Orlando — March 2023

 

Link to more photos. View the photos individually to see the captions.

I had heard that the Star Wars area at Disney World was bigger than the one at Disneyland (which we have not yet seen), and the Harry Potter area at Universal Studios Florida was more extensive than the one here in L.A. (which we have seen). So when I saw a cheap flights + hotel package for Orlando in March when there's usually not too much rain, I grabbed it.

Not everything worked out. First I found that the added parts at Universal were mainly roller coasters, which Victor would never do, so we dropped that. Once we arrived, we found that Uber was quite expensive, so we did use a rental car one day. Our cheap motel had mandatory resort fees, undisclosed until you checked in, of course. GRRR!! I hope the government succeeds in banning these! And finally, with every passing week, Florida governor De Santis angers me more, so I was unhappy spending money there. At least I did often wear these:

I also had, but never wore this more explicit pin:

As an Internet addict, I got online as soon as we were at the motel, but after about twenty minutes, my (rather old) Chromebook died! I was offline until we got back home! I only use my phone for phone calls and photography; I dislike doing Internet work on the phone.

Our Disney day began quite cool and a bit rainy, though it warmed up later. We didn't pay for Lightning Lanes, so we waited in long lines, but we did get to all of our desired attractions.

The weather improved after that first morning. Instead of Universal, we visited several other sites (see the photos): 

The Lake Nona Sculpture Garden has quite a few good pieces, including the charging bull famously on Wall Street and a Henry Moore.

The Morse Museum has the world’s most comprehensive collection of Tiffany works.

The Harry P. Leu Gardens is about fifty acres, including a large lake and multiple gardens. Many flowers were not in bloom this time of year, but at least there were butterflies in the Butterfly Garden.

I definitely wanted to see the Pulse interim memorial. I explained the event to Victor.

Misinformation

 

I am not plagued by misinformation, despite spending hours every day online and on social media. It's not that difficult. You can do it, too. Here are some tips:

Don't believe anything liar-in-chief Trump says.

Stay well-informed. (I rely mainly on LATimes, news.google.com, MSNBC, and CNN).

Only pay attention to news from legitimate sources.

That means don't click on any "news" items in social media, instead google the topic to see what trusted sources say about it.

And that means that social media won't feed you a lot of news or fake news items, because you don't click on them.

Be very skeptical of suspicious stories; check google and snopes. (I'm often the one debunking such items. It feels great.)

Added later: The Pro-Truth Pledge is worth reviewing.

Autographs — Wil Wheaton

 

Wil Wheaton was scheduled to sign his new book at Vroman's on August 31^st:

I was there early. Quite a few folks came. Shortly after 7 pm, they apologized and said they were trying to contact him. After 7:30, they said they had no news. Just before 8, they said it wasn't going to happen. They also said they would try again, and they took our names, promising to notify us as soon as they knew more. As I wrote at the time, everyone hoped he was OK. The next day, he was posting on Facebook, with no mention of the book signing he had skipped.

On September 23^rd, I received an email saying that he would be at Vroman's on October 26^th “for real this time”. I would be out of town (Houston trip). I asked if I could drop off my book ahead of time and pick it up when I returned. I had to write three times before they answered, but they said OK, and that's what I did.

(Index to autographs)

Houston — Oct. 2022

Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)

In February 2020, I booked flights for a trip to Houston a few months later. When COVID shut things down, that was the first of five trips I had to cancel. Now it's the last of them to finally happen. Rice's "Golden Reunion" weekend, my 50-year reunion, was the obvious time to go.

The trip included family, Rice, and several Houston sights, some new to me. We stayed with cousins Joel and Joan in Fulshear, 35 miles west of Houston. Victor particularly loved taking their dogs for walks.

We had dinner one night with more family: Warren, Lisa, Lauryn, Jason, Spencer and Ryan.

Around Houston, I first showed Victor the Rothko Chapel and Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk sculpture in front, which I've always liked. We continued to the Menil Collection. I was surprised by how much they continue to acquire. I had not previously seen their Flavin Installation. (See the photos.)

Because we had recently been to Hobbiton in New Zealand, we had to stop at the Hobbit Cafe. 

The rest of the day was at Rice. I particularly wanted to see Duncan Hall and the Turrell Skyspace. Duncan Hall did not disappoint, but there's really not much to see at the Turrell work unless you're there at dawn or dusk, which we did not manage to do.

The next day, we started at the WaterWall. I showed Victor the Galleria, including the ice rink. The mall has expanded over the years; it is much larger than I remembered. After lunch, there was heavy rain, so I abandoned plans for other sights, and we went directly to the Rice reunion dinner location. As the rain let up, we saw large rainbows over downtown Houston. 

In the weeks before the reunion, I asked several of my classmates whether they were going, and all but one said no. So I only knew a handful of the reunion attendees, but the reception and dinner were fine.

All around the region, when you tell someone that you go to Rice, the most common response is, "You go to Rice? You must be smart!" While I was attending Rice, someone made this T-shirt, which I still have, and which I brought to the reunion:

(I read that someone later made a bumpersticker of that, and Rice students often put it on their cars upside-down!)

New Zealand — Sept/Oct 2022

 Milford Sound

Link to more photos (As always, click any photo to enlarge it, and view the photos individually to see the captions.)

(And don't miss the link to a second album of Hobbiton photos below!)

I have long wanted to visit New Zealand. When I saw a sale price for this short tour, I signed up. Plus, I had sufficient airline miles for our round-trip flights.  But in the following weeks, there were changes. Certain activities were not going to re-open before we were there, and we made substitutions. In the end, we even cut Christchurch entirely and made the already short trip a full day shorter. 

I was not surprised that it rained at least a little almost every day, but it was also colder than I expected. I never wore any of the short-sleeve T-shirts I brought.

We started in Auckland. We walked around a bit, including Albert Park. Few people wore masks. Although we were in downtown, it was difficult to find a restaurant open for early breakfast. We then had a day-long tour of the city and surroundings, including Mount Victoria, both the Pacific and Tasman Sea coasts, the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park, and Arataki Centre. We walked a tiny bit of the [Edmund] Hillary Trail in the rain forest, saw giant ferns, large kauri trees, and Piha Beach with gray magnetic sand. (See the photos.)

From Auckland, we went by car to Rotorua via Hobbiton. Despite the drizzle, it was fun visiting Hobbiton. See my separate photo album there. 

Victor and Rodney at Bilbo's house in Hobbiton

In Rotorua, we went on a Duck Tours ride in an amphibious WW2 "duck" landing craft able to drive on city streets and become a motor boat in water. We did both. That evening, we saw the Maori presentation and had an indigenous dinner at Tamaki Village. 

From Rotorua, we flew to Queenstown on the South Island. The Rotorua Airport is a welcome throw-back: no security check, no metal detector, no ID check, and family and friends welcome at the gate. But our flight was canceled due to fog, and we were booked for a flight more than 7 hours later! We spent all day at the airport.

The next day, despite great weather in town, the morning Milford Sound flight/cruise was canceled! When I called, they set us up for a later time, and that worked. The flight was a bit bumpy, but beautiful; lots of snow-capped mountains. (See the photos, of course.) On the cruise, there was more beautiful scenery, a dolphin, and seals.

The following day, we walked a bit, including Queenstown Gardens, a bookstore, and an art gallery.

A cold front came through on the day we departed, so Victor saw snow falling for the first time, even though it was only a few flakes.

Crossing the International Date Line cost us a day when we flew from Los Angeles to New Zealand, but the return was weirder: We left NZ 8 pm one evening, and after a 12-hour flight, arrived in LA at noon the same day!

Autographs — Sandra Cisneros

 

She was at Vromans, promoting her new poetry book. There was an overflow crowd, many with multiple books for her to sign.

(Index to autographs)

Mérida - Sept. 2022

 

Due to COVID, we had not been back to Mérida since Victor came to Los Angeles in May 2019. He had not seen his mother or any of the rest of his family in more than three years!

We were there for two weeks. We will probably return again this coming winter.

There was frequent rain, especially in the afternoons. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people on the street wore masks; many more than in L.A.

As always, we spent a lot of time on and waiting for buses, both to the downtown and to Progreso. Because Victor's house is now mostly unoccupied, there is no longer Internet service, so I used Internet cafes in the downtown or I used Internet at his sister's home in Progreso. 

Manitoba - August 2022

Link to more photos (and one video). View the photos individually to see the captions.

Polar bears, beluga whales, and aurora borealis!

With Victor's love of bears (see here and here and here), we certainly had to go to Churchill, Manitoba to see polar bears some day. When I found this warm weather tour, I signed up. And despite some rain in the forecast ahead of time, the weather was very good.

First, we flew to Winnipeg. I was annoyed that they booked us at a hotel away from the airport that didn't offer airport pick-up.

At breakfast the next day, we met two people going on our tour. I figured there would be a handful of people joining us, but when we first gathered together, I was surprised to find more than fifty people in our tour group!

We had a charter flight just for our group (!) from Winnipeg to Churchill — no security checks! — followed by a tour of the area.

The next day, we went on a boat tour to see beluga whales. They were easy to find.

The following day was open for pricey extras (kayaking, aqua-gliding) which we didn't buy. So we wandered the town, although it's not very big and there's not a lot to do or see.

Next came polar bears! We did get good views of swimming polar bears and more distant views of them on land. Here's a 13-second video of one coming ashore and shaking off water:

We saw aurora borealis briefly one night (see the photos). On a tundra tour the next morning, we saw a distant caribou, one even more distant pair of polar bears, and birds including a golden eagle.

We left Churchill on another charter flight to Winnipeg, this time staying at an airport hotel. But the next day, our first flight to return home left too early to use the included breakfast.

Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, Dignity - July 2022

Link to more photos. View the photos individually to see the captions, several of which have more information than usual.

I have had my eye on this tour for years. In the Spring of 2019, even with the tour running almost every day during the summer, all dates were sold out. Then COVID hit, and the tour didn't run in 2020 or 2021. I was on the wait list. When it became available, I grabbed the earliest 2022 date.

Despite rain when we arrived in Rapid City, some intermittent light rain on the first full tour day, and excessive heat on the last, the weather was mostly good, and the trip went very well. We had a great time and visited many wonderful sites. 

Our initial day of travel had some problems. Flying to Rapid City, we had a connection in Las Vegas. First, we sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes in L.A. because Las Vegas was too busy. Then we left Las Vegas more than an hour late because we had a change of gate and plane. Once in Rapid City, I almost got lost trying to drive in the rain at night in a strange city.

After I saw this article, I knew I wanted to go a day early just to see the Dignity statue:

Despite having to drive most of the day to go there and back, it was worth it. Most people outside of South Dakota have still never heard of it. No one in our tour group, including the leader, knew of it. Oh, and it was the first time I've seen a highway speed limit sign saying 80 mph!

The first tour day was Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial. The next day, we had breakfast in South Dakota, lunch in Wyoming, and dinner in Montana. We stopped at Devils Tower (the first U.S. National Monument), at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (five museums) in Cody, and at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Somewhere along the way, I saw a variable speed limit sign (showing 75 mph) for the first time. I didn't get a photo, but here's one from the internet:

We spent the next two days in Yellowstone National Park, the world's first national park. I had visited in 2012, and was eager to return. The photos show the highlights, including a 16-second video of Old Faithful erupting (but other than that, my Yellowstone photos from 2012 are even better). The only real disappointment was that we didn't see very many animals. In 2012, I had seen large herds of bison and quite a few other animals. This time, only a handful of bison and little else. But one, walking right down the road, did cause a bison jam of scores of cars (not on our side of the road, happily). See the photos.

Leaving Yellowstone, we cruised through Grand Teton National Park and then had lunch in Jackson, Wyoming. After a night in Pocatello, Idaho, the tour ended in Salt Lake City, including a stop at This Is the Place Heritage Park.

Canadian Rockies - July 2022

 at Waterton Lake

Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)

When I did this trip in 2016, I wrote that I should have brought Victor. Now I did. He loved it. As before, we were lucky to have mild temperatures and no rain.

The itinerary had changed a little. With COVID complications for US border crossings, they had opted to omit Glacier National Park and instead added a few new sights near Waterton. (The border COVID rules eased just days before the trip, but the itinerary didn't change.) New stops were Red Rock Canyon and Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. I had never heard of bison jumps; the film there was very instructive. Peyto Lake was even more impossibly blue than I remembered (see the photos).

In addition to deer, we saw mountain goats, big-horned sheep and black bears (see the photos). The scenery was spectacular, although there were many trees that had burned and many that were damaged by mountain pine beetles.

Walking on Athabasca Glacier was fine, but Victor noted that we walked farther and did more on Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina in 2009. 

On my 2016 trip, no one told me about the triple continental divide at Snow Dome above Athabasca Glacier, where some water flows to the Atlantic, some to the Pacific, and some to the Arctic Ocean.