This past weekend Trish and I had a little trip to Rockville, Maryland. I was scheduled for an in-person performance at Tikvat Israel Congregation as the first in-person community program there since before COVID.
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| We were live! |
People arrived with a bit of shyness to actually be live with one another. We had a great time. The event was sponsored by sixteen cooperative non-profits and there was a significant live-stream audience. I had a great time and everyone seems to want to do it again.
This week Trish and I have had a little respite on the island. Autumn here is so beautiful and so we had to head out to our beach to enjoy one of the wonderful days.
We saw a total on four people on the beach, and this was the “busy” beach: the one that has a large parking lot and is closest to town.
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| Wide and almost empty now, this is where the lifeguards set up in the summer. |
We watched while both brown Pelicans and black cormorants fished in the waves. There were no visible dolphins out today.
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| Cormorants head home after a day of fishing. |
This time of year the sea oats are ripening and the grasses take on their fall colors. These are our subtle color changes without many deciduous trees on the island.
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| Can you spot the pelicans through the sea oats? |
We hang on to every nice autumn day knowing that colder weather will come all too soon.
Twenty-two years ago, my dear friend from college. Bill Jones, was the minister at Balmoral Presbyterian Church in Germantown, Tennessee. Bill and his wife, Lida, had begun to come to Ocracoke Storytelling Week and would eventually move to the island permanently when Bill retired from the church.
Bill got the idea for a storytelling weekend at Balmoral and that beginning has brought me back to Balmoral every other year for the past 22 years. Trish and I just enjoyed this year’s Balmoral Storytelling Weekend,
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| Telling stories in the sanctuary. |
The weekend usually involves both music and storytelling and is a free gift to the community sponsored by the Smartt Fund at Balmoral. This year, however, with COVID protocols in place, I was the only performer. There was a limited in-person audience with vaccinations and masks required and also a livestream alternative. It was an important time.
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| A wonderful listener enjoying the in-person audience. |
I told stories both Friday and Saturday and also for the sermon in Sunday worship. Trish and I are already looking forward to being back in two years.
Trish and I arrived in Colorado Springs and spent the night at the gracious old Broadmoor Hotel for the night. Yesterday morning we were up early and ready for the cog-rail trip up the mountain to the top of Pike’s Peak.
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| Ready to go. |
The original cog-railroad was started in 1889 and opened to the public in 1891. The tickets then were five dollars, or the equivalent of $150.00 today!
The first trains were powered by steam locomotives built at an angle to go up the grade. The trains ran on the same tracks until 2016 when the railroad was closed for a rebuild…it took four years and 100 million dollars to total rebuild the station, railroad cars, drive engine, track Ed and all tracks, and visitor center at the top of the Peak.
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| Totally new cog-rail tracks. |
Once at the top the temperature was 23 degrees with a 14 mph wind. A bit chilly! We looked in every direction…all the way to Kansas! What a view to behold.
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| Trish at the top! |
After a snack and a lot of looking it was time to go back down. We were lucky in that we had two sets of seats and could face forward both up and down the mountain. The new cars are smooth, warm, and comfortable. What a great day!
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| Everything new! |
From San Francisco, Trish and I drove over to Reno and then up to Mountain Home, Idaho, where we spent the weekend with Trish’s son, Greg, and his family. Greg and his wife, Annette, are both career Air Force and are now stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base just south of Boise, Idaho. This is our first time to see them since they moved there.
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| Trish and Greg on his weekend off duty. |
The big treat was getting to see their children, our grandchildren, Mallory, Jake, and Lucas. We had not seen them since before COVID.
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| Jake, Mallory, and Luke. |
After our weekend there, we drove on Sunday to Rawlings, Wyoming on our way to Colorado. One thing Trish and I love about driving across the country is the great variety of beautiful changing scenery we get to see as we go. With the speed limit being 80 mph we could cover 600 miles in eight hours.
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| We don’t have scenery like this at home! |
At the end of our day we arrived just as the new moon looked like it was going to eat Venus. Tomorrow we head to Colorado Springs.
From Monterey Trish and I drove up the coast through Half Moon Bay and on to San Francisco.
Our first stop was at the huge park near Golden Gate where we spent a lot of time at the Conservatory of Flowers. This is the first commercial greenhouse built in the United States and dates from 1879. The building itself is beautiful.
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| The 1879 Conservatory of Flowers greenhouse. |
Part of the mission here is the preservation of endangered flower species and there is a strong concentration of insectivores including many species of pitcher plants. We saw them in multiple shapes, sizes, and colors.
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| Fascinating Pitcher Plants. |
There were also lily pads floating on water so clear that they looked like they were suspended in the air. We loved this place and stayed for quite a long time.
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| Like they floated in the air. |
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| A beautiful day! |
We have been in Monterey for a couple of days and on a rainy afternoon decided to go to the aquarium. The building itself started out as an old shut-down sardine cannery on Cannery Row but has been expanded greatly through the years. Their collections center around what lives in Monterey Bay and along all of the Pacific coast.
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| A sea otter happily shows off for people. |
One of their most beautiful sets of collections are the jelly fish. They range broadly in size and color and are so delicate and complex to watch.
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| Beautiful to watch as they move. |
The bay is home to octopi and we got to watch them close up here. They seem to be looking back.
It was a beautiful visit!
Trish and I finished the Ojai Festival on Sunday afternoon and drove up the coast to San Simeon for the night. That evening we got to watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. At home, on Ocracoke, we drive down to watch the sun set over the Pamlico Sound many evenings. Since the Sound is in the west side of our island, our home sunsets drop the sun into the water. This looked much the same with awareness that friends at home had an almost identical view three hours earlier.
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| Over the Pacific. |
On our way we stopped to walk down to the ocean to McVay Falls, a waterfall that lands on the beach. This was a beautiful sight on the Big Sur Coast.
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| Right on the beach. |
After five days the snow looks almost like it did when it first finished falling! When our frozen pipes thawed, it turned out that we had a...
