Blueberries

Picking Raspberries

Beach Day

Bless York Beach, Maine. Bless it, bless it, bless it.

Smells: dry air, baked dirt

Do you ever smell a smell or hear a sound and just be taken back to a previous time? I don't normally wax nostalgic, but it happened the other day. I can't remember what triggered it, exactly, but here's the scene (that Jen never blogged!):

Last summer we flew west for Ben's wedding. We flew into Vegas (we know a shortcut to Wyoming through there) and enjoyed a few days in Southern Utah as guests of our friend Kate, from Jen's Marriott School days. We love Kate.


Kate built a wonderful home on a bluff over-looking the next plateau. The view is to the east, so the hills glow with the evening sun and are crested by the rising sun. It really is an enviable position. I don't know that I'd trade my New England ponds, granite hillsides, maple and pine forests, and mosquitoes, but I definitely have respect for the deserts of Southern Utah. Maybe it was a combination of the smell of warm wood, the thoughts of sunrise (with my Chicago trip), or something that took me back.


So we spent the evening catching up, chatting about the transition to retirement, the transition for me to a career, the nuances of how life changes. We reminisced. We had a great salmon dinner. We learned a little about Toquerville's Shoe Tree. We learned about the clever customizations Kate put into her house, like a Murphy Bed for her deck that also has a breakfast table option. Her outdoor shower for the master suite. Her elevator.


That night we had our scripture stories and family prayer on the back deck overlooking the plateau in the warm evening heat. It was great. Adding to the greatness was my plan to go exploring the next morning at sunrise. It was Kate's idea, really. I don't remember how it came up, but she told me what time the sun came up and gave me a map to follow. So I did it. It must have been like 5:15 or so when I left the house. I took a picture before I left to illustrate just how dark it was. I drove on down to La Verkin, then headed up Route 9 toward Zions. I had no idea how far I would get before the sun appeared.

As it turns out, I made it pretty far... as in, the whole way. It was before the park service started manning the gate, so I just kept driving (not having to pay the fee until I came back with the family during business hours). I climbed the switchbacks, I drove through the amazing tunnel that was dug through the mountain to create a pass. Then as the sun started threatening to come up, I pulled over to enjoy it. I had my banana and yogurt. I listened.

Nothing. Dead silence. When was the last time you were ANYWHERE that had dead silence? No animal noises, wind, water. Not anything. Seriously, had I tuned my ears to the right frequency I probably could have heard the photons coming with the morning. It's times like these that I start to talk to myself just to keep myself company!

So I sat. I don't remember what I thought about. I only remember being perfectly alone with my thoughts. I noticed that apart from the brightening sky, the first evidence of the sun I found creeping up behind me as it reflected off a distant peak. I was being encapsulated: from one side the sun was rising, and from the other, it was lighting more and more of the hillsides.

Before I left my thinking spot, I found that I had company: A pair of rams were grazing on nearby brush. To think they had been so silent! There were also plenty of examples of Sacred Datura. I thought they were relatively unlikely inhabitants of such an unforgiving landscape. Shows how much I know.

The rest of the day was pretty great, too! When I got back to Kate's family was just getting up, and they seemed legitimately interested in my morning adventure. I think they were largely content for me to have had that adventure on my own, though, since 5:15 MTN might have seemed a little early after a fairly long day of flying and driving.

These couple of shots are from stops at the Weeping Rock, the base of Angels Landing, and various other shuttle-stop-overlooks. We were thrilled to have a shuttle to ferry us around and keep hiking relatively minimal. After all, Ian was only two-and-a-half at the time. Ian was thrilled to have his binoculars to look at things. I was thrilled to be at the National Park that my mountain climber friend Jake says is the best of them all. I'm pretty sure that Jen was thrilled to see me really get into something. She promised that we could come back some day.

I honestly created a memory that will last a lifetime. So that's another one that was borne of adventuring in the wee hours of the morning. What is it with the morning and everything looking so elegantly beautiful? It seems like every time I get up early to do something, the payout is huge. Do you think that's what Poor Richard's was hinting at with the "early to rise" stuff? I doubt I'm alone here.


Now for your benefit, I am including a map. You can view it in a larger mode and actually enjoy a streetview vacation. You'll love it, I promise.

View Joe went to Zion('s). in a larger map

Sometimes...

...when you live in New England.........

....your flour molds.....

......And you save what you can....and then vow to only grind wheat from now on. (We lost about 100lbs of flour.) Because who needs white flour, anyway? Right?

Windy City: By foot, by cell phone.

This week while Jen was in Maine, I was at a conference in Chicago. In my experience, conferences try to schedule venues that have certain appeal to the visitors and presenters, so as to increase registration as much as possible. Well, our locale was the McCormick Place Convention Center about 2 miles south of anything. Though I do hear that that is the venue for the big auto show...

Anyway, having been made aware that the hotel staff does not recommend walking in the region (I think Jim Croce told them all about Bad Leroy Brown on the south side of Chicago), and with colleagues being confronted on their walk to Chinatown for dinner, I decided my gallivanting really needed to be limited the morning hours. After all, what hooligan gets up at 6 am to rough people up? I've never heard of one.

Here are a few of the things I saw:
With Chicago to the east of Lake Michigan, there is a sunrise over the water. That was pretty nice, given that I walked out on Northerly Island. It was quite beautiful. It's a part of the Museum campus, where they have the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, and Shedd Aquarium.
I guess that ages ago, the land was set aside for public use, and they couldn't put buildings on it... then they changed the legislation so that museums could be built. All along the lake shore there is a hiking and biking trail, which is quite nice. For that matter, Northerly Island is under a vegetation project to return the landscape to prairie grasses. I like it when cities try to include greenspace in their city plan.


Along with the parks come the typical strange art on display... I don't recall what the motivation was behind these feet, but I bet you could look it up without too much hassle. I thought I needed to join in the art, if indeed it was meant to be inclusive of all city walkers.

I saw all sorts of buidings and folks on the sidewalks in the morning. For example, this little building here was The Cable House, built for the president of the Rock Island and Pacific Railway company. The building to the right was... I dont know, but I thought it was cool at 6:15 seeing all the folks going to their construction jobs with the traditional Igloo coolers. There must have been hundreds of workers walking to work.
I saw all these other buildings, too. The American Book Company print shop. The Monadnock Block downtown. This big columnar street view. It was alot to take in, and consider that the whole place burnt down in 1871. Fire seems to have taken a pretty big role in town, as there are now firehouses converted to high end restaurants. There are buildings built upon rubble of old foundations, historic fire towers probably built after paranoid residents lost their whole estates due to that bad accident. Do you think Old Lady O'Leary really had something to do with it? I guess traditions will live on.

Let's see. What else? I went to the end of Route 66. Or the start. I guess it depends on which direction you are going. Closer to the hotel was this Calumet Plant, where Time and Life publications were printed. I thought it was cool to see the window washers scaling the building. Modern spider-men, if you ask me.

One of the nights we went to dinner at the Signature on the 95th floor of the John Hancock tower. That was pretty nice. The service was poor, the portions were small, and the bill was large. I suppose those are the things that come with the territory. Who ever thought that you'd have to pay extra for side dishes anyway? Call me uncultured. Call me cheap. Call me afraid-to-submit- an-exorbitant-receipt-to-my- -company's-accountant. I had an entree and drank water. My supervisor was there, too, so I don't think we'll get too much grief about it when we submit receipts. So it was a fun trip. Along with taking these pictures, my cell phone counted my steps. I did most of my walking in the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I hit the 30 mile mark over those two days. Seriously. I had super sore feet, since I wasn't wearing the best walking shoes. But that's what you are supposed to do, right? Go to a new city. Hit the streets. Take pictures. Avoid getting mugged. Get to know your colleagues better and feel rejuvenated with your job knowing what the state of the art is for your field. The only clue to seeing what I thought was mob-related activity was their local oozie and cement shoes store. Have a look.