Our Nation's Treasures

A day of hiking in Big Bend National Park ends most perfectly

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:06:00 +0000

The best echoing I’ve ever encountered is in the Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park in Texas. Mark and I hike 1.7 miles in along the U.S.-side of the Rio Grande. At the end of the trail, the canyon walls are only 25 feet or so apart. I shout “Ruth,” and listen to it bounce back and forth. “Bruce” is another good name for echoing.

The Rio Grande isn’t as grand as we had anticipated, at least not at this time of the year. This area gets about 10 inches of rainfall annually but frequently floods because it lacks soil to soak up the rain. The rainiest months are July, August and September.

A fairly easy hike is across the desert to Mule Ear spring. Appropriately named, the rocks stick up, are pointed at the top and are perfectly spaced and slightly curved in toward one another to resemble the ears of a horse. In my opinion, they are not tall enough for a mule’s ears.

The spring, about the size of a big hot tub, is an invigorating temperature for this desert heat—even in February—and clear. Two frogs sit at the edge, and two jump in. Mark and I wonder how many cowboys stopped to refill and refresh here at this ideal oasis.

Surprisingly, this desert has many springs, or, if not springs, nice, moist areas that the leafy, green trees spotting the desert make evident. Trees require more water than cacti, which is why deserts are not full of trees.

The hike to Mule Ear spring—our third of the day after the hike into Santa Elena Canyon and our early morning, 2 miles round trip to Burro Mesa Pouroff—pushes me to my poop-out point. I sleep the half hour drive to Chisos Basin visitor center plus another 20 minutes in the lot while Mark reads.

Somewhat refreshed, in the visitor center we ask for advice for how to spend our last few hours in the park. I tell a ranger we are thinking of hiking the Window trail. She says that both the upper and lower Window trails are 4–5 miles and asks if that’s what we have in mind. I tell her we’d hiked more than we’d planned that morning, 9-plus miles, but I say yes, that’s about what we were looking to do.

I imagine her sizing us up and deciding we don’t have 4–5 miles left in us; she suggests the Lost Mine trail at 2.4 miles. It’s her favorite hike in the park, she says. To me, 2.4 miles sounds perfect.

Mark drives the mile to the Lost Mine trailhead. He loads the backpack with water while I read the trail guide. “Pack some energy bars too,” I tell him. “It’s 2.4 miles, one way.”

The trail guide suggests the tired attempt the first mile only. I consider this. However, after a mile I feel strong enough for another 1.4-mile climb. We pass a man resting who tells us “It’s worth the effort.”

The trail is steep, and with more than half a mile yet, I am not sure anything could make this effort worthwhile: My lungs are burning and my legs feel as heavy as cinderblocks. Mark tramps ahead, which motivates me to, if not keep up, at least keep him in site.

Finally, at the top the trail flattens and opens to a lookout. I collapse on a rocky outcropping, out of breath and gumption. Looking at my surroundings, I realize the climb was worth it. The panoramic view is spectacular this clear day: the reddish-brown mountains across from us, the views to the left off to distant peaks, huge rocks jutting out all around, the comfortable, refreshingly light breeze. I’ve never been more perfectly rewarded.

This has been the most unique hike for our ultimate day in the park. I understand why it’s the ranger’s favorite. Despite the climb, it’s my favorite now too.

First day in Big Bend National Park is a bust

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:15:00 +0000

Hundreds or even thousands of years ago, Native Americans, before trying to conceive, would pray at what is now called Balance Rock at Big Bend National Park in Texas. Well, I don’t know this for fact, but it’s a reasonable assumption. The rock, bigger than a stand-alone freezer, is supported at one end by what looks to be a giant penis. I find no literature to confirm my suspicion about Indians praying for fertility, but the symbolism is hard to miss.

Mark and I almost miss Balance Rock because he zooms past its access road on our way out of the park. “Hold on! Turn around!” The day is still fresh enough as the sun has not yet met the horizon, but Mark is less than excited to witness more of what the park has offered so far: desert, desert plants, and the Rio Grande. This late afternoon, Balance Rock is a welcome change.

Our day starts excitingly. A javelina is rooting roadside as we drive into the park this morning. A javelina looks like a small wild boar but is more closely related to hippopotamus. They are about two feet tall at the shoulders. A roadrunner crosses our path too. Texans call roadrunners paisanos (pie-SAH-nos). Along a trail, Mark sees a snake.

Unexpectedly to us, Big Bend’s desert is loaded with botanicals: prickly pear cactus, yuccas, juniper trees, even patches of grass. More than 1000 species of plant.

We make the customary stops at visitor centers, eat our picnic lunch at a trailhead and take several short hikes.

One hike along the Rio Grande to a slot in a canyon passes a Mexican selling carvings and felt artwork. A ranger told us that we would likely encounter this muchacho. It wasn’t so much a warning, but she encouraged us to ignore him as he should not be on the U.S.-side of the Rio Grande. I look at the man’s wares but buy nothing.

Near the end of the trail, at river’s edge, we are serenaded from the Mexican side by a man we also expected, thanks to the heads-up from the ranger. According to sources, he’s a bit loco. Loco or not, his voice is lovely. The highlight of the day so far.

The Rio Grande here is neither deep nor wide. Mark, in his Gortex boots, wades out atop the rocky bed.

The Rio Grande is absent in other parts of the park where it usually runs during rainy season. The wettest months are July, August and September. Cracks in this February’s dry riverbed are 4–5 inches deep.

Our first day in the park ends with a hike at the Balance Rock area. We hope the southern and western parts of the park, which we’ll explore tomorrow, offer scenery as interesting. The eastern side of Big Bend has been a bust.

Friendliness overcomes desolation in Marathon, Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:45:00 +0000

Driving in Texas near the Mexican border, Mark and I are stopped by a uniformed officer with a German shepherd. The dog sniffs around the exterior of our car and the officer visually scans the back seat, which is a mess of snacks, jackets, magazines and sunscreens. Neither finds anything suspicious. We confirm that we’re U.S. citizens when asked, and I suppose we seem rather harmless because he takes our word for it, doesn’t ask for IDs.

Westward ho! Our destination is Big Bend National Park.

At 6:45 p.m. we arrive in Marathon, population 455, the town nearest the north entrance to Big Bend. Neither of the two motels here have vacancies. The next town west is more than 30 miles away, and who knows if it has lodging? The last intersecting road was 55 miles east, and there was a little motel, but we really don’t want to backtrack 55 miles and then in the morning drive it west again plus another 30 miles into the park.

The proprietress at the later motel we check in Marathon must recognize the desperation on our faces and calls a friend. Whew! The friend leases us a place in the little neighborhood for the night.

We’re mighty hungry, and it looks like the only place we can purchase food, besides a small grocery, is a bar packed with locals. Mark and I sit at the bar and order every dish they are serving that night: pulled pork sandwich, wings, and quesadillas. He gets a beer, I get a cranberry juice, and we talk with the twenty-something bartender, Matthew, who’s lived in Marathon for 10 years.

I ask what he does for fun in such a small, isolated place. “Lots,” he says. “The young people meet for game night once a week, I’m in a band.” At this, I wonder what venues they possibly could play, so far removed from anywhere. “We go hunting sometimes.”

“With a gun or bow?” I ask.

“With guns.”

“So you own a gun?”

Matthew shrugs and shakes his head. He stammers as if embarrassed, like he has to hunt with his pump BB gun while his friends blow game away with bazookas: “Well, not…well, just the basics—a rifle, a shotgun and a pistol.”

Someone from the other end of the bar shouts an order, and Matthew busies himself filling it while Mark and I look at each other wide-eyed and grin in disbelief. The basics? I guess it’s true: You don’t mess with Texas.

Remembering the Alamo and other historical places

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:51:00 +0000

Remember the Alamo? Neither did I until we visited. We buy audio tours for $5 apiece. I’d have wanted to read everything if we didn’t.

Supporters from many states arrived to help defend the fortification. Even Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey and Maryland all sent one man. Ever optimistic, the Alamo defenders never gave up hope that reinforcements would come any day; sadly, every last white man died. But the Mexicans spared most women and children and the few fighting black men.

A woman whose leg had been injured in the battle walked 75 miles to deliver news of the defeat. The Mexicans were defeated soon after the Alamo, and Texas gained its independence—for 10 years until it joined the United States.

In San Antonio Mark and I brush up on our knowledge of the Alamo and attend the rodeo before driving west.

After an early afternoon picnic at Amistad National Recreation Area, we drive halfway across a dam just for the view. We don’t go all the way because the other side is Mexico, complete with border guards. The crossing is not at all busy; no car passes in either direction the few minutes we are on the dam.

I would love to cross the border, just for the experience, but, alas, we did not bring our passports, now required for entry into Mexico.

So on westward. Our destination is Big Bend National Park, smack-dab in the middle of Nowhere, South Texas, but for a diversion we stop at Seminole Canyon State Park and take a guided hike 1 mile into the canyon to a rock shelter with pictographs, dated to 4,000 years ago.

From a park brochure “Seminole Canyon received its name in honor of the U.S. Army’s Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts…. The scouts protected the West Texas frontier from marauding Apache and Comanche bands between 1872 and 1914. Known for their exceptional cunning and toughness, no scout was ever wounded or killed in combat, and four earned the prestigious Medal of Honor.” The four earned their medals after capturing their captain, a white, from his band of about 75 captors. Four vs. 75, and they all survived!

The guide leads us past certain plants and cacti and tells us how the canyon inhabitants made use of them in the exhausting heat, a heat that is obvious on the canyon floor this February afternoon. It’s so hot I find it difficult to concentrate on what the guide is saying. It’s hard to think of anything besides the heat and how to escape it. I consider plopping down and rejoining the tour on their climb out of the canyon, but the shelter with the paintings is only about 100 yards further, and that’s the nearest shade as well.

A line of pictographs runs the entire length of the overhanging rock. They are of a resin of mineral pigment in animal fat or in urine and painted with fibrous plant leaves. Supposedly, these are some of the best examples of rock paintings in the world.

The guide says that scientist continue to learn more about people who lived there. For instance, weather continually unearths petrified poop! Adding a certain chemical to the rock-hard poop brings it back to “live” poop—with the smell and everything, our guide tells us—and the poop gives hints as to what the people ate—seeds and such.

Once we start our climb out of the canyon, we catch a bit of breeze, enough to energize Mark and me to separate from the group and take a side trail for an additional mile or so. Our curiosity of what the other side of the canyon looks like overtakes our thirst but we are, as we say, “bookin’ it” because we don’t have water. I am reminded of the horses I rode when I was young. The horses may have been only limping along and may have sweated through their saddle blankets, foam at the corners of their mouths, yet once reined toward the barn, when they knew their service would be over once they got there, it was tough to hold them back.

I feel like one of those horses now, hurrying to the car and water. When will Mark and I learn to take water with us, even for short hikes?

Catching dinner considered successful day of fishing

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Monarch butterflies migrate to Mexico in the fall. Early last October when Mark and I visited Dad, where he lives with my step mom on the coast of Georgia, we took the boat out and anchored at the mouth of a creek right in the monarchs’ southerly path. We pulled whiting from the sea and marveled at the monarchs flitting past. In a band 10 yards wide and from about two feet to eight feet above the water we witnessed a constant stream of butterflies. We estimated 800 to 1,000 butterflies flew by in three hours. Not many, but some, landed in the boat for a couple seconds’ rest. It felt magical being in the midst of the monarchs' natural pattern.

This year I suppose we were too late because there was no definite band of butterflies, just a few here and there flitting across the expanse of the bay.

Other things kept our attention.

Dad says, paraphrasing Forrest Gump’s philosophical aphorism, “When you fish in the ocean, you never know what you’re gonna get,” and that was surely the case on our first day fishing.

Mark fished the bottom while Dad float fished (with a bobber). I chose not to fish until it seemed worth my while. Right away Dad pulled in a trout, and Mark commented on how pretty a fish the trout is, long, thin and silver with dark spots on its upper half.

We were close to a small island rimmed with oyster shells, not much more than a sandbar. We let out enough anchor rope for the tide to carry the boat near, and I hopped out and combed the beach, looking for anything interesting that may have washed up.

Not finding anything out of the ordinary, I returned after 15 minutes and learned that Mark had caught a whiting, and a big one at that. Whiting, a mild, tasty fish, must be at least 10 inches long to keep; anything over 12 inches we consider big. Whiting are silver and not as thin as trout; they have no remarkable spotting or coloring.

Dad had switched to bottom fishing, and since fish were biting, I joined the men and tossed my line in with a shrimp for bait. Within a couple minutes I landed a redfish, also called a sea bass. Redfish are notch fish, meaning they must be bigger than a certain size to keep yet also smaller than another size. The notch for redfish is 14–23 inches. The one I caught was small but not too small.

Dad and I each caught a whiting, and both were too small to keep. Mark reeled in two sting rays, which are the bane of the south sea fisherman. They are fun to catch because they put up a fight, but getting them off the hook without getting stung can be tricky. Dad has suffered two stings, which did draw blood and were most painful. Submerging the stung body part in hot water eases the pain somewhat, but the true healer is time—five or six hours.

The day ended successfully. All-in-all, the three of us brought in eight fish species, a one-day record for us: flounder, croaker, skate, and shark, besides the trout, whiting, redfish and stingray from earlier.

One or two of us pulls in a decent size shark each time Mark and I visit. I caught the one this year: 18 pounds, my biggest catch of anything ever. We froze the filleted shark to bring back to Ohio. Mark’s brother makes a tasty marinade for grilling. Because of the mercury content, we don’t want to eat shark more than once a year.

Besides the shark, the fish we didn’t toss back into the sea were enough for dinner that night. Catching a meal is so satisfying—as is eating fresh-caught fish.

A duck farm in northern Indiana

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:51:00 +0000

“That makes it sound like they assemble ducks from pieces,” Mark says because I call the place the Culver Duck Factory. The company’s website gives the name simply as Culver Duck, not Farm, not Factory.

The PR guy, whom I contacted after our visit, says he prefers farm: “The word factory has gained a lot of negative press and is pushed by different groups to spin a bad light on what we do.” Culver Duck doesn’t piece together ducks; the place processes them—15,000 a day.

Tuesday after Memorial Day we arrive for our privately escorted tour with Tim.

On the way to one of several barns on campus, Tim tells us the company sells about 3.5 million ducks a year, mostly to Chinatowns across the United States. Ducks are processed at six weeks, like chickens, but spend less than 24 hours of those on site. The ducklings are sent out to surrounding Amish farms on the day they’re hatched, straight from the hatchery.

Baby ducks are born every workday, and before the tour takes us to the new arrivals, we pass a crate with seven or eight deformed or damaged baby ducks dying. Tim says that they’ve never had a healthy hatch rate better than 80%. Wild eggs hatch near 100% if weasels or another egg lover doesn’t find them and if they receive proper care from the mother duck. The eggs at Culver Duck, Tim tells us, are refrigerated for 3–8 days before they are incubated. Incubation is 28 days, nothing more, nothing less, which makes planning for hatchings quite easy.

In the back of the barn are stacks and stacks of crates, and I don’t even realize they are full of new hatchlings until we’re right up on them. Their quiet cheep, cheep, cheeps don’t give their location away. I hold one as Tim tells us that they are 100 per crate, and the baby jumps onto my chest and, like a kitten might, scoots over my shoulder. Luckily Mark catches it before it falls to the ground. Who knew ducklings could climb?

Ducks have little sharp points on their beaks that, at Culver Duck, get burned off right away when they are born. Tim tells us that ducks are carnivores, and bully ducklings can peck away at a more mellow one causing enough damage that many babies gang up and kill it—and THEN EAT IT!

Ducks at different stages of development are housed in the research barn, where feed and other variables are changed to try to produce a more optimal duck.

In the breeder barn are pens of ducks and fluorescent lighting overhead. Lights come up at 5 a.m., and most of the mommas lay their eggs then. Ducks produce one egg per day, six days per week. “Even ducks take one day a week off,” says Tim. Negotiated by the duck union? I forgot to ask.

We pass a wastewater lagoon, and Tim says all their water is treated on site and is used for field irrigation. The field is cut for hay once a year.

In the egg-sorting barn, lights shine on a tray of 30 eggs, and some are transparent. We see the inside of one is mostly purple, the color of a blood blister. These see-through eggs are infertile and are culled, as are any cracked, double-yolked, small, or imperfect eggs. The whole place carries a general bad smell, but here it’s almost unbearable.

Tim offers to let us see the entire operation: the stunning, killing, bleeding and plucking, but I decline. We do see ducks herded from a truck down a narrow path, at the end of which is the stunner and conveyor line, which carries the ducks, hung upside down, into the plant where they meet their deaths.

The tour took an hour, and before we part, Tim gives us directions on how to prepare duck; I tell him that I have eaten duck once, but it was greasy. He says people don’t know how to prepare them; they cook them like chicken, but that’s not the best way. He also hands us each a stick of duck jerky.

As we pull from the lot, Mark, chewing on his jerky, admits that the tour was interesting. I agree and am happy he thinks so. Picking alluring options for our long weekend up north was challenging.

96 laps, 128 cars, 2 dazed drivers and an ambulance

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:59:00 +0000

Before the main event, a couple old beater buses loaded with kids race around the 3/8-mile track at the Kalamazoo Speedway where Mark and I sit high in the grandstands this Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. The MC, high in a tower somewhere, is non-stop talk:

“Lines are short at concessions, get your hotdogs before the race starts.”

“Who out there saw the race today?” meaning the Indy 500. “Who likes Junior? How many Jeff Gordon fans?”

“It’s Shelby Carlisle’s 17th birthday today. Happy birthday, Shelby.” On and on. Very small-town.

The two bus drivers are actually in the first race, so at 7 p.m. they stop to jump in their own speedsters.

Soon the late model cars are lined up, two by two, eight or nine rows.

The cars look much like the race cars that Dale Junior and Gordon drive: sleek and low, all surfaces covered by sponsors’ names. They start circling the track, and after three go-rounds, the flag drops. Wow, it’s loud. A man a couple rows down wears earplugs. Smart.

Oh! There’s a wreck. The yellow flag is waved, and cars must keep their places as they circle. Nobody’s hurt, but a tow truck does have to pull the car away. The checkered flag flies again, and the noise is over the top.

A tower on the other side of the track displays a lap counter, and after 25, we think the race is over, because every car exits the track. But now the lap counter is a timekeeper counting down from 10 minutes.

The MC talks up concessions again, and every couple minutes he announces how much of the 10 minutes remains. He asks, “Who traveled more than 5 miles to get here? 10? Are there people who came from more than 25 miles away? How about 50?” He stops there. At 300+ miles, Mark and I may have come further than anyone.

With a couple minutes left, a car drives onto the track and into pit row for weighing. And before the 10 minutes has expired, all the cars—even one that wrecked—are back on the track. After the weigh-in, they line up in the order that they finished the first 25 laps, and the whole thing starts again.

After 75 total laps the winner is awarded $5000, and the MC climbs down from his tower and interviews him. He’s a local and has won this race several times

The MC announces that the Euro cars will race next: 200 laps at 128 cars on the 3/8-mile track.

Did we hear right?

Yes, he says it again—128 cars at once—and continues with the rules: if cars wreck or stop, they sit where they lie; other cars do not continue their circling but come to a complete halt until the driver of the dead car safely exits the track. It’s almost a demolition derby.

From the opening between turns 1 and 2, a seemingly never-ending caravan of four-cylinder junkers begins to wind around the track. Most are decorated, their numbers spray painted on their sides. One black Toyota has an MIA flag flying from the back window area, one has a tire painted yellow and secured squarely in the middle of its top, a teddy bear rides the back bumper of another.

The cars stack five-wide, and the flag drops. After only a couple laps one jalopy stalls at the inside near turn 3. The officials give the driver a couple minutes to try to resuscitate the car, but eventually call for a stop. Lights placed on the outside fence coming out of each turn and one in the middle of each straight-away flash red, and the 127 remaining cars screech to a stop. Of course there’s some bumping.

This happens again and again, and by lap 96 the track is littered with 10 or 12 cars, and bumpers, tires and various parts from the other 100. Two drivers have walked away dazed, and one needs a stretcher.

As we wait for the ambulance, the MC tells the crowd that the cars will race in the other direction after 100 laps. This is crazy.

As much as we’d like to, we don’t see the remaining 104 laps because we have reservations 50 minutes east on the coast of Lake Michigan and need to be there by midnight. It’s been so much fun; we might be back next year.

Transport back in time in a dream car

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:50:00 +0000

On our way to Michigan Memorial Day weekend, Mark and I stopped to stretch our legs at Snook’s Dream Cars museum in Bowling Green, Ohio. Snook’s is just a couple miles off the highway and looks like a 1950s service station from the outside. We’re the only ones here besides the lady who collects our $6 apiece to enter, so our original thought is that the place is a dud. But contrary to our initial impression, we find the place fun.

Bill Snook is quite the collector and not just of cars. The first room is filled with old pinball machines, carnival games, and slot machines—and most are playable. Mark gives me a penny and I slide it into a small gallery and get 10 shots with a little gun to try to knock down 10 metal tabs. The game has no flash—just wood and metal—but it’s fun. It takes me four shots to get the hang of the gun, which requires some force to fire, and I hit only two tabs. On to the roulette wheel.

The top of the machine has the colors with a coin slot next to each. I choose my color, pull the lever, but lose. One of several old nickel slot machines is calling anyway.

My first nickel gets nothing. My second pull lines up two lemons and I get two nickels back. I’m even. If I were in Vegas, I’d probably quit, but since I’m “gambling” with Snook’s money that the lady gave me from the till, I pull a third time. I hit the jackpot! Not literally, but that’s what it seems. Three lemons result and nickels pour from the machine. I take the winnings to the front—because there’s no gambling in Ohio. Snook’s gets all the loot.

I could spend the afternoon playing with another person’s money, and there are about 10 more machines to try, but I have returned my coins and Mark is already looking at the cars.

In the back I see Mark’s hands are deep in his pockets. He says it’s all he can do not to pop the hoods and look at the engines.

The place is pristine. Not a speck of dust anywhere, and the cars all shine like new, but they’re far from it. Nearly 30 cars make up the collection, from a 1921 Model-T Ford (black, of course) to a 1966 Pontiac GTO. Each car has next to it a sign listing year, original cost, current worth and how many were manufactured originally. My favorite is a 1954 Kaiser Darrin 161, which I have never heard of nor seen before. I really like the color—a soft mint ice cream. The accompanying sign says the paint is not original. It’s still my favorite though. I like the 1966 Mini Cooper too, as cute as a bug. Mark can’t pick one favorite, maybe the GTO.

We end our visit with a walk through the workshop, where an old truck is high on a hoist, and a car is parked in the other stall—with the hood up for Mark to take a peek at the power.

Snook’s Dream Cars museum is easy to get to: from I-75 north, take a right off exit 179 onto Route 6. Turn left at the next crossroad, County Home Road. Snook’s is on the right. Enjoy yourselves. And don’t worry about change for the pinball machine; Snook’s has got you covered.

Shenandoah National Park

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:02:00 +0000

To get to Shenandoah National Park, we drove east on I-70 through Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland to Virginia. The changing trees along the way were so pretty. In early October most had not yet changed, but among the hills of green were gold, orange, and red in small bunches Not shades of these colors, just the one hue of each, like a paint-by-number picture.

When we finally turned south off the major east-west interstates onto a state route in Maryland, traffic slowed to mostly stop within the first mile. As we crawled along, we passed tables of crafts and knick-knacks and junk lining both sides of the street. We were passing through on the day of the little town’s festival, and it seemed the whole tri-state came out on that beautiful early afternoon. Cafes offered outside seating, and I volunteered to get out, run ahead to a pizzeria and buy us some lunch. Mark wasn’t keen on that idea—and he had all our money.

In the second mile of our crawl, 20 or 30 minutes in, we stopped just before a kettle corn stand on Mark’s side. We agreed we needed kettle corn so I hopped out while Mark dug in his pocket for cash. At Mark’s door I grabbed the five ones he held out for me, ran across the street and up the embankment to the stand. They saw me coming, and a few steps before I got there I ordered“large!” I handed over the ones and the lady handed over the large bag of carmelly popcorn. I turned and saw that traffic had started its crawl. Down the grassy embankment, across the street, around the car and in. As slick as that, we had our snack for the rest of the trip.

A few handfuls of corn and 2 hours later, we were at the park. One north-south road 105 miles long, Skyline Drive, runs the length of Shenandoah National Park. The road runs along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and part of the Appalachian Trail runs through the park. Entrance cost $15 a car, but we showed our National Park pass, collected the park brochure and drove in.

The park has 75 pullouts for overlooks down on farms and ponds or towns and rivers to the west, and hills and trees to the east. Trees are the draw to Shenandoah, and October is the busiest time of the year. Trees in Shenandoah seemed not as pretty as those on the drive out, and its more southerly location meant that we likely visited a week or two too early for the full blown colorfest.

Lots of bicyclists pedalled up Skyline Drive that Saturday. They all seemed to be going north; maybe it was a race. One pedaller sat atop a unicycle, traveling uphill!

We stopped to hike part of the Appalachian Trail and spotted a young deer nibbling bark from a tree. Mark wanted to see a bear, and one gentleman we passed, a long-distance hiker, said they were aplenty along the trail.

That section of the Appalachian ended at Byrd Visitor Center, and across from Byrd, to the east, lay the Meadow: acres of blood red, glowing in the early afternoon light, interspersed with bits of yellow grass and several scrawny, scraggly trees. Mountains backed the scene. Looking from the Visitor Center, we wondered at the cause of the vivid color. Upon hiking into the Meadow, we saw the stalks, about 18 inches high, with leaves from bottom to top, which had changed into their striking fall colors.

The only exit from the park besides the ones at mile markers 0 and 105 is at mile marker 32, which is perfect for those entering from the north entrance midafternoon. About 15 miles west of the park is Luray, where we had reservations at Days Inn.

The southern 60 miles of the park offered nothing that the northern 30 didn’t. Shenandoah National Park is too much like Ohio to thrill us, and as cliché as this sounds, getting there was half the fun.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:31:00 +0000

Labor Day weekend we set our sights on a beach.

In Indianapolis we stopped at a BBQ festival for lunch. We arrived before 1 p.m. so saved a $5 per person entrance fee. On stage a band played, and the sound system was excellent: at every booth and lemonade stand in the small park, we could hear them well.

Feeling we’d scoped out the area enough to know where we wanted to spend our food tickets, we queued up and bought 21 for $30. All 21 tickets, that’s $30 plus the $8 for parking, bought us a half slab of ribs, a chicken breast sandwich, an order of potato salad, one of cole slaw and a small lemonade. Outrageous! But we enjoyed the lovely day, sitting in a patch of shade and listening to the band. Later that evening Kenny Wayne Shepherd was scheduled to perform. As much as we would have loved to ear-witness the guitar prodigy, we didn’t stay; our main aim was the beach.

Cruising up I-65, we saw a billboard advertising Fair Oaks Farms Dairy, 80 miles ahead at exit 220. I told Mark to wake me when we got there.

The place was right off the highway. Two barns sat adjacent to the parking lot. We walked behind them to a kids’ play area with a long, rectangular pillow of air on which they jumped, a wall with hand- and footholds they used to climb to the top to ring a bell, a track around which they rode mini John Deere tractors and small rails on which they rode a choo-choo train.

Beyond that beckoned a third barn. Mark and I walked in the door and down a short hall to an open doorway with a sign reading “Quiet please. Birthing in progress.”

Inside, sure enough, behind curving glass, under glaring lights, a cow, with birthing end pointed towards us, was pushing out a calf.We barely had time to register what we were seeing when she was pulled to her feet and out the back. Her bag was so big it was about to bust. A cow at milking time carries between two and four gallons. This mom was holding three times as much it seemed.

Another cow with a fresh calf lay in an adjacent enclosure. The calf wore the same white triangle on her forehead as her mother and the same white circle on her chin. We watched a couple minutes as she tried to stand: straightening her back legs and struggling to raise herself onto her front ones.

Before leaving Mark and I, of course, ordered ice cream. Vanilla and chocolate were out. It’s a good thing Mark and I both wanted butter pecan. After a pint, we drove north to the beach.

At Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, we walked onto Porter Beach. The clear waters of Lake Michigan and the crowd at the late hour surprised us. To avoid all the people, we decided to hike to Cowell’s Beach in the morning.

The park literature said we’d likely share Cowell’s with boaters who moored off the shore, but assured us we’d be of but a few who hike the two miles to arrive by foot.Along the mostly flat trail we hauled a double folding chair, our soft-sided cooler filled with water and a cloth Kroger bag with crackers, energy bars, a magazine and two books.

Arriving at 10 a.m. we shared the sands with two parties whose boats were anchored in close. Three hours, six bottles of water and some food later, we climbed the dune to the trailhead and turned to take a picture: parties from more than 50 boats now enjoyed the shore.

Parking was premium at all the beaches that afternoon, so we woke early on Monday and climbed Mount Baldy for a final view-from-on-high of the lake. On top of the highest dune in the park, we looked down on empty Baldy Beach and felt lucky to have the area to ourselves.Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore: the best natural beaches close to home.

Key West is Cool

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:26:00 +0000

People born on Key West call themselves Conchs, and folks who’ve lived on the key for at least 7 years may refer to themselves as Freshwater Conchs. However, because the cemetery is so little, only native Conchs may spend eternity there.

Mark and I learn all this and more while enjoying the Conch Train Tour. The tours last 90 minutes and leave every hour, so that means at least three trains, really just trolleys, are congesting traffic on the small island at any one time. Plus, thrown into the mix are at least three more from another tour company that offers 90-minute tours. The locals get annoyed but have come to accept it as a price to pay for, as Jimmie Buffet says, “Livin’ in Paradise.”

Our first night on the island we eat at Margaritaville, Buffet’s restaurant on Duval Street, the busy street with lots of surf and souvenir shops and restaurants. My mahi mahi is dry, but the music during dinner is good, all Buffet songs, and the margaritas are excellent.

Our second night we choose a less-crowded location for dinner than the popular Duval Street: We walk back the boardwalk from the docks and settle into a seaside, wooden booth at Turtle Krawl, a large restaurant that’s barely half full. We prefer the laid-back environment of the boardwalk to the laid-back, sensory overload of Duval Street.

Every evening the sun sets is a celebration on the west edge of Key West. The sun setting at the far edge of the ocean through billowy clouds is quite pretty, but also people crowd around street performers doing tricks for tips. A thin, athletic-looking man walks on his hands and bounds upright, one guy’s dog walks to people holding dollar bills, and she lightly chomps the money and carries it to drop in a hat; the owner tells semi-corny jokes the whole time. The best we see is a guy who juggles fire while riding a unicycle who tells funnier jokes. He opened his act by telling us he’d be juggling “not five, not six, but THREE” fire sticks. We speak with him after the performance. He has his college degree in finance but prefers the easy-going lifestyle of Key West and says he makes a good living earning tips each evening.

If either of us could juggle well or ride a unicycle, Mark and I might consider a move too. Key West is cool.

Adventure begins in Puerto Vallarta

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 15:01:00 +0000

This is the first travel story I ever wrote. It was published in the News Record, the University of Cincinnati’s school newspaper in 2002.

“Get me on the next plane to a warm place,” I told a travel agent one harried Wednesday morning. The following Monday afternoon, I unlocked the door of a sixth-floor, oceanfront room in Puerto Vallarta, on the brown Pacific sands of the Mexican Riviera.

Expecting nothing more than a relaxed break, I ended up with a whetted appetite for adventure.

I stayed at a tropical, botanical, all-inclusive resort. All-inclusive means daily activities like volleyball and snorkeling and even evening entertainment are included in one price. Most important, all meals are included too. I didn’t have to go into town and dine alone.

A stage was on the pool deck, and while I ate, I saw a show. The comedies were mostly physical because hotel guests spoke different languages, and the dances were sub-Vegas quality; the girls didn’t kick as high, but they were just as pretty.

One day, the activities hosts and hostesses pulled people, mostly teenagers, off the beach and out of their lounge chairs so they could practice for a show that evening. There were some true thespians and comedians. The amateur show was the best of the four I saw.

The beach was public so vendors came with their wares. I bought a set of five little ducks carved from marble for $5, at least two Mexican blankets for close to $20 apiece, and a silver necklace-that tarnished-with a globe charm for $10. A thin, blue wrap-around skirt I got for $5 is still one of my favorites.

Downtown Puerto Vallarta offered streets and bridges, modern jewelry and T-shirt shops, as well as squat, misshapen trees that must be 300 years old.

Off the main strip, up into the more residential area are doctors’ offices, and I even saw a tortillaria, a store with an hombre pushing cornmeal paste into the top of a siphon-like device. Onto a conveyor popped tortillas of about an eight-inch diameter.

My favorite part of the Puerto Vallarta trip was meeting a family from Argentina.

The first day, I went to dinner late so I would not be so obviously solo, or sola as they say in Mexico. I sat at an empty table but was soon jointed by a 15-year-old boy of Latin descent. We exchanged greetings and then I met his 18-year-old and 10-year-old brothers and his parents. I had taken their table. They welcomed me into their tribe.

I accepted their invitation to go into town with them that night. What a fun time.

We went dancing and bowling and dancing again. Back at the hotel, the 18-year-old kissed me on the cheek [I was 24], which surprised me since he did so in front of his parents. Later I realized the kiss must be the Argentinean custom since he and I danced together most of the night.

It was a remarkable experience and so easy to schedule. One Wednesday I was so stressed and uptight, but the following Wednesday I was two days into a trip I will never forget.

That was a great vacation, the beginning of my travel lust that I have satisfied going on 15 years now. That blue skirt I bought on the beach back in 1994? I wore it to work last week; it’s still one of my favorites.

Te Apua, New Zealand

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:57:00 +0000

We’re in Te Apua, New Zealand for a two-night stay. Mark and I take in the local attractions at a leisurely pace the full day we’re there.

Te Apua is home to the visitor’s center for Fjordland National Park, and after breakfast we ride our bikes there to see the introductory film, even though we’ve already visited the park, and we buy a magnet to add to our collection.

We walk to a bird sanctuary where one of two takahe is in the open so we get a good look. The bird is oddly shaped, almost spherical, with peacock-blue feathers underlain with dark purple. The beak is orange as are the legs and big-taloned feet. At the turn of the 20th century, the takahe were thought to have gone extinct. However, in 1950, while hiking deep within Fjordland National Park, a doctor rediscovered one. Today 200 takahe are thought to be roaming the wild. The male we see is about half the size of a large turkey.

And speaking of turkey, New Zealanders don’t eat it nor do the Europeans on the tour. All whom we ask about it respond in kind, similar to how I would respond if a foreign visitor were to exclaim, “You mean you don’t eat squirrel?!” Some may have tasted it, but it’s more of a game bird to them. And though not quite as plentiful as squirrels are in Southwest, Ohio, wild turkeys do roam all over New Zealand, both the north and the south islands—because no one eats them!

We take the afternoon boat across the lake to the Glowworm Caves. A powerful, noisy stream runs through the cave. Mark and I, in a group of 14, cram into a tiny boat and are instructed to stay quiet so as not to disturb the worms. The boat carries us to the grotto where hundreds of tiny spots of blue glow far above our heads, like constellations.

To me it seems unreal and I wonder if this is like a carnival attraction. Surely, the operator has secured a blue light to the actual cave ceiling and built a drop ceiling into which holes are poked at random to let the light shine through. I think we’ve been had.

However, further into the cave the points of light are on the cave walls, and the boat carries us close enough that I can blow on one. It moves! And from the light of an adjacent worm I can see the original worm squirm around. The hungrier the worms are, the brighter they glow—to attract insects. I blow on (disturb) several more worms before Mark scolds me with a nudge.

We bike back for dinner, and after dinner that night, Mark and I ride into town to the cinema. The posh theatre sells candy but not popcorn, and the movie has an intermission to allow folks to come to the lobby for wine. Fancy.

After biking back for our second night at this camp, we lie side by side in our sleeping bags, glad that we have to set this tent up only once more.

New Zealand's South Island

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:26:00 +0000

People sit in their own, self-dug spas on Hot Water Beach on the Coromandel Peninsula, where geothermally heated water bubbles up through the sand. By the time we get there, every square foot of beach is claimed, but people are friendly and invite us into their pools.

We hole hop, wondering if one will offer something different from the others. Some are more boil-y, and some are too hot for more than a touch from us, though little kids sit submerged with plastic shovel and bucket, fruitlessly digging to the source.

The country’s tallest peak is Mt. Cook, or what was originally named Mt. Aoraaki by the Maori, meaning peace and clouds. On the way there from our hot baths, our driver pulls off the road to let us snap shots of the snow-covered peak; he says it’s usually cloud-covered. It is magnificent.

Our camp that night is a rustic one with a single outhouse but the best view. We erect our tents riverside across from Mt. Cook, which reaches into a still-mostly-clear sky.

In Dunedin we tour the unimpressive Cadbury chocolate factory the next day before traveling on to Fjordland National Park and Mt. Cook.

Only one road leads into Fjordland, and to reach the end takes hours, but it’s worth the time. My bike and I are dropped along the way, and I glide downhill around hairpin turns 10 miles to meet the group at the marina of Milford Sound. The curvy switchbacks would be thrilling to tear around, I’m sure, but I’m careful since I’m biking alone.

We all take a 2-hour ferry tour of Milford Sound. Bottle-nosed dolphins breech around the boat, staying with us for 5 minutes. The captain says they appear for only about 10% of the cruises. He also says he’s never seen the water more calm. We all feel blessed to be here on this unusually clear spring day.

The cliff faces, the waterfalls, the sun-bathing sea lions, all are special, and upon disembarkation from the ferry, some describe the experience as spiritual. Mark and I are less moved, but we are the oldest in the group and have likely borne witness to more amazing and existential natural phenomena. We hope New Zealand brings us more.

Hocking Hills, Ohio

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:47:00 +0000

Hocking Hills State Park in Hocking County is just a couple hours northeast of Southwest Ohio. Six geologic areas comprise the park, three clustered in the north and three close together in the south.

In mid April we rented a cabin for the weekend and, with Mark’s sister and niece, arrived Friday mid-afternoon, via I-71 and State Routes 56 and 664.

Eager to stretch our legs, we parked in the lot off 664 across the street from a visitor’s center to Old Mans Cave. We saw lots of out-of-state plates, from Michigan and even Utah and California.

After a couple minutes of looking, we found the trail heads to the Upper Falls, the Lower Falls and Old Mans Cave behind the visitor’s center. The short hike to the cave, actually a stone recess, was nice on the comfortable April day, and the look at and walk through the cave was so surprising to me because I had never seen anything like that in Ohio. My sister-in-law commented that it seemed more like Tennessee.

The map of our first hiking opportunity on Saturday, Cantwell Cliffs, showed an area of the trail called Fat Woman’s Squeeze. We all laughed, wondering what that could be. The beginning of the trail, narrow stone steps between two rock faces, gave us our answer.

At the bottom of the narrow steps, the trail split: One fork led directly down and the other into a stone recess. I led the way into the recess, climbing over rocks and boulders or squeezing around them. I looked back, and no one had followed me.

I continued in my chosen direction and crossed the trickling stream and waited for the others where the forks converged; I do believe the others had a more difficult, steeper descent.

The mile-plus hike was pleasant with many stream crossings and large fallen trees we had to go over or under.

The next attraction, Rock House, is the park’s only true cave. Unique, as it is open on both ends and at several placed along its length, the cave is about 50 yards long. The short hike to it makes this one of the most popular features of the park.

Within a couple miles of our cabin is Conkle’s Hollow. We walked the paved path back to a lower falls past a couple small, stone recesses along the trail.

A light rain began as we made our way to the car.

In our cabin, while we waited for the rain to let up, we enjoyed a lunch of leftover lasagna and broccoli Mark had made the night before. We watched a movie we’d brought with us. Our cabin had a small TV with a DVD player. The rain never let up, so we decided to call it a day and nap, play cards and enjoy the hot tub.

On Sunday we returned to Conkle’s Hollow and, in the rain, hiked the 2.5-mile rim to the upper falls before turning south to visit Cedar Falls and Ash Cave, both offering diverse features and scenery. Cedar Falls is one of the top three prettiest waterfalls I’ve seen and the short hike to it one of the prettiest I’ve taken.

If you go, a Google search will return places to stay. Our cabin with two beds, two baths, kitchen, and hot tub cost $189 per night (Old Mans Cave Chalets, 800-762-9396). We brought a veggie steamer, a lasagna pan, and some spices from home and stopped at Wal-Mart 8 miles east of the park for groceries. There’s a Kroger on the way in Circleville on State Route 56 in Pickaway County; we wished we’d have stopped there instead. The park’s just 20 minutes east.

Biking along the Waikato River in New Zealand

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:37:00 +0000

Our guide describes several choice activities for today. We decide biking the path along the Waikato River is preferable to shopping. A young woman from England, Claire, thinks so too and joins us.

We assumed a paved path, but in New Zealand, paths and trails must mean the same thing, because this one is rough with curves, rises and dead drop-offs in some places.

Along one section, flat through woods, I spot something bright red among the brown undergrowth. It’s a mushroom with a white stem and yellow specks on its red dome.

We see thistles and other wildflowers too. In places, we can see the unbelievably beautiful, unpolluted water of the river, New Zealand’s longest, running at near capacity due to the rains.

Riding my bike, I have some close calls even though I get off and walk the most perilous sections of the trail. Just a couple miles in, and I have psyched myself out so that I don’t trust myself to ride more than 20 feet or so without dropping the toes of one foot to the trail for a feel of solid ground. This, of course, slows my progression, though Mark and Claire have powered on.

The trail splits: up a hill or around it? I take the level option and am on schedule to lean over and touch my foot to the ground. I lift my foot from the pedal, lean left and expect to catch myself on the tall, bending grass. However, the grass is bending over the precipice of a steep, grassy drop-off; there’s no solid ground on which to get my footing!

Realizing this, my mind warps, figuring the best way to fall. Forward or backward? Backward seems obvious, even though that means I have to twist my ankle somewhat to turn myself, as, at this moment, before my left foot has hit ground, I’m in a more favorable frontal approach to the fall. Mind still working at nanosecond speed , I know I do not want the bike on top of me, so I lift my right leg and push the bike in the opposite direction, which ultimately helps Mark find me.

With a push of the bike and a slight twist of my left ankle, I fall headfirst, back down, down the embankment. The back of my head strikes a significant bump, and I’m glad I’m wearing a helmet.

I come to rest, heels over head, 8-10 feet down, but I’m fairly comfortable on a bed of thick grass, not on any stickers or thistles.

To get back up to the trail on my own will take lots of effort, especially with a sprained ankle. And honestly, the angle is so steep, it may be impossible. So I scream as loud as possible, not for Mark by name, but a true scream, because I know I can scream louder than I can yell anyone’s name. “EEEK!” Pause, waiting for reply. “EEEEEK!” Still nothing “EEEEEEEEEK!” Now I’m kind of freaking out. EEEEEEEEEEEK!”

I’m going hoarse. “Surely they’ll stop and wait for me to catch up sometime and realize I’m not coming,” I rationalize. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!”

After almost a minute of screaming, from a distance to my left I barely hear, “We hear you!” Relieved, I lie in wait.

Fifteen seconds later, a little louder: “Where are you?!”

“I’m here, I’m here. I’m not hurt too bad though,” I add to alleviate any concerns.

A bit later, “Let me know where you are!” and minutes after that, a frustrated “Where are you?” only this time from my right.

Unbelievable. He took the path up the hill. Just like him though. Without fail, Mark chooses the worst traffic or directional option in all situations: If there’s a lane that’s not moving, we’re in it.

Less than a minute later, five or six since my spill, a flushed Mark looks down on me over the edge of the trail.

My rescuing knight takes ginger steps sideways down the slope, trying to find secure footing. He slips! But catches himself. Three or four feet down, he finds a grassy knob of earth on which to secure his left foot. I lean up, he leans down, grabs my arm and pulls me up to the trail, where Claire has joined us on her bike. Mark ran all the way.

I hug him and thank him, grateful he found me yet knowing it would have been a couple minutes earlier had he chosen the correct path. But that’s Mark, bless his heart.

Auckland, New Zealand

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 02:05:00 +0000

While we wait for our luggage, we watch a beagle, which I assume to be a drug-sniffer, walk amongst the bags of fellow travelers. The dog is small, even for a beagle, and wears the official vest of the Auckland Airport.

After sniffing one bag, the beagle sits, and his handler asks the woman to whom the bag belongs if she has brought any fruit into the country.

(Fruit?)

She shakes her head. Still, the handler asks permission to go through her bag. He pulls out an apple, and the woman is obviously embarrassed. Mark tells me he saw the sniffer find two oranges while I was in the ladies’ room.

With our luggage, we make our way through customs toward the exit. I’m gathering my things from the x-ray conveyor when Mark, just behind me, gets stopped. A fellow asks him, “Deed ya uhnderstand the deeclaration form ya feelled out on the plane before y’ landed?” Mark says he did, and the man tells him matter-of-factly that the x-ray of his luggage shows that “ya packed boots, bu’ ya deen’ dehclare theem.” Mark picks up on my “I told you so” through my sigh and eye roll; I declared mine.

Mark’s bag is pulled from the conveyor, the boots are removed, and the soles are caked in dried mud. The man tells Mark he could fine him NZ$200, which is a bit less than $200 American. But thankfully he doesn’t. What he does do is take the boots for a complete cleaning/decontamination while we wait: about 10 minutes.

It’s morning in Auckland, New Zealand, a complete 18 hours ahead of EST, so we’re ready for bed, but we vow to stay up until 8 p.m., the trick to avoiding jet lag.

After dropping our luggage at our hostel and showering, the first attraction we investigate in Auckland, one of the largest cities in New Zealand, is the Sky Tower. It’s the tallest building in the southern hemisphere at more than two tenths of a mile tall (that’s nearly 1070 feet). Instead we take the elevator to the observation deck and can see the city, the Tasman Sea and three grass-covered volcanic calderas. Supposedly, there are 48 volcanoes in the area. While we’re observing the landscape, we see two folks bungee jump from the top, higher than the observation deck, but at NZ$195 per plunge, it’s too steep for us.

From Sky City we ride the free shuttle to Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World, where we read about the adventures of Scott, Amundsen and Shackelton, the three main explorers of Antarctica in the early 20th century. A train takes us through the icy area where penguins dive and waddle. A 10-gallon aquarium is thick with pastel-colored seahorses, buoying above and hiding within the faux kelp. Eels, shark and a stingray swim in the larger pool. One ray is as big as the circle at the top of the key of a basketball court. I never knew they could grow so large.

We’re shuttled back to town and stop for pizza on our walk back to the hostel, then ice cream. Mark gets the national flavor, Hokey Pokey: vanilla with tiny toffee bits.

Tucked in by 6:30 p.m. listening to the radio and reading, we put out the lights at 7 p.m., relieved that we didn’t conk out earlier.

Sunday morning we’re up early for a bus to the zoo. We see the nocturnal, flightless kiwi, like a furry coconut with chicken feet and a hairy bird head. Its long beak has nostrils on the end since it hunts for food by smell. More birds we see are peacocks with their showy plumage on display and the kookaburra, about the size of an eagle but quite less grand. Its feathers look like unkempt, dirty hair, like he just got out of bed after a fitful sleep. The zoo is home to kangaroos, elephants, and apes, but surprisingly no crockadile.

By mid afternoon we’re at the Auckland Museum, which is huge. One could spend five hours here learning about the Maori, the native peoples of New Zealand, and then ascend to the second floor for natural history and on to the third for New Zealand’s war history. We learn that the Maori are skilled carvers, young people go through a right-of-passage ceremony, the chiefs of the villages live in the house with the most intricately carved façade, and town meetings are held at the chief’s residence. That’s all we have time to learn; we’re tired.

These two days in Auckland have allowed us to get acclimated to the time. In the morning we begin our 19-day tour to see what both the north and south islands have to offer. We’re ready.

Dry Tortugas National Park

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:17:00 +0000

Dry Tortugas National Park was originally composed of 11 small keys 70 miles west of Key West, Florida. Hurricanes over the years have decimated four of those, but this February our explorations are limited to the main island, Garden Key, because terns are mating on the surrounding keys, and we don’t want to interrupt.

Ponce de Leon named the keys Las Tortugas because of the number of turtles there. “Dry” became part of the name when it was discovered that none of the keys offered any water.

We and about 50 others arrive by commercial boat through rough seas. Mark and I managed well enough, but many, many of our mates did not fair so well. But we are secured to the dock now and disembark to an immediate tour of Fort Jefferson, which basically encircles almost the whole of Garden Key.

Fort Jefferson was built in the mid 19th century to protect the shipping channels of the Gulf of Mexico, however, construction was halted in the later 1800s because of advancements in weaponry; a brick wall, no matter how fortified, will not withstand repeated batterings from high-power cannons.

The fort looks pretty complete, and it did serve as a prison. Dr. Samuel Mudd is the most notorious prisoner to serve time there. Mudd set the leg of President Lincoln’s assassin, broken when he jumped from the balcony to flee the theatre after issuing the single gun shot. Dr. Mudd denied complicity, but nevertheless was convicted.

From the top of the fort we see the smaller Long Key and Bush Key. The surrounding aqua water, through which we see coral colonies, takes our breath away, it’s so pretty. While we linger over the view, our history lesson continues.

At the height of its population, when the fort served as a prison, Garden Key was home to more than 1000, mostly men, most set up in tents. The military officers had more permanent abodes of stone, some of which still stand on the grounds. At this time scurvy, which is caused by lack of vitamin C, became a problem, and within a relatively short time, the epidemic claimed 80 lives.

To overcome monotony on the key, some men sang and danced, played instruments or acted out plays. During the time of the scurvy outbreak, one of the commanding officers asked these men to perform for pay as a means to end the epidemic. The paying audience consisted of military men mostly. However, even passing ships would stop for a show. The key became the Las Vegas of the Gulf of Mexico, and the performers earned enough money to purchase significant quantities of Key limes from Key West to provide the lifesaving vitamin C the island occupants so needed. Among the 80 lives claimed were those of every one of the island’s nurses. Therefore, an appeal was made to Dr. Mudd, who helped bring the epidemic to its end and thus earned himself a pardon after serving two years.

We really enjoy learning some seemingly obscure American history, and after a lunch of sandwiches, potato salad, chips and cookies on the boat, we walk to the small beach for snorkeling (me) and reading (Mark).

Winds are high, and high winds are not conducive to snorkeling. However, I stay out about an hour, swimming along the fort wall, which, we’re told, offers better opportunities to see sea life. The waters here are crowded—not with fish but with other snorkelers. Orange and burgundy sea plants undulate with the waves, and a couple interesting fish swim among them, but I’ve experienced better snorkeling.

Away from the fort, 30 feet or so off shore, sea grass and dull coral offer hiding spots for dull-colored fish. I follow them, swimming back and forth, because I’m sure not to bump into anybody as I’m the only swimmer out here.

On the beach Mark hands me a towel, and I give him my score of the site for snorkeling: 5 on a scale from 1 to 10. A woman next to us asks if I saw the sting ray. If I had, the score would bump up a point, but, alas, I didn’t.

We leave Garden Key at 2:30 p.m., and the seas are still rough. I don’t know how everyone fares because I curl up and nap the two and a half hours back to Key West, ultimately glad that we had a chance to visit another of our nation’s treasured National Parks.

Vieques Island, Puerto Rico

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:49:00 +0000

Just after 5 p.m. we got into our room in Esperanza on Vieques, an island of the eastern coast of Puerto Rico that until 2003 had been occupied by the U.S. Navy so it’s relatively undeveloped. That evening we maneuvered kayaks into Mosquito Bay for a bioluminescent tour.

Bioluminescence is the phenomenon that makes fireflies glow. In the bay the bioluminescence is produduced by organisms called dinoflagellates. Any time they are disturbed, they light up.

We paddled out about a quarter mile in the bay in darkness broken only by the faint light of the moon, secured our boats to the guide’s and jumped out to swim. Well, Mark didn’t. He doesn’t swim. He was pretty scared for his first kayak paddle despite the fact that the water was only about 5 feet deep and if he stood flat-footed on the ocean floor, the moonlight would have glanced off his shoulders.

Streaks of light slid down my arms and fingers as I kept them moving in the water. The bioluminescence is obvious but the organisms producing the light are invisible. Like the lightning bug’s light, the dinoflagellite’s glow extinguishes in two or three seconds.

Mark, with a view from above in his kayak, said it seemed I had a neon green aura when I kicked my legs wide as I swam. He said I look like a ghost. According to NationalGeographic.com, each gallon of water in Mosquito Bay holds about 750,000 dinoflagellates. So when I swam, Mark was seeing millions and millions of dinoflagellates lighting my way.

Dinoflagellates even lit up in the water in Mark’s kayak, he said.

After a surreal half an hour, we rowed in, each paddle stroke illuminated. Fish zipped along near the surface, leaving a neon green jet stream.

The tour operator told us that the dinoflagellates use bioluminescence as a defense mechanism: They light up fish that are looking to dine on them so that predators of these fish can see them to eat before the dinoflagellates themselves are eaten. It sounds reasonable, but research returned nothing to back up this claim.

I don’t care why they do it, I’m just glad we had a chance to see a bioluminescent colony before the dinoflagellates go extinct.

There are two dinoflagellate colonies accessible from Puerto Rico. The best, most populated is the one we visited because no motorized boats tour the bay. Tour companies offer glass-bottom boat rides to a colony off the southwest coast of the main island, but pollution from boat motors is destroying the dinoflagellates; the tour companies are putting themselves out of business.

Swimming with dinoflagellates, even seeing them in the bottom of your kayak as Mark did, makes for a more memorable, first-hand—and fingers and legs— experience, I think. And no guilt.

If you go, go natural.

Inspecting New Species on the Georgia Coast

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:25:00 +0000

My dad and step-mom retired to the Georgia coast in 1999. They live on a salt-water creek that leads to a river that leads to the ocean.

Mark and I trek down once or twice a year, and each trip introduces us to a species we’ve never seen before, or at least never seen before in the wild. By our first trip this year, we had tired of the porpoise breaching in pairs, the blue heron, the wood storks.

However, last May when we were up a creek, a six-foot gator crept through the tall grass of the marsh and slipped silently into the water. That was the first for us though Dad said he sees them frequently.

Shrimping season is from September through December, and the most interesting creatures come up in the shrimping net. The net is seven feet in diameter with lead weights around the circumference. To cast the net, Dad stands on the front, flat part of his 18-foot Shoal Cat, a simple fishing boat with an Evinrude. He holds the net by rope pulls in its center in his left hand, places one of the weights between his lips with his right, and then grabs the edge of the net a semicircle away from the weight in his mouth. With a twist of his body, a fling of his right arm, and a rightly timed release of the weight from his mouth, the net flies out and lands in a nearly perfect seven-foot diameter. Shrimping is prime in three or four feet of water, and after about 10 seconds the weights reach bottom.
Then Dad gathers the net by the pulls. Most often we get shrimp. One out of five casts yields a bonus.

We’ve gotten toad fish, which looks just what it sounds like and is small enough to hold in your hand. We often get crab, and getting them to let loose the net is a challenge. Our biggest take was a black gar, which was a first for Dad even; they’re usually green. A gar is about a foot and a half long and thin, almost cylindrical, with a snout and a tail.

Some of the shrimp we net we eat, but more often we shrimp for bait.

One afternoon last October Mark and Dad were catching little yellow tail along the bank of a creek, but I was having no luck. And it was hot, so I jumped in and floated around.

The men ran low on bait and asked me to take them to the other side of the creek to net some shrimp, rather than start the motor up. I gladly pushed and pulled and maneuvered the boat over to the other side. Dad started casting the net, and I floated away.

Dad’s fifth or sixth throw landed a baby puffer fish. Having never seen one, I swam over, careful to avoid his casting. A little larger than a 25-cent gum ball, it had spines, but Dad said they’re just bumps of skin. I brought it into the water with me so that I could see it deflate, but the men had enough shrimp and wanted to go to the other side of the creek where the fish hid among the limbs of the fallen trees.

Puffed up, the fish floated, so I just threw the baby puffer fish, then tugged the boat to it, then threw the fish and tugged the boat to it again until the four of us were at the other bank.

The current carried the boat, and I divided my time between pulling it to avoid a scrape with fallen trees and playing with the baby puffer fish.

I did stop molesting it long enough that, after about 20 minutes, tiny bubbles came slowly, one at a time at first out of its protruding fish lips. After about 15 seconds and a final, bubbly, underwater exhale, it deflated to about the size of my thumbnail and began to swim down. I wanted to see it inflate so touched it just before it was out of sight. In no time at all, it was big as a gum ball again.

I continued to play with it, tossing it and swimming to it, but eventually leaving it undisturbed so that it would deflate again.

I think the baby puffer fish knew I wasn’t a threat because it deflated in only five or 10 minutes this time. I fought the urge to grab it again—I’m sure it was tired of me. But once it was Chiclet-size, I could no longer resist. I reached after it but too late; it swam too deep in the sea to see.

Yellowstone National Park

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:44:00 +0000

I wake up and look over to Mark in the single bed next to mine. On his stomach, cocooned in his comforter, he is looking at me. “It’s pretty cold,” he says.

Does he think I haven’t noticed? “It’s FREEZING! How long have you been awake?”

“Just a couple minutes.”

“Why haven’t you turned the heater on?” which would require him getting up.

“I’m fine,” he answers with mock innocence.

Knowing that Mark can wait me out and wanting to start our first full day in Yellowstone early, I throw back the covers, and the coldness steels my breath. I recover, hustle to the heater, turn it on, grab my bag and run to the bathroom, which has its own heater.

Yellowstone is our nation’s first National Park, established in 1872. Its 2.2 million acres holds the world's largest collection of geothermal features, with some 10,000 mudpots, fumaroles and hot springs and more than 200 active geysers.

On this clear, September day we aim north then west, stopping frequently to hike. Our first unique site is a wall of perfectly stacked, gray, stone cubes that we learn is basaltic rock, or cooled lava.

At the Mammoth Hot Springs area, near the entrance from Montana, we see an area of cascading shelves of white, like a frozen fountain only 100 times bigger than any fountain I’ve ever seen. In this area can be deposited up to two tons of limestone a day! Turning south, we get to the Norris Geyser Basin, which smells of sulfur and is the most geyser-active area of the park.

Since the west side of the access road is closed due to a controlled burn, we reverse direction back to the cabin.

We’re hoping for a good vegetable tonight at the village restaurant. Only one a day is offered. Last night was carrots and tonight is squash. We opt for fish and chips.

The next morning Mark and I, with lots of others, go on a ranger-led walk around the Old Faithful area and then take off on our own to see further points. The area around Old Faithful is chock full of geothermal features and many geysers that erupt more frequently. Mudpots bubble and steaming pools beckon for a soak though I never dip my toe in. Visitors are warned never to leave the boardwalks that surround the geothermal areas because the ground may be only a thin crust above boiling hot springs. Also, one may encounter a concentration of toxic gas. That morning, the geysers we see erupt are Anemone-big and little, Plume, Lion and, of course, Old Faithful. Old Faithful Geyser blows up to 184 feet high, every 80 minutes, roughly. Eruptions can last from one to five minutes.

We wait nearly an hour for Bee Hive Geyser, which blows twice a day, before deciding to leave, but as we circle the boardwalk, I notice its indicator gurgles. In 15 minutes we are rewarded with its full eruption, which I find most spectacular. Most geysers erupt out of holes nearly level with the ground so their spray is wide, like through a fire hydrant. Bee Hive’s blow is through a feature that looks like a large bee hive so its stream seems more forceful, like through a firefighter’s hose.

Further west we stop for a picnic lunch and watch buffalo. Through binoculars, Mark sees one limping badly. At our next stop, I inform a ranger of the injured bison.

We see lots of eruptions today and would like to go further west in the park, but smoke is too thick, so we drive back to our cabin and hike to Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Yellowstone got its name from the yellow rock walls of this canyon into which the Yellowstone River falls twice—109 feet at the upper falls and 308 feet at the lower.

Our final day we park at different spots on the access road and watch for wildlife. We tour museums and Visitor Centers we hadn’t visited before, and we hike to solitary geothermal attractions.

Back at our cabin, we nap and shower. At 6:50 pm Mark puts our name in at the village restaurant. We wait only 10 minutes, our shortest yet. However, like every other dinner we’ve had, the food lacks flavor.

The eats at Yellowstone stink, but you can’t beat the attractions.

Off the beaten path on the Olympic Peninsula

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:43:00 +0000

Having been to rainforests in Costa Rica and Ecuador, which are really just jungles, I am surprised, impressed and a little awestruck with the beauty of the trees on the Olympic Peninsula. Washington State is home to the only rainforest on the continental United States.

After our ferry ride from Seattle, our first hike on the Peninsula in Olympic National Park is up Hurricane Ridge to see the foggy view of Puget Sound and Canada. The mile-and-a-half path is up, up, up. Mark and I set off at a quick, steady pace, resting once or twice and make it in 35 minutes. A thick, gray cloud is fast approaching from the north so I get a few shots off with my camera before it blankets the sky.

For some reason, the two-and-a-half-mile hike to the hot springs from Elwa Station takes a lot longer and seems much more strenuous though it is mostly flat. It’s known that many people bathe in the springs, but at the trail head a ranger posted a notice: bacteria levels in the springs are high due to stagnant water—and dirty bathers, we presume.

Further west into the Peninsula is Sol Duc hot springs with cabins and a small restaurant—more of a concession stand. We order burgers and sit at a picnic table by the thermally heated pool where a couple youngsters swim.

After eating, we hike a short trail to some unremarkable falls before heading back east to Port Angeles.

On our return we stop at Crescent Lake midpoint ranger station with the Salmon Cascades. No fish, let alone salmon, though there are deer so tame they practically pose for pictures. From the station we hike a mile-and-a-half trail to some pretty falls with a good 40-foot drop.

Back at our motel in Port Angeles, we clean up and go out for dinner. We find the uncrowded Carmichael’s, with good food, friendly service and meal-ending, complimentary, homemade cookies.

The next morning we drive lazily east so we can catch the afternoon ferry across the Sound to Seattle.

On our way, we stop at a state park at the Northeast of the Peninsula with a lighthouse at the end of a spit. The beach is easy to walk on with packed sand and gravel-sized, smooth gray rocks.

Everyone walks to a different beat, and while we pass some people, others pass us. A woman and her teenage son walk with us a bit. They say they have enough provisions for us if we want to accompany them to the lighthouse, which they say is five miles out though it doesn’t look that far. But when nothing but sea surrounds the destination, the distance is deceiving. Since we have to catch an afternoon ferry to Seattle, we decline and reverse direction.

Though we don’t have time to hike five miles out and then back again, we do have time to explore the peninsula further. We see a sign for The Olympic Game Farm, which sounds like it’s worth a visit.

The Olympic Game Farm is like a zoo with roaming animals—except for the lions and tigers and a rhino in cages. The grizzly bears, behind electric fence, are our favorites, and the bunnies hopping around with yellow, pink, white and purple hair are adorable. Mark doesn’t like the llamas near the beginning of the path that stick their heads into our car, sniffing out treats. The zebras we happen upon next aren’t at all interested in what we might offer them. Just before exiting, we drive through a field of buffalo and deer. The deer are different from what we’re used to. These deer are a pale cream color, and their fairly new-born bambis have long, white eyelashes. So cute.

We drive through twice. Then we stop at a casino for lunch and a bit of blackjack before our boat departs.

In the late afternoon, Mark drives our rental onto the ferry, and we nap in it for the 30 minutes east to land, dreaming about the fun, full day we just had.

A visit to the Olympic Peninsula is worth the ferry fare across Puget Sound if you make it as far west as Seattle.

Petrified Forest National Park

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:24:00 +0000

Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona is bisected by I-40 and is the passageway to the great Painted Desert. Our first stop is the visitor center where we see the introductory movie about the park. Petrified Forest has one of the best geologic and fossil records of the Late Triassic in the world, and paleontologists find new fossils, including new species of plants and animals, each year.

Eager to see in the morning light the Painted Desert, which beckoned late yesterday as we drove east on I-40, we hike the easy 1.2 miles trail along its rim. The desert could be one of the natural wonders of the world, it’s so beautiful with its striations of oranges, pinks, reds and beiges.

We hike five of the seven maintained trails in the park, the longest of which is two miles, past petrified trees and wood, blooming cacti and Indian ruins and petroglyphs.

My favorite trail leads among badland hills of bluish bentonite clay. When I was little, my family took a trip to Badlands National Park in South Dakota, and for 25 years I have held on to the memory of how the colorful hills looked so beautiful and fragile with their layers of greens, pinks, reds, blues and browns. The whole landscape looked as a sand sculpture, like any touch or jostling would destroy the perfectly layered colors. Now, here I am, walking among hills just like those in the Badlands! I feel giddy, like I just locked eyes across a crowded room with George Clooney. Cautiously, I reach my hand out to touch the blue-gray surface, and it isn’t fragile; it’s a rock, after all. I smile and look over my shoulder at Mark, who isn’t nearly as awe-struck as I.

We stop in a visitor center at the far south of the park to read about the early explorations there, then eat a late picnic lunch at a table under a tree before aiming northward.

Roads are few and far between in this section of the country, and I look up from the map in time to see a road to the left to Nazlini, Arizona, a town on 27 before Chinle, our destination. So with a squeal of the tires, Mark manages to cut over, and we head north, hoping it’s the right road.

About 10 miles in, a shepherd herds a flock of sheep across the road while we wait. Just beyond that Mark slows because three cows are grazing just along the side. Past the halfway point, the road becomes unpaved, and we have to stop for four horses and two new colts crossing. We enjoy the unique experience, wondering if pigs or chickens or goats will delay us another short time. We’re trying to get to Hubble Trading Post before it closes for the day.

Hubble Trading Post in Northeast Arizona is the oldest operating trading post in the Navajo Nation and is a national historic landmark. Mark and I arrive just 15 minutes before closing and expect something grand, but it’s just a little, old, stone-and-mortar building. Inside isn’t especially nice either; behind the counter upon which the cash register sits are boxes of Bubble Yum and Tootsie Rolls as well as other standard gums and candies. It reminds me of a Sunoco or any service station, like we just filled up and stepped into the station to pay.

We pass into a side room with hand-woven blankets on display for sale. One is $8,995! The others are way overpriced as well. Back in the main room, one entire wall has slots filled with different size moccasins. We look for a pair for my cousin’s one year old, but they are out of that size. We leave Hubble Trading Post thinking that it really wasn’t worth the hurry driving there, but we agree that visiting Petrified Forest National Park makes today the best of the trip so far.

Congaree National Park

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 14:27:00 +0000

Mark and I leave Cincinnati after the morning rush on Friday to get to Congaree National Park in time for the Owl Prowl that evening. Congaree, in Columbia, South Carolina, is the largest contiguous area of old-growth, floodplain, hardwood forest left in the U.S.

Within Congaree’s forest are more than 20 trees that hold the record for their size within their species. However, in the darkness, split only by the limited illumination of our red-bulb flashlights (so as not to disturb the wildlife), we can see nothing but the wide bases of the bald cypress trees that are most prevalent in the forest. What Mark nor I have ever seen before are the Cypress knees: little wood cones that grow from the roots of the trees. A boy on the tour, about 12, says they look like stalagmites. That’s a great comparison. Why the knees grow is not clear. To help the tree breath? To provide stability in the moist soil? Congaree is a Native American word meaning “scraping the bottom of the boat.” Those knees were likely the scrapers.

The park ranger tells us that the moss line five or six feet up the trees is the height of the water line the last time this place flooded. The park floods about 10 times a year, and since the elevated walkway we are taking is covered during the floods, people tour the park via canoe or kayak.

The wildlife we experience on the Owl Prowl, in the darkness and the light rain, consists of a millipede, several yellow and black spiders called orb weavers and a barred owl; we don’t see the owl but hear its call: “hooo-ee-hoo.”

When we take a 10.5-mile hike our final day in the park, we encounter more impressive animals.

Because the gate’s not open this early morning, we park in the after-hours lot and hike the half mile in, Mark in the lead to save me from any webs woven over night. In the park we climb the steps to the elevated walkway and aim to the distant reaches of this 22,000-acre park.

Soon after exiting the walkway, we encounter a two-and-a-half-foot water snake lazily curving down the transparent, brackish Cedar Creek, a feeder of the Congaree River.

Not much further, Mark turns and quietly asks for the camera. I hand it over and see the barred owl, so named because of the dark, vertical stripes on its chest, sitting on a low branch of a tree not 25 feet ahead. Mark snaps the camera on, and the owl lowers his head and alights; Mark misses the shot.

As we are first in the park, there are no human sounds to scare animals, and
birds of all sorts are singing, and woodpeckers hammer away high on dead trees. This October morning is comfortable though we wish we wore long pants as the trail is overgrown and several times we have to find the least troublesome way around a tree that has fallen to block the trail.

Just beyond our owl sighting, Mark spots the tiniest of brown frogs on the forest floor. That Mark spotted him is amazing because he’s little and the exact color as the fallen leaves.

About a quarter ways in we stop for water and energy bars. Mark and the backpack are mummified in spider webs, so I unwrap them both to get to the goods. Resting, I notice a wooly wiggler on Mark’s leg: the fourth unique creature so far.

Just after I zip the wrappers and bottle into the pack, from our left we hear what sounds like a horse whinnying, only much louder, lasting much longer, not dropping in pitch as it ends, like a whinny does, and tinged with an element of fear. I imagine an attack on whatever emitted the screech/howl. Mark looks back, and we greet each other with eyes wide, unsure what to do.

We pause briefly before forging on, and just 10 seconds later, Mark turns and whispers “Pigs!” and points ahead to the right. I glimpse a black boar, a descendent of the pigs brought here in the 1800s for game, slip deeper into the forest.

Ahead is another fallen tree, and we are looking to find an easy way around, when a little red boar startles 20 feet ahead, like we flushed him out, which I guess we did. Mark jumps too; we are so close, the pig scared him. It is the color of cinnamon and the size of a rotund border collie.

After collecting ourselves, we approach the fallen tree. I pass Mark and walk to the left to investigate the ease of getting through, and we hear “grrr-r-r.” I turn and calmly walk away so as not to provoke a chase. Mark says, “Get behind me! I don’t know what he’ll do, but I want him to do it to me instead of you.” I step behind and search the ground for limbs to beat the attacking boar off my husband.

We hold our ground for a minute before deciding to go ahead.

By trail’s end, we are lucky enough to have had six pig sightings, most two pigs together. The red one was the smallest and the largest we saw was about the size of a fat German shepherd. Most were dull black, and one of those had a white stripe across its shoulders.

Back at the visitor center, I tell the ranger about our adventures on the trail while Mark hikes out to get our car.

Sitting outside the center waiting for Mark, I see a little green lizard on a thin branch. I’ve seen one before, but nearly everything else Congaree has offered us has been a new experience.

The turtles and copperhead are bonus wildlife that didn't make it into the story.

Jelly Belly Jelly Bean Factory, Fairfield, CA

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Evans Fryer) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:53:00 +0000

Today I bought $12-worth of jelly beans. Sounds like a lot, but they’re not just any jelly beans; their Jelly Belly “The Original Gourmet Jelly Bean” jelly beans. I became a big fan of the Jelly Belly bean after Mark and I made a stop at the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, California for a fun tour of the facility.

The Jelly Belly Candies factory is about an hour east of San Francisco. Tours are open to the public and begin every 15 minutes, approximately, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Factory workers and the candy-making machines get weekends off, but on those days TV screens set up strategically throughout the facility show the operations.

Once we stepped through the door of the place, we were in the gift shop, which was large and open; there were no walls to confine shoppers. We wandered over to test our free tastes of Jelly Belly’s new Rock candy: irregularly shaped chocolate chunks covered with a thin candy coating that reminded me of the coating on those malted candies sold at Easter time that look like robin’s eggs. We neither one cared much for the Rock candy.

The Rock candy counter was at the bottom of the stairs where we congregated for the next tour. We were each given hats that we had to wear while on tour in the food-making factory, California State law. We walked up the stairs and the tour began.

The upstairs is also open, and from that height we got great views of the Jelly Belly portraits, all mosaics done with Jelly Bellies: Princes Di, a young Queen Elizabeth, Benjamin Franklin, Larry King and, of course, our jelly-bean-loving, former president, Ronald Reagan.

Our guide led us through production—a level above—so we could see the whole operation. Not every flavor is made every day—that day the whole place smelled very cherry—but we could see canvas bins full of yellow, blue and pink beans waiting to be bagged. We learned that Jelly Belly jelly beans are flavored naturally, and that it was in the time of the Great Depression when candy shaped like crops—jelly bean, candy corn, caramel zucchini—became a mainstay. (That last one’s a joke.)

The 40-minute tour ended at the hoppers, where we saw the light, sugar coating being spun onto the beans. This area was where the Belly Flops were weeded from their more perfect siblings. Belly Flops are misshapen beans that, while they taste perfectly good, do not pass muster to receive the designation of a jelly bean.

At the end of the tour, participants received a complimentary, 100-count bag of mixed Jelly Belly jelly beans.

Before leaving, Mark and I shopped and sampled more in the gift shop, where bushel baskets held bags of different combined flavors of the candy beans. We selected two 2-pound bags of mixed Belly Flops: one to take home and one to eat during the rest of the week we vacationed in California.

Along the counter were the different flavors with helpers handing out free beans for the tasting. I tasted buttered popcorn, the number one best selling flavor, and loved it.
The two or three times a year I buy Jelly Bellys, buttered popcorn is the standard flavor I get, along with Tuti Fruity if it’s available. And I usually experiment with a third flavor because the people at Jelly Belly are coming up with new ones all the time. Today I got vanilla bean. It’s no buttered popcorn, but it’s pretty good.