Grandparenting in the UK Countryside

At the wildlife park with Shanti, Alan, and Hazel.

 After 13 months we finally got to meet and hold our granddaughter, Hazel, in person.  What a joy!  Even with regular FaceTime visits over the past year, it took about four days for her to warm up to us to us.  She was born just as the London lockdown started, and, other than her parents and day care providers, she has had little contact with adults.                                                          

Helping unload the dishwasher

Playing in our front yard

                                                                

Shanti, Alan, and Hazel.  It's been so nice 
to hang wih them!

Besides becoming fully vaccinated, a few stars aligned up two weeks ago to make his trip possible.  First, the UK government permitted London residents to leave town and the quarantine rules were changed so that we could do so with family members and for only five days—provided we get regular Covid tests.  We’ve had three so far, including the one required the day before we could board the 216-passenger jumbo jet with just 10 other passengers and eight crew.  

No problem with overhead storage!
We moved back a cabin to stretch out
on the empty middle seats for a good
sleep.

 

Shanti and Alan found a delightful three-bedroom home in the countryside about an hour from London near Marlborough.  Actually, our place is a former stable next to a 16^th Century mansion.  Very comfortable!  It even has an adjacent barn with a piano, foosball, ping pong, and is a refuge for me to practice drumming on my practice pad without driving everyone else crazy.

Our stable

The area is laced with public paths through farms, pastures, and villages. Shanti is working remotely. Kathy and I are just chilling and having fun with Hazel.  What a 25-pound bundle of energy—almost too much for us oldsters who thought we were in shape.  

Our yard

The 'barn'

View from our bedroom

Yesterday morning we received our negative Covid results, releasing us from our five-day quarantine.  We celebrated by grocery shopping at Waitrose (kind of like Whole Foods) and buying unique products, cheap wines, Moroccan blueberries, French cheeses and fabulous breads.  Shanti took the day off and we drove to a wildlife park in the beautiful countryside.  We also visited a monolithic site similar to Stonehenge. 

Stonehenge Light (Avebury) without
hoards of tourists

Hazel identified a lot of “dogs” at the zoo, including some with stripes, horns, manes, humps, and long necks.  Some could even fly.  Tomorrow Alan will drop Kathy and me off for a 10-mile walk along a canal tow path.  On Saturday we depart for four nights in London, where Kathy and I will get a chance to experience their neighborhood and see Hazel’s amazing day care facility.  

So, life is good! We're so glad we upended our other plans and made the trip.

“What We Can, While We Can!”

 

Zoo playground (Hazel
has her mother's childhood
fearlessness.)

Feeding Grandma

On a public path near our place

 

Celebrating our quarantine release

Bed time story

'Little One' does a commendable job of
keeping up with the elders!

PS:  My Thanks to our most wonderful son-in-law Alan Hampson for most of the photos.  That's why you don't see him in many of them.  

R.I.P. Karen

Karen Baxter Kelemen self portrait

We like purpose-driven travel, whether it’s for an international service project or something as simple as visiting family or learning more about our world.  Driving 1400 miles to Denver, Colorado for our sister-in-law’s memorial service was a new reason for us. 

Karen Baxter Kelemen, 66, died unexpectedly in her sleep March 21, just days into Colorado’s lockdown.  It was hard on my younger brother Neal and 26-year-old nephew William.  Karen was racked by severe pain from a nearly fatal auto accident at age 22.  Yet, she powered through it to become a mother, writer, youth pastor, musician, and accomplished artist. She was such a beautiful person, inside and out.  (See her definition of success at the end of this post.)   In 2001, she wrote:

Pain says, PAY ATTENTION

There is its gift,

Sometimes it is gnawing,

Like wild dogs breaking bones to the marrow.

Sometimes it is insistent,

Like someone pounding on the door who just won’t go away.

Sometimes it is unbearable,

Yet, somehow I endure.

We are consoled by her sky paintings which now grace our guest bedroom.

Skyscape Oil

Skyscape pastel from solo gallery show
at SOHO West

The socially-distanced service was simple and beautiful in the small park in front of Neal and William’s home.  And it was a nice opportunity to visit with siblings, cousins, and friends we haven’t seen in a long time.

Simple, distanced, and beautiful

The Bros and nephew William

Getting There

We lucked out getting there and back.  We departed Salem on Labor Day, heading east in the smoke and high winds against a bumper-to-bumper stream of Labor Day traffic.  Some of that traffic was undoubtedly evacuees of the Metolius River campground where we had planned to stay our first night.  We pushed on four more hours to Paige Springs campground in SE Oregon near French Glenn.  

It was too windy and smoky to eat outside.  We wondered if the smoke and winds were going to follow us all the way to Denver.  But overnight the winds shifted, and we awoke the next day to clear blue skies.  Unfortunately, that wind change was catastrophic for so many Oregonians and the communities we had driven through on Monday.  Without cell coverage, we were oblivious to it all and hiked 12 miles round trip to the confluence of the Donner and Blitzen rivers. 

Our  Paige Springs camp

Where the Doner and Blitzen Rivers converge

 

On that same day, much of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming were hit with up to 10 inches of snow—not a good omen for Karen’s memorial. We drove through snow and camped in mud at Rock Springs Wyoming, but when we arrived Friday afternoon, the weather was perfect.

Somewhere between Bridger and
Evanston, WY

Rock Springs fairgrounds.  That town
has to be the armpit or anus of Wyoming

Following the memorial service, we camped just outside Rocky Mountain National Park with my younger brothers, Mark and Neal.  RMNP was my very first camping experience at age 7, and I fondly remember that trip vividly.  My last time there was in 1968 when I climbed 14,259-foot Longs Peak with Mark and sister Sandra.  I couldn’t believe the crowds, but then in this era of COVID I guess I should.

Moraine Valley, RMNP

Bear Lake.  (Mark's Photo)

Longs Peak in the distance, elevation 14, 256.  From
Trail Ridge Road, at over 12,000 feet, the
highest paved road in the world. It was cleared of
snow just a day before we drove it

Three of the four bros and kathy.
Near Trail Ridge Road visitor center, elev. 12,000

The last evening there, our Uzbek daughter, Feruza, and her boyfriend from New York had dinner with us while on the way home from a Utah camping road trip.  It was so nice to see her in person, if only briefly. And it was the first time Mark and Neal got to meet her.

Kathy, Feruza, and Ron

Getting Back

Our original plans were to take our time getting home, savoring the golden aspen foliage, and possibly driving north along the coast of California on Highway 1.  But I got a hernia in late August following an epic morning at the gym.  Although surgery was scheduled for October, it was getting worse.  So, we called the surgeon and got the date moved up to the 28^th and took a direct route home.  Just as well, as the fires in California made the Highway 1 route no longer possible.

As we drove through dense haze in the Columbia gorge, we couldn’t see the river.  Fortunately heavy rains started in the Willamette Valley the night before cleaning the valley air.  By the time we got to Salem, it was a steady deluge, and the damp air smelled wonderful.  Once again, we lucked out!

Hazel

This was the month we were supposed to be in London providing day care for our six-month old granddaughter, Hazel.  But the COVID upended everything for everybody, and compared to many, we still have it very good.  We hope you do, too.

Hazel's first book

Solid food fun!

"What We Can, While We Can"

OR

"What We Could, While We Could"

(It’s still WW² either way.)

Karen’s definition of success 

(and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s)

To laugh often and much,

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children,

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends,

To appreciate beauty,

To find the best in others,

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition,

This is to have succeeded.To know that even one life has breathed better because you have lived.

 

       Karen Baxter Kelemen

     By that measure, Karen  was a huge success!  R. I. P. Karen.

Getting Out of Dodge

Like most people 4 ½ months ago, we thought things would be mostly back to some sort of normal by now.  We hoped we’d still be able to fly to London in May to see our first grandchild and fly there again for some extended daycare starting late in August.  

Our only non-selfie of two road trips

We thought we’d still be able to spend a week at our daughter’s mountain home in the Berkshires and take in Ringo Starr and Judy Collins at the Tanglewood Festival.  And my brother Neal and I were supposed to be backpacking this week in southern Colorado.  Not to mention in-person Rotary, Assistance League, and Capital Manor meetings, hosting dinner parties, going to concerts, and dining out.

Please don’t feel sorry for us, as we have it pretty damn good.  Unlike so many others during this Covid crisis, we are healthy and solvent, and so are our kids.  We don't have to go to work.  We are merely inconvenienced.  At first, we enjoyed the novelty of it all with new recipes, romantic dinners, binge watching, sleeping in, video calls, in-home workouts, and books.  We’ve done our part to isolate, distance, and mask up.  But that said, every once-in-awhile, it feels so good to get out of town, or even out of the house.  Time for a socially-distancing road trip or two! 

 

Camping alone at a Harvest Host
winery near the Columbia Gorge

With self-service gas, a full trailer pantry and fridge, and self-contained toilet and shower, it was easy to maintain distances in the wide-open west.  Not since we left the Peace Corps in 1980 with four months of unstructured travel through Burma, Nepal and India, have we traveled without a destination or itinerary.  Very liberating!  And there is something very therapeutic about the expansive horizons or the West.

The John Day Fossil Beds and Painted Hills in June

We haven’t been to this area in decades, and it was better than we remembered it. The Painted Hills are beautiful! 

One of many colorful views

We kicked it off with a first night at our favorite place in all of Oregon—the Metolius River near Camp Sherman.  We’ve made it a point to camp there every year for the past 35 years, except for last year when we were on a cross-country road trip.  

Wizard Falls on the Metolius River

We also hiked in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness outside Prairie City.  Also better than we remembered, but more crowded.  

Strawberry Lake Wilderness

Here are some of our best photos of that one-week trip, mostly in chronological order.

 

The Columbia River, Idaho Panhandle, Montana, and the Beartooth Mountains in July

We went up through central Washington, following the Columbia River to the Canadian border. The stunning road to Grand Coulee Dam is like a mini Columbia River Gorge, but without all the heavy traffic.  

 

Steamboat Rock, below the Grand Coulee Dam.  We camped
in the trees on the other side and climbed to the extensive top.
(Photos from the top are available in the photo link below.)

Driving toward the Grand Coulee Dam

Here's a link to a few photos from the Columbia River segment.

After we got to the border in a week, we decided, “What the heck—let’s head SE.” 

NE Washington and the Idaho panhandle, while beautiful, creeped us out.  Too much in-your-face flag waving and open-carry firearms, even in the local Saturday market. (Dude, do you really need a 45mm, large clip military pistol to sell us some organic lettuce??)

 

Camping (Glamping) at a brewery

Fortunately, much of Montana was less politicized and more beautiful.  One night we stayed at a Harvest Host brewery outside Livingston. (Harvest Host allows self-contained RVs to stay on their farms, wineries, ranches, and breweries.)  In one of our rarer encounters with humans, a local Harley rider helped us level our trailer and gave us some travel tips.  As we were picking up our pizza, some other masked locals told us what roads to avoid and what we absolutely had to see.  What a stroke of luck!  

We changed plans and saw the Big Hole National Battlefield and some historic sites.  Our masked conversations at the brewery sadly reminded us of what is lost in this whole Covid world—the opportunities that result from random connections with friends, acquaintances, and strangers.  And the social nature of camping has also changed.  Our Airstream has always been a conversation magnet with fellow campers.  Now, everybody keeps to themselves.

 

SW Montana countryside.  We drove the
scenic byways  nearly the entire trip

The Beartooth Mountains in northern Wyoming on the border with Yellowstone were spectacular. In fact the 68-mile white-knuckle road was probably the most beautiful drive we have ever experienced in North America. (Jasper to Banff is now second.)  The steep roads and countless switchbacks were so worth it. And the mosquitoes thought we Oregonians were delicious.

 

Switchbacks and the 6-8% grade on the
68-mile Beartooth Highway (not my photo)

View from our campground at Island Lake

Beartooth Peak in the distance

                                                                             

Here is a link to curated photos of the Montana countryside and the Beartooth Mountains.

   ******

During long stretches of road when we weren't navigating switchbacks, we listened to the biography of Frederick Douglass. While it waded into the weeds with too much lengthy detail, we learned just how brutal slavery was and how the North and our churches were so complicit with it—way more than we were ever taught in school.   And the same with the Jim Crow laws and racism.  Although we have always believed that Black lives matter, this biography reinforced it big time.  Plus, we learned a lot about what daily and political life was like in the 19th Century.  

 We’re glad we went, but glad to be back home in our queen bed and our three-butt kitchen with a large fridge!

Note:  You can see more photos and detailed commentary on my Facebook page and on Instagram @Kelemenron.

 Quarantinewhile…

 One of our bright spots since mid-March is to wake up to what we have named “Hazelgrams.” Shanti and Alan in London delight us nearly every morning with a Whats App photo or video of Hazel, now over four months old. She's talking up an incoherent storm and learning to crawl backwards.  Hopefully we’ll get to meet her in person someday….

Hazel Hampson-Kelemen 
@ 4 months old

Finally getting Hazel registered
at Town Hall, on Shanti and
Alan's 2nd anniversary at the
same location

Morning routine

Morning selfie

“What We Can, While We Can.”

 (Or should our motto now be “What We Could, While We Could?”)