Endless Summer

Posted on October 16, 2016 by soldstone

Life is pretty rewarding in the pursuit of an endless summer. Quite frequently, Michael declares gleefully that “endless summer” is the goal of our trip. Whenever the weather seems a little cooler, he says we’ll have to move further south soon! Indeed we have been blessed with warm days, sunny skies, and nary a need for a jacket. For the last month we have been basking in the autumn warmth of southern California, specifically La Jolla, near San Diego. Michael’s parents still live here in the house he grew up in, and we have taken over the basement guest room. Pretty nice digs if you can come by them! Most mornings I go for a walk along the cove and cliff tops to see what the ocean has to offer that day. Sea lions, pelicans, sea gulls, cormorants, and harbor seals are frequent companions, as well as a plethora of multilingual tourists. Michael goes off to surf at one of the nearby spots whenever the conditions are to his liking. Many afternoons we make time to go to the beach to top up our tans and breathe in the ocean air and sound of the waves. It’s a rough life, I know! In between these leisure pursuits, we’ve been spending quality time with family, reconnecting with old friends, and preparing to go overseas.

Here are some scenes from my morning walks.

Cormorants and Sea Lions

Harbor Seals

Children’s Pool on a super clear day

Children’s Pool on a very different day!

High tides and heavy surf make for a dramatic coastline!

While we’ve been lolligagging in San Diego, we’ve had a few small adventures of note. One weekend we camped at San Elijo State Beach in Cardiff-by-the-Sea. The campground is run by the state and the sites start booking out 6 months in advance, which is when they become available in the system. We had a stroke of luck back in March and secured a prime campsite right above the beach, close to the beach access, and just the right distance from the toilets.

The view from our campsite, #52

The campground also has showers, a camp store, and a taco shop. It is situated just across the road from eateries, a coffee shop, and a fantastic gourmet market called Seaside Market. So if you want to go minimalist on the cooking, as we did, it’s easy to eat well. The beach has a good surf break, so Michael was happy to have such easy access. It really was lovely to have the sound of the waves lull us to sleep and to witness incredible sunsets each evening from the comfort of our picnic table or the beach below!

The only downside was the noise from the trains that blow through at regular intervals, including at night. During the day it was pretty easy to tune them out, but their whistles seemed incredibly loud at night when they woke us from a sound sleep! Our second night there, my friend Sandy joined us with her sweet dog Jax. We had a fun time roasting marshmallows and making s’mores by the campfire!

Sandy and Jax

Shaking the tent out…Atlas holds up the world!

Another fun adventure consisted of riding our bicycles down to Pacific Beach from La Jolla. When we got to the boardwalk, we found a beach festival in progress with all manner of booths, crafts, beach volleyball tournaments, a surf contest, food, and bands playing. There was a “Best of the Beach” fish taco contest with entrants from local restaurants which caught our eye– $10 to sample 7 different tacos and vote on your favorite. What a deal! Of course we had to do it. Wow was it good!

Last year’s champion – mmmm, very tasty!

Another favorite

The beach scene

After sampling some tacos, we rode slowly down the boardwalk through Mission Beach all the way to the jetty at the end by the entrance to Mission Bay. The boardwalk was teeming with people and colorful characters, so it made for some superb people watching. That evening we went to a friend’s house for a barbecue.

Michael has been calling and catching up with old friends from high school, college, and even as far back as kindergarten! It’s been a particular pleasure to reconnect and get to know these people. There have been barbeques and snorkeling expeditions and we have plans for more visits next week. One Sunday we drove up to Newport Beach for the day to see one of Michael’s college friends. We really enjoyed spending the day with him and his family, going to the beach, and hearing about their lives.

A couple of times we have been in snorkeling by the La Jolla cove. The first was not so great due to poor visibility, but we did get inspected by a sea lion or two while in the water. The second time, the visibility was pretty good and the water quite calm. The cove is part of a marine preserve. There is a deep canyon in the ocean floor that comes quite close to shore at that spot, causing an upwelling, and making the marine life abundant. I spotted a leopard shark swimming by. They are small and harmless and come to breed right off the cliffs there. As you may have guessed, they have spots! We also saw plenty of garibaldi, which are bright orange and look like very large goldfish. The young ones are greyish, with bright, electric blue spots! I spied a large abalone as well as a calico bass too. In addition to snorkeling, we have been enjoying regular trips to our favorite beaches, sometimes at sunset.

Horseshoe Beach

In three weeks we leave the country. Our first destination is the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, where we will visit both Rarotonga and Aitutaki, two of the many islands. We’ll be there about two weeks before flying on to New Zealand. In New Zealand we have about three months. We have made plans for roughly three-quarters of that time, primarily because it will be the summer high season when accommodation and transportation can book out. We’ll visit both the North and South Islands using a combination of holiday houses, airbnbs, backpackers, motels, bed and breakfasts, car, camper, ferry, and airplane. Just this week, we booked our onward flight from New Zealand to Melbourne, Australia using miles. That is as far out as we have planned, although we don’t foresee coming back to the U.S. for at least a further 3 months after that. Tentatively, we’ll visit Australia, Bali and Lombok in Indonesia, and wherever else may strike our fancy.

It’s hard to believe it’s mid October already! We have certainly been having fun and have tried to soak up every minute of our sabbatical from work. Now, as our departure on the big overseas trip approaches, we have been taking care of the final details of what we will take with us, how we’ll carry it, how we’ll manage our technology, and getting excited for the adventures to come!

See you down the road…

A New England Late Summer Idyl

Posted on September 21, 2016 by soldstone

Patience is a virtue, or so they say. If this is the case, then you, dear readers, are all quite virtuous! We are now in San Diego, having crossed the country by plane and car with adventures and stops along the way. Unfortunately, I also encountered some technical difficulties which have delayed my posting to this blog. When your laptop no longer functions as a laptop but requires an outlet to plug into, and your campground has no cell signal, you just have to surrender to being truly unplugged! Nevertheless, I promise to catch you up on the comings and goings and share some of the beauty we’ve encountered on our journey from the Northeast to the Southwest of our country.

We spent at least another ten days in Massachusetts. The time was filled with more family visits and some weather dodging. One weekend we drove up to Cambridge to visit my brother-in-law and enjoyed a couple of days filled with excellent food, fine and abundant conversation, and a visit to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusets. Two small museums – The Peabody Museum and The Essex Institue were combined to create the Peabody Essex Museum. My maternal grandfather, a Boston historian, was an assistant director at The Peabody Museum beginning in 1936, so it has family significance. I had not been to the museum in many, many years and in the intervening time, it has been overhauled to wondrous effect. There is an incredible, light filled atrium designed by Moshe Safdie, which gives the feeling of being on a ship with sails overhead. Even now, they are preparing to add another new wing! The museum contains a huge collection of maritime art and history; American art; Asian, Oceanic, and African art; Asian export art; books and manuscripts; and historic buildings. It’s origins draw from The East India Marine Society, founded in 1799 and described thus by the museum:

“…an organization of Salem captains and supercargoes who had sailed beyond either the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. The society’s charter included a provision for the establishment of a “cabinet of natural and artificial curiosities,” which is what we today would call a museum. Society members brought to Salem a diverse collection of objects from the northwest coast of America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, India and elsewhere.“

What was most memorable from my childhood visits to the museum were the extraordinary number of shrunken heads! Now it has a broader scope and you can find galleries devoted to Chinese Export Art, Japanese Art, an Art and Nature Center, and special exhibitions. They have gotten rid of a lot of the shrunken heads. I suppose they were not terribly p-c! We wandered through a gallery of maritime art which had some fantastic model ships of varying shapes and sizes. We also visited a special exhibit of Childe Hassam, an American Impressionist. We didn’t make it to the Rodin exhibit. However, the main attraction of our visit was the Yin Yu Tang house. This is an antique Chinese house built around 1800 that stood for 200 years in a rural village in the region of Huizhou in southeastern China. It was dismantled piece by piece and reassembled at the museum. It is the only such house outside of China! This feat was accomplished through a cultural exchange agreement and a collaboration of Chinese and American experts. Now you can tour the house, learn about its history, and see it as it was last inhabited in the 1980’s by the Huang family, whose ancestral home it was. If you are interested in the Peabody Essex Museum, you can find more information at http://www.pem.org. It’s a pretty neat place!

Before leaving Boston to head back to my family’s summer home, we stopped on the waterfront to visit some old haunts from my years of living in “Beantown.” Here is the view of the harbor and the Long Wharf from the parking garage. We had sticker shock at the price of parking, but at least we got a view!

Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market were as busy as ever so we didn’t stay too long. We found the plaque dedicated to my grandfather, the same one from the Peabody Museum, at the foot of the statue of Sam Adams by Faneuil Hall.

We also walked through the North End, Boston’s old world Italian neighborhood, and passed by one of the places I used to live. It was the feast of St. Anthony, so there were parades with drum and bugle corps!

The building where I lived for a time

Michael spotted a boat with a name that epitomizes his dream for our sabbatical. We had to get a photo!

A lot has changed in that city but it still feels like home to a certain extent. I spent the better part of 10 years living there and then returned for a couple more later on, so it was fun to take a walk down memory lane!

After returning to Nonquitt, we had a quiet week with my mother punctuated by dinner with old family friends at the house, and an evening out at The Back Eddy in Westport, a lovely waterfront seafood restaurant. The sunset was incredible that evening.

The weather continued fine, so we had many walks on the beach. We also rode bicycles down to Padanaram Harbor to view the boats and see how the causeway and bridge repairs were coming along. Closure of the bridge across the harbor, for what will be a multi-year project, was the subject of much discussion as it forces everyone in the vacinity of Nonquitt to take the long way around.

Super clear water one day!

Padanaram Harbor

Over the busy Labor Day weekend we became rather more social, with cousins in residence next door and a communal beach barbeque. My nephew joined us along with my brother and his family, so the house was full. The weather forecast was less than encouraging with the remnants of what had been hurricane Hermine bearing down on us. The wind picked up, but the rain held off until Monday, which allowed the barbeque to go forward. We chose the prudent course and pulled my brother’s small sailboat off the beach. Here you can see the men performing their heroic duty with black skies in the background!

The storm brought choppy waters and high tides. Here are some shots of the newly enlarged inlet for the saltwater marsh which stretches behind our house and in back of the South Beach. Good thing they made it bigger as it seems to be at capacity already!

All in all, our time in Massachusetts was a pretty typical New England late summer idyl. We flew back to Denver after a rainy Labor Day and began the next stage of our adventure, which I will detail for you in my next post.

Until then, take care and I will see you down the road!

Old Friends and Family

Posted on August 26, 2016 by soldstone

It was quite a heave to leave our house and hand over the keys to the tenants, but we did it. The last few days were a whirlwind of mad packing, moving boxes to the garage, and decision making. I don’t make very good decisions late at night, but sometimes you have to suck it up and work with what you have. Our tenants are nice people, so our house is in good hands. At least we have that going for us, and that’s a lot!

Our farewell party with friends was terrific. We enjoyed seeing all “the usual suspects” from our gang and had a wonderful summer evening in our friends’ garden. Here I am with the hostess, my dear friend Machelle. You can also get a glimpse of some goofiness with my husband, Michael! A good time was had by all. Thank you Machelle for such a lovely send-off!

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The first leg of our trip started with a drive to Denver from Durango. This is a drive both of us have done many times, but it’s been a while since we went over that road. The views did not disappoint however, and we even saw a fresh dusting of snow on the very tops of some of the highest peaks. We arrived at another good friend’s house in time to enjoy some cocktails on the porch and breathe a sigh of relief. The decompression had begun! This process was helped along by some mighty fine Painkillers – a concoction of rum, pineapple and orange juice, with coconut milk and a dusting of fresh nutmeg. Delicious! And a reminder of other great times shared at the Soggy Dollar Bar in the British Virgin Islands, whence the drink cometh. Many thanks to our friend Art for hosting our first night!

The next day we had a full day in Denver to relax as we didn’t fly out until the following day. It was strange to shift gears so abruptly from having so much to do in a short time, to having no agenda! We spent some time at the REI flagship store where I used to work, and I really enjoyed seeing so many old friends and former colleagues. It was a blast to catch up after so many years. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 7 years since I left Denver and moved to Durango!

Late in the afternoon we made our way to yet another great friend’s house to spend the night. We were treated to a fabulous meal and a happy reunion. How lucky we are to have so many wonderful friends and what a great way to start this journey!

In the morning we flew from Denver, Colorado to Boston, Massachusetts on an uneventful flight and arrived to lovely weather. We spent the night at my brother’s house and enjoyed a leisurely evening catching up with my sister-in-law on their back deck. The next day we picked up a rental car and drove down to our family summer house on Buzzards Bay to join my mother, brother, niece and nephew. This is a house I spent many summers in growing up, but now that I live in Colorado, I haven’t been back very often. It is a lovely place in which to relax and unwind completely. There are beaches to walk on, swimming to enjoy, views to admire and all manner of relaxed or energetic pursuits to suit your pleasure.

We have spent this week basking in the fine weather and, as my husband would say, getting our slack on. Some highlights have included evening walks to the beach to enjoy the beautiful late light, watching the Wednesday evening sailboat races from afar, sailing my brother’s small sailboat off the beach, and a visit to the New Bedford Whaling Museum for a special event, which included a tour of the museum and wine and cheese on the deck with a magnificent view of the harbor. Here are a few photos that I hope capture the beauty of this place.