Don – Page 2 – Post Irony

Big Bend Thanksgiving – Day 2

By Don on Sunday, November 22, 2015

We kicked off our first full day in glorious Big Bend by taking a drive down the River Road, a Texas-famous stretch of highway along the Rio Grande. It starts in Terlingua and runs 60 miles or so to Presido. Our first stop was the tiny berg of Lajitas to visit the town’s mayor, Clay Henry. Clay is a goat. Several Clay Henrys have held the mayoralty. The folks in Lajita have many colorful stories about Clay’s hard-drinking ways.

We stopped for lunch at the general store in Lajitas and I had the best sandwich I’ve ever had anywhere anytime. Pastrami on sourdough. It was decadent offering.

A few miles up the road we stopped to check out the river and see the remains of the movie set Contrabando. Only one building remains out of the six or seven built 20 years ago. Just facades and shells with nothing on the inside, they were apparently flood damaged and falling in and were destroyed for safety reasons. I got a good photo of the church the last time we visited.

Not a lot to see so we just took some pictures of each other and moved up the road.

We stopped at the rim of Colorado Canyon just as a guided group of young people rolled up. The spot was featured in the movie “Fandango” in the scene where Kevin Costner digs up a bottle of champagne from under a rock with D-O-M scratched into it. The rock and the inscription are still there. The guide was super enthusiastic about showing his group the rock. They were many and loud and climbing all over the place.

The River Road twisting away across the desert.

We eventually stopped at Closed Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park for a short late-afternoon hike. Closed Canyon is a classic slot canyon affair that is quite quite a bit narrower than it is deep.

The canyon acts as an open-air drain to the Rio Grande for a closed in valley separated from the river by a high ridge. The water must really roar through there when it rains in the right spot.

Like the slots in Arizona, the canyon features a series of progressively higher pour overs. Gina and I hung back while Abby and I continued down as far as we dared. We finally got to a drop that we thought would be hard for Abby to ascend, so we turned around.

I got her to make a rare pose for me at the top of the pour over.

Big Bend National Park traveling Vacation

A Big Bend Thanksgiving – Day 1

By Don on Saturday, November 21, 2015

I talked Gina into going to Big Bend National Park in 1996 and it was so hot and miserable it took 14 years to convince her to return. Now I can’t keep her away from the place. We returned for the third time since that ill-fated mid-90’s trip over the week of Thanksgiving. After the 10-day trip we declared it our best vacation of all-time. (When I say “we” I mean Gina and me. Abby thinks our trip earlier this year to Universal Studios in Orlando has been the best vacation.) We even convinced Nana and Gramps to tag along with us.

I rented a fisheye lens for the trip and I thought it would be funny to break it in with a fish-face portrait. I was impressed with how Abby is really selling it.

We stopped off in Marathon, Texas, for lunch at a classic roadside diner-type establishment.

A couple of actual working cowboys came in and sat at the next table. They ordered iced coffee.

We booked three nights in the Chisos Mountain Lodge inside the park. The rest of the trip would be spent in a couple other places outside the park.

The building in which our room was located was built in the early 40s and it is clearly showing its age, but it’s all about location, right? We were right in the heart of the action and the surroundings were very peaceful. We hardly saw any of the other people staying all around us.

That evening we walked to supper at the lodge restaurant with a nearly full moon rising over the mighty 7,500 foot Casa Grande.

Arkansas Camping Photography

Orange Gloaming

By Don on Saturday, August 22, 2015

We hadn’t been able to get Daisy out since the spring so we took a chance that the late August weekend wouldn’t be sweltering and we were right. Thanks to an weak early afternoon front blowing through. The skies cleared and the sunset was pretty great. Also, it seems that the weekend after the first week of school is a great time to beat the crowds. Only two other campsites were occupied in the loop we stayed in.

Abby First Day Of School

First Day Of 4th Grade

By Don on Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Are you kidding me? Some other first days of school.

Beach Gulf Shores traveling Vacation

The Shores Of The Gulf

By Don on Sunday, July 26, 2015

We made our second trip of the year to Florida (see the documentation on our first trip.) This time we hit Gulf Shores, Ala., to do some beachin’.

The first beach trip Gina and I ever made was to Gulf Shores many years ago, but we hadn’t been back since. We have been to Pensacola and Destin a few times each and have always stayed in a regular hotel or one of those high-rise condo monstrosities. For this trip we decided we wanted to try the beach house route. Gina found The Green Heron House on a canal in the heart of Gulf Shores. It was small but quite adequate for our needs.

The house’s namesake patrolling the canal behind the house.

Being a map guy, I enjoyed that the owners had hung up a couple of historical maps of the Alabama gulf coast.

We ate a ton of great food. I remember not being impressed with Gulf Shores’ restaurant options, but this trip was pretty stellar. We discovered that the best eateries were so close by that we could get takeout, avoid the long wait, and still get back to the house with hot food. So we did that several times. S&S Seafood, which is just a takeout joint, not a restaurant, was a great find.

One day we drove over to Pensacola to tour the haunted lighthouse and eat at Crabs We Got ‘Em.

We went a little crazy one day and signed up for the local zip line madness. It was a lot of fun and pretty scary at first. We were pretty impressed that Abby just jumped off the edge of the first tower with zero hesitation.

At one of the stations we were told we needed to go down backwards with our legs propped up in the safety lines in the “torpedo position” because the headwinds would prevent us from reaching the landing area if we went in the front-facing configuration. That was a thrill. All the zip line pics except this one were shot by the venue’s staff photographer.

We capped it all off with a little night crabbing and family beach portraiture.

Abby Birthdays

She’ll Never Be 8 Again

By Don on Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Family Fun

The Big D

By Don on Monday, April 27, 2015

Gina is a big fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories and when she found out that the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas was hosting a a big interactive Sherlock exhibit, well, she just had to go. The museum has a lot of other stuff to do, like extract wheat DNA in the hands-on lab.

weather

Oh, Hail

By Don on Tuesday, April 21, 2015

We had a nice hail storm. I don’t think it was enough to warrant a new roof.

Compton Double Falls Hiking Photography Waterfall

Two Are Better Than One

By Don on Monday, April 20, 2015

I’d been meaning to get to Compton’s Double Falls for years and I finally just went ahead and did it. Hike was pretty simple: Park on Cave Mountain Road, hike downhill for a mile or so and then hike back up hill to the truck. It’s not a tough route to find and it’s even marked with orange ribbon.

I took a slightly different route on the way out and ran across this bear-shredded log. The area had a strong musky smell as if the bear had just been there. For the rest of the hike I sang and talked to let the area bears know that I came in peace for all mankind.

Vacation

Harry Freaking Potter

By Don on Monday, April 6, 2015

It turns out that there’s a couple of sections of a major theme park in Orlando, Fla., mocked up to look like locations in the Harry Potter novels. And because Abby has turned into a Harry Potter nerd in the last year and Gina has been a Harry Potter nerd since sometime in the ’90s, they hatched the idea to go to this theme park for spring break this year. I’m not a Harry Potter nerd, but this is my payback for making them go to Big Bend last year. They even convinced the aunts Jodie and Katie to come with us.

Abby has been agitating to go on a plane for three or four years and she finally got her chance. She had her fancy matching luggage and carryon so she was pretty adorable making her way through the Hell of the airport. When the miracle happened and the plane lifted off she nearly flipped her lid. “This is so cool,” she was almost trembling with excitement. She knows I don’t like to fly. She kept looking over and saying “You’re scared, aren’t you.” And then laughing manically.

So we got to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and I admit it was pretty neat what with the rides and the recreation of Hogwarts and fictional London.

The first stop was the wand shop to get our interactive wands, which are used to make things move in various areas of the park. Picking out just the right wand is a laborious process.

Abby worked out the kinks with some help from a passing witch and then gave me some spell-casting instruction.

They like to keep things authentic at TWWOHP, even down to having an actual giant as the maitre de at the Three Broomsticks tavern.

On the second or third day (it’s easy to lose track of time in paradise) we hit a giant water park with some major league water slides. I commonly deride water parks as merely big tanks of pee, but I really enjoy a good waterslide. After this place, I’ll never be able to go to Wild Urine Country again.

We hit the fictional London locale Diagon Alley at night, which is not to be missed. It made for some cool photos except for the people standing shoulder to shoulder in every inch of the place.

A giant dragon was perched on the roof of the Gringotts Bank building and every 10 minutes it belched a massive flame blast.

People would line up just before the flame time and hold their phones up to video the spectacle in the horribly wrong vertical orientation. I lined up a great shot of them and that jackass in the striped shirt walked in front of me right when the flame went off.

We ate some great food.

We got some exotic hair accessories.

We rode the Hogwarts Express a few times.

We acted silly.

And on the last day while killing time before we had to be at the airport we ate at what must be ground zero for the Orlando hipster scene, Yellow Dog Eats. It had this awesome VW Bus photo area out back.