-muffins with egg, a small banana, and a cup of some strange fluid masquerading as orange juice, we are over land. The random shapes of the fields below, sharply delineated by hedgerows, look almost like stained glass, done all in brilliant green. The pitch of the engines changes subtly and the ground begins to creep nearer as we begin the long glide to Gatwick.

As we exit from the long lines of the immigration and passport checks Hugh and Barbara are waiting for us with smiles and hugs, and the intervening five years since we've last seen them evaporate like mist under a warm Sun.

It doesn't take a lot of mental adjustment to accommodate to hurtling down the left multiple lanes of traffic on the M23 Motorway south, but Hugh soon exits onto one of the A roads, heading south and east toward their home in Heathfield. The motorways in England are similar to U.S. interstate highways, with broad multiple lanes. The main thoroughfares, all prefixed with the letter A before the route number are a different matter. All the A roads we've experienced so far are sinuous, with narrow lanes. There seem to be no road shoulders, and trees and bushes crowd to the very edges of the pavement. Speeding cars and trucks break off any encroaching young shoots, trimming the vegetation into perfect vertical walls that frequently make right angle bends at truck-top height to form dark green tunnels. Neither do there seem to be many restrictions on parking, and where roads pass through villages and towns there are often places where parked cars reduce the width of the road to somewhat less than one and a half lanes. It becomes a test of driving skill and bravery to determine whether you shall brake for the oncoming car or speed toward the single lane opening with hope that you will be able to cut back into your own lane before you have a head-on collision. Roads with a B designation are like the A roads, except that they are generally narrower, with perhaps more twists and turns. Of course there are more of these than A roads.

We arrive in Heathfield unscathed, and after being shown around Hugh and Barbara's beautiful house and spectacular garden, are invited to take a walk in the nearby woods. There are miles of woodlands within a few hundred yards of the house, and we quickly leave the bright sunshine behind, immersed in that wonderful slightly yellowish Spring green of newly leafed forest.

The breezes that dance through the treetops continuously open and close gaps in the overhead canopy, sending bright shafts of sunlight down toward the forest floor, spotlighting crowds of bluebells. Misty the dog is delighted to run free, hurrying ahead to investigate wondrous odors that our less sensitive nostrils cannot detect. There is no underbrush, and one can almost imagine long ago bowmen walking stealthily among the old tree trunks, stalking a deer.

We wander for awhile through open farm fields that stretch in rolling grassy folds off to the village of Mayfield a few miles distant, then plunge back into the cool liquid green of the woods. A short distance downhill we come to a steep embankment. We climb the few yards to the top, and are standing on the bed of an old branch railroad that was closed and stripped of rails and cross-ties almost 50 years ago. Following the railbed for a way we come to an old arched brick bridge that once carried a road across the tracks below. We scramble up the slope, cross the bridge, and head back to the house as the sun slides toward the western horizon.

The back of the house has large windows facing almost due west, look out over a green wooded valley and more distant fields all the way to the horizon. The evening is cloudless, and we stand on the back porch watching as the Sun, now orange and fading, touches the horizon and seems to sag, melting itself into a stair-stepped rounded pyramid, then shrinking to a red mound and finally a glowing sliver before sinking out of sight. We stay for a few minutes more, watching the shadow of the Earth begin to creep up the misty atmosphere toward night.

England Trip - Enroute

2011-05-11T16:23:00.003-04:00

Monday, May 9

Hartsfield Airport, Atlanta is a city unto itself, figuratively if not literally. Its Concourses A through E analogous to busy streets, with shops, restaurants, and news stands lining the sides, scurrying pedestrians crowding the thoroughfares, all of them intent on getting to somewhere else as quickly as possible.
Boarding the big Boeing 767 that will carry us across the ocean, we shuffle slow-motion down the long narrow aisles and install ourselves in the small spaces where we'll spend the next nine hours.

I love the beginning of any flight. Rolling down the taxiway, watching other planes ahead, the glimpse down the length of the runway as the pilot swings the plane into position for takeoff. I like the sounds, the mechanical whir as the flaps are extended, and the whistling, wailing sound of the engine turbines climbing through octaves toward full power. The best part is the moment when the brakes are released and the aircraft surges forward, accelerating down the runway, watching the nose lift in the moment before the sudden surge at the instant the wheels leave the ground and we leap into the air, watching in fascination as the ground falls away.

Our flight path takes us northeast across corners of Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. By the time we are winging across Vermont and New Hampshire the sun, falling toward the western horizon bounces firey orange sunglint up toward us from lakes and rivers far below. At 35,000 feet the sky is always clear, with delicate gradations of color for sunset that fade rapidly as we race on eastward.

As we fly across the Atlantic we will pass through five time zones, and although we will land at London's Gatwick airport around 7:30 in the morning in England, our internal clocks will still think it is only 2:30 a.m.

Although this great circle route doesn't take us near Greenland or Iceland, there are some observable indications that we are flying a northerly path. I look at my watch, which tells me it's midnight, although the plane is rumbling on through some more easterly time zone, and already there is a ember-red glow in the north east as if that whole quadrant of the horizon was awaiting some celestial wind to fan it into flames. Craning my neck and spreading my hands to block the reflections of lights inside the airplane I can just make out the lopsided W shape of Cassiopeia, it's center point aiming vaguely in the direction of Polaris. By contorting a bit more I can just barely see it at the upper edge of the window high above the tip of the wing.

As we float eastward at almost 600 mph the sky continues its evolving light show, an infinitely delicate gradation of color from melted-glass orange though daffodil yellow and even a faint spring leaf green to robin's egg blue, mauve, and finally a rich purple high up.

Long before the Sun actually puts in an appearance the scattered light begins to reveal a vast expanse of faintly pink cotton-ball clouds stretched out below us, showing subtle variations in local wind currents that create swirls and eddies in the overall texture of the cloud layer.

Ode to ALSEP

2011-04-16T17:27:00.000-04:00

Today is April 16th. 2011. In this day in 1972 a 36 story tall Saturn V rocket carrying John Young, Ken Mattingly, and Charlie Duke lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bound for the moon on the Apollo 16 Mission that would see two astronauts land in the lunar highlands of Descartes.
The astronauts brought with them a number of Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages (ALSEP), powered by radio-isotope thermoelectric generators, designed to continue gathering data on seismic activity, the solar wind, the amount of heat flowing out of the moon's interior, and relay that data to scientists on Earth. Although still fully functional, all of the ALSEP equipment was shut down by remote control from Earth in 1977 when the program ran out of funds to receive and process the data.

Here is a poem I wrote in remembrance of the ALSEP.

ODE TO ALSEP

With all the world waiting
We turned our eyes skyward.
Remember that day when we all looked through
Our electric windows on the universe,
Seeing old spheres from a new point of view?

Three times again, and again, and again,
Descending on dancing flames,
They scurried, slow-motion, through ancient dust
Who still now remembers their names?

They did the unthinkable, achieved the impossible,
Went where none had preceded, and more.
"Ho-hum! ...another launch, you say?
Is football on Channel Four?"

Mechanical colonists left behind
When we blasted back home in our ships
Drew life in their bellies from shattering atoms,
Energizing electronic chips.

They sensed the heat of ancient fires,
Moon-embers, banked deep inside.
They felt the star-bits streaming,
And the rumbling silent tide.

ALSEP voices, talking to Earth
In chattering bits and bytes
Sent their colonial treasures back
Through the lunar days and nights.

They measured the limb-shocked solar winds,
Changing the charges in sputtered lands,
And vibrating signals crossed the void,
Twitching inked fingers on metal hands.

The footprints and tire-tracks, unchanging, remain.
Like paths to the future, they glisten.
Solipsistic sentinels converse with themselves,
But there's nobody left who can listen.

A Trip to Tromso - 17 minute video

2011-01-24T09:56:00.000-05:00

...a 17 minute video summary of the trip to northern Norway, January 6th - January 18th, 2011
Click here

Green Ghosts - The Aurora from Tromsø, Norway

2011-01-13T04:41:00.004-05:00

It's 11 p.m., and Marit's son Hronn bursts into the living room where we are all sitting around talking and drinking, with "have you decided not to watch the aurora tonight?"

Within seconds everyone is in the entry hall throwing on jackets, slipping stocking feet into boots that are only partly laced and tied off so that they can be put on with firefighter speed. We hurry out into the dry, cold night air, fumbling with gloves, stocking caps, and hoods. The thermometer reads -11 degrees, but that's Celcius. The "real" temperature is 12 degrees Fahrenheit, and you can feel the outer edges of your nostrils getting crinkly.

The sky is a very dark blue-black except over the island of Tromsø where a few low-lying clouds are reflecting back the orange glow of the lights of the town. Extending from behind the sharp ridge of Storstein that rises sharply behind the last row of houses and across the entire span of sky, is a ghostly, faintly glowing greenish band that looks at first like the disappearing remnants of a contrail left in the wake of a long-gone jet plane. Perhaps it is a high, thin, ice crystal cirrus cloud that marks the outer edge of an approaching low pressure system, glowing the light of the nearby first quarter moon, but as we lift our chins high the cloud begins to glow a bit brighter along the middle. It seems to be gathering itself inward, a gradual metamorphosis into a long, sinuous, ropey looking worm of a shape that begins to writhe, leisurely developing bends as if it were trying to slither across the sky.

Farther north, up the sound, another greenish cloud fades into visibility, this one like green grassy filaments spread out and stretched off into the distance in the southwest, more or less parallel to the now slowly wavering line.

We keep looking back and forth across the bowl of the sky, for the horizon to horizon display is too wide to take in all at once. The green ribbon brightens some more over the town of Tromsø while its other end fades almost to invisibility over the mountain ridge. Vertical streaks gradually appear beneath it until it looks like a diaphanous curtain trailing down from the sky, and it begins to move, visibly rippling along its length as if it were being moved by an ethereal breeze.

In truth, this is exactly what is happening. The Sun continuously ejects tons of ripped apart atoms, protons and electrons away from its surface at more than a million miles per hour. At that rate it takes this electrically charged plasma about three and a half days to get to the Earth. Encountering the powerful magnetic field surrounding our planet, most of it is bent right around the Earth and passes harmlessly on into interplanetary space. Some of those electrically charged particles, caught in the Earth's magnetic field, move rapidly toward the north or south magnetic poles. Colliding with the tenuous upper atmosphere, they make the air molecules glow, somewhat similar to the process inside a fluorescent light.

Proximity to the Sun has no particular effect on whether or not the solar wind generates aurora. The Earth reached perihelion, only about 91,400,000 miles from the Sun just a few days ago. The main factor is solar activity. When the Sun belches out large amounts of ionized gas or there is an ejection of plasma from the corona of the Sun toward the Earth, it results in spectacular auroral displays about three days later.

Now the vertical streaks, oscillating gently in the solar wind begin to take on subtle pastel shades of yellow and red, scintillating just a bit along their lower edges. Darker vertical sections travel along the softly glowing wall of aurora, looking vaguely like the shadows of people moving behind a back-lit curtain. It doesn't take a vivid imagination to understand why some Inuit people believed that they could see the spirits of their ancestors moving just behind the northern lights.

A few minutes later the curtains of light fade about the same time that the long green tendril of light across the sky starts to brighten. As we watch, it begins to move sinuously, writhing itself into bends, then whorls, in places fading then brightening again, the motion of the curves somehow snake-like.

So entranced and excited we can barely breathe except for guttural gasps and utterances, we stand in the middle of the street, boots squeaking and crunching in the snow as we turn this way and that, trying to take it all in.

The magic light show begins to fade after about twenty minutes, although we are told that sometimes it continues for hours on end. As we troop back into the house for warm drinks we know that we have seen one of the most amazing wonders of the world.

Aurora!

2011-01-08T03:58:00.001-05:00

January 8

We arrived in Oslo a little before noon yesterday (6 am EST), and had a five hour layover before the 5:30 flight to Tromsø. Our friends from Bradenton , FL arrived about 4 (an hour after sunset!), and we made the last flight 90 minute together.

Our Norwegian host Marit and her sister and their sons and wives all met us at the airport with big WELCOME signs, and we went in two cars to Marit's house in Tromsdalen, and as we pulled up in front of the house her son and grandson were waving torches in greeting, and then touching them to fuses, shooting a volley of brightly colored welcoming fireworks into the air! Marit's house is the last house on a street overlooking the harbor....beautiful in the dark with all the Tromsø city lights reflecting on the water.

We were all sitting around in the living room when someone came in with the word that the Aurora were active! Of course we all threw on coats, slipped back into shoes (since you remove your shoes at the door when you come in) and hurried out onto the porch. The aurora were indeed putting on a show;it looked like delicate blue-green curtains hanging from the sky, sinuously billowing, slow-motion in the wind. Constantly moving, brightening, fading away, reappearing close by or some distance away, they entertained us and totally entranced us for perhaps 5-10 minutes, and then became fainter and stopped altogether. What a literally awesome display!

We sat around talking until almost 1 am. The house is very warm, but the bedrooms are kept at only about 50 degrees, so the fluffy douvet covers on the bed were welcome, if icy when first slipping in. By the middle of the night they retained so much body heat that I actually wished that the bedroom itself was colder! I slept soundly until about 7:30 this morning, and now at 8:30 I'm the first one up, sitting again in the living room enjoying the lights on the waters of the harbor below. So far, I'm the only one awake.

I'm told that much closer to noon the sky does lighten a bit, but of course the sun will not rise above the horizon here until late February.
The sky began to get a lot lighter by 9:30, eventually looking like the sun was about to come up in the southeast by noon. The rest of the group was all up by 11:00 am, and Marit put out a big spread of many diffferent kinds of lunch meat that included reindeer salami, flatbread, scrambled eggs, herring, pickled beets, orange juice, coffee, and we all sat around the table for over an hour, just talking. I can tell already that it going to be difficult not to eat too much while we're here!

Shortly after noon the sky was as bright as it gets, a dark twilight gray, and five of us piled in Marit's car, a Skoda built in Czech Republic, and headed to Sentrum, the town center. Bundled in heavy coats and gloves we were well insulated. We parked nearby, since only pedestrian traffic is allowed. Crowds of strolling shoppers picked their way cautiously along icy sidewalks under festoons of Christmas lights and red lanterns criss crossing the crowded streets, looking for post-Christmas bargains in the brightly lit shops in the quickly fading light. Near the waterfront we stopped for drinks in a cafe where customers were enjoying the flames of the fireplace as much as the warmth of companionship. By 2:30 in the afternoon night had returned.

By dinner time, Marit's house was full of people. Counting sisters and sons, wives, girlfriends, grandchildren, and guests there were an even dozen at the table for dinner, three huge pans of home cooked pizza.

At 8 in the evening Marit's sister who lives just down the street, called with an aurora alert, and the seven of us remaing in the house hurried to the entry hall, throwing on heavy coats and slipping into boots in a drill that must have resembled the rush of firemen answering the call to a four alarm fire.

Tonight's display was fainter than the previous night, this time a single narrow band stretching across the whole sky from the crest of the steep mountain ridge behind the house across the harbor and disappearing below the opposite horizon ridge line of the island in the west beyond Tromso. We stood outside for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for it to brighten or show some movement like the dancing aurora of the night before, but eventually they simply faded away.

Transatlantic Travel

2011-01-08T03:24:00.000-05:00

10:15 pm EST and we've been airborne for 5 hours, which means we're traveling at about 500 mph somewhere over the Atlantic northeast of Newfoundland with another 2,000 miles to go and 4 hours to touch down in Amsterdam. It's 70 degrees below zero outside. This A330 Airbus is a wide body jet with 2-4-2 seating, which means that there are about 250 people aboard. We'll land at 8:00 am local time dragging groggy bodies, still believing that it's only 2:00 am!

Each seat back has its own interactive TV screen, with an extractable armrest controller that allows the selection of perhaps 25 different movies in sevderal languages, an active map that keeps track of aircraft progress or lets you roam the planet. There are 6 different music channels, a number of video games, information in English, French, German, Chinese, and Japanese, and the ability to send email at $2.50 per message.

Even with all the selection, the man across the aisle is watching a different movie on the tiny screen of his Ipod. People are sprawled in an amazing variety of contorted positions, trying to fit tired bodies into small, cramped spaces.

Unlike domestic flights, transoceanic Delta flights offer a very nice dinner service with chicken, pasta, mixed vegetables, crackers, cheese, choice of red or white wine or beer, and a fudge brownie for dessert. An hour out, the lights brighten, and the flight attendants bring around breakfast of an egg mcmuffin and coffee.

It's a few minutes after 8:00 am when we land at Schiphol Airport, the sky is still totally dark, not even a pre-dawn glow. Amsterdam is about fifteen degrees farther north than Richmond, Virginia where the sun rose yesterday at 7:25 a.m. In Amsterdam the sun rose today at 8:45. Although the local clocks are reading 9:30 am now, it's still only 3:30 a.m. in Richmond, and without much sleep, today we'll be tired early! Our KLM flight leaves in an hour. Next stop: Oslo, Norway.

Oslo ...a five hour layover. The airplane flaps extend with a whine, signaling our final approach to the Oslo airport. On the ground the air temperature is 10 degrees, and as we float down toward the runway we can see that the undulating countryside is white. Smooth snow lies on the ground, blurring the boundaries between land and lake. Smooth snow lies on evergreens crowded shoulder to shoulder off into the distance, each branch bearing a load like white cotton, giving the appearance of a stylized Christmas card. Smooth snow spreads like cake icing over every roof, turning houses into models of Kincaid paintings, tendrils of smoke climbing into the still air. A ten foot deep layer of dense white frosty fog has settled in low lying hollows, sliding and curling around and over fields, trees, and houses, giving the whole scene an other-worldly feel.

It's just past noon when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky for the day and starts its descent toward another long night. At midday the angle of the sun makes it feel more like a late Richmond afternoon. Sunset here today is at 3:30 p.m. and it won't rise again tomorrow morning until 9:15.

Warm River Cave - an old story

2010-12-23T17:14:00.001-05:00

...from long ago and not so far away....

A few miles north of Covington, Virginia just off State Route 220 lies the entrance to an alien world visited in winter by Richmond area educators on a teacher adventure sponsored by the Mathematics and Science Center. Our field trip leader, a science teacher in Hanover County, had gotten permission for access to the cave, which is on private property.

We drove off the main highway only a few hundred yards. There we parked the van that had brought us from Tawny's Cave near Blacksburg where we had explored the day before. On the slope of a hill near the road there was a misty cloud floating up from the ground into the cold December air. The temperature was only in the 20's so we bundled up carefully before getting out. We walked toward the rising column of steam and discovered a pit with sheer sides about eight feet deep.

After receiving instruction from our leader we free-climbed down the rock walls of the pit clinging to small jagged toe holds and jamming fingers into small cracks in the frozen rock being cautious not to step on any icy spots. At the bottom of the hole there was a wall of steamy air, and as we stepped through it into the entrance room of Warm River Cave all of a sudden we were out of the cold. It was warm!

The day before we had left Richmond early in the morning and had spent most of the day exploring Tawny's Cave. Just off the road to Mountain Lake, Tawny's is a cave that very likely matches your mental image of the way a cave SHOULD look, complete with sinuous interconnected passages, stalactites, drip stone formations and even a few bats hanging from the ceiling.

Warm River Cave is very different. It is a limestone cave but it doesn't' have many stalactites or stalagmites. Instead it consists mainly of "breakdown". Water flowing underground has carved away so much rock that the whole inside of the mountain appears to have caved in on itself. The huge jagged boulders dropped down in tumbled confusion, leaving lots of space to crawl between the rocks. It was like climbing through the spaces in a jumbled pile of building blocks.

We left a change of clothing in the entrance room and began to climb down and down and down, ever deeper, sometimes squeezing through openings so small that we had to hump through them stretched out flat like caterpillars, scraping rock a little on all sides.

Before long we came to an eerie part of the inside of the mountain where the entire rock structure of the mountain had dropped a short distance without breaking. Imagine a crack three and a half feet wide, tipped at an angle of forty-five degrees, stretching up past your head for fifty to a hundred feet, and just below your heels jammed onto a three-inch ledge slanting down, down, down, out of sight beyond the reach of your helmet-mounted light. It was like a mountain within the mountain. It stretched off into the distance below me and as far to the left as I could see in the dim light of our headlamps. It was spooky, but exciting!

We wedged our way sideways across this subterranean rockfall for a least another ten minutes before reaching another area of tumbled breakdown where we could continue our descent. Now whenever we stopped to catch our breaths, we could hear the murmur of water rushing across rocks somewhere still deeper ahead of us.

A few more minutes of scrambling and sliding down over rocks brought us to an underground stream five feet wide and a foot or two deep, its rushing waters plunging off downhill into the blackness. There was enough space to climb along the tumbled rocks at the edge of the water for another hundred yards before we came to a spot where it was evident that two underground streams joined each other. A cold stream welled up from under some rocks to the left, and was joined by a smaller stream rushing out of a low passage to the right. It was obvious that if we wanted to go any farther, not only would we have to crawl, we would have to crawl IN the water! The water felt just slightly cool to us as we got down gingerly on hands and knees, but within seconds it felt comfortable. It must have been at least 70 degrees!

For the next two hours we were rarely off our hands and knees, and that was usually to drop to our bellies to pull ourselves along in the water with forearms, elbows, and toes as if we had been attempting to bypass an enemy outpost in some jungle war-movie!

In a few places the roof of the passageway dropped so low that we had to take off our helmets and float through narrow openings on our backs, noses a half-inch above the surface of the water and an inch from the roof, rocks pressing in to within inches of our cheekbones. In one place, not even that technique would work. We had to submerge to get under the rock that just barely cleared the surface of the water in order to be able to continue on the other side. It was challenging!

Occasionally we would come to small rooms or the passageway would open out wider, providing enough headroom to stand up and walk, splashing along in the streambed for a hundred feet or so. More than once in these rooms we could see other passageways leading off in different directions higher up. The cave evidently has many different levels.

Finally we came to a larger room with flow stone cascading in petrified falls down the walls. There were beautiful shallow rimstone pools here, with chuckling four-inch waterfalls. Off to the right side of the room was a deep pool of water. Shining our lights into the pool we could see it slanting back steeply under the rock wall forty or more feet deep, crystal clear and beautiful sky blue, to a point where we could see no farther. This was one of the warm spring sources of the underground stream that we had been following.

Far back into the mountain, we came to a larger chamber that had steep, slippery clay banks slanting up out of the water thirty feet or more. Like children, or uninhibited otters, we spent the next half hour scrambling up the incline to take turns slithering back down our improvised mudslide into the warm, muddy water, while the passageways of the cave echoed back our whoops, shouts, and laughter.

Traveling back through the water-filled passageway was easy: the hard part was the long climb back up to the surface over cold rocks, in air that felt even cooler on our wet clothes. As we climbed out of the pit into a fierce snowstorm and raced for the warmth of the vans, we knew we'd had a real adventure!

Modern Cities You've Never Thought Of

2010-11-30T21:09:00.000-05:00

I've stopped to spend a leisurely hour in the city of Hartsfield. Sitting beside one of the major thoroughfares, I'm watching the heavy traffic flowing in both directions, and speculating on the origins and destinations of all the other travelers passing through.

You won't find the city of Hartsfield designated as such on any map of Georgia, although its average population must make it one of the larger cities in the state. The climate is remarkably even, varying little from an ideal 70 degrees , summer or winter, year around.

Hartsfield is a futuristic city. Conventional cars must be left in parking lots on the outskirts of the city. A robotic rapid transit subway system whisks commuters between the business areas of the city, and a woman's soft computerized voice announces each station stop. The few vehicles you see here are electric powered, and are reserved only for those who are unable to walk easily. Virtually all of the traffic within the city limits is pedestrian.

The entire population of this city has arrived recently, actually within the last few hours, and although I'm told that the number of people here at times exceeds fifty thousand, no one stays long. There are no residences here, and workers leave at the end of their shifts to travel to bedroom communities located in Atlanta or other nearby towns within easy driving distance. Hartsfield, with its totally transient population is indeed a city of the future, complete with its own roads, shopping malls, fire department, police force, and city administration.

This is a new kind of city, having come into existence only within the past couple of decades, taking its place along with the other great unmapped cities of its kind like O'Hare in Illinois, Dulles in Virginia, Heathrow in England, and Le Bourget in France.

Like the traffic in more conventional cities, the volume of traffic in the city of Hartsfield ebbs and flows fitfully, punctuated by the low rumbling roar of jet engines in the background. Fascinating as it is, everyone seems anxious to leave, stopping in clusters to scan with furrowed brows the rows of digital data on banks of computer screens that display a continuously changing list of arrivals and departures.

Somewhere far off to the south, a couple of weeks walk, many hours of driving, or an hour and twenty minutes by plane, other intent eyes are scanning digital data on other banks of computer screens, all of them focused on the departure of a single flying machine now scheduled to leave on Dec. 17 at 8:51 p.m. EST. That is the tentative targeted time when space shuttle Discovery will leap for the last time from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I'll be watching.

A faceless voice is announcing my own departure from this strange city. It's time to grab my possessions and to join the others crowding to leave Hartsfield International Airport. I know that I'll be back. Even though I wouldn't want to live here, it's a great place to visit!

Latitude Lassitude

2010-11-12T23:39:00.000-05:00

What can you say about an interstate highway...any interstate highway? Basically they all look the same, with minor variations. They are the cement incarnation of a Phillip Glass symphony...seemingly endless repetitions of the same theme, gradually, very gradually evolving from one thing into something else. The music changes with the surface underneath the tires; whispering over smooth asphalt, humming over longitudinal highway grooving, whining over transverse grooves, the tarmac tympani changing the beat from thump-a-thump, thump-a-thump to kathunkety-thunk, kathunkty-thunk as the spacing between the expansion joints changes.

The vegetation gradually changes size, type, texture, tint. The trees seem to observe the state borders. Cruising down Interstate 95, soon after we cross into North Carolina we begin to spot the wispy gray beards of Spanish Moss hanging from tree branches. As we near the the lower side of South Carolina, very close to the Georgia state line we spot the first palmetto trees, and leave the predominant oaks, maples, and sycamores behind.

The colors of the highway change too as we travel, sometimes dark and smooth, then dark with millions of sparkling mica facets that catch and reflect the sunlight, paving the highway with countless diamonds. In parts of Virginia the highways have a distinct greenish tinge from the Catoctin Greenstone gravel that goes into the cement mix, but in Florida the cement pavement of I-95 South is glaring white like the low white sand dunes we see as we turn east off the Interstate toward Cocoa Beach.

Perhaps the most magical change is the air itself. Tropical air is sensuous. Why is that? Surely not just the varying amount of moisture in the atmosphere, since that fluctuates seasonally in Richmond from dry to saturated, and it never feels like Florida. I think that it must be the unique combination of ocean salt in the air and the vegetation. Indian River grass washed up and decaying on sandy western shores, sawgrass, palmetto, swamp-smells blended with hints of flowers and the warm moist air all blend in a heady recipe that seeps into your lungs to work its spell. A few deep breaths and you want to get rid of shoes and wiggle toes in white sand, rub pungent coconut oil on your skin, lie in the sun or sprawl on warm sand. The resulting change of attitude might be blamed on latitude. It isn't exactly ennui, but gone are any plans that involve hurrying. Fading fast is any kind of planning at all. Normally get up at 6:30 or 7:00? Try 8:00 or even 9:00 without a twinge of regret! Thought you might go fishing or paddle a kayak on the Indian River in the morning? Why rush? The river will still be there this afternoon, or tomorrow, for that matter. A few insidious thoughts creep in that you should be doing something, but hey!....sitting and watching a snowy egret stealthily hunting breakfast, or taking note of the changing shapes, colors, and textures of the clouds overhead or watching distant sailboats scurrying south along the Intra-Coastal Waterway...well, those are doing something!

On the Road Again

2010-10-29T22:12:00.000-04:00

     Failure to launch! We had not yet left Richmond today when a friend in Florida called, saying that he had just heard that the Shuttle launch had been pushed back from Monday afternoon for at least 24 hours while maintenance crews search for and repair nitrogen and helium leaks in the port-side Orbital Maneuvering System on Shuttle Discovery. We'll continue on schedule our trip to Florida anyway, pleased that we have reservations for multiple nights at the Long Point Campground south of the Kennedy Space Center.
     The day is perfect for cruising the interstate: bright sunshine, cool but not cold, a cloudless sky - except for one tiny spot of white that looks like a hovering UFO. As we roll through southern Virginia approaching the North Carolina border there are lots of cotton fields, millions of dark, dried stalks holding their puffy white harvest up to the Autumn sunshine.
     The traffic is steady but not too heavy, and we see lots of vehicles with Canadian plates on motor homes and trailers...Québécois fleeing from temperatures that are already dipping at night into the 20's, heading for extended stays in Florida.
     The mid-day sunlight illuminates the leaves of trees turning yellow, turning them to glowing gold, shimmering as they flutter in the afternoon breezes. The gusty slipstream that chases tractor trailers makes the long green blades of grass along the roadside ripple in waves, shiny and scintillating, reflecting the sun.
     North Carolina scrolls past the windows, showing off its magnificent treatment of interstate landscaping. Spectacular six-foot-wide alternating strips of red and white flowers near on and off ramps mimic the red and white stripes of the American Flag.
     Signs and billboards along the road clamor for the attention of drivers, each attempting to outdo its competitors with extravagant claims. "35,000 Towels in stock at J&R - Exit 97", "World's Largest Gun Show Next Exit!!!", "See and Do Orlando"!
   Anything that may break through to the jaded senses of drivers, enticing a short stop, is a plus. Although Kenly, NC is over a hundred miles from the ocean, a truck stop within sight of I-95 has erected a towering replica of the real lighthouse at Cape Lookout. Beginning in the middle of the state, over a hundred miles from North Carolina's southern border you begin to see really "kitchy" signs exhorting you to stop at "South of the Border", a complex of arcades, gift shops, rides, and greasy-spoon fast-food enterprises just over the border in South Carolina. A huge slab of a sign bigger than the boxy building beside it shouts, "LARGEST SELECTION OF FIREWORKS ON THE EAST COAST!"

The sun is dipping below an orange horizon as we pull into Santee, South Carolina for some dinner. We'll spend the night here, and continue our slide south in the morning.

The Final Countdown

2010-10-28T20:53:00.000-04:00

The last countdown for Space Shuttle Discovery really began on September 20th when the enormous tracked mobile launch platform lumbered ponderously out of the 52 story tall Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center, carrying Discovery with its big red empty external fuel tank and the solid rocket boosters toward Launch Pad 39A three miles away, a journey accomplished at the speed of a slow stroll.
Now on Thursday evening, October 28th its final liftoff is less than a hundred hours away. The astronaut crew members flew in to the Kennedy Space Center from Houston this afternoon.

Here in Richmond, Virginia we've begun a smaller less complicated countdown with our our shorter, less critical checklists as we load food, clothing, bedding, electronics, entertainment, cellphone and battery chargers and the like aboard our Chinook RV for an ETD of noon on Friday, heading for a geographical rendezvous with Space Shuttle Discovery while it's still fastened securely to the Earth. We'll be watching from the vantage point of Titusville, Florida on Monday at 4:40 p.m.

Rappahannock River Adventure

2010-09-20T20:38:00.000-04:00

September 18th, 2010
We got a late start on Saturday morning, driving the Chinook RV East on I-64, Rt 33 through West Point to Rt 17, and then on smaller roads eastward to Topping, Virginia.
Turning down a dirt road we came to Camp Kekoka on Indian Creek. An all-day music festival was already in progress, but we had come to listen to our neighbor Robbin Thompson play at 3:30.
We strolled down to the dock to look out across the water, searching for Robbin's sailboat "Song Bird". It was nowhere insight, although he had posted on his website that he was looking forward to sailing from his home slip in Jackson Creek near Deltaville to the concert. We wondered if he was still beating north to windward against the strong winds blowing down the Chesapeake Bay.

We bought hot dogs at a vending stand, and as we stood listening to the music and munching on our summertime luncheon, Robbin came up to say hello. He had slept on his boat and had planned to sail up to Indian Creek, but the 30 knot north winds and 4 foot seas had convinced him that driving his car was a more comfortable option!

We moved our folding chairs closer to the performance stage as Robbin's assigned time got close, and enjoyed a full hour of his songs, including "Out on the Chesapeake", and his best-known and most popular composition "Sweet Virginia Breeze"

After the concert we drove back across the high bridge spanning the Rappahannock River to Grey's Point Campground for a sunset paddle in the kayaks, and to spend the night.

September 19
After a leisurely breakfast we packed up and headed north on Rt 3, eventually turning back toward the river and Belle Isle State Park, which preserves over 700 acres of riverfront, marshes, and forest. We put our kayaks in at a sandy bottomed spot on one of the tidal creeks, and explored the marshes for several hours before heading back to Richmond.
Click here for video
A great way to celebrate the last weekend of summer!

Kayaking The Chicahominy

2010-09-03T22:18:00.000-04:00

The Chicahominy River flows roughly northwest to southeast, all of it across the almost-flat coastal plain of Virginia known as "Tidewater". Here, when the tide is ebbing rivers flow toward the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, but as the tide turns and begins to rise, the river currents slow, stop, reverse their direction, and for six hours flow upstream. The river meanders its sinuous course across the coastal plain, mostly shallow and spread out, filling the swampy areas along both sides and providing a rich ecosystem that is difficult for humans to develop. Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes settled along its banks long ago, living in harmony with their surroundings and being supported by the river and marshes. Each tribe still has land along the river.

At its broad mouth, the Chicahominy joins the even wider James River just above Jamestown. Here, on land next to the new Route 5 Bridge, James City County maintains a wonderful park that includes acres of woods, picnic areas, a large grassy field, a boat launch ramp, and lots of camping sites.

As long as you pay attention to whether the tide is flowing in or out, the flat water here is a wonderful, easily accessible place to enjoy a paddle on the river.

Hot Air Ballon Adventure

2010-08-17T11:52:00.000-04:00

In mid-July we went to the Boars' Head Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia with our grand-nephew Alex and my sister-in-law Linda to go hot air ballooning. The rendezvous time was 6:00 a.m., and it was just beginning to get light. The balloon pilot, Mr. Behr has been offering trips from the Boar's Head Inn since 1980. The first thing he did was inflate a 10 inch helium balloon and let it go, watching carefully to see how it rose above the trees, noting that it was moving toward the north. Since a balloon flight always moves with the wind, Mr. Behr states that he has spent the last 30 years of his career not having any idea where he is going!

    Determining that the light breeze and the weather report were both good, he instructed us to walk with him just a short distance to an open area, where he and his assistant unloaded the huge bundle that contained the balloon, and the large basket that all ten passengers would ride in. The balloon was stretched out and attached to the tipped-over basket, and a gasoline-driven high-speed fan was used to blow cold air into the balloon opening to begin the inflation. Once there was adequate space the double propane burners at the top end of the basket frame were turned on, quickly filling the balloon.
     We all scrambled in, and seconds later we drifted slowly into the air accompanied by the loud roar of the propane burners. A few short blasts, and all of a sudden it was totally quiet as we floated across a small lake near the Inn, over a road and an affluent neighborhood out toward wooded countryside.
     The sun was low on the eastern horizon as we sailed along. There was very little sensation of movement. Since the air all around the balloon was moving at the same slow speed as the balloon itself, it felt more as if the balloon was stationary and the ground was somehow scrolling past beneath us.

Video Here

Do you think you'd like to do this too? Investigate here:
www.comeflyinmyballoon.com

A Visit to London

2010-07-07T23:16:00.000-04:00

....Arkansas, that is! It's a two day trip from Richmond, Virginia. The first day of driving follows I-64W to I-81S down through the SW tip of Virginia at Bristol, crossing over into Tennessee, and then West on I-40 about halfway through Tennessee before stopping for the night. The morning of the second day is for completing the long stretch that covers the rest of Tennessee, then across the Mississippi River into Arkansas, through Little Rock in the middle of the state, and on another 80 some odd miles through Russellville on the edge of Lake Dardanelle to the crossroads of London, population just under 1,000 people.
My daughter Lynne and her husband Blake Slater live there, along with grand-daughter Devin, our main reason for going. Lynne is signed up for a week-long, three-unit course that is being given an hour and forty minutes one way drive from home, and we're staying with Devin during the day while Mommy and Daddy are away.
It's summertime, and it's HOT! One way to cool off is for the kids to play in the sprinklers!

Open Reduction Internal Fixation

2009-12-31T15:06:00.002-05:00

This animation is very similar to the surgery Jane had on her shattered left femur. Her incision was on the side instead of the top.

Open Reduction Internal Fixation of Femur Fracture @ Yahoo! Video

2009 in Review

2009-12-22T23:33:00.002-05:00

This is the annual Christmas letter sent out to friends. This year it's been so delayed that if the post office is efficient, the letters we mail will arrive sometime between Christmas and New Years!

Merry Christmas 2009
It’s been a busy grand-parenting year! Our first 2009 trip was a drive to Arkansas in our gas-sipping Honda Insight for a New Years visit with George’s daughter Lynne, her husband Blake, and our granddaughter Devin. We went back again the first two weeks in May to be resident grandparents to Devin while her parents Lynne and Blake celebrated their 20th anniversary with an adventure trip to Costa Rica.
Devin is two years old and so is Kaylee, daughter of my son, Mark. Mark and his family live only an hour away, so several times every month throughout the year we are able to visit and have dinner with Mark, his wife Emmie, and grandchildren Dylan and Kaylee.
In February, after Super Bowl weekend, we decided to escape the icy-cold Virginia weather, and packed up the Chinook RV for a dash to the tropical surroundings of Florida. The trouble with that plan, however, was that the cold front followed us all the way to the Florida Keys, and we discovered that while we were dealing with Florida temperatures in the 30’s, in Virginia it had climbed back up to the 50’s! Still, we enjoyed some wonderful bird watching in the Florida Everglades.
In March I dug a monster hole almost six feet deep in the front yard to uncover a break in the water line. We spent a chilly week with friends and family at Emerald Isle beach in North Carolina, enjoying walks on the beach and playing lots of music together in the evenings with harp, recorders, tin whistle, autoharp, banjo ukulele, and hammered dulcimer.
Jane’s artificial knees, put in five years ago, are doing well. After training, she felt strong enough to join me in the annual Monument Avenue 10k, along with almost 33,000 other walkers and runners. Jane walked, I ran; we both finished. After it was over, in a moment of seventy-one year old madness, I signed up for and began training four times a week with the Richmond Marathon Training Team. Extra aerobic exercise was provided in May by digging a monster five foot deep hole to locate a second water main break in the front yard!
With the warm weather and the approach of summer, we enjoyed paddling our recreational kayaks on outings to the James and other Virginia rivers. My stepfather Forrest Keck died in June at age 100, and we spent some time in Oakland, California taking care of affairs and visiting with my relatives. We drove to Redding in northern California for a visit with my son Bruce, who is working on a degree in nursing there. The three of us explored the countryside, and climbed the slopes of Mt. Lassen.
We flew from California to Victoria, British Columbia, the springboard city for several weeks of touring and kayaking on Vancouver Island. First, we made our way with eight friends from Richmond to God’s Pocket on Hurst Island for a week of daily sea-kayaking and hiking on the shores of islands we visited, seeing lots of eagles, other sea and shore birds, porpoises, orcas, and humpback whales. The two of us meandered back south down the island, ending with several days at wonderful Victoria, being hosted by a college friend of Jane’s who lives in Victoria.
In late July we hosted our Kansas City great-nephew Alex. For a week we and Linda, Jane’s sister, delighted in providing East Coast adventures before bringing him with us for an early August beach week at Emerald Isle NC with his grandparents. By now my marathon training runs had increased to over 25 miles a week, and at the end of the month I completed my first half-marathon. We found that the demands of the training ate amazing amounts of time as the mileages increased, but did find time to get out sailing a few times in September in our boat “Starlady” on the Mobjack Bay.
October was busy with a visit in Bedford, VA with French visitors to the Bedford D-Day Memorial, another week at our favorite beachfront cottage in Emerald Isle, and the home stretch of long-run training for George. We co-wrote and presented a planetarium program for the Science Museum of Virginia, one of four we did this year. As November approached, we flew off to Costa Rica for a delightful week with George’s cousin Mary, her husband Bill and several other couples. We went sailing, snorkeling, visited national parks, soaked in mineral-laden hot springs, climbed and rode a zip line through the rain forest before heading back into colder weather.
In mid-November the local NBC station interviewed me as the oldest member of the 1,200 people on the Richmond Marathon Training Team. The marathon was on a cool Saturday morning, and my friend Marilyn popped up next to me on the course several different times, jogging with me for many miles, waving a sign on which she had painted "GO GEORGE GO!" and encouraging onlookers to join the chant! Jane managed to observe my progress from four different vantage points along the marathon route, at one place playing loud cheering on a boom-box. As I crossed the finish line at 6 hours, 2 minutes, and 43 seconds, the TV crew was there to catch the old geezer finishing. That same evening we both danced at the wedding reception of our friends Leslie and Scott. To top off November, my daughter Lynne and I went on a trip to Panama for a week with plane tickets and accommodations I had won in a drawing!
On December 8th we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Friends and family joined us at the James Center downtown to enjoy the Christmas lights, a celebratory dinner, and a Christmas concert. We are planning to spend Christmas Day with 98 year old Aunt Mary Frances and Jane's sister Linda. Then we will fly to Kansas City to visit Andy, Jane’s brother, and his family. A quick trip to see Devin (and of course, her parents) in Arkansas will bring our year to a close.
Best wishes for a wonderful 2010 to you and those you love.

Nor'easter!

2009-12-19T13:37:00.004-05:00

It has been years since warm, moist air swept up from the Gulf of Mexico to meet icy air pouring down from Canada to meet over Virginia and dump lots of snow. In Richmond this morning there were 10" on the ground near the James River. The only vehicles moving were trucks and SUV's. I put on cross-country skis and made my way to the top of our hill, about a mile from the house, and enjoyed a nice downhill run back down the middle of Scottview Drive to Riverside. More skiing this afternoon on the trails in James River Park.

The last few days of Fall

2009-12-12T23:23:00.002-05:00

It's beginning to feel more like winter than Fall. More and more nights when the temperature drops below freezing. It's time to be inside with dancing flames in the fireplace and carols playing. It's a time for good food and good wine and good friends.

Panama - a Trip to Embera Puru -Part II

2009-11-28T16:45:00.023-05:00

On our arrival in Embera Puru we were escorted by most of the village up from the river bank and into the meeting house, a large rectangular open sided building with palm thatching.
The chief and his wife greeted us in Embera, and the shaman translated into Spanish. Anne Gordon de Barrigon our tour guide is married to Otniel, a member of this tribe. She translated the Spanish into English for us as our hosts described life in the village.
This group had lived in the Choco region. About 35 years ago they fled the abuses and bad treatment they were enduring, and came north, through Darien, which includes the southernmost part of Panama and adjacent lands in Colombia, searching for a better place to live. They found it in the rainforest off a branch of the Chagres River, a spot with a high bank above flood level, relatively easy access to more populated areas down stream, plenty of fish, and good hunting in the forest. They were already living there when the government of Panama formed the 500 square mile Chagres National Park in 1985 to protect the watershed that is so essential to the continued operation of the Panama Canal. Water is vital to the function of the canal locks since each boat that crosses the locks needs around 52 million nonrecoverable gallons of fresh water. The Chagres River is dammed downstream from Embera Puru, creating a large reservoir lake that feeds water in Lake Gatun, which in turn functions as a big section of the canal, and provides water for the operation of the locks. The Embera were grandfathered in and allowed to stay on their land, living pretty much as they always have, hunting and fishing, growing a few rainforest crops and harvesting a wide variety of medicinal plants from the surrounding jungle for their own health needs.

Their homes are built up off the ground about ten feet to keep things dry in a very wet, rainy region and to reduce the risk of snakebite from fer-de-lance, coral snake, and the central american bushmaster, all of whom are very venomous. Access to each house is via a log with steps chopped into it, leaned up against the elevated floor. The springy, resilient floors of the houses are made from the thick flattened bark of a local tree. Under the house is reserved for storage and hanging things to dry.

The cooking is done above. Each house has a rectangle of small logs near one edge of the floor. Into this has been placed multiple layers of banana leaves, covered with six to eight inches of dirt, providing a place to build a cooking fire on a wooden floor. We were served a delicious lunch of patacones (twice fried green bananas smushed into delicious little crisp yellow patties, and fresh river bass caught that morning. We rinsed our greasy fingers in a bowl of water with crushed basil leaves in it. Refreshing! We finished off the meal with slices of fresh, sweet pineapple and papaya.
We had some time to wander the village wherever we wished. Some of us went back to the meeting house to look at beautiful carvings, lovely decorated baskets woven so tightly that they will hold water, and other handicrafts. I bought a wooden flute like the one I had heard played by the welcoming committee as we first were arriving.

Another option that Lynne and I both took advantage of was to be decorated with an Emerba-style tattoo. Every member of the village does this. A dye is made from the fruit of the jagua tree. Held in a small coconut shell cup, the purple-grey liquid is applied carefully to the skin with a small forked stick of bamboo, making a double line. The designs are first outlined, and then the tattoo artist uses fingers and hands to fill in solid the space between the designs by applying more of the juice. Lynne chose an open design that looked like a necklace of leaves around her neck, and I opted for the full design on chest, arms, and back down as far as my waist. Since I was wearing long pants instead of a loincloth, I decided to stop there. In addition to being dramatic in design decoration the tattoos also serve as an excellent insect repellent, even though the dye has no particular odor to humans. It is also used for its antiseptic, antibiotic, bactericidal and fungicidal properties, and provides an amazingly effective screen against sunburn. At first the tattoos were very light, but they continued to darken for a couple of days until they turned black. The designs last only about ten days or two weeks at the most before fading away, and as they disappear the Embera renew them with different designs. At least that's what we were TOLD; it remains to be seen how long they last on pale North American skin!

We took a half hour walk with the village shaman up hills and down hills on a forest trail, clay slick in places, stopping often as he pointed out various plants that are used for a wide variety of treatments that include, headache, indigestion, fever, snakebite, the improvement of birth contractions, erectile disfunction, and antibiotics.

On our return to the village a number of the men and women had assembled in the meeting house, and they invited us in to be entertained with some music and dancing. The men drummed and played flute as the women sang and danced. First was a bird song and second was a jaguar dance. All the women lined up, oldest in front, youngest in the back, and they moved in a line around the room, bent forward and slapping bare feet on the smooth clay dirt floor in a syncopated rhythm as they sang. These two performances were followed by some more music they called a rumba, and we all were invited to participate. Great fun!

All too soon it was time to leave, and those of us not staying in the village overnight made our way back down to the edge of the river to get back in the big dugout for the long trip back downriver and across the lake to the waiting van. The men of the village gathered again on the high riverbank, playing the flute and drums to say goodbye, and the music faded as we headed downstream.

Panama - a Trip to Embera Puru -Part I

2009-11-27T11:39:00.013-05:00

My daughter Lynne and I traveled in a small van this morning for 40 minutes in the traffic and dirt and noise of this city of about 800,000.
As we left Panama City behind, the roads became less congested but in worse condition, with lots of potholes capable of swallowing half a tire at a single gulp. The high-rise buildings disappeared, replaced by cinder-block one-room tin-roofed houses with trash in the yards to decorate the rusting old cars. If it hadn't been for the bananas and mango trees, I might have thought I was in West Virginia!
The farther we got from the city, the narrower the road became, now muddy and rutted, spanning small streams in deep worn creek beds with crumbling cement bridges that any cautious person would hesitate to walk across. The paving was far behind us as we lurched up clay-slick hills, back tires spinning just a bit faster than we were moving forward. The jungle crowded down to the edge of the road.

Eventually the van stopped when it couldn't go any farther without going into Lake Alajuela. There was a huge wooden dugout canoe waiting for us, captained by an Embera man wearing a bright blue loincloth and nothing else except his tattoos from neck to knees.

Ten of us climbed in the boat to sit two abreast, and the canoe backed out onto Lake Alajuela. Swinging around we headed down the miles-long lake at full throttle, the bow throwing up a standing wave higher than the gunwhales. The water was kept out of the canoe (mostly) only by a narrow splash rail. A steady flow of water dribbled over the edges and squirted under pressure from the small cracks near the bow, running down the 35 foot length of the canoe between our feet. It's the rainy season in Panama, and we skimmed along the coffee-with-cream colored muddy water, skirting around floating plants, sticks, and logs. In the dry season the water level is 30 feet lower, and the trip would involve navigating a small stream instead of a lake.
About 40 minutes into the ride the canoe tilted toward the right as we made a sharp turn and slowed to enter a narrow side channel. Negotiating twists and turns past low hanging branches, and ducking under those we couldn't avoid, a few minutes at idle speed brought us to a lovely waterfall that tumbled down over a ragged basalt scarp. We clambered over the sides into shin deep water and waded the remaining hundred feet or so to the pool at the base of the falls.

It took no additional encouragement for me to plunge into the cool water and swim over for an impromptu shower under the cascade. Refreshed and soggy, we clambered back into the canoe and it backed out the way we had come. A man standing in the bow used a pole to wedge the long canoe first to the left and then the right as a means of steering.
A short run later we left the lake itself and entered the Chagres River. Another fifteen minutes of a tributary brought us to Em-bear-AH PUru, the Embera Village home of about 150 people who continue to live off the land as they always have. They welcome the occasional small group visits arranged by the American wife of one of the Embera men.

The throaty roar of the outboard motor alerted the people of the village to our arrival long before we actually got there, and there was a group of eight men on the river bank above the landing, drumming and playing a bamboo flute to welcome us. It appeared that the entire population of the village had come down to the water's edge to meet us, the men wearing loincloths that hung to knees in front and covered much less behind. The women wore brightly colored pieces of cloth that reached from waist to just above the knees, and nothing else.

Men, women, and children all wore purply-black elaborate tattoos with intricate geometrical designs on shoulders, backs, breasts, stomachs, buttocks, and thighs. We soon found out that the tattoos are not permanent, lasting only a week to ten days before they wear away or wash off. They are renewed frequently, both because the designs are pleasing, and because the chemicals in the plants used to draw the designs serve as a very effective bug repellent.
Click here for Part II

Panama City - First Impressions

2009-11-24T15:57:00.008-05:00

We're here!
I went to bed on Tuesday at about 8:30 p.m. and actually got almost, solid four hours of sleep. I had the alarm set for 12:30, but woke a few minutes early. We were already packed. I had everything stowed in a backpack, since we were headed for the tropics, and it was only for a week. We pulled out of the driveway right on time at 1:00 a.m.

It rained the whole 120 miles from Richmond to the Dulles Airport west of Washington, D.C. The Copa Airlines ticket counter was open when we entered the terminal, but we had to wait until 4:00 a.m. for the security inspection, so we got bagels at the only food concession open.
The sky was still pitch dark as we cleared the runway at 5:38, and the city lights disappeared immediately in the low, wet overcast. With the cabin lights out it was easy to drift off into the uneasy dozing that masquerades as sleep on an airplane. Somewhere, sometime later, breakfast was announced in Spanish, and we practiced the preying-mantis contortions necessary to cut pieces of food on a miniscule tray without knocking the bite of egg omlette off the fork of the person beside you. High rise buildings admired their own reflections in the waters of Miami Beach as we flew by.
More dozing.....half-watching the featured movie Julia and Julie, and playing with the channels to see how well the audio wizards were able to synchronize English lip movements with Spanish dubbing. Down through the hidden bumps and dips of low-hanging clouds, and onto the runway in Panama City 45 minutes early.

The cab Lynne arranged was waiting for us, and it was about a 20 minute drive into the city. What a big city it is! There are literally hundreds of very tall, very narrow high rise buildings, with construction cranes all over the place putting up more. We are on the 33rd floor of a high-rise condo with spectacular vistas sloping up gently to the hills behind the city a few kilometers away, and the shoreline of Bahia de Panama. The bay is really nothing more than a slight curved indentation on the Pacific shoreline, and the mud-flat bottom slopes out at such a shallow angle that at low tide the water recedes a quarter to a half mile!
After getting settled we walked about three quarters of a mile to a shopping mall that makes any large mall that I've seen previously look puny by comparison! This mall was easily twice the surface area of any I've seen before, and three stories high. We found the food court and had lunch, then wandered several levels before we found the supermercado (Super Market), where we picked up bread, milk, bananas, and a half papaya. Half a papaya may seem silly until I mention that half of this fruit was a good five inches from center-slice to rind, and about 20 inches long, by far the largest I have ever seen. It will let us eat papaya with lime juice every morning for several days!

The contrasts here are interesting. It is as if some mischief-maker took a giant stick and stirred and swirled opulent high rise buildings, abandoned factories, modest homes, small old apartment buildings, empty blocks where buildings have been or are being demolished, and tiny one-room tin-roofed houses until they were thoroughly mixed, then sprinkled all with various open-windowed schools throughout for a garnish, the drone of student recitation competing with the constant roar of traffic, horns blaring long blasts to express driver frustration at the congestion.
I need a nap! More later!

Richmond Marathon 26.2 miles - I DID it!

2009-11-18T14:21:00.007-05:00

The week before the Richmond Marathon, Joe Sullivan, Sports News Reporter for the NBC-TV Channel 12 in Richmond, called me to say that he had heard that I was the oldest person on the Marathon Training Team, and that he'd like to do an interview.
I met him down on Riverside Drive near my house, and he recorded lots of video footage of me running on the road beside the James River before doing the interview.
The piece aired on the evening news the Tuesday before the race.

An article appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch the same day, titled "At 71, Set For Debut"
Better late than never, indeed. George Hastings, a California native who moved to Richmond in 1984, says he has been "in and out of running most of my life He will make his marathon debut on Saturday. At age 71.
Hastings said he has been toying with the idea of running a marathon since he was a teenager. As a 16 year old, he said, he would run from his home to Oakland Technical High School, a distance of about two miles. His goal each day: to try to beat the school bus.
Years passed, and Hastings did much running but never entered a marathon. As his 71st birthday approached, he said, "I thought to myself, 'Good grief! I'm actually getting old. I've been talking about running a marathon for most of my life. It's time to either put up or shut up.'"
He has prepared for Saturday's race as a member of the Marathon Training Team.

The morning arrived. It was time. I had run a short three miles on Thursday the previous week after the TV interview, and had finished with a very sore right knee. A quick visit a few days later to the doctor revealed through an MRI that I had a torn meniscus in my right knee. The doctor, a specialist in sports medicine, said that as long as I took it VERY easy, especially going up or down hills, and wore a neoprene compression sleeve on my knee, that I could attempt the 26.2 miles, with the understanding that my knee kight just lock up, or become so painful that I would have to drop out. After five and a half months of training, I accepted those terms.
I met other runners gathering a few blocks from the starting line on Richmond's Broad Street, and as we walked the short remaining distance there was excitement and tension. The over 5,000 marathon runners were grouped according to pace per mile, with the fastest of course being in front. The winner was Jynocel Basweti, a man from Kenya, who finished the entire run in 2 hours, 18 minutes, 22 seconds!
I started out deliberately slowly, being extra cautious of my unreliable right knee. Out Broad Street a few miles, jogging a few blocks over to a few miles on Monument Avenue, a few more blocks over for another long stretch on Grove Street, and finally along Cary Street and down a steep hill to the James River. From there, across the Huguenot Bridge and along Riverside Drive. I had a big cheering section of friends and neighbors as I passed the intersection a block from my house, and Jane handed me a most welcome banana to refuel as I left the ten mile mark behind.
From there up a long climb to Forest Hill Drive, and a very long run all the way downtown to the Lee Bridge. Crossing the James River, my running muscles began to tell me, "That's it! We're finished! We're not going to do this any more!", but my brain kept pushing the unwilling mutineers for a few more miles before the muscles won the argument. There were many times I thought that I had reached the point where I would have to stop, but discovered that walking muscles are really quite different than running muscles. I found that I could keep up a brisk pace walking.

As I came up Main Street I was joined by my friend Marilyn Elder, who ran and walked with me, holding a sign that said, "Go, George, GO!", and exhorting spectators on the sides of the street to join in the chant. It kept me laughing, and my mind off the fatigue and pain I was feeling in my hips by now. It seemed as though there had been no start and would be no end to the run by now. It was just one foot in front of the other, over and over and over. I wasn't out of breath, but the tiredness was building. I crossed Broad Street, and headed into the north side of Richmond in the last six miles, now covering distance I had never done before. My faithful self-appointed coach and publicist Marilyn joined me again as I shuffled my way toward the finish in downtown, dropping out only about a half mile from the finish line.

A block later I was joined by Chelle Quinn, the head coach of the Orange Team, and she covered the last few blocks with me. As she peeled off about two blocks from the end, I could look down the hill the remaining distance and see the huge crowd watching the stragglers coming in. I was by now the almost the only person on the street, and as I approached the finish line I was propelled onward by a wave of cheering.

Joe Sullivan from Channel 12 was there, pointing a camera, congratulating me and asking how I felt. Of course I felt wonderful, exhausted, and in pain all at the same time, but mainly elated that I had finished!

You can see the post-marathon show that aired the next day here My post-marathon interview appears at about 13 minutes, 35 seconds into this 28 minute program

Training for the Richmond Marathon - 2009

2009-11-18T13:52:00.005-05:00

It has been fun, at 71, being the oldest member out of more than 1,200 people on the Marathon Training Team! We first met at the SportsBackers Stadium in Richmond the first week in June, and the first group run seemed intimidating. It was a total of 4 miles, and by the time I had completed it near the back of the group of about 50 I was running with, I was huffing and puffing.
The following week we were to run on our own 3 miles on Tuesday, 3 miles on Wednesday, and 3 miles on Thursday, getting together with my small training group, the Orange Team, on Saturday to run 5 miles together. Although there were more advanced intermediate groups and I was with the novice group, I discovered on each run that some would take off from the beginning at a brisk pace that they maintained throughout the run. Others like me would start out more slowly, and the Orange Team would rapidly be spread out over great distances, finishing with widely variant times.
Early in the training I attempted to keep up with the fast runners. I discovered quickly that I wasn't able to do that, so I would start out with the fast runners, and cut back to a slower pace partway into the run. I really was paying attention to the time it took me to run a mile, and trying each week to improve the time. For me, that was the wrong approach.
Each week the total mileage increased, and the Saturday group runs became longer too. Each time a longer distance was scheduled, I saw it looming as a goal that I might now be able to achieve.As I look back at the log I kept, I see that the Saturday long runs increased up to 10 miles, then back a bit to 7 the following week, jumping to 12 miles the week after that. Back to 10 miles the next week, and then in mid-July the first half-marathon distance of 13.1 miles. Each time I finished a longer distance I felt elated that I had been able to complete it, but dreaded the next mileage increase.
I was very nervous as I started the official Patrick Henry Half Marathon in Ashland, Virginia in July. I pushed hard for that, and finished the race second in my age group of 70-74 in 2 hours, 38 minutes, and 5 seconds, only about a half hour behind another man in his 70's!
As August, September, and October slid past the running progressed to longer and longer distances, both on the weekday runs and the group runs on Saturdays, building up to a 20 mile run three weeks before the date of the Richmond Marathon.
I finally realized that the average time I took to run a mile was not particularly significant, being that my goal was only to finish the marathon, not to beat anybody. I began to do a better job of setting a deliberately slow pace of not any faster than 13 minutes per mile. I was better able to sustain that pace without "bonking", completely running out of energy near the end of a long run.
The last two weeks before the November 14th Richmond Marathon were planned to taper off on the running intensity to allow muscles and body to recuperate a bit before the big event.

Marathon Training

2009-09-30T14:54:00.009-04:00

I'm 71 years old, and I've been in and out of running most of my life.

Mostly out, but I can remember when I was 16 I would run from Oakland Technical High School to downtown Oakland, a distance of about two miles, and try to beat the school bus going the same direction. The bus would pass me with jeering students catcalling out the windows, but then would slow in traffic or stop at a traffic light, and I would pass the bus. Sometime I beat the bus and sometimes it beat me, but it was always a fun challenge. I thought to myself, "Someday, I'll run a marathon!"

After a year of college I entered the Army as a draftee, and of course there was lots of running in training, both during Basic, and later in Germany as a member of the infantry. That wasn't fun, but I can remember thinking to myself, "With all this training, I'll bet I could run a marathon!"

I finished college, got a teaching degree, taught 6th grade in Monterey, California, and after a few years was offered a position as an elementary school principal with a big educational television project in American Samoa. My first assignment was to open a new school on the tiny, mile-wide island of Aunu'u. The school was built on newly cleared land about a mile from the only boat landing. All the school supplies were delivered once a week by motor launch from the harbor at Pago Pago, so on Wednesday mornings I would leave the school office, climb a low sand dune to get a clear view of the ocean to the east to look for supply boat. When I saw it in the distance I would get all the boys from the one eighth grade class, and together we would run along the soft sandy path around the island to the boat landing to offload and carry all the supplies back to the school. I was in wonderful shape, and thought to myself, "If I had more space, I bet I could run a marathon!"

Many years later I lived on another beach when I was working for the educational programs office of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I would run for miles in the sand along Cocoa Beach, and think to myself, "I'm strong enough to run a marathon!"

I moved to Richmond in 1984 to teach astronomy and space science at the Mathematics & Science Center, and often would run the four mile loop around the Central Gardens neighborhood during my lunch hour, thinking to myself, "Maybe one of these years I'll run the Richmond Marathon!"

I first ran the Monument Avenue 10k in 2002, and completed it in only 54 seconds over an hour. I thought to myself, "I bet if I trained I could do it in under an hour!"
The next year I was delighted when I finished in just over 58 minutes.
I became over confident. I didn't train as rigorously the next year. I finished four minutes slower. I thought to myself, "I'd never be able to run a marathon!"

The next year, I didn't even bother to enter the 10 k race.

In 2006 I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and had a successful prostatectomy. Because I was incontinent as a result of the surgery I thought my days of running were over, but 7 weeks later I managed to run a 5k race while wearing a leg bag. With exercise the problem improved. I was able to get rid of the hardware, but running was still problematic.
The following year I had another surgical procedure which almost completely restored normal bladder function. I completed the the Monument Avenue 10k again, and I thought to myself, "Maybe I could run a marathon!"

I ran another 10k the following year, and although it took me more than an hour, I kept thinking, "I ought to see if I could run a marathon!"

As my 71st birthday approached, I thought to myself, "Good grief, I actually getting old, and I've been talking about running a marathon most of my life! It's time for me to either put up or shut up!"

Ignoring the incredulity of friends, I signed up for the Marathon Training Team. During our first meeting at The Diamond with over a thousand other registrants, I was surprised to hear announced that the youngest participant was 18, and the oldest was 71!....WHOA!...That's ME!

I'm a proud member of the Orange Team of novice runners, and have been doing the weekly runs on my own and the group runs on Saturday mornings since the beginning of June. This past Saturday I participated in a 16 mile group run, farther than I've ever run before, and when I huffed and puffed back to the starting point I thought to myself, "I really AM going to run a marathon!"

This week is a "slack-off" week: Four miles on Tuesday, eight miles on Wednesday, five miles on Thursday, and a group run on Saturday of 12 miles for a total of 29 miles for the week.
8 mile Pony Pasture to UR Lake and back
Find more Runs in Richmond, Virginia
The week of November 5th will be more challenging: 4 miles, 9 miles, 5 miles, and a Saturday run of 18 miles! That will be followed by a slightly less demanding week, and then a week where the Saturday run is 20 miles!
The Richmond Marathon is scheduled for Saturday, November 14th. I WILL finish a marathon!

Adventures in British Columbia - July 25th

2009-08-12T16:17:00.006-04:00

Saturday, July 25th
In Victoria, B.C. The alarm went off this morning at 5:30, and I bumbled around getting up and dressed in shorts, running shirt and shoes. I put fresh batteries in the GPS, strapped on a water belt, grabbed a cup of coffee with extra sugar from the motel lobby, and was out the front door at 6:06. I’m till hanging in there on the marathon training. From the motel in downtown I ran downhill to the harbor, along the waterfront, past sailboats and fishing boats, floating houseboats, the seaplane dock, and fisherman's wharf, past lots of waterfront condos, and finally out along waterside park trails overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with the state of Washington and snow capped mountains in the distance. I’m still huffing and puffing on long distance runs, but I’m pleased with my finish time of 1 hour and 48 minutes...right on the 12 minute per mile pace for the whole nine mile route.
After I showered and changed clothes, we ate a big breakfast of potatoes, eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee in the restaurant adjoining the hotel. Gale and Sabra came to pick us up at 9:30. They took us on a meandering tour of Victoria, then back to the motel to pick up the rental car, and we followed them out to the airport to return the car. We all rode together the short distance to Bouchart Gardens, only to find out that the admission price was jacked up today for the fireworks display this evening. We opted to come back on Sunday instead.

The Victoria waterfront is a great place to be on a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon in July! Buscar bands and acts spread themselves arbitrarily along the quay just far enough apart that each could command its own audience. In one spot a group in their teens and early twenties belted out punk rock with considerably more enthusiasm than talent. Farther along a darkly tanned guitarist was singing “Brown-Eyed Girl” along with a Jamaican steel drummer. A comedian/juggler hustled up his own crowd with audience participation schemes, wild antics, and witty patter that kept everyone in his venue laughing.

The narrow, deeply indented Victoria Harbor is continuously criss-crossed with tiny passenger ferries that are not-too-distant cousins of the little boats we saw herding rafts and logs in the sorting pond at Beaver Cove. Each one of these slightly tippy little aquatic taxis holds a maximum of 10 people. For a few dollars the captain will take you anywhere in the harbor, cheerfully pattering about the shoreline sights, and should you see something you like before your stated destination, will hand you a token good for re-boarding his or any other ferryboat after you’ve strolled around on shore long enough.

We got off at a dock surrounded by thirty or forty houseboats. They lay snuggled together side by side and gently jostling each other in the slight motion of the water. Some were small, single-room affairs, while others were two stories tall, with several rooms, lounging decks with planters, and all the comforts of a real home. Along the wharf there were several food stands, and we enjoyed a couple of overpriced hotdogs on buns before boarding another putt-putting little ferryboat to head back to the hotel.
There was considerable publicity on posters and in guidebooks about the annual “Luminara” festival to be held in a city park that afternoon and evening, but the weather began to look threatening. Just before sunset it began to rain. We waited. Then waited some more. It seemed as though the heaviest rain had slacked off, so we put on rain jackets and started to walk down to the park. We saw lots of wet, bedraggled people heading the other way, many of them herding young children in soggy, drooping costumes.
A paved path led up a wooded slope in the park, and pulsing sounds of music floated down through the dark. Big drops of water dripped from overhanging branches and leaves, and I was thankful for the hooded rain jacket. Several hundred people were in the clearing at the top of the hill where the path emerged from the woods. They were jumping and twisting, arms over heads or holding long skirts up out of the mud, prancing and dancing, or standing on the sidelines clapping or nodding heads while the throbbing rhythms of the Chikoro Marimba Band pounded out through the pouring rain. There were at least five marimbas, the largest of which had deep toned wooden bars eight inches across and a couple of feet long. PVC pipes of different lengths hung underneath, resonating and amplifying the hypnotic beat.
No one seemed to be paying the slightest attention to the rain, which continued to pour down on dancers and musicians alike, and water splashed off the marimba bars as the padded mallets pounded on. The set finally came to an end, and lights on sidewalk stands began to turn off. As the marimbas were being dismantled the crowds of people began to wander off into the dark with smiles on their faces.

Adventures in British Coloumbia - July 24th

2009-08-11T21:16:00.000-04:00

Friday, July 24th
This morning we drove down Highway 1 from Parksville to Nanaimo, where we explored the old log Bastion, built in the 1850’s by the Hudson Bay Company to protect its coal mining operations here. I marveled at an old map of the mines that showed literally hundreds of tunnels beneath the waters of the harbor. We wandered through the terraces and craft stalls overlooking the marina and harbor before heading south again.
The town of Chemainus, pronounced Chuh-MAIN-us, used to be a prosperous lumbering town before the sawmill shut down. In 1982 the town began to invite artists to paint murals depicting different aspects of the town’s history on buildings around the town. Today there are 39, with several more planned.
We ate lunch in the city park while listening to a Bolivian musician playing flutes and panpipes, and then took a walking tour. We covered the remaining 78 km to Victoria in the afternoon, checked into a motel near the city center, and were hosted for dinner at Gale and Sabra’s house.

Adventures in British Coloumbia - July 23rd

2009-08-11T16:58:00.000-04:00

Thursday, July 23rd
Woke up early, and at 7:00 I decided to do my run in the morning instead of the afternoon. I peeked out the door of the motel to find thick fog obscuring everything more than a couple of blocks away. After some stretching I stepped back in to take off my fleece so I wouldn’t overheat, and removed my glasses since they don’t have windshield wipers! The first few minutes of running were chilly with the air at 52 degrees and the wind blowing a fine misty rain, but I warmed up quickly. I ran down the main road two miles toward the edge of Tofino, then back again along the same up and down undulating bike path. When I got back I was delighted to find that I had clicked off four miles in 39 minutes, 30 seconds…better than a 10 minute per mile average…the best I’ve done in a long time.
We went for breakfast at Darwin’s Garden, a botanical garden, then drove south out of Tofino south along the coast. We drove up the steep incline of Radar Hill where there is supposedly a fine view of the surrounding mountains, sounds and islands, but all we saw was thick fog. We parked the car at Long Beach, wedged in between bushes on one side and an enclosed utility trailer, one of several belonging to various surfing instruction companies. A short walk through wind-twisted evergreens brought us to a wide, hard packed sandy beach sloping very gently to the edge of the water almost a quarter mile away. We could just make out many moving black spots looming in the fog at the edge of gently breaking waves. This may be the most popular surfing beach in all of British Columbia. One of the surfers told us that the summer waves, generally 2-3 feet were mostly for beginners, and that the big waves that come roaring in from the northwest on the backs of winter storms bring out the serious surfers.
We drove a little farther to the Wickanannish Beach, where there is an interpretive center. The upper edge of this beach was covered with tumble-worn logs, piled in a jumble that looked like giant pick-up sticks. There were only a few surfers here at the far end of the beach, away from the offshore rocks and the closer in sand bars at this end that create wicked rip currents that sweep rapidly far out from the shoreline. We briefly considered having lunch at a restaurant there, overlooking the surf, but a plain hamburger was $13, and the prices went up from there.
We drove on toward the other oceanside town of Ucluelet (pronounced Oo-CLUE-eh-let). There the meandering hilly streets gave vistas of a small bay and led us to the Canadian Coast Guard station and the Amphitrite Lighthouse on a rocky point at the end of town. We walked down to look at the tidepools and surging surf, and found a nice bench in the warm sunlight that was finally beginning to burn of the morning’s thick fog, and sat there for awhile, listening to the groaning and moaning of a buoy bobbing on the waves a few hundred yards off the end of the point. We made a quick trip back to the car to get lunch materials, and on the way back, I could have sworn I heard the WHOOSH! of a whale’s spout. Soon after, we saw a boat heavily loaded with people, surging and rocking its way across the swells not far from shore, and saw people pointing and calling out to each other. Sure enough, a few seconds later a humpback whale surfaced, took a quick breath, and submerged again. Perhaps 30 seconds later the whale repeated the performance, then again, and one more time before disappearing to stay under for awhile, looking for tasty snacks.
In the late afternoon we started on the sinuous road back across the spine of Vancouver Island. Reaching the east coast, we turned south again and stopped for the evening at Parksville. We had an inexpensive, but delicious dinner at Tim Hortons, dessert at a Dairy Queen, and then drove down to the beach to watch the sunset at 9:15 p.m.

Adventures in British Columbia - July 22nd

2009-08-11T16:37:00.001-04:00

Wednesday, July 22nd
We got a leisurely start this morning after a sumptuous gourmet breakfast prepared by Bill and Agathe the Bed & Breakfast hosts.
We drove to Qualicum Beach, where we turned toward the west coast town of Tofino on Highway 4, the Pacific Rim Hwy. We spent a pleasant couple of hours a short distance out of town, exploring the provincial park at Little Qualicum River. There is a narrow, sheer sided rocky gorge here, and impressive waterfalls that plunge down into deep crystal clear pools that reflect back the green of the surrounding forest.
We stopped at Cathedral Grove where there were cedar, spruce, and hemlock trees twelve feet in diameter and as much as eight hundred years old. Nowhere else have I had the same sense of awe that I’ve felt when walking through groves of ancient California redwoods. One of the unexpected differences between these groves and the redwood groves was that the air here smelled like Christmas trees!
We drove on a narrow winding road through towering jagged mountains with patches of snow lingering on the upper rocky slopes. We stopped for a picnic lunch in Port Alberni, then on along more twisting and turning two lane road, pulling off frequently at wide spots to allow the cars piling up behind us to go whisking past. I was reminded of a very different but strangely similar road to Hana in Hawaii. There are two kinds of travelers on both roads: those who take the time to take the curves gently, driving slowly and stopping often to absorb the beauty of the surroundings, and those who take pride in their ability to squeeze every mile per hour out of their cars as they careen around the turns.
Late in the afternoon we drove along the shores of the huge Kennedy Lake and pulled into Tofino. Evergreens crowd the edges of the road and occupy the spaces between buildings. It some ways it is reminiscent of the town of Carmel, California. The air is chilly, and filled with the pungent iodine smell of the kelp beds offshore. Like Carmel, Tofino is an artsy community and a get-away destination for the well-to-do. It is passed around with not too secret pride that John Travolta maintains a place here. There are lots of art galleries and crafts shops, and prices for everything from meals to lodging are exorbitant.
Tofino is also a surfing destination. Wide flat beaches and gentle waves that surfers can ride for long distances attract novices to practice in the summer fog, and professional surfers from all over the world to ride the big storm waves in the winter months. You might even say that Tofino has surfing mania; even the drugstore sells wetsuits!

Adventures in British Columbia - July 21st

2009-08-11T16:36:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, July 21st
We got a leisurely start down Highway 19, and at the town of Campbell River turned onto 19A, which runs along the eastern shoreline of Vancouver Island instead of down the middle. We passed through several small waterfront towns, mostly places for vacation homes.
At Buckley Bay we took the ferry across the narrow Straight of Georgia to Denman Island. There is an “almost village” there with a post office and a few craft stores, and not much else. We drove to the north end of the island, and then back down the main road that crosses the island west to east. This connects to a second ferry to Hornby Island, but we opted to explore Boyle Point Provincial Park.
We took about a mile hike through woods to the point on the southern tip of the island. A very narrow channel separates Denman from the tiny Chrome Island and its lighthouse. We barely made it back to the dock in time to catch the 4:30 ferry. We were the last car aboard.
Just a short distance on south down 19A in the town of Fanny Bay we found the Ships Point Bed & Breakfast. The view is spectacular from the deck of this house on a promontory that overlooks the Strait of Georgia and Denman Island. The owners were gracious, but unobtrusive hosts who obviously take great pride in their home and garden.

Adventures in British Columbia - July 20th

2009-08-11T15:54:00.000-04:00

Monday, July 20th
I walked up Main Street in Port Hardy past the totem pole at the corner of Hastings to the coffee shop to have French toast while Jane used the motel internet connection. We checked out at 11:00, heading south. On a winding side road that led to the east coast we passed Beaver Cove, a HUGE log sorting operation. An enormous area of the cove was filled with floating logs waiting to be bundled into rafts to be towed to a sawmill. On land, giant front end loaders with big steel claws in place of scoops picked up eight or ten logs at a time, moving them around to different piles according to size. Deformed logs or those that were too short were dumped sideways into the maw of a machine whose spinning innards chewed them quickly into shreds that were carried away along a conveyor belt to some unknown destination. Other machines grabbed the piles of sorted logs, whipping bands around them to tie them into bundles, and trundled them to the edge of the water where they were dumped. Tiny little boats, tipping and rocking alarmingly, their narrow widths and high pilot houses making them look in constant danger of capsizing, scurried around a very large pond, pushing and nudging the groups of logs into larger collections to be rafted together.
A few miles farther we came to Telegraph Cove, an interesting collection of quaint old small houses balanced touching a steep, heavily forested slope and extending mostly out on pilings over the water. Long ago it was a logging camp, then a fishing village. Now it has a marina and a big motel out over the water on the opposite side of the small cove. It provides services for private recreational fishing boats that take advantage of the strong tides through a narrow channel that brings rich nutrients to the surface for the salmon that abound here.
Driving south again on Hwy 19 we pulled off at a rest stop, and discovered a nice woodland trail along the side of a beautiful lake. A short walk down a trail to the water’s edge revealed how quickly the land can recover from clear-cut logging. Pines, spruce, cedar, and alder trees with trunks a foot or more in diameter provided dense shade for ferns and other low bushes that lined a pleasant path that used to be a logging railroad bed.
Another hour’s drive brought us to the little town of Sayward. Driving along a narrow two lane road through scattered houses, we never did find any town center. We continued a way down the road to Kelsey Bay. There IS a discernable village here, set around a green, and just a bit farther, a bay opening into the sound. There WAS a big logging operation here sometime in the not too distant past, but everything is shut down and empty. Very strong winds were whipping up big whitecaps on the channel outside the bay. There were a few boats huddled behind a massive breakwater of large sharp rocks at the left edge of the bay, and several rusting hulks of old ships formed a gloomy looking breakwater on the opposite side. Describe the Cable Cookhouse.
Driving back up the road almost to Hwy 19 we checked into the last available cabin at “The Fisherboy” motel/campground. All the rest of the accommodations were occupied by firefighters who spent each day miles away battling a forest blaze in a box canyon over some distant ridge. They showed up with blackened faces and clothes at around 9 p.m. an hour before sunset, looking pretty exhausted at about the same time I showed up, also exhausted, after running 10k. There was much chuckling, not-very-well-muted commentary, and elbow nudging about my short running shorts on their part as I turned my back to go into the cabin.

Adventures in British Columbia - July 19th

2009-08-11T13:50:00.001-04:00

Sunday, July 19th
We woke up early the next morning in Port Hardy, and walked a few blocks down Main Street for some breakfast at the coffee shop. We drove in two cars a few miles south to Port McNeill to meet the whale watching boat.
At the appointed hour we roared off south down the straight at about 40 mph to pick up a family at Hidden Cove, past Alert Bay. When they were safely aboard we hurtled back north again, flying along at full speed past McNeill, Port Hardy, Bell Island, Hurst Island, Balaklava Island, and Scarlet Point out into the Queen Charlotte Straight. Once we reached open water the captain slowed to a stop and turned off the engines. Lowering a hydrophone, he listened in vain for whale sounds.
Dense morning fog hung low over the water, obscuring vision and deadening sounds. The engines rumbled into life again, and the captain proceeded with more caution now, keeping a close eye on the radar screen. He spotted the approaching sailboat several minutes before it loomed out of the fog a few hundred yards off the port bow. Another ten minutes farther out into open water the captain stopped the engines again to listen, but still there were no sounds of whales in the area.
W started slowly back on a course to Port McNeill, and at this point we all thought that it would turn out to be a nice, but expensive boat ride. Fifteen minutes later we spotted the surfacing and spouting of a pod of orcas, and eased over slowly to meet them. The captain stayed the required 100 meters away, and we wallowed along slowly beside them for the better part of an hour. Individual pods of orcas are led by an elder female. Babies born into that pod stay with their mothers for life. Although males will swim with other pods long enough to find a mate and procreate, they always come back to mother. This particular pod was unusual. Several years ago a dying mother orca was found with a severely malnourished baby. The mother died soon after, and rescuers took the baby to be nursed back to health. After more than a year in a large open water pen near the shore the youngster was deemed healthy enough to be released. It soon found a pod to swim with, but wasn’t well tolerated, and soon left. After some time on its own it began to swim with the pod we saw, and was soon adopted into the family. We could see this young whale surfacing along with the others, still not fully grown at age nine.
We got a special treat when one orca swam leisurely under the boat, just a few feet below the surface. We cruised with them for at least an hour before coming back to Port McNeill.
We drove back to Port Hardy where we said goodbye to Jerry, Ruth, John, and Sheila. They headed off to the airport to catch the small plane to Vancouver, where they would stay overnight before their Monday morning flight back to Richmond.
There were festivities that afternoon and evening as people from miles around came into town to celebrate FILOMI Days. FIshing, LOgging, and MIning are the three industries that support the Port Hardy Economy. There was over-amplified rock and country music coming from a portable bandstand that had been parked at the curb next to the waterfront park, a small array of the midway arcade booths you can find at any county fair, face painting for the kids, and an unusual attraction consisting of a twenty-by-twenty foot inflatable pool filled with water and three very large inflatable transparent plastic balls. Kids would climb inside a ball which was then inflated, zipped, and velcroed, then rolled onto the surface of the pond. Big crowds watched with great amusement and the kids tried to stand and walk or run, but mostly fell down inside the floating balls. The crowds began to pack up and head for home when the sun set about 9:00 p.m. and we headed back to the motel.

Adventures in British Columbia - July 18th

2009-08-11T13:49:00.001-04:00

Saturday, July 18th
Saturday morning we made one last trip down to the dock, this time hauling our suitcases to be stowed aboard the launch “Hurst Isle” for the trip back to Port Hardy. Once again the day was cool and grey, and the water was an undulant grey mirror that we skimmed across. While our traveling companions dragged luggage up the ramp to the pier I jogged back the four blocks to the motel to pick up the rental car waiting for us in the parking lot.
I transferred luggage to the motel and then took our friends to the Port Hardy airport to pick up a second rental car. We drove in two cars to Port McNeill to catch walk-on ferry to Cormorant Island and the town of Alert Bay.
We ambled along the waterfront street passing a well-used marina occupied by many motorboats and a few sailboats. Several ancient wooden trawlers lolled at odd angles on the rocky beach, most of their paint gone and widening gaps showing between the planks of their hulls. A cedar log at least five feet thick lay in a grass covered empty lot, showing ax-chopped holes where spring boards had been wedged in on opposite sides to provide a place for loggers to stand while sawing down the tree.
Newer cedar logs with the bark carefully removed lay near the First Nations Cultural Center, waiting to be shaped into carved poles honoring the different clans who live here. Completed totem poles had been erected near the entrance to the museum.
After exploring the cultural center we walked up the hill behind it past a decaying old three story brick building that for many years was a residential school where children were placed after being taken from their parents at age six. They were taught to speak English only, and punished if they spoke in their own tongue. By the time they had finished at least six years, it was thought that they would be fully absorbed into proper Canadian culture, and were released. Today the building is being used for offices, and there is a workshop in the basement for indigenous woodcarving.
The Big House, a very large cedar sided meeting center with a low pitched roof built by the First Nations people sits high on a hill behind the harbor. Standing far out in front was the tallest totem pole I have ever seen, probably more than one hundred feet high. The traditional figures of turtle, bear, raven, salmon, eagle, moon, sun were clearly visible on the lower parts of the pole, but it was so tall that it was hard to identify the faces near the top. At the very highest point on the pole sat a real eagle, surveying the world from his lofty perch.
We entered the meeting house through the wide front door. The inside, perhaps sixty feet wide and twice as long, was a single large room with a dirt floor and long tiered benches along each side. Parallel cedar log ridgepoles three feet in diameter spanned the entire length of the room, supporting the rafters of smaller logs. The center of the roof opened into a large rectangular cupola where the smoke from the fire burning in the middle of the room found exit.
We took seats on the side benches, and when a good crowd had gathered the performance began. Flanking the door were two winged totems depicting ravens and at the opposite end of the room two eagle totems kept watch over the single bench that faced the fire. Seated at that bench were several young people whose job it was to sing the tribal chants and keep time by pounding with short heavy sticks on a long hollowed out wooden log drum. Dancers ranging in age from four or five years old to adult demonstrated parts of the ceremonies performed to mark seasons, harvest, and fishing. It was gratifying to see that the language, the culture, and the customs of the people were experiencing a rebirth and growth in the younger people.

Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - July 17th

2009-08-10T21:54:00.000-04:00

Friday, July 17th
By now the whole crew considers itself experts, and we demonstrate our group skills as we paddle easily past the end of Balaklava and up Browning Channel all the way past Bob’s Landing, crossing the channel, and passing two small timber covered islands that guard the entrance to Alexander’s Bay, indented deeply into Nigei Island. We haul the kayaks up on a beautiful grey slate shingle beach. There are perhaps 50 feet of flat gravel beach sloping up gently to an immense linear pile of logs and driftwood, funneled into the bay by winter storms.
Immediately behind the barrier of logs is a dense forest that is almost entirely composed of spruce trees. We clambered over the log ramparts and found a trail leading off into the dark, mossy forest. We walked single file about a mile through rain forest with moss so deep and thick that it covered the forest floor like a carpet, covering the ground, the rocks, the trunks and branches of standing trees, and fallen logs and branches the littered the forest floor. The trail, twisting and turning through the jumbled old branches and fallen trees was almost invisible, and it would have been easy to wander astray if it had not been for the ugly old plastic bottles and jugs tied to branches at frequent intervals at eye level.
We emerged from the dark forest into the light at Clam Cove. Across the water was a cluster of ramshackle buildings, and I speculated that it was a tribal village. It wasn’t until later that day that I found out that it was a very run , but still operative dive center. After a brief pause on the shore of the cove, some scurried and others ambled back to the beach at Alexander’s Bay for lunch. By the time we had all regrouped the morning overcast had cleared almost completely, and it was actually hot. I wandered a few hundred yards down the beach and around a huge pile of driftwood, and felt inspired to test the water. It was icy, but refreshing in the heat of the afternoon. After putting my clothes back on and returning, a couple of others also wandered down to that sheltered part of the beach to indulge in the pleasures of skinny dipping.
It was late in the afternoon before we started the long, hard, five mile paddle back to the cabins. As we crossed the last half mile of channel to the dock we must have been a sight. Eight long kayaks moved as a phalanx, sandwiched close together in perfect formation, paddles dipping vigorously, surging ahead of the others a foot or two for mere seconds before the falling back again. We were tired and winded as we hauled the kayaks up on the dock one last time. It was a perfect ending for an adventure filled week.

Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - July 16th

2009-08-10T13:05:00.001-04:00

Thursday, July 16th
This misty morning we had a strenuous pull across the Christie Channel and up along the eastern shore of Balaklava. The lighthouse at Scarlett Point came into view as we neared the northern end of the island. It perches on a promontory at the top of steep cliffs close to a small indentation in the shoreline that leads to a cleft in the rock only a few feet wide.
Spanning the gap of the small bay, a thick cable droops its catenary curve toward the kelp floating below, and at the low point, an attached rope with a bulbous float hangs to within 20 feet of the water. High on the lighthouse rocks above a cable and pulley with a winch attached stands ready to be lowered, spider-like to pick up cargo whenever a supply boat stops below.
We string out single file and paddle one by one under the cable lift and through the narrow opening into a small shallow lagoon. Scattered along the wooded shore are old channel marker buoys, a barnacle-encrusted marine railway, several ancient outboard motorboats sleeping on cushions of old tires, and a boardwalk leading up the slope into the trees. We lift the kayaks carefully only a little way onto the rough shore, since the tide is ebbing, and walk along a path into the woods.
Walking in the temperate rainforests of British Columbia you can still believe in magic. The forest floor is springy underfoot where thick layers of moss cushion each step and mute all sound. The grey misty daylight struggles down through branches of close growing cedar and hemlock, and you feel compelled to tiptoe, talking only in soft voices, half-expecting wood-nymphs to peek from behind moss covered tree trunks or to duck behind tangled windfalls.
A short climb brought us to the top of a rocky cliff at the edge of the forest to a view of the wide Queen Charlotte Channel, with other dark islands looming out of the fog in the distance. The breeze off the cold water was chilly, and we turned back into the still woods to make our way down to the lighthouse.
Unlike the United States where virtually all of the lighthouses have been automated, in British Columbia most are still manned. As we strolled out into the cleared area close to the lighthouse we were met by Ivan, the head keeper at Scarlett Point. After serving as an assistant at several other lighthouses he was certified as a head lighthouse keeper, and has been living here for the past seven years in one of two houses on the grounds. The second house is assigned to the assistant lighthouse keeper, who was presently away on vacation for a week.
Ivan obviously loves his job, and took great pleasure in telling us about the operation of the light and its equipment. He said that only a week before he had stood for several hours watching the annual return of hundreds of orcas following the movable feast of salmon that are heading in to spawn in the rivers where they were born.
Deer are frequent visitors, for they enjoy nibbling the acres of grass that cover the grounds. Several, including a doe and very young fawn, wandered along the edges of the grounds, apparently unconcerned about the presence of human visitors.
By the time we had returned to the kayaks the lagoon had drained almost completely, the tidal ebb looking like a rushing mountain stream. Ribbon and leaves of seaweed were now the only cover for rocks that had been underwater when we arrived. Every few seconds, small jets of water shot a foot or two into the air as hidden clams squirted miniature geysers from their siphons. We had to wait a half hour for slack tide to make our escape. When we observed the saltwater river reverse its direction and beginning to flow back into the lagoon we launched our kayaks, and steered a narrow winding route between rocks and through thick kelp to make our way to open water. There were strong winds and following waves at our back as we paddled down the Christie Channel, speeding us on our way back to God’s Pocket, but by the time we had finished dinner the surface was once again as smooth as glass in the low rays of the setting sun.
Bill and Anne, the owners of the God’s Pocket Resort invited the lot of us out for an evening sunset cruise, and we all trooped down to the big motor launch. As the sun disappeared behind the ridges of Nigei Island we spotted a humpback whale spouting in the distance. Bill spun the wheel and headed over to where we had last seen the whale. Everyone was watching on the port side of boat, waiting for it to surface again when there was a loud WHOOSH off to the starboard. The whale had swum directly underneath us and surfaced about 30 yards away with an exhalation of fish-breath!
After the excitement Bill took boat up the channel between Balaklava and the Lucan Islands, along the Browning wall, all the way past Point Scarlet, flashing its beacon in the gathering darkness. By the time we had sped back down the Christie Channel and had tied up again at the dock it was 10:30, and we all headed for bed at the end of a wonderful day.

Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - July 15th

2009-08-10T12:59:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, July 15th
There is such an abundance and variety of delicious food each morning at God’s Pocket that I have to restrain myself at breakfast. By now all of us here have bonded as a single group, a team, a crew. We waddle away from the dining room/kitchen cabin to get ready for the day’s activities, and are all reassembled down by the kayaks on the dock at 9:00. This morning Dan turns to the right as we leave the tiny bay to skirt the shoreline of Hurst Island.
We see eagles on the rocks. We see eagles perched high on bare branches of trees overlooking the water. We see eagles in flight. It seems there are eagles everywhere, especially when the salmon are running. Dan, our guide from Sea Kayak Adventures jokingly says that there are so many eagles around that they call them Vancouver Island pigeons.
Around the northern tip of Hurst Island we go, paddling through the edges of great masses of kelp, and we breathe in the pungent but pleasant smell of iodine and salt that floats like invisible fog in the chilly morning air.
Harlequin Bay, named for the harlequin ducks often seen there, cuts at an angle for perhaps a half mile into the eastern shore of Hurst Island. We stop near the head of the bay for a water break and rest before retracing our path back out.
Now heading southeast we reach then southern end of Hurst, and group close together, side by side, to cross the deep, narrow channel between Hurst and Bell Island. The combined effects of strong wind and current in the Christie Channel along the steep rocky edge of Bell Island created a heavy chop that made the going hard until we reached a narrow sheltered passage less than fifty meters across. Suddenly the water was calm in the wind shadow of a small hemlock and cedar covered islet. The still water reflected back the images of the trees on both sides as we coasted along, dipping our paddles quietly. Before long we came to a shingle beach where we hauled the kayaks up on the flat-sided gravel for a lunch break.
A short steep path up the bank behind the beach led to a spot where other kayakers had camped. The thick layer of moss on the forest floor would have provided a soft mattress for anyone lying there looking out and down to the green water of the channel. A lovely boat, with sails loose and slack came softly chuff-chuffing down the passage on diesel power, rounded a bend, and slid out of sight as we made our way back down to a hearty lunch spread out on a camp table by Mike and Dan.
We were a bit anxious as we headed back along the return path, anticipating hard, wet work paddling in the open channel into the wind and choppy waves when we left protected waters. It was a welcome surprise to find that the wind had completely died. All the chop was gone, and our trip back across the passage between Bell and Hurst was no more difficult than paddling on a lake. We could focus less on the process of moving forward and more on our surroundings. We saw more eagles, and while passing through a narrow opening a few yards wide between Hurst and offshore rocks, we spotted a mink scurrying about the tide pools, hustling up some dinner. More than once while we completed the circumnavigation of Hurst Island we saw harbor seals popping up for a quick breath of air and a peek above the surface. Off in the distance the dorsal fin of a Dall’s dolphin broke the still water as we rounded the point of our bay and headed for the dock.

Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - July 14th

2009-07-29T22:55:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, July 14th
Everyone was on time for a hearty breakfast at 8:00. The kayaks were ready for us to slide into the water at 9:00, and we already felt like old pros as we donned spray skirts and life jackets and helped each other steady each kayak as we scrambled off the low dock into the boats. We got ourselves into formation with Dan at one end and Mike at the other for the paddle west across the Christie Passage to Balaklava Island’s southern end at Nolan Point. We skirted the very small sparsely forested Jerome Island, an old Indian burial ground, more accurately designated a place of the dead. It was the practice of the people who lived here originally to put their dead in cedar boxes on the ground or simply hang the bodies on tree branches and let the ravens take them away.
We strung out in a long line, paddles bobbing, dipping, and dripping as we made our way leisurely toward the northwest between Balaklava and the nearby Lucan Islands. In the Browning Passage vertical rock cliffs drop down deep underwater, and we paddled within a few feet, exclaiming at the sight of sea anemones and brilliantly colored sea stars clinging to the rock wall below us in the clear water. This spot in particular is a destination for scuba divers from all over the world for some of the best cold water diving available anywhere.
Several miles later as mid day approached we landed at a pebble beach called Bob’s Landing, although no one could tell us just who “Bob” was. Beyond the sloping rocky beach we could see two huge logs lying on the bank, bound together with thick strands of rusty steel cable. The cleared land behind was smooth and grassy, sloping gently away from the shore, leveling off, and then slanting down to an old sorting pond where lumbermen had floated their giant logs. Perhaps it was “Bob” who had supervised the building of a big boom rig here that could lift the logs in bundles into the small bay to be towed to some distant sawmill. The lumbering operation had been abandoned for a long time, and thick clusters of tall foxgloves hid the old logging road, showing their brilliant stacks of bell shaped flowers and nodding gently in the breeze.
On our return trip we rounded the southern end of Balaklava and skirted the eastern shore toward the north for awhile before “sandwiching” again for the crossing to Hurst. The tide had turned and was flowing with the strong breeze down Christie Passage. My GPS clocked us at 7+ kph as we made the crossing. We were drifting south about as fast as we were paddling east and our vector brought us to a point a bit beyond the entrance to the bay at God’s Pocket. As we paddled between the slopes of the island and the rock outcropping close to shore the buildings and dock were a welcome sight!
After a change of clothes and a few glasses of nice red wine provided by SKA, Steve got out his guitar. He strummed and sang while I tootled on my tin whistle for awhile on the sunlit deck before another sumptuous dinner.

Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - July 13th

2009-07-29T22:54:00.001-04:00

Monday, July 13th
The sun was up at 5:30 a.m., long before we were. We walked a short distance along the waterfront to a local coffee shop for breakfast at 7:30, and back a block to the government dock by 8:00. The 20 foot tide was close to its lowest point, so the metal ramp down to the floating dock was steep. The aluminum hulled 60 foot motor launch Hurst Island was waiting for us. The crew of two plus the twelve passengers made short work of carrying boxes of food, supplies, and personal luggage down to the boat where it was passed from hand to hand aboard and stowed below decks.
By 8:30 the big twin diesel engines were pushing us slowly away from shore, turning the reflections of the shoreline trees and grey overcast sky into undulating green and silver abstract paintings. Once clear of the inner harbor the engine sound rose to a throaty roar and the wind across the open deck increased to gale force as we went ripping across the still surface. Small islands loomed in the distance and scrolled past in rapid succession. The huge propellers slashed the water into a churning turmoil of spray and whirlpools that were quickly sucked into the bubbly wake streaming out behind us, but out to the sides the sea was so calm that it bounced back the grey-silver sky like a pool of cliquid mercury. Float bulbs of kelp we saw bobbing on the surface were easily mistaken for the heads of harbor seals at a distance. The occasional real seals we did see ducked out of sight quickly as the sped closer.
Forty minutes later several bald eagles watched us warily from the tops of spruce trees as we rounded the point at the end of Hurst Island. The engine roar subsided to a low rumbling as the God’s Pocket Bay came into view. The rock walls of the cove drop sharply into the water on one side of the densely forested island. A hundred yards away the other shore slopes more gently toward a tree covered rocky outcrop. Some of the rustic buildings of the resort are perched over the water on pilings the head of u-shaped bay while others cling to the slopes above, connected by boardwalks and steps.
The tide was just starting to flow in, and the ramp connecting the walkways with the floating dock descended to it at a steep angle. Everyone pitched in to unload the supplies and baggage. Boxes of food disappeared into the cook house, and we hauled our suitcases and backpacks to our assigned cabins.
After lunch we gathered on the dock for an introduction to the tandem kayaks, the thick lifejackets with multiple buckles, the spray skirts that keep water out of the openings, and exit strategies to be followed in the unlikely event of a capsize. Dan and Mike, the two guides provided by Sea Kayak Adventures assisted in sliding the kayaks one at a time off platforms that were only a few inches off the surface of the water. Easing down into the kayak’s two openings and checking to make certain that the spray skirts were stretched securely over the rim of each cockpit, one by one we paddled out to cluster at the opening of the bay.
Dan and Mike herded us into a side-by-side line not much more than a paddle length apart and told us to remain in this “sandwich formation” while we crossed the mile-wide
Christie Passage to the next island. In case strong winds or currents moved us up or down the channel at unexpected speeds, this formation would guarantee that we’d stay together as a single group.
We paddled along rocky shores and once in awhile through thick beds of kelp as we skirted the west shore of Balaklava Island. We watched lots of eagles watching us pass while they perched on bare branches keeping an eye out for salmon swimming too close to the surface. Although the air was a chilly 55 degrees I found out quickly that a warm flannel shirt and a windbreaker were way too much clothing! As we approached the Christie Passage on the way back we could see that the wind had picked up quite a bit, raising moderate waves and small whitecaps. Once again back in sandwich formation we all made the crossing without incident, but were very happy to have the spray skirts when small cold splashes sloshed across the tops of our kayaks.
Everyone was happy to have the luxury of hot showers and clean clothes waiting. The sun was hanging just above the ridges of Balaklava and the air was cool so we all crowded into the cozy meeting hut for a few glasses of nice red wine before the dinner bell clanged a summons to a mouth watering dinner of fresh caught salmon in the dining hall.

Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - July 12th

2009-07-29T22:52:00.003-04:00

Sunday, July 12th
Kim, who checked us into the motel last night is manning the desk again this morning, but passes off the duty to someone else to drive us in the motel van out to the airport to pick up a rental car. On the way, she entertains us with tales of spending seven months on a fishing trawler modified for pleasure use.
She and her husband cruised from the south end of Vancouver Island up the inside passage all the way to Alaska with no particular destination in mind, stopping in out of the way harbors and villages. She recalled vividly pulling in to one northern anchorage. He husband, a former member of the Canadian Coast Guard, contacted the local Coast Guard station and discussed the weather forecast with them. He was advised that a series of severe storms was sweeping in from the northwest, and that if he didn’t leave immediately there was a very good chance that he’d be stuck there until spring!
The left right away, but the first of the storms caught up with them anyway. The winds reached hurricane force and the seas built until the wave heights were more than twenty feet. Her husband, an experienced seaman stayed at the wheel, and sent her below where she’d be safer. Kate told us that she spent the better part of a day and a night in a lower bunk with her back on the mattress and her hands and feet braced against the wood framing of the bunk above to keep from being tossed and slammed around inside the heaving cabin. She obviously survived to tell the tale and the boat proved itself to be very seaworthy, but she did confess that she and her husband have given up cruising!
The drive north on Highway #19.Vancouver Island’s main road from Victoria to Port Hardy is a long one. The most spectacular overlook along the way was out across the Seymour Narrows of the Discovery Channel. The distance across the narrow channel is only about 700 yards, and much of the entire tidal flow from the Georgia Straight rushes through here at speeds of up to 20 miles per hour! Ripple Rock used to be submerged only 9 feet below the surface at one point, creating enormous whirlpools over 30 feet in diameter which could, and did swallow whole boats. Over the years 119 boats were lost here, and several unsuccessful attempts were made to dynamite the top off the obstruction. Finally in 1958 tunnels were dug under the seabed and up into the rock and more than 1300 tons of explosive were placed to blow up the rock.
Today the narrows is navigable, but care must still be taken by smaller boats to avoid the still wicked currents and eddies.
There are high mountains in middle of island, a few with patches of snow lingering in late July. Far up the slopes there are large sections where lumber companies have done clear cutting of all the trees. Reseeding has been carried out in those areas, but the result is a patchwork quilt effect of trees of different heights and different shades of green. In places on the steeper flanks of some mountains you can see avalanche paths through forests on steep terrain.
As you approach the north end of Vancouver Island the high rocky mountains give way to foothills with gentler slopes, in some places with second growth forest and in other places covered with older cedar, hemlock, spruce and alder. Port Hardy is a small town with a tripartite industrial base of fishing, logging, and mining.
This far north in July the sun doesn’t dip below the horizon until almost 9:00 p.m. so I had time to go for a three mile run before dinner. The motel was directly across the street from a swath of grass and a narrow rocky beach. Off to the right several piers jutted out into Port Hardy Bay. Rusty fishing boats and a 35 foot long Athabascan cedar wood canoe repeated themselves in the dark slow ripples beneath them. A paved path led along the waterfront and through a small park where tall cedars cast long shadows in the setting sunlight. I jogged slowly uphill through a neighborhood where many residents were out and about, chatting with each other on sidewalks or sitting on front porches. Most of them were First Nations people, the term that now describes better than the word “Indian” the people who have lived here for thousands of years. I saw some beautifully carved totem poles in front of the elementary school and the community center. A bit farther up the hill the pavement stopped and the unpaved one-lane washboard road curved off into the dark woods, so I headed back to the motel and a delicious dinner of cedar planked salmon.

Sea Kayaking in British Columbia - The adventure begins

2009-07-25T21:24:00.010-04:00

Saturday, July 11th
The alarm goes off at 5:30, and as I sit up bleary eyed, as I always do whenever I wake up, the first grey of a summer morning is already beginning to lighten the sky. We packed late the evening before, so all we have to do is get dressed and cart our luggage out to the rental car in front of my sister’s house.
Even this early on a Saturday morning the traffic is moderately heavy as we approach the toll gates for the Oakland – San Francisco Bay Bridge. Our $4.00 is taken by the man in the tollbooth without comment to a proffered “Good morning!”, and we keep pace with all the other cars flying along at 15-20 mph over the posted speed limit. The top two thirds of the towers on the suspension side of the bridge are invisible in dense low lying fog as we thread the maze of splits and off ramps and successfully negotiate our way onto Highway 101.
We turn in the rental car, collect our luggage, and trundle on down to wait our turns for the thrill of going through security. It’s not especially a thrill for us; only the minor inconvenience of taking off shoes, emptying pockets of loose change, extracting the laptop from its case and the camera from the backpack, but the stainless steel parts of Jane’s artificial knees invariably set off the alarms when she walks through the security gate. The thrill is for the security officers, who suddenly look more alert. More than once I’ve seen smiles of satisfied self-importance as they usher Jane to a nearby glass booth to begin the ritual of the waving of the magic wands as she assumes a wide stance and stretches her arms out to the sides while the guard confirms that there really isn’t a bomb hidden in either of Jane’s legs.
Once through security and we have collected and repacked scattered belongings and put our shoes back on, we head down the long corridors to the waiting area. We stop to buy some breakfast from one of the vendors that feel justified in charging at least triple what any reasonable person would pay for comparable items anywhere else. I extract a slightly stale cinnamon bun from its clear saran shroud, only to find that it has been baked with about three times too much sugar to be palatable. Perhaps that explains the treble price. I take a few bites just to have something in my stomach before I set it aside. I mistakenly assume that at least the coffee will be good. If you find the bitterness of quinine, combined with a hint of slightly burned plastic and the acidity of mild heartburn then you would have labeled the coffee delicious. My coffee cup, still mostly full, followed the remains of the cinnamon bun into the trash can. At least I had a good book to read while we waited for our flight to begin boarding.
The climb up through the fog into brilliant sunshine lifted my spirit as well as my body, and I sat in the window seat wit my head turned as far as it would go to the left to watch the ground far below and the anti-solar glowing point with the tiny shadow of the plane in the center racing across the countryside to keep up with us. It was exactly 10:00 a.m. as we passed over Redding where we had been just a few days before, and I could see the city’s famous Sundial Bridge, the Sacramento River winding through town, and Shasta Dam where the river’s falling waters turn the turbines and generators that provide power for much of northern California.
As we descended into the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, dysphoniously tagged with the name “SEATAC”, I was impressed with how the waters of Puget Sound embrace the edges of the city. During our long layover we had the chance to explore this city within a city. There are several thousand residents, all transient, either scurrying between concourses and flights or providing food, shopping, security, ticketing, custodial, and transportation services to others.

It was a short half hour flight to Victoria, whose airport is about a half hour drive north of the city at the edge of the charming waterside town of Sidney.
Our friends Sabra and Gayle met us for a mellow dinner on the outside terrace of a restaurant at the water’s edge looking out across the Haro Straight to the San Juan Islands, and far beyond, Mt. Baker in the State of Washington.

Click here for a video of the flight and the trip on Vancouver Island