Where in the world are Holly & Terry? We are in Clarksville, VA after driving cross country first from WY to CO for visits with a friend and our son, Sundance, - then across I-40 through TX, OK, AR, TN and into VA. I haven’t blogged in a few weeks but thought I’d catch folks up. After enjoying a leisurely weekend around Labor Day, we headed to Silverthorne, CO - a beautiful spot a few hours north of where Sundance lives (near Antonito, CO). We stopped in Silverthorne to visit a dear friend from Huntington, VT, Barbara Blackington, and enjoyed our time with her, daughter Allison, and partner John. They were very hospitable and showed us the work John does on the ranch and we toured Allison’s spa. Barbara recently moved there from Vermont, and it was a nice treat to see a familiar Vermont face out west. We spent a long weekend with Sundance on his land and met his newest family addition, Zappa, a beautifully sweet border collie whom I adore. Sundance is well and working hard but will join us on a family trip to Ireland next week – more about that below. After relaxing and catching up with Sundance for 4 days, we began our direct journey east so we could arrive in Washington, DC this weekend for a quick visit before boarding a plane for Dublin on Monday, 10/1. Luckily we gave ourselves extra time to get to VA where we wanted to drop off the RV and see mom for a week before the Ireland trip. We made good time the first day and had hoped to make a quick visit to my dear high school best friend, Patty Skeryl Bryant, in Atlanta. Sadly, we had to forego that stop because Terry got a kidney stone and we were stuck in Borger, TX for a few days. Luckily the stone passed without any blasting needed but he was advised to follow up with an urologist. One hazard of living like gypsies is that finding regular doctors and specialists and having some consistency of medical care is a challenge. But we made it safely back to Clarksville with an appointment waiting the very day tornadoes touched down near Clarksville (Boydton & Chase City). We hit some of the rains from Florence in western VA and arrived to mom’s with about 8” of standing water just outside the motor home front door! Needless to say, it was an interesting journey back across the Midwest. It was a bittersweet time as well because after 3.5 years touring North America, our RV time is winding down. We had planned to stretch our “full timing” this long and then get back to work. Fortunately we are able to stretch a bit more, just not cross country in the RV. Once Terry felt sure he didn’t have another kidney stone in the works, I took off for a long weekend with mom and my nieces Serena & Heather to Virginia Beach. This was a nice get-away, replacing the one mom was supposed to have taken to St. Simon Island, GA with the Road Scholar program. It was canceled due to storm Florence’s arrival, so mom quickly planned this excursion instead which was a nice bonus for us girls! Over a year ago, we began planning a trip with our niece Amanda Douglass and her husband Craig that started as a Stadtler family trip to Ireland with about 14 of us hoping to go. As it turns out, there will be just 7 of us – Amanda, Craig and their 2 kids Jake & Claire, me, Terry and Sundance. Craig and Amanda have a company – Sports Travel Academy – that takes college student groups on tours to Europe and Australia (he’s an Aussie). He has the connections and skills, and he and Amanda pulled all the details together for this trip. We picked October originally because Terry and I thought we’d be hiking the Appalachian Trail this year (March-Sept) and would be finished by now. Also, their kids attend school year round and are “tracked out” meaning they have a 3-week break in Oct. We will be spending time in Dublin, Belfast, Derry (officially Londerry), the Cliffs of Moher, etc. and then will have 4 days in Amsterdam. We are very excited to spend time traveling with the Douglass family and having Sundance join us, and my next blog will showcase our time at the Guiness brewery, the cliffs and canals. Beyond that, we may take some side trips in the RV from Nov-Feb, but our main goal is to train for hiking the Appalachian Trail next spring beginning in March. That will be another grand adventure so we are excited about the possibilities but still quite sad that we aren’t wildlife watching bears, bison, eagles and wolves out west. But we know we are very blessed to have had this wonderful opportunity to tour our picturesque country, Canada and now Ireland.
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This week on our way to Colorado to see our son, Sundance, we found a beautiful and delightful place to spend a few days on the Green River in Wyoming. In the southwest corner of Wyoming and hugging the northeast border of Utah, lies a 91 miles-long reservoir, Flaming Gorge. It was named so when Major John Wesley Powell mapping the Green River from WY to the Grand Canyon wrote in his journal in 1869, “a brilliant red gorge is seen...where the river enters the mountain range...we have named it flaming gorge.” Almost 40 years later, Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed the gorge and surrounding area part of the national forest system, and the reservoir was created with a dam in 1964. The Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area along the river is huge with forest service campgrounds, marinas, dispersed camping, and arid sage brush for Pronghorn and bighorn sheep. The area protected encompasses 207,363 acres of land and water almost equally divided between Utah and Wyoming. We chose to camp on the water near Buckboard Crossing in a dispersed site (that’s an approved camp spot without hookups and no fee is charged). The weather was wonderful, sunny and warm (afternoon temps in the 70’s and 80’s and overnight in the 60’s). We swam and kayaked, Rocket played fetch, and we read books in the sunshine, took long walks along the water, and just relaxed. Others came here with lots of toys. There were ATVs, dirt bikes, large floating family rafts, pontoon boats and tubes, wakeboards, jet skis and fishing boats...lots of toys. The fisherman must have been lucky because I saw a brown trout about 18” long and a fish mouth gulp air at the water surface that was as big as a cantaloupe! There is a stipulation by the forest service that you can only camp 16 days, but it is clear that all along this area (Buckboard Crossing), locals park their campers for the season and come down on the weekends. It’s about 30 miles from the nearest big town - Green River and just a mile or so from a marina with a forest service campground, convenience store, and gas for boats. There’s plenty of room for all, and for the holiday weekend, the forest service campground was only one third full - probably because of the plethora of free campsites. We arrived Wednesday afternoon before Labor Day and while spots closest to us held camp trailers, no one was around us until the weekend came. We met our closest neighbors of 2 days because they also had a dog playing fetch in the water. While we were preparing dinner one night, Rocket inched ever closer to their tent (about 75 yards away) and eventually inserted himself into their game! Our campsite was on the side of a large cove and the water was a refreshingly cool temperature. The boat and jet ski traffic picked up on the weekend, and sometimes waves rolled onto shore but for the most part, the water remained calm and enjoyable. We harnessed plenty of solar power and saw no rain. One day we drove the loop road around the reservoir, from the western side of the river to the eastern - through Manila, Utah and back to Wyoming through Rock Springs and Green River. This is about 190 mile trip which can take between 3-6 hours depending on how many stops you make (we took 5.5 hours). This scenic drive takes you through a geologic loop with signposts about the rock formations you see. The signs list the era (I.e Jurassic or Cambrian, etc) and what types of fossils are present, I.e., “marine fossils of large squids.” As we went from west to east, there were three noteworthy stops we made along the way. The first is Sheep Creek area which is a loop off of the loop, just south of the town of Manila, UT. This loop drives away from the arid sage brush hillsides and juniper trees, into lush green aspens and pines tucked into cliffs beside the flowing creek. The road ascends a mountain and carries you above the area while cows graze and meander through the woods (open range of cattle is allowed but no sheep are allowed to graze here because disease could infect the wild bighorn sheep that roam here. A second noteworthy area along the loop drive is Red Canyon. This is the place John Wesley Powell described in his journal. This area is designated as the Ashley National Forest in Utah. There’s a visitor center with lots of information and a gift shop, there are overlooks into the Canyon, hiking trails, horseback riding, campgrounds, a lodge and restaurant. The cliffs have fencing to protect visitors but looking down into the canyon, a sign tells you that the river here is 4000 feet wide and 1700 feet deep. It’s a stunning view and as boats move down the curving river, their white wake trails and waves make tiny white swirls this far above the canyon. There are microclimates here with a variety of plants and wildlife. In the shaded areas are quaking Aspen and Douglas fir, and in the sunny areas, large Ponderosa pines stretch to the sky. Animals in this forest include black bear, mountain lion, golden belly marmots, chipmunks, Pronghorn, mule deer and even moose in some parts...quite a variety. The third noteworthy stop for us on the loop is the dam. We’re not ones to get excited about major engineering feats, and this dam is certainly smaller than the Hoover dam, but we did stop to take some pictures of it and the boaters enjoying their journey down the river. The dam took 7 years to complete and is used mostly to regulate water flows while generating 344 million kWh of electricity and hosting 2.5 million visitors to the area yearly. In all we stayed 5 days. I finished reading Louise Penny’s book THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY (now I have to get the one that follows it HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN). And I’ve started a book I’m quite fond of one third of the way into it, SHADOW. MOUNTAIN by Renee Askins about her connection to wolves and her work for 15 years restoring wolves to Yellowstone. Terry finished Neil Young’s autobiography WAGING HEAVY PEACE (interesting but a bit all over the place) and started ISLAND OF BONES by Imogene Robertson. One thing about this trip, we are reading a lot of books. Two others we both enjoyed listening to while driving were from Amazon’s Audible - Trevor Noah’s BORN A CRIMINAL and David Sadaris’s book CALYPSO - both humorous and read by the authors. Today we leave the gorge and spend a few days working our way to southern Colorado to see Sundance for the weekend. We’re looking forward to that and to exploring some of Colorado along the way.
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AuthorFormer documentary film producer, wife and mother of one...I'm taking time off to see the US with my husband Terry. Here's where I'll write about our adventures RVing until the money runs out! Archives
August 2021
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