We have spent a couple of days in the desert grassland of the Petrified Forest National Park in AZ imagining it as a prehistoric rainforest - the way it was in the Triassic Period 225 million years ago. This is one of the best places in the world to see the fossil record from the late Triassic. The park is named for the abundance of petrified wood that lies about, shimmering in the sun. During the Triassic period, torrential storms stripped trees by their roots and carried them down river beds until they came to rest eventually in swamplands as continents moved. Buried in sediment as wind and water continually molded, sculpted and peeled back the layers, minerals combined to change the wood to quartz crystals, petrifying the wood. And while petrified wood can be found all over the world, this park lays claim to the largest collection of any place on the planet. Walking through the park, these stone remnants of a forest gleam in the sun, and polished and on display in the gift shop or museum show a brilliance of color depending on how much iron or magnesium is embedded in them.
11/22-24 We have spent a couple of days in the desert grassland of the Petrified Forest National Park in AZ imagining it as a prehistoric rainforest - the way it was in the Triassic Period 225 million years ago. This is one of the best places in the world to see the fossil record from the late Triassic. The park is named for the abundance of petrified wood that lies about, shimmering in the sun. During the Triassic period, torrential storms stripped trees by their roots and carried them down river beds until they came to rest eventually in swamplands as continents moved. Buried in sediment as wind and water continually molded, sculpted and peeled back the layers, minerals combined to change the wood to quartz crystals, petrifying the wood. And while petrified wood can be found all over the world, this park lays claim to the largest collection of any place on the planet. Walking through the park, these stone remnants of a forest gleam in the sun, and polished and on display in the gift shop or museum show a brilliance of color depending on how much iron or magnesium is embedded in them. The hiking trails are short here and there's not a lot of wildlife like many parks north of here, but the petrified logs and chips are everywhere and fossils of dinosaurs, small reptiles, even pollen and spores found here make it a world class scientific laboratory. Humans have lived here for the last 13,000 years and there are remnants of their villages and lots of rock art (petroglyphs) throughout the park. We love that the park is dog friendly so Rocket hiked with us to Martha's Butte to see petroglyphs and to Old Blue Forest which provides a great view of the blue Mesa. Visitors are cautioned that it's illegal to take the petrified wood from the park, but you can purchase beautiful pieces from the gift shop (ranging from $7 to $10,000). There is no campground in the park, and the road through it is only 28 miles long. But we're camping at the gift shop just at the southern entrance. For $10 a night you can get a spot with an electric hook-up and a very rickety picnic table OR for nothing you can get a spot with a rickety table. No bathrooms, showers, septic or water, but we're happy we are self contained and don't need those amenities! A couple of days is enough to Do what we want here, ,so today we begin making our way east to New Mexico and then north to southern Colorado to spend Thanksgiving with Sundance. It looks to be very cold at night there, and Sundance has to work each day at the ski resort, but we are very much looking forward to seeing him and the dogs and hopefully skiing a bit at Red River with him on his lunch breaks! We are very blessed and thank God daily for all he provides. May you all have a Happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday and be surrounded by people you love.
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November 9-16, 2015
We haven't done a lot of hiking in the last week for health reasons, but we had a nice time visiting friends and family and I got good news from blood tests! I wasn't feeling great, not 100%, in early Nov. and its because the medicine for my hyperthyroidism (over production of hormone) was working too well and making my thyroid under produce needed hormones (hypothyroid). So I'm happy to write that the doctor has decreased my medicine by half, yet again. One more time reducing it in half -hopefully in December- and maybe I'll be off it altogether! We are now in Joshua Tree National Park, CA after spending time with our nephew Brian Stover and his girlfriend Charlotte in Rancho Cucamonga, CA - plus a day visit for me to see Cinematographer and friend Reuben Aaronson and composer friends Marta Victoria and Eddie Freeman of Icarus Music in the LA area. What a treat it was to visit dear friends! It's been 7 years since I was in CA, and I just love the sunshine and Palm trees but detest the freeway traffic. Terry's had a cold for a few days so he's resting, trying to shake it. We've been reading books and watching DVD's using our solar energy. It made me think you might want to know what we do for entertainment while traveling, so I'm including lists of books and movies below. We brought a stack of DVD's from home (took them out of their cases and placed in paper covers to save room). But we also go to thrift stores and store bargain bins purchasing used or inexpensive movies occasionally. We actually like bad horror (B rate) movies and enjoy laughing at ridiculous plots or cheesy graphics. In addition, we're watching some old classics. We've only made it to one theatrical release in the last 4 months and that was THE GIFT. We very much enjoyed that; thanks critic Roger Moore for the tip! Since we typically stay in national parks or forests we don't have access to cable TV (although we do sometimes when in private campgrounds around cities). But oddly enough in Joshua Tree, we get 16 channels, and with the exception of the infomercial channel and a Christian station, they ALL have an Asian focus (most are not in English). (Here I have to admit we watched about 15 minutes of a Korean game show where cyclists have to pedal bikes across moving trails over water as swinging plastic obstacles cause them to fall into the water nearly every try- all set to whimsical Benny Hill type music- hilarious!) But here's a sampling of what we've been watching or re-watching on DVD: Hitchcock's: NORTH BY NORTHWEST, 39 STEPS, BLACKMAIL, SABOTAGE, LADY VANISHES, MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, NUMBER 17 RAISING ARIZONA, PINK PANTHER- several (starring Peter Sellers), LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, HOSTEL, HAUNTING (several), DELIVERANCE, FRIDAY THE 13th, SALEM WITCH TRIALS, SNOW WHITE, TRAUMA THE CLIENT, DETONATOR, THE CONVERSATION,THE GINGERBREAD MAN, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, SNATCH, STAR WARS IV-VI, INDIANA JONES (3), LORD OF THE RINGS, "O" PLATOON, BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, A BRIDGE TOO FAR Here's also a sampling of what we've been reading: HOLLY'S READING LIST: Jodi Picoult's: My Sister's Keeper, House Rules, & Nineteen Minutes Fourth Protocol, by F. Forsythe Through Cougar's Eyes, by D. Raber Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee 5-8 Agatha Christie mysteries Compilation- Works of Henry David Thoreau TERRY'S READING LIST: Deal, by Bill Kreutzmann Thunder Bay, by W. K. Krueger Go Set A Watchman, by Harper Lee Compilation - Works of Mark Twain The Informant, by K. Einchenwald House Rules, by Jodi Picoult Lost in the Barriers, by Farley Mowat For the most part, when we finish a book we leave it as a donation to a reading library at a campground or in a town since we brought a heavy box of books and want to lighten our load. Yet another reason we like to acquire used books. November 13, 2015
Lately a few significant things have happened with our dogs so I'm dedicating this blog to them. First off Rocket turned 7 this week. He got special loving, longer walks, ball play and a bone that day. He's been with us since he was about 14 months old and he was a rescue border collie - pure breed - whose owner lost their farm in Northern VT and had to give him up too. In the year on the farm, he must have spent a lot of time in a truck because he loves to sit behind the driver and watch every vehicle that passes, as though he's counting sheep, I mean cars. In the RV, he really enjoys watching from his seat behind Terry and alternating by sitting beside me and looking out the huge front window. Like most BC's he's a very busy dog who needs to know where his peeps are on a hike, always running ahead and often returning from behind you. He isn't an alpha male and gets along with all dogs. He also loves to follow cats around trying to manipulate them, but don't tell him it's really the other way around. Lately we've been spending so much time in national parks, that he's missed out on a lot of hiking, but when we camp in national forests, we take him with us off leash. He's always under voice command and if we need to, we can have him heel behind one of us or in between us which has come in handy on many occasions. I'm considering writing a children's book with him as the hero and Shady as his accomplice detective. Most recently we have cast him as the hero in a real life mystery. We spent one night (Halloween) camping in a Las Vegas RV park. There are hundreds of RVs there in a gated community with a guard station. But I read in their newsletter the day we were leaving that some bikes had been stolen, and they thought the thieves had jumped over the cement wall. I didn't think much of it. But the night we stayed there was Halloween, and Terry and I went to a haunted house and toured the strip; we were only gone for about 3 hours. When we returned, we scolded Rocket for tearing up the screen door. At the time we thought he was lashing back at us for leaving him. It was a few days later that we noticed marks on the outside door which had been locked when we left the dogs alone. It is clear someone tried to break into the RV. We surmised that someone tried to break in while we were gone Halloween and didn't succeed because 2 dogs began barking fiercely and one of them (Rocket, I'm sure) clawed and bit so vehemently that he pulled the screen loose. So now we feel badly about scolding him, and grateful for his loyalty. (We also repaired the screen easily.) In this book I MAY write, Shady will be the silent partner who doesn't get the credit but probably is the most important detective of the two. What happened significantly with her recently is that she has had an allergy for a couple of years and her ears need drops and sometimes her tummy gets red and itchy and needs a spray. We've been treating this off and on as things flare up. A couple of weeks ago, she woke me with a wheeze and cough that has steadily gotten worse over the last couple of months. I was sure she had some tumor on her throat, pneumonia or that at 14, cancer or some illness meant she didn't have much time left. We took her to a vet in Utah who X-rayed her lungs and heart, found nothing wrong and gave us medicine to treat the allergy. We are so happy that $350 later we know that she is not dying and that with new medicines she's gotten so much better and is still enjoying our trip! 11/5-11/7
We decided to visit the hottest place on Earth, the lowest place in North America, and the largest national park in the lower 48 - Death Valley National Park. We've chosen a great time of year because it's 70's and 80's during the day and 60's in the RV when we wake up in the morning. We're generating power with our solar panels and can leave items outside without fear of rain since the park gets less than 2"/year total! The park has the requisite dunes, and unique shrubbery, but also has mountains that reach 11,000' - some have snow now - beautiful rock hillsides, salt flats and even Salt Creek with vegetation surrounding it in the midst of the desert. We hike in the early morning, leaving the dogs in the RV and when we return for lunch, it's only about 75 inside. Yesterday afternoon we took them with us to the visitor center to hear a ranger talk on the patio: "scary, creepy crawlers." I learned that tarantulas can go 2 years without eating, and that scorpions carry their young on their backs. Also the most fatal scorpion venom is from the Bark Scorpion that only lives at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Back in the 1800's areas here were mined for Borax, gold and silver so there's a Borax museum, abandoned mine shafts and equipment and this week a group known as the 49ers have come for a week. I don't know what they're all about, but there's no pan handling allowed! Today when we hiked the sand dunes, we stumbled upon a film shoot for the Star Wars fan club so C3PO and R2 were walking about the dunes! Our first day here I enjoyed watching a coyote from the RV windows as he circled around a neighboring came peers perkiness but didn't make a move. Today on our hike, we watched a golden eagle soaring along Salt Creek for a long time as we hiked along the flat drainage nearby. I would love to see a Kit Fox or Pupfish who live here, but don't care to see the rattlesnakes and scorpions who mainly come out at night! Tomorrow we leave and are glad to have visited this land of extremes but look forward to trees, more plant and friendlier wildlife! 11/1-11/4 We headed south of Utah for some warmth and thought we'd find a crowd at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in NV, but I'm sitting on a deserted beach as I type. Of course, it's not a typical beach...there are lots of rocks and its surrounded by a desert; the dogs are allowed here and on trails in the area, and there are mountains in the distance. It feels great just to play fetch with Rocket in the water, read on the beach, watch the seagulls fish, and relax. Temps are in 70's & 80's. This morning we rode our bikes from the campground (Boulder Beach, run by National Park service - $10/night no hook-ups) to Hoover Dam, and we walked across the dam. There's a bike/hike path- partially paved and then gravel, and it's about 5.5 miles each way. The trail cuts through flat desert, as deserted as the beach but beautiful blue Lake Mead is in the distance, encircled by mountains composed of sedimentary rocks and volcanic lavas and basalt. The "Old Railway Trail" takes us through 5 tunnels carved out of the lava rock in the 1930's so railway cars could bring in the materials used to construct the enormous and impressive Hoover Dam. The tunnels are short but dark, and Mexican Freetail bats live here from April to Oct, then migrate back to Mexico - we didn't see any. We decided to walk across the dam - you can't take the bikes nor dogs - but did NOT take the tour(s). Apparently the structure is self-sustaining and gets no federal funds. I guess the power it generates for 25 million people doesn't yield enough money to keep it operational because they charge $10 to enter the visitor center, $15 for a short tour, $30 for a longer tour, and $10 to park your car in the garage. We did none of those, and we're still satisfied with our self guided tour. I did wonder where the door was that Chevy Chase stepped out of in that Vacation movie!
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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
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