Roadtripping Through National Parks

Pam of Digging is hosting a bloggers' celebration of national parks this week. As soon as she mentioned it, I knew I wanted to post about our roadtrip out west over Christmas/New Year's in 2006/2007. Between buying a new laptop and transferring photos and other files, and having said two-week-old laptop broken by a to-remain-nameless four-legged animal, it's taken me this long to post.

For the westward leg, we took the southern route out of Texas. The first couple of days were really just about driving. We were going to spend Christmas with our friends in Berkeley and needed to get there before, well, before the 25th.

Joshua Tree National Park in Twenty-nine Palms, California, was our first national park on the trip. Prior to our trip, I knew more about U2's Joshua Tree than the US Joshua Tree. (We stayed at the Harmony Motel where U2 stayed when recording that album.)This is the aptly named Skull Rock. Somehow I managed to not got a picture of the famed Joshua tree while at the park. I think I was distracted by the weather. To get this view, we walked up a short but steep path, and I swear the temperature dropped 20 degrees and it started snowing!As soon as we got back on the park road, the snow stopped.This is a field of ocotillo cactus really seemed more like a Martian landscape than California.From Joshua Tree we continued west, making a stop in Indio for a date shake at Shields Dates, which was really delicious and well worth a slight detour. We then traveled up the California coast toward Berkeley. We stopped in Big Sur, which is really gorgeous but primarily state parkland so I'll save it for another post.

After spending a few days in Berkeley, we headed east. After a stop in Las Vegas, we drove to the Grand Canyon National Park. It started snowing as we drove and was snowing pretty steadily and heavy by the time we reached the park. We had hoped to catch the sunset over the canyon but with the snow we really couldn't see much of anything.

Here's the view out of our room at the park: The next morning we got up before dawn to catch the sunrise on the park's eastern edge. And well, the snowfall again thwarted our efforts. It was still beautiful, just different.Later in the morning the skies started to clear, and we could actually see the winter wonderland.
After breakfast, we picked up the world's cutest to-remain-nameless four-legged animal from the park kennel. Did I fail to mention that we took our dog with us? She actually turned out to be a great traveler. I'll discuss a little more about national parks and dogs at the end. She loved the snow on first sight, and particularly loved finding a frozen Greenie buried six inches under the snow. All of our previous questions about whether she had a good sense of smell were answered as she quickly started digging and found the frozen treat. We hiked along the southern rim trail for a while. The northern rim of the Grand Canyon is closed during the winter months.The rim trail was exactly that--a trail ever so close to the edge of canyon. A few times I worried about losing my footing or having an overexcited animal chase a bird over the edge. Thankfully at the truly dangerous spots, there were railings.It's hard to see in the photo below, but this is a view back at El Tovar, the main canyon lodge.The snow at the Grand Canyon was just part of a blizzard that was hitting Colorado and northern New Mexico. Our original plan was to spend a few days, including New Year's Eve in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But the snow closed the only road into Santa Fe so we had to reroute.

We ended up spending an extra day in Sedona, Arizona, which turned out to be a great detour and allowed us to hike many of the red rock trails. And we had time to stop in another national park, Montezuma Castle. Technically, Montezuma Castle is a national monument not a park, but I think it still fits in with the theme.Montezuma Castle is a much smaller version of Mesa Verde. This castle is really all there was to see, a brief but enjoyable chance to stretch our legs.Our final national park on this trip was Carlsbad Caverns. My husband loves caves and caverns so this stop was a priority.Obviously getting some good shots in the caverns were a little difficult. In fact, I'm not entirely sure if the photo above is right side up. We took the King's Palace guided ranger tour.After Carlsbad, we made the long and fairly boring drive back to Austin. We had had a wonderful time though and were ready to sleep in our own bed (well, beds, the dog has her own).

A few practical notes on our trip: we purchased a national parks annual pass, which was a tremendous value at, I believe, just $50 then (it's $80 now). The entrance fee to the Grand Canyon alone is $25. We more than covered the cost of the pass and were able to use it later in the year at Big Bend National Park.

National parks are not actually the best place to take a dog. Dogs generally are not allowed on most trails. For example, at the Grand Canyon dogs are only allowed on the rim trail. You can't take them down into the canyon. At many national parks, you can camp with your dog but you must leave the pup behind when you go hiking. If you want a true hiking/camping experience with your dog, I would stick to state parks. For this trip, these limitations were fine, but they are one reason why we haven't yet made it to Bryce or Zion national park.

But the national parks do understand that many people travel with their pets and make accommodations for them. The Grand Canyon has an on-site kennel for dogs and cats. Carlsbad Cavern has a kennel where you can leave your dog while you tour the caverns. In fact, there are signs all over the parking lot advising you not to leave your four-legged friend in your car. I can imagine leaving a dog in the car would be much more dangerous during the summer months.

Thanks, Pam for hosting this celebration. It was nice to relive our trip. I wish I had time to find all the photos from the national parks I've visited on the east coast, but I just won't have time to get those up!

The Big Island: Animal Edition

Rainbow over Kilauea Ike

Last month my husband and I were lucky enough to travel to Hawaii, the Big Island, for someone's big digit birthday. (Hint, it wasn't mine.)

When I saw all that was growing on the Big Island, I thought about a post comparing the beautiful, luscious plants to the same variety growing (or rather, not growing) in my yard. I quickly realized that such a post would be just overwhelmingly depressing. If you wanted to see dead plants, you could look out your door. After the summer we've had, I decided we needed a happier post. (And if I had actually gotten the post up two weeks ago as I'd planned, it would have been even more depressing. I think the rain is starting to make us all feel like our summer was just a bad nightmare.)

So here's a little summary of our trip.

We started our trip on the Hilo side of the island, otherwise known as the wet side. Hilo averages more than 130 inches of rain annually. Drought restrictions are enacted when the wet stuff falls below 70 inches per year. It's no wonder these signs are needed: (And, knock wood, it's beginning to look like we might need some of those signs here in Central Texas!)

We left Hilo driving along the northeast coast and of course had to stop at the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. It was raining as we toured but you don't let a little rain stop you when you live on the wet side so we took our borrowed umbrellas and forged ahead.One of the first plants we came across was this white bat plant. It's highly doubtful that it will grow in Austin, but it would be cool if it did.These are called lobster claws. I was not tempted to eat these because I am one of those freaks who don't like lobster. Plus, after I ate some mystery berries at Kilauea volcano, my husband wouldn't let me out of his sight when potentially ingestible plants were in my range.

(In my defense, he had read me Mark Twain's description of the berries as juicy. I assumed that meant that Twain had sampled them. And it's my husband's issue, not mine, that he doesn't want to spend his vacation speeding his wife to an emergency room.)My husband wouldn't even let me sample these beautiful flowering bananas. (Of course, I wouldn't eat a plant in a public garden.)I'm not sure why but a lot of plants had animal-related names like this cat whiskers and
this mule's foot fern and
this peacock fern.

I don't know the name of this beauty but had to include it because it was so pretty. (It was a little hard trying to write down plant names while maneuvering the camera and the umbrella and making sure I didn't slip on the walkway and once again potentially force my husband to take me to the hospital.)One of my favorite animal-related plants was this old-man palm.
with its cute little braid. I wonder if that's a gardener's task? No. 12 on to-do list: Braid old man.We traveled from the wet side to, you guessed it, the dry side of the Big Island. As we drove down the coast surrounded by nothing but lava fields and brown plants, I was unpleasantly reminded of Austin.

But then we checked into our free hotel (yea for the husband's travel points!) and had this view from our own private balcony: I immediately felt much better.

Add a bathing suit and a hat to this turtle, and this is pretty much how I spent the rest of our vacation.From time to time I wandered into the Pacific to cool off: Sometimes I had to flip over on my back.And of course, all this relaxing made us hungry so here's the last animal shot I have for you:
Roasted pig at the luau. Yum.

Rose City

In early July, I had the chance to leave hell and visit Portland, Oregon. I'm not even sure I was actually invited before I started packing my bag. Of course, Portland ended up having its way with me. I left on June 30; our flight delayed by thunderstorms in Austin. The next day Portland had its highest temps of the year--low 90s--while Austin was chilling in lower 90s.

"Are you serious?!" I yelled at the city. I had traveled half way across the country in search of cooler weather only to find myself hotter than I would have been had I stayed put.

Of course, the next day the temps in Austin were back at hellacious levels (tm Annie in Austin), and the temps in Portland were, well, less warm. If I'd wanted to, I could have even worn a jacket in the morning and in the evening. I didn't because I wanted to appreciate the novelty of being cold outside in July, as opposed to paying $8 to be cold inside a movie theater.

I'd only been to Portland briefly before so it was really nice to be there for several days. A couple of things about the city surprised me.

1) the food. Good god. These people know how to eat well and pretty cheaply. A lot of it inadvertently involved a lot of pork: pork belly, bacon, bacon, sausage, and more bacon. If you're planning a trip there, let me know, and I'll send you my personal list of recommendations.

2) Portland is the rose city. This really shouldn't have surprised me. The one place we did visit in our short trip five years was the International Rose Test Garden in Forest Park. But I thought the garden was a special place where people with magical rose-growing gifts that I do not have practiced their mystical art. Instead, everyone in Portland can grow a rose. Every yard, nook, and cranny had at least two varieties, healthy and in bloom. Roses grew around the city like weeds. (Or maybe they grew like purslane, Carol?)
We saw lots of roses at the Test Garden on our first visit years ago in late August, but the blooms were nothing like we saw this trip in early July.

Pink roses,yellow roses,
orange roses,
red roses, white roses, lavender roses, (the last time I saw a lavender rose was in a Buenos Aires rose garden)I took pictures of the hundreds more roses, but I think you get the picture. The roses began to blur together.Amidst all these exuberant blooms, two areas of the garden stood out because of their quiet beauty. Who knew that I would find a beige rose so beguiling?And then over in one shady area of the garden, I enjoyed the cool colors and textures of these hostas and ferns. I also enjoyed the shade, because even though Portland was 15 degrees cooler than Austin, 93 is still hot.(And now the poor folks in Portland are having 100-degree days! I'm sorry, I really am. I had no intention of bringing Austin's weather with me. I was supposed to bring Portland's weather back to Austin, but I guess I got my spells mixed up.)

Outside the entrance to the park I saw a couple of unusual things: this sign,
and these roses covering the fencing around some tennis courts.
Roses covered the fences around the courts but failed to muffle the curses of the older man playing doubles.

But the strangest thing is about this picture has nothing to do with rabid rose growth. The most unusual aspect is that there isn't a Subaru to be seen in the parking lot.

Seriously, people, that's funny.