Diane and I returned to Columbia from our
visit to the East Coast in early September 2014. We were delighted to hear we had new
neighbors, Julie and Lydia. Julie was on
the faculty at the University of Missouri School of Music. Lydia was writing a memoir about their years
traveling all over the world with The Colorado String Quartet which they founded. Julie had been first and Lydia second
violist.
Since we had always used Diane’s 1992 Camry
for our road trips, it had a lot of miles.
Diane had recently replaced it with Libby Gill’s 2002 Toyota Camry. It was time to break it in on a long driving
trip with Diane at the wheel every mile of the way. Not driving long hours each day meant that it
would take us two and a half days to get to Moab and two days to return to
Columbia. The trunk in Diane’s new car
was large enough to accommodate a big cooler along with our luggage and
traveling gear. We visited the deli at
Schnucks and purchased slices of turkey, roast beef, ham, salami and provolone
cheese. Diane prepared celery, carrots,
zucchini and cherry tomatoes. She brought
along avocado to spread on our whole wheat buns and lettuce, and we had
Missouri apples for dessert. She also
made up a large quantity of what we call gorp, consisting of roasted sunflower
seeds, roasted pumpkin seeds, walnuts and dried cranberries to use with the
yogurts the motels usually have on their continental breakfasts. In addition, we had enough bananas to get us
to Utah. We were prepared for our traveling
breakfasts and lunches.
The first day, we stopped at a beautiful
rest stop in Kansas, just past Topeka, and had our lunch while seated at a shaded
picnic table. That night, we stayed at a
Hampton Inn in Garden City, Kansas and ate dinner at a nearby Applebee’s. The next day, we stopped at a visitor’s
center in Colorado on Highway 50 and
again had a nice picnic table and beautiful weather. Proceeding to Alamosa, we stopped for gas,
and that is when we encountered our first bad weather. When I came out of the bathroom, I spotted
Diane sitting in the car at a pump with hail and rain pounding down. I could only wait for the storm to pass
before joining her. We then drove on
into the mountains toward Wolf Creek Pass at 10,856 feet. The snow began, the traffic slowed and, as we
approached the pass, it came to a standstill.
Snow plows whizzed by, as well as a state trooper with lights
flashing. Fortunately, the highway was
wide with big shoulders, so we felt safe, although Diane was having visions of
us stuck up there all night and forced to pee in the snow. I, having spent many years as a young girl
traveling through the mountains, was calm and patient. After about one-and-a-half hours, the traffic
started moving. Eventually, we were
through the pass and starting down the mountain.
First view of the mountains
Going over Wolf Creek Pass
We spent the night in Durango at a Best
Western. There were lots of restaurants
downtown, and we decided on Tequilas. As
we walked down the street toward it, several young women ran out of the
restaurant and by us. The owner was
standing at the door looking in our direction, and when we got there, he told
us the women had left without paying. We
went on inside and both of us had pulled and/or chunk pork dishes. Diane’s had hot peppers, so we put the
leftovers in two separate containers for future lunches.
It was only a three-hour drive from Durango
to The Needles district of the Canyonlands National Park. We passed
Church Rock on the way. The Canyonlands
were formed by the Colorado River and had often visited by the native tribes which
left many signs of their presence. On
the road to the Visitor’s Center, we stopped by Newspaper Rock, known for
hundreds of petroglyphs, one of the largest, best preserved and easily accessed
group of symbols in the Southwest. The petroglyphs featured a mixture of human,
animal, material and abstract forms.
Church Rock
Newspaper Rock
After stopping at lookouts along the way,
we saw a film at the Visitor’s Center and had lunch at a picnic table
overlooking the scenery. We drove to the
Cave Spring Trail that led to a historic cowboy camp and prehistoric
pictographs. At one point, there was a
ladder to climb up onto some rocks where the Trail continued. I went up the ladder, but decided it was too
precarious to step off onto the rocks, so came back down. Diane was very happy about that. We drove back to the main road and continued
by the Wooden Shoe Arch Overlook to the Big Spring Canyon Overlook.
Wooden Shoe Arch
We finally left the Canyonlands and drove
on to Moab and our lodging for the next three nights, the Desert Hills
B&B. It was a few miles south of
downtown Moab in a residential area. We
had the Sunset Room, a big room on the second floor with pine furniture and a
two-sink modern bathroom. We settled in
and then drove into town to eat. I
remembered this area from family trips in the 1950s when it was not a tourist
destination but rather the center of uranium mining. Geiger counters could be purchased in the
drug stores then. This day the main
street had a lot of red dirt that had washed down from the surrounding
hillsides during some recent, heavy rain.
For our first night’s evening meal, we chose Twisted Sistas, a new-age
type restaurant. I had caramelized
scallops served over a black bean & corn salsa on a bed of mixed greens,
drizzled with a smoked chipotle cream sauce, lemon zest and chopped green
onions. Diane had grilled eggplant
topped with a red pepper, artichoke and olive tapenade, served with sautéed
spinach & garlic mashed potatoes and a parmesan crisp.
We had our first breakfast at the B&B,
cooked by the Italian-born husband. The
couple who owned the B&B had their own chickens, so there were fresh eggs
aplenty. We headed to the Visitor Center
at Arches National Park. We planned on
stopping at most of the viewpoints.
After winding up several switchbacks, we arrived at the La Sal Mountains
Viewpoint. The weather was cloudy with
rain threatening. We stopped at the
Courthouse Towers Viewpoint that had views of The Organ, Three Gossips, Sheep
Rock and the Tower of Babel. Next,
opposite The Great Wall, was the Petrified Dunes Viewpoint. We went by the Balanced Rock and turned into
the road to The Windows Section. We
parked, pottied, and proceeded up the path to the North Window. The steps were partially covered with the
sand/soil that had washed down from earlier rains. We made it to the top and sat down to drink
some water. It started sprinkling, and
we could see lightning and rain headed our way.
After taking pictures of the North Window and the Turret Arch, we headed
back down the path.
North Window
Turret Arch
We continued our drive, but the Wolfe Ranch
Road to the Delicate Arch was closed due to flooding. We stopped at the Salt Valley Overlook and
the Fiery Furnace Viewpoint and continued on to the Devils Garden Trailhead. It was still raining, so we sat and ate our
lunch in the car. We drove around and
found a parking spot that was close to the toilets and the Trailhead. The path was in pretty good shape, but had
some puddles and muddy areas. It was
mainly flat, but had some ups and downs.
We walked to where we could get a good view of the Landscape Arch, a
spectacular ribbon rock, whose span is more than a football field in
length. We stopped to take a picture of
the Balanced Rock on the way back to Moab and our B&B.
Landscape Arch
Balanced Rock
We had made reservations at a restaurant
our B&B had recommended, the Desert Bistro.
It was off the main street and, no doubt, the most pretentious
restaurant in this tourist town. We
shared a butter-leaf salad with fresh red pears, jicama and candied walnuts, in
a pomegranate-raspberry dressing. I had
Handmade Agnolotti pasta filled with parmesan, asiago and truffled mushrooms,
served in a marsala wine sauce with portabella, shitake and oyster mushrooms, a
hint of lemon, balsamic and sage. Diane
had Gorgonzola encrusted filet of beef tenderloin with roasted tomato
demi-glace, roasted garlic mashed potatoes and sautéed vegetables.
We decided to spend the next morning
focused on more Indian rock art. There
were two types: (1) petroglyphs (motifs that are pecked, ground, incised,
abraded or scratched on the rock surface) and (2) pictographs (paintings or
drawings on the rock surface). There was
a site just around the corner from our B&B called the Golf Course Rock
Art. The panel ran from ground level up
to about 30 feet on the high rock wall.
The area was about 90 feet wide.
There were human figures, such as the ‘Moab Man.’ On the far right we saw what is called the
reindeer and sled. We were disappointed
to see a moderate amount of recent graffiti.
Next was Kane Creek Drive that ran along the east side of the Colorado
River. There were several sites, but
they also had a lot of graffiti. We next
went up Utah Scenic Byway 279, or Potash Road, along the west side of the
Colorado River. We passed by many men
and women doing rock climbing. Then we
saw the best site yet. The soil on the
bottom part of the bluff had been removed to put in the highway, so the
petroglyphs were up high where the top of the soil used to be. The carvings started 25 to 30 feet above the
road, and therefore there was no graffiti.
Diane took lots of pictures.
‘Moab Man’ on the left
Rock Climbers
Petroglyphs
above the Colorado River
The deli at the Moab City Market had a
great salad bar which we used for our lunches the next couple of days. We found some picnic tables in a roadside
camping ground and had our lunch. We
then went to a pier along the Colorado River and boarded a jet-boat catamaran
for our three-hour round-trip cruise down the Colorado River. Despite the recent rains, the depth of the
river was only about two to three feet, making it treacherous for our
boat. At one point, the boat got weeds
in the jets, and it took about 20 minutes for our driver to get them out and
continue. It was good to see the sights
from the river. We saw some arches that
we would not have seen otherwise as well as the ‘Thelma and Louise Point’ in
the Dead Horse Point State Park (named after the movie).
Arch seen from boat on Colorado River
We had dinner at The Sunset Grill which was
located 250 feet above the canyon floor.
There was a beautiful view of the cliffs, and we hoped to get pictures
of a sunset. However, when the sun
slipped down, there were no clouds to produce color and it disappeared quickly
behind the cliffs. I had large gulf
shrimp sautéed with white wine, creamy butter, garlic, shallots and a hint of
lemon. Diane had Idaho’s famous Snake
River trout sautéed in butter and flavored with a blend of herbs and spices.
View of the cliffs over Moab
The next day we had a six-hour drive to
Denver taking the scenic route along the Eastern side of the Colorado
River. The Cisco cutoff to I-70 enabled
us to stop at a Colorado Welcome Center for our salad-bar lunch. It was good to see Joe and Karen at their
house in Denver where our guest room had new flooring. We had ‘wine hour’ and then a nice supper of
grilled pork tenderloin and red peppers.
The next day, Joe and Karen drove us into
the mountains west of Denver to Evergreen for lunch at a winery, Creekside
Cellars. Diane and I both had soup and
salad, and, of course, shared a bottle of wine with Joe and Karen. We spent the rest of the day at their home
with the dogs, viewing the new plantings in their backyard.
On our last day in Denver, we took the
light rail into the newly renovated Union Station in downtown Denver to meet
Greg Westwood whose parents were friends of ours in Columbia. We walked to Shells and Sauce for lunch. I had Eggs Carbonara: Penne pasta tossed in bacon, asparagus and
organic peas in a white wine cream topped with two eggs over easy. Diane had Southwest Buffalo Sausage Burrito: Caramelized onions, peppers, spinach, eggs,
cheddar and roasted potatoes topped with green chili and chipotle aioli. We then went back to Joe and Karen’s before
heading to the Denver Botanic Garden at dusk to enjoy the lighted Chihuly
installation. It was reminiscent of the
one we had seen in St. Louis.
Karen, Joe and me in front of a Chihuly
display
The next morning, we headed back East going
as far as Hutchinson, Kansas. The
Hampton Inn was close to the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center. We were tired of eating out, so we went to
the local Walmart and bought a chicken fresh off the rotisserie, some pita
bread and a salad from the salad bar.
There was enough chicken for our lunch the next day.
The following morning, my birthday, we
toured the Cosmosphere and it was definitely worth the visit. It provided so much background and history of
rocketry, the development of its use in WWII and the immigration to the U.S. of
the scientists who were instrumental to the development of rockets in the U.S.
Finally, we made it back to Columbia,
unpacked the car and headed to the House of Chow. I had an eggplant with tofu dish, while Diane
had the fish fillet in black bean sauce.
In less than three weeks we would be
leaving for our final international trip of the year. We wouldn’t be in town on election day in
early November, so we went to the County Clerk’s office to complete our
absentee ballots. Larry and Carl came to
our house to celebrate our first joint-marriage anniversary day with a Diane
dinner. We squeezed as many movies,
plays, and concerts in as we could. My
Muleskinners co-treasurer, Pam, came over, and we completed and filed the
quarterly Missouri ethics report.
Then it was time to leave on our trip with
Olivia for an African Safari Adventure.
When Olivia first started doing these safari trips, we didn’t think we
would want to go on one. After all, we
had a few days on safari in South Africa.
However, our friends Hanna and Dorene talked us into signing up. They had been stationed at the U.N. facility
near Nairobi, Kenya and spent a large amount of time visiting the area near the
camp where we would be on safari. They
wanted to go on this trip because of the visit to Tanzania. At the time they had lived in Kenya, they
couldn’t visit Tanzania as it wasn’t open to foreigners.
It wasn’t an easy trip getting there. We flew from St. Louis to Detroit. That’s when we ran into the first
problem. Our flight kept being
delayed. We could see the plane outside
the gate and were not told what the issue was.
Then we were allowed to board, only to be told the problem had
re-occurred and we would have to leave the plane until it was fixed. At the gate, we were offered food which
consisted of bags of snack food, which neither Diane or I ate. We were given the option of having our luggage
taken off the plane for an overnight stay, which we did not exercise. No sooner than the people who took that
option walked away, we were told the problem had been fixed and we would be
leaving. After those people and their
luggage were retrieved, the plane finally left the gate.
When we got to Amsterdam the next morning, our flight to Nairobi had to
be changed as well, making our already late at night arrival in Nairobi even
later. We needed to notify the tour
company, Micato, which was going to meet our flight, about the change. I had their telephone number and kept trying
to call them on a pay phone. It just
wasn’t working. I was getting more and more frustrated. I finally spied and
stopped a uniformed security person who told me that in Europe you have to dial
00 before the country code in order for it to go through; then I was
successful. We finally made it to
Nairobi, were picked up, taken to our hotel and collapsed into our beds.
We were up early for breakfast the next
morning and saw Hanna and Dorene. Hanna
rented a car for the day and drove us through the suburbs of Nairobi toward the
area where they had worked for the UN. It was the UN's official headquarters in
Africa. It was a Sunday and along the
way we saw many local women dressed in their Sunday best. Hanna had chosen a fine restaurant with a
lush garden setting that we explored before eating. She was a very generous person and again
picked up the bill for our meal. It was
a relaxing day after the difficult one that preceded it and got us in the mood
to enjoy the rest of the trip.
Dorene, Hanna and me at restaurant
After our first official briefing by our
Safari Director the next morning, we drove to the Giraffe Center that was
established to protect the species of giraffe found only in the grasslands of
East Africa. We were taken up onto a
platform where we were shown how to feed the giraffes. There were no trainers and the giraffes were
more aggressive than I liked, so I just watched the other Olivia guests put food
in their hands for the giraffes to eat.
We were free to walk around and view the other wildlife they had on
display.
Hanna feeding a giraffe
Our next visit was to the Karen Blixen
Estate. It was the former African home
of the Danish author, famous for her 1937 book Out of Africa which
chronicled life at the estate. The 1985
romantic movie based on the book with the same name starred Meryl Streep and
Robert Redford. We had lunch at the
Karen Blixen Coffee Gardens before visiting the Dame Daphne Sheldrick Elephant
Orphanage. The baby elephants were led
out and closely monitored by their trainers. They had already chosen their
young matriarch to follow, and it wasn’t the biggest one. We all stood behind a rope line to watch
their antics.
Baby elephants
The next day after an early breakfast, we
went to the Nairobi airport for our charter flight to Kilimanjaro Airport in
northern Tanzania. Clearing immigration,
we continued on another charter flight to an airstrip at Lake Manyara. We had
lunch at the Lake’s Serena Lodge and then our bus drove two hours to the
Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Serena Safari Lodge. It was very luxurious, strung along the rim
of the volcanic crater. Each room had
its own balcony overlooking the bottom of the Ngorongoro Crater, the world's
largest inactive, unbroken and unfilled volcanic caldera. We could understand
why Hana and Dorene wanted to come here.
Me and Diane on balcony with rim of the
caldera in the distance
In the morning, the four of us, Hanna,
Dorene, Diane and I boarded a 4-wheel-drive vehicle for the trip over the rim
and down into the caldera. Once there,
our guides tracked animals on the floor of the crater. It is a very large area, between 10 and 12
miles across with an area of 102 square miles.
We saw lots of lions sleeping in the grass, their distended bellies
indicating they had no problem finding food.
We saw our first male lion, the large African buffalo and spotted
hyenas. We also saw some interesting
birds: Kori bustard, secretary bird, black hawk and black headed heron. After our catered picnic lunch on the crater
floor, we returned to the lodge to have a cocktail on the terrace and view the
sunset.
Male lion with full belly
African buffalos with herd of Gazelle
antelope
Hippopotamuses
Spotted hyena
Secretary bird
Kori bustard
Wedding party at hotel
Leaving the Ngorongoro Conservation Area
behind, we started the drive to our next safari. We watched the local tribal boys herding
their goats as we first headed for a visit to the museum at Olduvai Gorge
founded by Mary Leakey. She was an archaeologist and paleoanthropologist who
conducted research in the gorge for decades and discovered a skull fragment
belonging to an early hominin. A guide gave
us a tour of the museum, and we tried to digest as much of the information as
we could.
Sign with name of museum in Swahili
After a picnic lunch we continued on and
entered the famous Serengeti National Park, driving through the plains looking
for game. The species of antelope we saw
were gazelles, red hartebeest and impalas.
In addition to many of the same animals we had seen in the crater, we
saw a cheetah, giraffes, a troop of baboons, a herd of wildebeest, both a
marabou and a saddle-billed stork and several red-headed vultures. We settled into another luxurious lodge where
we had dinner.
Gazelle
Red hartebeest
Impala with its parasitic oxpecker at work
Herd of wildebeest
Cheetah
Giraffe had to really bend over for this
tasty bite
Elephant mother with babies
We spent the entire next day on the plains
of the Serengeti looking for wild game to shoot with cameras. I should have mentioned before now what good
spotters Hanna and Dorene were! They
often called out an animal or bird’s name before the guides in our
vehicle. We saw many of the animals from
the day before, like the giraffes munching on their favorite leaves on the
acacia trees and the herds of wildebeest.
We did see more of the big migrating herds that the Serengeti is known
for. We saw cape buffalos, black-faced
vervet monkeys, lions lounging in the shade, a giant eland and little dik-dik
antelope and a wart-hog. An easily
visible leopard laying on a tree branch caused a traffic jam of 4-wheelers full
of tourists with binoculars and cameras.
There were more birds I could identify: a lilac-breasted roller,
Ruppell’s vulture, tawny eagle and black-headed weaver.
Giant eland antelope
Dik-dik antelope
Giraffe strolling by leopard in the tree
Traffic jam
Lilac-breasted roller
Elephants having fun
Giraffe-peckers
Warthog
We arrived at the Serengeti Serena Lodge in
the late afternoon where each couple had their own luxurious round-thatched
cottage. The front looked out over the
plains, while the back was an acacia forest.
Our bed was heavily netted. We would soon be saying goodbye to Tanzania,
but we were very glad to have been able to visit here.
Cottage
We
had breakfast and then transferred to an airstrip for a charter flight to the
Masai Mara, a large game reserve in Kenya.
It is just over the border from Tanzania and the Serengeti. After a stop to clear customs and
immigration, we drove to our tented camp with a short game drive along the way.
We spent three nights and parts of four days at this location.
Airplane to the Masai Mara
This was a different experience from our
time in Tanzania where we stayed in resort-like lodges. Although we were in a tent, it was a more
luxurious tent than the one in South Africa.
The zippers that opened sections of the tent were kept fully zipped at
all times, so we didn’t need a wooden box to protect items. On the other side of the dirt path that ran
in front of our tent there was a river where we saw crocodiles. We not only saw the many hippopotamuses, but
often heard them first thing in the morning.
Not our usual alarm clock sound. They
were loud! It was not unusual for us
to observe fresh paw prints on the dirt path to breakfast. Lions were curious animals, and we had been
warned to keep to our tents during the night.
Me outside tent looking through binoculars
Our front porch view
On our afternoon game drive, we saw a pair
of beautiful crowned cranes and the unusual looking saddle-billed stork. Some crocodiles were enjoying a mud
bath. A leopard was trying to relax, but
started getting upset with the watchers and left. A lion was relaxing while being watched. A multi-generational group of lions looked
more laidback.
Crowned cranes
Saddle-billed stork
Crocodiles having a mud bath
Leopard trying to relax, getting upset and
leaving
Lion trying to relax while being watched
We had an early morning game drive. It was enjoyable to watch a male lion walking
with a couple of youngsters. While
driving in the area of the camp, we saw the following two new scenes. There was the usual complement of buzzards on
a carcass, but what was unusual was seeing a tall marabou stork right there
among them. We saw our first courtship
fight with two impalas butting heads with each other and hippopotamuses almost
hidden below some lilies. We enjoyed
watching some baby baboons having fun.
Papa taking the babies for a walk?
Buzzards and a marabou stork on a carcass
Impalas butting heads
Hippopotamuses in the lilies
Baby baboons having fun
The new animal sightings included a pack of
mongooses, waterbuck antelopes and a jackal.
There were many new birds: grey-crowned crane, orange-throated longclaw
and African jacana.
Banded mongooses
Waterbuck herd
Jackal
African fish eagle
African jacana looking like it could walk
on water
Diane and I, along with our friends Hana
and Doreen, signed up for a trip to Lake Victoria, shared by Kenya, Tanzania
and Uganda. It is Africa's largest lake
by area, the world's largest tropical lake (surface temperature constantly
above 39 degrees Fahrenheit), and the world's second-largest freshwater lake by
surface area after Lake Superior. We
flew 40 minutes over the Soit Oloololo Escarpment (long, steep slope that
separates land areas having different heights) and hundreds of Maasai villages
on the way. At the lake, we arrived at
the Takawiri Island Resort where we boarded motor boats. The boats slowly went along the shore line
where the women were washing clothes and sometimes themselves. Men were mending fishing nets, preparing to
go out on the lake and bringing cattle to the water to drink. The lake has 3,000 islands and our boat
headed toward one. It sped over the
waves, slapping up and down against the water, jolting my body in a most
painful way. Finally, we got to the
island, the boat began to slowly circle around it, and I could relax. I saw an iguana sunning on a rock and the
following birds: reed, white-breasted, and black cormorants, a sacred ibis,
little and great-white egrets, great-white pelican, fish eagle, African pied wagtail
and yellow weaver. Then there was the
painful return at high speed to the lodge for lunch. I was very glad to relax
with a glass of white wine and eat Nile perch freshly caught in Lake Victoria. It had an almost boneless white flesh that
was particularly good eating. After a
short visit with some local children, we flew back to the Maasai Mara for our
final night in Kenya.
Airplane to the Lake
Women washing clothes
Cormorants
Iguana
The following morning, we saw our last
wildlife on the way to the air strip where we boarded a flight crossing over
the Great Rift Valley on the way to Nairobi.
The African rift valleys are where important paleoanthropological
discoveries have been made and why they are often considered the “cradle of
mankind”. After landing in Nairobi, we
visited with our Olivia friends in the Hotel Fairmont dayroom for several hours
until it was time to leave for our first flight on our 22-hour journey back to
Columbia.
At home, we found that the election results
were mostly what we had expected.
Republicans won the state auditor and our U.S. House race. Democrats won all the Boone County government
races and the two Missouri House races that were entirely within the city. However, Republicans won three others that
were extended into the rural part of the county. This was not boding well for Democrats in the
largely rural parts of our state. The
good news was that on November 7 U.S. District Judge Ortrie Smith ruled that
Missouri’s 2004 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage violated the
U.S. Constitution. Smith’s ruling came one day after the 6th U.S. Court of
Appeals in Cincinnati upheld bans on gay marriage in four other states, setting
the stage for possible review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Early in December, I had surgery on my
right hand to remove a glomangioma which was a benign growth in the palm of my
hand that for several years had been painful and sensitive to pressure. Since I am right-handed, it was an awkward
period of time until I could get the bandages off. Christmas eve, our old friend, MF, and our
new friends and neighbors, Julie and Lydia, joined us for dinner, all
contributing dishes for the meal. 2014 was
a good year. I was glad we had the
health and energy to accomplish all that we had done.