How Lenin Made My Day

(Image from biography.com)

I will have a question in my next post.

But first the story.

In the summer of 1989, two years before I met my husband, my girl friend H and I went backpacking in the Cairngorms in Scotland. We took the ferry from Rotterdam to Hull, hitchhiked to the Cairngorms,

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

I was very tempted to use a bridge photo, but that would be a spoiler for a future post. I like this one, too, though, because it shows reflections of different things in different sections.

In Yellowstone National Park, dogs are allowed in cars and campers, but not outside except for in the campsites, on leashes. I took this picture of a small dog in a huge RV in a parking lot near a waterfall. I was wondering when I was going to use this picture. Thanks for the challenge!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal

(Image from Wikipedia)

The lava flow of the Valley of Fires in New Mexico was formed about 5,000 years ago; it’s one of the youngest lava flows in America. The vegetation still looks like it started popping up rather recently. And in geological time it has.

Click here for a short but informative video about the Valley of Fire.

Top Ten Musical Memories

When I hear a song I haven’t heard for a while, I immediately remember where I first heard it, or where I bought it, or which hangout played it a lot. . .

I thought I’d share some of them.

1. Morning Town Ride by The Seekers

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette

My then boyfriend T in our canoe in Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada, 1991. I actually took this picture in broad daylight, so it’s technically a pathetic failure but I love the result.

FIve of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done

A much younger R

Well, let’s see.

Literally one of the hardest things was the first time I dived off a diving board. This was in a swimming pool in Switzerland. I was twelve, and on vacation with my then best friend Dees. We went to that pool several times, and she dove in like a pro. Toward the end I finally took what was meant to be the plunge. But it was a belly flop instead. Although the term belly flop doesn’t really cover it. A flop sounds soft. This was not soft. In fact, I can still remember just how hard it was, slapping flat onto that water. Very hard indeed.

Something Colorful From the Rockies

Just some more milking. This is in Silverton, Colorado.

Some Black and White Rockies

Mater in the Mountains

On our trip through the Rockies, we stopped in Silverton. On one of the back roads I came across several old, rusty trucks, with their tires half sunk in the ground.

I loved taking pictures of all the rust and the different paint layers becoming exposed.

The Rockies: The Ending

Okay, I’ve put it off long enough. I’ve managed to prolong our vacation through these photo posts, but now I’ve come to the end. Not that there won’t be more photo posts about the Rockies, but they can wait.

The Rockies: Bear? Where?

So we saw bison and elk, and two wolves at the river’s edge. They were playing and taking their time, and people were taking pictures from the other side, but just when I was finally almost close enough to start taking killer photos, they decided to leave. Aaaarrrghhh! The photos of the elk in the previous post were my photography high point of the vacation, and these wolves were my biggest photography frustration.

The Rockies: Elk

The other animal that we saw a lot of in Yellowstone was elk. Apart from when you’re in the car, it’s not a good idea to get too close to bison, but I got pretty close to a beautiful male elk. I think I was about eight feet away at some point. That’s also not recommended; the grammatically annoying signs everywhere say that “all wildlife are dangerous”.

The Rockies: Bison

Apart from the mud volcano and the mud pots and a few fumaroles at the beginning of our day, we mainly saw animals. So many that we never got to the next geothermal feature. And mostly we saw bison.

The Rockies: Mud Volcanoes and Sulfur Pots

The next day we woke up to find ourselves in a wonderful campground, with lots of trees and little trails going off behind our site. Not that we spent any time there. We left after breakfast and didn’t come back until well after dark.

The Rockies: Jackson Hole and on to Yellowstone

So the last three posts were all about one day, and it still wasn’t over. We got to Jackson Hole in the evening. You can tell by the gas station that it’s a prosperous town.

The Rockies: Oh, the Horror!

This series of posts wouldn’t be complete without me complaining at least once. So here goes.

I didn’t fully appreciate how clean Colorado is until we crossed the border into Utah. And Wyoming is worse. Every roadside and every rest stop is trashed. When we got down from the RV, we immediately had to watch where we walked, to avoid all the broken glass, and I regularly picked up trash that was in the way of a good picture. And all this despite the steep fines for littering.

The Rockies: Or Rather, The Plains

I drove after the stop at Big Sandy Reservoir, and being in control of the breaks meant that I could pull over a lot to take pictures.

After that reservoir we drove through the endless plains of western Wyoming. You can drive for tens of miles and not see a single structure, other than the barbed wire fencing along the road.

The Rockies: Big Sandy Reservoir

After our afternoon and night in Rock Springs, Utah, we drove on up to Jackson and then east to Yellowstone. B was no longer nauseous. He was drinking water and holding it in, and eating some jello at my insistence. He still didn’t feel all that great, but that was understandable after the day before. He got to lie on the couch while we drove, strapped in, of course.

The Rockies: Dinosaur National Monument

We backtracked slightly the next morning to squeeze in Dinosaur National Monument before going on the Yellowstone national Park, or at least Jackson, Wyoming.

The Rockies: Let’s Just Forget About Counting Days

Okay, where were we? After State Forest State Park we drove clear across northern Colorado to Utah. Not so many spectacular mountains, more rolling landscapes of the high desert.

What Happened? All Will Be Revealed

Hi folks. Just a short note to let you know I have not forgotten my blog. Nor have I vanished from the face of the earth. I have a legitimate reason for suspending my Rocky Mountain trip updates for a few more days. So don’t unfollow me just yet. More will come, I promise.

The Rockies — Who Gives a Heck What Day

After Rocky Mountain National Park, we drove to State Forest State Park, where we were practically guaranteed to see moose. That would be nice, especially a bull moose from a little closer up. But no such luck. Not a moose to be seen.

The Rockies: Day–I Have No Idea What Day

The next day we spent driving back east to Estes Park from our campground in the western part of RMNP. We had seen two bull moose the day before, but from such a distance to be uninteresting in photos. So imagine our surprise when we saw a mother moose and her baby calmly munching willow leaves not more than twenty feet from the road.

The Rockies: Days — I Lost Count Already

We took the smaller scenic route to Rocky Mountain National Park from the Black Canyon (highway 50 east to just before Salida, and then north on 24 through Leadville to the last bit of Interstate 70, but honestly, I think going straight up to Interstate 70 from Montrose would have been more scenic. Except for Blue Mesa Reservoir, the biggest body of water in Colorado. It goes on and on as you drive east on 50 from the Black Canyon, and it’s worth seeing. Especially if you’re used to lakes always being surrounded by trees. Here the desert comes right down to the water’s edge.

The Rockies: The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

The next day T had to work, so he stayed in the RV while the kids and I went along the rim trail that ran from just outside the campground to the visitors center. The walk was about one mile along the rim of the canyon, but it took us an hour and a half, because there was so much beauty to take in, and so much breath to catch, since we weren’t used to the altitude. Here are some of the many, many pictures I took during that walk.

The Rockies: Day 2

We spent all of the second day driving from Durango to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We had driven the road from Durango to Silverton before, and we had taken the old train as well, but it’s spectacular every time.

The Rockies: Day 1

For the next two weeks I’m having a photo blog of our trip to the Rocky Mountains.

The first day we left Austin in the evening and drove to Fort Stockton, in west Texas. I didn’t count that first day. But the next morning in Fort Stockton, I was the first one up, so I took a walk around the campsite. It was just an ugly campsite in the middle of nowhere, for people on their way from somewhere to somewhere else, but there was a very short trail into the desert. The sun wasn’t up yet, so I was hoping to see some critters.

Lazing on a Saturday Morning

Just a picture I took around Monterey Bay, California, years ago.

Mount Snowdon in the Spring

Well, I’ll wait with the scathing post. I was cleaning up the slides I’d scanned a while ago. I used to have slides instead of photos. So I saw them even less than photos. That’s one of the things I love about a blog. I can see my favorite pictures and share them with whoever is interested.

Anyway, I didn’t clean my slides very well before scanning them, so I was doing that in Photoshop last night. Amazing!

Top Ten Things I Miss About Holland

• 

  photo: Autumn Arnold, Peanut Cheese

  Not worrying about money, or getting fired, or getting sick, or not being able to retire, or how to pay for the kids’ colleges.

• Having all my friends within visiting distance.
• Having seven weeks paid vacation plus vacation pay (like a thirteenth month’s salary).
• Going to the doctor or hospital without my wallet.
• Walking around the Saturday market and buying big, beautiful bunches of flowers that last for weeks and only cost a few euros.
• Traveling by train. Relaxing and looking out the window with a cup of Earl Grey tea instead of sitting in traffic.
• Taking the ferry to England and hitchhiking to the Cairngorms or the Lake District or wherever, and hiking around, camping in the wild.
• Cycling for the purpose of getting somewhere.
• Sleeping with the windows open (scorpions would crawl in if I did that here).
• Watching a decent documentary on TV without having to subscribe to HBO.

Memories of Grass

Isn’t it amazing how smells can evoke memories? The first time I remember experiencing this was when I lived in Australia.