Days At Home!

 After we finished in Jonesborough, Trish and I have had a little break at home before starting on our next travel venture.  We got the 4:30 Swan Quarter ferry back to the island, a trip that is almost three hours long.  The sunset started on the ferry and finished as we landed back on the island.

First promise of sunset on the ferry.

It was a lovely sight to see our island home lighted by the full finish of sunset.

Home for a little bit.

Once we got to our house we fell into bed after a long trip.  The next morning we walked around the house to see what was new.  Our contractor, Woody, had replaced all the outside doors while we were away…a late showing bit of damage from Hurricane Dorian that is only now appearing two years later with swelling and disintegration.  

The biggest surprise, though, was the huge growth of our banana trees!  They had doubled in size and had a host of babies in the seven weeks that we were gone.  We still don’t know if we will ever get bananas, it all depends on the winter weather, but they are beautiful…and little frogs are living  in them everywhere.  We love the little frogs, they not only sing at night, they feast on mosquitos!  After one week at home, we will be on the road again.

Lost in the bananas!

Jonesborough

 Our final stop on this trip was in Jonesborough, Tennessee, where we spent a couple of days filming for the Virtual 49th National Storytelling Festival.  The proper decision had to be made to bypass the in-person festival due to the very high spike in COVID cases in Tennessee and the area surrounding Jonesborough.  During this past week several tellers who live close enough have been in town filming while others are being filmed where they live, even outside the US.

In addition to telling stories for the festival, I got to play with the Jonesborough Novelty Band while we recorded music for the festival.  The leader of the novelty band, Terry Countermine, even had Barbara McBride-Smith join us for a special song that will be featured at the festival.  This completed our time of fun!

More Tales

 Our last weekend stop of this trip took us to WILMORE, Kentucky, for the fourth More Tales Storytelling Festival. WILMORE is the home of Asbury University and one of the school’s strongest departments is Media Communication.  On Friday, while Lyn Ford and Octavia Sexton told to elementary school students, I got to present in two college classes in the Media Communication Department at Asbury.  We had lots of fun.

The festival has an Appalachian theme and included some music as well as storytelling.  It is held on the grounds of WILMORE City Hall right in town.

More Tales.

A big treat for Trish and me was that her niece, Heather, who lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky, came to the festival on Saturday and we got to spend the day with her.  I had never met Heather and Trish had not seen her to visit for a long time.  This was a bonus.

Visiting with Heather…her first Festival!

The Festival ran through Saturday night after which we packed up to go to Jonesborough for filming.

Saint Louis

 After Quilt Town, Trish and I drove to Saint Louis for the night.  Our hotel was directly across the street from the Arch and the Museum of Westward Expansion and right beside the Dred Scott Court House.

We arrived in the afternoon with just enough time to visit the Arch and the Museum before closing time.  Right now the tram trips to the top are running only on a very limited morning schedule that was over for the day, so, we will wait for that another time.  But, we had a wonderful time in the Museum.  The Museum has been totally redone with a lot of new interpretive features since I was here last.  It now moves through historic eras rather than looking at a general way at westward extension.  You could spend a lot of time here.

Part of the Great Riverboat Era Interpretation.

The old Courthouse where the Dred Scott trial was held is presently closed for refurbishment, so, we could not visit the inside.  

Dred Scott Descriptive Marker.

Pretty soon our hunger and tiredness won out over our desire to learn more new things, so, with a last look at the Arch, we retreated for dinner and a night of rest.

Quilt Town, USA

 Yesterday we spent a good part of the day in Hamilton, Missouri.  This little town, population 1,800, was formerly known for being the childhood home of J. C. Penney and the location of an old Penney’s store.  Now it is a different place.

A dozen years ago, Jenny Doan and her son and daughter started Missouri Stat Quilt Company.  Today the company owns fifteen renovated buildings that make up most of the Main Street in Hamilton selling fabric, sewing machines, yarn and other quilting sundries.

Trish and I spent most of yesterday morning here selecting fabric for real and potential quilting projects.  This is something she does well and I do with love.  We had a wonderful time together.

Luckily for us, if you bought a certain amount of fabric, you got free shipping.  We easily exceeded that certain amoung and are now looking forward to a large  box when we get home.  What fun!

The Brown Palace

 On Sunday morning following the Timpanogos Festival, the tellers are normally taken to Salt Lake City to see the live broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Music and the Spoken Word program. For the past year and a half the Choir broadcast has been put together from previously recorded programs due to COVID and that plan is still in effect.  So, this year, we went up to Salt Lake City and had a tour of the 21,000 seat Conference Center in all its emptiness!  Afterwards we ended our weekend with a departure breakfast.

On Sunday afternoon Trish and I drove to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, for the night and then on to Denver on Monday.  Our plan was to spend the night in one of my favorite hotels, a place Trish had never been, the beautiful Brown Palace Hotel.

Opened in 1892 when it was the tallest building in Denver, the triangular shape of the building provides a window view for each of its 400 rooms. Its beautiful open interior retains the style of its 1892 era and makes you feel rested just to enter.

Looking down from our room.

After our dinner in the Ship Tavern, we headed up to bed to rest up to drive across the rest of Colorado and all of Kansas tomorrow.

Trish amidst the beautiful architecture outside our room.

Timpanogos Festival

 Last year the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival was totally virtual.  This year the 32nd Timpanogos Festival was, for many of the tellers, the first live audience festival since before COVID.

First time on a real stage!

Great care was taken, especially with the tellers. Chairs were spaced in the tents and people brought their own family blankets as well to the Amphitheatre events.  Only after the audience was seated were tellers brought to the venues by golf cart.  After we told, we were carted away while the audience remained seated.  There was no direct audience-teller contact.  We were very well cared for.

The Amphitheatre on Laughing Night.

It took immense work to pull off this event this year and the audience was extremely grateful to be there.  Everyone was hungry for stories and the festival was a very restorative event.  We thank the Timpanogos Committee for all their outstanding commitment and work.

Robert and Donald getting ready to share the stage.

The festival will be available virtually beginning in October as all events were filmed.  Go to www.timpfest.org to get tickets for the virtual festival.  

Ashton Gardens

 The Timpanogos Storytelling Festival is held in the beautiful Ashton Gardens at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah, just south of Salt Lake City.

The gardens were created by Karen Ashton who is also the founder of the Timpanogos Festuval.  The gardens are fifty-five acres of beauty ranging from the rose garden to the Italian garden to the Monet garden to the Biblical sculpture garden.  The plants are beautiful and endless.

There are also beautiful waterfalls that can be turned up and down to manage noise for events in the garden.  Apart from the festival, we simply love being in this lovely place.

Ready for Timpanogos

 Trish are I are now in LEHI, Utah, getting ready for the 32nd Timpanogos Storytelling Festival.  We arrived on Monday, had a library program Tuesday, did a school performance visit yesterday, and last night had our orientation session with the other tellers in the beautiful Ashton Gardens where the festival begins today.

After our dinner, we all had a golf cart tour of the gardens and the festival layout so we will know where to go for each of our sessions.  The caretaking this year is being done with great care.  Listeners arrive in the tents, we are then brought in for our performance after which we are returned to the green room with no up close audience contact.

Karen Acerson, shows us one of our performance tents during our tour.  We also visit the large amphitheater hillside where some of the evening events center,  Tomorrow we will be all ready to go!  This feels a bit strange after more than a year of no live performing, but, everyone is very excited.

Goblin Valley

 Goblin Valley State Park in Utah is not a place you would happen to pass by accident.  It is a destination.  About an hour off of Interstate 79 west of Green River, you cross what looks like open dry country with nothing different up ahead.  Then, suddenly, you come to Goblin Valley State Park.

Trish and the Goblins.

There is no way to describe this place except by being here.  You walk down in and amongst hundreds of goblin like formations which you discover are solid rocks sitting atop clay like bases.  The more erosion, the more goblins.  We wandered around, almost lost among them all, with wonder.

This is a place to visit if you have a chance!

Canyonlands

 Yesterday Trish and I spent the day on a trip to Canyonlands National Park nearby.  We drove out across the Island in the Sky Mesa to what seems to be the edge of the world where you can look out for endless miles across this vast Park.

You clearly see the white rim of the upper canyons from here.

Later we hiked out to Mesa Arch where the view looks for miles back towards Moab.

The most striking views, however, come when you look down into the canyons and see the roads that were once traveled by the huge potash trucks when there was mining prior to park establishment.  Today the road is open if you wish to drive there…we did not!

Our last stop of the day was at Dead Horse Point State Park where the views run from the present potash ponds below to the Colorado River at Dead Horse Point in the distance.  It was a wonderful day in a world totally different from Arches.

Moab

 I first came to Moab about 30 years ago and have since been here many times both for pure fun and doing school visits.  It is one of my favorite beautiful places. Trish, however, had never been here, so, I was very excited for us to be here together.

Our first day was, of course, spent as Arches National Park just to the north of town.

Looking down “Park Avenue.”

One of the nice things about Arches is that the beauty begins as soon as you enter the Park. More than just the arches, all of the stunning rock formations here are breathtaking.

One of our favorite little walks was to Sand Dune Arch, hidden a bit off the road, it is a treasure not to be missed.

Sand Dune Arch.

The best thing about this day is that we have three more days here!

Mesa Verde

 Yesterday we drove from Durango to Moab, a drive that included a visit to Mesa Verde National Park on the way.  As early as 7,500 BC the cliffs of Mesa Verde were used as seasonal dwelling places by Paleo-Indians.  But, by about 650 CE there were permanent residents here.

Trish and I walk down the Spruce Tree House trail.

The basket making culture built the complex structures we see here today and lived here full time until a series of drought years pushed them to other places by about 1,285 CE. 

Spruce Tree House dwellers had a fresh water source at the foot of their dwellings and they climbed to the flat surface above to farm crops as successful agricultural settlers.

The largest cliff dwelling in North America is Cliff Palace House where several hundred people lived at the height of its lifetime.  After the dwellers departed, the cliff houses were undiscovered for  more than six hundred years.

Cliff Palace House.

Durango

 We are now in Durango, Colorado, and, yesterday we spent the day riding the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  

Ready to board.

Our train left the station in Durango at nine am.  We were booked in Presidential Class in the Alamosa Parlour Car at the end of the train.  We were glad to be in this car as it was a chilly day with scattered rain showers and an open car might have been uncomfortable,

The 45 mile route to Silverton goes up the gorge of the Animas River.  At the route’s zenith, we traveled on a ledge nearly four hundred feet above the river below. It was spectacular.  Being at the end of the train we had great views of our engine as it curved far ahead of us.

The scenery of the entire trip was beautiful and the soft rainfall made things greener and brighter than ever.

After a lunch stop in Silverton, we started back, arriving back in Durango after nine hours and  85 miles from our start.