Vacation, day two…

 The day dawned with promise of more adventure! We woke, knowing today’s journey was going to take us to Shoshone Village, where my companion has friends, who basically run the town. But first, we needed to capture some interesting things from Spicer Ranch. Below is “Fishbug”, a piece of art that’s at the relative entrance to the ranch. It’s really cool and lights up inside at night.

Here’s another piece of art we caught while leaving the ranch:

One of the things that I have marveled at and have talked to friends about at length is the concept that the desert isn’t for everyone. I’m not gonna lie, the only other place I’ve lived is the Pacific Northwest, Washington State to be precise, and man did I love it there! It was basically the polar opposite of the desert, that was living in a rain forest. I mourned to a great degree when we moved back, and I will always believe that I left a piece of my soul in the great Northwest, but in the ensuing years, my birthplace has been very kind. It has afforded me opportunities I couldn’t have dreamed of as a teen, and it is home. Desert beauty is stark and sometimes harsh, almost always dangerous, and not always palatable or friendly, but it is in my soul also and it is home. I had a lot of opportunity to appreciate it this trip, I hope I did it justice. I imagine, many of the landscapes I viewed on this trip is where the term “purple mountains majesty” came from.

We stopped at Ash Meadows on our way down and saw how many of the structures we saw were formed and the different layers in the earth.

I know in my heart that I am a very big nerd and lifelong learner, but this was very interesting to me. It was great to see families enjoying the shade of solar panels that doubled as the shaded parking structure at this visitors center and get a warm feeling in the heart that people are making lemonade out of the lemons the pandemic has given us.

We made it to our destination and it was time to relax a bit.

Life is grand and beautiful, and there was also a great deal of appreciation for the life I am able to live.

Fun fact….when you stay in this RV Park, there is a Spring-fed pool right across the street! It’s use is free when you stay in the park. You get a key and it’s mostly deserted at night. What a treat! While the days were warm, it being late March/early April the nights were still chilly, so having this pool was really awesome!

We got to meet and have a beer and dinner with the “mayor” of Shoshone Village. I also appreciated on this trip, getting to see and meet people, hear a piece of their story, and appreciate their passions. This village was built in the early 1900’s by the great grandfather of the woman who currently runs it, She collaborates exhaustively with educational and conservation groups in order to preserve what they have built. She has many short nature walks and interesting things to see, it’s really a great little spot. I want to bring my sweetie back here.

Peace.

And, we did a thing….

 I am lucky and have a somewhat unusual situation. I was lucky enough to be able to buy the house I was raised in from my mom, and will also pass it on to my own children.

My parents bought the house brand new, when it was first built, around 1963. Through the years, there were some changes, and I still marvel at the strength of my mom. My dad died suddenly, from a heart attack, a month before I turned seven. After that, my mom was done with men. She never remarried and she never really dated seriously.

Many, many years ago, the kitchen looked like this:

This picture was probably taken, like, 1987? Maybe 1988? That fabulous honey-packet-holding awesome is my dear friend Joe, who I was able to see recently for the first time in many, many years. BUT, that is not this story….

Before we bought the house from my mom, we did a kitchen remodel. My mom was at the beginning of the decline in health that would eventually take her life. Uncontrolled diabetes led to peripheral vascular disease, painful feet and legs, and eventually, the stroke that killed her. I am positive she also had some sort of dementia happening because she couldn’t remember things she had agreed to and also became mean and bitter. She wasn’t mean to me until almost the end, but it broke my heart to have my beautiful mama not know things. That was a time of conflict for me. She fought me on a lot of things, and once the kitchen was put back together, she continued to be “set in her ways”. My mom was born and has earliest memories in the Great Depression. She was a hoarder, not super bad, but she wouldn’t let go of things because she thought they were perfectly good and still had life in them, then would lose them and buy new ones, then find the old things. This was the kitchen after the remodel with my mom:

When we were doing the things for this remodel, it brought back up so much turmoil and pain surrounding that time! My brother has been a construction tradesperson for over 40 years. He said he would help us. We thought that meant he would guide us on the road to making the best kitchen possible. We didn’t understand that what he meant by “help” was to scream at and belittle us for not also being construction tradespeople and also not being as helpful as he could have been. What’s past is past, but man, did it bring everything back up! This was a tremendous opportunity to PURGE all that energy, and boy did I!! I am the total hippy dippy, and was determined to do right by my daughter. We saged, we incensed, we cleansed, and we made everything as good as we could get it on this remodel!

I didn’t want my daughter to have to go through that when we remodeled the kitchen this time. I know so very many people right now are suffering, and for that I feel somewhat guilty. AND, for those of us who’s incomes and such haven’t been affected, we were able to remodel our kitchen again after 20 years. We refinanced our house, took out money to do the kitchen and some other things, dropped our payment amount by almost $300, and were able to get things done properly through Home Depot. May I present to you, our new kitchen!

                                                                                                       

I love it so! Still have back splash to do, but so far, I think it’s amazing.

Peace!

Vacation, day one….

 I did a thing. Back around the beginning of March, we were wrapping up the kitchen remodel, various people in my household were in a funk, and I was feeling pretty invisible, taken advantage of, and not awesome. Sort of feeling like the weight and responsibility of my little world was weighing heavily on my shoulders. I had a friend I’ve worked with at TTITD for several years, and had always been friendly with, approach me about the possibility of taking a road trip. It’s always awesome to get away, and it’s sort of appalling that I’ve lived my life on one coast and not taken advantage or taken the time to see so very many things in my own “back yard”. It was time to change that….

My friend and I are very, very different people. She doesn’t have kids, and she has a penchant for being OCD. I have children and grand children and tend towards the messier side of life just because taking care of other people makes you very aware of choosing battles wisely =) Sometimes, it’s enough, at the end of the day, that everyone is still alive =) We didn’t know how we’d do traveling together, but we were determined to find out =) We left on March 28, and were gone until April 10th. This is the journey…..

The first day began with frustration. I had thought I was doing good and had everything situated and handled, and as often happens, when the car was packed and I was driving away, I remembered many things I had forgotten, it having been more than a year since I’d done any traveling. This made me late. I HATE being late because I truly believe that the most important thing another human has to give you is their time, and being late means one is disrespecting that gift. Nothing to be done about it but apologize and say I’m on the way. Luckily, she didn’t leave without me, despite her boyfriend’s urgings, and we were on our way to near Beatty, Nevada.

This is in a ghost town called Rhyolite, in Nye County on the edge of Death Valley in Southern Nevada. Wikipedia tells me that the town is relatively new, for a ghost town, having come in to existence in 1905. In addition to the ruins of the old town, there’s an outside sculpture garden that features many pieces that spent some time in a desert far North, where Burning Man is held in the Black Rock Desert.

There is a labyrinth there. I will confess that when we got there, I tried to walk the circuit, but having been cooped up in a car all day, the excitement of the trip, and watching my friend get to all the cool pieces to take sunset pictures before me gave me major FOMO and I abandoned this beautiful circle, vowing to return some day and take the time to walk it. We landed at a place called Spicer Ranch that is a hidden hot spot that should stay hidden =) It was beautiful and the people there were kind for letting us stay.

I’ve always been fond of the peace crane, and they showed up a few times on this trip, to guide me to remain mindful, and kind, and reflective. This one was supersized and appealed to me very much.

This wasn’t in a stream or river and didn’t seem to be destroying anythings habitat =) It seemed, oddly, for just this purpose. A platform, with varying size and style rocks, that folks take their turns at stacking. I love this aesthetic, and don’t like to think of it killing creatures. This seemed an innocuous way to like this style of art without hurting anything.

Finally, desert sunsets are so beautiful. I tried to take pictures of many, on this trip, and they definitely helped me have appreciation for this amazing earth on which we live, and all of the beauty that exists in it, in both traditional and untraditional ways.

We drove back down into Beatty for a mediocre barbeque dinner I think we barely made before the sidewalks rolled up on the town. What we discovered is that it’s often a new experience in the midst of a pandemic, when traveling as folks are just beginning to realize or do things outside. Many of the places we visited and tried to do things, they relayed to us how busy they’d been for the immediate time before we were there. People were out of food, out of stock and sometimes, out of patience. We rolled with the punches and had an amazing first day.

Peace!