See the USA

Although I won't be doing it in a Chevrolet (at least I don't think so; depending on what my brother's set up with the rental folks), I will be seeing a lot of the USA in the next week and a half.

For those of us of a certain age, the title of this post will automatically start the mental jukebox singing this song. For the young-uns who might need to learn this bit of ancient Americana, here's the YouTube video I took the still above from.

Dinah Shore's trademark blown kiss at the end was definitely the highlight of the ditty, much imitated in my Chevy-centric childhood household.

But this is really just a roundabout way of saying I won't be blogging for a couple of weeks, as I will be too busy seeing sights from Denver to Boston to Bar Harbor, Maine. [You'll note that all of these destinations have one thing in common: they're north of the Mason-Dixon line, and also, hopefully north of the 90° isobar on the temperature map.]

My brother, sister and I are combining a visit with the newest member of our family (great-niece Evie in Denver) with a spin through New England. Covering all that real estate should provide several posts-worth of material for when I return, don't you think?

Wordless Wednesday: wish Astros could catch a break...just once

Two-sport weekend...2.0

Heading to Houston for a two-sport mother-daughter weekend is beginning to look like a summer tradition. Readers with long memories might remember our trip last June. Well, schedules aligned favorably again this year and last weekend we were able to save ourselves from the agony of watching the Astros lose two baseball games, which was our original plan. Instead, we got to watch the Dynamo win one!

These fine fireworks were at the baseball game Friday night, and they were certainly the highpoint of the evening. As Chronicle beat writer Zach Levine (a much better writer than the Astros are a baseball team) penned in Saturday's paper:

It's a good thing it was fireworks night. That’s probably the only thing that stood between the gathering of 29,252 and the Minute Maid Park exits as the captive audience was treated to nine of the worst innings of baseball by the home team all year as the Astros lost 11-4 to the Atlanta Braves.

But the fireworks, though spectacular, weren't the only interesting thing about the game. For folks who were seeing their first game of the season, the new incredibly hi-def scoreboard cum video screen was pretty impressive. On the right is the pre-game animation it showed.

And, of course, just being at the ball park is fun. Especially when it's really hot outside and they have the roof closed and the a/c contained. It really is a lovely stadium. Here's our view as the roof was opening after the game for the pyrotechnic display:

But as we headed back to our wonderful lodgings (many thanks to Barbs and Paul for being such great hosts) we knew that our weekend had really only begun.

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After sleeping until an ungodly 10 a.m. the next morning (driving 3½ hours to watch your favorite team get mauled is exhausting work!) we headed out for a full schedule of activities.

First on the agenda was the quirky Orange Show, which I've wanted to visit for years and just never had gotten around to. Reminding us somewhat of the Bishop Castle that we stumbled upon in Colorado several months ago, although on a much smaller scale, it's an eccentric Houstonian's monument to things orange. And things mechanical (-looking). And things musical (it's a concert venue where the setting must upstage a lot of the acts). And just things odd.

Apart from size and setting, another difference between it and the Castle is that the Show is a finished product. Recently re-opened after refurbishment, it has become something of an institution in the middle of the nation's 4th largest city. Rather than a continuing project somewhat isolated in the Rockies.

It's also affiliated with Houston's most concerted effort to out-weird Austin, the famous Art Car Parade of song and story. [We saw it once in pre-blog days; my brother takes it in every year and it would be fun to go again. We'll have to put that on a future Houston calendar.] The art-car sculpture on the right is in the front yard of the house across from the Show.

Here are some more Orange Show photos:

a panorama
Sally taking a sight-seeing break on one of the remarkably comfortable
tractor seats available for viewing shows at the Show

the entrance booth (where they collect the $1 admission) and gift shop

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And now for something completely different, as Monty Python used to say.

Not far from the Orange Show (especially not far in Houston terms) is the Forest Park cemetery, where I learned to drive and where most of my forebears are buried. [When we first moved back to Houston after my father died in 1960, Mom took us out here very frequently. And when I was old enough, but before I got my learner's permit, it was a good place to practice driving and get ready for the more daunting experience of Houston traffic.]

I had felt rather bad about not visiting the site in such a long time, so this was a perfect opportunity. We stopped at a little florist shop across the street and took flowers to the sites of my parents', grandparents', and several aunts' and uncles', graves.

The environment is just as peaceful and nice as I had remembered, although Houston is almost as dry as we are and the vegetation looked a little brown. I'm sure our flowers won't survive long in the heat, but it felt good to make the gestures.

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Since it took us surprisingly less time to get around than we had planned (this hardly ever happens in Houston) and since the Orange Show didn't take nearly as long to see as we thought, we had some extra time on our hands before the weekend's second sporting event was to get underway.

So we decided to head over to my old stomping grounds, the Rice campus, and walk off our large Tex-Mex lunch (a highlight of the trip which I neglected to mention) taking in the sights there. As it turned out, we did some walking, but also spent a refreshing hour recharging our batteries in the pleasant (air conditioned) atmosphere of the new campus pub that you might have seen in my last post.

One of the highlights of the campus ramble was getting to go into the (relatively) new Rice baseball stadium, which I had only seen from afar. [Note to selves: we must come to a college game here next year!]

Reckling Park with the Houston Medical Center beyond the outfield—what a great view!

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Now for the sport number two. A short jaunt to the UH campus and we were surrounded by the sea of orange that is Houston Dynamo soccer. The fans were just as enthusiastic as last year and I was so glad to have found bright orange Dynamo gear for us to wear. [See photo at the top of the post. Thanks to our friend Amy (who met us there with her mom for the game) for taking the picture with Sally's camera.]

Here's a shot of the crowd, celebrating the team's first goal (they ended up winning a very exciting match, 2-1):

The win was a perfect end to a perfectly orange day. Historically, before the Astros were the Astros they were the Colt .45s, and their colors were orange back then, too. So it was really an almost totally orange weekend.

A most cheerful color for a very satisfying and fun trip, in spite of the dismal baseball. Here's hoping the Astros will be in a bit better shape in time for our two-sport excursion next year. Maybe they should bring back the rainbow jerseys, with all that orange?!

Wordless Wednesday: posh life of college students today

Patriotic Paddle

We had such a special treat on Memorial Day (May 30). Urban paddling!

In how many other top-10 population cities could you do this? and get a view like this? close enough to downtown to catch such a photogenic view of an iconic skyscraper (the Tower Life Building)?

Let me think...I imagine the answer is: ZERO!

But in San Antonio, you can. At least, you can now. The river is open for paddling downstream of Nueva Street [with a permit]. Our diligent and persistent paddling group non-leader was able to navigate the labyrinth of local government, find the right office, and secure our free permit to paddle. And it was made extra-special to do this on Memorial Day.

Several of the boats were decorated and although I was too busy with family wedding festivities over the weekend to decorate ours, a friend came through with an extra flag and some duct tape. So I was able to show my colors after all. (You can see the front of my kayak on the left with its decoration as we head under a bridge.)

On the right a sign notes the high points along the River. You can't paddle all the way to the Missions or all the way to downtown, as there are sections around dams and other engineering works with watercraft prohibitions. The sign is for the River Walk, though, alongside the stream, and you can walk to most of these destinations.

We started our paddle at the San Antonio River Authority offices, just upstream from Blue Star, which we've visited on other occasions, from the landward side.

Then we floated further upstream for a mile or so, through the scenic King William residential district. You can see these Victorian beauties better from the streets, but it's great to get the river perspective for a different look.


After King William, we were almost to downtown. The dam at Nueva Street is a natural barrier that stopped our upstream progress.

But we just turned around and went back downstream, a little past the River Authority, then back to it for our takeout. Here's a shot of the lovely, de-channelized River as we headed back. The big tower is the old Pioneer Flour mill, where there is now a well-regarded restaurant. It also marks the vicinity of Blue Star, where there's another dam that bracketed our paddling area.

But we weren't done! After a lunch break (to refuel after that strenuous paddling ) at Taco Haven, most of us took off for another little trip. This time, downstream from Blue Star.

We started at Lone Star Boulevard, where the railroad bridge you see on the left is located, across the street from Roosevelt Park. This is as far as the Mission Reach project has come to date, and what a treat it was to see this section of the River de-channelized and looking much as it must have back in San Antonio's early days.

It had been more or less a big ditch, but now, amazingly, it's returned to its almost natural state. And they've done such a great job it looks like it was like this all along! I think you'll agree this is a big improvement over concrete channels.

I didn't go all the way to Blue Star, since there was a little portage just downstream and it was hot enough that dragging my heavy boat for a while wasn't too appealing. But I got this nice view of the helpful landmark of the Pioneer tower as we approached it.

Again, can you believe, looking at this picture, that it was taken just a couple of miles from the downtown of a major US city?

San Antonio is where it is because of the River, and it was very satisfying, as well as fun, to connect with our roots on this Memorial Day. I have a feeling a tradition has been born!

Wordless Wednesday: New Mexico domestic architecture

Rio Chama 2011: off and on the river

[Henry's blog post on the trip is now up. It's much more detailed, especially regarding the boats, rapids, etc., than mine.]

After covering some of the more mundane aspects of our 2011 Rio Chama trip in my last post, I'll treat you to some more sublime images this time. As well as give you a chronology of our floating, hiking, and relaxing activities.

The weather at the campground where we set off, just below El Vado Lake, might have given us pause. We were rained, sleeted, and even snowed on a little, off and on, as we gathered ourselves and our stuff together for the trip.

But we'd been led to believe by weather.gov that things would be improving over the weekend. And we're trusting souls. Fortunately, the weather squints were right. Friday was still chilly, although with not as much precipitation as Thursday. And Saturday and Sunday got progressively warmer and sunnier.

Our first campsite was about 8 miles down the river (out of a trip of 30-31). We have come to the conclusion that there are no poor sites along the Chama, and were quite pleased with this site. So pleased, in fact, that we decided to make our two-night encampment there.

Yay! After wearing ourselves out packing and getting underway, we wouldn't have to pack up camp the next morning but could sleep in, have a luxurious breakfast, do some hiking, and spend
plenty of time watching clouds and otherwise relaxing...

The small pictures above and below were also taken at this lovely spot. The amazing tree on the left was right next to our tent, and besides looking like a piece of sculpture, provided handy storage for all kinds of kitchen and personal items.

The sunset picture above on the right was taken on Saturday evening. Can you see how we were somewhat puzzled as to whether we'd been raptured up as predicted? If you're in the middle of countryside like this, how would you know if you weren't in heaven?

Henry and some of the guys took a hike Saturday morning/afternoon, and I went a little ways with them, but felt the call of book, sleeping pad, and camp chair pretty quickly and headed back to relax.

Staying an extra day in camp also allowed more wildlife flora and fauna watching. Here are some examples of what we saw... [note: I'm not too sure of either of the flower id's; if anyone can provide corrections, please do so]

Velvety Nerisyrenia

Creeping Oregon Grape

Canada geese (no question about this id)

Sunday morning we did pack up camp, and got on our way down the river.

After trying for several hours to upload a video I made of one of the most scenic of the rapids (Aragon Canyon, at mile 10) [both directly into the blog and, when that seemed to be taking 'way too long (try 2 hours!) on YouTube (where, after 45 minutes of loading it said there was failure due to an "unknown error")] I'm afraid you'll have to be content with this somewhat blurry image I made from one of the frames...

[Since I know nothing about video, I'm not too surprised that I had these difficulties. I should have known there would be trouble when I couldn't view the videos I was taking on the camera. Perhaps I should read the manual again? And even buy some editing software to replace the free program I've used, albeit clumsily, before?]

Anyway, we had several more of these very nice class II's on Sunday, and no one had any trouble with running them, as opposed to video-ing them. Even the behemoth cataraft, affectionately known as the Bismarck, only got minorly stuck on rocks a couple of times.

For Sunday night's camping spot, we really hit the jackpot. One of the reasons for staying at our first site two nights, other than laziness, was that by Sunday night, we knew the primo spots further downstream would be open. Since almost everyone just makes the trip a two-nighter and takes out on Sunday. We even felt that we could legally take the best large group site, in spite of our only having 9 folks in our party instead of the required 10.

So we set up camp at Chama Wall, around mile 16.5, and had this for our front yard view:

Not too shabby, eh?

The only disadvantage to the site was the fact that sunrise didn't come to our campsite until rather late the next morning, and it was little chilly. But the view was worth a few shivers....

In addition to the great neighborhood, the campsites were very nice and had all kinds of other amenities, like an incredibly huge fallen tree providing all kinds of photo opps...


...a nearby hike up a slot canyon that combined jungle-gym-like clambering fun with wonderful rock scenery...

thanks to Scott for taking this picture of me

Henry, Jon, and Donald went on up the canyon further than the rest of us wanted to. But what we saw even on the abbreviated version was pretty nice...

Although, you might ask, why Zoltan, Scott, and I didn't soldier on with the others up the canyon. Part of the reason was the increasingly rough nature of the trail. But the main reason, for me, at least, was the wildlife. In particular, I have seen my first RATTLESNAKE outside of a zoo. 'Way outside, in fact. Actually, right next to my foot! Yikes! Fortunately he just slithered away from us instead of toward us, but that glimpse was enough for me. (Henry has photos of the snake on his blog. For some reason, I didn't think about taking any...)

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Our final day on the river, Monday, provided the most excitement, with the class III's out of the canyon that are the most challenging. We only had one mishap, however, at Gauging Station Rapid. No serious injuries, though, and the only lost gear from an overturned canoe was one paddle. Easily replaced with one of the extras we always bring for such contingencies. Fortunately/unfortunately, there's no video of the spill.

What is fortunate about this difficult rapid, though, is that it's just a couple of miles before the takeout, where cold beer was waiting.

As much fun as we had on the trip, after 4 days, it was nice to think about amenities like cold beer, warm showers, and beds with sheets. And some of us, at least, are already thinking about our next float down this wonderful river.

Wordless Wednesday: such pretty cousins!