TravelBlog » Wondering Naturalists

Wondering Naturalists - Lynn & Jon Glase

Jon and Lynn are two sixty-something, semi-retired, Ph.D. ecologists seeking the wisdom from the natural world that can only come from first-hand experience with things and events. This current journey takes us in a round trip from Ithaca, NY up the west coast from San Diego, CA to Portland, OR and back to Ithaca in three months. We travel with Moxie, a Bichon Frise, in an Airstream trailer pulled by a diesel truck. The truck's "carbon footprint" has been balanced through purchase of carbon offsets from Terrapass, thanks to our sons, Rob and Nick, who we shall visit during this trip. Our enthusiasm for birding, kayaking, and local cuisines will doubtless be revealed in our narratives, which we hope to post every several days with as many photos as seem interesting.

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Joined on: February 7th 2008
Last Login: May 18th 2008

Blog Entries: 16
Photos: 272

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Blogs & Travel Journals

by Wondering-Naturalists, order by Date newest first.

By Wondering Naturalists
May 8th 2008

Back Home in Newfield

North America » United States » New York » Ithaca

Traveling the Columbia Gorge
The Columbia River Gorge Scenic Area extends from Portland upriver to the dam at the Dalles.

Well, we are back home in Newfield, New York, after 10,250 miles logged in 79 days of traveling. Thanks to our wonderful friend and neighbor Gundy, who stopped by weekly to look after our house and water the plants, our home seems as we left it and the plants have never looked better. The final leg of our journey saw us leaving Portland, OR and Rob, Leila, and Leo early on the 21st of April. We travelled up the awe-inspiring Columbia Gorge on Interstate 84, then headed to Spokane, WA. Since we were to visit some friends in northern Wisconsin, the [View Full Entry]

By Wondering Naturalists
April 27th 2008

Another Reunion!

North America » United States » Oregon » Portland

The bridge at Newport
Newport Oregon was a lovely, well-protected bay that extends many miles inland.

Though Newport and Charleston (previous blog) are two nearby ports on Oregon's central coast, they are quite different. Charleston is an earthy fishing town, but there was great fear that the salmon fishery was to be closed this year. We got the impression that quite a few people were unemployed. One of our neighbors was a veteran of the Kuwait and the Iraq wars and was living full time in his trailer (an older Airstream). He sounded like it wasn’t the post-service experience that he had planned for. In both towns, we were camping at RV facilities adjacent to the town [View Full Entry]

By Wondering Naturalists
April 15th 2008

Heading to the Oregon Coast

North America » United States » Oregon » Coos Bay

Highway 66 to Valley of the Rogue
Our journey on Highway 66 followed the Applegate Trail. This was a southern route of the Oregon trail that was considered a safer path to the Willamette Valley of Oregon by the early settlers, since i... [more]

This entry covers our trip from Fort Bidwell, CA to Valley of the Rogue, OR, where we spent three days, and the five days we stayed in Coos Bay, on the south Oregon coast. Our last night in Fort Bidwell saw snow and wind. We had planned to take a shortcut over Fandango Pass, but decided given the snow, that we had better take a longer, but less elevated route to our next stop at Valley of the Rogue (named for the wild and scenic Rogue River), in southwest Oregon. Although it snowed on the higher passes, the road remained dry [View Full Entry]

The Rogue River--a Wild and Scenic River

By Wondering Naturalists
April 14th 2008

A Side Trip to the High Desert

North America » United States » Nevada » Reno

Pyramid Island
This island, for which the lake was named is actually a tufa, composed of deposits of calcium carbonate.

The colors of Nevada are a complete reversal of expectations created by six weeks in California. We crossed into Nevada east of Donner Pass and the miles of evergreen trees and snow gave way to chaparral and the subtle colors of sage and tumbleweed. Much to our surprise, we learned that tumbleweed is a foreign invasive species! It’s a part of our western legends…”_See them tumbling down…_..” However, always there have been snowcapped mountains in the background. We stayed at a campground in Reno that was near the casinos and convenient shopping. It was also convenient to the Truckee River which [View Full Entry]

By Wondering Naturalists
April 8th 2008

We Left Our Hearts…

North America » United States » California » San Francisco

San Francisco RV Park
Our first stop in the San Francisco area was actually in Pacifica, CA where we spent one night at a unique RV park we'd been to previously that overlooks the Pacific.

Here we are in Oregon, playing catchup on blogs we have neglected due to too much "living in the present." We knew this would eventually happen! This missive covers the time we spent in the Bay area both before and after our Yosemite trip. Since we had done most of the city stuff on two previous visits to San Francisco, we devoted this period to spending time with friends, our son Nick, and several scenic/birding locations in the Bay area. Our home-base during this period was the Anthony Chabot (prounced "sha-bow") Regional Park to the east of Oakland. From here we [View Full Entry]

Entrance to Anthony Chabot Regional Park

View of the San Francisco Bay from Chabot Park.

By Wondering Naturalists
April 1st 2008

Yosemite National Park

North America » United States » California » Yosemite National Park

Approaching Yosemite
Approaching the Sierras. Due to a mixup in reservations at campgrounds within the park, we stayed at an RV park just beyond Mariposa.

One of the major reasons that we chose to drive to the west coast was to visit our two sons who live in Berkeley, CA and Portland, Oregon. We spent several weeks in the San Francisco-Berkeley area at a regional park between Oakland and Castro Valley. This park and some of our adventures in the area will be the subject of another blog. Instead of doing a lot of “city” stuff in the area, we and Nick spent five wonderful days in Yosemite National Park. March is a wonderful time to go to Yosemite. There are not huge crowds. In the [View Full Entry]

By Wondering Naturalists
March 21st 2008

Strawberry Fields Forever

North America » United States » California

Camp Site at Sunset State Beach
Our campsite was adjacent to the dunes at Sunset State Beach. Large, beautiful pine trees restricted the output of our solar panels, but we still produced enough electricity to meet our needs.

For three days we stayed at Sunset State Beach near Watsonville in the Monterey Bay area about 90 miles south of San Francisco. California has many state beaches, some with camping, some without. Some allow dogs on the beach; some do not. No services were provided at Sunset Beach, so we were "dry camping" here. We could not help comparing coastal development in Florida where we spent three months RVing several winters ago with coastal development in California. Florida is dominated by housing developments, golf courses, and high-rise condominiums blocking view of the ocean and access to it. This section of [View Full Entry]

By Wondering Naturalists
March 14th 2008

Big Sur Country

North America » United States » California » Big Sur

Big Sur, California
Big Sur is a unique coastal section of California located between Cambria in the south to Carmel in the north where the coastal mountains (the Santa Lucia Mountains), with elevations up to 5000 feet, ... [more]

In this blog entry we are using a different approach that we hope will integrate the written comments and the pictures better by putting most of the text in the captions for the pictures. We hope you like it. [View Full Entry]

By Wondering Naturalists
March 7th 2008

California Central Coast

North America » United States » California » San Luis Obispo

Morro Bay, California
Low tide in Morro Bay. The roof of the Natural History museum is to the left and town harbor to the right. Morro Rock marks the entrance to the harbor.

We are coming to the end of a 5-day stay at a state park in Morro Bay, a part of the Central Coast of California that seems to have everything a reasonable person could want. First, the scenery is drop-dead beautiful. The entrance to the bay is marked by Morro Rock, a 23 million-year-old volcanic plug, the first of some nine that are arranged in a line between Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo. Morro estuary is considered to be the least disturbed and most important saltwater marsh in the state and provides critical habitat for thousands of ducks, geese, and [View Full Entry]

By Wondering Naturalists
March 4th 2008

Dry Camping at El Capitan State Beach

North America » United States » California » Santa Barbara

Entrance to El Capitan State Beach
Located just north of Santa Barbara.

We left San Diego for El Capitan State Beach, just north of Santa Barbara, on Friday (29 Feb - Leap Year). Jon was apprehensive about dragging our home on Interstate 5 through the tangle of freeways that is Los Angeles. Actually, it went smoothly, except at the point when the storage compartment holding our sewer dump hose opened and resulted in dragging 25 feet of hose down the freeway. Fortunately, we were able to pull over onto a shoulder and retrieve our equipment, Within a minute of that, a CA highway patrol cruiser was there to help us and be sure [View Full Entry]

Looking North From El Capitan State Beach

Campsites Overlooking the Santa Barbara Bay