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.

Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands — May 2022

 

Sunset at "The Window"
Big Bend National Park

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

This tour took us to all four national parks in Texas and New Mexico and a few additional stops. The temperature was frequently above 100, and we used four different buses, which required adjusting the itinerary for lost time. But despite the heat and the bus issues, the trip was a success.

Our first stop was McDonald Observatory. When I drove between Los Angeles and San Antonio, I always saw the turn-off for the observatory, but because it is more than 30 miles off of the interstate highway, I had never visited. We had an excellent tour guide.

We continued to Big Bend National Park, another Texas attraction I had never visited, mainly because it is so remote. On the first night there, I lucked upon a spectacular sunset photo (above).

The next day's highlight was Santa Elena Canyon and the Rio Grande, sadly nearly completely dry (see photos). The lowlight: A road construction crew had one piece of equipment sticking out too far, and it damaged several panels of our bus! Investigating and reporting the accident involved federal officers and much time. Since the nearest replacement bus was many hours away from Big Bend, we were happy that our bus remained drivable.

The next day, we changed to a new bus as we left the park. We had lunch in Marfa and stopped at the famous Prada art installation there.

We made a brief stop at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, but saw nothing that really interested me.

The next morning, our bus driver noticed a leak under the bus, and we waited several hours for a replacement bus. It was older and from a different company, so we were told we would get yet another bus the next day!

We stopped at the Living Desert Zoo and then proceeded to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I had visited Carlsbad Caverns when I was maybe twelve; Victor, of course, had never been there.

The next day, with our fourth and final bus, we went to White Sands National Park. I was at a different portion of the park on a 2013 tour of New Mexico's "Space Trail".

The next morning, after a short stop at Old Mesilla, we returned to El Paso for our flight home.

Autographs — Solnit

 
After a two-year pandemic absence, The LATimes Festival of Books returned yesterday. I managed to hear at least parts of five panels, and I bought two books. I have enjoyed much of Solnit's work. I would have preferred getting her to sign some of her other books, but this was the only one available at the event.

P.S. In January 2023, a Facebook friend asked what I thought of the book, and I wrote this note.

(Index to autographs)

Autographs — Klune

 
After a two-year pandemic absence, The LATimes Festival of Books returned yesterday. I managed to hear at least parts of five panels, and I bought two books. I chose this one because Klune spoke about how pleased he was to include a "happy gay" character. I have not read any of his work yet.

(Index to autographs)

Autographs — Sandra Tsing Loh

 

Sandra Tsing Loh spoke at Occidental today, and was happy to sign this book. Now I have to read it! When I saw that she was coming to Oxy, I bought this, hoping to get her autograph.

I have read some of her essays, and before I retired, I often heard her short "The Loh Down on Science" pieces on the radio while commuting. Today, her talk was "The Loh Down on Writing". As expected, she was informative and entertaining.

(Index to autographs)

Atlanta — March 2022

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

This tour took us to Atlanta and vicinity. I chose this because although I have been through the Atlanta airport many times, I had never stayed to visit. 

I originally booked this for Spring 2020; COVID moved it first to 2021, then to 2022. During this delay, CNN stopped giving tours, and that was dropped from the itinerary.

We were to face further disappointments: Because of a winter storm in mid-March, the cherry blossoms were delayed.  This tour had been carefully timed to include Macon's International Cherry Blossom Festival:

but the entire festival was postponed a week. Instead of seeing multitudes of cherry blossoms, we saw very few. 

Also, when we visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park, the grounds were open, but the buildings, including the Visitor Center, were closed due to COVID. Of course, they re-opened the very next week.

Finally, when we visited Stone Mountain Park, the Summit Skyride was closed due to wind.

Despite all that, the trip was pretty good. The weather was mostly mild, with only a bit of rain one day and some strong winds on our last day. 

We did not choose the group air travel, but we did connect with the group when they arrived at the Atlanta airport, so we joined them for the bus to dinner and the hotel.

Monday, the first full tour day, included the Georgia State Capitol, a bit of the Atlanta Beltline, the World of Coca-Cola, and MLK Park. At the Coke headquarters, I finally was able to buy a couple of products I have been vaguely searching for: Coke Zero Starlight and Vanilla Coke Zero with Coffee. They were pricey — $2.50 and $3.50, respectively. I drank them later in the week; they were nothing special.

Tuesday, we went to Marietta for the Gone With the Wind Museum, and Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, then returned to the city for the Atlanta History Center, including Swan House and the Cyclorama. While on the bus, our tour guide showed us Gone With The Wind. I had not seen it in more than fifty years; now it seemed way too melodramatic, and Scarlett O'Hara was simply stupid.

Wednesday we were in Macon. A step-on guide showed us many historic Macon homes (we toured one, Hay House), and regaled us with stories of famous Macon musicians.

On Thursday, we went to FDR's Little White House in Warm Springs. On the bus traveling there, our guide showed us the movie Warm Springs, with Kenneth Branagh as FDR, which was quite good. I liked the displays at the park, but after the movie, I was disappointed that we didn't see pools full of spring water, just empty pools with one small bubbling water trough where we could touch the spring water. Later, we stopped at Callaway Gardens (more of a large forested park than a garden) and the included birds of prey program and Butterfly Center.

Friday was the last day with the tour group. We hit the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum and Stone Mountain Park, including its Historic Square of relocated period houses.

Victor and I stayed for one more day on our own. After considering many possibilities, we walked to Piedmont Park, where we stumbled upon the Atlanta Science Festival.

I was worried that Victor would not get much out of this trip, but he says he did enjoy it, even if he didn't know most of the history involved, including the U.S. Civil War!

And, repeating: Link to more photos. (View the photos individually to see the captions.)