Sorebutz
Robb Geiger/Barbara Butz Joined: August 23rd 2008
Logged in: October 17th 2008
Logged in: October 17th 2008
Travel Blog Posts
Robb, Barbara, Jan, Denny, & Judy
Last blog: On The Way Home (outside Des Moines, IA). I wasn’t sure whether I’d add anything more to this blog, but today we met Peggy Bender at a Starbuck’s inside a Target in Kearny, Nebraska, and this deserves a few words. How to explain that within minutes we were sharing our life history (well, some of it) with this total stranger, and vice versa. Many interesting convergences: Peggy a former Franciscan nun who studied at St. Xavier in Cincinnati (my best friend, Paul, an ex-Jesuit; his best friend, Bill - who I knew very well - an ex “Jebbie” from Cincinnati who taught at St. Xav); took architecture courses at MIT (my architect cousin, Sally, a grad of MIT); bought her dream house in Needham MA (I went to Wellesley next door; she walked around ... read more
Harbor seals at Crescent City
Last week of sightseeing. Sunday, October 05, Eureka. By now I suppose some of you are wondering how we find being on the road, just the two of us, in a small car, for miles and miles, weeks and weeks. We left home at the end of August, about 5 ½ weeks ago, and we’ve now covered over 6,000 miles. I don’t think the housekeeping details of traveling are particularly interesting on the whole, but I will admit that it’s somewhat of a challenge to keep organized, focused and most of all, energetic when you’re so much on the move. So here’s a little insight into how we do it. Here’s what we have with us: one medium size suitcase apiece for clothing; small duffel just for shoes/boots; larger duffel for workout/biking clothes and a bike ... read more
Jan & Denny's Tahoe house
Monday, September 29: Mountain country. Lake Tahoe. We’ve spent the weekend hiking in the mountains surrounding Jan and Denny’s home outside Tahoe City. Saturday we hiked 11.5 miles, up to 8400’ (climb of 1800’). Jan and Denny’s buddy, Al, has a GPS and could tell us almost anything we wanted to know about the route and where we were on it. But I astounded Al, and myself, by guessing how far we had come within .01 miles! The hike was a little tough on my joints but they responded very nicely to a couple of Vitamin N’s (naproxen=Aleve) and a hot shower. On yesterday’s hike, a little over 4 miles and a few hundred feet up, my boots felt good and I was moving well. (Though not fast; the guys were always way ahead. Jan is ... read more
Looking north from Twin Peaks
Museum-going: Our first adventure was at the Exploratorium, the fabulous science museum with hands-on exhibits that actually work! I never got off the second floor, absorbed in huge exhibits on “life” (from cell structure and DNA to … everything else) and “sound.” (Just heard on NPR that one of the people who developed the Sound exhibit just won a McArthur award, and hooray for him!) Along with several kids who were so interested they practically lay on the table where it took place, I watched the fascinatingly revolting dissection of a cow’s eye (by a most dispassionate teenage kid; “…thinking of being a vet or biologist some day?” “I dunno…”), and watched as cells from a young girl’s cheek went under a microscope and were zoomed until the nuclei were clearly visible - all explained by ... read more
A garden fence at Fort Ross
September 16: We enjoyed two hikes further up the coast (even though, after flirting with us briefly, the sun pulled the covers up and went back to bed). One hike took us to the intersection of the San Andreas fault and the creek that comes out at Ft. Ross, settled in 1812 by Russians who came down from Alaska looking for sea otters (pelts) (which they hunted up and down the coast to extinction) and food for their Alaska settlements. Once the otters were gone, and they found that coastal lands were not agriculturally rich, they sold out to a rancher named Call. The area became part of California in the 1840s. The action of the fault - the Pacific plate moving NW against the North American plate) - turned the creek in one area perpendicular ... read more
Fog on Coleman Valley Rd.
Sept. 9. Back from Sonoma - a diversion from our intended foray into bike-riding. We were headed for the bike shop in Sebastopol. After lunch yesterday at Alice’s Restaurant there (served by Alice herself, aka “She Who Must Be Obeyed”), we scoped out bike rentals in that town and set our sights on a ride today. But the fog that has returned to the coast persisted inland today, with a slight drizzle to boot. So we headed for Sonoma on a more gustatory expedition. We drove through ranches, orchards, and vineyards - in sun! Sonoma has a pleasing central plaza and garden anchored by a former city hall and surrounded by several historic Spanish buildings dating back as far as the 1820s when Sonoma belonged to Mexico. (Apparently the city declared itself an independent state for ... read more
Map of the coast (& where we are)
Sept. 4, Thursday: Cliff Cottage, Bodega Bay, CA. My aunt and uncle, Patsy and Ed McKeown, treated us to a wonderful overnight in SF (well, Piedmont, across the bay and in the middle of Oakland). Patsy is my mother’s remaining sister and therefore particularly dear to me. But both of these folks in their 80’s are sharp as tacks, Ed is particularly great with maps and made sure we had the right ones with us. Better yet, they will probably join us one of these days for a “day in the country”, or on the coast, as the case may be. I’m a lucky kid to have such a large and wonderful family, McK’s among them. So we’re here at last in our seaside aerie, and what a beautiful place to spend a couple of weeks. ... read more
Barbara in an Iowa tall grass prairie
August 30, 2008. Estes Park, CO We’ve put 1116 miles under the wheels in two days, and it’s not easy to make a tour of I-80 across the plains - without much of a stop - interesting. But one serendipitous “symmetry” did come to me as we turned onto I-55 from LSD and I realized that this, the first part of our journey, was along the route of the old Illinois and Michigan canal. And that just two months ago, we had ridden our tandem across New York State on what remains of the old Erie Canal. These two canals and their middle section, the Chicago River, made Chicago into the “golden funnel” of the mid-1800s that collected the riches of the prairies and shipped them, by water, as far as New York City and New ... read more
