Category Archives: People

adventure, Attractions, Colorado, featured, Nature, Outdoors, People, weather, wildlife

Rocky Mountain High, in Colorado…

July 5, 2014 travelingdad 2 Comments

(This is a catch-up post. We had such a good time in Parker, and such a hectic schedule after, I am still trying to get us current. As you may have noticed yesterday, we have a bit of time on our hands now. We left Denver heading east on Memorial Day. )

We have not actually spent the last six weeks in Moab. We did raft the mighty Colorado on a day-long expedition out of Moab.

From Moab, our little rig, with our Dodge Caravan as always in tow, chugged up Wolf Creek Pass in southern Colorado, after a day at Mesa Verde National Park.

We had visited the cliff dwellings before, and they seemed none-the-worse for wear in the last ten years.

The older I get, the harder it is to get my head around building something that lasts for centuries, with one’s bare hands. I wonder if the Puebloan who arose one June morning around the time Chris Columbus was cajoling Queen Isabella for cash thought over his breakfast of arrowroot and water about how to select rocks and mud that would support his dwelling roof through the bronze age, the industrial revolution, space exploration, and Miley Cyrus.

Probably not.

From Wolf Creek Pass, way up on the Great Divide, we found ourselves truckin’ on down the other side, and into Alamosa. On the way in, we passed the motel-in-the-drive in, a quirky establishment I stayed in in 1969 on a trip with my Aunt Kathy, and where Jen and I stayed again on a Colorado trip about ten years ago. In 1969 I saw the original True Grit there, with John Wayne and Kim Darby.

The next day we waxed up our boards and headed for Great Sand Dunes National Park, to show Coloradans how the coast dwellers play on running water. At the base of the Dunes is a river that runs about 200 feet wide and four inches deep—when it runs at all. In the lee of snow-capped Rockies peaks, my middle son demonstrated skimboarding. It’s probably been done there before, in this geological oddity–miles of sand beach in search of its ocean, now a thousand miles away. But it sure was fun to watch middle-son frolic.

We left Moab for the most intense part of the drive so far. In southern Arizona, just beyond the area of Mesa Verde in the southwest part of the state. Though we hadn’t planned to go to Mesa Verde, we hadn’t planned on Arches either, and once we realized how close we were, well, how could we not revisit the ruins of our ancient kin?

From the Great Sand Dunes, we pointed north for a week of R&R with brother Mike in sunny Parker, Colorado, and some repairs on the Caravan. We all breathed a collective sigh of contentment. For the first time on the trip, we were headed for a destination we knew well–my brother’s comfortable, spacious home.

We backtracked the second day to the Cheyenne Zoo, on the east slope of Cheyenne Mountain overlooking the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs. We got there just in time to experience a hellacious hailstorm, and still carry the pockmarks on the Dodge to remember it by.

The next day we paid a visit to the very cool Denver Museum of Nature and Science and were again patting ourselves on the back for buying our Museum membership back in Dallas at the Perot Museum.

Mike has never been one to let the grass grow under his feet, and while we were in town, in one memorable day, we drove to Boulder to tour the Hammond’s Candy Factory in Denver, then to tour the Celestial Seasonings Tea headquarters on (of course! Sleepytime Drive in Boulder, and then to The Boulder Dinner Theater featuring Shrek! The Musical!

The Hammonds candy tour will be remembered best for the moment when 20 cell phones sounded simultaneously in the tour group to warn of an approaching tornado. We chatted up the employees while huddled in the ladies room, waiting for the all-clear signal. We also loaded up on candy, to show our appreciation for the free tour, and to support local merchants.

The Celestial Seasonings tour featured a variety of tea samples, including ones we hadn’t heard of, and we bought several boxes at below-retail. Then we were off to the dinner theater with Uncle Mike, and cousins Matt and Jenny, for a night of laughs, thrills, and very touching moments.

Next day, we boarded the Georgetown Loop Railroad for a short but wonderful excursion from Georgetown, CO up Clear Creek in the Rockies Front Range to the town of Silver Plume.

Mid-trip, we climbed off for a mine tour of the old Lebanon Silver Mine that turned out to be a real treasure! The guide was a lifelong resident of Silver Plume, and she really knew her mining stuff! She was a delight, and answered every question with wit and a deep knowledge. We also learned about the miners’ lunch–pasties–which we had a chance to sample later in our trip.

Trudging out from our day (one hour, fifteen minutes) in the mines, we were of course, ravenous. So next stop was for Mountain Pizza in Georgetown. Yes, pizza by the pound. Coming back into Parker, we stopped by Littleton in a driving rainstorm to snap a picture of the house on Josephine Way where I spent my fifteenth summer. My brother pointed out Columbine High School, three blocks from where I’d lived. Columbine has always had a connection for Jen and me. The tragedy started the week we married, in 1999, and sadly, continues every several weeks or so that schools are in session.

In America.

We wrapped up Colorado with a street festival in Denver on South Gaylord Street. For all your income tax needs, stop in at Mike Downs, CPA, 1040 Gaylord Street. 1040. Get it? The Festival was followed by a splendid cookout in Boulder at Matt and Jen’s, where we met their newest family member, and desserted on Chocolate Mousse cake from Carlo’s Bakery in Las Vegas. (Yes, the boys and I went back after all and bought a cake, froze it, and toted it to Colorado with us!)

Colorado is the one state west of the Mississippi where we feel at home already. We spent two weeks there nine years ago, and again two weeks three years ago, and if it wasn’t so far from the ocean, we would strongly consider calling it home.

adventure, featured, Nature, Outdoors, People, South Dakota, Uncategorized

While it Wasn’t on our Schedule…

July 4, 2014 travelingdad 1 Comment

As the immortal bard John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens to us while we are busy making other plans.” On Wednesday, at 12:23 pm Central Time, as we drove from Mitchell, SD to our next camp in Hot Springs, SD, our motor home broke down just before exit 225 on I-90. It went into what is called limp mode. It is hard to imagine a more apt technical term.

We limped off the interstate in the general direction of a gas station at the top of a hill on Highway 16. We never reached the top. What followed was a series of calls, starting with the Good Sam Roadside Assistance dispatch. Phrases like, “holiday week, ” “remote location,” “limited options,” sprinkled the short conversation between interminable hold periods.

Other things happened too. Two motor homes and a guy in a pick up truck stopped to make sure we were okay. Jordan was dispatched by Sam from Charley’s Auto Service in Kennebec , nine miles back, to see if he could determine if it was worth hauling us to his shop. He couldn’t, but not for lack of trying.

It is one of those mysterious events that befall vehicles, that I stopped worrying about at some point in the last 3,500 miles or so. We have covered almost 30 states without so much as a hiccough from this faithful lumbering beast, and now a baffling, and possibly very expensive, ailment has her functioning perfectly as a camper and not a whit as a conveyance.

We were immediately befriended by Beth and Lauren of the New Frontier RV park in Presho, SD. They enlisted a neighbor, Scott part-owner of Hutch’s Cafe & Lounge in Presho, to tow our motor home with his pickup truck the half-mile or so to the campground. Wouldn’t take anything but thanks for the effort. We can’t get anyone to look at the motor home until Tuesday, July 8. In Chamberlain, forty miles back.

Now I remember why I love blogs. It’s the immediacy. The “this is what’s happening now, won’t it be interesting to see how it turns out?” emotion of the moment. Funny thing, last time I felt this way was when our car broke down in San Antonio. There is a moral there.

Beth and Lauren have invited us to a Fourth of July picnic tonight in camp. Not sure what we’ll do. It is a beautiful, idyllic setting, and quite peaceful.

I keep thinking of the thousands who’d planned to spend their Fourth on the Outer Banks, and the wrenching experience of forced evacuations for Arthur. We hope everyone is safe, somewhere. Keep low, Jimmy B, since I am sure you stayed on the island.

Give me Presho, and the strong sense that, just today, the nation’s birth day, we are right where we are supposed to be. Happy Independence Day, to friends and loved ones near and far. Be safe, be well. Be grateful.

And pass the potato salad!

Attractions, People, Texas

Where the Ghosts Dance

April 12, 2014 travelingdad

San Antonio is an interesting oyster–not much to see from the outside, dazzling on the inside. We took the kids down to experience the Alamo. You round a maze of parking garages and high rise hotels and wham! It’s just there. The iconic front wall of the simple church that was never meant to fortify anything.

Like Gettysburg and Antietam and other geographic accidents of history, it’s a place for reflection and pause. The signs remind you: no hats on men, keep your voice low, no photographs. Here is the place where, as Colonel William Barrett Travis said to the “People of Texas & All Americans in the World”:

The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country. Victory or Death.

It is hard to imagine in 2014 a former Congressman stepping over the line in the sand to stand alongside him facing certain death. But Davie Crockett did just that, after an election loss where he famously told the people of his district, “you might go to hell, but I am going to Texas.”

And it raises questions in older men’s minds about what one might have done in a similar situation. Travis was 26, his whole life at his feet. What is worth offering a life dearly for? Having once been admonished, “Don’t tell me what you believe. Tell me what you do all day and I’ll tell you what you believe,” would I have stepped across the famous “line”? It’s good to think on these things occasionally.

It seemed so fitting that our last night in San Antonio was a party in the shadow of the Alamo. It is a place one can easily imagine the ghosts dancing.

adventure, People, Texas

San Antonio, City of (At Least One) Angels

April 9, 2014 travelingdad 5 Comments

Last night we were on our way back from Austin, after watching a bat exodus (more to follow), and our Dodge Caravan overheated about three miles from our KOA in San Antonio. What followed was a series of events alien to my grown-up life: summoning a tow truck, trying to locate a taxi, trying to figure out where we were at an unfamiliar exit ramp in an unfamiliar town, and this morning, trying to decipher the baffling code of a city bus schedule.

Enter Rebar. Rebar (I checked the spelling) is a tow truck operator in San Antonio. When he arrived on scene last night, first he made sure that we would get back to camp ok . Us being me, Jen, our three boys, and Shadow, our faithful dog. Rebar said if we needed a place to stay, we could crash at his apartment. He offered the kids chips from a bag he had in the cab.

Sometimes it takes a burp in one’s plans to realize how much goodness there is in the world. Rebar is four months in the country from Kurdistan. He speaks four languages, and his formal English is much better than mine. He fled Iraq finally, where he’d worked as an English translator for the U.S. Army. Something about extremely short career expectations.

Now he is in San Antonio, learning his way around, and grateful to be here. And so, need I add, are we. At this hour, I don’t know what will become of the work on the car. Will we have to end the trip to pay for a new engine? Were we mistaken to tow our car? Will we have to drive it from now on, and try to sell a tow dolly? I hope not.

But we met an angel last night, in the midst of trying and failing to find a cab to come to the part of town we’d broken down. I had the sensation, talking to Rebar, of reading The Life of Pi, and wondering, at the end, how much of Piscene’s tale was true, and how much was fanciful fiction designed to weave a more exciting tale, and in the case of Rebar, to maybe reap a better tip.

I prefer to believe in angels. Rebar is one. That’s what my kids remember about our cramped, late-night drive, and there is more than enough danger in the world for me to worry that they’ll arrive as adults overly innocent. So thanks, Angel Rebar. Welcome to America, and I hope you continue to be yourself here, for our sake.

featured, People

The Mystery of Family

April 6, 2014 travelingdad 2 Comments

One of the main goals of traveling for us is to catch up with family scattered like dandelion seeds over the country. From Texas to Arizona to California to Colorado to Montana to New York. We will miss Alabama and South Carolina and Florida this trip, but we are, after all, moving to Florida…

We talked over the picnic table last night about how strange it is that there are people in the world mommy and daddy have no relationship to, but when our kids are born, they instantly have uncles and great-aunts and cousins they will have for life.

My wife and kids have been meeting relatives, in some cases for the first time here in Dallas. Strangers from a shared tribe open their homes and their emotional lives, and share all sorts of things, ask the most probing questions, They are, after all, family.

Family often leaves clues. My oldest is told affectionately that he has the mannerisms of Uncle Sandy, by a woman who’s not seen Sandy in decades. Men who are grandparents are referred to by the names ten-year-olds carry. Billy. Richie.

What invariably begins as the most awkward of conversations between complete strangers soon becomes surprisingly comfortable, after all. Connections are discovered, both in the past and the present.

People spark friendships over the oddest things. Dogs and campfires and roasted marshmellows. And tentative emails. This is your niece. We’ll be passing through in several weeks, and would like to see the gang…

Strangers become comrades, and partings are more genuine sadness than relief. Until next time…

Attractions, People, weather

Cave City, Kentucky

March 25, 2014 travelingdad

First, to start the week, a big thank you to those who have recommended places-to-see so far. Thanks to Bill C of Eldersburg, who suggested we stop in to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the Oak Ridge Boys of Elvira fame take their name. Bill recommended the American Museum of Science and Energy, where IMG_1566 we witnessed spectacles that stood our hair on end! Oak Ridge is the Secret City created to provide the enriched uranium for Big Boy and the fateful choices that brought World War II to its climactic conclusion. Awe inspiring and spine chilling.

Thanks also to Jen’s friend Bev from Maryland who recommended Mammoth Cave. We have a tour scheduled for 9 am today. And we are now citizens of Central Time!

Thanks as well to Resa D of Parker, CO, who suggested we visit Cade’s Cove in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. She suggested hiking, and we did , but the boys also love discovering their own fishing holes.

Thanks, very much, to Eileen O of Maryland, who suggested we take in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Dollywood deserves its own post, so look for that in the next day or so.

It may just be coincidence, but I assume the town we’re in this morning gets its name from the nearby Mammoth Cave. It is 27 degrees outside as I write, and in case you wondered, the campground shut off water just after we arrived yesterday afternoon so the pipes don’t freeze.

Because of our need for internet, for Jen’s work, and of course these vital posts, we are staying in campgrounds we don’t normally frequent. Of course, we’ve never had a 29-foot motorhome along either. This is our second campground on the trip, and the second one that looks more like a drive in, for those who remember them, than a park.

It’s really a flat expanse of grass squares dotting a crushed gravel drive, with a few picnic tables and fire rings (our site has neither), and a few trees that stand barely higher than the four-foot posts for the electrical and cable hook up. Yes, our kids have only ten channels to choose from. Why, I remember a day…

But to its credit, it has a dog park where Shadow can run free if she can talk anyone into daring the bitter cold to walk her there.

People

A Jewel in Altamont

Image February 28, 2014 travelingdad

Yesterday my brother Dave, his son James, and I were driving across Illinois, bringing the motorhome from Boise, ID. We all agreed we’d like to try something non-chainlike. The GPS suggested a place called The Railroad Street Coffee Shop, on 120 Main Street in Altamont, Illinois. We happily drove past a McDonald’s, a Subway, and a few other chain shops, and into Altamont proper, past the playground and the quiet residences of the bucolic town, named from the Latin for City of Plain, and originally a part of Mound Township.

According to Wikipedia, William Henry Perrin wrote in 1883: “The name of Mound Township was bestowed upon it in consequence of what is known as the neighborhood of Blue Mound… [where] recently, the Government has erected a signal observatory upon it, some seventy-five to one hundred feet in height, from the top of which one may look across the States of Missouri and Arkansas and see the cowboys watching their herds on the prairies of Texas.”

We missed the cowboys yesterday, but found a cook’s mess that would have warmed a hungry cowpoke’s heart. When you walk in the door of the Open Door Diner (under new name and management, GPS!), the first thing that confronts you is the Wall of Shame, a vast poster board of those unfortunates who were bested by Gramps Challenge, an intimidating breakfast heap if ever one was concocted. A sampling of the epitaphs: Bigger shovels just fill the hole faster!! On the up side, I have breakfast for the week. As of yesterday, four noble souls had conquered the Gramps Challenge, and lived to achieve a Certificate of Achievement.

The rules are simple: You have 30 minutes. No trips to the bathroom. No help. No regurgitation (that would be messy). With roughly 700 miles to go before the trip was complete, we were not even tempted. But I did sample a concoction called Cooks Garbage Can. It was huge, and heavenly.

Vennia and James are the husband-wife team that have owned and operated The Open Door Diner for the last three years. Yesterday, Vennia waited tables while James tended the grill. Their daughters also work there, and family members support missions to Cuba, Panama, and other far flung locations in support of their church.

In our haste to get from Point A to Point B with the minimum of fuss, we are losing something vital: experiencing the small Vennia-and-James establishments. Mom and Pop, who, while they understand the need to make a buck, also will whimsically concoct a creation that is a wonderful culinary grab bag, and who invest their lives into their work, their community, and their world.

Tonight is the gala fundraiser for the next mission effort coming up. Give generously, and trust me: Don’t be afraid to order anything on the menu at the Open Door Diner on Main Street, Altamont. And allow yourself enough time to gab with the proprietors. You’ll be glad you did.

Cool Travel with Kids