China 2nd Impressions

No, you did not miss the first impressions.  That will be a future post because first impressions mostly involved face masks and utter shock that anything can grow here.

But after that first week of jet lag and getting nothing done because of the Chinese National Day holiday, we had a spectacular clear day to go see the Forbidden City and this lovely little lake.

Despite my shock that anything can grow here, the produce is actually quite tasty.  And I don't just mean food prepared with Chinese flavors.  The raw stuff at the market SMELLS good, LOOKS good, TASTES good.  I had my first food mix-up at a restaurant near the embassy.  I ordered the grass-cross-box claw 苦瓜， instead of the grass-cabinet claw, 黄瓜，which turned out to be bitter melon instead of zuchini.  Everything else tastes better here, so maybe bad-tasting bitter melon would too.  But no.  I don't care how healthy it is supposed to be, it is not something I will ever eat again if I can help it.  The kung pao chicken, however, was tasty and there was plenty of it for both of us.

You've all heard that Chinese safety standards are lacking.  Here's an example.  The splash pad at the playground is just for looks.   The sign warns, "Do not enter the fountain area!"  The kids can probably handle the water pressure, but the electric shock would be a nasty surprise.

Now it is the weekend.  After two weeks of no internet, I think this picture is self-explanatory.  My friend posted almost the exact same picture after her move to Abu Dhabi: empty house, embassy furniture, kids lined up glued to electronics, animals interspersed, laptops on laps.  Winston explained that this is why they are called "laptops."

Tomorrow is Sunday, which means Dunkin' Donuts around the corner and then Monday will be back to work and school, scouts, Chinese and Bible Study.  Normal life, in other words.

 

Yellowstone

Welcome to Yellowstone!  There are buffalo on the road. The elk and antelope and moose were not so bold and stayed in the meadows.

We started the trip swimming in Pagosa Springs with Sam and Pearl and ended it swimming in Yellowstone.  I really wanted my kids to get to swim in a hot spring, because it is such a memorable experience. There is a hot spring within walking distance of the place we stayed in Taos, but we turned right instead of left and couldn’t find it in the undergrowth, even though it is supposedly the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Plus half the places we stayed were named for hot springs: Pagosa Springs, Colorado Springs, and Rock Springs, for example. Supposedly at Yellowstone, there is one spot way up north where a hot spring meets a cold river.  We never found it.  Correction: there are dozens of places where hot springs meet cold rivers, but swimming is not allowed. It IS allowed in the lake if you like that Nordic cold dip experience.  Our book listed the Firehole River as the only other swimming spot.

Up-river are the rocky rapids.

Downriver was a glassy pool, dammed by a natural rock ridge.

In between was a cleft between two deep, deep rocks where the current shoots through with hardly a ripple on the surface.  Wyatt’s first project was to find a log and make a bridge. You can see the current trying to rip it out of his hands.

I laughed so hard as that log inched its way across the rocky landscape, dragging its tail like Jabba the Hut.

Success!  There were two 30-something–year-old guys shooting the gap.  They swam up against the current and then rode the current back.

Those guys jumped off a low cliff, too, which would have been fine in Oman, but I asked the kids not to since there were signs up everywhere saying not to. That is Wyatt  in orange and Tristan at the far left.

Once they had exhausted the fun to be had with the bridge, and gotten over the reluctance to swim in their underwear, they went in.  Wyatt first, of course, then Tristan, then Winston.  The water was not as cold as you would expect, having had thousands of gallons per minute of boiling water pumped into it by the Grand Prismatic Spring. But for a rainy day in October, it was still cold.  I don’t have pictures of the Grand Prismatic Spring, probably because it actually was raining at that point.  It is the famous brilliant blue one with red streaks running out like solar flares.  It was almost completely obscured by steam, but the steam glowed pale blue from underneath.  Link to gorgeous photo

Where was I this whole time? Nursing the dog bite and realizing just how much you need two hands in rocky terrain. I couldn’t even use it to steady myself. The injury is better, by the way, with just two scabs and skin peeling from where it swelled.

We stayed in West Yellowstone at a hotel because of the rain, and had breakfast at Ernie’s bakery.  The wi-fi was OK and the bear claws were great.  They had slivered almonds stuck in like claws.  Thank goodness for on-line school, because I would have felt guilty asking to stop in every town at the coffee shop, but this way, we had to. The last place we stopped was “The Fix, Espresso and Basque Food.” The Basque Country is a northern region of Spain, and the girls there said their dad was Basque.  They had every flavor imaginable of Italian Soda, which was a nice break from hot chocolate for the boys.

Like the Grand Canyon, the Yellowstone Gorge doesn’t look like much in pictures.  Even in person, you can’t tell how big it is.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Close-up of the terraces at Mammoth

And of course, Old Faithful.  We saw a nice video about the pocket of magma under Yellowstone that acts like a giant boiler. They said, “Here at Yellowstone, you are closer to the forces that shape the earth than anywhere else.”  How’s that for adding drama to your sight-seeing!

Favorite Stop for Lunch and Strangest Campsite: Capitol Reef, Utah

Today’s post was supposed to be about Yellowstone, but all I can think of as I look at the pictures is what a pain the National Parks are to deal with.  You can pretty much count on NOT camping within the park, which means you go in and check and then back-track out of the park to bounce up a Forest Service road looking for a flat spot with some shelter and preferably some water.  We were ready for anything, of course.  You all know how competent Troy is.

So here is a typical day. After a morning of packing and schoolwork, we arrived at Capitol Reef. 

Our trusty guide book said that the valley here was established as an orchard and you could still pick your own fruit.  Pick-your-own-fruit is probably my kids’ next favorite pass-time after chase-each-other-with-sticks.

We stopped at the ranger station.  Now they call it a visitor center.  I guess I won’t talk about that either.  All I want to do is complain. All the rangers and volunteers that we talked to were delightful, as you can imagine.  Many were part time and/or retired or volunteers. This young lady from Garland, Texas  is an astronomer and gave a short talk to get us all excited about the star party later that night.  She succeeded in getting us excited, but we didn’t get to go.  We did pull out the star chart through the rest of the trip.  As you can imagine, the stars were magnificent everywhere we went.

A hand-written sign pointed the way to Pick-your-own.  Then you weigh what you pick and pay by honor system. 

You only have to pay if you want to take fruit away.  What you eat while enjoying the cool shade and burbling brook and spectacular surroundings is free for the picking.  The boys got a little carried away and we still had apple caramel chewy bread in the dutch oven three weeks later.

I tried to have lunch ready on our travel days, because handling the cooler was a major ordeal.  The walls were three inches thick and it was certified to be bear resistant.  All the parks require bear canisters now to keep bears out of people’s food and hopefully out of the campgrounds.  It must be working because we saw no signs of bears anywhere.  The monster cooler weighed 30 pounds empty.  Getting ready for this trip had its ups and downs and I cried one day about eating Lipton soup for six weeks straight and crouching over a burner the size of a cupcake to prepare meals for five.  Troy did all the research for the cooler and camp stove and bought them, no expense spared.  This was such a peaceful spot that we pulled it all out and cooked anyway.

The downside was that we were racing daylight to leave the park and find a campsite.  Our book had some maps and Troy downloaded maps from the Forest Service that show some roads. To me, the National Forest areas (not all contain trees) seem vast and monotonous.  How do you find one tiny spot to camp?  Troy looked for places where a road met a creek.  That narrows it down to just a few spots. 

This was a dead-end valley of multi-colored dirt.  It was so soft that I doubted it could hold me up.  How has it lasted so long?  How does it hold itself up?  The black dots above are the boys, sinking knee-deep into the hillside.  There were four-wheeler tracks all over, so my guess is that the local kids come here to “go mudding,” or do donuts and slide around ‘til their trucks are caked an inch deep with mud.  I am sure Utah kids do that just like Texas kids do.

We had it to ourselves for the night, with nothing to hear but the river. The place was interesting, but I can’t say we wanted to dally the next day, so we did some writing homework and headed on to the next coffee shop.

Keeping score: Hively’s- 2, Wildlife- 2, and Troy finds a new hobby

The Forest Service rents out some of its ranger cabins, so we snagged one in the Bighorn National Forest for four days.  It had electricity but not running water.  I sent the boys to the creek to fetch water and Wyatt said, “What? There’s no housekeeping?” That kid is such a comedian.  We did not expect electricity, and I actually like the camping rhythm of going to bed early and getting up early.

It was cold and foggy and had rained for three days. Luckily our plan for those days was to visit Yellowstone, which is a park that requires a lot of driving in your warm, dry car, plus we got a hotel.  So, after a rainy drive through the Little Bighorn valley, famous for Custer’s Last Stand, we arrived at our cabin and stayed inside to finish our audiobook.  Thank goodness for Brandon Sanderson.  He is a prolific writer of fantasy with super-powers.  I joked that I would have to shoot myself if I had to watch or listen to one more super-hero story, but I love his pacing and characters.

The forest had a very uniform, lumber-industry tree-farm feel to it.

The advantage of young trees planted close together is that there isn’t all the underbrush to snag your bow and steal your arrows and hinder your squirrel hunting. And the squirrels are not at all wary.

Wyatt shot his first squirrel and managed not to even mark the pelt. If you see a little blood on its shoulder, the blood is actually Wyatt’s.

The shot broke its back, but it wasn’t dead yet, so Wyatt got bit.  The doctor said, “Dude, HOW did you get bit by a squirrel?  I have never seen a squirrel bite.”  It turns out that there has never been a reported case of rabies transmitted from a small rodent to a human.  Bats, raccoons, skunks and carnivorous animals, yes.  Does anyone else remember those dire warnings from childhood that if you chase the squirrels you might get bit and get rabies and die?  It was a complete exaggeration that just cost me $150.

     We overheard the nurse on the phone telling someone, “We have a woman here who got bit by a dog and a child who got bit by a squirrel.  We have to report it to the sheriff because of the case last week in Lander.”  Well, last week in Lander, I was in the ER with a nasty dog bite.  I said, “I am the case last week in Lander.”  The nurse said, “The case in Lander died from rabies.”  Yikes. That was obviously a different case. The dog in my case was healthy and had his shots and I got off with antibiotics and light duty.  The owner left it loose and unattended at his nearby camp, and I got bit when I tried to shoo it out of MY truck. He’s going to get a ticket. Troy left him a note and talked to him afterwards on the phone and he was very apologetic, a fact that made me stew about it a lot less than I would have otherwise. The deputy who took the report at the ER joked, “So the dog just thought he was going for a ride?”

Within the forest is a designated Wilderness Area.  That’s where you have to go for a more natural feel.The drive up to the trailhead was 3 miles, but we gave up on driving when we realized we were only going 3 miles an hour and could walk faster.

These boulder fields are left by glaciers as they recede, though it is more fun to be mystified by how they all got there than to know all of natures tricks.

Wyatt very carefully skinned his squirrel and barbecued it in the wood stove.  He would have eaten it, but he realized he had not quite cleaned everything properly. He was worried that Troy would be mad about the bite and the expense of the ER, especially after hunter safety class specifically warned about how people are killed every year by deer that are not actually dead yet.  Troy was not mad.  He is happy that Wyatt is learning valuable lessons on a small scale that will really matter on the large scale.  The pelt is spectacularly beautiful and perfect.

As for Troy’s new hobby, no, it is not making arrows. That is an old hobby. 

The new hobby is chopping wood.  It is like a kettle-bell workout, but practical!  He is all set to retire here and chop the entire winter wood pile by hand.  I am not convinced.

Here’s the score:  for the two squirrels we killed, we got bit twice and had two trips to the ER, though I guess the dog doesn’t really count as wildlife. 

Not enough time, and Arches National Park, Utah

It is Octover 7th, just under a month since we started, and we are officially out of time and heading back.  We made it as far north and west as Billings, Montana, where we docked at the mothership (REI) and ate chicken fried steak with fried eggs for lunch. Crater Lake, Oregon, and Redwoods, California, will have to wait for another trip.  Six weeks seemed like all the time in the world.  Now it seems like we haven’t even left the southwest.  Yes, Wyoming is 60 degrees colder than Yuma, where my aunt said it was 107, but the landscape is still scrubby sagebrush, grassy prairie, rocky cliffs and pine forests.

Winston said that he didn’t see what was so great about Arches.  A woman overheard him and said, “Well, someday, they won’t be here anymore.”

The next day we got up at dawn and headed up a popular trail.  This window is where we stopped for breakfast.  Troy has a kit with a tiny burner to make tea or oatmeal.

Winston relented and said that this place was pretty great.

The cave behind Wyatt is actually an arch, and someday, that arch will be the one people come to see.

Can you see Wyatt down in the crack?  His hand is level with Tristan’s foot and his face a bit below.  He saw a walking stick that someone had dropped and was off like a marmot in pursuit.  It looked like he would be crushed, which I know is ridiculous, so I didn’t say anything, but Troy made him come back up.

The trail went along the tops of these ‘fins’ of rock.  As you can imagine, the kids were thrilled.

And finally, the destination: the Double-O arch.

There were crowds coming up by the time we were heading back, so it’s a good thing we got a last-minute campsite in the park campground near the trailhead.

This was also the only campsite where we got to sit around a communal fire and chat with other campers.  I imagined doing a lot of that, but it has not been the case. 

Three of the nobs on the hilltop are children.  Another rock fin ran through the campground and everyone went out to watch the sunset.  Never mind the sheer 25-foot drop on either side.

The campground with the moon and Broken Arch in the background.