Road Trip to Florida

Our destination was Melbourne FL and we did the calculation between flying/car rental and driving - deciding that for two people without significant time constraints, it was less expensive to drive. The drive from Maryland to Florida is a trek on I-95. One passes around Washington DC and Richmond VA and then I-95 becomes a highway that misses any major city. I had thought we might see some fall color as we traveled southward; there was a little in Virginia but by the time we got to North Carolina, the pines dominated the roadway. There were miles of them. Sometimes there was a cotton field visible along the highway. Once past the Roanoke Rapids, there were more swamps and broad rivers. It was still sweat shirt weather all the way from Maryland to South Carolina where we stopped the first night.

By the time we got to Florida, it was warm and wet. I enjoyed the dolphin sculpture at the welcome center. Since it was raining, we stopped for lunch at MacDonald’s rather than picnic.

As we got out of the car the rain slowed down and I noticed two wood storks on a grassy area next to the parking lot. What a great way to start out our week in Florida! I’ll be posting more about our time in Florida over the next few weeks.

The road trip to Florida included a return trip too. On the way back I captured the sunrise in Georgia. We were up early for a long day of driving to get back to Maryland.

Road Trip Preparation

Being ‘on the road’ for 11 days requires some planning. Even though I’ve done it enough times before that I should be ‘experienced’ there is always a niggling worry that something might be forgotten. The usual things are on the list: 

• Pick up tourbooks from AAA.
• Check the travel times between destinations with Google maps.
• Load the lodging reservation information details onto my Kindle - and print the summary.
• Plan the food for ‘picnic’ meals. I am making Pumpkin and Ginger Scones the day before we leave and will take the ones left after we enjoy them fresh from the oven. Also on my list are hummus and veggies, nuts (cashews, peanuts, soynuts). This has been a great year for apples so they’ll be the primary fruit for the road.
• Arrange for house/cat sitter.
• Water the house plants right before we leave. I have a sweet potato that sprouted recently; I planted it in a large pot indoors and have a grow light for it; it is growing very rapidly. My plan is to baby it through the winter and then plant it outdoors in the spring….so that next fall I’ll have quite a crop of sweet potatoes - but it needs to survive our being away.
• Look at forecasts for destinations before packing. Weather is pretty changeable this time of year…and where we are going is generally warmer than Maryland….but is it warm enough to get out the warm weather clothes again?
• Checkout ebooks from the library and make sure they are transmitted to the Kindle. I am not taking any paper based reading material on this trip!
• Create a mindmap for quick reference and re-plans while travelling. The goal is to get the most pertinent information (destinations, addresses, availability, travel times) condensed into a one page reference. Most of the time we can look up information on a smart phone if we need to - unless we are somewhere without cell phone coverage. 

Usually the things we forget are easily remedied - either with a quick purchase or by deciding that it wasn’t so essential after all!

Clearing away ‘Stuff’ - November 2013

The theme for this month is intentionally using up items from around that house - that have been around way too long and will be around forever without conscious effort to use them. Here’s my list.

Picnic supplies. I have paper plates that are over 10 years old! And there is a box of plastic spoons that is over 5 years old. There are multiple reasons they have been around so long; the primary ones are: 1) I forget that I have them and 2) recently I’ve started taking reusable plastic containers and packing food in a way that I don’t need utensils at all. On the next vacation, I plan to use the plates and the spoons.

Pads of paper. I have accumulated quite a few pads of paper in various sizes. They come from a variety of sources: charities as a ‘gift’ in the mail, goodies handed out at meetings or conferences, or hotels. I have several on my desk with different kinds of reminders…and it thrills me every time I use one enough to tear off a sheet to go into the recycle….and it’s even better when a whole pad has been consumed. At the rate I am going it will still take several years to reduce the pile (and it seems like more come in all too frequently.

The wrong kind of paper towels. A few months ago I bought a less expensive brand of paper towels. They are less absorbent - so much so that my husband refuses to use them! I’m taking them to use as napkins on our next road trip. It may still take a long time to finally use them up.

Do you have things in your house that will take conscious effort to use up?

Monument Valley - Part I

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is barely on the Arizona side of the Arizona-Utah boarder and the day trip from Monticello UT to Monument Valley was so eventful that I am doing two posts about it. Today the focus is on the road trip down and back; it took just under 2 hours each way. Blanding is the only town of any size along the way; the visitor center there has a Navajo loom set up in the museum area. Mexican Hat is at the place where the road crosses the San Juan River. There are two distinctive rock formations along with way: Mexican Hat just north of Mexican Hat and Navajo Twins near Bluff. I’ve included the images I’ve captured of them in the slide show below.

On the Road in Colorado - October 2013

The ‘paper airplane’ art seen at the top of the escalators in the Denver International Airport (picture above) is always something I appreciate upon arrival. There were a lot of travelers when I arrived in early October…and returned a week later.

Our final destination was Utah so the images of Colorado were what we could capture along I-70 while enroute. Fortunately - driving from Denver to Grand Junction is scenic any time and particular this time of year  when there is the addition of fall call to the mix: the dark green of pines, the yellow of aspens, older fall colors for scrubby trees, a scattering of snow on the highest peaks, and bands of rock colors anywhere the vegetation has been swept away or never grows in the first place. I also included an apple tree (with fruit) that was growing at a rest stop and the sunrise on the morning we flew home - in the slide show.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 17, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Distracted Driving Video - 35 minutes…three vignettes…the message: don’t text and drive

Fall in The National Parks: Some Other Park Fall Drives Not To Overlook - Some ideas for a fall foliage road trip

Why do we laugh? - James May with a very straight-faced explanation

Park Score Index - Compare ranking of cities based on parks

Photos from Restored Wetlands - From the Prairie Ecologist. My favorite is the paper wasp on the swamp milkweed.

Why aren’t more girls attracted to physics? - It’s all about seeing possibilities.

A History of the World: The 100 British Museum Objects - There are several images for each object and a narrative. Note the little symbols beside each thumbnail and click on the thumbnail to take a closer look; the images with a magnifying glass have annotations (I prefer to click on the thumbnail, go to full screen, then look at the annotations), listen to the short videos for the ones with the ‘play arrows.’ A bit longer audio (originally for a BBC radio program) is available as well.

How a 'Deviant' Philosopher Built Palantir, A CIA-Funded Data-Mining Juggernaut - The good and bad of the state of the art in mining information from huge amounts of data.

Great Blue Heron Highlights 2013 - From Sapsucker Pond in Ithaca NY. I didn’t watch much of the season ‘live’ this year but enjoyed these highlights.

Three Ways Cooking has Changed Over the Last 300 Years - It’s more than cooking….it’s the history of what people ate. Some ingredients are not common now…others are common but prepared quite differently.

June 2013 Road Trip

My road trip a few weeks ago took me from Dallas TX to Tucson AZ. The route went through Dallas - Fort Worth - Weatherford - Abilene - Midland - Pecos - El Paso - Las Cruces - Tucson…and back. On the way out we made a side trips into Abilene for the Frontier Texas exhibit and from Las Cruces to White Sands National Monument. On the way back we stopped at Clark Gardens near Weatherford. I have some future posts about those places. This post is about the scenes from the road.

It turns out that the pictures from Tucson back were the better ones - so the slide show below starts in Tucson and includes the scenes from the road in the three states. All three states have increased decoration of bridge abutments and overpasses along their interstates in recent years. They emphasize architecture, natural features and colors of the area. I captured some of the more unusual ones. El Paso seemed to have the most extensive and the most elaborate - in muted colors that seemed to fit the environment of El Paso.

The clouds were also noticeable. Their thickness built up in the afternoon of our first day of driving from Tucson. We had quite a rainstorm about an hour past El Paso. At first we thought we might be able to drive from underneath the big cloud…but it was as speedy as we were. The speed limit in that stretch is 80 mph but we slowed down in the deluge.

All three states have rest stops…many of them quite scenic. And they had picnic tables with shade - and situated to catch the breeze; we enjoyed picnic lunches even in the June heat. The welcome centers are even more elaborate. I took a picture of the sign and the doors of the one in New Mexico. The Texas rest stops included mosaics on the walls….and photogenic insects because they are so ‘open.’ As we got closer to Dallas we managed to take the route through Weatherford rather than return to the highway after our stop at Clark Gardens - so I got a picture of the center of town while we were stopped at a light. From there it was Fort Worth and Dallas traffic…not photogenic. We were all glad to get out of the car and stretch!