As noted in my last post, we had terrible wildlife viewing luck during our trip to Alaska, but we had an ace up our sleeve. Right before we left for the trip, a friend mentioned two national parks that almost guaranteed a bear sighting – Katmai National Park and/or Lake Clark National Park.
In my ignorance, I started looking at how we could drive to one of these parks and from where, only to discover there is no way to get to either of them without taking a boat or flying. As an aside, Alaska has more pilots per capita than anywhere in the U.S. (and some say the world) as the forbidding geography and dearth of roads – 80% of Alaskan communities are not connected by roads – make flying the only option to get to many places.
By that time, nearly every tour/flight to these parks was booked – one of the downfalls of planning travel to popular places very late in the game. After days of research, I managed to find two seats with a company that had decent reviews, but we had to take an afternoon slot even though that is riskier for weather. In fact, when the day finally arrived, we woke to a rainy, gray morning – not a good sign for a flight over the bay to either park – but the timing ending up working in our favor! Katmai was out for that day overall due to the weather, and the morning tours to Lake Clark were plagued by light rain.
But by 2 pm, when we took off from Homer, the skies were still gray, but clearing, and the rain was gone. A one-hour flight carried us across Kachemak Bay and onto the landmass that contains Lake Clark National Park. There were four of us and a pilot/guide in the tiny Cessna that swooped down and skidded to a stop on the beach.
In our thigh-high hip waders, we exited the plane and began a three-hour walk on the shores of Lake Clark National Park. We had finally arrived in an Alaskan locale where bears were not only plentiful but also completely focused on digging up clams and nearly oblivious to our presence.
Within our first half hour on the beach, a bear came scarily close to us, but as we’d been told, she barely glanced our way and lumbered along on her quest for food. Anytime we were even a little bit close to a bear (it all seems close to someone who does not regularly see bears!), we were asked to kneel or crouch down low and stay still.
The company we used did not allow guides to carry any guns (we approved!), but they did carry marine flares that are loud, bright, and foul-smelling and are only used in the event a bear comes much too close and seems aggressive. In their history, they’d only had to shoot off a flare one time, our guide said, and it successfully warded off the bear.
As another aside, while we did not seem to be bothering the bears in the least, and rarely came very close to them or even within their sphere of awareness, it still felt like we were encroaching on their turf to some extent. Perhaps they have just become habituated to the small planes they see and hear? But that isn’t normal or natural. Was it significantly worse than hiking in their habitats? I don’t know! It was a great outing, but I’ve been thinking about it since we went.
The rest of the bears we saw that day were farther away, but it was still great fun to finally see so much wildlife, especially the mama bears with their cubs frolicking beside or behind them.
While the bears were awe-inspiring, perhaps the cutest animal of the day was a little red fox. We’d been in the park many hours by this point, and J decided to sneak off behind a tree as a “rest stop.” The rest of us were staring into a field hoping to spot a few more bears when this adorable little fox danced up, checked us out, and then
headed directly behind us toward J and his tree! We all started to giggle, which J later said he thought was us being rude, but then he almost jumped (the rest of the way) out of his pants when the little guy stopped and looked up at him.
He proceeded to amuse us for several more minutes and then scampered away, a very sweet farewell to Lake Clark National Park and our afternoon brush with Alaskan wildlife.
Alaska and Hawaii were the 49th and 50th states to be admitted to the Union, and though we switched the order of the two, we were thrilled to finally be able to say we’d visited all 50 U.S. states. We were even more excited to be back in a geography and topography that makes us both very happy. After moving to the east coast almost two years ago, we sorely missed the American West, and Alaska immediately felt reminiscent of some of our favorite spots in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and other mountain states.
Anchorage
After almost 12 hours of travel, we pulled out our secret jetlag antidote and immediately changed into hiking clothes and hit a trail just outside of Anchorage in the late afternoon. We had choices – flat, up-and-down, or super steep – and we chose the latter for various reasons, one of which is that we are ridiculous. Not only was it over 1300 ft (almost 400 m) straight up, but the top still had patches of snow and ice, and the winds were ferocious. Add in some nice loose scree and rock jumbles, and it might have been a little ambitious in the short time we had before we had to be back for dinner and a trolley tour that evening.
We are happy we did it, though, as we were only staying in Anchorage one night and we saved the nice coastal path for the morning before we drove out of town. We had a great dinner in a place recommended by my brother, raised another glass with some locals in a bar before our trolley time, and then nearly nodded off on the city tour even though we always refuse to calculate what time it is back home. (It was well after midnight, I can say now!) We did stay alert enough to watch for moose (very frequently sighted on the tour, supposedly) but saw exactly zero of them. Sadly, this wildlife jinx would extend throughout our time in Alaska.
The Coastal Trail runs for 12 miles one way, but we only covered about 5 miles round-trip the next morning before starting our drive north to Talkeetna and the area near Denali National Park.
It was a beautiful, cool morning, and the path was peaceful and gentle. Multiple signs warned us about what we should do if a moose appeared. One did not.
Talkeetna and Denali
On the way to Talkeetna, we took a detour to cross Hatcher Pass. On a bouncy, packed dirt road for many miles of this, we questioned our choice for a while but ultimately marveled at the views from the pass and seeing the piled-up snow still along the road in late June.
We arrived in cute Talkeetna in time for a sunny outdoor lunch of top-notch pizza and beer, which we attempted to walk off with an endless slog around a lake – no lake or any other views whatsoever, plus hordes of mosquitos – not our best choice of a hike.
A moose, a moose!
Our luck improved that evening with enough cloud movement to allow us to see the top of Denali. I guess very few people actually get to see the whole mountain, and J had given up himself and was ensconced in emails in the hotel room. I kept checking obsessively until suddenly the top emerged from the day-long cloud cover (I’ve never gotten over not getting to see Fitz Roy after a brutal 10-hour hike, so I was not going to let this one get away without a fight!)
After much research on how to best see Denali National Park, we chose to drive our own car 2.5 hours to the park visitor center and catch a park bus from there to go as deep into the park as one can go at this time. Cars can only go partway, and we’d heard that the bus drivers were good at spotting animals and explaining where to get off to hike.
“Frequenting” … perhaps we have a different definition?
It turned out to be a very long and unexciting day – about 5 hours on the bus, with no Denali (mountain) sightings at all, a lone baby elk so far away it looked like a mere dot on a patch of snow, and misting rain that discouraged us from hopping off for a hike.
Our driver seemed entertaining at first but rapidly became tiresome, talking almost solely about himself. We were very happy to get off the bus in the late afternoon and drive back to Talkeetna for a cozy dinner at the bar in a brewpub and a final night at the classic park lodge we had booked, a favorite of the trip.
To Homer via the Seward Highway
The next day was a mishmash of stops on our way to Homer and an interim stay in Alyeska. We made a quick stop in Wasilla to see the Iditarod Museum (moderately interesting, but we did love the film about the dogs) and then drove on to Palmer to climb the West Bodenburg Butte Trail to the top of the butte to get a panoramic view of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. The Mat-Su valley is a highly fertile area where farmers apparently grow enormous vegetables. We were too early in the summer to see the really big ones, but the hike was a good climb up 500+ steps.
From here we drove for many miles along the Turnagain Arm, one of two branches of the Cook Inlet. The towering Chugach State Park mountains were a constant on the left side of the Seward Highway and the miles-wide flats extended to the far shores of the inlet on the right. The Turnagain Arm has wildly fluctuating climate and tide ranges, with the second highest tides in North America and tops in the U.S. at 40 ft (12 m). (While we knew of neither place before, we saw the #1 place for highest tides three months later at the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, Canada.)
As the weather grew gray and drizzly, we pushed on to our cozy ski hotel in Alyeska and a great dinner at a tiny restaurant in town, again recommended by my brother. Lucky J got up very early the next day and got the only solid view of a moose we would see on the trip. I had to settle for his photo. People kept telling us over and over again that the NEXT highway was chockful of moose, the road into THAT park would for sure be crowded with moose. This would come to be our total allotment of moose, a single fellow on the grounds of our hotel.
Speaking of animal warnings, we took our next potentially bear-laden hike later that morning on the Winner Creek Trail. Pretty much totally alone for the five miles out and back, we found ourselves peering closely through the lush rainforest foliage and keeping our ears perked up for any rustling. You know it – not a creature in sight – but we had a delightful time on this thick forest trail with footbridges over deep gorges. We learned at the entry sign that this was part of the northernmost coastal rainforest in the world, so at least we had that going for us – who needs bears?!
Homer
My parents had raved about Homer for years, saying it was their favorite spot in Alaska, and my brother had put us onto a small enclave of houses/cabins overlooking Kachemak Bay. When we arrived, we were more than pleased; the small house was comfortable and kitted out with everything we could possibly need for a few days, including a hot tub on the deck that overlooked the bay and mountains beyond.
At the end of a couple of days, though, I suffered from the disappointment that comes with expecting too much. Homer had its charms – a fantastic local breakfast spot that we’d go to everyday if we could, a relaxing little brewery with good beer and a sunny courtyard, and several solid halibut dinners (Homer is the Halibut Capital of the World).
We took a sweet loop hike in a field of early summer daisies and lupine, and we ambled along Bishop’s Beach and the short Beluga Slough Trail.
We found a (very) few fun shops along the Homer Spit, a long thin strip of land poking into Kachemak Bay. Luckily, we had planned a half day outing from here in an effort to see another national park and maybe, maybe see some animals. More on that in a separate post!
Seward
We left Homer mid-afternoon and retraced our drive up and over the Kenai Peninsula and then back down to Seward. The small town was gearing up for the 4th of July as well as a mountain race, so we just walked around a street fair and grabbed a casual dinner at (once again) a brewery.
We rose early the next day to catch an 8 am boat tour of the fjords that snake in and out of the Kenai Peninsula.
It was unfortunately another gray, misty day once we got out of the harbor so the scenery was a bit more understated than we had hoped, but it was still very cool to sail right up to the face of a huge glacier and catch a glimpse of a few sea animals.
Our lasting memory of the fjords tour, however, will be the very rough seas that left a great majority of the passengers seasick and all that entails. For whatever reason, I was not only spared but was quite hungry, so I ate an enormous bean burrito that was served to us at lunchtime (who thought that was a great idea on these seas?) even as everyone else, including J, looked disgusted with me and wrapped theirs up for later consumption! I spent as much time as I could in the wind and spray outside so I could really see the glaciers and other landforms (and get away from all the sick people).
We wrapped up our Alaskan activities the next day with the best hike of all, a strenuous round-trip on the Harding Icefield Trail leaving from the valley floor of Kenai Fjords National Park. This trail winds steeply up over 1000’ per mile through cotton and alder forests, meadows of wildflowers, and finally above treeline. Nearly 40 glaciers flow from the Harding Icefield, and our hike took us up past Exit Glacier with different and more amazing views as we climbed.
As we started, we were warned:
“This is bear country! The vegetation along the trail is dense and passes though thickets of salmonberrries, a favorite food of black bears. Black bears are spotted almost every day from the Harding Icefield Trail.”
But, for once, I was glad to be thwarted in our bear viewing as we were already on tricky terrain and would not have enjoyed coming face to face with a big, scary creature as we rounded a tight corner here.
(Three months later, two hikers were attacked and fought off a bear only a quarter mile up the busier trial at the base; I can’t even imagine dealing with this as high as we went.)
We had not brought our micro-spikes to Alaska (it was summer, right?), and this final day of hiking showed us our error as we slipped and slid on slanted fields of snow. We made it past the Top of the Cliffs segment but after that our lack of poles and spikes forced us to turn around.
Even from there, I, along with many other trekkers that day, sat down and slid on my butt to keep from taking a tumble and sailing right off the edge of the mountain. It was an adventuresome way to end an adventure-filled trip to our 50th state!
Our Japan trip is slipping more and more into the distant past without my documenting two other stops, one before and one after our rewarding Kumano Kodo hike. We left Tokyo aboard the sleek Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. I love it when our transportation is part of the fun, and this was a good one. Comfy seats, urban and then rural views, and Mount Fuji out there on the right as we sped along.
We spent our first afternoon and evening in Kyoto just strolling and getting the lay of the land, wandering through Gion, the Nishiki Market, and Pantocho Alley.
We tried to get into a popular little gyoza restaurant, but while standing in line, we spied a note about their sister location that had vegetarian-only dumplings. Win-win for us as the line was much shorter and we are not big meat eaters anyway; we ordered some beers and gyoza and had a perfect, casual little feast before returning to our ramble around the city.
We were up early the next morning for a ride out to Arashiyama Bamboo Forest. We congratulated ourselves on this good move as the crowds were building rapidly by the time we ascended through the forest, roamed around a bit on the hills, and then came back down into the touristy little town.
We skedaddled pretty quickly and almost succeeded in seeing Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) without massive crowds as well. In non-typical fashion for me, we also managed to see this sparkly gem of a temple in outstanding weather conditions!
Moving from gold to silver (temples), we pushed on to Ginkaku-ji, but J was already reaching his temple limit for the day, and we made short work of this visit.
Luckily, we were not far from a famous udon restaurant and after an hour in line outside, we got in and had a fantastic lunch. We are very much not the kind of people who wait in line to eat, but we made an exception based on the tiny eatery’s reputation, and I was so happy and proud (ha!) to get kudos from our millennial children for our efforts.
We walked off the fat noodles, broth, and toppings on the Philosopher’s Walk to Nanzen-ji and then added one last mile to get back to our hotel.
After resting for a matter of minutes, we realized that if we were going to buy knives at a famous shop founded in 1560 (originally as sword makers), we would have to leave immediately to get to Nishiki Market before the knife shop closed for the next two days, at which point we would be gone.
We had to push through dense crowds to complete our mission, but we did succeed in the nick of time. I imagine we were one of the few parents whose Christmas gift to their children that year were big, fat, very sharp santoku knives! They were beautifully boxed and wrapped and even though it meant we had to check our bags on the return flights, it was worth it to have these wonderful knives in all of our kitchens.
For the second day in a row, we got out nice and early the next morning to get to Fushimi Inari Taisha, the social media-worthy series of torii (gates) that proceed up, up, up into the woods.
As advertised, the crowds thinned considerably the higher we went, and once again, we were happy with our choice to accelerate our day to avoid the tourist throngs.
Alas, by the time we’d walked almost an hour back into the main city and Kiyomizu-dera, it seemed like all of the people we’d missed the day before and this morning had converged upon this large Buddhist temple, one of the signature World Heritage sites in Kyoto.
Still, we both thought it was worth jostling with slow walkers, baby strollers, and various other impediments to free movement; the temple architecture was especially rustic and appealing, and we were able to once again clear the masses the further into the site we ventured.
We finished off the visit with lunch, a stroll through the charming cobblestone streets of Sannenzaka just below the temple, and an unplanned but gorgeous walk into Maruyama Park, a most satisfying ending to the afternoon and, other than one last city walk and okonomiyaki dinner, farewell to the city of Kyoto overall.
After our Kumano Kodo hike, which commenced the next day on the Kii Peninsula, we returned by train to Osaka about six days later to finish off our time in Japan. I’d made no major plans, just a hotel reservation, so we improvised as we went, coming up with some fun walks and a small side trip to Nara one day.
Although it was wildly crowded and kitschy, we enjoyed dinner and a walk in Dotonbori, Osaka’s well-known entertainment district, known for its bright neon signs, nightlife, and extravagant street food.
We had to eat one last giant okonomiyaki (cabbage, egg, and flour pancake – yum), and we enjoyed the Christmas lights and high street energy on our hour-long walks each way from the hotel.
On our last full day in Japan, we decided to take a train to Nara, best known for the impressive Buddhist temple, Todai-ji, as well as herds of semi-wild deer. Japan’s first permanent capital (710-794 AD) is still home to scads of heritage statues, other art, and buildings, and it’s an easy place to get around on foot.
As our very last temple of the trip, Todai-ji simultaneously blew me away and made J exhale a huge sigh of relief. The grounds themselves were mesmerizing to me, with water reflection views from many angles, allées of cherry and maple trees, and of course the pretty deer at nearly every turn.
In what is becoming a common refrain in this post, we appreciated the deer more the farther we got into the park. (Just keep walking, and everything will get better! I think I follow this philosophy in many parts of my life, but I digress …!). In the early stages, the deer were clearly habituated to human feeding, and they were aggressive and dirty. As always, I questioned the ethics of feeding/not feeding these formerly wild animals. In spite of the fact that these graceful creatures have decimated some of my own landscaping over the years, and are overfed here, I can’t help but adore them for their lithe elegance, and so I let myself enjoy walking among them in such a picturesque setting.
That evening, we enjoyed this lively and modern city’s night lights one last time as we walked to find some good beer.
We scored a window seat at a small craft beer establishment in a high-rise building and reviewed our fantastic two weeks in this country of manners, cleanliness, and wide-ranging beauty.
Before we started our Kumano Kodo hike, we visited two popular Japanese cities, Tokyo and Kyoto, and added a stop in Osaka after that adventure. We began our trip overall in Tokyo and hit the ground running, almost literally. Overwhelmed at first by the big and busy train stations, we decided to cover huge swaths of this huge city on foot. We were out the door within 30 minutes of checking in and walked around the Akasaka area for several hours that evening, grabbing a casual dinner and then crashing after our 16-hour + travel day.
On our next, first full day, we put in well over 30,000 steps, rambling through the Chiyoda district of government buildings, then Azabudai Hills, Shibuya City, Yoyogi Park, Harajuku, Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, and Shinjuku City.
There was a brief stop for an açaí bowl in Harajuku, but other than that, we just kept moving.
The city was surprisingly quiet! We expected throngs of people (we got most of them at the famous Shibuya Scramble crossing) and the busy sounds of traffic and city life, but the streets were mostly uncrowded and the silence in many parts of the city was astonishing. (We found out the next day – when we finally went into Tokyo Station – that it was a three-day holiday weekend.)
We had booked our only “nice” dinner of the entire trip at Isana Sushi Bar, a tiny, eight-seat omakase restaurant with a kind and patient sushi chef who served us 12 courses of fish, seafood, and vegetables and explained everything in very good English.
We had seen the movie “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” and thought it looked fun but slightly daunting to be served at one of these teeny traditional places, so when I found Isana and its good reviews for being unintimidating, we booked it very early in our planning. We joined two Australian women on a university graduation trip, a couple from Madrid on their honeymoon, a businessman from New York City, and a Japanese man who now lives in Spain.
We saved “old Tokyo” for another day and spiced that up with some trendy areas that our son recommended, places that would have never hit our radar otherwise. Again, we chose to make our way on foot, starting with a rainy walk to the Imperial Gardens.
After taking some misty photos while balancing an umbrella overhead, we soldiered on to Tokyo Station to see its unique architecture, modeled after Amsterdam’s Central Station, and to preview our routing to Kyoto a few days later.
(I’m glad and not glad we checked. The station was an utter madhouse and we felt panicky about our ability to navigate it when we really needed to. Later, we learned that many lines had shut down that day due to a typhoon, and when we went back on our real travel day, we were fine.)
Stubborn walkers that we are (and freaked out by the train station chaos), we decided to hoof it to Senso-ji, the city’s oldest temple, in the Asakusa neighborhood, with stops along the way in Akibahara and Ueno. We knew nothing about Akibahara, known as “Electric Town,” a shopping area for things we had little interest in (video games, manga, anime, and electronics) but which our youngest son had told us was very fun to walk around.
He was right! We gawked at the window displays, signage, and general busyness of the area and then moved on to Ueno and its big city park which, after the visual stimulation of Akibahara, we found a bit boring. On we trudged in the rain, eventually giving in to the damp cold and our hunger, stopping to eat a nice warm meal on a quiet neighborhood street.
Senso-ji was our final stop for the afternoon. Built in 645 AD and the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo, Senso-ji is a brilliantly colored, five-story pagoda with swooping eaves. The walk toward the temple itself is a huge shopping thoroughfare, jam-packed with both local and foreign visitors.
No longer in the market for travel tchotchkes, we pushed through and just walked slowly and aimlessly through the temple grounds, enjoying the smell of incense (me – it always reminds me of the Himalayas) and the thought that we were done sightseeing for the day (J)!
In addition to all the city rambling we did in Tokyo, we also bought tickets well in advance for teamLab Borderless, an exhibit by an art collective with several shows in the city. Billed as a “museum without a map” the artworks transcend rooms, intermingling with each other and viewers alike, creating novel experiences for all involved.
We’d seen similar shows in U.S. museums, but this was a whopper, and we spent several hours exploring the rooms and images throughout. It was a perfect, sparkly send-off from bright-lights Tokyo.
Up next: the bullet train to Kyoto and a whole different vibe!
It had been way too long. We last did a multi-day hike in the summer of 2023, but after that, all hell broke loose with family happenings and some personal life beatdowns. Those are not worth sharing, and most took a welcome uptick by the fall of this year. So the minute we saw a chance, I booked a trip to Japan! J and I had been thinking about Japan for quite a while, but a long, expensive journey like that is easy to push down the list, and that’s what we did for many years. But sometimes things just come together to give a final nudge, and suddenly we were mere months away from this big trip.
Once again, I found that only planning a short time ahead was very freeing and exhilarating – no fussing over every detail, no time for buyers’ remorse, no far-in-the-future schedule worries, and every motivation to throw myself into the research and make decisions fast.
I created an itinerary shockingly quickly, assembling airline miles, hotel points, and old notes in order to cobble together three big city visits with a 6-day hike across the Kii Peninsula. It all worked out perfectly, and the hike was definitely the highlight of the trip.
J and I have done all sorts of hiking – solo trips with all planning and research done by me, group outings where all we did was show up and hike with a daypack, treks with tent-and-sleeping-bag stays, others with cushier lodges, and most everything in between. This time we decided to try a different hybrid: self-guided walking every day and carrying days’ worth of our own gear, but with an outfitter booking our lodging each night and providing some scheduling help with the optimal daily mileages. By the end, we were thrilled we had not gone with a group (it was the most peaceful hike we’d ever taken), and we also realized we could have done the other part ourselves quite easily (maybe better) despite being warned that traveling without help in rural Japan was difficult.
Getting to the start of the hike might have been the hardest task we faced! After three days in Tokyo and three in Kyoto, we ditched our main luggage, traveled early in the morning to Kyoto Station with our backpacks and poles, boarded a JR Express train to Shin-Osaka Station, located the Kuroshio train to Kii-Tanabe, and finally dashed for a bus to Takijiri.
After all that, we still had one of the steepest days of the entire hike ahead of us, but luckily it was only a couple of hours until we reached our tiny ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, where we were the only guests. We settled into our tatami-matted room, showered, changed into yukata (basically loose-fitting cotton kimonos), and joined our husband-and-wife hosts for a home-cooked dinner. All of the anxiety I’d felt about getting to the hike melted away, and we knew the following days would be much more stress-free, if not a little bit more physically daunting.
Throughout the days, we passed through occasional villages on the Nakahechi Route – Takahara, Chikatsuyu, Nonaka, Hongu, Yunomine Onsen, Kawayu Onsen, and Nachi, among them – but many of our days featured nothing but deep and silent woods for hours on end. It was the definition of “zen” in the generic sense of the word, a sustained period of time for thought, absorption, and meditation.
J and I have hiked together for long enough that we fall into familiar patterns: he sets the uphill pace (think death march) and I lead the downs (skipping like a kid), and we walk together on most flats or mild undulations. Oftentimes we fall into our own reveries, focusing on nature and esoteric musings (me) and life’s problems and solutions (him).
The path itself, subtly but well-marked, alternates from thousand-year-old stone paved paths and steps to root-filled passages, both cutting through old growth trees. In more than a few places, the trail drops off precipitously into deep ravines on the left or right, and we were grateful for both our sure feet and the lack of rain on the mossy rocks and roots. We crossed several passes; although the highest ones were only a little over 3000 feet (1000 m), we gained and lost many more thousands of feet of elevation each day as the trail climbed and dipped all day long.
Some days were short (8-9 miles) and some longer, including a killer 17-mile day with serious ups and downs. On the days with more mileage and/or heavy elevation gains, we had to be cognizant of daylight hours and hustle a bit, but we never felt unsafe despite long stretches of solitude, and we would have probably been just fine even as dusk arrived. Despite being one of the two main walking pilgrimages in the world (the other is the Camino de Santiago in Spain), the Kumano Kodo trail was surprisingly quiet and unpopulated, even in high season. There were a few days when we saw no more than 10-15 people the entire time.
We passed many small Shinto shrines (oji), as well as three of the five major (“grand”) shrines in the area. There was a smattering of viewpoints along the trail, but really, the hike is almost all covered and close, with mile after mile under canopy. I’ve been known to fuss after too many hours in the “green tunnel” of the Appalachians, but this heavy woods smelled so fresh and piney, and the ancient stones and moss added so much moodiness, that I didn’t miss the sky as much as usual.
Our lodging ranged from family-owned ryokans and minshukus, where we had the place to ourselves or stayed with a family host, to larger local onsen (hot springs) hotels in “spa towns.” Although we did give the onsens a try, and they were very relaxing after a rigorous day of hiking, we were not big fans of either the accommodations or the towns; both were a little worse for wear, and we had become spoiled by our tiny, traditional digs earlier in the trek. Still, those bigger places DID pack us some pretty amazing lunches to stuff into our packs! This has to be the best trail lunch I’ve ever had.
True to form, we did not take the rest day built into the mileage schedule we were given, adding an extra day of hiking so that we could complete the entire Nakahechi route across the Kii Peninsula, a piece of southern Japan that lies between the East China Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east.
We ended at one of the most picturesque shrines of all, Nachi Taisha, and its backdrop, Nachi-taki waterfall, the nation’s highest.
(Alas, the shrine itself was wrapped up amid a massive restoration, so the left photo below was taken of a travel agency poster!)
After a long hike, it’s typical to feel a sense of satisfaction, and we did, but in many ways, I just wanted to keep on walking. The Kumano Kodo was easily one of the most peaceful, calming treks I’ve ever done, and I’d love to find a similar experience somewhere else in the world. Meanwhile, it was absolutely pouring rain at the end of the trail (and had been for hours, so we were soaked to the bone), and we had to figure out logistics for that night and then get back to Osaka, putting a rather abrupt end to all that dreaminess!
I recently saw another blogger’s 10-year anniversary news and realized I must be at that point myself. Indeed, I had been notified a few weeks ago, but like everything related to my blog in recent months/years, it went unnoticed and ignored.
What has kept me away? The top reason is certainly a refocusing on what is happening in the real world – the day-to-day life events that have piled up heavily in ways both good and bad. There is also the feeling that writing all about me, me, ME is self-indulgent at best and mind-numbing to others at worst.
Since my last post, we have relocated from Houston, Texas, to Durham, North Carolina. It was a difficult move, occurring days before Christmas and ending with lost and broken items. The moving company was outrageously bad, and it took several months to sort everything out. Too many things in the new house seemed to have problems, and the weather for the subsequent three months was awful – rainy, dreary, and apparently uncharacteristically cold – an unpleasant development after living in a place where the climate suited me perfectly.
The stress of the move, coupled with constant demands to leave our new “home” to tend to other family matters, created a sense of disconnection from my own life and settled deep into my body. For the first time in my life, I struggled to sleep, I fell woefully out of shape, and my physical being kept trying to let me know it was not happy about things. I didn’t have time to care or to try to fix it for many months.
As I write now, I think I have turned a corner. I’ve thought this for days or even a week or so before, only to have things smack me in the face again, so I am a little leery of celebrating quite yet. But the weather has finally turned, our extended family is in a good place (new babies help a lot!), and I have decided to return to working out hard, beginning to train for what is likely to be my steepest physical challenge ever later this year. I’m also convinced the spotty eating I’ve done (both under- and over-indulging in a vicious pendulum swing) has contributed to my troubles, so I’ve kept myself on a steadier course there as well. Best of all, I’ve started planning trips that sound a little like vacations!
In keeping with the nature of the blog, I will veer away from personal agita and document one of those happier times, a very quick little journey we took back in September before all hell broke loose.
The trip involved the wedding of my college roommate’s daughter in the Brittany region of northwest France, and because we would have little control over what we did there, and just a short day and half in Paris at the end, we made no major plans. “No major plans” has become my favorite way to travel these days; there’s less pressure to see everything, more time to roam, and no expectations to be dashed.
We enjoyed every improvised hour we spent in Paris, strolling all over the city, starting in the Latin Quarter where we stayed, stopping in the Marais for falafel, eating a classic brasserie dinner on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, wandering the Tuileries, licking ice cream cones on the Île Saint-Louis, checking out the progress of the Notre-Dame repairs, and ambling through the Luxembourg Gardens with what seemed like half the capital’s population on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon.
We paid for nothing but our hotel and simple food, stood in no lines, and took very few photos. We also crammed in a half-day trip to Fontainebleau to see an old blogging friend (so happy to meet Estelea!) for a hike and a drink, a delightful addition to our time in the Paris area.
But it was our three days in Brittany that made this little sojourn a special one in many ways. For one, this region had been one of the first places we ever took our three young children overseas, and our memories were very fond. We had stayed at what was then, and might even remain, one of the nicest hotels I’d ever been in.
I looked it up and found the miraculous news that it had been fully renovated during Covid and was less than half the price we had paid 24 years ago. (What? How?) A good sign for sure; we booked immediately for our first night in Dinard, and it lived up to our very rosy memories.
Free for part of the next day, we took a short ferry ride across the Rance estuary in drizzly morning rain to Saint-Malo, the medieval walled city famous for its role in World War II.
Expecting my usual bad luck with the weather, we set off with rain jackets, hats, and umbrellas, only to see the sprinkles slow and the clouds part as soon as we docked fifteen minutes later.
We spent the sunny morning walking a full circuit on top of the city walls, descending into the warren of quiet, mostly empty streets for more rambling, and eating a lunch of moules frites and eggy, cheesy galettes at a heavenly outdoor café.
By afternoon, we were driving an hour west to Pléneuf-Val-André, the wedding destination, and checked into our less fancy seaside hotel for two more nights. We are known to pack in as much outdoor exercise as possible before weddings (a weird habit, I know), so we left almost immediately for a short, brisk walk to Ilôt du Verdelet to get our bearings before the first evening’s event.
The wedding was as lovely as you might imagine in this ruggedly charming place, with a castle as the backdrop and many pleasurable hours of eating and drinking on a crisp late summer evening.
But before that elegant event, we threw on our trail shoes and snuck away for a very long hike along the coast, a route that reminded us of the Big Sur area in California, with incredible ocean views at every turn.
We passed old stone buildings, a WWII bunker, black sand beaches, and quiet coves. We walked about ten miles round trip, up and down the shoreline path that is part of GR34, Brittany’s long-distance hiking route, filling our heads and lungs with all the fresh air we’d been missing all summer in south Texas.
It was a short little trip, but it was filled with activities that we love that required no special planning or effort. Good food, good movement, good friends – worth the journey to be sure.
Apologies to those whose blogs I have ignored or semi-ignored for a while as I shifted my priorities even more off-line. I can’t say I will reappear as regularly as I used to, but I will try!
I’ve had a lot of jobs, both paid and volunteer, full-time and part-time, enjoyable and dreaded. In rough chronological order, I’ve been a cashier, lifeguard, ESL instructor, international banking analyst, oil and gas corporate lender, project finance banker, financial writer, college English professor, Spanish tutor, memoir editor, community board chairperson, foodbank volunteer, and urban farm office helper. But I might have just finished the sweetest little job of my career: information desk lady at my local airport!
I worked at the smaller of two airports in the fourth largest city in the U.S. It’s small but mighty, and it is the first and, to date, only 5-star airport in North America (according to air transport rating agency Skytrax). If I may brag about “my” airport, I will say that despite my own anecdotal evidence and probably yours, most flights really do leave on time or very close to it. The airport is constantly being cleaned, and the janitorial staff really seems to care about how things look. The TSA men and women are serious but generally kind (do not roll those eyes), open to helping find lost items and announcing every little thing that has been left behind. We have artists-in-residence, live musicians, and an art collection, all of which I’m convinced add to civilized behavior and attitudes. I’m proud of the clean facilities, amenities, and service-oriented employees that helped us earn and keep this status.
Most photos here are of the traffic signal control boxes in the neighborhood around the airport.
I only work a day or two a week, and they’re not even full days. I sit in a huge, stainless steel “command center” right after the security checkpoint, and nearly everyone traveling that day needs to pass my desk. I am so eager for interaction that I rarely look down at my computer screen or notepad, instead constantly turning my head left and right and smiling at everyone who passes me, letting people know I am friendly and open to questions. As a result, I serve anywhere from two to three times as many airport customers as my fellow workers do on a given day.
Even when I’ve been very busy in my outside life, I have looked forward to my days at the airport, settling into my high swivel stool, knowing that the coming hours will keep me from my texts, emails, phone calls, and other annoying problems. It’s hard to worry about things at home when I am jumping up every minute or two to direct someone to the right gate, keeping people from pushing wheelchairs onto a moving sidewalk, or calling the operations center to clean up dog poop (yes, people leave that behind in airports, too, not just your yard or city sidewalks).
What are the most popular questions I get? Some days, I have dozens of people asking me where the Chick-fil-A is; other times, no one at all asks me this, and instead I’ll have multiple queries about our lounges. (We have none, I am always sorry to say.) I’m frequently asked where passengers can go to smoke between flights, and I spend plenty of time explaining all the food and beverage options to people. I help travelers find Ubers, pet relief stations, ATMs, rental cars, diapers, and iPhone chargers. I know where everything is here, right down to the exact locations where passengers can find Starbucks, the USO, an interfaith chapel, the shoeshine stand, the coldest water fountain, the shortcut to Eco-Park, and the quietest place to take a conference call.
My small job has miraculously shown me the very best in people. I would have guessed that air travelers would be stressed out and, therefore, rushed and cranky. On the contrary! I would estimate that over 90% of the people I have seen are relaxed, friendly, and largely unhurried (clearly they do not use my last-minute strategy for arriving at airports). There is very little rage, an emotion we see so often in public and online. In a world that seems less and less polite every day, the denizens of our airport have renewed my belief that people are mostly good. We read such awful news every day, and we see social media accounts that celebrate terrible behavior and attitudes, so one of the very best perks of my job has been seeing just the opposite. I come home feeling good about people; how many jobs can do that these days?!
People who miss flights are frustrated but stoic, asking only for help in finding another option. It is surprising how many adults are flying for their very first time, and I love making them feel more comfortable and confident. Dozens of people turn in found cell phones, glasses, bulging wallets, licenses, clothing, toys, and even a complete engagement ring and wedding band set, and they truly care about getting these items back to their owners. I’ve been warned that stopping parents from taking strollers onto the moving sidewalk will get me vitriolic responses, but when I smile and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ I discover most people are perfectly happy to wheel their baby off to the side and even thank me for keeping them safe.
If you’re a natural people-watcher like I am, this is an amazing job. I study and admire all the snappy travelers – their clothing, bags, shoes, and even hairdos. I marvel/wince at some others; bare midriffs are everywhere in public now, in case you haven’t noticed, and pajamas appear at the airport with startling regularity just as they do in roadside hotels these days. (Luckily, these PJ’ed people are wearing shoes, unlike the hotel breakfast crowd.) I enjoy the juxtaposition of professionals in business suits and high heels with the athleisure crowd, the scantily clad, and even people in costume (like those headed to Mardi Gras in massive dresses and bonnets). An unscientific survey would have the Astros and LSU tied for first place among the sports jersey wearers, joggers as the traveling pants of choice, and upright spinner bags as the most popular luggage.
As much as I dislike stereotyping, I need to make a short women-vs-men comment here. I sit close to a very large sign that directs people to Baggage Claim, Gates 1-5, etc. Most women read this sign. Many of their male partners or colleagues do not, and when the woman begins to veer off, or they both slow down to ascertain their direction, the male invariably wants to keep following the crowd, even when it is clearly in the wrong direction and his female companion is trying to tell him this. I watch with amusement and in anticipation of my next interaction. I won’t get into the whole “men don’t ask for directions” cliché, but let’s just say that when they eventually come back and ask me where to go, the women usually nod in an “I told you” way.
In a similar vein, I have noted in my anthropological survey of the airport species that young parents have a very distinct division of labor. The mother generally carries one child, holds the hand of another, loops the diaper bag and a carry-on over that same arm, and pushes the stroller that the second child has refused to get into. Occasionally, the dad has a car seat to carry, but usually his only baggage is a cell phone, into which he is talking while mom schleps everyone and everything else toward the gate. (To my son who is reading, you are exceptional in this way as well! 🙂 )
People glaze over a bit at airports. There is a brain fog that must be triggered by security or a plane change. Some of these zombies walk straight onto the oncoming moving sidewalks, the DO NOT ENTER signs apparently too high for their locked-in gazes to see. They leave their passports, phones, and keys in the security bins, they drop their jackets and blankets while walking and don’t even notice, and they are incredibly oblivious to gate change announcements that are crystal clear and abundantly loud for most ears. An enormous number of people mistake their boarding position or seat number for the gate assignment, and I have had more than one traveler who booked connecting flights without realizing that they were going into and out of totally different airports (that are 30 miles apart and on opposite sides of the city).
But back to the good stuff, which is the main reason for my post. I see our travelers as being on an adventure, even if it’s just a work trip, and they are mostly on their very best behavior. I see very little sniping between spouses and partners, parents and kids. People are nice to me and nice to each other. I have seen how powerful a smile can be, whether it ramps down a Type-A executive facing a delay or comforts a young woman rushing to catch a plane to her little brother’s funeral. Our airport is a microcosm, and it’s a benevolent, efficient, lovable one, and I’ll very much miss both working and traveling in and out of here when we leave the city in a month for our new home in another state. Of course, they have an airport, too, so maybe I’ll take my resumé there and move up to a bigger desk!
After the thick soup of Southeast Asia’s skies in March/April and an interminable string of days over 100 F (39 C) in Houston this summer, the prime attraction of our hiking trip to northern Italy might well have been the weather. Crisp, cool mountain air and a vigorous weeklong hike in the Dolomites were the perfect balm for our heads and bodies.
For the first time since Covid, J and I were joining a small-group hike with an existing team of trekkers, only two of whom we knew. One was our daughter’s father-in-law who, along with his wife, has become a true friend (what a bonus for us!). We flew into Venice and immediately transferred to a small town, Selva di Cadore, several hours north and close to the Austrian border. From here, we would spend the next three days exploring this section of the Dolomites before moving on to several others.
From the minute we entered the mountains about midway through the drive, it was clear that the landscapes would be different from anything we had hiked in before, and the views on this trek would soon surpass even the sublimely cool air in our affections. Technically part of the Alps, the Dolomites have all the visual appeal of their mountain relatives in France, Switzerland, western Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. But here, striking vertical cliffs, pointy pinnacles, and craggy towers rose dramatically from the land.
As the dolomitic rock was pushed up and shaped by running water and ice over five glaciation periods, the landscape took on other distinct characteristics, including heaps of rocky debris at the feet of many of the sheer cliffs. At times, the space between peaks was as soft and green as a typical Alpine meadow,
at others, the base of the mountains was more of a sere moonscape,
and in between those extremes were hybrid fields of clumpy grasses strewn with rocks and boulders of many sizes.
The night before we began hiking in earnest, our guides informed us that the weather for the first few days would be quite bad – not just rain, but thunderstorms and lightning that would create dangers we’d have to avoid, perhaps even to the point of abandoning our plans. We got lucky the first morning, staying dry as we hiked at lower elevations for the first few hours.
With a bit of blue sky peeking through, we reverted to the original plan of hiking up to the Pelmo, a throne-shaped chunk of rock, but by lunchtime, we were getting pelted by rain, scampering into a hut, peeling off wet layers, and contemplating the long, steep descent we would have to make back to the town.
We chose to use a trail in the woods, thinking the tree cover would keep us a little drier, but alas, we slipped and slid down a muddy, root-filled trail for the rest of the afternoon.
Getting back to our lodging, we remembered why Europe is such a great place to hike: you get a full day of serious activity, but you come back to a warm shower, a real bed, and spectacular food!
***
Day two was forecast to be the worst day of all, so instead of an exposed hike, we took a quick gondola ride partway up the mountain and when the skies surprised us by staying blue and clear, we completed a steep ascent up to Ristoro Belvedere, a mountain hut (rifugio) with stunning views of the Pelmo, Monte Civetta (the “wall of walls”), Marmolada (the Dolomites’ highest peak), the Pale di San Martino, and more. The panorama was astounding, and feeling inspired and invigorated by our weather luck, we climbed a bit farther to Fertazza peak and its added view of the valley and Lake Alleghe.
Although the clouds began to darken, we pressed on to a cheese factory, stopping to sample the goods and endlessly photograph the cows – a distinctly touristic activity!
We’d added a group member by now, an Australian sheepdog who had been following us for at least the last 2-3 miles, running ahead, circling back, and herding us down the mountain like his sheep.
Our culinary adventures were just beginning as we clomped right back up the hundreds of feet we had just hiked down in order to get to Chalet Col di Baldi, a gourmet hut high in the range. We stuffed ourselves with venison, trout, ravioli, and barley soup (in my boring case) before setting off for an up-and-down traverse and eventually a long, steep descent back to Selva di Cadore.
We reunited with our doggie friend who was now many miles from home. One of our guides called the phone number on his collar tag, we roped him up, and made the final trek into town with him in tow. It was a very long but rewarding day in every way.
***
The next morning, we packed small bags for an overnight at the very high Rifugio Lagazuoi, not a place anyone could transport our duffels. Yesterday’s rain caught up with us a few times before lunch, and the varied terrain was a challenge for all. There were boulder fields to start out – gorgeously studded with wildflowers,
a super steep and narrow climb up a set of exposed switchbacks known as “Oh Shit Hill,”
then a long slog in drizzle to a rifugio where a few people decided to leave us for a rest, and finally an endless trek up a slanted, cliff-hugging slab of stone to the oldest hut in the Dolomites, Rifugio Nuvolau, built in 1883. We were now completely spoiled by the vistas, here getting stunning views of the Tofane, Cristallo, and again the Marmolada.
After another hearty lunch, we hiked three miles down to Passo Falzarego to catch a cable car up to Rifugio Lagazuoi.
At the hut, it was difficult to tear ourselves away from admiring the scenery from the sunny deck, but we eventually checked into our dorm-style rooms and headed back out to explore a World War I tunnel system that runs through the mountains here on the Italy-Austria front. We strapped on our headlamps, used cables to inch our way down to the tunnel entrances, and crouched our way through some of the trenches and tunnels used during the war. It was quite a sobering, physically uncomfortable, and slightly creepy experience. It was hard to imagine how thousands of Italian and Austrian soldiers endured 20 months, including two winters, locked in hand-to-hand battle and sheer deprivation on these forbidding peaks.
That afternoon and evening, our cameras got a good workout as the scenes from the rifugio spread out before us, first in deep greens and blues
Can you see our rifugio way up there at the edge of the rock?
and then tinged with the rosy hues of sunset.
(We will descend into this scree-filled valley tomorrow)
***
The next morning, we began our most ambitious descent, a nearly 5000-ft (1524 m) drop down through a hidden valley into Cortina d’Ampezzo.
(Our initial descent from the Rifugio Lagazuoi)
This challenging day took us behind the Tofane – three peaks renowned by climbers and alpinists and all over 10,500 feet (3200 m) in height. Walking right from the Lagazuoi refuge, we took a series of scree-covered switchbacks around the peaks of the Tofane down into the remote Val d’ Travenanz and the Rio de Fane.
The river was at the bottom of a deep gorge, and we had to shed our shoes multiple times to cross and re-cross the ice-cold flow. Left to our own devices, we came up with a variety of crossing strategies, and a few people got a little wet!
After a picnic lunch in a sunny field, we continued on to a huge waterfall near the bottom, then finished off our 11-mile day with a walk to our vans for a short shuttle into Cortina.
***
I have no good memory or notes on where we hiked the next day, but it was a tough uphill climb all morning to the Lago di Foses,
followed by an undulating path through velvety green fields,
another delicious rifugio meal of giant omelets, and a long gravelly descent back to Cortina. This was the first day we ran into large groups of hikers as the latter part of our day passed through areas easily accessible by car. We’d been lucky all week with empty trails, especially yesterday in the “secret” valley where we’d seen no one at all.
***
We chose to rise very early on our last day of trekking to beat the crowds to the Tre Cime (Three Peaks) area, another location that attracts day hikers. Our knowledgeable guide also suggested we hike opposite to the route taken by most of the expected crowds, and she knew of a special little hut (Malga Langalm) that would only be about an hour into our hike if we went this way.
Here, we would stop for breakfast instead of a later meal as others would, so we left Cortina with empty bellies that were happily filled with cappuccino, fresh yogurt, honey, fruit, and homemade cakes a short time later.
All of us deemed this stop to be one of our very favorites; we had spectacular views of the Tre Cime massif, the food was outstanding, and the chill of the morning and our wake-up hike were rewarded with a warming morning sun as we relaxed on the outdoor patio.
Because of our reverse routing, we only ran into crowds at the main viewpoint of the Three Peaks. Until that point, we again had the otherworldly landscape mostly to ourselves.
(All ours!)
We jostled with the day hikers for a few photos, but we’d already gotten such great views in several hours of skirting the massif that we were happy to leave the final stop to the hordes.
After a boisterous farewell dinner a week after we’d meet the group, J and I spent a short day in Venice before flying home. Our cool, refreshing break was over, and the city of canals got us ready for the heat and humidity we would face the next day.
It was a highly successful trip, full of brisk activity, spirited friends new and old, exceptional cuisine, and some of the best hiking scenery we have seen. I’m always drawn to exotic locales for my hikes, but the good old European mountains deliver every time!
It was supposed to be a scenic 190-mile cruise up the atmospheric Mekong River, a ride through nature, fresh air, and small, remote villages after almost two weeks in big and/or busy cities in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Instead, we found ourselves exposed for two full days to the smokiest air I have ever experienced. With an AQI score of over 500, the air pollution in Laos and northern Thailand tinged the skies with a sickly yellow/gray/brown hue and left its acrid taste in our mouths and noses. Slash-and-burn agriculture is alive and well in this part of the world, and we hit the peak of the crop-burning season, unfortunately.
We left Luang Prabang in the morning and boarded our boat in the small town of Ban Xang Hai. At first glance, we were skeptical, but once aboard, we quickly noted the many charms of our vessel. Long and lean, the wood boat had a variety of seating options, tables, and even a few bed-like couches along the edges. This would be our home for the next two days although we did disembark for the night in between.
Our first stop was Pak Ou, also known as the Buddha statue cave. The shores of the Mekong are riddled with caves, and this one, about two hours into the journey north, is one of two now-famous ones.
We climbed the steep stone staircase and were met by the unexpected sight of thousands of small Buddha likenesses. None is in great shape, but the imperfections – chips, broken limbs, and peeling paint – add to the cave’s aura.
Back on the boat, we continued north, snacking, drinking, chatting and lunching in the comfortable interior. Soon we were also sneezing, coughing, and squinting, as the smoke and its particulate matter settled deep into our nostrils and throats, the crevices of our fingers, and the folds of our clothing.
We tried hard to ignore the air quality, but it was certainly making things a little less pleasant with each passing hour. Although there was no escaping the air, we tried to take our minds off of it with the bucolic river scenes – an elephant being bathed by its owner, small gatherings of animals, passing vessels of all sizes and colors.
To add to our dustiness, we stopped at our first small village, Ban Bor, in the early afternoon. We trekked up a steep hill of sand and dirt to meet a classroom of children whose teacher is a friend of our guide. This enclave was well-kept and calm, and I mostly enjoyed the visit, something I had worried about because I have an aversion to “poverty tourism” in general, and the stops we had planned gave me pause as we moved upriver.
By evening, we got even creepier views of the smudged horizon; as we crept forward, it felt like we were sailing the River Styx, with the filth in the air backlit and yellowed by the setting sun. We got an overnight respite from the air in Pakbeng, a small town in the middle of nowhere but still home to a lovely set of cabin-like rooms high above the muted Mekong.
The following morning brought 90 more miles of smoky, blurry cruising up the river, as well as a second and much more unsettling village stop. We could immediately see and sense that Ban Huoy Lamphane, a poor Hmong village, was very different from the prior day’s visit. Known as one of the most fiercely independent hill tribes, the Hmong resist outside pressure to change; while not a bad thing in theory, the attitude has nevertheless left villages like this one adrift.
There was none of the industry (by which I mean weaving and other arts) of the first village, many children were clearly not in school, and the pride of place we had seen earlier was not to be found. I felt uneasy about our presence here; were we in any way helping, or was this exploitative tourism pure and simple? I happen to be fairly informed about the Hmong – one of my favorite books about a clash of cultures is Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down – and after having worked with several Hmong families resettling in the U.S., I was loathe to judge what we were seeing and torn about the efficacy of any help some passing tourists could really offer. A rough visit for me.
We completed our journey up the Mekong, crossing into Thai waters at Houay Xai in the mid-afternoon. We had high hopes, but of course we quickly learned that smoke knows no borders, and the thick air would stay with us until we left for Bangkok a few days hence. In spite of the miasma that enveloped our boat for two days and nearly 200 miles, the boat ride was a pleasant suspension of time, both literal and figurative, and I’m glad we did it.
Laos might have been the most confounding destination on my trip to Southeast Asia. It started under blue Bangkok skies with the most cheerful turboprop ever, and it offered a multitude of unique experiences, but everything about our time there was dimmed – quite literally – by horrific, smoky fires.
From our first stay in charming Luang Prabang, through a 200-mile boat ride up the Mekong River, and on into northern Laos and Thailand, the pervasive fires lent a sickly grayish-yellow tinge to everything we saw.
Still very much a user of slash-and-burn agriculture, Laos in late March/early April 2023 was in the midst of one of the most extended crop burns in recent history. Even before we touched down in our plane, my nostrils and throat began to register the smoke, and a quick glance outside made me think the pollution here was even worse than in Hanoi. We deplaned onto the tarmac and were hit by eye-watering particulate and the realization that this was no temporary haze.
Feeling a little bit ill both emotionally and physically, we proceeded into Luang Prabang for almost a full day of sightseeing before we could check into our lovely hotel. We started with the National Museum (formerly the royal palace) and went on to Wat Xieng Thong, both just outside the main downtown area.
The main attraction for me at both the museum and the temple were the stunning cut-glass designs on the walls, both inside and out.
Our young guide initially appeared to be very serious, but we were quickly surprised and amused by his deadpan delivery of some rather salacious facts about the palace’s residents. As our time with him continued for the next five days, we were regularly entertained by his blunt, slyly-joking manner.
Our lodging here was one of the places I had booked for J and myself in 2020, so I was eager to see if it lived up to my lofty expectations. The good news was that it did; the bad news was that we were unable to enjoy the gorgeous amenities because of the suffocating smoke. The pool, the outdoor bar, and the private patios outside our rooms were all off-limits if we wanted to protect our lungs. We partook of some of them in very small doses, but for the most part, we were stuck in our rooms when we were not out touring the city and countryside.
(Lest you think I am being dramatic about the air quality, for that period and the surrounding weeks in Laos, the AQI was a shocking 500+ for days on end. As a comparison, the recent fires in eastern Canada resulted in several readings of about 400, with the worst day in New York City registering 377 and causing all sorts of cancellations and flight stoppages. Unlike the mostly accidental fires in North America, the weeks-long fires in Laos and a few other Southeast Asian nations are set on purpose every spring despite educational efforts about the effects on the environment and human health.)
Still, we tried to avail ourselves of all of the charms Luang Prabang offered: cute little shops, a huge night market, distinctive architecture, delicious cuisine, and more.
One morning, we rose extra early to participate in Tak Bat, the giving of alms to the Buddhist monks who live in Luang Prabang. At about 6 am, the monks began their procession through the town, where locals and tourists alike lined the streets with baskets of sticky rice.
In fact, we saw very few tourists, which surprised and pleased me as I had worried that the whole alms-giving thing was just a touristy thing to do. On the contrary, the rice and other food handed out each morning is the main sustenance for these monks, and we saw many local people, women especially, who sat and supplied the monks long past our brief 30-minute stint of placing small handfuls of rice into the bowls that the monks carried.
After breakfast at the hotel that day, it was still early in the morning, and we had some free time before our next outing. Smoke be damned, I was eager to climb Phousi Hill for a little exercise as well as a view of the town. Although no one would join me, my inner badass compelled me to do this short hike after an innocent comment made by our van driver the day before.
Upon arrival in town, we had parked at the base of a long set of stairs up a hill, and when asked what was up there and if we could climb them, the driver let out a small laugh and said yes, we were allowed, but certainly no one in our group should attempt it. Challenge set and accepted, buddy!
As it turned out, the hike up was not difficult at all; it took me about 15 minutes to walk from the hotel to the top of the hill even with a second set of stairs that were hidden from view at the bottom. The joke was on me, though, because (a) there was no view to speak of given the air quality, (b) my lungs were now choked with that heavy, dirty air, and (c) I dutifully followed the “Way Down” signs and ended up semi-lost up on the back of the hill (with a bunch of gold Buddhas) and then totally disoriented when I arrived on the complete opposite side at the bottom, along the river and nowhere near the streets back to the hotel.
Using a general sense of direction and a landmark electrical pole I had spotted the night before, I half-ran, panting, my way back in the thick, hot air and barely made it before the van left for our next stop. (As a funny aside, I learned firsthand what our guide had warned us about when I asked for directions. I would point left and say, “Avani hotel?” Big smile and nod yes! “Or that way?” as I pointed right. Big smile and nod yes! Back to dead reckoning, I guess.)
I was reluctant to participate in our afternoon activity that day because I have a big problem with most kinds of animal tourism, and we had an elephant sanctuary on our schedule. After much questioning and my own research, I became comfortable that this place was ethical and positive. There were no elephant rides, no bathing of the animals by tourists, and only four elephants were in residence at the time, with a few mothers and babies out in the nearby forests but not in the visitor part of the sanctuary.
Despite my worries, it was an amazing afternoon. After an informative and enthusiastic talk by the sanctuary spokesman/manager, four mahouts brought out their elephants and “introduced” them to us. I don’t imagine I will ever stand so close to such magnificent creatures again, and I’m glad that this chance was one that felt acceptable to take.
After the trip, I happened to read a long, fascinating article about the musical genius of some elephants; apparently, they have naturally perfect pitch and an uncanny sense of rhythm. In that essay, I also learned that in some places, female Asian elephants are used by human mothers to babysit their children because of the elephants’ very high levels of intelligence, sense of nurturing, and responsibility. Having seen them up close, I can very easily picture this scenario. They are gentle, sentient souls.
Our last outing in the Luang Prabang area was another activity I initially pooh-poohed but ended up really enjoying. We traveled outside the city to a working rice farm that allowed small groups to come in and both learn about and help out with every aspect of rice cultivation. Over the years, I’ve seen rice paddies and terraces, watched farmers plow with their water buffalo, and cooked and eaten rice (obviously), but I have never really thought about the enormous number of steps involved in getting rice to my table.
We got started by taking off our shoes and wading into a small square of clumpy mud into which we scattered rice seeds (grains) to start the process. Rice fields must be flooded at planting time and remain constantly waterlogged; there is no clean way to do most of the jobs in a rice field. A short distance away, we stepped into a section a bit farther along in the growing process; here we pulled up small clumps of rooted rice plants that had just started to grow, carried them to another field, and planted them in new mounds of mud.
In the next paddy, we learned (out of order) how the water buffalo-powered plows turn the soil for new plantings (with a few of us getting to “drive”), and in a final section, we helped cut the mature rice with a scythe before knotting the bunches and carrying them under a roof for the next series of tasks.
Threshing, dehulling, winnowing, cleaning – the list went on and on until the rice was finally hanging over a wood fire, cooking in its bamboo basket before being spooned onto a plate. Here, as in most of Laos, the rice is sticky rice, and I am now an ardent fan.
In fact, I might miss sticky rice more than any other food in Southeast Asia … those plump grains all glutinous and full of nutty texture, baked to a slightly crusty perfection inside their baskets, scooped out in chunky spoonsful, and piled with fresh vegetables, meats, sauces, or just eaten plain and simple … Oh, I miss that rice!
It was a highly instructive day overall, and we felt like we’d been in an outdoor classroom while also helping, in a very minor way, with the work of the farm. Covered with mud to our knees and an ashy film everywhere else, we shuttled home and blissfully showered before our final stroll around town and a much-enhanced appreciation for the scrumptious sticky rice we consumed at dinner!
Next up: a cruise (seemingly into the apocalypse) on the Mekong River
Expectations and I have a rocky relationship. I am a wishful thinker, an eternal optimist, and an unreasonable believer that everything is going to go my way. I’ve tried, really and truly tried, to tamp down my travel hopes and dreams because I’ve learned the hard way that a thick blanket of fog can get stuck over Mt. Fitzroy the whole time you’re there, a week of rain might materialize at a Mexican beach, and a heavy snowfall on a trail in Bhutan can and will cancel a trek that can probably never be rebooked. So, when things not only follow my scripted expectations, but even exceed them, I am a pretty happy traveler. Cambodia as a whole, and the Angkor complex in particular, can be happily filed in this category.
I have spent at least the last decade pining to go to Cambodia. During that time, I went plenty of other places, but I kept pushing this one down the list because I wanted to combine it with its neighboring countries since that is a very long trip for me. So many of my blogging friends have been there, and all I could do was read and dream. My son went years ago, and I was pretty jealous. Then my sister who rarely travels managed to get there, and I was even more envious. Finally, we booked a long, painstakingly planned, independent trip to the region in February/March of 2020. You know what happened to that attempt.
We rebooked for that November (this Covid thing wasn’t going to last that long, right?) and watched that itinerary blow up as well. I tried for the spring of ’21, then the fall, then twice again in 2022, but every time we tried to wedge a 3-4 week outing into our schedules, it just wouldn’t fit. Knowing that most of the conflicts came from his calendar, my husband finally suggested I find a small group and take the trip myself. I needed no extensive coaxing and was booked a few months hence within days of our conversation. Sorry, honey!
So there I was, finally in Siem Reap, Cambodia, getting ready to see the largest religious structure in the world. We would also spend days covering the vast overall complex of Angkor, the capital city of the Khmer empire, a site which many researchers believe was the largest pre-industrial city in the world. Sprawling over nearly 400 square miles (1000 square kilometers), Angkor had an estimated population of up to a million people in its heyday, the 9th to 15th centuries.
We started with Ta Prohm, the temple made famous by the Tomb Raider movies (which I have never seen) but so striking in its own right that it hardly needed a bunch of Angelina Jolie movies to recommend it!
When the Angkor temples were found and slowly rebuilt, Ta Prohm was left more untouched than others, apparently because it was one of the most imposing temples in the ancient city and also because it had melded with the jungle in a particularly picturesque way – man’s creation and nature intertwined to glorious effect. As our first stop of the morning and introduction to Angkor, Ta Prohm was a big winner, eliciting dozens of photos and much energetic roaming about the grounds.
We moved on to the city of Angkor Thom (the largest of all sites within Angkor) and Bayon, the grand temple at its exact center. With 216 smiling Buddha faces carved into its towers, and an incredible three-tiered bas-relief that depicted scenes of everyday life and historic events, Bayon was captivating.
The bas-relief alone might have kept me there for days (we covered only the exterior galleries; these were mirrored by a set of interior carvings), but by the end of this site tour, at the peak of mid-day, we were huddling behind every column we could find, in search of any thin strip of shade in the 100-degree (38 C) heat and stifling humidity.
There were so many stories in the bas-relief that I couldn’t begin to photograph or memorize many. A woman giving birth, a cockfight, kings carried on elephants, battles between Khmers and Chams; all were realistically carved into the stone and have survived centuries of weather and neglect to tell the stories of the Khmer people. Many are quite funny or charmingly quotidian: a woman holding a turtle so that it bites the man in front of her, a seller’s fingers tipping a scale to cheat the buyer, scenes from a beauty parlor, the tweezing of chin hairs, etc.
Angkor Wat itself was, as anticipated, the highlight for me. It was followed by a number of delightful surprises, but still, this monumental structure and its grounds are a tourist hotspot for a reason. Despite its scale and popularity, there was something very quiet and peaceful about Angkor Wat, perhaps because we visited in the late afternoon as the sun hit the edifice at a slant and most of the visiting hordes had left for the day. Even in its busiest areas, though, the temple exudes a quiet spirituality that even the non-religious can appreciate.
We approached over a vast moat that surrounds the temple and reflects its western face, an anomaly among Khmer temples, which mostly face east. Like Bayon, Angkor Wat features a long wall of bas-reliefs, in this case spanning 800 meters of wall space (nearly half a mile!) and centuries of history. Here, they are more deeply etched, and with a bit more shade in which to view them, we were able to study the carvings at leisure.
As we stepped inside, one of my favorite aspects of the site appeared – a stack of partially sunny doorways – and to my delight, similar scenes were repeated over and over throughout the first and second floors of the temple.
At one point, our guide pointed out a different colored stone in the floor and laid his phone’s compass down to show us that the temple was centered at exactly 0 degrees north; how did they calculate that and build from there with absolute symmetry over 1000 years ago? I’m a sucker for this kind of evidence of ancient expertise.
On the second floor, there was a large plaza from which Angkor Wat’s five iconic towers rise, all with tiny, vertiginously steep stairs leading to their tops. One set was for the king only (and he was carried up them); on a different set, some metal steps had been added on the corner of another tower so we peons could climb to the third floor ourselves. A few of us scrambled up and were rewarded with golden hour views of the lower floors and the grounds.
Our final day in Angkor began with a tour of Banteay Srei, also known as the pink temple because of the red sandstone used to build it.
The name translates as “citadel of the women;” though the origins of the name are unknown, theories include the more petite dimensions of the structures, the intricacy of the bas-relief carvings, and the existence of many female deities carved into the rock walls.
Because it is so small with such immaculate handiwork, Banteay Srei is a visitor favorite, a tiny gem in the lineup of temples at Angkor.
We continued on to Banteay Samre. Also much smaller than the places we had seen the day before, this site featured a single tower reminiscent of the ones at Angkor Wat and the same rosy limestone used at Banteay Srei.
Although I was almost at max temple absorption by this time, we undertook one last outing, to Preah Khan in the afternoon. Here we observed even more clearly the flip-flopping of religions that occurred at many of the sites, first Hindu, then Buddhist, back to Hindu, and Buddhist again.
Preah Khan was the least restored temple we saw, and that in itself was revelatory, putting into perspective much that we had seen in the days before. I love puzzles, but when I contemplated the jumbled heaps of giant stones inside and outside the tree-encircled outer walls, I could hardly imagine the jigsaw skills that would be needed to recreate even this one temple, let alone the assortment of reconstructed temples we had visited in our time in Cambodia.
Beyond the Khmer treasures, Cambodia was also my favorite stop in the region. The people were exceptionally kind and gentle, and we were able to talk with several individuals whose lives had been terribly torn apart by the Khmer Rouge in the time of the killing fields. The grace of these survivors, their ongoing ability to find joy, and their pride in what their country has done to restore itself in ways far beyond ancient ruins were powerful and humbling. I am so grateful that I had a chance to meet them and see a small bit of their past and present lives.
Outside of bustling Hanoi, Vietnam felt like a very different place. Not a huge surprise with the change from big city to smaller locales, but the two other locations we visited each left very distinct impressions themselves – one a remarkable but understated natural atmosphere, and the other a sunny and cheerful yet somewhat overdone destination.
Halong Bay was, in spite of gloomy weather, a wonderfully moody excursion. Our group was able to rent a private boat for a four-hour cruise in the Gulf of Tonkin, located in the northeast of Vietnam. The drive itself was a great way to see the new-ish (2021) major expressway connecting Hanoi, Hai Phong (the 3rd largest city in Vietnam and the largest port in the north), and Halong Bay in half the time it used to take.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Halong Bay contains over 1600 islands and islets, nearly all of them uninhabited, and the limestone karst landforms rise almost eerily from the warm bay waters – usually turquoise, but more of a murky green on this rainy day.
We sailed through the foggy, misty landscape, taking cover when the sprinkles became real rain, emerging again and again to ogle the clumps and pillars of land covered in tropical vegetation, the rock beneath etched by centuries of erosion into arches, caves, cones, and lateral cuts.
For once, I allowed myself to enjoy the scenery as it was, not how I expected and wanted it to be – all sunny and shiny, the light glinting on the gem-colored water – and I found myself actually feeling glad for this muted view. The bay was serene for our visit, with few boats out, and the peaceful, quiet cruise was a welcome diversion from the activity of the past few days.
*****
We arrived in Hoi An at night after a final, full day in Hanoi, a flight to Danang, and a drive south. The city at night had me a bit flummoxed, uncertain about why this small town collected such accolades. Its trademark lanterns were beautiful and festive, and the streets away from the river were busy in a fun way, but the raucous, brightly-lit party atmosphere along both sides of the riverfront felt like we had accidentally landed in Las Vegas or Disney World.
Inebriated and minimally-dressed tourists roved the riverside promenade, sloshing drinks and cutting us off as we walked and tried to find a photo shot without dozens of heads in it. Put off by the scene, I retreated to the quieter streets lined with shops and restaurants, and all was okay again.
We stayed in an attractive old colonial-style hotel away from the downtown but easily accessible by “buggy” or on foot. It turned out to be a haven in the heat and bustle. Here in Hoi An, we had our first days of real sun, and after a few short hours, we were beginning to regret what we had wished for in cloudy, gray northern Vietnam as the temperatures soared into the 90s (30s C) and the humidity ratcheted up even more.
For me, one of the highlights was a Japanese covered bridge from 1593, totally intact and the centerpiece of the old town.
In the light of day, I enjoyed walking street after street, even along the river, popping into small shops, looking at art, trying on a few pieces of clothing, and admiring the centuries-old homes and bright, modern coffeeshops. My companions were avid shoppers; I am at best a reluctant one, so I split off and walked the town on my own, free to peruse the goods but buy nothing.
In spite of its popularity and sporadic excesses, Hoi An still charmed with plenty of signs of simple, daily life. These humble vignettes, along with the upbeat cheer at every turn, will remain happy memories of my visit to this small, ancient town.
It was 1971 or ’72, and I remember sitting at my school cafeteria table, wearing my POW/MIA bracelet for the first time. For those too young to remember, during the Vietnam War, many of us wore a metal bracelet with the name of a prisoner of war or missing-in-action soldier on it. (About 4-5 million bracelets were sold at about $2.50 each.) A recent story I heard about a woman who has spent over 50 years searching for “her” soldier made me realize what a loser I must be. I don’t even remember the name or the outcome for my soldier – how sad! I hope that means it ended well and I was able to forget for a good reason.
What I do still remember is the way the word “Vietnam” made me feel back then; it was a very scary place to imagine for a naive teenager. Later, as an adult, I watched so many sobering movies about the war and its aftermath (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Good Morning, Vietnam, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, among others), and the frightening view I had of this time in history was only reinforced. Given those dark and upsetting memories, I was thrilled to see what a vibrant and joyful place Vietnam is today.
The first week I spent in Southeast Asia last month was dedicated to Vietnam, and it wasn’t nearly enough to see the country in full. We spent three days in Hanoi and its environs, including a day trip to Halong Bay. Then we flew south to Danang and drove on to Hoi An, two very different cities.
(Parenthetical note from this linguistics geek: I learned while there that the Vietnamese language only contains one-syllable words, connecting them in speech to form different meanings. All of the place names above are more correctly written as Viet Nam, Ha Long, Ha Noi, Da Nang, etc. I would prefer to write them this way because it more accurately reflects the local pronunciation, but I feared that would be too distracting, so I have Anglicized the spellings. Thank you for reading this aside that is basically for me to see in the future!)
As expected, Hanoi was a big, noisy, crowded, gray-skied metropolis, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Like many cities outside the West, this one had a full range of socioeconomic levels living side-by-side. The elegant old French Quarter with its wide streets and monumental buildings had plenty of tiny side streets, some not nearly as nice as the big ones, and the Old Quarter (Hoàn Kiếm) and City Center pushed right up into each other with a mish-mash of architectural styles and old-new contrasts. As an inveterate walker, I took the opportunity to wander this safe-feeling city in multiple directions.
My first outing on foot was not alone. Because my husband finally gave up his chance to join me on this trip, I signed onto a small group adventure and met the best strangers I could have ever found to spend three weeks with. On the very first evening, four of us decided to walk about 20 minutes to dinner. I slipped on the only pair of nice sandals I’d brought and set out into the humid night. The very humid night. The moisture in the air is the only explanation I have to explain how the 2-inch woven wedge heel on my left shoe separated from the sole and began to slap against the pavement, tenuously connected to the front of the shoe.
At the restaurant, I removed the offending thwapper altogether and kept it in hopes I could glue it back on at the hotel. Alas, no – as I left to hobble home after dinner, clumpity-clumping as if I had one much shorter leg, the right heel detached itself from the sole! That one I ripped off with little fanfare and tossed both woven wedges from my very favorite sandals into a garbage can on the street. The next afternoon’s foray into the city on my own was to find and purchase a replacement pair of sandals, and I had so much fun hunting around and then chatting with a charming salesgirl at a shop that I deemed my shoe disaster to be a lucky addition to my adventures in Hanoi.
Official sightseeing in Hanoi was hit or miss. We visited the Temple of Literature, whose raison d’être was commendable – built in 1070, it is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and the site of Vietnam’s first national university – but it just didn’t really grab my interest aesthetically, and our guide went on a little too long as we stood in the dusty grounds. It was still a fun visit as throngs of local high school students were taking their graduation photos there.
(Another side note: Vietnam’s literacy rate growth is seriously impressive. After WWII, about 5-10% of the population was literate; now it is over 95%, one of the highest rates in the world. By way of comparison, the U.S. literacy rate ranges from 79% to mid-80% depending on the source.)
Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and home were similarly tedious, especially because we failed to go in the morning when we could have actually seen his body. I’m not particularly morbid and interested in corpses, but the stories about sending (or not; there is controversy) “Uncle Ho’s” body to Russia for refurbishment each year was just too sensational to ignore! The park and presidential palace were literal bright spots in an otherwise gray day. Without getting too far into political ideologies, it was also interesting to learn about Ho Chi Minh’s goals that transcended simple Communism, namely Vietnamese independence and the idea of blending Communism with nationalism, including his success in allowing markets to continue to flourish within the system.
The last touristy thing we saw was the most interesting – the Hỏa Lò Prison, aka the Hanoi Hilton. Many of us have heard so much about the American prisoners held there during the Vietnam War, but a number of fellow travelers and I were unaware that this famous prison was actually built by the French in the 1880s and used to imprison, abuse, and torture Vietnamese detainees. Left there in the brief period between French control and the war as a symbol of colonialist exploitation and the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French, it began a new life in 1967 when the North Vietnamese began using it to hold and similarly mistreat American servicemen. Needless to say, it was a depressing but eye-opening place to behold.
As is often the case, the parts of Hanoi I enjoyed most were the daily street scenes and experiences. One morning we walked in a local market with zero tourists and saw all kinds of strange produce and an even larger assortment of squirmy animal products.
We crammed into a coffeeshop for egg coffees, perching on tiny stools and sipping this odd but tasty combo. I so enjoyed seeing the industrious local ladies in what looked like silk PJs, pushing their carts and balancing their huge woven baskets on a pole throughout the old part of the city.
Another afternoon, I left the group and walked the mile around Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the historical center of the city. It was a brutally hot, humid, and smoggy day, but it was great to get in a brisk walk while watching local families and couples enjoy their city.
We ended our time in the capital with a fancy dinner in the French Quarter, the only really high-end meal we had on the trip. Housed in a restored French colonial villa, the restaurant served traditional Vietnamese cuisine and provided a calm oasis in the middle of this bustling city. It was a perfect last evening in Hanoi, itself a great introduction to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
As I booked my flights a few months ago for a trip to Southeast Asia, I was reminded that I could just as easily fly east rather than west and connect through the Middle East. I had actually done this several times in the past with great results, once through Abu Dhabi and once through Doha, Qatar. This time I could fly the whole way from Houston to Hanoi on two flights with a 9-hour+ layover, again in Doha. Add in the fact that I would pay only a little over half of what I would spend taking three flights over the Pacific, and it was a no-brainer.
I booked on Qatar Airways, an airline I had successfully flown about five years ago. Regardless of how I felt about some of the controversies that gripped Qatar before and during the World Cup, I was not willing to cut off my nose to spite my face with so much money and time on the line. I knew from my Abu Dhabi trip that I could probably leave the airport, so I sought and easily found a way to get a transit visa, store my bags, and skip out of Hamad Airport for a few hours, and just like that, I found myself with a long evening and night in the capital city of Qatar.
Doha is a relatively new city (1820s, with independence declared from Britain in 1971) and is situated on the eastern shore of this small but wealthy Persian Gulf nation. It is home to about 80% of Qatar’s population, the majority of whom are not native Qataris. The economy is fueled primarily by oil and gas, which supplanted pearl diving a century ago, but in recent years, the country has been boosting their coffers with major sporting and other events, as well as a heightened focus on tourism. The latter was, in part, what made my outing so easy and rewarding.
My first stop was at the Museum of Islamic Art along the city’s famous Corniche, the promenade and road that arc along the waterfront. Although the museum was closed at the late evening hour I arrived, it was a great vantage point for the glittering skyline of West Bay across the water, a stroll past some older boats in Dhow Harbor, and of course the outside view of the museum itself, a splendid mix of Islamic and modern architecture designed by I.M. Pei.
We then followed the Corniche around the curve of the bay to immerse ourselves in that colorful clump of skyscrapers in West Bay, a glitzy district of the tallest buildings in the city. These are home to government offices, foreign embassies, hotels, shopping, dining, and luxury living. It almost looked like a computer simulation from afar with the neon colors rising high into the sky and reflected in the dark water, but it was definitely thumping with energy at street level.
The older, more established Souk Waqif more than held its own in the thumping-with-energy department! By the time I had circled back and started walking around the core of Doha’s traditional quarter, it was almost 11 pm, but the area was wide awake and brimming with activity. Knots of thobe-clad Qatari men, local families with children, and tourists all mixed with local merchants and restauranteurs in the warren of streets.
One moment I was admiring old wheelbarrows for moving goods, and the next I was passing a modern pizzeria or trendy coffeeshop. I ping-ponged from displays of old artifacts to upscale eateries. The one thing I did not see in this bustling area was anything reminiscent of a girls’ night out; local women were always accompanied, and vastly outnumbered, by men. Still, there was no discomfort at all in walking around the quarter on my own as a single woman, and I seemed to draw no extra attention.
The only part of my evening sightseeing that initially looked staged for visitors was Katara Cultural Village, an educational and commercial center opened in 2010 between West Bay and The Pearl. It had all the makings of a Disneyesque set, and I entered reluctantly, assuming it was a touristy showpiece. I was pleasantly surprised to find it filled with local people on a Friday night, strolling the air-conditioned streets (yes, there were vents in the sidewalks to cool things down in this city that often reaches the 120s F (high 40s C). The area was so attractive I couldn’t help but enjoy my stroll in spite of an internal cringe about the energy usage. Originally opened for the Doha Tribeca Film Festival, the “village” contained museums, an opera house, fine arts and Arabic poetry centers, a planetarium, and a long list of other cultural amenities, all built to reflect the country’s cultural and architectural heritage.
By a little after midnight I was back on a bus to the airport and ready for my 2:45 am flight to Hanoi. Did I get to really know and understand a new country? No, of course not, but I had a great time seeing another of these small Persian Gulf countries that straddle a strange line between traditional and modern life. That chasm is far greater than anything I see in my daily life or even other travels, and for good or for bad, it was illuminating to see. The bottom line is that my three hours in Doha were far more fun and interesting than the airport, so it was a win-win for me!
My memories of Malta, formed mere weeks ago, are jumbled and not altogether sensible. Like many recollections of past trips, the ones formed here make no sense on paper, but the associations are somehow even more solid for their inexplicability to others. I’ve written before about some nonsensical links I’ll always have from my travels and how they sound absurd to outsiders but are so tightly connected for me. Think Boy George and St. Petersburg, Russia. R.E.M. and the roads of the Peloponnese. Beyond those questionable musical connections, I’ve reminisced about toilets in France, paper products in Tibet, a mysterious white horse in Ecuador, my radio claim to fame in Cape Town, and so many other random but powerful memories.
As our trip to Malta was planned, we only really had four days to explore and get to know our travel mates better. As executed, we were down to three days and two nights, and a chunk of that turned out to be devoted to a couple of World Cup football matches, a sporting event I don’t think I had ever watched – or really wanted to watch – in my life.
The trip started poorly, with our Turkish Airlines flight leaving Houston so late that we missed our connection and had to spend what would have been our first evening of cocktails and dinner with old and new friends at Istanbul airport instead. It could have been worse. IST has been massively updated, and the place was hopping with activity, had a decent airside hotel, and offered an array of fun dinner options. Not Plan A, but we made the best of it.
Arriving early on day two, we met Kelly and J, along with J’s brother and his wife (an amazing bonus couple!), at our quaint little hotel in Valletta. After a quick breakfast, we were off for a walking tour of the capital city, some barely-past-noon beers, and then a boat ride to the Three Cities, which the group had explored a little bit the day before we arrived. Here we were treated not only to toasty yellow stone walls and narrow streets, but to the brotherly banter of J and T. My J is one of two brothers as well, and it was clear even in the first hours of strolling and chatting that we would be a compatible, and often goofy, group!
Kelly and J had spent the previous week in Doha at the World Cup, and like true World Cup fans, their schedule in Malta would include a double header of matches on our second night. Not certain we would be able to sit through both contests, we showed up for match #1, Croatia vs. Brazil, with intentions of politely watching for a short time and having a small amount to eat and drink with the group before venturing out on our own for the evening. In short order, however, we tumbled headlong into the excitement of the match and a cascade of drinks and cheers. Buoyed by the upset results, we hung around for a change in venue and the start of the next quarterfinal, Netherlands vs. Argentina, only to find ourselves once again entranced by a sport we had only ever suffered through as our children played youth soccer for the few years we all could tolerate.
We did manage to see more of Malta than the two bars that hosted our soccer-viewing marathon. In addition to the Three Cities, we ventured out on a bus to Marsaxlokk, a small fishing village south of the capital.
We ambled for hours above, below, and within the burnished stone walls of this fortified little island, and we even had a Michelin-star dinner at Noni in Valletta.
We admired doors and door knockers,
San Francisco-style urban hills,
and a full complement of beguiling streetscapes.
We burned a path in Merchants Street, up to the city gates and Christmas market, back down to the hotel, up to St. John’s cathedral and its Caravaggio paintings, down to Fort St. Elmo, over to Old Bakery Street, and out onto the ramparts on all sides of the city.
We got a solid feel for this unique little island that sits between Sicily and Tunisia, and we had a great time with our friends old and new. It was a joy to be back in Europe again and, in spite of its newness to us, it had the familiar old feel of so many beloved places on the Mediterranean.
We’ll remember the walks and the walls, the cuisine and the scenery, but when we think about Malta in the future, my bet is that we’ll always associate it with soccer (ok – football; see how fast I’m learning?!) and the simple good times of watching those exciting matches with beers and snacks in hand and convivial friends by our side. We even watched the finals when we got home; we’re hooked, and it’s all because we met Kelly and J and T and R in Malta!
It’s fitting that my blogging and real-life friend Kelly introduced me to the expression “Leap, and the net will appear.” Not much leaping has gone on here for a while, but it was an innocuous message from Kelly a few days ago that launched a swift and thrilling decision to meet her and husband J in Malta just four short weeks from today. That has, in turn, prompted my first blog post in quite a while. Not exactly a high-wire act, but a pretty nice shot of adrenaline after these last few years!
Lake Tahoe: the last place we saw Kelly and J
I go through phases of throw-caution-to-the-wind leaping. There are times like the one where I decided on a whim to cash in my airline miles and fly for 48 hours in order to meet other blogging friends Lisa and Fabio on their sailboat off the coast of Madagascar for a week, and other stretches when I settle into a safer existence in which any sort of impulsive decision-making seems irresponsible or just too damn hard to pull off.
Madagascar: Lisa, Lexie, lemurs!
Jumping back onto the blog feels scary and impetuous, too. I’ve drafted plenty of posts that fizzled out mid-composition in recent months; they just felt boring and uninspired, perhaps because my blog is about travel stories, ideally set in exotic or far-flung locales, and all I had done in the last several years was drive our car back and forth across the U.S. and western Canada.
You’ve read all about my road trip addiction, the pull to the west as summer gets underway, the call of blue byways when the days are long and a sense of giddy adventure rises in my chest as we exit a new hotel on a warm morning. But even the granddaddy of our road trips to date (over 5000 miles, starting in Houston and making our turnaround in Whistler, British Columbia, and in between big chunks of Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Utah) failed to inspire a riveting, or even good, tale. A little follow-up drive of some 3000 miles up the spine of the Appalachians was equally beautiful … and equally devoid of mass interest. You’ve been there, done all this driving with me before!
Sure, it was fun and very scenic at times, and the people part has been great. Lots of family, some more bloggers like Alison and Don in Vancouver, our now-IRL pals Pam and Sean in Oregon, my 29029 gang at Whistler Mountain, and my best high school and college friends in Montana and South Carolina.
Vancouver and Whistler probably did deserve a write-up; they were first-time destinations for me and were breathtakingly gorgeous, but I just couldn’t flesh out a compelling story.
Bend, Oregon was a photographer’s dream, the southeast and Appalachians offered somewhat fresher driving routes, and there was even a new grandbaby visit in there for good (the best) measure! Still, a narrative eluded me, photo essays aren’t really my stock-in-trade, and personal stories have been mostly off-limits here.
In our non-travel life, we’ve been contemplating other big leaps as well. Our reason for establishing a second base in Colorado two years ago (our son’s growing family) suddenly disappeared when he took a new job in Ohio in July. That tipped the east-west scale a little farther to the right, with kids now in San Francisco, Ohio, and Boston, and precipitated a now-endless discussion of whether we should stay put in the middle of the country to be able to fly quickly to any of the three places (really four, since my parents are still in Pennsylvania) or try to move somewhere where three of the four could be reached by car in a day’s driving? With my husband J’s job allowing him to work from anywhere these days, we began to contemplate a relocation, but we know better than to follow peripatetic children, and part of our mostly-practical selves keeps saying to be patient.
I think we can sit on that decision a while longer, but the overseas travel itch was not as easy to push off. Perhaps a sudden or last-minute opportunity is more conducive to decision-making, at least in our household. We can’t seem to make dinner plans with friends or neighbors for months on end, but when one of us suddenly proposes an outing that evening, it works! In this case, Kelly casually suggested we join them, I latched onto the idea, J was impressively open to it, and two days later, everything was booked … I hope she really meant it! Next post from Malta!
I’ve written before about my penchant for repeat travel. I don’t really understand people who check places off a list, who believe that going anywhere more than once is a waste of time, money, or a chance to bolster a count of some kind. Some travelers – I am clearly one! – happily return to places they have enjoyed (and even places they have not), perhaps to deepen an understanding or maybe to change their minds about a subpar initial experience. (Believe me, there is no value judgment intended here; I want to keep seeing new places as much as anyone else.)
Much of the last two-plus years has been a more painful exercise in repetition, not just in the travel realm, and when I looked back at where I had gone since my last post in July of 2021, I couldn’t help but see many of the same places over and over again. There were good reasons for that – family most of all – but the main one was that we hadn’t been able to really spread our wings in all that time.
Home
Now, I’ve recently returned from my first journey out of the country since February of 2020 and it was, you guessed it, a repeat: my third trip to Costa Rica. It was the least ambitious of my forays there but still a great way to triangulate what I know about this small Central American country. Like many, we have cancelled our fair share of travel plans in the last few years, so when my son and his wife asked if I wanted to join them on a trip in late April, I jumped at the chance. They had their own travel goal: getting one final country stamp in their daughter’s passport before she turned two and had to start paying for a ticket!
Our family’s initial trip to Costa Rica was twenty years ago, a spring break trip with our three kids to the west coast of the country and our first experience with eco-tourism. The hotel had no A/C or TV, was strategically built into a jungly hillside to catch ocean breezes and optimally manage water and waste, and served food from sustainable and organic sources.
At our kids’ ages at the time, it helped that it was also a veritable wildlife refuge, with howler monkeys in the trees outside our room and giant iguanas that roamed the pool deck. A short jaunt down the road was Manuel Antonio National Park, a tiny gem that we spent several days exploring with knowledgeable nature guides.
We returned in 2005 to spend nine days of our Christmas break volunteering in a small village in the Monteverde Cloud Forest. This was not the same cushy vacation we’d had a few years earlier! We stayed in a rustic motel that cost $10/night, where my daughter and I found a spider the size of my fist in the ice-cold shower on day one. We dug trenches for pipes, mixed concrete by hand, moved endless piles of cement blocks, painted, hammered, and cleaned.
Overseas volunteer trips were in their infancy at the time, and we have always been happy we took such a trip before many of these ventures became little more than vanity projects. We felt truly connected with the villagers who worked alongside us for a week and a half, and we were required to take our work cues from them, whether or not we might do it that way at home. It was a valuable lesson in servant leadership. As simplistic and hyperbolic as it may sound, I still believe this trip was the initial driver for our children’s later careers and other life choices.
Last month’s excursion had no such lofty ambitions, unless bonding with my granddaughter and her parents counts (I think it does, actually!). This time, as we did on the first visit, we spent a day near San Jose to recharge after the long trip with a toddler. We were especially happy with that plan after our flight was delayed, our car rental became a series of mishaps, and we reached our hotel after midnight.
The rest of our days – again, on the west coast, this time in Jacó – were pure vacation as we walked the beach, played in the pool, and ambled into and around the small town for groceries, dining, and of course, ice cream. In a full-circle kind of outing on our last day, we took little E to revisit the eco-resort as well as Manuel Antonio National Park, and both were just as delightful as they were when her daddy was 14 years old!
It felt great to break the seal on staying put in the U.S. Now I’m itching for more, so I’ll need to twist J’s arm to get back out there in the near future. Until then, I’m savoring one more repeat stamp, even if I’ve got a couple of new ones in mind for this year!
It was finally time for a more comprehensive tour of the western U.S., especially now that Covid was on the wane and we had a mini-HQ in Colorado from which to depart. We’d seen a decent assortment of places out west over the years; in fact, no state we would see was a stranger to us, but we had never committed consecutive weeks of time to just rambling around the region.
The Itinerary: Our schedule and destinations were predicated on seeing friends and family in a number of cities, and I had the added incentive of spending some active, prolonged time at higher altitudes to prepare for a mountain event I planned to do in Idaho in the middle of the trip. I drove from Houston to the Denver area in late May, spent a week in our little Colorado abode, and trained in the foothills on my own and with a fellow event participant. I loaded up the pup in early June and headed over the Rockies to Salt Lake City and on to Boise, Idaho, where I stopped long enough to pick up my husband at the airport and walk Boise’s mellow, refreshing Greenbelt for an hour or two before setting off once again to make Bend, Oregon by nightfall.
After three days in Bend, we meandered through southern Oregon to Crater Lake National Park and on to Northern California and the Mount Shasta area. San Francisco was next, a city stay that still featured plenty of hiking in Muir Woods and Angel Island, and after the weekend, we pointed the car east to Lake Tahoe. A stunning drive north into Idaho landed us in the Sun Valley/Ketchum area, where we split up – husband and dog to a nice hotel for work and some play, and me to my Bald Mountain hiking challenge and decidedly less cushy lodging (a tent). Four days later, we followed the Salmon River on a jaw-dropping drive through the Sawtooth Mountains to Bozeman, Montana, and a few days after that, we were traversing the Beartooth Highway, northeast and northern Yellowstone National Park, and then western Yellowstone and the Big Sky area. The incredible Tetons were our final stop before returning to Colorado after three glorious weeks.
Friends and Family: A big part of our motivation to stop in the places we did was to see our kids and some old (and new) friends. As a bonus to start my trip, I overlapped for a few days with our daughter and her husband who were visiting Colorado, and I also got to spend some joyous days and evenings watching our one and only granddaughter try to take her first toddling steps with our older son and his wife. In Bend, we reunited with friends with whom we had done volunteer work in Costa Rica and Mexico, and in two minutes, the twelve years since our last get-together disappeared in a rush of old memories and fondness.
A weekend in San Francisco was our first chance to see our younger son’s new life since a job change during Covid took him cross-country with his girlfriend. In the Lake Tahoe area, my fourth-ever blogger meet-up was a big success; Kelly (Compass and Camera) and I had always joked that we must be sisters from other mothers, and I think our dinner together supported that notion! “The Js,” our two husbands, got along great also – always a plus.
My J got together with an old work colleague and friend in Sun Valley, and I must note that in the first two days without me, he managed to fall and skin his arms and legs on both a trail run and a mountain bike ride (and people think I was the crazy one doing the mountain challenge …). In Montana, we had a too-short visit with my dear, best friend from high school, and we arrived back in Colorado just a few days after grandbaby E became a bonafide walker (hiking with Gigi cannot be far behind!). What a fantastic way to add love, friendship, and context to all the new places we went!
Travels with Tashi: We got a new puppy last spring, and I am still not used to the complications he adds to our lives after more than a year, even after being a former dog owner for fifteen years. The two-and-a-half-year gap between dogs must have spoiled me because now I can almost not tolerate having to think about his schedule and all the gear we have to haul around for him, especially in a city hotel where the car is nowhere near the room.
Still, he was a trooper. Like our other pup, Tashi is great in a moving car, on some days chilling in his crate on and off for up to nine hours while we stopped in small towns and pulled off the road for one of my 7 million photos. We introduced him to various cabins, hotel rooms, and strangers’ houses over the weeks on the road, and he was impressively nonplussed. After a few attempts to hike with this energetic little guy, we gave up and left him in our accommodations while we did the longer trails because he is still in the eat-everything stage, and one night of severe illness was enough to dissuade us from trying that again on this trip.
Yes, he is small, but the chair is enormous!
Hikes Galore: Our goal is always to find a hike or two anywhere we go, and this trip produced the goods. In Bend, our friends pointed us to Smith Rock State Park, which exceeded all expectations by a mile (or five). The climbs were a great warm-up for me, afforded stunning views, and wound us through all sorts of rock formations (see “Monkey Face” below) before a steep descent.
Crater Lake offered a series of snowy walks, which we had to let Tashi enjoy with us. Being from Houston, he found the cold, wet stuff to be a captivating novelty, and we were happy to give up some longer walks to see him scampering around the rim of this enormous, deep-blue lake. (Hard to ferret out cigarette butts in the snow anyway.)
Our SF son knows we are not content to just sit around and eat at fun restaurants (which we did both nights), so he took us to Muir Woods to reprise the Dipsea Trail hike we did a few summers ago, and he tacked on a nice, steep descent and climb back up out of a woodsy ravine to end our morning. The next day, he and his girlfriend booked us all a ferry ride to Angel Island, where we biked and hiked the entire island on a crisp, sunny Sunday.
Kelly pointed us to many, many hikes and other sights in the Lake Tahoe area, and we ditched Tashi again to marvel at the scenic east coast of the lake on the Tunnel Creek-Sand Harbor walkway, hike down into the Emerald Bay area, poke around Sugar Pine Point State Park, and take an easy amble through more historic lodges at Tallac Historic Site at the end of one day.
In Sun Valley, I hiked Bald Mountain more times than I ever need to again (fifteen, to be exact), and J got in some solid elevation on Proctor Mountain and then Bald Mountain himself when my event was over. Like a normal person, he summited once, but he did have to get down on his own, which is a knee-buster of a descent.
Bozeman was my cool-down, but we had to get a few little hikes in, trekking up Drinking Horse Mountain trail for a grand view of the Bridger range in the morning and capping the day with a sunset stroll up Peet’s Hill, a local mound that was surprisingly satisfying and enjoyable … and we even let Tashi do this one with us, lucky little guy.
In the big national parks – Yellowstone and Grand Teton – we mostly took abbreviated strolls with the dog, snapping photos at turn-outs and walking short distances from there. We did sneak away for an easy four-miler at Taggart Lake one morning at GTNP, and it was a beauty.
Lakes Galore: I knew we had Crater Lake and its deep cobalt waters on the agenda, but I hadn’t stopped to think about all the magnificent lakes we’d ogle on this trip. Lake Tahoe – Big Blue itself – was a worthy rival for the Oregon national park site, and many smaller lakes on the trip caught our eye as well. From serene and still to deep and powerful, the lakes all reflected and magnified the splendor around them and quickly became a highlight of the trip.
Big Skies and Wide-Open Spaces: The West is dominated by its skies, and we couldn’t get enough of the clouds – from pale, wispy strands to pregnant white poofs to looming gray masses – adrift on the overhead sea. Entire days passed with us seemingly inside an Old Master or impressionistic painting – the vast fields lime and lemon hued, the pines adding a punch of dark green, the peaks a bit of stony punctuation, and the waters a mirror of that gigantic canopy of sky. The expansiveness got under our skin, and we both commented on how hard it would be to go back to city life and its confined spaces.
Geothermal features:Hot springs and geysers have never attracted me much, but the spectrum of colors and ethereal mists at Yellowstone were a worthy addition to my “geo-art” series of photos over the years. I might have snapped more pictures here than anywhere else on the trip, and that’s saying a lot with Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe’s over-the-top photogenic appeal.
The “road” in roadtrips: I love a good non-interstate, and we naturally hit a lot of “blue highways” on this trip and went out of our way to drive others. Highway 75 from Sun Valley to Redfish Lake, Idaho, a twisting ascent up through the Sawtooths and over Galena Pass, was one such treat (secondarily because we had absolutely no cell service for hours, so there was no temptation to be distracted), and it was followed by an equally-isolated drive that followed the Salmon River for many miles and hours. We drove two hours out of our way from Bozeman, Montana, one morning in order to start our Yellowstone trip from its northeast entrance. After that eastern swing landed us in Red Lodge, we hooked back west to drive the entire length of the Beartooth Highway (US Route 12) from there to Cooke City/Silver Gate and into the national park.
In Summary: The trip brought home our desire to live at least part of the year amid mountains, streams, woods, and open skies. We have taken a baby step in that direction with a small apartment in Colorado, and only time will tell if that is enough … or too much? … with our kids spread from coast to coast, and ongoing jobs and life changes for family members in all four of our time zones. Meanwhile, we have the memories of this brilliant road trip, which I would have been happy to continue for at least a few more weeks. Responsibilities lured us back to our humid home, but we’ve already agreed a western journey will be a permanent fixture on our summer docket.
There are no guns or robberies in this story, no convertibles, and, I’m sorry to say, no trysts with a young Brad Pitt. We are no Thelma and Louise; we’re just L and L on our own girls’ road trip with plenty of laughs, a whole lot of talking, maybe a little bit of wine, more than a few foodstuffs that rarely pass our lips on a regular basis, and even a few “daring” border crossings.
In pre-pandemic January, my friend L flew from Chicago to Houston to take a four-day road trip with me into the middle of Texas. As a little background, L is one of those people who is interested in everything (that is a good thing), and the mere mention of a place or activity, no matter where it was heard or read, can send her off on a quest. (I still thank our lucky stars for her voracious guidebook reading, or we would have never screeched to a halt a few decades ago to herd our six kids into the best sheep farm ever in New Zealand!)
With that in mind, you must know that this trip largely came about because of an article L saw on a plane in American Way magazine, in which the tiny city of Del Rio, Texas, was featured. She was convinced by the flattering multi-page spread that Del Rio had to be the best kept travel secret ever, “a peach of a town” she kept calling it, and she wanted to make it the centerpiece of our trip.
I did some research of my own and quickly determined that the small town on the Mexican border sounded like a good place to drop in. For a day. Max. It did have some appealing draws – new art galleries and craft beer bars in the small downtown, a curious mix of vegetation and wildlife based on its location, and nearby, incredible prehistoric cave drawings and an International Dark Sky Sanctuary. A nice bonus would be a walk over the bridge linking Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, if we got our way. (Lots of people tried to dissuade us from getting our way. Before we left, we got the usual friends-and-family lectures on U.S./Mexico border towns, and even the front desk employees at our hotel looked at us in dismay when we asked how we could make the crossing. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)
We left Houston on a weekday morning, hoping to get to San Antonio for lunch and Del Rio for dinner. We planned to spend the evening and the next day in that peach of a town, and then move on to Fredericksburg, Enchanted Rock, Dripping Springs, Luckenback, and every farm-to-market road we could find on the way back home. While many of those places deserve to be, and have previously been, chronicled here, the rest of today’s story is all about Del Rio and its Mexican sister city, Acuña.
Our first glimpse of the magazine-lauded qualities of Del Rio turned out to be the bright yellow Julio’s tortilla chip factory and restaurant, right on our route into town. We resisted a stop, but we did succumb to a supermarket purchase of a jumbo-sized bag of the famous chips to power our ride the next day. (As a side note, there were also Buc-ee’s sea salt caramels, home-made chocolate chip cookies from another hotel, and a few more wonderfully unhealthy treats consumed along the way.)
We “explored” downtown Del Rio that evening; almost everything was closed, but we did find a great little craft brewpub with good beer, some comfort food, and most important, a couple of young girls who worked there who assured us that a walk into Acuña the next day would be safe and fun.
Wednesday dawned wet and dreary, with a heavy mass of swollen clouds nearly touching the ground, so we had to ditch our bird sanctuary hiking plans and replace them with a nature museum and a drive across the Lake Amistad dam – half in the U.S. and half in Mexico – in case we got rained out (or chickened out) of the walk across the border later.
Having accidentally driven into Mexico from El Paso a number of years ago, and then getting stuck there for hours trying to get back into the U.S. with a rental car and a minor daughter with no ID, I was a little more skittish than necessary about driving past the sign that warned “LAST CHANCE TO TURN AROUND BEFORE ENTERING MEXICO.”
So we made mistake #1. We parked outside that gate and walked in. It appeared that only vehicles could go to the right, so we went left … apparently into an official area where entry was forbidden. We walked for about two minutes before we were approached by the border police and pointed right back out to our car.
Still confused but slightly emboldened by the instructions he gave us, we got in the car, crossed our fingers, and went through the official lane to cross the bridge. A quarter of the way across the bridge/dam, we saw a parking area on the side and got out to see what we could see. Almost before we saw anything, shots rang out, a peppery rat-a-tat-tat that sent us jumping back into the car and hightailing it down the ramp into the U.S entry checkpoint, our minds full of violent scenarios.
The immigration officer was semi-amused. “Those were shots to ward off the turkey buzzards,” she smiled, barely. “Did you at least get to the commemorative plaque in the middle?”
“Umm, no,” we replied sheepishly. “If we actually enter Mexico, will we be able to get back in here easily?”
“It’s hardly a border; you’ll be in the middle of the bridge. You can park and then turn around. I’ll be here,” she added. I could sense her trying hard not to roll her eyes.
Since there were no other travelers and no lines, we finally went to stand with one foot in each country, straddling the Rio Grande, sort of, and contemplating the forbidding terrain on either side of the river. Re-entry was quick and easy, as promised, and we were on our way back to Del Rio.
We couldn’t really say that was going to Mexico, could we? Googlemaps and some other online sleuthing led us next to a bleak parking lot on the U.S. side of the Del Río-Ciudad Acuña International Bridge. We waded through giant mud puddles, slogged for a mile down the berm of a 4-lane highway, crossed the bridge, and finally reached an impressively large and modern Port of Entry complex. We went through customs with about two other visitors on foot, wound through a series of corridors, and landed in Acuña just before noon.
The welcome sign suggested it was party time, but unfortunately, the town was a bit less colorful, with only a few little bodegas and kitschy shops open for business. (To be fair, the weather was truly dismal.) We strolled up and down the main drag, Miguel Hidalgo, and finally lucked into the one spot we’d read about for lunch: La Fama, a more modern bar/restaurant with a homey atmosphere and good food and beer.
In the past, Acuña apparently had quite a late-night scene; a string of clubs and bars drew crowds of students and others, and during the day, citizens of both towns crossed the border for work and school. Even though much of the after-dark revelry ramped down with the rise of warring cartels, the cities avoided much of the drug-fueled violence of other border towns, and today, as in many places along the Rio Grande, Ciudad Acuña and Del Rio still have a symbiotic and easy relationship.
Hundreds of workers continue to go over the border and back each day for work, children are driven to private schools on the other side, and the economy is inseparably integrated. The mayors of the two towns are friendly, cooperating daily on big things, like international trade and infrastructure projects, as well as smaller details like easy border crossings for their residents. It all works just fine, as far as we could discern. No big walls, no big deal, just the way it should be.
By mid-afternoon, we had crossed back into the U.S. for the third time (the immigration officer asked us why we had two stamps in the last four hours!) and were on our way north into the better-known Hill Country. Although the next three days had many highlights of their own, I had to admit the unlikely destination L had discovered in her in-flight reading ended up being the part of the road trip that stuck with us longest. There’s a whole other world out there, and a lot of it is just a short road trip away from home!
For the second time in little over a year, I point my car northwest on a 1000-mile journey, and then retrace it, through some of the bleakest land in the country. There and back in 32 hours last year, and there and back again a few weeks ago, this time sweetened in the middle by a most joyous event: the birth of our first grandchild. That the trip follows on the heels of a solid two months sequestered at home makes it all the more liberating, and I savor the trip almost as much as the heart-bursting reason behind it.
Like the previous trip, I do this one alone and almost in silence – no podcasts for me, or playlists, or even the radio most of the way (there really is no radio reception most of the way!). These are the times my thoughts get to meander as far as the land does, without limits or defined edges.
My mind yawns open like the arroyos out the window; the past and future wander into my head while the present plays out amid the rocking horse oil pumps, the wind turbines, the fields of grain and cattle, the ridges and folds and dusty flats that are palpable beneath my wheels. I point my phone camera out the bug-splattered windows over and over again, trying to capture a strange bliss I could never properly explain.
I savor mile after mile, hour upon hour, of the Texas Panhandle – beige and chalky, then red and earthy, reeking of cows, and beaten by wind. For long stretches I hear what sounds like a thin metal whip flaying the roof of my vehicle. It abates as I slow from 80 mph to pass through tiny, rural towns – a few battered houses, a feed store, a gas station from the ‘50s, a BBQ joint, a Chinese or Mexican restaurant from time to time.
In a few spots, I might catch a glimpse of a strip joint like the (surely beachy) Player’s Bikini Club, or perhaps a big-ass gun shop, or an ad for a steak the size of New York, none of which feature in my daily life and are therefore endlessly amusing to me.
In a matter of seconds, I’m through these towns and back on the open road. Many people would find the sere landscape dull or depressing, but I find its scoured featurelessness profoundly pleasurable. It’s a blank backdrop for old camp songs, writing ideas, life-plan reviews, a phone call here and there. I barely need to turn the wheel, and the hours effortlessly slip by.
I’ve started from barely above sea level, and by the time I hit Amarillo, Texas, I’m at 3000 feet, riding the high plains ever higher, to almost 4000 feet by the time I reach Dalhart, nearly 5000 by the Texas-New Mexico state line. I never feel I’ve left flat ground, though, inching through those feet of ascent ever so slowly.
Deeper into New Mexico, the gradual rise becomes steeper; by the time I get to Raton Pass and thunder down into Colorado, I am at almost 8000 feet, and both before and after the pass, my views become more three-dimensional and colorful. Late spring growth softens the land, and pine trees begin to replace the drier juniper, cottonwood and mesquite varieties. Distant peaks poke out of the corrugated foreground, some still snow-covered, adding a depth of field that I welcome in spite of my contentment with the monotony.
There are even some less natural sparks of color from time to time. My favorite is Cadillac Ranch, a field of half-buried cars outside of Amarillo, a scene I have wanted to see on the first three passes over this route. On the way home, I finally go out of my way to stop.
The installation is surreal – a garish row of spray-painted Caddies with their tail fins rising out of a sun-bleached cow pasture – and I roam the perimeter as much as I can, avoiding the painters who are encouraged to make their own marks on the “sculpture” of ten cars, originally buried nose-down here in 1974.
It is an hour before sundown on a scorching evening; the western rays are blinding, and the hot wind out in the field has me parched within minutes. Still, I walk slowly back to the car, prolonging what will be my last night in the vast emptiness.
As I drive closer to low ground, humidity, and the big city, I don’t want the trip to end. I choose an alternate way into Houston, sticking to smaller roads that bisect horse farms and white-fenced meadows. And then I am back to the 13-lane Katy Freeway, the gauntlet I must run to get home. Muscles tensed and brain overloaded for the first time in weeks, I finally snap the radio on. Already buffeted by stimuli, I figure a little more won’t hurt. I’ll stay in overdrive in my lush green surroundings for the next month, and then … I’ll make the same soothing trip all over again!
One Foot Out the Door 