Storm Watching on the Oregon Coast

Hey Flyover friends!

Yeah, Jenna and I are still out there exploring and loving the US of A. In fact, you can and should check in with Jenna’s epic cross-country adventure at Round-Trip America. I was able to join her for a few days in South Dakota and we had a grand time, simply grand. She’s doing tons of cool things, writing and posting gorgeous photos. Go see for yourself.

I also recently took a trip to Oregon, where I spent some time on the Oregon coast looking for storms. Big, exciting storms. Click here for a story about that trip. And Sophia in an Oregon Storm is a short video companion to the story, in which I am delightfully buffeted by the wind and rain. I love that kind of thing.

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Getaways for Winter Days

We all have our own ideas of the perfect winter getaway. For some people, it’s a tropical beach, far from the snow-covered driveway. (Whenever I say I miss snow, living here in Texas, my husband says, “That’s because you never had to shovel a driveway.” Which is true.) For some, it’s atop a ski mountain, or curled up by a fireplace on a cold, cold night.

What’s your dream winter escape?

That’s the topic for today’s threefer and our guest writer is Claire Walter, who has been writing about skiing and travel for years. She’s also blogging every which way, with blogs about travel, Colorado food, and Colorado bargains. She jokes that she’s “a travel writer who rarely leaves my time zone. People from all over the world come for our silky snowy, gorgeous mountains and great climate. I’m here to welcome them.”

Winter doesn't get much better than this. Photo courtesy Colorado Ski Country USA

For me, the ideal day is snow underfoot and sun overhead. Fortunately, the Colorado Rocky Mountains provide an abundance of both. I’m, equally happy on downhill skis, cross-country skis, and snowshoes, and if I had ever mastered snowboarding, I’d probably love that too.
I used to live in the Northeast where winter days were often gray, and where snow turned quickly to slush on city streets and to near-ice on the ski slopes. I lived in Colorado for two years before I stopped skiing with my toes curled in my boots to feel that I was holding on to the hardpack. Now I expect soft snow underfoot, cornflower-blue skies overhead and the sun shining down.–Claire

A winter beach is gloriously empty. Photo by alisonpavlos via flickr (Creative Commons license)

A good thick sweater is essential. Long johns, too. But–and sun worshippers are sure to call me crazy for it–I prefer visits to Jersey shore beaches (and other cold-in-the-winter locales) when everybody else is on the ski slopes. Though I enjoy a good Italian ice and a day of body surfing during high season, there’s something beautiful about a beach that’s empty and slightly somber. Winter waves are a powerful sight to see. I love watching the season’s intrepid surfers take them on. And did I mention the beaches are empty?–Jenna

Cold snow and hot springs are blissful combo. Photo by Sam & Mary Cissel/National Park Service.

My husband and I snowmobiled from Cody, Wyoming to Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel in Yellowstone National Park. I don’t particularly enjoy snowmobiles. They’re too loud, smelly, and fast for me and I always feel just one attention lapse away from disaster. Still, the scenery and experiences (including a terrifying race with a buffalo) we had on this 50-mile route were once-in-a-lifetime extraordinary. We ended that long day at the hotel where we rented a room and a private, outdoor hot tub. As we soaked away the day’s exertions, snow started falling, like stars from the night sky. I’d do it all again in a minute.–Sophia

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Autumn in Wisconsin

I’ve been goofing around in Door County, Wisconsin this week, getting a good dose of autumn everything—colors, weather, pumpkins, apples, autumnal scarecrows-and-sheaves-of-wheat displays. Good golly, it’s everything you want autumn to be–so perfect, it’s hokey. Wonderfully so. Here, take a look:

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Focus on America’s National Parks: Images of Yellowstone

It has finally arrived. Yesterday, the first episode of The National Parks: America’s Best Idea provided the best excuse in recent memory to avoid all to-dos, to step away from the musts, to ignore text messages and e-mails.

The show began with a quote from John Muir: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”

I thought back on some of the beauty I’ve experienced in the National Parks. The day at Denali when, with just a few other people around, I watched a moose taking a midday bath with her newborns. The afternoon a foghorn broke through the quiet of a hike in Acadia National Park. And the hundreds of images I focused on during a three-day photography workshop in Yellowstone National Park. Here, some of the photos I settle into when I need to pull back from daily life. I hope you enjoy them.

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Prairie Love

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Pawhuska, Okla. Photo by Sophia Dembling

No such thing as a bad photograph of the prairie. No, really.

I’ve been prairie obsessed since visiting the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Pawhuska, Okla., a year ago. Several months later, an hour tagging barbed wire fencing (as a favor to prairie chickens) in the Oklahoma panhandle convinced me that tromping across a prairie is a thousand times more glorious than even the most glorious photograph.

I wish I’d planned ahead to participate in one of the prairie restoration volunteer projects in Iowa for National Public Lands Day, Sept. 26. Or in activities the following weekend for Prairie Appreciation Week at Homestead National Monument (also Iowa). That sort of thing would be worth traveling for, if I were free to travel those weekends. Maybe next year.

Instead, I’ll celebrate National Public Lands Day 2009 (woohoo!) by searching the website for a volunteer project closer to home, maybe planting aquatic plants. (I’m sure there won’t be many mosquitoes.) There’s probably a project near your home, too. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to spend an autumn Saturday?

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I am, therefore I ‘Clark’

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As a total word nerd, I’m always inventing new phrases on road trips.

In the lexicon I’ve developed with my friends, “To Clark” means “to overly plan an adventure in an attempt to make sure everyone will have a great time, only to see the plans backfire, causing disastrous results.”

Clark, disappointed again.

The verb is a direct reference to Clark Griswold, he of National Lampoon’s fame, who (at least on the silver screen) consistently made good-natured attempts to provide a good time for his (otherwise indifferent) family—Ellen, Rusty and Audrey—out on the open road, and consistently came up short.

It is pejorative, but lovingly so, as in “I’m exhausted, Matty really Clarked us into the ground today,” or “Matty, don’t Clark it too hard.”

The phrase was hatched in the summer of 2000, when Bret (now an editor at Newsweek) and Dave (now a political pundit) and I went camping for a week in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.

The three of us never had been camping together, and I wanted to make the experience special. I booked us the best campsite. I planned some fun kayak adventures. I scouted good hikes.

Of course, lots went wrong.

It rained on our campsite. Our kayaks rolled in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Bret practically needed a Medevac during our hike on Mount Constitution. To add insult to injury, all three of us fell for the same ballerina (and nobody really got her).

Instead of hating me for these unexpected developments, my friends likened me to Griswold, going so far as to call me “Clark” for most of the trip. The rest, as they say, is history.

For me, the lesson was simple: especially while traveling, avoid over-planning at all costs. Build in down time. Poke around. Explore. The key to a good road trip is serendipity, that wonderful phenomenon by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate.

When you Clark it, the itinerary gets so full, the whole notion of happenstance doesn’t stand a chance.

# # #

Of course one always can Clark the home schedule, as well.

I’m guilty of this often, and I’ve done it again this summer. My intentions were good when I agreed to join the gals at Flyover America, but the birth of my first child has made time a rare commodity around these parts.

With this in mind, I’ll be taking an extended hiatus to focus on child-rearing and other stuff. It’s been a pleasure to write with Jenna and Sophia for these few months, and I’ll be back periodically for guest posts or the occasional three-fer. In the meantime, please follow my other work on my personal Web site and daddyhood blog. Thanks for reading.

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What’s Left Behind: American Ruins

What Cornish left behind

Ruins thrill me. Especially when they’re just…there. When they’re free of guided tours, other people, and too much information. I like to wander decaying exteriors and see how nature has started to claim them for its own. To see trees and plants growing where people once danced or ate dinner. I like to see sunlight filling every hole in the roof or, even better, a full blue sky replacement roof

But, in the past, ruins have always felt more a part of trips abroad. It’s an age thing: for me, the U.S. still feels too new to really have ruins. House tours in the U.S.? Yes, of course. From Newport to San Simeon, we’re a country that loves to celebrate elegant and/or historic homes from days long gone. I love those homes, too, but they don’t send my imagination swirling in the way that a good pile of stone does. The barely standing frame of a house? It’s my bliss.

Last Thursday, I found some local bliss. After a commuter rail trip along the Hudson, I went hiking in Hudson Highlands State Park. Though I’d been to Cold Spring, one of the towns it borders, many times throughout my life, I hadn’t ever hiked the park. It’s tempting to smack myself for that but I do love that, even close to home, there are always new discoveries to make. Besides, Thursday’s hike was a birthday outing with my friend K and what we found there was the best birthday gift I could have stumbled across.

Delaying the end of the hike..

The writeups I’d scanned about the hike mentioned that it featured the remains of the long-abandoned estate of industrialist Edward G. Cornish. It registered but, and this isn’t totally odd for me, I was also a little too focused on the pre-trip details of when to go, what to wear, blah blah blah. Once on the trail, the ruins started to appear pretty quickly: a stone exterior here, a pool filled with mud and rainwater there. I was glad I hadn’t read too much. For a while, these ruins were mine to rebuild in my imagination. And, now that I’m back home, I have plenty of time to read up on what really went on inside their doors–and turn my attention to new ruin-finding outings around the U.S.

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Eulogy for a State Park

On a clear day atop California’s Mount St. Helena, the entire Bay Area comes into view.

In the mornings, a shroud of fog enrobes the Napa and Sonoma Valleys like a giant cotton ball, clinging to the green hillsides as the sun threatens to drive it away. In the afternoons, these same hillsides emerge as an undulating landscape, a lush version of the rolling waves due west, in the Pacific.

The view from the trail to the summit

Perhaps the best time of day is evening, when the moon rises from the east like a silver saucer, illuminating the mountain in soft yet resplendent light.

It’s no wonder author Robert Louis Stevenson (yes, he of “Treasure Island” fame) spent a summer in an old mining shack here in 1880. Stevenson chronicled his experiences in the 1883 book, “The Silverado Squatters,” a great and detailed (albeit anti-Semitic in parts) read.

The book soon may be the only way for interested visitors to experience the park; the mountain and related trail systems lay within the boundaries of the aptly named Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, one of up to 100 state parks that might be closed by Labor Day to help eliminate a budget gap of $26 billion.

Faced with the threat of public lands no more, a buddy and I took a recent trip to the park to explore. We were blown away by how understated the place was.

Two images in particular lingered.

First, of course, was the spot where Stevenson and his wife spent their summer. No structures remain, but a concrete memorial in the shape of an open book on a pedestal now sits where the mining shack once stood. The memorial doesn’t say much—here lived Mr. Stevenson, blah, blah, blah. It was erected in 1911 by the “Club Women of Napa County,” whoever they were.

An understated memorial to an understated guy

The second unforgettable image was the view from the top of 4,344-foot Mount St. Helena. The peak is the only place in Northern California from which you can spy land in three counties: Napa, Sonoma and Lake.

Ask any local vintner, and they’ll tell you that the schlep to the summit has become a Wine Country rite of passage. The summit was a reason to celebrate for us, as well; after the customary photo opp, Bill reached into his bag and grabbed two glasses and bottle of rose.

By the time my buddy finished pouring, the wind was whipping, the fog was burning off and we could faintly make out the silhouette of a hot-air balloon floating below us.

“To Stevenson,” I said, raising my glass. Let’s hope I can do it again soon.

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Windmills vs. Wildlife

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Near Marfa, Texas, photo by Sophia Dembling

I’ve always appreciated the sight of a windmill on the horizon but otherwise, gave windmills little thought.

That changed after I visited the boring-sounding American Wind Power Center in Lubbock, Texas where the huge collection of vintage windmills can only be described as folk art. First I was charmed, then I slapped my forehead when the center’s executive director, Coy Harris, pointed out that areas like Lubbock, with lots of wind and little ground water, could not have been settled without windmills. (Although in my defense, I was having my first taste of the powerful, persistent West Texas wind.) I’ve been a big windmill fan ever since. Windmills, they look good, they do good … surely they can do no harm.

Shattuck Windmill Museum, photo by Sophia Dembling

So I loved The Windmill Farm B&B in Tolar, Texas, where transplanted South Dakotans Chuck and Ruby Rickgauer collect vintage windmills (which Chuck also restores), and visiting the Shattuck Windmill Museum in Shattuck, Oklahoma, which has a collection as appealing, if not as extensive, as Lubbock’s.

I find modern wind turbines beautiful, too, in a different way. They are otherworldly, a little frightening, like something landed from outer space, marching ponderously over the horizon and across the prairie.

But since also falling in love with the lesser prairie chicken, I am conflicted about those turbines. Maybe all windmills aren’t benign.

Lesser prairie chickens are not on the endangered species list, but they are in peril and wind turbines interfere with the little fellas’ breeding grounds.

Wadena, Indiana, photo by Johnny Jupiter Photo via Flickr

The birds won’t do their mating dance near tall structures, which in their birdie brains puts them at risk from predators from above. Now there’s a race between conservationists trying to get the species on the endangered list and wind-power companies, trying to get turbines up before it is. (In related horrifying news, it seems wind turbines also cause bats’ lungs to explode, poor things.)

Oh dear, oh dear. I’m torn between two lovers. Of course wind power is good. But so are prairie chickens. And bats, for that matter.

Surely with some forethought and planning, it’s possible to both build windmills and keep our wildlife safe, yes?

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It Happened In A National Park

Pretty soon everyone is going to be talking about our national parks; Ken Burns’ latest project is a six-parter called The National Parks: America’s Best Idea and will debut on PBS on September 27.

We’ll be watching, for sure, but in the meantime we decided to get a jump on the chatter with our own national parks memories—three little moments that left a lasting impact.

Photo by Jenna Schnuer

The first day of a photography workshop in Yellowstone National Park served up bubbling mudpots, hot springs with colors that would shame the brightest wildflowers, and plenty of elk. Old Faithful was ahead but, in my mind, it was the stuff of kitsch and cartoons. I wasn’t excited. With my camera set on the spot, I waited for the geyser to blow. Ho hum. Whatever. And then she did. Thousands of gallons of boiling water shot more than 100 feet into the air. Instantly, the earth owned her again. She was released from kitsch and cartoons. She was beautiful. —Jenna

Mid-July 2003 in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park. It’s 4 a.m., but the sky is bright. I’m alone in a kayak near the Beardslee Islands, floating, when a juvenile male humpback surfaces ten feet from my starboard bow. Beneath the water’s surface, his basketball-sized eye looks straight up at me as if to say, “Yo.” Then, the blow: putrid, soggy air from the animal’s lungs bursts from the blowhole, soaking me in an instant. We float together, side-by-side, for what seems like an eternity. Then, without warning, he arches his back, salutes with his flukes and sinks to the depths.–Matt

Photo NPS/Eric Leonard

I’m doing a little solo day-hiking in Texas’ Big Bend National Park among the fragrant pines high in the Chisos Mountains. I find a outcropping with a view and sit to contemplate life for a few minutes when a hawk—I’m not bird-savvy enough to know what kind, the park is home to several—flies by just overhead. I’ve never been this close to a hawk in flight and the stately swoosh … swoosh of the powerful wings moving against the air is startling, stirring, and unforgettable.–Sophia

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