My camera's not exactly out of service, but it is currently in a state of limbo as I'm trying to figure out the best cleaning method for the sensor. I first started noticing a fair amount of dust on the sensor (which, at apertures from about f/8 and up, aka "landscape apertures", shows up in the pictures) after we returned from the Brace family vacation to Yosemite over a year and a half ago. I used the least invasive method for clearing the dust, which also turned out to be the least effective: I used a non-compressed-air blower to "redistribute" the dust inside the body of the lens. This is the only kind of "cleaning" that won't void Canon's warranty but it was totally and completely ineffective. Had I known better, I would have driven an hour North to Irvine and walked it into the Canon Service Center to have the sensor cleaned for free. Alas ... I was lazy. And the dust wasn't make-awful-noises-at-the-computer-screen frustrating AT THE TIME. But then we went to Alaska, where I changed lenses four or five times a day (seriously). And then we crossed the country through the high desert, where I also changed lenses four or five times a day (again, seriously). And lo and behold, I ended up with dust specks all over pictures, even those taken at apertures wide enough that you'd NEVER expect to see dust specks (um, f/4.5). After extensive googling and reading recommendations on my favorite photography forum, I decided to buy a third-party kit that uses special brushes to "grab" the dust from your sensor. Of course, Canon in no way endorses using this product, but a lot of pros use it, it seems fairly intuitive to use, and I couldn't find a bad review or anyone screeching "THIS RUINED MY CAMERA!" or anything to that effect. So I bought it. And it's been sitting in our apartment unopened for a week now while I work up the nerve to perform open-heart surgery on my camera.
You can say it. I'm a pussy.
But in my defense, it's not like there's anything to take pictures of around here right now anyway. We had a bad windstorm that pulled down most of the leaves and those that are left on the branches are brown and disappointing anyway. I've been keeping myself busy by painting our apartment (yes, we're allowed) and finally getting some pictures hung on the walls. And I've been e-window shopping for new couches (finally!!) and some inexpensive decorating touches handmade by the wonderful living room entrepreneurs on etsy.com. Those will have their own post someday, maybe once they're acquired by me. =)
On a little bit of a tangent, I know I've had some recent rants about paint on facebook, but since this is a totally separate and public forum unrestricted by character limits, can I just say that I feel incredibly dumb for buying Behr paint for the last seven years? At some point in the past, it had occurred to me that non-home-improvement-superstores sold paint and maybe those specialty paint stores might be worth my time ... but then I read a Consumer's Report that said Behr was highly rated, and I didn't think twice. Even when I needed three friggin' coats. Even when their eggshell paint was so shiny it was practically a satin. Even when it was so thin the roller left streak marks on the walls.
When we moved here, I noticed there was a Sherwin-Williams contractor store just a block from our place, and there was a normal retail store two blocks from our favorite grocery store. Convenience? Check. Then I remembered that S-W sells ~quart-sized samples for $5. Samples? Check (we have a lot of windows and the light is constantly changing, so giving the colors a test run was necessary). But the clincher? S-W sells a no-VOC paint, their Harmony line, that actually got good reviews online (most no-VOC paint is really thin and doesn't cover very well). The no-VOC thing was important to me this time around because a) we have adequate but not great ventilation in our place and b) we were going to be living in the space WHILE painting. So for the sake of the cats and our own bodies, and because I'm practically transluscent and being environmentally conscious is Stuff White People Like (if you think that's an off color remark, I'm referencing the linked-to blog. So click on it. And shut yer yapper.), "green" paint was important to me. And you know what? This paint ROCKS. It covered like a dream, even on our incredibly patchy "historical" plaster walls, and despite painting in shades 3 and 4 (down from the top on a standard 7-shade color card), I only needed one coat. That's 300 sq ft of wall covered in one gallon. Needless to say, I'm so pleased I've turned into a one-woman Sherwin-Williams ad campaign.
But the painting and such isn't even the point of this post. The point of this post WAS to tell you all about the shopping odyssey on which I embarked Monday. Nick and I are in the market for new furniture, but furniture shopping options are rather limited in Dayton. Cincinnati, on the other hand, is just 35 miles South of us and has many options, so I mapped out an itinerary and headed down for the day. But the REAL genesis of this journey was to scout out an international foods store that was described to me as a "Foodie Mecca." Yes, being without gainful employment and without PROSPECT for gainful employment has left me with some free time, and I have truly enjoyed being able to get back into the kitchen and actually ENJOY cooking again. To clarify: I've always liked cooking, and I will even admit that I have spent my fair share of stolen moments during grad school dreaming not of science but rather of what I would cook up for dinner that night. And then ... somehow ... over the years, cooking dinner became an obligation, something that had to be done out of necessity, and even though you want to make something tasty and good for you, you resent the time and energy that it takes to make a nutritious meal every damn day. So to suddenly have free time to shop farmer's markets and cook around the season's produce, be able to plan out meals, etc, has been wonderful, inspirational, and energizing. And it's also gotten me thinking about cuisines that I never bothered attempting in my own kitchen in San Diego, mostly because I could run down the street and get excellent take-out. One such cuisine that I miss greatly is Thai. The best Thai food I ever found in San Diego was Antique Thai, just down the way from our place. Nick and I would typically get a soup and two entrees, and Pad Thai was almost always included in the take-out spread (although THE BEST Pad Thai in SD was, in our opinion, at the Red Pearl Kitchen downtown). Now, despite the fact that many people assured us, upon leaving San Diego, that we would always be able to find good Asian food around military bases (and other iterations of the same theme), we have yet to find or see decent Asian cuisine in these parts. Air Force bases apparently attract a different variety of international cuisine than do Navy bases. There ARE Thai restaurants here: we're mere blocks from two very popular Thai restaurants, the first of which, Thai 9, has gotten mixed reviews but appears to be the best choice in the Miami Valley and our other Thai experience has been at a place called (I kid you not) Yummy Burger - also named White Lotus - that is quite literally spitting distance from our front window and serves breakfast 24 hrs/day plus American fare such as burgers as well as the owner's specialty, Thai. Despite all of the charm of the place - its only seating is the 10 stools at the counter, and the delightfully funny owner flits about the place making all of the food in front of your eyes - the Thai was just okay. It's disheartening to watch your chef use the same curry paste from a jar that you yourself have in the fridge ... but it also convinced me that, if I were willing to use a more liberal hand with the peanut oil and source out some fresh exotic ingredients, I could probably do it better myself. So I scoured the internet for a Pad Thai recipe that was a) authentic and b) in English. And I quickly realized that the probability of finding a key ingredient, fresh tamarind, was 0.00000001% in Dayton. And I basically figured I was out of luck (I even looked into getting freeze-dried tamarind shipped here, to no avail), when I struck up a conversation with another military spouse at the local British tea shop (I'm all kinds of international, folks), and I learned of a place down in Cincinnati called Jungle Jim's. All the woman told me is that if I could find it anywhere, I'd find it there. So I hopped online and checked out this Jungle Jim's place ... only to find that HOLY HELL this might be my second or third favorite place on Earth. And, as luck would have it, Jungle Jim's is located not far from the last furniture store that was on my list of places to hit in the 'Nati. Thus it became my last stop of the day.
My experience went something like this:
- I was greeted at the entrance to the parking lot by a sign reading "Welcome to FoodieLand" in big Disney-esque (or, more accurately, National Lampoon's Wally World-esque) font.
- Huge signs pointed me toward the shopping carts, and then a series of big blinking NASCAR stoplights screaming GO in green led me through the entrance and into the "normal" grocery store portion of the EIGHT ACRE food wonderland.
- Passing through the "domestic" portion of the store, I entered heaven. And by heaven, I mean Land Of Cheese. Kind of indescribable. The cheeses were sorted by country and were subdivided by cow vs goat milk. All I kept thinking was "I can come back. I don't have to buy it all now. I can return to this place. It's not that far away." Except all of the willpower that I consumed during my passage through Cheese Fantasy Land left me weak and vulnerable in the wine and beer section, which was the size of a proper Binny's or Sam's or Bev Mo and had a huge selection of craft beer in addition to wine from every part of the world. Whoever designed the layout of this place, with the cheese and booze sections near the front of the store and with their own quick checkout stands, deserves a standing ovation. Except that ovation would have to exclude clapping, as my hands would be filled with cheese and/or a wine glass.
- On to the Asain foods section, which itself was maybe 8 or 10 aisles plus refrigerated cases ... I picked up some basics that had been on my list, like oyster sauce, seaweed, and dried mushrooms. I was disappointed, though, not to find freeze-dried tamarind pods, and I resigned myself to having to resort to tamarind paste, which is much more widely available but doesn't have the same punch as the "real" thing. But c'mon, it's the midwest. And the freeze-dried things are supposed to be hard to find. No big deal.
- I turned the corner and saw the produce aisles, and in addition to the usual suspects, they had a separate section containing international / hard-to-find produce items. So ... many ... unfamiliar ... names ... and I thought I was pretty well-versed in Asian veg, what with the plethora of Asian supermarkets in San Diego. But GOOD LORD, this place blew my mind. I picked up some fresh lemongrass and chayote squash (also called mirlitons - pronounced "Mella-tons" - in the South) and THEN. I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. There was a box of FRESH (not frozen, not freeze-dried, not pasted) tamarind pods. For, like, three bucks. For a POUND. If Nick had been there with me, I probably would actually have done a little dance in the aisle. Okay, a BIG dance. That may have had more to do with the realization that civilization was closer than I thought than the actual find of fresh tamarind itself.
- Past the Asian foods aisles, I was greeted by a talking animatronic Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest at the entrance to the British foods section ...
- and a Bindi-adorned plaster elephant at the entrance to the Indian foods.
- The Mexican section (Mercado Gigante!), just as big as the Asian foods, had eight bajillion kinds of dried beans and spices, plus a whole aisle of prepared sauces. I was already feeling overwhelmed so breezed quickly though the Mercado, and then just past this section was the ...
- Fresh fish. Fresh. As in, swimming around happily in 1000+ gallon tanks of constantly circulating fresh or salt water. Pick out your tilapia! Watch them fillet it for you!
- I ran out of steam before I could get through the Eastern European or German sections, and I ran through the Middle Eastern section (to get some good quality Tahini so I can make my Erin-tested, Erin-approved hummus).
- Just as I thought I was done, I had to pass through the organic / health foods section to get to the registers. Doh. That sucked another half hour of my life. (Rennet! Nutritional Yeast! Liquid Amino Acids! Tempeh! A whole WALL of olive oil!)
And after spending two hours in this store, I felt like I'd just been through eight hours of day-after-Thanksgiving mall shopping. But. Mission. Sooooo. Accomplished. And as I was leaving, I noticed a group of school kids gathering at the front of the store for a guided walking tour! Of a freakin' GROCERY STORE!
I actually have a ton of recipes I'm thinking about posting, most of which DON'T use these crazy ingredients that I picked up at Jungle Jim's ... but I sort of want to be able to post them with pictures, which requires me to bite the damn bullet and get to work on my camera cleaning. And as I cook my way through some of the dishes I have planned with my tamarind, chayotes, lemongrass, miso, etc, if I find some real winners I'll be sure to post them, just in case you stumble across an Asian food market and feel adventurous.
Off to make dinner (a version of potato-leek soup with mustard greens) ...
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
I know, I know, I've been totally post-less these last two months. I'm not even entirely sure where all the time went, but between road trips to Chicago/St. Louis/Champaign/Kentucky and trying to get out and enjoy the autumn weather, we've been two busy bees.
Nick went through his four-week "refresher" course and is now in the thick of the fall quarter, which means exams and problem sets and all of those things that make me cringe and have kept him in the computer lab well into the evenings. I would tell you about his classes, but even thinking about engineery things like MatLab make me fall asl........... *snort**cough*.... huh? Did I just lose consciousness?
Recently, I've been keeping myself busy by heading out and about to scout out good fall color. This season is, apparently, a lot less intense and A LOT later for color than usual (or so the local news people tell me); a 2-year-long drought and mild summer supposedly have something to do with that. I dunno ... we've been here 2 months and have seen more rain than would have fallen in 2 decades in San Diego, so "drought" sounds suspicious to me. Don't get me wrong - the rain has been really pleasant, and I'd almost forgotten about Mother Nature's Free Car Wash Service, but there's a part of me that misses hearing the tap-tap-tap of the raindrops on our roof. And no, the pound-pound-pound of our upstairs neighbors' kids doesn't count. Seriously. We're in an old industrial building. Even acknowledging that not all of the floors in this building are concrete like ours ... the sounds are akin to living below a bowling alley. Thankfully, the kids only live there part-time and Nick and I choose to find it amusing.
Anyway. Rain. After starting this post mid-week and only getting back to it now, the weather has changed from 73 degrees and sunny to RAINY (see, Ohio? Drought?! Suspicious!!!). I'm worried that this storm system was bad enough to bring down all of the beautiful leaves that were waiting for me in Clifton Gorge State Park, John Bryant Nature Reserve, and Buck Creek State Park, all of which were on my roster for this week and weekend. However, I'm thankful that I did get out to Cox Arboretum (one of our local Metroparks) and Caesar Creek State Park while the weather held.
Cox Arboretum is a lovely park located not so far from the recently closed GM plant in Moraine and was only a 20 minute drive from our place. There is an educational center and landscaped grounds, but the vast majority of the park is accessed by several miles of well-groomed walking paths that wind through the woodland. One of the things that has impressed me about Dayton is the system of urban Metroparks that provide a respite of green and natural among the suburban sprawl that connects Dayton to numerous small towns within a 30-minute drive from the city center.
Mid-day at Cox Arboretum was marked by harsh light (which typically makes for unappealing pictures) so I headed into the woods. Being late October, I was surprised by how much green remained in the wooded areas, and as the paths wound deeper and the canopy closed in, it seemed that the only trees touched with color were the tallest or most remote. From a wanderer's eye, it was a kaleidoscope of color touched by the kind of sadness that autumn brings; there is a subconscious knowledge of the coming winter, a smiling grief at the beauty of dying and the smell of decaying leaves, and that foreboding feeling that the moments are fleeting and should be embraced. It's telling, isn't it, that every child who grew up with a yard full of crunchy, colorful leaves has the SAME memory of raking those leaves into a HUGE pile (taller than ME, mom! Taller than the PORCH, dad!) and then taking running, bounding, joyful leaps into those piles. These memories are warm, soft, cozy ... which, when you think about it from the point of view of the adult who had to actually rake the cold dead pointy leaves, is ironic. But I think that even as children, we know that autumn is something magical and something to be cherished, even more than the blooms of spring or the pool weather of summer. It's change and progress, an evolution of time, in Mother Nature's most striking example.
Okay, where was I? Oh yes. Walking through the woods of Cox Arboretum was a beautiful and tranquil experience, but it seemed that all of the colorful trees were tucked behind the "plain" green ones that had not yet received the "Hello, there, it's OCTOBER!" memo ... or they were grouped together in a totally unphotogenic way. Just as disappointment started to mount, I came into a clearing that was utterly surrounded by trees bearing bright yellow leaves.
It was right about this point where I started focusing my attention upward to the canopy, and I was mesmerized by the layers of color. There were touches of green, the bright sunny yellows, and hints of flame orange that morphed into blazing red tones as the leaves fluttered and the sun shifted behind wisps of cloud. Assuring myself that poison ivy is one of the first plants of autumn to shed its leaves (whether or not this is actually true), I ventured off-path and flopped down on my back to get a view to the sky. I know that there are few places left in the United States that have even one square foot of absolute silence, but a Blackhawk helicopter could have flown past me right then and I may not have noticed: all I heard was the rustling of the leaves in the canopy and the crunching of the fallen ones under me as I rifled through my pack to get my camera.
A little farther along the path, there was a small break in the canopy, and my imagination read it as a ring of fire broken by one insolent tree that just refused to change color! Why do two trees, same species, next to one another, change color at different times? Is it the depth of their roots? Did the tree that germinated first get primo root location and access to water? Is one tree imperceptibly taller than the other? Anyway, I sat against the trunk of this tree to get the shot, and in processing, it seemed somewhat vertigious:
(its sibling - I prefer this shot, but Nick likes the former:)
I know I'm sort of waxing poetic about something that happens EVERY YEAR and is hardly news to my fellow midwesterners, but this is truly my first autumn in SEVEN years!! Rediscovery? Understatement.
So one of the things that struck me as I walked and craned my neck toward the canopy was the repetition of nature. I mean, yes, fractal theory of course applies to nature and natural elements, so to say that nature repeats its patterns at infinitum is about as revolutionary as saying that water is wet. But witnessing it for yourself is still pretty damn cool. Like this shot, looking upward at the network of tree branches and leaves that are not-so-vaguely reminiscent of the veining on the underside of an individual leaf:
I encountered only a few people on the trails at Cox Arboretum, and in one very remote section I came upon a virtual carpet of leaves that seemed relatively undisturbed by feet. It was late enough in the day at this point that there wasn't much sunlight coming through the treetops, but enough to grab this shot:
And after taking that shot, I may or may not have tromped through that pathway like a little kid flying face-first into a freshly-raked pile. *gulp*
When I finally found my way back to civilization, the sun was at a low enough angle to get some warm shots of the pond area of the park. The pond is full of koi fish, turtles, and lilypads, but the mild autumn coloring of the trees and their reflection in the water was what struck me.
There's also a small bridge over a second pond, and after waiting for a swarm of pedestrians to run back and forth over it, the wind died down to nothing and I managed to get a pretty clear reflection:
After walking around and assessing the photo-worthy opportunities at Cox, I started the drive back to our place. I purposely diverted to Carillon Park, on the perimeter of the University of Dayton, ~5 minutes South of us. Carillon Park has a museum, a cafe, and a belltower, but also has a large open green space on which I could imagine college student congregating for frisbee or studying ... but on this day, I had it all to myself. It was late enough in the day that the sun was low and warm and pleasing, although the autumn colors could hardly be considered "peak".
This picture was an accidental result of seriously overexposing the image - when I tried to recover it in Lightroom, it created this oddly-colored picture. But ... I don't hate it. =)
And my last shot of the day was taken facing West, actually. The lighting isn't ideal, but it's better than I would have expected for a West-facing shot at 6 pm in the winter. I liked the look of the clouds hovering over the river (you can't see it, but it's just behind the trees) with the subtle fall colors on the trees.
I haven't yet uploaded my pictures from Caesar Creek Park, although I expect there aren't too many keepers among them. =( Right now, I'm trying to focus on getting some Alaska pictures developed - it's been long enough, right?! ahem. So hopefully there will be more updates to come SOON!
Nick went through his four-week "refresher" course and is now in the thick of the fall quarter, which means exams and problem sets and all of those things that make me cringe and have kept him in the computer lab well into the evenings. I would tell you about his classes, but even thinking about engineery things like MatLab make me fall asl........... *snort**cough*
Recently, I've been keeping myself busy by heading out and about to scout out good fall color. This season is, apparently, a lot less intense and A LOT later for color than usual (or so the local news people tell me); a 2-year-long drought and mild summer supposedly have something to do with that. I dunno ... we've been here 2 months and have seen more rain than would have fallen in 2 decades in San Diego, so "drought" sounds suspicious to me. Don't get me wrong - the rain has been really pleasant, and I'd almost forgotten about Mother Nature's Free Car Wash Service, but there's a part of me that misses hearing the tap-tap-tap of the raindrops on our roof. And no, the pound-pound-pound of our upstairs neighbors' kids doesn't count. Seriously. We're in an old industrial building. Even acknowledging that not all of the floors in this building are concrete like ours ... the sounds are akin to living below a bowling alley. Thankfully, the kids only live there part-time and Nick and I choose to find it amusing.
Anyway. Rain. After starting this post mid-week and only getting back to it now, the weather has changed from 73 degrees and sunny to RAINY (see, Ohio? Drought?! Suspicious!!!). I'm worried that this storm system was bad enough to bring down all of the beautiful leaves that were waiting for me in Clifton Gorge State Park, John Bryant Nature Reserve, and Buck Creek State Park, all of which were on my roster for this week and weekend. However, I'm thankful that I did get out to Cox Arboretum (one of our local Metroparks) and Caesar Creek State Park while the weather held.
Cox Arboretum is a lovely park located not so far from the recently closed GM plant in Moraine and was only a 20 minute drive from our place. There is an educational center and landscaped grounds, but the vast majority of the park is accessed by several miles of well-groomed walking paths that wind through the woodland. One of the things that has impressed me about Dayton is the system of urban Metroparks that provide a respite of green and natural among the suburban sprawl that connects Dayton to numerous small towns within a 30-minute drive from the city center.
Mid-day at Cox Arboretum was marked by harsh light (which typically makes for unappealing pictures) so I headed into the woods. Being late October, I was surprised by how much green remained in the wooded areas, and as the paths wound deeper and the canopy closed in, it seemed that the only trees touched with color were the tallest or most remote. From a wanderer's eye, it was a kaleidoscope of color touched by the kind of sadness that autumn brings; there is a subconscious knowledge of the coming winter, a smiling grief at the beauty of dying and the smell of decaying leaves, and that foreboding feeling that the moments are fleeting and should be embraced. It's telling, isn't it, that every child who grew up with a yard full of crunchy, colorful leaves has the SAME memory of raking those leaves into a HUGE pile (taller than ME, mom! Taller than the PORCH, dad!) and then taking running, bounding, joyful leaps into those piles. These memories are warm, soft, cozy ... which, when you think about it from the point of view of the adult who had to actually rake the cold dead pointy leaves, is ironic. But I think that even as children, we know that autumn is something magical and something to be cherished, even more than the blooms of spring or the pool weather of summer. It's change and progress, an evolution of time, in Mother Nature's most striking example.
Okay, where was I? Oh yes. Walking through the woods of Cox Arboretum was a beautiful and tranquil experience, but it seemed that all of the colorful trees were tucked behind the "plain" green ones that had not yet received the "Hello, there, it's OCTOBER!" memo ... or they were grouped together in a totally unphotogenic way. Just as disappointment started to mount, I came into a clearing that was utterly surrounded by trees bearing bright yellow leaves.
It was right about this point where I started focusing my attention upward to the canopy, and I was mesmerized by the layers of color. There were touches of green, the bright sunny yellows, and hints of flame orange that morphed into blazing red tones as the leaves fluttered and the sun shifted behind wisps of cloud. Assuring myself that poison ivy is one of the first plants of autumn to shed its leaves (whether or not this is actually true), I ventured off-path and flopped down on my back to get a view to the sky. I know that there are few places left in the United States that have even one square foot of absolute silence, but a Blackhawk helicopter could have flown past me right then and I may not have noticed: all I heard was the rustling of the leaves in the canopy and the crunching of the fallen ones under me as I rifled through my pack to get my camera.
A little farther along the path, there was a small break in the canopy, and my imagination read it as a ring of fire broken by one insolent tree that just refused to change color! Why do two trees, same species, next to one another, change color at different times? Is it the depth of their roots? Did the tree that germinated first get primo root location and access to water? Is one tree imperceptibly taller than the other? Anyway, I sat against the trunk of this tree to get the shot, and in processing, it seemed somewhat vertigious:
(its sibling - I prefer this shot, but Nick likes the former:)
I know I'm sort of waxing poetic about something that happens EVERY YEAR and is hardly news to my fellow midwesterners, but this is truly my first autumn in SEVEN years!! Rediscovery? Understatement.
So one of the things that struck me as I walked and craned my neck toward the canopy was the repetition of nature. I mean, yes, fractal theory of course applies to nature and natural elements, so to say that nature repeats its patterns at infinitum is about as revolutionary as saying that water is wet. But witnessing it for yourself is still pretty damn cool. Like this shot, looking upward at the network of tree branches and leaves that are not-so-vaguely reminiscent of the veining on the underside of an individual leaf:
I encountered only a few people on the trails at Cox Arboretum, and in one very remote section I came upon a virtual carpet of leaves that seemed relatively undisturbed by feet. It was late enough in the day at this point that there wasn't much sunlight coming through the treetops, but enough to grab this shot:
And after taking that shot, I may or may not have tromped through that pathway like a little kid flying face-first into a freshly-raked pile. *gulp*
When I finally found my way back to civilization, the sun was at a low enough angle to get some warm shots of the pond area of the park. The pond is full of koi fish, turtles, and lilypads, but the mild autumn coloring of the trees and their reflection in the water was what struck me.
There's also a small bridge over a second pond, and after waiting for a swarm of pedestrians to run back and forth over it, the wind died down to nothing and I managed to get a pretty clear reflection:
After walking around and assessing the photo-worthy opportunities at Cox, I started the drive back to our place. I purposely diverted to Carillon Park, on the perimeter of the University of Dayton, ~5 minutes South of us. Carillon Park has a museum, a cafe, and a belltower, but also has a large open green space on which I could imagine college student congregating for frisbee or studying ... but on this day, I had it all to myself. It was late enough in the day that the sun was low and warm and pleasing, although the autumn colors could hardly be considered "peak".
This picture was an accidental result of seriously overexposing the image - when I tried to recover it in Lightroom, it created this oddly-colored picture. But ... I don't hate it. =)
And my last shot of the day was taken facing West, actually. The lighting isn't ideal, but it's better than I would have expected for a West-facing shot at 6 pm in the winter. I liked the look of the clouds hovering over the river (you can't see it, but it's just behind the trees) with the subtle fall colors on the trees.
I haven't yet uploaded my pictures from Caesar Creek Park, although I expect there aren't too many keepers among them. =( Right now, I'm trying to focus on getting some Alaska pictures developed - it's been long enough, right?! ahem. So hopefully there will be more updates to come SOON!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Move-in
So, the move-in is ... well, it's going. Slowly. The movers delivered our household goods on Friday and we have been unpacking, shifting, and sorting ever since. Thankfully, Nick had the fabulous suggestion of staying in temporary housing a couple of extra days so that we wouldn't have to rush to set up the bed, find and unpack the sheets, dig out pillows, etc. Sunday was our first night here at our new house, and despite the fact that it still looks like a bit of a disaster, we love it!
We gained some square footage and another bedroom and bathroom in this move, but lost our patio and garage ... so in reality, storage-wise, we're pretty even. Because our living space is so open and HUGE, we are partitioning off the far end toward the master bedroom for an office / study space. And because we don't need to use one of the bedrooms as an office, one will be a dedicated guest room (yes, we will be buying another bed, Mom. No more AeroBed for you!) and the third bedroom is going to be a general storage room. But even with all this space, we are still being buried by boxes, despite my efforts to break down as many as possible and consolidate the paper packing waste. I had a DIY therapy session yesterday morning that involved me stepping into the big DishPack boxes and stomping down the paper to compress it - it was like that episode of I Love Lucy with the grape-stomping, only ... not.
Oh! Did I mention that this apartment has a huge master bedroom closet? In New York City, this thing would've been classified as another bedroom ... it's HUUUUUGE!! Even Nick has been gleeful about having a closet that can double as a dressing room. It makes me so happy, I don't even mind not having a double sink in the master bath.
Once we have everything set up and unpacked, I'll be sure to take some pictures and post 'em. But 'til then, please let this blog post serve as the open invitation to COME and VISIT Erin and Nick in Dayton!!*
* (it's cooler than you might think)
We gained some square footage and another bedroom and bathroom in this move, but lost our patio and garage ... so in reality, storage-wise, we're pretty even. Because our living space is so open and HUGE, we are partitioning off the far end toward the master bedroom for an office / study space. And because we don't need to use one of the bedrooms as an office, one will be a dedicated guest room (yes, we will be buying another bed, Mom. No more AeroBed for you!) and the third bedroom is going to be a general storage room. But even with all this space, we are still being buried by boxes, despite my efforts to break down as many as possible and consolidate the paper packing waste. I had a DIY therapy session yesterday morning that involved me stepping into the big DishPack boxes and stomping down the paper to compress it - it was like that episode of I Love Lucy with the grape-stomping, only ... not.
Oh! Did I mention that this apartment has a huge master bedroom closet? In New York City, this thing would've been classified as another bedroom ... it's HUUUUUGE!! Even Nick has been gleeful about having a closet that can double as a dressing room. It makes me so happy, I don't even mind not having a double sink in the master bath.
Once we have everything set up and unpacked, I'll be sure to take some pictures and post 'em. But 'til then, please let this blog post serve as the open invitation to COME and VISIT Erin and Nick in Dayton!!*
* (it's cooler than you might think)
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Utah, part II
Big news here from Dayton! Nick and I successfully found a sweet apartment and are signing the lease today (Thursday) and moving in TOMORROW (Friday)!! We (I) had centralized our search to the downtown area, with particular focus on two historic neighborhoods, South Park and the Oregon district. I had read a lot about South Park online - it was named neighborhood of the year in '08 and consists of mostly turn-of-the-century victorians and craftsman, many of which have been lovingly restored. The part that really attracted me to the area was the neighborliness: everyone meets on Friday nights at the South Park Tavern (which has 18 taps dispensing microbrews from all over the country), during the late spring through fall they have rotating "porch and patio" parties that migrate from one person's house to another, and everyone knows EVERYONE. We got a real warm fuzzy from the area. Rentals in the district are hard to come by, but we looked at two houses, both of which were bigger than our needs and at the upper end of our price range. I also looked in the Oregon district which is immediately North of South Park and has just about all of the hip restaurants in Dayton ... but no rentals fitting our bill. About three blocks North of the Oregon is a block called the Cannery district, which is a series of several old buildings that have been restored and converted to loft spaces - we looked at a couple of floor plans and really fell in love with one that is a corner/end unit with something like 13 huge windows (5 of which still open!) and a huge open floor plan. If you go to www.cannerydayton.com and look at the floor plans, it's the 3br plan named "Barney Power," which is an odd name for a floor plan but is apparently named after one of the builders, a Mr. Barney, who constructed the building in which our floor plan exists and his company which provided electric power to the other buildings on the block (power). Anyway, the size is just right for us. And the location couldn't be better - we are easy walking distance to the Oregon and to South Park Tavern, our immediate downstairs neighbor is a huge wine shop that also does tastings and is perhaps the only decent wine shop in Dayton (you know, the kind where the owners actually taste the wine they buy), next to the wine shop is a huge art gallery / coop, next to that is the only real nightlife in Dayton (Therapy Cafe), and next to that is the only proper tea shop in the city as well. Oh, and two blocks Northeast of us is the 2nd Street Market, the biggest farmer's market in the region. Those of you who got to hear me whine about leaving San Diego and Be Wise Ranch and all of my lovely farm-fresh produce will realize how big a plus that is for me. (and speaking of farmer's markets, we stopped by one close to Wright-Patt just yesterday in hopes of finding a little something for lunch and perhaps some veggies: it was adorable in that it was only 5 or 6 stalls, but the prices were outrageously low. I got four amazing heirloom tomatoes for A BUCK. Best tomatoes I think I've ever tasted in my life, by the way.)
So we'll have a new address soon. I don't want to post it online for anyone out there in cyberspace to find, but if you need it, go ahead and email me and I'll send it directly to you. Nick and I are keeping our (619) cell phone numbers and probably won't bother getting a house phone in the new place, so we can still be reached at those numbers.
Okay, so updates aside, I wanted to give you the final chapter in our cross-country drive. After a night in Green River, we woke up early and headed right out for Arches Nat'l Park. The drive was, again, beautiful, although we seemed to come upon the scenery much more abruptly than on our previous drives. The road went from vast plains with distant buttes to WHAM! Pillars of gorgeousness!!
(as you can probably tell, these were all taken from a moving car - a recurring theme here. So forgive me if the foregrounds are a bit blurry. Can't be helped.)
We arrived at the park around 9 and couldn't help stopping at every pullout, every scenic point. From the moment you enter the park, you head up a series of switchbacks that end up giving a fantastic view of the road below and, as it turns out, of the Moab fault line that runs along the opposite hillside just up from the road (you can't really make it out by eye, even in person. I just had to trust that the little placquard explaining the whole thing wasn't lying.)
Again, we had frustratingly little time to spend in the park, so we tried to limit ourselves to views from the car or very short walks. The first real viewpoint that you encounter in the park is for what is called "Park Avenue," a series of jutting formations that do sort of resemble walking around downtown New York City (or any big city, for that matter) with skyscrapers on either side of you. Although I think Park Avenue ought to be seriously flattered by this comparison. We were there early enough that the sun was still pretty far to the East, leaving most of Park Avenue in shadow. So no pictures. But we continued on to the Courthouse Towers, which includes the "Three Gossips":
Across from the Courthouse Towers is a formation known as The Organ, which rises out of the surrounding rock and really does resemble the kind of organ pipes you'd find in an old European cathedral or something. This shot was from the car as we approached it (with the Tower of Babel in the background):
Although the sun wasn't in a favorable position, this shot was too tempting to resist. We were the only car in this pulloff to view the Courthouse Towers; the parking lot was at the base of The Organ. I loved being able to get a sense of scale from the Prius at its foot (even though there's a bit of distortion from the wide-angle lens and the picture badly needs to have the horizon straightened):
Looking North from the viewpoint, The Tower of Babel was clearer, and damn if it wasn't ah-maze-ing:
Next up was "Balanced Rock," which is pretty much what you expect it to be, only taller and larger than we expected. This was one of the many formations that has a short path leading to it; in this case, the path circled around the base and allowed us to see it up close from many different angles. Nick decided to wear a shirt that just happened to be the same color as the rocks ... see if you can spot him (sorry for the picture being kind of dark - I edited this one in the car and I don't know why it ended up this way):
Arches, much like Bryce, is accessed by one main road with several short offshoots. We sort of missed the first one. Well, we saw it, but a lot of stupid drivers were turning down it so we decided to keep heading North, away from the unwashed masses. Turns out, that road leads to some of the most famous formations, including the Windows arches ... once we realized this, we made a pact to hit it on the way out of the park. We took the next offshoot, though, toward the MOST famous arch in the park, Delicate Arch. Turns out the only way to really get close to the arch is to take a hike that was going to take way more time than we had budgeted. I was bummed but, as Nick reminded me, this trip was just a taste. And how happy would I REALLY have been, hiking 3 miles with 1,000 ft elevation gain, in 95 degree heat? Good point, husband. Good thing he looks out for my sanity (and his). So we sort of viewed it from a distance, pronounced it lovely, and continued back to the main road and farther North toward the Fiery Furnance (only accessible by ranger-led trails) and the far Northern end of the park.
The views were ever-changing through this part of the park, and we were both startled by the vast array of KINDS of landscape we saw in a very short distance. We saw everything from open, scrub-covered rolling plains to gargantuan formations the size of a city block, and even the types of rock seemed to change. In the Fiery Furnace region, the peaks were small and bulbous and tightly clustered, but just past it the land opened up and there were more individual pillars spaced farther apart. (one theme, however, that was consistent throughout the park were the distinct phallic shapes. I know I'm a bit of a dirty bird who maybe doesn't have the cleanest mind to begin with ... but seriously. Phallis. Everywhere. I mean, c'mon.)
There were also many of these half-caves, half-arches, the result of weathering that will someday result in an arch in the rock.
Oh, and see? I was there! (I love my sideview mirror shots. I actually specifically CLEAN the passenger window and mirror at each gas station so that these shots are possible. Sad, I know. But are you really that surprised?)
Some sweet clouds moved in just as we approached Skyline Arch:
And we continued to the very Northern end of the Arches Drive where the only park campground and the main trailhead to most of the other arches exist. We drove through the campground quickly and were surprised by not only how beautiful it was, with campsites tucked into the red rocks or with sweeping views of the nearby hills, but how well-equipped it is, with dishwashing stations and several toilet and shower facilities. When I told my mom how much I liked the campgrounds, she told me about when she and my dad had camped there in their mid-20s and had to rig their own shower by balancing a bucket with a spout on a rock ledge above their campsite. Of course, back then there probably wasn't an 8-month waiting list to get a campsite ... but some things are just worth the wait!!
On our drive out of the park, we stopped at the cutoff for viewing the Windows. We thought we were being smart by not hitting it first thing in the morning, and by large we managed to avoid crowds in the rest of the park by jumping ahead of the rest of the early morning crowd. But we didn't really expect so many people to be in this particular section of the park, as it was going on noon. Anyway, we took our time along the winding drive toward the trailhead for the Window Arches. We saw the Cove of Caves:
And the Parade of Elephants:
Some more phallic pillars (and the very beginning of an arch):
And sweeping panoramas of the Arches country:
We climbed up on top of a little hump to get those shots, and while we were up there, Nick happened to notice what may have actually been the tiniest arch in the entire park!
And of course he had to say he had "been there" and "done that" and "traversed the arch." I just had to have photographic evidence:
Yes, dorks are we.
Our Arches detour was a bit longer than we'd orginially intended, and we still had some long hours in the car ahead of us before getting into Denver. I took over driving shortly after Arches, and we really enjoyed the Colorado country. By any other standards, it was spectacular. After just driving through Utah's most lovely and impressive land, though ... it was just ... nice. But the skies were clear (although obscenely hot the entire time. Leave it to us to find the heat wave and go straight toward it!) and we followed the Colorado River almost the entire time. We started to notice some ridiculously nice-looking homes and realized we were nearing Vail - I figured we must be getting close to the mountain passes that would take us over the continental divide. And yes, we were soon at 12,000 ft on a very steep road with the poor Prius loaded to the absolute gills ... guess what? I found the limits of my car! Now, this is kind of a point of pride for me, as I often jump to the defense of my hybrid when people joke around about how it must "putter" or "whir" or whatever other misconceived notions they have about it being slow/dottery. 'Cause I'M not the one who's merging onto the highway too slowly or who can't find the gas to escape nasty traffic situations. I MAY have told someone that if I ever found 'em on the road, I'd smoke 'em. And, largely, that's true. The Prius has some zip. But not at oxygen-starved 12,000 at Loveland Pass. And not full loaded. And certainly not when I'm stuck behind a camper-towing SUV who decided to slow down to FORTY-FIVE mph at a whim. OFTEN. I was actually screaming at the d.b. "DON'T YOU KNOW I CAN'T ACCELERATE?!?!" Oh well. My pride may have been wounded, but we all made it through without a problem and enjoyed our descent into Denver. We wanted to stop in the city for dinner, and Nick had picked out a brewpub that's right across from the ballpark. Only after exiting the highway did we realize that it was a game night ... and that the game would be starting in just over an hour. Thankfully, once we got through dealing with pedestrains and dumb drivers, most of the parking in the area was just 2-hour and therefore empty. We parked, we ate, we had a beer, and we continued to the old, odd, and somewhat seedy town of Limon. We were EXHAUSTED and it was late, so we picked the cheapest AAA-rated place that had WiFi and crashed for the night. We didn't get in til well past dark, but we saw a beautiful sunset. Here are the last moments of light:
The rest of our trip was more about family and friends and less about scenery - especially since we had to drive through the length of Kansas. I mean, Kansas was nice enough. It's a lot like Illinois, only less flat. And more bugs. And SO MUCH HEADWIND. I actually got the lowest mpg I've ever had in the Prius. We stopped for a couple small meals in Hayes (at Al's Chickenette, a famous bastion of fried-chicken amazingness) and Salina (at the Cozy Inn, where sliders still get made the way White Castle used to, before they were corrupted by gross grease and corporate greed). These towns were fascinating to me, because they were obviously centered around the grain industry and the huge grain elevators lining the train tracks through the hearts of the towns. But ... everything just seemed ... dead. The elevators didn't look like they'd been used in 50 years (and we saw plenty of active elevators as we drove through the state). The train tracks looked to be in disrepair. The old buildings around the tracks, such as train stations, old city halls, etc, looked like they hadn't been touched in decades upon decades. And then, you drive three blocks over to the part of town they've (tried to) revitalize, and you see men in suits with briefcases! It was just ... bizarre. And now that we're in Dayton, I can see how this town, not only having lost the big GM plant about 8 months ago but also several huge long-standing corporations that employed thousands of Daytonians in the last few months, could have that kind of future. I sure hope not - I am growing fond of this little city. But you see how an industry dies and the city sort of tries to exist, tries to hold on, and tries to act like those brick or concrete symbols of the industries on which the city was founded are just OKAY THE WAY THEY ARE and that they need to be there JUST IN CASE. I have seen so so many beautiful brick warehouses here in downtown Dayton that are just sitting empty, totally and completely EMPTY and have been for years ... and there are just more and more added to the rolls every month. As the economy evolves it'll be interesting to see how Dayton rides the wave.
Anyway. We spent the night in Kansas City and got to spend time with Nick's high school friend Scott and his wife and daughters, then rolled on to St. Louis the following morning to spend a day and night with Nick's brothers Matt and Chris, my sister-in-law Kate, and our nephews Braydan and Josh. After days of eating in the car or at odd hours, it was nice to just sit and relax and have a home-cooked meal! We drove out to Edwardsville to have breakfast with Matt and Braydan on Saturday morning and then continued up to Chicago to first spend some time with the Braces (Randy and Jenni and Kayla drove down for dinner, and my aunt Jo Ann, uncle Peter, and their kids Alex, Peter, and Ashley all came by for the festivities, too!), and then we moved on to my in-laws' house in Homewood for the night. Bob and Lynda have temporarily adopted wee Natasha and Naski during this transition time, and it was fun to spend time with them and see how they've acclimated to their new surroundings. Natasha loves having space to escape from Naski's irrirating stalking behavior, and Naski has most definitely warmed up to them both, especially Bob. He was a little wary of us ... but soon figured out that we were pretty much okay. I loved having Natasha realize "OMG! It's MOM!" but she wouldn't leave me alone ALL NIGHT, constantly jumping onto the bed, nuzzling my face, and pestering me for love and attention. I miss my kids.
Sunday morning we enjoyed brunch with the Sinnokraks and then had to bid adieu to Chicago to start the first of many road trips between Chi-town and Dayton.
And now we're HERE! And finding things to like about Dayton. Still haven't found a JOB, but you know ... all in good time?
So we'll have a new address soon. I don't want to post it online for anyone out there in cyberspace to find, but if you need it, go ahead and email me and I'll send it directly to you. Nick and I are keeping our (619) cell phone numbers and probably won't bother getting a house phone in the new place, so we can still be reached at those numbers.
Okay, so updates aside, I wanted to give you the final chapter in our cross-country drive. After a night in Green River, we woke up early and headed right out for Arches Nat'l Park. The drive was, again, beautiful, although we seemed to come upon the scenery much more abruptly than on our previous drives. The road went from vast plains with distant buttes to WHAM! Pillars of gorgeousness!!
(as you can probably tell, these were all taken from a moving car - a recurring theme here. So forgive me if the foregrounds are a bit blurry. Can't be helped.)We arrived at the park around 9 and couldn't help stopping at every pullout, every scenic point. From the moment you enter the park, you head up a series of switchbacks that end up giving a fantastic view of the road below and, as it turns out, of the Moab fault line that runs along the opposite hillside just up from the road (you can't really make it out by eye, even in person. I just had to trust that the little placquard explaining the whole thing wasn't lying.)
Again, we had frustratingly little time to spend in the park, so we tried to limit ourselves to views from the car or very short walks. The first real viewpoint that you encounter in the park is for what is called "Park Avenue," a series of jutting formations that do sort of resemble walking around downtown New York City (or any big city, for that matter) with skyscrapers on either side of you. Although I think Park Avenue ought to be seriously flattered by this comparison. We were there early enough that the sun was still pretty far to the East, leaving most of Park Avenue in shadow. So no pictures. But we continued on to the Courthouse Towers, which includes the "Three Gossips":
Across from the Courthouse Towers is a formation known as The Organ, which rises out of the surrounding rock and really does resemble the kind of organ pipes you'd find in an old European cathedral or something. This shot was from the car as we approached it (with the Tower of Babel in the background):
Although the sun wasn't in a favorable position, this shot was too tempting to resist. We were the only car in this pulloff to view the Courthouse Towers; the parking lot was at the base of The Organ. I loved being able to get a sense of scale from the Prius at its foot (even though there's a bit of distortion from the wide-angle lens and the picture badly needs to have the horizon straightened):
Looking North from the viewpoint, The Tower of Babel was clearer, and damn if it wasn't ah-maze-ing:
Next up was "Balanced Rock," which is pretty much what you expect it to be, only taller and larger than we expected. This was one of the many formations that has a short path leading to it; in this case, the path circled around the base and allowed us to see it up close from many different angles. Nick decided to wear a shirt that just happened to be the same color as the rocks ... see if you can spot him (sorry for the picture being kind of dark - I edited this one in the car and I don't know why it ended up this way):
Arches, much like Bryce, is accessed by one main road with several short offshoots. We sort of missed the first one. Well, we saw it, but a lot of stupid drivers were turning down it so we decided to keep heading North, away from the unwashed masses. Turns out, that road leads to some of the most famous formations, including the Windows arches ... once we realized this, we made a pact to hit it on the way out of the park. We took the next offshoot, though, toward the MOST famous arch in the park, Delicate Arch. Turns out the only way to really get close to the arch is to take a hike that was going to take way more time than we had budgeted. I was bummed but, as Nick reminded me, this trip was just a taste. And how happy would I REALLY have been, hiking 3 miles with 1,000 ft elevation gain, in 95 degree heat? Good point, husband. Good thing he looks out for my sanity (and his). So we sort of viewed it from a distance, pronounced it lovely, and continued back to the main road and farther North toward the Fiery Furnance (only accessible by ranger-led trails) and the far Northern end of the park.The views were ever-changing through this part of the park, and we were both startled by the vast array of KINDS of landscape we saw in a very short distance. We saw everything from open, scrub-covered rolling plains to gargantuan formations the size of a city block, and even the types of rock seemed to change. In the Fiery Furnace region, the peaks were small and bulbous and tightly clustered, but just past it the land opened up and there were more individual pillars spaced farther apart. (one theme, however, that was consistent throughout the park were the distinct phallic shapes. I know I'm a bit of a dirty bird who maybe doesn't have the cleanest mind to begin with ... but seriously. Phallis. Everywhere. I mean, c'mon.)
There were also many of these half-caves, half-arches, the result of weathering that will someday result in an arch in the rock.
Oh, and see? I was there! (I love my sideview mirror shots. I actually specifically CLEAN the passenger window and mirror at each gas station so that these shots are possible. Sad, I know. But are you really that surprised?)
Some sweet clouds moved in just as we approached Skyline Arch:
And we continued to the very Northern end of the Arches Drive where the only park campground and the main trailhead to most of the other arches exist. We drove through the campground quickly and were surprised by not only how beautiful it was, with campsites tucked into the red rocks or with sweeping views of the nearby hills, but how well-equipped it is, with dishwashing stations and several toilet and shower facilities. When I told my mom how much I liked the campgrounds, she told me about when she and my dad had camped there in their mid-20s and had to rig their own shower by balancing a bucket with a spout on a rock ledge above their campsite. Of course, back then there probably wasn't an 8-month waiting list to get a campsite ... but some things are just worth the wait!!
On our drive out of the park, we stopped at the cutoff for viewing the Windows. We thought we were being smart by not hitting it first thing in the morning, and by large we managed to avoid crowds in the rest of the park by jumping ahead of the rest of the early morning crowd. But we didn't really expect so many people to be in this particular section of the park, as it was going on noon. Anyway, we took our time along the winding drive toward the trailhead for the Window Arches. We saw the Cove of Caves:
And the Parade of Elephants:
Some more phallic pillars (and the very beginning of an arch):
And sweeping panoramas of the Arches country:
We climbed up on top of a little hump to get those shots, and while we were up there, Nick happened to notice what may have actually been the tiniest arch in the entire park!
And of course he had to say he had "been there" and "done that" and "traversed the arch." I just had to have photographic evidence:
Yes, dorks are we.
Our Arches detour was a bit longer than we'd orginially intended, and we still had some long hours in the car ahead of us before getting into Denver. I took over driving shortly after Arches, and we really enjoyed the Colorado country. By any other standards, it was spectacular. After just driving through Utah's most lovely and impressive land, though ... it was just ... nice. But the skies were clear (although obscenely hot the entire time. Leave it to us to find the heat wave and go straight toward it!) and we followed the Colorado River almost the entire time. We started to notice some ridiculously nice-looking homes and realized we were nearing Vail - I figured we must be getting close to the mountain passes that would take us over the continental divide. And yes, we were soon at 12,000 ft on a very steep road with the poor Prius loaded to the absolute gills ... guess what? I found the limits of my car! Now, this is kind of a point of pride for me, as I often jump to the defense of my hybrid when people joke around about how it must "putter" or "whir" or whatever other misconceived notions they have about it being slow/dottery. 'Cause I'M not the one who's merging onto the highway too slowly or who can't find the gas to escape nasty traffic situations. I MAY have told someone that if I ever found 'em on the road, I'd smoke 'em. And, largely, that's true. The Prius has some zip. But not at oxygen-starved 12,000 at Loveland Pass. And not full loaded. And certainly not when I'm stuck behind a camper-towing SUV who decided to slow down to FORTY-FIVE mph at a whim. OFTEN. I was actually screaming at the d.b. "DON'T YOU KNOW I CAN'T ACCELERATE?!?!" Oh well. My pride may have been wounded, but we all made it through without a problem and enjoyed our descent into Denver. We wanted to stop in the city for dinner, and Nick had picked out a brewpub that's right across from the ballpark. Only after exiting the highway did we realize that it was a game night ... and that the game would be starting in just over an hour. Thankfully, once we got through dealing with pedestrains and dumb drivers, most of the parking in the area was just 2-hour and therefore empty. We parked, we ate, we had a beer, and we continued to the old, odd, and somewhat seedy town of Limon. We were EXHAUSTED and it was late, so we picked the cheapest AAA-rated place that had WiFi and crashed for the night. We didn't get in til well past dark, but we saw a beautiful sunset. Here are the last moments of light:
The rest of our trip was more about family and friends and less about scenery - especially since we had to drive through the length of Kansas. I mean, Kansas was nice enough. It's a lot like Illinois, only less flat. And more bugs. And SO MUCH HEADWIND. I actually got the lowest mpg I've ever had in the Prius. We stopped for a couple small meals in Hayes (at Al's Chickenette, a famous bastion of fried-chicken amazingness) and Salina (at the Cozy Inn, where sliders still get made the way White Castle used to, before they were corrupted by gross grease and corporate greed). These towns were fascinating to me, because they were obviously centered around the grain industry and the huge grain elevators lining the train tracks through the hearts of the towns. But ... everything just seemed ... dead. The elevators didn't look like they'd been used in 50 years (and we saw plenty of active elevators as we drove through the state). The train tracks looked to be in disrepair. The old buildings around the tracks, such as train stations, old city halls, etc, looked like they hadn't been touched in decades upon decades. And then, you drive three blocks over to the part of town they've (tried to) revitalize, and you see men in suits with briefcases! It was just ... bizarre. And now that we're in Dayton, I can see how this town, not only having lost the big GM plant about 8 months ago but also several huge long-standing corporations that employed thousands of Daytonians in the last few months, could have that kind of future. I sure hope not - I am growing fond of this little city. But you see how an industry dies and the city sort of tries to exist, tries to hold on, and tries to act like those brick or concrete symbols of the industries on which the city was founded are just OKAY THE WAY THEY ARE and that they need to be there JUST IN CASE. I have seen so so many beautiful brick warehouses here in downtown Dayton that are just sitting empty, totally and completely EMPTY and have been for years ... and there are just more and more added to the rolls every month. As the economy evolves it'll be interesting to see how Dayton rides the wave.
Anyway. We spent the night in Kansas City and got to spend time with Nick's high school friend Scott and his wife and daughters, then rolled on to St. Louis the following morning to spend a day and night with Nick's brothers Matt and Chris, my sister-in-law Kate, and our nephews Braydan and Josh. After days of eating in the car or at odd hours, it was nice to just sit and relax and have a home-cooked meal! We drove out to Edwardsville to have breakfast with Matt and Braydan on Saturday morning and then continued up to Chicago to first spend some time with the Braces (Randy and Jenni and Kayla drove down for dinner, and my aunt Jo Ann, uncle Peter, and their kids Alex, Peter, and Ashley all came by for the festivities, too!), and then we moved on to my in-laws' house in Homewood for the night. Bob and Lynda have temporarily adopted wee Natasha and Naski during this transition time, and it was fun to spend time with them and see how they've acclimated to their new surroundings. Natasha loves having space to escape from Naski's irrirating stalking behavior, and Naski has most definitely warmed up to them both, especially Bob. He was a little wary of us ... but soon figured out that we were pretty much okay. I loved having Natasha realize "OMG! It's MOM!" but she wouldn't leave me alone ALL NIGHT, constantly jumping onto the bed, nuzzling my face, and pestering me for love and attention. I miss my kids.
Sunday morning we enjoyed brunch with the Sinnokraks and then had to bid adieu to Chicago to start the first of many road trips between Chi-town and Dayton.
And now we're HERE! And finding things to like about Dayton. Still haven't found a JOB, but you know ... all in good time?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Utah, part I
So. It's official. Nick and I are Daytonians.
We arrived Sunday evening at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and checked into our pre-reserved temporary lodging that will be our pit stop until we find an apartment/house. And there's progress on that front, but I hesitate to write anything about it as I don't want to jinx anything. But it's looking good so far.
I have to say, I was a *bit* concerned as the receptionist at the Inn directed us not to a hotel room but to another building ... and as we drove through the temporary housing area, a collection of one- and two-story duplexes, there was a HUGE bulldozer and a half-torn-down building that happened to look very similar to the rest of the units we were passing. That is to say, Nick and I both silently sat in the car, thinking "AREYOUFUCKINGKIDDINGME? We're being sent to condemned freakin' housing. Only they haven't gotten to ripping OUR shithole down yet." And we had no idea how long we'd be staying here ... so our throats both started to sort of close up in anticipation (dread?) of what we'd find. Neither one of us wanting to be the first to say anything, we gingerly opened the front door (like we thought it was going to come crashing off its hinges or something) and shot each other somewhat confused looks when ... lo and behold ... this place was NICE. As in, full kitchen with nice appliances and dining room furniture, big living room with a flat screen TV, and two well-appointed bedrooms. Clean carpet, nice floors - in fact, it looked to have been relatively recently remodeled. So I guess the Air Force DOES know how to take care of their people after all. Huh.
It's hard for me to believe it's only been one full day here: what a day it's been! We went over to the medical center to square away the transfer of my health care and records, Nick went over and checked out the AFIT campus on base and met up with his sponsor, a former S-3B guy who's here working on his PhD, we went grocery shopping at the commissary on base, and then we went and looked at some apartments in the downtown area and one other neighborhood that had piqued my interest. Like I said ... progress.
I had a little time in the car on the way through Kansas to sort through and do some very (very) rough editing of my shots from our first day in Utah, and in my procrastination to get anything up on the blog in the last few days, I managed to get through the second day as well.
So let's see, where did I leave off? Ah yes, St. George. Lovely desert hamlet. Friendly people. We departed as early as we could muster the next morning for a 40-minute drive into Zion Nat'l Park. Almost immediately, the landscape became more rugged and riddled with red peaks jutting up from the middle of incredibly flat stretches of desert scrub.
(this following image is one of my faves from the day, though sadly it ended up a bit oversaturated during my in-car rudimentary postprocessing. This is one I'll work on once my picture monster desktop is up and running again in our new place.)
Oh, and one more note about the post-processing: after I started looking through the images, I noticed that HOLY HELL I have a lot of dust on my sensor. Maybe from switching lenses five or six (or more) times a day in Alaska? Or even more frequently here on the road trip? (that's rhetorical) The dust gets progressively worse through the first day and you'll notice some really bad dots on shots from the second day. I will be editing these spots out of the "keepers" but I need dear old Photoshop to do that well, so for now you can curse the evil dust along with me.
Because Zion is an incredibly popular park, there is almost no parking inside the park, and there is basically one main road that takes you to all of the sights, the National Parks people decided to limit the number of cars on the road in the park. Now, the main drag is accessible only by shuttle bus, and as we just didn't have the time to hop on, hop off, etc (and it was already upwards of 90 degrees at 9:30 am), we chose to drive on through the park and leave Zion unchecked on our bucket lists. But we certainly got an appreciation for the architectural peaks and mesas (buttes?), and we were there early enough in the morning to still have the moon hanging in the unbelievably blue sky:
And the drive, of course, was beautiful. We climbed up on a series of switchbacks that overlooked the main canyon of the park and then passed through two long tunnels carved into the side of the mountain. Here's a shot as we entered one of the tunnels, looking back through the side-view mirror at the stunning peaks behind us:
As we continued our drive through the park, we started to notice the fascinating patterns that the wind and weather had worn into the sandstone. Some of it, like this, was more of a horizontal slashing, while other patterns closer to the tops of peaks were more vertical:
And then we got to Checkerboard Mesa, so named for the horizontal and vertical slashing that creates a sort of grid on the side of this windswept mesa.
I could type out the explanation for this amazing geological phenomenon, but seeing as I took a picture of the sign at the viewpoint, I'll let you read it as I did:
I should have realized this was the Easternmost stop in the park when a busload of weary-looking European tourists unloaded and excitedly paced from one end of the viewpoint to the other, snapping pictures. Hey, when your first sight of Zion is Checkerboard Mesa ... well, I couldn't really blame them (too much) for hogging every good self-timed portrait shot. Sure enough, we soon exited the park and were on toward Bryce. We had one of those great road trip moments as we were driving along (well, NICK was driving along. I was staring, stupefied, out the window). We rounded a curve and it looked like we were going to be passing over a small river or a mini gorge or something: the land was pretty flat and there were no super duper special geological features on the near horizon. Then, out of nowhere, we drove over a little bridge and HOLY CRAP! The view off to the right was like a miniature Grand Canyon!! The picture didn't really work (I was kind of shooting into the sun and there was enough respiration from all of the trees out there that there was a bit of a haze), but maybe it'll give you a sense of something:
We had a pretty peaceful drive through the Utah backcountry as we approached Bryce Canyon National Park. Just outside of Bryce, we went through a portion of the Dixie National Forest known as Red Canyon, which was probably the most intense color I had seen in a long time.
There was a nice little pulloff and we stopped to take a few pictures, but we were also happy to feel that the temperature had dropped a few degrees (we had gained significant elevation). As we continued toward the Bryce entrance, we started seeing more and more reddish orange rock interspersed with the normal gray granite:
And then, voila! We were at Bryce. Thankfully, unlike Zion, you can drive the main road and its little offshoots, and we pulled into the first of many parking areas to explore the main "ampitheater." You can actually walk the whole rim of the ampitheater (so named because it's a crescent-shaped rim that envelopes a deep gorge filled with these AMAZING formations called Hoodoos) but we sadly didn't have time!
The Hoodoos are incredible, spiny, veiny spindles that are formed through erosion by water and ice and are distinct to this one small area of Utah. The presence of multiple kinds of sandstone layered on top of one another is what allows for the kind of weathering that produces these bizarre and fascinating formations. I realized, after looking through my pictures, that it's a) impossible to convey the magnitude of the expansive ampitheater, b) unlikely that pictures could give a sense of scale of the individual Hoodoos, and c) still awesome to see in pictures.
Nick and I wandered around Sunset Point and hiked a short trail up to Inspiration Point, all the while walking in a sort of dazed and amazed stupor. The beauty of this country leaves me speechless; that it CAN leave me (ME!) speechless is stupefying. It's easy to see why Native Americans worshiped gods of nature and natural forces: if we didn't have knowledge of geology, time, and science, wouldn't we also assume that supreme beings put those mountains, those hoodoos, those arches, in exactly the place they wanted? To be worshiped as pillars of strength and beauty, monuments so many thousands of times more beautiful and delicate, intricate and colossal than humans could ever dream of creating? As we drove around, Nick and I wondered when in the evolution of man did he begin to appreciate natural beauty? We know that early homo sapiens were drawn to water sources for food and survival and natural caves for shelter ... but when did we as a species begin to look at the world around us and have our breath taken away by the grandeur and grace? Does it date back to the same time we started making practical objects from an aesthetic point of view? Did nature inspire us to do that? It's enough to make the heads of a couple of agnostic thinky people like us spin (see them spinning?).
A little farther down the main drive in Bryce, we came across a pullout for a view of one lonely arch (Bryce doesn't have many):
And we saw so much more, but for the sake of brevity (I know, I know - TOO LATE!), I will just say that Bryce was someplace we really look forward to returning to for an extended stay and hiking. There are some great trails that are easily accessible to the average day hiker that take you down below the rim so you can hike with the hoodoos! And because Bryce is at 8000-9000+ feet elevation, even in the summer is it far more temperate than the other Utah parks. And once you acclimate to the incredibly wee amount of oxygen in the air at that height, I think a Bryce hiking/camping trip would be an excellent adventure indeed.
We had toyed with the idea of staying North of Bryce, just outside of Capitol Reef National Park, in the tiny hamlet of Torrey. The town has just 141 residents but somehow supports several restaurants and no fewer than six hotels ... go figure. Nick had read in our trust AAA Utah guide book about a locally famous restaurant called Cafe Diablo which, as we found out from our waitress, is listed in 1000 Places to See Before You Die. The food was divine, although the portions were absolutely mind-bogglingly huge. We each had an app (Nick had rattlesnake cakes, I had a duck salad with jicama slaw) and were so stuffed from those we were really glad we'd decided to split an entree (pumpkin seed-crusted local trout). The setting was totally idyllic and the food left us rested and relaxed. We decided to continue on through Capitol Reef and stay in Green River (it may have had something to do with nostalgia for the name ...). The drive through Capitol Reef lasted through the magic hour before dusk, and it could not have been more appropriately named!
We stumbled upon this one-room building along the road in the park, and although it was just being shaded by the adjacent peak, there was still enough light to capture the scene. This building was nearby and similar in appearance to the historic Fruita school, a one-room schoolhouse founded by the Mormons shortly after they settled the area, though there was no plaque at this building indicating its purpose or history.
We stopped to get one last panorama during the moments just before the sun set:
And thus ended our marathon day of National Park-ing. It couldn't have been better! We pulled into Green River late and exhausted but oddly energized. But it still hadn't really hit us that we were MOVING across the country instead of just VISITING some parks on vacation. The first revelations started to come the following day ...
Which I will blog about once my fingers have recovered from this post. =)
We arrived Sunday evening at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and checked into our pre-reserved temporary lodging that will be our pit stop until we find an apartment/house. And there's progress on that front, but I hesitate to write anything about it as I don't want to jinx anything. But it's looking good so far.
I have to say, I was a *bit* concerned as the receptionist at the Inn directed us not to a hotel room but to another building ... and as we drove through the temporary housing area, a collection of one- and two-story duplexes, there was a HUGE bulldozer and a half-torn-down building that happened to look very similar to the rest of the units we were passing. That is to say, Nick and I both silently sat in the car, thinking "AREYOUFUCKINGKIDDINGME? We're being sent to condemned freakin' housing. Only they haven't gotten to ripping OUR shithole down yet." And we had no idea how long we'd be staying here ... so our throats both started to sort of close up in anticipation (dread?) of what we'd find. Neither one of us wanting to be the first to say anything, we gingerly opened the front door (like we thought it was going to come crashing off its hinges or something) and shot each other somewhat confused looks when ... lo and behold ... this place was NICE. As in, full kitchen with nice appliances and dining room furniture, big living room with a flat screen TV, and two well-appointed bedrooms. Clean carpet, nice floors - in fact, it looked to have been relatively recently remodeled. So I guess the Air Force DOES know how to take care of their people after all. Huh.
It's hard for me to believe it's only been one full day here: what a day it's been! We went over to the medical center to square away the transfer of my health care and records, Nick went over and checked out the AFIT campus on base and met up with his sponsor, a former S-3B guy who's here working on his PhD, we went grocery shopping at the commissary on base, and then we went and looked at some apartments in the downtown area and one other neighborhood that had piqued my interest. Like I said ... progress.
I had a little time in the car on the way through Kansas to sort through and do some very (very) rough editing of my shots from our first day in Utah, and in my procrastination to get anything up on the blog in the last few days, I managed to get through the second day as well.
So let's see, where did I leave off? Ah yes, St. George. Lovely desert hamlet. Friendly people. We departed as early as we could muster the next morning for a 40-minute drive into Zion Nat'l Park. Almost immediately, the landscape became more rugged and riddled with red peaks jutting up from the middle of incredibly flat stretches of desert scrub.
(this following image is one of my faves from the day, though sadly it ended up a bit oversaturated during my in-car rudimentary postprocessing. This is one I'll work on once my picture monster desktop is up and running again in our new place.)
Oh, and one more note about the post-processing: after I started looking through the images, I noticed that HOLY HELL I have a lot of dust on my sensor. Maybe from switching lenses five or six (or more) times a day in Alaska? Or even more frequently here on the road trip? (that's rhetorical) The dust gets progressively worse through the first day and you'll notice some really bad dots on shots from the second day. I will be editing these spots out of the "keepers" but I need dear old Photoshop to do that well, so for now you can curse the evil dust along with me.
Because Zion is an incredibly popular park, there is almost no parking inside the park, and there is basically one main road that takes you to all of the sights, the National Parks people decided to limit the number of cars on the road in the park. Now, the main drag is accessible only by shuttle bus, and as we just didn't have the time to hop on, hop off, etc (and it was already upwards of 90 degrees at 9:30 am), we chose to drive on through the park and leave Zion unchecked on our bucket lists. But we certainly got an appreciation for the architectural peaks and mesas (buttes?), and we were there early enough in the morning to still have the moon hanging in the unbelievably blue sky:
And the drive, of course, was beautiful. We climbed up on a series of switchbacks that overlooked the main canyon of the park and then passed through two long tunnels carved into the side of the mountain. Here's a shot as we entered one of the tunnels, looking back through the side-view mirror at the stunning peaks behind us:
As we continued our drive through the park, we started to notice the fascinating patterns that the wind and weather had worn into the sandstone. Some of it, like this, was more of a horizontal slashing, while other patterns closer to the tops of peaks were more vertical:
And then we got to Checkerboard Mesa, so named for the horizontal and vertical slashing that creates a sort of grid on the side of this windswept mesa.
I could type out the explanation for this amazing geological phenomenon, but seeing as I took a picture of the sign at the viewpoint, I'll let you read it as I did:
I should have realized this was the Easternmost stop in the park when a busload of weary-looking European tourists unloaded and excitedly paced from one end of the viewpoint to the other, snapping pictures. Hey, when your first sight of Zion is Checkerboard Mesa ... well, I couldn't really blame them (too much) for hogging every good self-timed portrait shot. Sure enough, we soon exited the park and were on toward Bryce. We had one of those great road trip moments as we were driving along (well, NICK was driving along. I was staring, stupefied, out the window). We rounded a curve and it looked like we were going to be passing over a small river or a mini gorge or something: the land was pretty flat and there were no super duper special geological features on the near horizon. Then, out of nowhere, we drove over a little bridge and HOLY CRAP! The view off to the right was like a miniature Grand Canyon!! The picture didn't really work (I was kind of shooting into the sun and there was enough respiration from all of the trees out there that there was a bit of a haze), but maybe it'll give you a sense of something:
We had a pretty peaceful drive through the Utah backcountry as we approached Bryce Canyon National Park. Just outside of Bryce, we went through a portion of the Dixie National Forest known as Red Canyon, which was probably the most intense color I had seen in a long time.
There was a nice little pulloff and we stopped to take a few pictures, but we were also happy to feel that the temperature had dropped a few degrees (we had gained significant elevation). As we continued toward the Bryce entrance, we started seeing more and more reddish orange rock interspersed with the normal gray granite:
And then, voila! We were at Bryce. Thankfully, unlike Zion, you can drive the main road and its little offshoots, and we pulled into the first of many parking areas to explore the main "ampitheater." You can actually walk the whole rim of the ampitheater (so named because it's a crescent-shaped rim that envelopes a deep gorge filled with these AMAZING formations called Hoodoos) but we sadly didn't have time!
The Hoodoos are incredible, spiny, veiny spindles that are formed through erosion by water and ice and are distinct to this one small area of Utah. The presence of multiple kinds of sandstone layered on top of one another is what allows for the kind of weathering that produces these bizarre and fascinating formations. I realized, after looking through my pictures, that it's a) impossible to convey the magnitude of the expansive ampitheater, b) unlikely that pictures could give a sense of scale of the individual Hoodoos, and c) still awesome to see in pictures.
Nick and I wandered around Sunset Point and hiked a short trail up to Inspiration Point, all the while walking in a sort of dazed and amazed stupor. The beauty of this country leaves me speechless; that it CAN leave me (ME!) speechless is stupefying. It's easy to see why Native Americans worshiped gods of nature and natural forces: if we didn't have knowledge of geology, time, and science, wouldn't we also assume that supreme beings put those mountains, those hoodoos, those arches, in exactly the place they wanted? To be worshiped as pillars of strength and beauty, monuments so many thousands of times more beautiful and delicate, intricate and colossal than humans could ever dream of creating? As we drove around, Nick and I wondered when in the evolution of man did he begin to appreciate natural beauty? We know that early homo sapiens were drawn to water sources for food and survival and natural caves for shelter ... but when did we as a species begin to look at the world around us and have our breath taken away by the grandeur and grace? Does it date back to the same time we started making practical objects from an aesthetic point of view? Did nature inspire us to do that? It's enough to make the heads of a couple of agnostic thinky people like us spin (see them spinning?).
A little farther down the main drive in Bryce, we came across a pullout for a view of one lonely arch (Bryce doesn't have many):
And we saw so much more, but for the sake of brevity (I know, I know - TOO LATE!), I will just say that Bryce was someplace we really look forward to returning to for an extended stay and hiking. There are some great trails that are easily accessible to the average day hiker that take you down below the rim so you can hike with the hoodoos! And because Bryce is at 8000-9000+ feet elevation, even in the summer is it far more temperate than the other Utah parks. And once you acclimate to the incredibly wee amount of oxygen in the air at that height, I think a Bryce hiking/camping trip would be an excellent adventure indeed.
We had toyed with the idea of staying North of Bryce, just outside of Capitol Reef National Park, in the tiny hamlet of Torrey. The town has just 141 residents but somehow supports several restaurants and no fewer than six hotels ... go figure. Nick had read in our trust AAA Utah guide book about a locally famous restaurant called Cafe Diablo which, as we found out from our waitress, is listed in 1000 Places to See Before You Die. The food was divine, although the portions were absolutely mind-bogglingly huge. We each had an app (Nick had rattlesnake cakes, I had a duck salad with jicama slaw) and were so stuffed from those we were really glad we'd decided to split an entree (pumpkin seed-crusted local trout). The setting was totally idyllic and the food left us rested and relaxed. We decided to continue on through Capitol Reef and stay in Green River (it may have had something to do with nostalgia for the name ...). The drive through Capitol Reef lasted through the magic hour before dusk, and it could not have been more appropriately named!
We stumbled upon this one-room building along the road in the park, and although it was just being shaded by the adjacent peak, there was still enough light to capture the scene. This building was nearby and similar in appearance to the historic Fruita school, a one-room schoolhouse founded by the Mormons shortly after they settled the area, though there was no plaque at this building indicating its purpose or history.
We stopped to get one last panorama during the moments just before the sun set:
And thus ended our marathon day of National Park-ing. It couldn't have been better! We pulled into Green River late and exhausted but oddly energized. But it still hadn't really hit us that we were MOVING across the country instead of just VISITING some parks on vacation. The first revelations started to come the following day ...
Which I will blog about once my fingers have recovered from this post. =)
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