On Friday morning, when we were camping at the Frio River last weekend, we got up and started making breakfast. Our campsite neighbor came walking over.
"Excuse me," she said, "Sorry to be weird, but I was wondering if you guys wanted this picture I took of you."
She took a picture of us? That's kind of weird and creepy. Especially when you're out camping and you don't even have walls to put between you and your stalker. What was this all about?
"What?" we asked.
"Oh, last night, I was taking pictures of the Northern Lights, and I got one that had your family in it. I thought you guys might like to have it."
She held up her phone, and showed us a really neat picture. Both me and my wife filled with regret. The Northern Lights were visible last night? Here? Crap! We knew that they were supposed to be visible in a lot of the states they normally never visit. My wife had been glued to her phone for our entire five-hour drive over from Houston. One of the things she'd seen was a story about that.
"The Northern Lights are going to be visible in most of the lower United States tonight," she'd blurted out at one point during the ride. "I bet I know what state they won't be seen in."
With that, we'd all forgotten about the possibility at all. The Northern Lights were right above us, and we hadn't even looked up. I haven't seen the Northern Lights since I visited my then-girlfriend now-wife-of-25-years in Edmonton in January of 1998. They were right there above my head, in friggin' Texas no less, and I didn't even think to look.
"Oh, this picture is great. Thank you," we said.
She airdropped the picture to my phone, and I have it to show to y'all.
So great. You can even see Cassiopeia up there. My phone could never manage a picture that nice. One of downfalls of buying a phone about two years or more after its been released so that I don't have to pay $1,000 for the pleasure of owning one. Usually, I don't mind, but when I see a picture like this, I feel it a little.
The good news is that I just heard that there should be more instances of the Northern Lights making excursions down south over the next several months. Maybe I can manage to see them with my own eyes again, instead of just getting a picture of myself with the lights that I never looked up at.
PS - The saddest part is that I sat out there for another hour after everyone else went to bed getting in my 1,000 words on "Lazerfist Saves Christmas" and still never looked up in all that time. That bright light that you see around us had been turned off, and there was nothing to hinder my sight, but I still never looked up.
While in Canada, I went to Waterton Lakes National Park for a day with my two daughters. We went hiking to a couple of waterfalls there. It was a couple of beautiful trails. Let me share some pictures with you.
Sadly, there was a big fire several years ago, so many of the trees are burned out husks.
However, that opened up the ground to more sunshine, so there was a lot more greenery on the ground.
Each trail had a smaller waterfall along the way too. Here's a nice one.
I did a selfie in front of it, but you can barely tell it's me because of the shadow.
The first waterfall was Bertha Falls, a pretty nice one.
Then we went on an even longer hike to one called Lineham Falls.
There were actually green trees there, as well as another smaller falls along the way.
The actual waterfall we were in search of was much more impressive.
I love hiking and being in the outdoors, but we overdid it a little on this day. My feet hurt forever afterward. It wasn't until I was back at home for a full day before I felt like I was back to normal.
Hey, everyone. If you're one of the six people who regularly read my blog, then you might be wondering why for the last few weeks, I've been pumping out post after post of books from my shelf. Why didn't I have anything new to say? Well, those were posts that I wrote way ahead of time to hit while I was out of town. I have a sickness in that I feel the need to post on the blog every day, even if I'm not around.
We just got back yesterday from a two week vacation to Yellowstone and Canada. We drove all the way up there, a grueling two day affair that required an 18-hour day to get from Houston to Denver as well as a shorter, but still lengthy, day to get from Denver to Yellowstone.
We had fun there, though. We saw a lot of things and did a ton. I took a bunch of pictures that I'll share with you too. First off, we went to the visitor center.
That's always a good idea, so that you know what the most interesting things to see are and how to find them. Yellowstone is really neat. I guess it's a supervolcano, so the whole friggin' place is on top of a giant caldera. That makes an awful lot of the place superheated, and water and steam comes bubbling and spurting up all over the place.
We went to several pools like this one.
They're not the kind of pools you want to go swimming in, though. Most of them are much hotter even than a jacuzzi. They're closer to a pot of boiling water. So, unless you want to look like stew meat, you gotta steer clear and stay on the walkway. Here's another one we saw.
Nice, huh?
Sometimes, the pools are big enough, they figure they can't just call them pools, so you get one like this:
Yikes. Don't get in the lake if it's steaming, folks. It's not worth it.
There are some other things that Yellowstone is known for. We saw the Fountain Paint Pots.
And at Mammoth Hot Springs, we saw a few things, like this:
We didn't only look at volcanic stuff. We even went hiking in some spots...the spots where the ground isn't superheated, anyway.
Of course, Yellowstone is most famous for geysers, and we saw a few of those.
Steady Geyser was neat. So was Clepsydra Geyser.
Or this one, which was really going!
Of course, we made sure to see the most famous one of all.
We were even there the day that Biscuit Basin exploded...we weren't actually on Biscuit Basin at the time, though, so I don't have any pictures to share with you of that. Hopefully, you enjoyed this pictorial review of my vacation. I hope the majesty of the landscape really entertained and awed you like it did me.
The third day of our cruise was spent at sea the entire time...although, does it count as the third day if the first day we didn't even set out until after dark? Well, they count it when they are charging you, so I suppose I should count it too. Anyway, at sea the whole day was a bit of a bummer, particularly because we had such crummy weather. One second it looked like this:
Then the next minute, it looked like this:
Those pictures were actually taken at the same time. I went from one side of the ship to the other, and it seemed like I was in a totally different place. So, the day spent at sea didn't work out like I'd hoped. I was planning on laying out in the sun beside the pool and getting as bronze as a statue, but much of the day the sun was blocked by clouds, and as soon as the sun went away, it got cold. There was a constant breeze, and without the sun, the breeze chilled you. With the sun it was a different story.
The worst part about the cruise was that the main thing to do there was to eat. The buffet was open almost the entire day, and you could go to the restaurant and order whatever you wanted and as much of it as you wanted three times a day as well. Since May, I've been doing the opposite of that. I generally eat only once a day, and that's only on the days that I'm not fasting and therefore eating no times a day. For the first time in forever, I ate three meals a day. I did my best to stick to pure low carb foods, but eating so often meant that it didn't really matter. By the time I got back, I'd gone from weighing 214 the Saturday that I left to 224 the Saturday that we got back. Ten pounds in one week! How long am I going to have to struggle to get that back off again? I hope it won't be that long, but who knows?
The funny thing is I can't understand why we had a whole day at sea. If you look at this map of our route, it shows how far we traveled on the first night to make it to Nassau.
We went all the way out there, but then spent a whole day coming half the way back. Maybe there's some kind of nautical reason why they had to take that route, but it seems like we could have spent a lot more time at Ocean Cay than just a day if we'd taken the direct route instead. Whatever...I'm no sailor, so I guess I get what I get.
The next morning, we arrived at our second destination.
We were having trouble docking, though. They said the current was too strong for us to make the approach, and we had to keep circling and trying again. It wasn't until around noon that we were finally able to pull into the port.
Ocean Cay is a private island owned by the cruise company, and they've been developing it into a destination for the last few years. When we got there and started walking around, I felt like I was at Disneyland...a sort of beach Disneyland. There were cute little sidewalks to stroll along with souvenir shops and food stands everywhere, bathrooms were strategically placed throughout, and speakers along the side of the lane played music the whole time. I kept expecting to hear an announcement say, "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, the Main Street Electrical Parade is about to begin!"
It's pretty much all artificial except for the ground beneath your feet, although that might be artificial as well. I think the island might be at least partially man made. Wikipedia says the island was built by dredging back in the 1960s. Oh, wow, I just discovered that there's a three part documentary about the development of the island on Tubi. I think I'm going to have to watch that.
Anyway, the place is really beautiful now. The water is that lovely pale blue that you get in the Bahamas when you combine crystal clear water with the white sand underneath.
It's a good thing that I lost a lot of weight in the last year, or I'd be too embarrassed to let anyone see these pictures. I've still got a goodly way to go to lose those love handles and the like, but I feel a lot better about myself than I did 75 pounds ago.
That lighthouse in the background was pretty cool, and I love lighthouses. I wanted to go on the tour of the thing, but my wife kept complaining about the idea. She said her knees were hurting, and she didn't want to make it worse by climbing all of the steps up there. She said I could do it by myself...which didn't really appeal to me. If I had wanted to do stuff by myself, then I wouldn't have taken her along on the trip. I did walk over and get a picture by it.
It's different than an old lighthouse though. It's very modern, as you can see by looking at it. It's see through. Which is, I suppose, a way to make sure that they wind is less likely to damage it. I did walk over and inquire about the lighthouse tour, and they told me they were already all booked and I could wait around to see if anybody didn't show up, but I wouldn't be certain to get a spot. I decided against wasting a half hour waiting for the tour, and just moved on with my life.
The lighthouse was pretty cool though. It lit up at night. When night came along, just before leaving, they had a big party on the beach, and the lighthouse joined in with a light show. At the time we filmed it, it was pretending to be the graphic equalizer for the music.
It supposedly did a whole huge light show, but it was taking forever to happen, and it was getting cold up there on the top deck in the wind, so we didn't stick around to see it.
What did we do while we were on the island? Well, we waded and swam in the beautiful water...
And laid in the sun.
We'd had so much cloudy and rainy weather during the trip but here on Ocean Cay that morning, we were finally getting the sun we'd been looking for. It turned out to be a little more than we were ready for. You can tell from this picture of me from the end of the day.
Yup, I'm pretty red by then. Whoops. No matter. It didn't last very long. The next day it was fading to brown, and now, a week later, I'm as bronze as a statue, just like I set out to be.
Ocean Cay was the end of our trip. The next morning, first thing, we were in Miami and beginning our deboarding process. Later that day, we caught our flight back to Houston, and then it was back to life as usual. Our time in paradise was over, but it sure was nice while it lasted.
