On The Road

We have been away from the boat for almost a month now, and I miss it.  So does Mike.  We are back in San Diego for a couple of days, to take care of business.

We flew into St. Louis on March 11, and of course when we got there at about 11 pm, we discovered our suitcase did not arrive with us.  We last saw it in Denver when we cleared customs, so we knew that it did make it to the US.  The guy at Frontier Airlines was wonderful, and we eventually headed off to the rental car place with two tiny little black bags filled with toiletries, courtesy of Frontier Airlines.  The only reason we cared at all about the luggage was because all our tax papers, which included hundreds of receipts, were in there.  So it would be pretty much a disaster if it were to be permanently lost.  And things were complicated by the fact that our first destination - Hayward, Wisconsin - was hours from any airport. (They found the suitcase and sent it to us via Fed Ex and we got it five days after we arrived.)

But there was nothing we could do about it except wait, so we picked up the rental car.  I kept complaining to Mike how it wasn't fair that some people had one, two, even THREE suitcases while we had none at all.  At one point I said "Honey, please get the luggage" and pointed to the little airline bags with toiletries the airline gave us at the lost luggage counter.  The guy at the rental counter said "you are the happiest people I've ever seen for people that just got robbed."

I learned a lot on the drive from St. Louis to Hayward, because I paid attention in a different way than I ever had before.  This part of the midwest was not a part I had really been to before, and even if I had been there, it was only to drive through on my way to somewhere else, usually on a tight schedule.  And I never paid any serious attention to the landscape, only to note if it were pretty or not.  Finally, any trips I did take to the area were before I developed my almost obsession with bodies of water. For the first time, I was not on a rigid schedule.  Next, I was accompanied by a learned geologist (Mike, and he really is one), who was really interested in seeing the country from that and other scientific points of view.  Finally, there were lakes and rivers and creeks, all of which had water in them.   Moraine country!  I only hope I am spelling it right.

Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures while on this leg of the trip - it was all too fascinating just looking at everything and being there.  There was snow and ice and everything was sort of melting and then freezing again, over and over, almost more than once in the same day.  It was cold, but not too cold so as to be miserable outside.  The only bummer was that it was not the kind of weather for hiking.  It didn't freeze deep enough to be able to walk on top of the snow, and you would fall through.  Then it would get wet and mucky.  In some ways, I think it is the least hiking friendly time of year. 

We had a great visit with my family in Wisconsin.  I don't get to see them very often, but I am hoping now that they have seen how well Mike and I have survived so far, they might come and see us! 

While driving around Wisconsin, we came across the YMCA camp I went to as a kid.  Everything was covered with snow, and a lot had changed, but some of the original buildings were still there, including one of the cabins I stayed in.  This is the outside.

Here is the inside.

I guess it has seen better days - I did not remember it quite like this. And below - the lake.

It was strange, but fun to see it after all these years - I went when I was nine and ten years old - so it has been like 45 years since I was there.  I wish my son had gone - my dad went when he was a kid.

We also watched rivers break up - here is a picture of that.

It was more dramatic in person.  Even all the years I lived there, I just never paid any attention to stuff like that.  I guess I was too busy waiting for it to get warm at that point.

After we left Wisconsin, we went down the Mississippi River all the way to Cape Girardeau, Missouri before we turned west for Mike's mom's house and the Ozarks.  I have never taken this particular road trip before, and the little river towns were amazingly beautiful.  We were especially impressed by the churches with their incredibly tall steeples - Mike referred to them as "God spears."  The river itself was mesmerizing - it is a real working river and the sight of so much water moving here and there was wonderful.  I was in my element.  Maybe I should have been a river pilot!  Here is a picture of the Mississippi in St. Louis.  It was taken from the restaurant that was on the top floor of our hotel.

 

Here is the river in a more rural setting.

Anyway - if I had to live in a city and it had to be in the midwest, I think I would pick St. Louis.  I liked a lot of things about it, and it had a good vibe.  And really good food!

Missouri is full of springs.  I mean really full of springs. We went and saw at least five in a forty mile radius of Mike's mom's house.  They are incredible (I must get some new adjectives!).  I do not have words to describe how hundreds and thousands of gallons of water just comes bubbling up from the ground or out from under a cliff face.  And "bubbling" is too mild.  It comes pouring out of cliff faces, and when it comes up from the ground, it is like someone has a fire hose under the water shooting it upward.  It is humbling and inspiring at the same time to see so much natural water.  And what is called a "creek" in Missouri would be a raging river in California.  Here is an example.

 A creek?  Really?  But I will never stopped being amazed by natural running water.  Never. 

So now we are back in San Diego, taking care of business.  We got our taxes done, visited more family, and bought a new watermaker.  It will make 30 gallons of drinking water out of sea water via reverse osmosis, and runs off the little gas generator we have on board.  This is really good because this means we can go pretty much as far away as we want to and we will not run out of water.  Sometimes it is easier to get food than it is to get water.  And since we will be in the Sea of Cortez all summer, which is a desert, it will come in very handy as otherwise we would have to buy it.  And be very careful with it. This means we can have fresh water showers any time we want to. And fresh water wash downs every time we get salty, which is always.  And the dishes can be washed in fresh water.  All we (Mike) have (has) to do now is get it to Mexico and install it.  We have so much stuff to haul across the border it is not even funny.  Two dollys with boxes and the biggest unit of the watermaker on them, and two suitcases, one of which contains a heavy pump for the watermaker and a wheel for the dinghy.  We have to haul all of that on a shuttle bus, a regular bus, a ferry, and god knows how many taxis to the boat.  But there are worse things - and after all, we are headed back to Mexico.  I miss it terribly.  It could easily become a black hole for me - a place I fall into and never leave.  I like it just that much! 

Anyway - we did a lot of things I didn't tell all about - like replacing the floor under Mike's mom's toilet, and seeing different birds, including pheasents and peacocks, and going to Arkansas which is MUCH more sophisticated than Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma combined.  (Except for St. Louis.)  Mike's mom is moving there, so in the future we will be going to Arkansas rather than Missouri.  And because Mike's niece in Arkansas is an equestrian, we got to see her horse and see her ride it, and now Mike is more positive about horses than he was before.  I might actually get him to ride one in the near future!  We also stayed in a beautiful resort in Arkansas on the White River.

Here is a picture of two of my sisters and I demonstrating in Wisconsin against union busting. 

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  It was good to be able to do something besides just have a good time sightseeing and visiting people I love, something worthwhile and bigger than I am.  I just hope people here could stop being so mean about each other.  There is no other way to describe it.   Just plain mean, with no compassion or even noblesse oblige, something I think even the French nobility supported, for heaven's sake. 

I will try to post again after we get from here to Ensenada - leaving tomorrow via a shuttle bus that leaves a marine supply store about two blocks from this hotel to a hotel in Ensenada.  Then we will check into Mexico and get a six month visa, and spend a day or so before we drag all our stuff on a bus to La Paz - a 24 hour ride. I just found out some friends of ours might be in La Paz at the same time, so we'll spend a day there.  Then after that we drag our stuff to a ferry for a 13 hour ride to Mazatlan.  I bet that trip will generate some interesting stories - or at least gruesome descriptions of aches and pains!