Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falklands--Lands of Exceeded Expectations


 “Why do you want to go to Antarctica?” people would ask us.  “It’s cold, expensive, and difficult to get to.” Our answer is “Why not?” It’s changing by the day and is ground zero for what is happening with global climate change. It has wildlife you can’t see at home and stunning scenery that is hard to describe.  Every person we know who has been there said it was one of the best places they had ever been. And so it was for us, too.

 Those who had been before advocated that we take an expedition type of trip on a small ship specifically designed for icy polar waters and that we include South Georgia and the Falkland Islands in the itinerary, so some of my comments and photos apply to those places as well.

 

18 days, 3,982 miles
We went with Road Scholar, one of the more affordable tour operators that met our criteria. They teamed up with other operators aboard Albatross Expedition’s 175-passenger Ocean Victory. It handled the rough seas of the infamous Drake Passage and the Southern Ocean well (depending upon who you talk to—we didn’t get seasick), and it got us into and out of some very tight and icy places. It took us 3,982 miles over 18 days.

The Ocean Victory--our refuge
in a hostile wilderness
Antarctica is about the size of the United States and Mexico combined, but that all depends upon which time of year you measure its snow and ice. It’s now dramatically smaller in the winter than 10 years ago.  Although not part of Antarctica, South Georgia (1200 miles to the NE) and the Falklands (750 miles to the north) are part of its weather and ocean current systems and marine wildlife migratory patterns. South Georgia has a population of 12 in the winter and 40 in the summer, mostly researchers and caretakers of an historic abandoned whaling village. The Falkland Islands have 3800 residents, mostly in Port Stanley. Very British!

Iceberg off Spert Island, 6:00 AM

 Geography aside, the scenery is stunning, absolutely stunning! We thought it would be a monotonous landscape, but it changed nearly every hour with the lighting, ice formations, and sea color. And none of it is manmade.

And the animals! There isn’t a huge variety of animals compared to a place like Costa Rica, but that is more than made up for in quantity where we would walk among massive penguin colonies. We never got tired of watching the seven of nine species of penguins and their young chicks. But we did we tire of their smell, which made our parkas and rain pants stink up our cabin temporarily. Nor did we tire of sea lions, seals, seabirds, and frequent whale sightings—including a very rare sighting of three blue whales off the coast of South Georgia, which some of the seasoned crew and guides had never seen before.

Fur seals and King penguins on South Georgia

 In Antarctica, we dropped anchor in about eight different places and boarded zodiacs for shore excursions or zodiac cruises about twice per day. We had about six excursions in South Georgia (nice to see greenery again!) including a hard four-mile hike, and two landings in the Falklands with hikes of four and eight miles.

 What was our highlight or the trip? Every day kept getting better than the one before.  However, what we’ll remember the most was a zodiac cruise in the north Weddell Sea at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula amid a field of icebergs, sea ice, and humpback whales. Even though it was 8:00 pm, there was still a lingering twilight. We carefully climbed out of the zodiac to set foot on an ice flow smaller than a football field. We were among the first and the very last people on earth to ever set foot on that exact spot and piece of melting ice. It was one of those surreal moments we will cherish for the rest of our lives. This piece of melting ice was a good analogy for how fragile Antarctica is right now, and it made us feel fragile on this speck of ice in such a vast inhospitable place.

 

The guides scouting out a landing site
on "our" ice flow
Surprises? One of our surprises about this trip so far is just how little free time we had. When we weren't on shore or in the zodiacs, there was always a lecture from one of the 18 guides/zodiac drivers from all over the world with a combined Antarctic guiding experience of 129 years. Most of them also had advanced degrees in marine biology, geology, ornithology, oceanography, and more. The most interesting presentation was on krill, the small crustaceans that are the food source for many creatures up the food chain. The funniest was about penguin poop projectiles.

 We had two special guests aboard. One was Alastair Forthegill, the executive producer of BBC’s Frozen Planet series. He gave us insights into how they filmed various scenes of the series and the Disney movie, Steve. The other was the head of British Bureau of Infectious Diseases, the UK’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci. He talked about the spread of Avian influenza which is now affecting sea mammals in the Antarctic region, especially in South Georgia where we had to abort a shore landing because of a huge die-off of seals.

 

Fortuna Bay, South Georgia, where we had to
abort a landing due to a seal die-off from
the avian flu.
Our favorite communal part of the day was the 6:00 pm briefing where all 170 of us and the guides gathered over drinks to review where we’ve been, what we saw, the upcoming weather, and the plans for the next day.  It was a cat and mouse game with big weather and ice situations, so our plans frequently changed, often serendipitously.

 The things we most love about travel is meeting people, culture, history, and architecture—and food of course! While short of the architecture part, we’ve met a lot of interesting fellow travelers and learned a lot about Antarctica’s history and the stories behind its explorers and whaling. (Ask us anything about Shackleton). And the food had a good selection of Indian and Asian food, some fish species we have never had before, as well as tempting European deserts. Kathy lost five pounds, I gained one.

Firman, our cabin steward
from Jakarta Indonesia
 But on the cultural side, we befriended several of the housekeeping and wait staff who hail from India, Nicaragua, Indonesia, China, and the Philippines, and it’s been fun learning about their families and lives at home and trying to brush up on our rusty Indonesian.  They work nine months of the year here and on arctic expeditions, but they all say they make much more than they possibly could with a similar land-based job back home or on a large cruise ship.

Polar plunge. A video clip from
the vantage point of the
mudroom is on
the photo link below

 
And oh yes, I did do the polar plunge, along with about 80 other shipmates. They played the Stones’ Start Me Up while we queued up in the mudroom. It was so fun. The cold shock quickly wore off into a warm glow as we swapped stories with complementary shots of vodka afterward. I should have done a cannonball.

These brief words, my daily journal (available upon request), these photos, and five Facebook and Instagram posts can’t begin to describe the totality of this experience. Our expectations were exceeded beyond measure.  It was the trip of a lifetime!

           

             "What We Can While We Can, What We Could While We Could”

 Here is a link to more photos and brief video clips, mostly in chronological order. They are best enjoyed on something larger than a phone.  (Warning: The penguins really know how to ham it up!) About 5% of the photos in the link are not mine. For more commentary and photos, please check out my five Facebook posts @ron.kelemen  or my Instagram @kelemenron.



 

Sunday, January 14, 2024

Goodbye St. Albans; Off to a New Adventure

Warming up at a pub on New Years Day
We’ve been mostly enjoying our past month in St. Albans, UK where our 3 ½ year old grandchild Hazel and her parents live. With a population of 148,000 and average housing prices of £604,400 ($769,760 US), it is one of the most affluent places to live in the UK. Keep in mind that these are mostly row houses of 1500 square feet or less, and a lot of residents live in apartments.

We find it very bicycle and pedestrian friendly, and it seems like we are always encountering baby strollers and toddler scooters. Parks and playgrounds are everywhere. As son-in-law Alan said, “People live in London to start their careers, then move to St. Albans and smaller suburban cities to raise a family.”  Being just 40 minutes by train to central London, I’m sure Covid had something to do with it as well.


The 612-year old High Street
clock tower at Christmas
We love its “High Street,” the name given to the center of most town squares where most of the eateries and shopping occurs. It is at the top of a hill, about three blocks long, two blocks wide and almost completely pedestrian.  Farmers markets happen all year about two-three times per week.  The population is about 90% white and 4% South Asian, but we hear a lot of Eastern Europe and Middle East accents. High Street and St. Albans have many ethnic restaurants including at least a dozen north Indian restaurants, a Bangladeshi one (our favorite), Japanese, Thai, French, Turkish, Greek and several Middle Eastern.  This is in addition to countless pubs and Italian places. Dining out is actually cheaper than in the States.  Usually no tipping is involved, but the nicer places for a full meal sometimes add a 10% service charge. Wine is cheaper.

With 3,000 years of continuous human habitation, St. Albans was the site of England’s most important Roman settlement and the place where hot cross buns were invented. We can still walk among the ruins and see some cool things in a museum at the heart of the settlement just 1.5 miles from Shanti and Alan’s home.

For security & privacy reasons, it's not their
home or street. But it's typical.
And speaking of historic structures, it feels like we are living in one.  Their 100-year-old, 16- foot row house is always in need of repairs and more heat.
So, between walking Hazel to and from nursery school every day (except during Christmas week and weekends), cooking, laundry with no dryer, and grocery shopping, we’ve been busy with home repairs. Considering that we are complete home-improvement screw-ups and lack proper tools, everything takes longer than it should.

It's not what you think! 
We journeyed here two times 
to find screws to fix a broken
Ikea cupboard door. Just what
we home improvement 
screw-ups needed.

But it wasn’t all work. We read our four or five daily digital newspapers, went to the gym regularly, caught up on The Crown, played cutthroat pinochle with Shanti and Alan, and went to London three times.  Once for the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone and the stolen Elgin Marbles, one for the Tate modern art museum, and to Buckingham Palace. Even we anti royalists were very impressed. (No photos were allowed.)  We also spent a lot of money and time—mostly at High Street—getting the proper equipment for our next adventure to Antarctica that we either forgot or didn’t know to get before we left home.  But at least Road Scholar told us at almost the last minute.
Cha & Nasta, our favorite lunch eatery serving
Bangladeshi street food.  We've become good
acquaintances with Rahena, the co-owner.

And interspersed with all the above tasks and fun, we were remotely trying to deal with Kathy’s almost 99-year-old mom in memory care.  We had to move her there from assisted living four days before we flew here.  She’s been such a difficult resident that her costs have skyrocketed to the point where she has exhausted all her assets. We’re running up a huge phone bill with Oregon DHS getting her Medicaid assistance. But the bright side is that we’ve worked with some wonderful and caring human beings at the State who are making it easy on us. They make public employees look great!

It was a joy to celebrate Christmas through the eyes of a child again!  Hazel is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. And she definitely has a mind of her own. As much as we think she loves us, she said that she is looking forward to more “Mummy and Daddy time” once we leave. Shanti and Alan have long, stressful days so we try to pick up the slack as much as possible. Little does Hazel know that our absence will mean more time in nursery school and less with parents who need to cook, clean, shop, and do chores.

Christmas morning and a Bluey playhouse

So, goodbye St. Albans.  We’ll miss Hazel, Shanti, and Alan. We’ll miss St. Albans, its environs, its delicious bread, and unfailingly polite people. We’ll miss the small cars and relatively quiet road noise without the din of oversized  loud pickup trucks, unmuffled motorcycles, and souped-up low-rider drag racers at home.  And we'll miss the absence of unhoused people that are so omnipresent at home. But we won’t miss the potholes, narrow roads, crazy roundabouts, right-hand drive, and the dark and dreary weather.  On to Antarctica, where it is summer and slightly warmer!

Here's a link to just a few additional photos.


"What We Can, While We Can; What We Could While We Could"

PS:  It's been almost six months since my last post.  So what happened since then? I had rotator cuff surgery August 30.  Recovery is coming along, but slow and uneven. Hazel, Shanti, Alan visited us in September and we had the joy of introducing Hazel to camping and 'smores. A week later, daughter Skyler joined all of us for a week in central Oregon. Then three days before we flew to the UK, we had to move Kathy's mom into memory care.

Four generations before Kathy's mom
really started going downhill

Roasting marshmallows in a sling
at Silver Falls State Park 


Friday, July 21, 2023

Six Observations on Another Cross-Country Road Trip, 2023 Version

Outside the Gettysburg Museum
 We're back now from our 4th cross-country road trip since 2016.  This one was shorter: 6,993 miles and 33 days.  And it was the first time we drove straight home without any layovers, taking nine full days of driving.

Each time we have taken a different route: across Canada, through the South, or upper Midwest.  This time we took a lower Midwest route which enabled us to bicycle a couple segments of the Katy Trail, a rails-to-trails path through central Missouri. It also gave us the opportunity to tour the Eisenhower and Truman presidential museums/libraries, Mark Twain's home, and Gettysburg, which also had Eisenhower's farm and retirement home. Somehow, we dodged the heat, floods, most of the wildfire smoke--except in Gettysburg and South Dakota.

Part way through our trip I published a blog with photos about the Eisenhower Museum and one about the Riding the Katy Trail.

The Eisenhower Museum






At a trailhead of the Kathy Trail, a State Park
that is 240 miles long and 100 feet wide




Our ultimate destination was daughter Skyler's home in northwest MA in the Berkshire mountains. This was the highlight of our trip. What made it so fun is all of her friends, plus daughter Feruza from New York and Nati and Jasmine Zavala from Washington DC.  And the food!  The photo link below reflects remarkable restraint in not including photos of all that we ate or drank. Besides eating , playing on the lake, and hiking, we saw James Taylor and heard the Boston Symphony at the Tanglewood festival.

The Becket estate and fun house

Hanging out on Little Robin Lake, Becket MA


At the James Taylor concert before the rain










One of several group-cooked meals
Adult Garden Games






I was going to wax eloquently about the whole experience.  But I reviewed previous posts and concluded that they conveyed many of our thoughts about what it's like to drive across the US and back.  The links to some are at the bottom, and I encourage you to read them. If nothing else, the photos say a lot.

But I have a few observations and takeaways from this trip: 

First, camping is sociable again!  The contrast between this trip and our 2020 and 2021 camping was hard to miss.  People now talk to one another in stores, gas stations, truck stops, and especially in the campgrounds.  It felt so good to connect with strangers and watch kids play in the campground playgrounds.

We passed this in heavy winds in the Columbia
Gorge.  It caught up with us in Idaho the next day.
Second, there are many more and larger RV's.  People are camping again, and living large on the road. We speculate that this was pent up demand from Covid restrictions and the supply chain issues of 2021. Some of the people we visited with now live in their 5th-wheels or motorhomes by choice full time, but some by necessity.

Third, there are many more wind turbines.  They are no longer just in the West, but all the way to the East Coast.  That also made for some tense moments passing the big rigs carrying the towers and blades. And speaking of wind, this year it seemed like we were constantly battling crosswinds, headwinds, and gusts.   

Fourth, there is more traffic, especially trucks.  People are back on the road again.  With 80 mph speed limits in some states, trucks passing us--especially in windy conditions--were good reasons to grip the wheel firmly.

Lunch stop with the Big Dogs

Fifth:  roads are better and under construction.  Difficult construction zones we passed through in 2021 are now smooth as glass.  But more than the last three trips combined, we spent many miles in construction zones.  On a 487-mile drive to Gettysburg, we encountered a 25-mile one-lane construction zone up and down the curvyAllegheny mountain roads.

Sixth:  America is BIG and beautiful, and--inspite of our divineness,  it's people are still  friendly. I said this in the previous posts (linked below) but it is worth repeating.  Although we completely missed the desert Southwest this time, the contrasts are what make it so beautiful and interesting.  We loved watching the landscape transition behind the windshield within hours or days.

Downtown Welcome, MN in the distance



We kept losing track to time and
place, so we used this white
board in the trailer.
As always, it feels good to be home reconnecting with friends and enjoying the comforts of home.  And it feels great to not be behind the wheel or in an overly-cozy trailer.  But I'm sure that within a week or two, we'll get the itch to hit the road and go camping again.

Here is the link to our curated photos, more or less in chronological order. 

And if you're interested in our comments from other trips, here are four more posts with photos.  They were more expansive and better said than in this post:

Reflections on a Cross-Country Road Trip from 2016

The Vast Midwest from 2019

Six Weeks and 8,800 Miles, Back to Eden! from 2019

Only 2500 Miles to Go from 2021


"What We Can, While We Can; What We Could While We Could."



Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Riding the Katy Trail

Cabooses often mark one of the 31 trailheads
 We’ve been fans of rails to trails for several years. They are basically abandoned railroad lines converted into walking and bicycle paths, made possible by the National Trails System Act of 1983. It preserves abandoned rail corridors through "railbanking," until funds can be raised to develop them into public paths. 


We’ve ridden quite a few of them, Our favorite is the Hiawatha Trail from the Montana border down to Wallace ID through numerous tunnels and over several trestles.  But the most famous one of all is the Katy Trail, over 240 miles long across much of central Missouri. It’s in the Rails-to-Trails Hall of Fame (organized by the wonderful Trail Link app), and rightfully so.  When planning our biennial cross-country road to the Berkshires of MA to see daughters Skyler and Feruza, we decided to try a couple segments of it.



Unlike many of our other adventures,
it was impossible  to get lost on the Katy Trail

Telegraph post from 1870
Nicknamed the Katy,  the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (MKT) began in the 1870s, and ran through much of the Missouri River valley by the 1890s. It provided a vital link between the agriculture of central Missouri and the quickly developing American southwest. The last train ran in 1986.  


Through a lot of lobbying, fundraising, and persistence, the trail was finally converted to public use in 1999 and made into a very linear state park, 240 miles long by about 100 feet wide. Many of its 31 trailheads have cabooses from the MKT trains that plied the route as well as fascinating historical signs and a surviving depot buildings. We spotted some telegraph posts from 1870 along the trail, and marveled at the backbreaking work in the heat and humidity to elevate the grade above the wetlands.


A well-appointed trailhead at Clinton

The first day we rode about 38 miles in high humidity and 90 degree temperatures. The dust from the crushed limestone rail bed  coated the spouts to our water bottles and gummed up our gears.  But the novelty of it all made it fun until the return trip after a heavy lunch in Clinton, MO. We’re out of shape and our butts got sore.  Glad we decided not to ride the entire route, like some people do!

 



Along the path from Windsor to Clinton




One of the more boring and hot parts
of the Windsor to Clinton segment

















Our second forays were based out of New Franklin, next to Boonville, founded by Daniel Boone's sons. 


Booneville:  The old RR bridge is in the background

We caught a beautiful sunset over the Missouri River the first night. For the third leg we drove to Rocheport, and cycled 17 miles along cliffs, the Missouri River and some Lewis and Clark campsites.  It was much cooler that day, shaded half the way by a dense deciduous canopy. We had limestone cliffs on one side and the mighty Missouri on the other.

Lewis & Clark campsite
Missouri River

Refreshing shade

Limestone cliffs part of the way


 

























Mark Twain's childhood home



















With our early start and quick finish we decided to break camp and head north to Hannibal, birthplace of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.  Very interesting, but we don’t know how people got along back in the day without air conditioning.  Life when he was a kid was tough, but not as tough as it was for the slaves that worked for his family in his very early childhood. 

Well worth the read!
We've been listening to a fascinating audio book called These Truths--History of the United States by Harvard history professor Jill Lepore. She explores the origins of our divided nation and traces much of it to racism and all the compromises about slavery necessary to form this nation.  We highly recommend a print version, as she is a wonderful writer, but not a good narrator.


Update

And as an update from to the last post about the Eisenhower museum a few days ago, we toured the Harry S. Truman museum the next day. We found them both similar and yet different. Both pointed themselves in a good light and offered good perspectives from the standpoint of the First Ladies. Ike's seemed to have more emphasis on his pre-presidential days listing every posting he had since WWI.  Harry's had more focus on all the crises he and the US had ending the war and dealing with the new nuclear age, Korea, and the emerging civil rights movement.  


"Give 'em Hell" Harry

The Truman Museum and Library


















As an interesting coincidence, Harry roomed with Ike's brother in college. Also, Ike's first choice was to attend the Navel Academy, but he was too old, so he went to West Point instead.  History would have been a lot different if Ike had joined the Navy!

Sunset on the Missouri from an abandoned 
RR bridge


          

At one of the trailheads


 "What We Can, While We Can; What We Could, While We Could"


Tuesday, June 20, 2023

The Eisenhower Museum and Library, Abilene KS

Right across the street is the Greyhound Hall of Fame
 As we fought strong crosswinds with our small Airstream in tow across I-70 in Kansas, all we wanted to do was get through the Kansas winds and start some bike rides on the Katy Trail in Missouri.

But we kept seeing signs for museums and attractions at nearly every exit.  In addition to a local historical museum or mansion in nearly every town, there are also the largest hand-painted Czech egg, the largest spur, the largest belt buckle, the Greyhound Hall of Fame, The OZ Museum, the Prairie Museum of Art and History, the Buffalo Bill Sculpture, The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics, The Evel Knievel Museum, the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site, and the Territorial Capitol Museum, are but a few of the many places along I-70.

But the Eisenhower Presidential Library/Museum in Abilene was reason enough to take a day off from the stressful driving and immerse ourselves briefly in history literally the middle of America (well, actually 100 miles from the center of the continental USA).  It did not disappoint!

Main Street, Abilene in the torrid mid-day heat
 of June.  Actually, the town is thriving, as
it was never really a part of the rust belt.
Abilene was a wild cattle town at the end of the Chisholm Trail where cattle were shipped by train to Chicago in the 1870s. Wild Bill Hickok brought some law and order to it as its marshal. It is the home of many stately mansions, the Greyhound Hall of Fame, and a thriving agricultural center.  And it is also where Dwight D. Eisenhower grew up on the wrong side of the tracks at least a mile from the mansions, delivering ice to them as a teenager.

The Eisenhower home


Born in the early 1950s, we didn’t become aware of politics and US history until President Kennedy. So, until today all we knew about General and President Eisenhower, aka Ike, came from our interest in WWII, the Interstate Highway system, and his famous Presidential Farewell Address about the military industrial complex.  But a tour of his home and a several-hour visit to the museum gave us an appreciation of an extraordinary man (and his wife, Mamie) during an extraordinary century. Ike was born in the horse and buggy days and never had indoor plumbing until age 18.  He died just three months before the Apollo moon landing.


The living room (foreground).  The parlor was
only when special guests arrived.


The museum did a magnificent job of laying out what things were like in our country and the world from his childhood, to his distinguished military career, to college president, to NATO commander, to President and beyond. He was the right man for the right time, a likeable and hard-working person skilled in logistics and diplomacy.  He commanded respect from his adversaries and advocated for his “Middle Way” philosophy of balancing between “present and future needs, obligation with privilege, and security with liberty.” Mamie’s challenging life as a supportive military and presidential wife was also well chronicled.  

The D-Day planning table.  For security reasons, 
no photo was ever taken of the participants

The extensive artifacts, documents, and gifts of his presidency are property of the National Archives, which owns them and establishes a branch in all 14 presidential libraries.  But his pre-presidential items are not.  One of my favorites was the D-Day planning table from London, plus some of the unique gifts he received.




A gift from the King of Nepal in 1960


Having seen the JFK, Lincoln, and Senator Kennedy museums, we’re now inspired to see more.  We’re changing plans and going to the Harry Truman Library/Museum tomorrow.







We salute you, Sir!


After lunch we drove around town, gawking at 10-bedroom homes on tree-lined streets. 

As the sign warns,
"Beware of The Thing"






Then we toured the Dr. Seelye over-the-top home built in 1905. It was wired by Thomas Edison and furnished with many purchases at the 1905 World’s Fair (including the only surviving bowling alley of its kind). He made his money creating patent medicines and selling them via an army of salesmen fanning out across the country by horse and wagon. He hung out with George Merck and E.I. Lilly, and Mentholatum Deep Heat is his only surviving invention.

The Seelye Home, built in 1905
No expense was spared. Unlike
others of the era, it was very
tastefully furnished and decorated



The home was 11,000 sq. ft
and 11 bedrooms






Kathy bowling in the basement
under the watchful but encouraging
eye of the docent













"What We Can, While We Can; What We Could, While We Could"


Here are a couple of bonus picks from the road to here:

Crossing the Snowy Range from Saratoga
to Burlington, CO




South from Nebraska along the Colorado-Kansas border



A minnow among whales in our RV 
park outside of Abilene