If you feel like you are being watched...you are

My friend Becky has a regular zoo at her house. There has been talk of charging the neighborhood kids a $1 to come and see the animals. There are 3 rabbits, 2 cats and a dog. The rabbits, Emmett, Janga, and Milo could care less about us as humans, as long as we feed them, they are happy. The cats, Knightly and Kipling, like to pretend we don't matter, but we find that they hang out wherever we happen to be. Beamer is the most exuberant in his love for us.

Before I came to stay, the bedroom where I sleep, as the guest room, was off-limits to the animals, mostly the cats, because the rabbits would need a plan worthy of the Fantastic Mr. Fox to make it out of their cages and up the stairs and Beamer is pretty much by Becky's side. Wanting to know what was behind the closed door pretty much consumed the cats. So imagine their joy and happiness when I came and occasionally leave the door open. On those days, this is where Kipling ends up:

Imagine these two eyes staring at you in the dark.

The problem is once the cats are in, it is difficult to get them out. Come evening I close the door so I won't have to play the yarn game to get them to leave (they now know why I play this game so it works about half the time) so I can go to sleep. About bedtime I start to feel like I am being watched. Knightly takes up position in the bathroom down the hall and then peers around the door towards my room looking for an opportunity to sprint inside when my guard is down:


The whole of him:


Despite his well-laid plan I have yet to fall victim to his stealthiness.

Blue Ridge Parkway

I have been staying with my friend Becky in Charlotte and her parents came out from Colorado a couple of weeks ago to visit and drive the Blue Ridge Parkway. We drove the first day from Charlotte to Waynesboro, VA, where the Parkway begins. We drove for the next two days until, reaching Chimney Rock, NC and home. If we had waited a couple of more weeks we would have seen some beautiful colors on the trees, but we were able to see a few trees that had already started changing colors. I would like to go back to the Parkway and do more of the hiking trails that are available. I understand the spring is another good time to visit because there are several waterfalls along the Parkway that are very beautiful in the spring when the snow is melting and there is a lot of run off. This late in the summer meant that most of the waterfalls have dried up.

The drive has inspired me to watch again The Last of the Mohicans, which was filmed at various points on the parkway. From what I have read the majority of the filming was done in North Carolina.

This fence enclosed several old Appalachian farm buildings.

View from Humpback Rocks, for the humpback appearance of the rocky outcropping.

Another view from Humpback Rocks.

It was dusk when we came upon this big guy. The Smoky Mountains have the largest population of black bears in the United States. The picture isn't very good, but hopefully you can see his outline and dark shape right in front of the garbage can. When came by the first time we scared him into the trees, so we circled the parking lot again and when we came up again he had come back out of the trees and was again close to the road and the garbage cans.

A picture from Ravens Roost at dusk at the end of our first day. The view looks down onto the Shenandoah Valley.

Just one of the beautiful flowers seen along the way.

A small taste of the colors to come.

Otter Lake

A view of the forest at Otter Lake.

Another vista.

A picture of the famous Appalachian Trail.

This is one of the signs that denotes the Appalachian Trail. For the first 110 miles of the Parkway, the trail runs almost parallel to the Parkway, crossing the road at several points, before turning west.

And another vista.

There were several stone bridges along the Parkway. There were also several tunnels, the majority being in NC.

This picture gives you a good view of the natural fog that often covers the mountains, resulting in the "smoky" look that gives the Great Smoky Mountains their name.

Me straddling the border between Virginia and North Carolina. The party that surveyed this boundary in 1749 included Thomas Jefferson's father, Peter.

Grandfather Mountain. Can you see the profile of the old man?

Picture of the famous Linn Cove Viaduct.

And another vista. The lowest point on the Parkway is 649ft. and the highest is 6047ft. This is neither of those points.

Sunset view at the end of our second day.

We visited the city of Boone, NC, hometown of the famous Daniel Boone. We also spent one night in Mount Airy, NC, birthplace and home of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for the Andy Griffith Show's fictional community of Mayberry.

I have pictures from our third day but will save them for another post, since they are from places off the parkway.

And at last came Wales

Hard to believe I have come to the last post on my travels in Europe before coming back to the States. At least I am finishing up these posts less than a year later.

I spent a week in Wales with my good friends Stephanie and Mary Beth. We got a screaming deal at a resort in a small town called Machynlleth, thanks to Stephanie and her parent's time share investment.

Mary Beth and I arrived in Mach (that is what we started calling the town to avoid slaughtering the Welsh pronunciation, and because the locals refer to it as Mach) at 11:30 PM, on the last train for the night. There was one other gentleman to get off, and luckily for us he did, because he saved our bacon.

We were told that normally taxis are waiting at the train station and that we shouldn't have any problem finding one. Unfortunately, that is true. Mary Beth and I started walking towards town, but quickly decided to turn around and go back and try to find a phone to use.

As we arrived back at the station entrance the gentleman who also got off the train was waiting there. He inquired if we needed help and we explained the problem. It just so happened that he too was waiting for a taxi. He was retuning home from London where he had watched his football team play. He was a bit tipsy and unable to drive his own car, which he offered to let us drive to the resort where we were staying. Thanking him for this we instead accepted his offer to use his cell phone to call for a taxi. He actually ended up ordering our taxi for us in Welsh, which was pretty cool. While waiting for the taxi we discovered that our new friend was a sheep farmer. This of course started a conversation about his sheep dogs. We asked if his dogs were as amazing as sheep dogs are reported to be. He said that no his sheep dogs are lazy and only run down hill. Every morning they hop on the back of his 4-wheeler for a ride to the top hill and then chase the sheep down. We had a good laugh.

All in all it was a delightful week spent seeing a castle, visiting the coast and tramping across farms and the green, green, green Welsh countryside

Statue of Owain Glyndwr, a Prince of Wales. I found the carvings fascinating:


Looking down on Mach while hiking through the countryside:


A Welsh golf course lawnmower:


One day we rode the train to see Harlech Castle. Other than the day being dreary it was a very cool place to visit. You are free to roam as you wish. You can climb up on top of the walls and look out over the city and surrounding countryside. Because of the gray weather, the green of the grass was shocking in its intensity:


A view from one of the walls. The weather for the day was what you see below, low hanging clouds with an ever present mist and mingled with heavy rain:


Playing around with the black and white setting on my camera. Because the weather was so dreary and the castle was built with gray stone, the colored version of this photo looks about the same:


This is the bridge that we crossed everyday when traveling from the resort where we stayed into Mach:


Me on the coast of Wales. We took a day to visit the city of Aberystwth a hour bus ride from Mach that was cheaper than the train:


The street that ran the length of the beach was very charming with its many colored houses. Made me wonder just how much it costs to have a seaside view. This is looking south:


Looking north. At the time I wished I had had a panoramic lens and access to a boat so I could get far enough out on the water to get a full picture:


This is the sign one sees at the beginning of the wharf. I think the sign would work well when wanting to steer/motivate/scare an individual down the right path:


Aberystwth Castle ruins. The castle was built by Owain Gwynedd:


A small stream we had to traverse on a hike where we were almost lost in the Welsh countryside. I had visions of our bodies never being found:


I never could get over how green everything was. It was beautiful:


When I return to Wales it will be to visit Snowdonia, a national park that has the highest peak in Wales. If the park is anything like the rest of the country, it is going to be amazing. This blog post ends a month of travel. Hard to believe it has been almost a year since I returned home. The question now, where do you suggest I travel next?

And then there was Guernsey

After seeing Mont St. Michel and staying at a B&B in a town I call Little Briton, because everyone we met there was not French, but British, we made our way to St. Malo, where we spent the day before boarding the ferry to Guernsey. The ferry hits the two English Channel islands, Jersey and Guernsey before docking in Portsmouth.

Boat yard in St. Malo:


We needed to do laundry and had time so we figured why not. We had to decipher the instructions on how to purchase soap and run the washer and dryers because it was not all that clear. The amazing part, the pants I am wearing in this picture, not the ones I was wearing when I entered. I did the world's fastest pants change so I could wash the jeans I was wearing, trust me, you would have been rendered speechless by my speed.




We then caught the ferry for the Isle of Guernsey. It was on the ferry that I heroically saved Mary Beth's priceless headband by asking a crew member to walk out on bow of the boat to retrieve it from where the wind had blown it.

Guernsey has quite a World War II history. The island was captured by German soldiers, who took control of the Bailiwick of Guernsey (shown below). The Bailiwick is now a historical site were one can learn about the German occupation. I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (highly recommend) after visiting Guernsey. While this book is a work of fiction, it is based upon historical facts and gave me an idea of what life was like for those on the island at this time:



Looking back on St. Peter Port from the Bailiwick of Guernsey:


Another view of St. Peter Port:


La Maison de Victor Hugo:


We did not go inside because they wanted 15 quid, and I am sure Monsieur Hugo would be appalled at that absurd price:


For my niece Rowan. I take pictures of any restaurant sign with a niece or nephew's name on it. Rowan certainly has the more popular name. This is the second restaurant I found with the name Rowan in the title. The other restaurant was in the Lake District.


This is how I hope to pass from this world to the next:


Another place on the island we visited was the Little Chapel. It is covered in broken pieces of china and was quite fun to walk around inside, definitely not a place for tall people:











The flight from Guernsey to Birmingham was on a double propeller plane that held approximately 40 people. I can honestly say I have now been on a flight where I thought for sure the plane was going to crash on landing. It was stormy and windy in Birmingham, and I had a death grip on the arm rest and Mary Beth's arm the entire time we were descending.