Back On Track!

 For those of you who are regular readers, let me apologize for being out of touch for a few weeks.  Our schedule this fall has been extremely heave with one nine-week trip followed by an eight-week trip after only a week at home.  

After Memphis, we did take a riverboat ride down the Mississippi River from there to New Orleans.  Most of the way we had very spotty connections to the world and also our days were filled from end to end.  We ended our trip at the beautiful Oak Alley Plantation before departing in New Orleans.

Imagine looking from this porch down to the River and watching steamboats go past!

From New Orleans, we drove to Roanoke, Virginia, for Trish to have eye surgery the next day.  No, it was not caused by the river trip, it was already planned.  The recovery took both of our time for the following week until she was released by the doctor.  (No photos of this!)

We then headed for Midland, Texas, for the thirty-fourth Midland Storytelling Festival.

I had always been fascinated by the Natchez Trace Parkway but had never had the opportunity to travel it. So, we drive from Roanoke to Nashville and from there took the Trace all the way to its end in Natchez.  This was about 400 miles spread over two days and we were very glad we took the time for it.

The original road was a series of Native trails that made a short cut from the Natchez area to the Nashville area overland rather than by the River.  When early Europeans arrived, the Trace was their way back to Tennessee and Kentucky after taking boat loads of trade goods to New Orleans…they even sold the lumber from which their flat boats were made and traveled back to start over.  

The Trace was the main route used by American forces to and from the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.  This historic marker tells the story.

A bit farther down the road we came to the death site and burial place of Meriwether Lewis.  

After co-leading the Corps of Discovery along with William Clark when he, Lewis, was only twenty-nine years old, he was appointed by President Jefferson as the Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory at age 32.  At age 35 Lewis was traveling down the Trace when he stopped for the night at a tavern.  In the  night the proprietor heard loud voices, gun shots, and someone calling for help.  She looked out the door and saw someone crawling back toward one of the cabins in the back, BUT DID NOT INVESTIGATE!. 

The next morning Lewis was found dead, shot twice and with his throat cut.  Because he was said to be suffering from depression, the story arose that he had committed suicide, but a closer look at the record clearly seem to dispute this.  This is the place of his burial.

We loved making this drive in the winter time.  With all the leaves off the trees, you could see far into the woods where much of the original trail parallels the new parkway.  On the southern end, there were beautiful swamplands.

We ended our trip right back in Natchez where we had been on the riverboat a month ago.  Now it is on to Midland!

Memphis Pumpkin House

 Every two years we have a weekend of storytelling at Balmoral Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee.  This event started twenty-seven years ago when my good friend, Bill Jones, was pastor of this church.  After Bill’s retirement the event has continued.  We love the people in this church and the whole community that have there.

Arriving early this year, we were taken by our friends, Fran and Phil Shannon, to see the Pumpkin House at the Dixon Museum and Gardens in Memphis.

More than twelve hundred pumpkins and large gourds are used in building the Pumpkin House.  As we approached, we could not believe what we were seeing!

The House is about sixteen feet square with plenty of room to go inside.

Even the chandelier is made of pumpkins and gourds.  There are pumpkins in every imaginable shape and color.

The “thatch” roof is made of corn stalks!  Our visit was the last weekend the House was open before taking it down.  On the day we were there, it was so beautiful and warm that we wondered why it was not left standing until Thanksgiving.  Three days later, when the temperature dropped to 29 degrees, we understood…if the pumpkins stayed until freezing weather, it would make a terrible rotten mess!  We are glad we got to make this lovely visit.

St. Louis: The Arch

 We are on our way to the Cave Run Storytelling Festival in Kentucky but we had a few extra days before needing to be there. Trish and I stopped for three nights in St. Louis.  Our hotel was about a ten minute walk from the Gateway Arch National Park.  We had a great view right from our window.

Since we have a couple of days here, we decided to spend a whole day around here and soak in everything that can be done.  We loved it!

After watching a virtual reality movie depicting St. Louis in the mid- nineteenth century, it was time to take the tram to the top of the Arch.

From the 600 foot high view at the top, you see all of St. Louis from one side and across the Mississippi River into Illinois on the other. Here is a view right down to the historic Dred Scott courthouse.

After lunch we had a riverboat ride on the Mississippi. We had no idea how much commerce happens on the river here. We watched a constant dance of barges being moved, loaded, unloaded, and then heading down the River toward Memphis or on to New Orleans for export.

Our final activity of the day was watching the movie about the building of the arch.  It is next to unbelievable to watch the 1963-65 workers complete this unimaginable job without a single accident. It was a good way to finish a good day!

Back on the Train

 After two great days of exploring around Moab, Utah, Trish and I got back on the Rocky Mountaineer for our return trip to Denver.

The first part of this trip took us across the Utah desert where everything in sight showed us what desert crossing is really like.  We imagined both the first pioneers who walked across here and them the first steam train passengers who make what to them was a magically fast trip.

Soon we joined the headwaters of the Colorado River which guided our route all the way to Glenwood Springs for the night.  We often saw people fly fishing, but we could not at all figure out now then got to this remote part of the River.

The route back over the Rockies is always so interesting and inspiring.  We passed through forty-four tunnels on this return trip.  Once in a while we say a house high up and wondered how people got there, especially to build it!  We often saw the front end of our own train as there were plenty of curves.

Arriving in Denver at the beautiful Rally Hotel, our room looked right into Coors Field where that evening the Denver Rockies defeated the Los Angeles Angels seven to six.  Just for the end of our adventure, we decided, there was an extended fireworks show at the end of the game.  This was the view from our hotel room!

We highly recommend the Rocky Mountaineer and have another trip, this one in Canada, planned for next fall.

Arches National Park

 Instead of buying any of the tours offered by the Rocky Mountaineer, Trish and I rented a Bronco for two days and spent them exploring on our own.  We have been to Arches National Park before, but, it is so very spectacular that we had to spend most of our first day there again.

The sandstone formations and arches that we see today started out more than 300 million years ago when a vast underlying salt base began to push up domes in the overlay.  Some of these domes split and some even turned over leaving erosion to create the arches and other formations we see here today.

These days the Park requires people to get a time of entry pass.  This is a great idea as it spreads out access and eliminates the overcrowding midday that we used to experience here.  We had no difficulty at all finding parking space wherever we wanted it and the trails were not crowded at all.

At different times of the day, the light changes the shapes of the sandstone and the visual experience is different.  Here at Sand Dune Arch the light paints a unique visit.

There are also unique slots and trails.

After we left Arches, we took a road beside the Colorado River below Moab where we saw a multitude of Petroglyphs left by ancient Anasazi residents.

We have another whole day here before we get back on the train for Denver.

Rocky Mountaineer Train

 The Rocky Mountaineer Train Company in Vancouver, Canada, now has its first scenic route in the United States. It is called Rockies to the Red Rocks, and, Trish and I are in the middle of this eight day trip.

We boarded this magical first class train in Denver, Colorado, and were immediately served breakfast, our first of constant feeding throughout the day! We headed up from Denver over the Continental Divide through the Moffatt Tunnel (fifteen minutes through the tunnel on the train) and began to follow the very beginnings of the baby Colorado River.

Our cars have giant windows and the whole world comes inside as we make our way through a total of forty tunnels.  At the end of the day we stop for the night in Glenwood Springs where Trish and I relax in the Hot Springs before sleep.  Next morning we are on our way again.

Our destination today is Moab, Utah, where we have a three day layover so we can explore Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and all that is around there.

This is such a lovely and smooth ride.  The Rocky Mountaineer people take perfect care of us.  The trip is already worth our taking and we keep looking forward to all that is coming.

Rocky Mountain National Park

 Trish and I spent much of the past week at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, so we could visit Rocky Mountain National Park.  The Stanley itself was built in 1909 by F. O. Stanley, one of the twin Stanley brothers who invented dry plate photographic negatives and created the Stanley Steamer automobile. He was also a central figure in promoting the creation of the National Park.

In addition to driving our own car, we took an open-top van tour into the park.  This enabled us to go places we could not have gone in our own and avoid having to drive or deal with parking.  It was wonderful!

We took unpaved roads about which we would have never known on our own into places we never would have seen.

From above 12,000 feet the view went on forever.  Both of us, though, did feel some altitude complications through our days there.

There were still many patches of snow from last winter showing.  What used to be larger glaciers have now multiple small remnants.  Overall it is breathtaking.

On another day we had a ghost tour back at the hotel, but, even spirits could not compare with the wondrous beauty of nature!