On the Road - Midland

On the road again ... even though I just got back from vacation! This time, I am in the same time zone as my husband. What a treat! Midland is a really nice, clean town. I took this shot of a herd of bison at a local park.

Some airports keep the planes on the outside,

Midland brings 'em right in over the baggage claim area. Actually, Midland is home to the American Airpower Heritage Museum which houses and preserves authentic World War II artifacts and memorabilia, including uniforms of Allied and Axis countries, armament, photographs, weapons and equipment, and, you guessed it PLANES!

Memorial Day

Memorial Day has always held special meaning for me. As I was growing up, I helped members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post decorate soldiers’ graves with small American Flags. Mimi, my grandmother, was a member of the VFW and often wrote the programs that were presented on Memorial Day. Memorial Day also meant selling Buddy Poppies to raise money to support veterans in the Big Spring VA hospital with necessities and other items. I remember the Gold Star mothers who we also honored each Memorial Day for the sacrifice they bore for our country. Mothers who had sons in the military hung a banner with a blue star on it. Gold Star mothers were mothers whose sons were killed in action. Their blue star banner was replaced with a gold star banner. Recollections, also, of old soldiers drinking their memories of war away in a dark, smoky bar at the VFW. I learned to do the Texas Two Step in the arm of one of those old soldiers. Yes, arm is correct, not a typo … he had left one on the battlefield in Europe.

This Memorial Day, I was moved to tears by articles in the Austin American Statesman. The companion articles, “Army of one: War calls soldier back” and “Back in military life, kinship is renewed” were about a local veteran who has served a tour in Afghanistan, returned home, started back to school and got on with his life only to have the Army call him back. Sgt. Johnny Meyer wants to be a journalist and the Statesman is giving him the opportunity to provide articles from his current tour in Iraq. The description of Sgt. Meyer getting notified and the acceptance he expressed were heart wrenching. His description of connecting with others who had been called back over drinks at a local bar made me sick to my stomach. We, as a nation, are creating veterans that will most likely also be alcoholics.

Also on my mind this Memorial Day is my niece. She is a beautiful blond girl with potential that she doesn’t even recognize. She is smart. She is funny. She is a wonderful and caring person. She is in the Navy. She is on her way to Bahrain.

It breaks my heart to think of the changes that war will make to our young citizens such as Sgt. Johnny Meyer and my niece. I pray that they will be kept safe knowing that they will be changed when they return home. Please let them return home alive.

Vacation - Day Seven

From Twin Falls, Idaho, we drove the Thousands Falls scenic loop, which took us by the Hagerman fossil beds, ruts from the Oregon Trail and a thousand falls!
Here is a picture of the ruts. It is amazing that they are still viewable. It really makes me ponder the "foot print" that I (and we as a society) are leaving. What ruts are we making that future generations will be able to see long after we are gone? Did the people on the wagon trains making those ruts know, wonder or even care about the evidence their passing was leaving?













This is a nice scenery shot from an Oregon Trail rut viewpoint.

And finally, the last photo of our vacation … another shot of a waterfall. This is one of the "thousand falls" that pour into the Snake River.

Vacation - Day Six

Day six had us leaving Jackson and on our way to Twin Falls, Idaho. Over a high pass in the mountain and through farmland. Once we got to Twin Falls, we took a detour to see the Shoshone Falls. Shoshone Falls have a longer drop than Niagara Falls. It was beautiful as this picture shows.

Vacation - Day Five

In Jackson, WY. We had planned this to be a rest and relax, down day. My husband had planned to play bridge at the Senior Center. I had planned to go horse back riding and then get a massage. Unfortunately, my husband woke up with a cold. So he stayed in the hotel, reading and generally being quiet while I went about my day. Here’s a picture of me on my rented horse Dolla at Eagle Rock.

Vacation - Day Four

It started snowing while we were having breakfast and continued until we were out of Yellowstone. We stopped and took this picture as we were leaving. There was about 4 inches of snow.







As we were turning onto the Jenny Lake Scenic byway, we saw vehicles on both sides of the road. Slowing down, we asked what was happening and were told that there was a brown bear mother and her three cubs in the meadow. So naturally, I pulled over too (ever the tourist). This is the best shot I could get because the bears were a little far away for my camera. But I saw them with my own eyes and you will just have to trust me that the brown blobs in this picture are bears!

Jenny Lake












Just past Jenny Lake, we saw this gray wolf. The day was gray, the sage brush was gray and the wolf was gray. I cropped it and enhanced the color so the wolf stands out a little better.











Again working with the panorama on my camera. Here is a panorama of the Tetons.

Vacation - Day Three

We spent the night at the Lake Yellowstone Lodge. Built in 1891, it is the oldest standing lodge in the park and has been added on to a couple of times. Our large room that faced the lake was in the original portion of the lodge. The floor creaked and slopped. The bathroom was huge and had wonderful original tile. The glass in the windows in both the bedroom and the bath was original and had a few visual flaws and drips. I tried taking a picture, but it did not show up very well.

It turns out our visit to the park was just 3 days after it opened. Everyone was nice, but very new and therefore not everyone was very knowledgeable. We decided the best way to see the park was to let someone else do the driving.

Since we visited so early in the season, not all attractions, excursions and areas were fully open. We took the only tour available, the Circle of Fire tour. Our tour bus departed early in the morning and made a circle around the major geothermal features as well as by the falls. My husband sometimes opted to sit on the bus instead of walking around as his knees were hurting (turns out he was also coming down with a cold, but I digress and there will be more about that later). The weather was cool but not bad when we started out or when we ended. In between, there was snow. Cold, blowing snow. He sat the coldest, blowingest, snowyest one out, but I was a trooper and braved the weather to get some shots of the geysers. Here are the photo highlights of the tour.

Lake Yellowstone lodge – from the lobby looking out at the lake













Bluebell pool – One of the first of the thermal pools we saw. The color was bright blue.

Cooking pool – Actually in the lake. There are written accounts of settlers in the area fishing in the lake and cooking their catch in this pool. Our guide said that it probably was not a good idea as the pool has been tested and has large amounts of arsenic and mercury.













Here is a shot of our tour bus at the continental divide. Yep! that's snow!!

Cute little chipmunk watching for Old Faithful to blow. It was actually facing the geyser and looked like it was waiting.

What trip to Yellowstone would be complete without a visit to Old Faithful. I took several shots of the geyser, but this one is shows the gush at the highest point. Note the beautiful clear blue sky.

Here is a shot just an hour later of a geyser. I cannot remember the name, but the story is that this geyser was unpredictable until a few years ago when it blew really big. Since then, it has been a constant geyser, going off every few minutes. Not large like Old Faithful because it does not have time to build up as much pressure. If you look closely, you can see the snow falling in the picture. The little white dots of snow were really much bigger and the wind was blowing so it was very, very cold.

Down the road, we took a break and walked out in a meadow to see some wildlife. This shot is actually a three-fer, although you might be hard pressed to see the third animal. The bison mom and calf was my focal point. The geese and the ground squirrel (lower left hand corner) rounded out the triad. There was a large (30+) herd of bison and a large flock of geese. This photo only shows the mom and calf because I cropped it to get the "madonna" shot.

Water falls – I took way too many photos of water falls. Here are just a few.

Lower Falls

Upper falls

Little falls

Artist Falls Close up

Artist Falls panorama – I tried my hand at using the panorama feature on my camera.

Other wildlife shots

Here is a shot of a raven. Notice the ruts? Those are wagon ruts from the Oregon trail, still visible after over a hundred years. Between 1841 and 1869, the Oregon Trail was used by settlers migrating to the Pacific Northwest

Another ... much smaller, bison herd. These were right by the road and fearless. They were aware of us, but ignored us.














A lone male elk

Vacation - Day Two

Leaving Logan, we traveled up Logan Canyon National Scenic Byway. Mile-high limestone cliffs tower above dense forest and the winding Logan River as you travel the scenic 40-mile route between Logan and Bear Lake. This was an awesome experience. There really are no words for how beautiful this drive was.

Here is a shot of Ricks Spring Cavern.

The cold spring water that gushes forth from the rock.

A shot of a waterfall in Logan Canyon

Cherry blossoms. These trees lined the canyon and scented it with a sweet floral smell.

Here is a hazy picture of Bear Lake. You are driving along in a canyon that comes up to the edge of the road and then you turn a corner and suddenly you see this massive lake. My husband first drove this canyon and saw the lake in 1962 in the middle of the night as he and other friends were traveling to the World’s fair in Seattle. Imagine coming upon this with moonlight reflecting off the lake.

Next we traveled down the Pioneer Scenic Trail. Here is a shot of Oxford Peak.
From there we drove into Yellowstone National Park. It rained on us almost the entire way after reaching the park. I concentrated on driving while my husband watched the scenery but didn’t take any pictures. He saw a moose, but I didn’t. But I did avoid running over a gray wolf. One of two that we saw on the trip.

Vacation - Day One

One of the perks … maybe the ONLY perk of being a road warrior is the frequent whatever points that I accumulate. This week my husband and I took advantage of those points to take a vacation. Two free airline tickets took us to Salt Lake City via Las Vegas. The Las Vegas airport has slot machines in the gate area. Hard core.

Picked up a rental car and headed for Logan, Utah for our first free night. Here is a shot of the Latter Day Saints Logan Temple on the hill in Logan. It was a very imposing sight.

We asked a local for directions to a restaurant with local flavor. Unfortunately for us, it was a Mexican food restaurant. Call us Mexican food snobs if you want, but we didn’t’ travel to Utah to eat Mexican food!!! It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t terrific either.

On the Road - Lubbock airport art

Passing through the Lubbock airport this weekend, I saw this wall sized picture of cotton. When you fly over the Texas Panhandle in the fall, fields are white with snow ... if it is a good year!

A few months ago, when I was going through security, I dropped a glass bottle of patchouli oil perfume. Maybe it was my imagination, but I think I smelled patchouli as I went through security this time! oopps!

On the road - Tampa

Traveling again. This time to Tampa. Easy direct flight on Southwest. A little choppy because of the storms.

The Tampa airport has something I've never seen in an airport before. An aquarium. Neat. This picture is a little blurry but it does show the nice coral formation in the middle. I think the coral is fake (resin). The fish did not seem to mind though.

The air, when I got outside the airport, seemed rather hazy. The evening news was full of information about wild fires around Florida and how the smoke was clogging the air. Lovely. People in cars commuting with masks on.

Sewing innovation

Alternate titles for this posting Necessity the Mother of invention or another use for sticky notes. I had to do a bit of sewing today. I purchased a pair of knit shorts and as I was taking the tags off, I tore a little hole in the material ... right in front.

So I took out my sewing machine to fix it. Set it up on my desk. Dug through my sewing stuff and found thread that actually matched pretty close (lucky). Threaded the machine and then started to look at how to fix it. The hole was just below the elastic waist band which meant that it was not in a place that would lay flat to mend. What to do? I looked around the desk because I was contemplating using paperclips and a ruler to hold it straight when I noticed a pad of sticky notes. Hmmm ... I wonder ...

I took a sticky note and put it right under the hole which smoothed out the gather and made the material flat. Then it was a quick few zigzag stitches to fix and tada! It was mended. I pulled the sticky note off and figure that the paper that got stitched in will disintegrate the first time I wash the shorts.

Mark Twain said

"Years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore.

Dream.

Discover."

Our next vehicle - Electric?

My husband and I are looking to buy an electric vehicle. Typically if we are traveling out of town, we rent a car. When we are toodling around town, we have a little generic car that gets about 25-28 mpg. It's so small that whenever we want to buy something big (think lumber for our patio project, or a new chair), we have to either rent a truck or borrow a friend's van.

Recently we saw the Dynasty truck and I immediately fell in love with it. The Dynasty is classified as a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle so has a limited (30 miles) range. It is really cute and has a neat 3rd door that opens into the bed of the truck for easy access in addition to the normal tail gate. Unfortunately, the place that sells them in Austin has such odd hours that we've yet to actually sit in it or drive it.

Another option is a Zap utility truck. Zaps are a little funky because they only have 3 wheels. It's also a NEV but has a greater range. A BIG plus for the Zap is that it has an optional solar panel that charges the batteries while you are driving or parked somewhere. This gives it an even greater range. The Zaps are the less expensive of what we are considering and with the solar option ... top choice, right now.

Lastly, today, I discovered the Phoenix SUT. The Phoenix is everything that I want. But it has a much bigger price. It looks and performs more like a normal truck. Since it can be used on the highway, it's not classified as an NEV. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be available for consumers until 2008.

Sunny Day

After what seems like an eternity, the sun has finally broken through the clouds. The rainy weather has been really nice in terms of getting things growing and filling the lakes. I know I should be happy for it and I know that come July/August, I'm going to be wishing for some cloudy, wet days. But it just seems like it has been gray and gloomy forever. I'm so glad to see the sun again!

Happy Dance! Happy Dance!

Aaarrgghh!!!

I, yi, yi ... I'm starting a new project and already I feel like I'm being set up for failure. Maybe it's because I don't work as fast as others. Or maybe it's because I bill for the amount of time that I actually work and possibly others don't. Either way, once again I'm on a project that seems as though it doesn't have enough hours in it.

I value my non-working time and try really hard to keep the balance between work and home. But now, I'm feeling pushed to the edge ... forced to either not record the actual number of hours I spend on the project and so take the hours out of my home time or else I'll be over budget.

Arrgh!! I guess I'll just have to suck it up. Most of the time I like my job, but this is one of those instances where I'm feeling like I don't know what I'm doing and that I'm a failure at the job and at life in general.

So ends the pity party.