Potpourri

I last posted to Thistle Adventure on the 22nd of February, after we'd been on the road only a couple of days. And now, here it is the 1st of March and I'm finally rounding up the parts of the past seven days into a travel medley composition.

Driving down the Coast we had rain, rain and more rain. A quick walk was grabbed here and there in the sun breaks, but mostly we were lulled by mile after mile of the wipers beating back and forth, the rain pounding down on Thistle, and the oncoming traffic throwing water at us. Our world was a saturated mess as this wet winter continued to be wet.

Hay stacks became strange ominous dark blotches through our rain drenched windows...

At one point, stopped for construction, we were thoroughly entertained by a rain gear clad flagger wearing the world's biggest smile. She talked with the folks stopped before us and then, putting an even bigger smile on her face, she walked over to our car window. In the beating down rain she cheerfully said, "At the next little store they serve great hotdogs with homemade mustard." Ed and I have not been big hotdog eaters for years, but, guess what we did in the wake of such an irresistible smile?

Leaving the coast at Fortuna in California we headed east on Higway 36 into the Shasta Trinity National Forest, towards Red Bluff. A slow-going mountain road, two lanes, millions of curves, frequent slides from the heavy rains, snow at the higher elevations, and views to knock your socks off. On the west side of the Salmon Mountain Range were redwoods and on the east, oaks. Grass lands, firs and pines completed the mix. An occasional ranch tucked into the landscape gave reason for the highway. Definitely not the road to drive if you're in a hurry but worth every second if you're not.

From Red Bluff to Auburn we were headed directly through the Colusa-Yuba City-Marysville area where a week earlier the back roads, as well as I-5, were flooded and folks in the path of the Orville Damn were evacuated. With sun replacing the rain we had dry roads, but the fields were flooded and walnut and almond orchards stood in pools of water. Little dwellings still had water lapping at their doorsteps, but I'm guessing quite an improvement from the previous week of water inside.

Coming through the valley, following the Sacramento River, I finally discovered the secret of knowing where I am at the corporate-developed intersections. You know the ones. They have all the usual players -- Safeway, McDonalds, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Wendy's, Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell. So here's the trick. Street signs. In the northwest the streets are Pine, Fir and Cedar. Down here in the valley they are Oak and Olive. In the southwest they are Sage and Juniper.

Once we were in Auburn (Meadow Vista actually) we stayed for two nights to visit with Sharon and John, high school friends. The Potpourri yearbook was pulled out time and time again to refresh our memories. Do you remember him? What happened to her? We told all the stories we could remember about Jeff, our good friend and classmate, who had died just a few months earlier. We managed to get all our gruesome health issues out on the table, with John still in recovery from back surgery and me, not so long ago, doing the intestinal surgery dance.

Ed and I walked the roads, finding the Hankins home but not looking for mine. We even drove around Auburn finding the homes of our long ago friends -- Sue, Linda, Jeff, Judy, Marilyn, Paul. John's former home. Comments sprang up, "Wow, the ice house is gone. Isn't that where Rankin's Department Store was? Such a shame the main building of Placer High was demolished." YAnd, somehow, Ed and I drove away without one photograph.

Today we spent most of the day on Highway 49 headed south from Auburn to Cool and then Coloma where gold was discovered. On to Placerville, Sutter Creek and then Jackson where we stopped for lunch at this charming Serbian Orthodox Church under the bluest sky imaginable.

Growing up in Auburn, positioned nicely in the Mother Lode country on Highway 49, I have traveled this road many times. If you have not, you are missing some of California's most charming little towns, magnificant scenery and fascinating gold rush history. Plus the wine tasting isn't to be overlooked. I recommend putting Highway 49 on your must do travel list.

Our night's stay was boondocking on Greeley Hill, not too far from Sonora, looking out over the sprawling lights of Modesto in the valley.

This morning we head to Yosemite. Road reports advise all but one road into the park are closed by snow and winter storm damage but we have a clear blue sky so nothing looks impossible. And, at this very moment we enjoy internet and sunshine in Mariposa. Three signs jump out to define this lovely little town for us -- Dabbles, Bytes and Chocolate Soup.

~~~

Potpourri

Placer High School yearbook

Several songs or events strung together in a medley

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Tonight I Pray for my Country

Today Ed and I hiked the Misery Ridge Trail feeling optimistic about Hillary Clinton being our next president. We laughed and talked as we hiked, enjoying the views and the day and our world and our country's prospects for peace and prosperity. We enjoyed stomping the misery of this awful campaign season in the butt.

How misplaced our optimism.

I have always trusted the voters to do the right thing...eventually. I guess eventually is a bit further off than I thought. For half of this country to think Trump is even remotely qualified to be President is terrifying. And then to realize they knowingly voted for a liar, racist, sexist, and rapist as well, for President of the United States, is enough to make me want to sit in a corner and weep. Is misogamy so engrained in this country that fighting it is stronger than electing a totally vile person. Trump will never be my president. He is a person devoid of ethics; lacking respect for others; without an ounce of self control; and unprepared in all ways to lead our country. I have no respect for the man, president or not.

So tonight I pray for my country. I pray for my family, my friends, and myself. I pray for the strength to overcome my fear and distress at this election's outcome. I pray for an easing of my sadness at watching this opportunity for women dissolve. I also pray for people of color, immigrants...the "other" on Trump's enemy list.  I pray that I can forgive the people who voted for this vile man. I pray I can forgive the people who would not give up on their Bernie fixation and voted third party or not at all. I pray the ignorance in this nation can be replaced with wisdom and anger with hope.

The final word tonight - Donald Trump wins. God help us all.

~~~

"How do we go from our first black president to a president endorsed by the KKK? How?"

~ Rob Fee

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Stomping Away Misery

Misery: "a state or feeling of great distress or discomfort of mind or body"

This election cycle has been the true definition of misery! Tempers, nerves, fear and anger have all been stacking up as the weeks have drug on and on and on.

But, finally, tomorrow, Election Day is here --Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Will Hillary Clinton win, as I hope? Will the Democrats take back the Senate? My fingers are crossed. Could we throw in the House too? Not likely, but please, pretty please! And then on down the ticket with wins for Democrats, putting distance from the toxicity of this campaign. 

My political stance is no secret.  I switched from my birth-party many years ago because I wanted a party that would support me as a woman. I needed a party that didn't fight equal rights. I've never looked back. I became a Democrat on a single issue; I remain a Democrat on many issues.

My personal feelings are that we have only one qualified candidate for President, and she is exceedingly well qualified. What a pile of misery has been stacked on top of this one woman's shoulders by those who hate her and fear her. Attack after attack after attack. As a feminist, the misogyny directed at her has been painful and maddening and inexcusable.

As a member of Pantsuit Nation, I definitely would wear a pantsuit tomorrow, if I had one. Pantsuits aren't exactly Thistle attire, but I do have a white shirt and I will wear it to show my solidarity with the suffragettes, with women, and for the long fight of women to earn the right to vote. I can't express strongly enough how powerful the election of a woman president is to me.  Just the thought of Madam President makes me want to both cry and shout with joy.

Ed and I voted several weeks ago before taking off on our trip, but we plan to spend election day in a special way to symbolize the end to this election cycle.   We've planned to return to Smith Rock State Park for another hike. It will be the perfect tribute to this day.  It will be our show of strength and our hope for the future. The hike will be on Misery Ridge Trail. It is rated "most difficult" and goes up and over the ridge. Hillary Clinton's race has been "most difficult" as well and she's going up and over the ridge.

We will stomp our way along, kicking away all the misery Hillary has suffered and all the misery the American people have suffered.   Ed and I will celebrate the beauty and the good of this nation.

We will put misery behind us and move forward...stronger together! We will celebrate the results of early voting's good news, holding the faith of victory!

~~~

“As women, we must stand up for ourselves. We must stand up for each other. We must stand up for justice for all.” 

~ Michelle Obama

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It's the Season...for Thoughts of Politics

It's the political season and I simply can't help but think of how our nation could be better. I see, woven throughout our differences in this nation  a fiber of pride and patriotism. Some folks try to claim these traits for their own, as others shun them, but the threads are deeply tangled and embedded. America is a nation we love, yet a nation we love to hate as well.

I struck up a conversation recently with a National Forest Ranger, which I like to do when the opportunity arises. I know it can be a stressful job, so I go out of my way to say "thanks". As we talked about his work as a ranger, Ryan, a polite young man, who was conducting a Forest Service survey alongside the road said, "a man just drove by and flagged me the bird". Ryan showed sadness as he spoke and in a hurt tone continued, "he doesn't even know me."

Why does anyone think this behavior is ok? Reacting to a person's job, color, age, or any other reason, by striking out in frustration, as happened to Ryan, is unkind. Was the finger waver acting out his perceived superiority or was he angry with feelings of impotence at a system too huge for him to understand? I don't know and can only guess at what motivated him to be rude. In his column once, years ago, George Will made the case that ethics would be well served if we would follow Miss Manners' rules of good social behavior.

Ryan told me, as the conversation changed topics, he would be better off working for the Department of the Interior rather than the Department of Agriculture. When I queried him about this I learned that each agency shares in the profits of its negotiated contracts and since BLM is doing oil contracts (up in sales) and Forest Service is doing forestry contracts (down in sales), their funding reflects this. Ryan's agency is experiencing grave budget shortages.

Both the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, through their agencies, are responsible for managing public lands for varied uses. The agencies begin each day with conflicting goals as they set out to please all their constituencies, as well as supplementing their tax-short budgets. Talk about an untenable position. It seems like the system is designed in a way that pits one interest against another and leaves the agencies in a damned if they do or damned if they don't position.

The environmentalists get in a turmoil because the agencies are not doing enough to protect the land for wildlife; ranchers for grazing; miners for mining; foresters for logging; and recreation folks for each person's specialized interest. And none of this speaks to wildfire fighting, dams for electricity, road building, protection of Native American sacred sites or the multitudes of other urgent management issues. What we have is a swirling dervish type of mess.

A few days later I engage in a conversation with two Department of Interior employees. As I approached them I could feel their tension. When I held out my hand for a handshake and to deliver my customary thank you, I felt their tension melt. Criticism seems to be what is most typically directed at our government employees and they are skittish. I asked if I could take a photo and the man wielding the chainsaw said, "Let's see, I have my eye and ear protection, my chaps, boots and gloves. Sure, go ahead."

I am grateful for the work done by the agencies managing our public land and every time I step into a pit toilet, clean and with toilet paper, I am even more grateful. I'm angered by the man who flipped the bird at a young ranger, leaving no one feeling very good and resolving nothing. Our government isn't all bad, nor is corporate America all bad, nor are either all good. Both provide things we need and want, yet both require continual nudging as our world changes and power structures shift.

Easy answers will not be found...ever! But good manners would be an excellent place to start. We just might find polite behavior leads us to respectful conversation that just might lead us to finding solutions.

~~~

"Ideological differences are no excuse for rudeness."

~ Judith Martin, Miss Manners

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John Day

I've been reading Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire - a story of wealth, ambition and survival, by Peter Stark. An excellent read.

In the early 1800's, John Day a forty-year-old Virginian joined John Astor's Overland Party as a hunter. He had harrowing experiences along the way, including being left behind because he was too weak from starvation to travel and almost dying.  Then, once recovered enough to travel again, he and his traveling companion, Crooks, were robbed and stripped naked by Indians, then set free to wander for an entire week without clothing before they found help from trappers.  All of this misery and fright left John Day mentally deranged, much like a modern-day soldier. At one point he tried to commit suicide. His last years were lived out in Astoria.

Yesterday our travels followed the John Day River; passed through the town of John Day; and then  the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.  Our first stop in the monument was the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center. This 14,000 acre National Monument showcases 40 million years of Oregon History. It is comprised of three units: Painted Hills, Sheep Rock and Clarno.

From the Paleontology Center we traveled along scenic highway 19 to Mule Shoe, a BLM campground situated along side the John Day River. We are camped entirely alone with only an occasional car passing by. Fee: $2.50. Stunning beauty!

Our home for the night...

Tomorrow we explore!

~~~

 Overland Party:

"In their wandering, hunger-ridden route, in all their wrong turns and suffering and dead ends, Hunt’s Overland Party happened to discover the best way to cross the last third of the continent. The route finding occurred in the most haphazard, unsystematic fashion—motivated by a drive to profit rather than by exploration or science—but they had done it...That crucial discovery...would become the Oregon Trail."

~ Peter Stark, Astoria

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Hell's Canyon Revisited

We just love being here...

~~~

"We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."

~ Henry David Thoreau, Ealden: Or, Life in thee Woods

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Trip Delay

This isn't the first time trip delay has happened, in fact, it happened on our first Thistle Adventure too.  Yep, Mr. Ed was not blessed with good teeth.   His teeth want to die before he does so his non-travel days are filled with fillings and extractions and impressions and implants and dentures and bridges and huge outlays of cash.  The dental work, planned to be wrapped up in September, has slid into October. Our Rocky Mountains trip from Alberta to Colorado has shrunk to something much less ambitious because we're getting a late start and the snow is already flying in Banff.  We now have a departure date, God willling and the creek don't rise of October 8, with Ed wrapping up his dental commitments for this fall on the 7th.  

My teeth seem to be doing fine.  Other parts of my aging body, however, are acting up.  Having managed to put the digestive tract health issue behind me, I've now been diagnosed with osteoporosis.  As they say, we don't get out of this life alive, but wouldn't it be lovely if loosing our teeth and doubling over with bad posture didn't need to be part of the game plan.  I could forgo the wrinkles too.

Aah well, complaining won't help my bones, exercise will.  My wrinkles?  I think I'll find some relief with candlelight and no mirrors.  For the osteoporosis I now have my list of stretches and twists and balancing acts along with high impact exercises.  I've biked for years to avoid high impact exercise because of my fused ankle.  High impact exercise is now on the top of the list of what I'm supposed to do -- running, jumping rope, hiking, dancing.  Yikes.  Do I sacrifice the ankle for a straight back?  It feels like a "between a rock and a hard spot" kind of dilemma.

Examining my life, even the struggle parts, I am always able to find gratitude -- wonderful family and friends; beautiful home and community; years and years of high energy and good health; happy childhood; meaningful and stimulating work and leisure activities; and money enough to consider myself rich by world standards.  I'm even grateful to discover there is a payoff to being older bringing with it a sense of maturity I never imagined possible.  Our retirement years, or as I recently read and prefer, our "refire" years, can be full and rewarding!  Long held relationships grow even richer and there is free time to spend as we desire.  A contented feeling, like surround sound drowns out not all, but much of my younger life's anxiety.  And then there's patience.  I have much less for stupid stuff, but much more for a delay or postponement here and there.

So, with a bit of a late start on our fall trip, soon we'll depart.  Reduced in scope yes, but no matter, we definitely are looking forward to another Thistle Adventure.  We'll spend time in the North Cascades, head east to Glacier Park, and then backtrack to Idaho's panhandle.  To explore the panhandle we will drive south on Highway 95, searching for bike trails and sweet small towns, basking in Idaho's scenic beauty.  Fall colors are in our hope-to-see plans too.

One trail we'll seek out is the Pend d'Oreille Bay Trail off Highway 200 (referred to as Idaho's Highway 66).  Highway 200 begins at a junction with Highway 95 in Ponderay, just north of Sandpoint.  A short sweet trail that has Benton wiggling with anticipation.

                                 

                                  

Our plan is to get far enough south before too much mountain snow and then home before it snows here on Whidbey.  We'll be home for the holidays. "Let it snow!  Let it snow!  Let it snow!"

Early January our first 2017 Thistle Adventure will begin.  Branching out from our southwest travels of these past two years, we currently have two destination bike trails in our sights.  First is the Natchez Trace Parkway, 444 miles from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee.  The second is the 200 mile Katy Trail State Park in Missouri, along the Missouri River.  But before the trails, we're looking forward to meeting up with Ed's brother and his wife at Big Bend National Park in Texas.

~~~

"When I reflect upon my life, the best things were like a fine wine.  It took more time than I wanted but how glorious the taste when it had matured."

~ Ron Sims

Celebrate Summer

Needing to put aside our at-home commitments and celebrate summer we jumped into Thistle and took off for Oregon.  Our Destination was the 22.7 mile Banks to Vernonia State Trail, west of Portland, but east of the coastal mountains.  A trail-of-note designed for horses, walkers, joggers and bikers, and while we were there, roller derby folks too.  Passing through forests, over bridges and trestles,  and through farm lands the trail pleases all tastes.   Forests provide a cool bowered jungle-like pleasure.  Farms and fields enchant with their open vistas sporting horse-grazing, hog-raising and free-ranging chicken.

And look what came with the trail…

We camped at Stubs Stewart State Park one night; moved to the mountains and camped at Gales Creek a couple of nights, commuting to the trail, and then spent four nights at Anderson Park, a city campground in Vernonia.

Gales Creek

Stubs Stewart was very near  the trail, at about the midway point, and also boasted a large network of mountain bike, equestrian and hiking trails.  Anderson Park is located at the Veronia trail head.  It also provided the additional benefit of easy walking to restaurants, coffee shops and the grocery.

Oregon is delightfully bike friendly…

 One great restaurant in Vernonia, the Blue House Cafe (excellent food), even provided bicycle parking inside…

Leaving Oregon and the Banks to Vernonia State Trail, we head north to a network of trails in Thurston County, Washington.  These three connected trails provide off-the-road links between Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater, Yelm, Rainier and Tenino.  We found ourselves being  a bit envious just imagining how wonderful Whidbey Island would be if we had off-the-road bike trails connecting our communities.  

We spent one night in the City of Tenino campground, but then, being back in Washington and too close to home, we once again turned into homing pigeons and headed for Whidbey Island.  The riding was great, but unfortunately not great enough to overcome our homeward bound instincts.  

~~~

"(A Bicycle is) an unparalleled merger of a toy, a utilitarian vehicle, and sporting equipment.  The bicycle can be used in so many ways, and approaches perfection in each use.  For instance, the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created:  Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon.  A person pedaling a bike uses energy more efficiently than a gazelle or an eagle.  And a triangle-framed bicycle can easily carry ten times its own weight -- a capacity no automobile, airplane or bridge can match."

~ Bill Strickland