From South Carolina to New Orleans: Life in a Tiny Van

The Blue Smoky Mountains in South Carolina seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway. The National Parkway, built by the Civilian Conservation Corp in the 30's, exists for its own sake.  It is 469 miles of scenic road in the Appalachians with no signs, no services, nothing but winding beauty and strategic overlooks. The white dots in the foreground trees are ice bits, from a storm the day before.

Some hairy moments from Life in a Tiny Van:

• It’s deep dusk, dry, and the campground off the road is apparently several miles straight down.  Barely the width of our van, the dirt road shows, on the map, a series of extreme hairpin turns.  Out of options on the lovely undeveloped Blue Ridge Highway, we head down and hope the road is clear and the brakes hold because there is no return.

• Blackness surrounds the shoulderless two-lane blacktop. Pouring rain, no street lights, no signs, no place to pull over and no entry to the locked campground…. 6:15 p.m. feels like midnight.  The dark Atlantic is on either side of us. 

Vesta NOT on the loose.  Guess who leads whom? 

• We fueled at a busy corner; I reach into the van for the gas cap and Vesta flies out the door, pleased to have made another escape but frightened by the noise and cars. She races for cover in the shrubs - not the first escape.

Big Cypress in  the Everglades

• Five days without a shower in hot weather in a swamp: trekked hours in water up to our thighs. We ferret out an RV camp, find it jammed with full time residents’ rigs, junked trailers, semi cabs, and rusty pickups. A dumpster-diver collects aluminum cans next to us as we eat our lunch. Where could the showers be...?

• We squeeze by each other in the narrow aisle, try to remember what we traded places for. A can plops on the floor (“contents of the overhead bins may have shifted”) as we gather supper ingredients. Much re-arranging of stuff is required each evening.  Rules:  Return that which you took out to the place from which it came, or it may disappear permanently. Worse, it will be taking up volume unassigned to it, shrinking the small space in which we live.  We think the hostage syndrome may be in effect, because we feel at home in IRV.  

Look hard: range, fridge, sink, counter and pantry are in view.  

All who have traveled have stories of being lost, losing things, losing heart, or wishing to lose his or her traveling companions for a little while. Yet sometimes a steep and narrow road leads to a sublime little camp one has to oneself. Sometimes the road leads to new coping strategies or new friends, beyond the thrill of new sights and experiences. the disconcerting moments are few, and the ecstatic moments are plentiful.  See photographic evidence below.

Since the last writing, we’ve traveled far, including: The Great Smokies National Park in Tennessee/North Carolina; The Blue Ridge Parkway;  Congaree National Park in South Carolina (tiny home of enormous old growth national champion trees); Timucuan National Preserve and Historic Site in northeast Florida, (site of an 18^th century plantation dating from Spanish rule, with grim details of early slavery);  Big Cypress National Preserve (part of the Everglades); The Everglades National Park; the Florida Keys; a bird-heavy National Wildlife Refuge on Sannibel Island, FL; parts of Alabama and Mississippi (a NPS Civil Rights memorial on the Selma/Montgomery trail; Faulkner's home, Elvis' birthplace), and now New Orleans.  Not to mention lots of fascinating country along the the back roads we prefer to travel. Our Alaskan/Floridan friends Gary and Mary Ann Reeves showed us some  civilized parts of the east Florida coast as well as much kindness and generosity.

Purple Gallinule in Everglades.  This bird is as entertaining as it is beautiful, running around on the lilly pads and dog paddling with it's lumpy feet.

World champion Loblolly Pine and Water Tupelo trees in Congaree NP, South Carolina.

Following are some favorite photos (we hope you like birds too), from the incredible Florida wild places.  Gail took the limpkin at Blue Cypress Lake. It's a rarely seen and secretive bird, we are told. The rest are Craig's:

Tri-color Heron

Green Heron

Limpkin

Little Blue Heron. We finally did learn our herons and egrets, which can be confusing.  For example, this Little Blue was white as a juvenile.  A great white egret is sometimes considered a white morph of a great blue heron.  Etc. They were very patient with us.

Yellow-crowned Night Heron

Roseate Spoonbills

Snowy Egret (check out the yellow feet)

Wood Stork (endangered)

The wood stork snaps its mandibles shut in 25 millionths of a second, the fastest known reflex in a vertebrate animal.



Ahinga, cousin to a cormorant. It stabs its fish prey and tosses it into the air, then gulps it.

White Ibis, so plentiful we called them "Ib-eye"

A "gut" in Congaree (a sometimes wet gully)

A red-shouldered hawk, the pale Florida morph. Many and tame, as were all of the birds in the Glades, as well as in amazing concentrations.

Reflection: Wilderness in the Lower 48 consists of small wild areas surrounded by agriculture or habitation.  Conversely, in Alaska small habitations or agriculture are surrounded by wilderness.  Protected wilderness is surrounded by even more wilderness.  In the south, animals have a hard time making it in their little wild islands, and often perish moving from island to island. Road kill is a little visible evidence. 

The Everglades have no elevation higher than 8 feet. Much of it is water and mangroves, the rest is savannah-like plains with a water base:

The Shark River in the Everglades:  60 miles wide, a foot or two deep , about 200 miles long,  covered in sawgrass. Here we stood on a "hammock," a relative mountain at a few feet,  and pretty dry.  Panthers like them.  The Florida Panther is making a comeback!

An inch elevation change (yes, one inch) in the Glades determines which plants and animals inhabit an area.

This Strangler Fig killed its host, a large baldcypress.
What began as an epiphyte became a parasite,
choking off light and nutrients.  

Overlooking Key West from balcony rooms with Craig’s bro David and Joanne, we  enjoyed a good stretch out of IRV.  They flew down from Denver for a few days of sun in the Everglades and the Keys.  We kayaked in the Everglade’s Florida Bay.  At Key West we visited Hemmingway’s house, drank in his old bar, and enjoyed the colorful rumpus on Duval Street (excellent food). Hated to leave! Franchises notably absent, lots of little fish houses, marine outlets and beachwear for sale.  Diverse folks. We also learned about chiggers which we hosted in the Glades (they do not lay eggs in you, they do itch insanely).  Alaskans are put to the test bug-wise there! (January is dryer and less buggy, btw).

Alligator (we also saw a croc while kayaking in Florida Bay, Everglades). One alligtor bellowed at us three times (what a voice!!) while we canoed in a mangrove swamp. He was advising us to move away, we did not argue.

Kingfishers enjoy all the fish in the swamp along with the waders.

Manatee (or manatee nostrils, to be exact)

Now we must choose between refining and adding to the blog or walking around in New Orleans' French Quarter.  Opportunities are rare for blogging/wi-fi  as we usually spend our nights in state and national campgrounds,  thus the long time in between installments. So there is definitely pull to keep going here......but there's really no choice, is there, dear readers?.......til the next time! 

From New York to North Carolina: In Praise of Preservation

Blog 2 (11/20/11)

In Praise of Preservation

Lately, as travelers do, we have savored fine examples of the enterprise of safeguarding.  Art museums, national parks, memorials, wildernesses, natural history museums, historical sites, villages and cemeteries have moved us deeply, and inspired a thematic approach to this chapter.

  

While in Boston we went to nearby Concord, an historic vortex. Here was the start of the American Revolution as well as the home of literary and intellectual giants Nathanial Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau.  

Henry David Thoreau

The townspeople have taken care to preserve their history and make it accessible in a meaningful and beautiful way. Our long-held inner visions converge with an outer reality here.  The physical presence of Emerson’s study; Walden Pond and the site of Thoreau’s cabin; the graves; the countryside; all animate these cherished human beings in ways biographies cannot. We were touched and grateful to have been given tangible access to the lives of our luminaries. 

Boston Fall

In Cambridge, a bastion of heritage, we shared time with nephew Galen, an environmental consultant, and fiancé Miya, doctoral candidate in political science at Harvard.  The conversations were rich and often focused on the future of the environment and humanity. We took in the Harvard Museum of Natural History, where preservation is decidedly world class. Recently extinct sea cow, moa and dodo skeletons reminded us of the fragility of species; too late to preserve anything but the bones. Realistic delicate glass plants created 150 years ago for botanical studies and still in use defy comprehension. Juxtaposed manifestations of human care and carelessness baffle the mind.

Left: A grass flower, magnified (38x) in glass

 (For photos of the glass flowers, go to the website of the Harvard Museum of Natural History.) 

The turtle shell is from the age of gigantism (think giant ground sloth). Craig is with an icthyosaur; the rest of the intact body stretches out of the lens.
 .

 We were not prepared for the National Memorial at Antietam, the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.  Twenty-three thousand casualties in a single day, more than in the American Revolution, the Mexican War and the War of 1812 combined. Incomprehensible suffering. 

Though for worthy causes, preservation of the Union and an end to slavery, what can we say about war? As wished by the families of the dead, the memorials for the battles are the exquisite, peaceful countryside itself, a confounding contrast. In addition to the stories and monuments, care in the preservation of the place itself helped us to understand the events and arouse our shock and compassion in a way that no history book ever could.

The witness tree at Antietam Bridge

We camped in a dramatic example of habitat preservation:  Assateague Island National Seashore, famous home of wild horses. Southeast of Washington D.C beyond Chesapeake Bay, it is a long, thin, sand barrier island.  Uninhabited, it provides no toxic runoff from farms and towns. The bay is unpolluted, a rare surprise in this age. The island supports complex marine, salt marsh and scrub forest ecosystems. A birder’s paradise, it is also home to clams, crabs, deer, foxes, possums and more. It is so productive that visitors may harvest as many clams and crabs as they like.  Hunting and fishing are allowed, and people kayak, canoe, swim, bike and generally holiday to their heart’s content, sometimes sharing the beautiful wide beaches with the wild horses. It is fabulous.

Assateague became an island in 1933 when a giant nor’easter breached the thin isthmus to the north, at Ocean City (Maryland). We approached from even further north, believing we could enjoy ocean views in each direction (we should have Googled Earth).  We found instead opaque walls of factory outlets, franchises, high rises and hotels. A few alleys provide public access to the beaches.  The contrast with the adjacent National Seashore is stunning. How did Assateague come to be spared?

Ocean City on island 1/4 mile wide.  It stops at a narrow gap, and Assateague begins (below)

Bridge to Assateague

In 1962 Assateague was platted for 9000 private lots and a road was laid down the center of the island. A giant nor’easter  destroyed the road in 1963, crashing confidence in the devlopment.  In l965 Assateague became a National Park, and Chincoteague to the south became a National Wildlife Refuge. Thanks to some help from “nature running wild,” this remarkable site will remain home to its denizens, its deep complexity and beauty available to all of us.

(remains of road on Assateague to right; wild turkeys on Assateague below)

Migrating White Ibis (juvenile)

Many species of egrets here (this one is the great);  immature little blue herons are white too.  Can get confusing! We saw the little blues, great blues, migrating marbeled godwits, tundra swans, snow geese northern gannets, among others. 

Since the start of this blog we continued south along the barrier islands, North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  At Roanoke Island, we visited the NPS memorial to the mysterious and sad lost first English colony, 100 men, women and children (1585). Nothing was ever discovered of their plight.  Nearby at Kitty Hawk is the memorial to the Wright Brothers thrilling first human-powered flight. Only 66 years elapsed between the first flight at KittyHawk (1903) and the landing of man on the moon (1969).

The actual spot where the first plane went aloft, and the distance marks for the 4 flights on that amazing day.  A mere sixty six years later we were on the moon!!!

Perfect reproduction of the original Wright Bros. flyer, Kitty Hawk National Memorial

Further south are Cape Hatteras and Ocracoke, North Carolina.  That these absurdly thin sand islands even exist is a wonder.  They are mostly National Seashore (NPS), with little villages as inholdings strung along the way.  The relationship between the locals and the National Park Service is not always easy; sport fishing and warm ocean waters exert pressure from tourists and developers. But the island ecosystems are protected, which protects the islands themselves.

Our journey so far has enhanced our confidence in the process of protecting and memorializing treasures in our country, both natural and man-made.

A few lighter notes:

We have been enjoying local wild seafood cooked in IRV, blue crab, shrimp, butter clams.  YUM! Hate to leave the coast but the Blue Ridge Highway and Great Smokies beckon.  Craig reminds me that we will be returning to the land of seafood before long.

Interesting highlights and factoids: 

• Armstrong took a little piece of the Wright brothers’ first flyer to the moon with him.  It’s on display at the memorial site.
• The ponies on Ocracoke, unlike Chincoteague, are true descendants of Spanish Mustangs.  They are stocky, with one less vertebra in the neck and one less rib than other horses.
• The ponies on Assateague run wild, but population is controlled by hormonal injections delivered by dart.
• We left Ocracoke for the mainland by ferry at sunset and saw thousands and thousands of double-crested cormorants streaming from the sea to a small sand island that became slathered by their dark bodies.  We’ve never seen so many birds in a single place. 
• Robert E Lee was first invited by Abraham Lincoln to lead the Northern Armies before he aligned himself with the south, due to loyalty to his home state of Virginia. 
• In The Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and N. Carolina (now a National Wildlife Refuge)  George Washington surveyed the first drainage and passage canal (called a ditch)  as it was being dug by slaves.  We stood on the unobtrusive spot of his camp. George himself called it a great dismal swamp, and the name stuck, so we are told.

• North Carolina’s black bears ar the largest in North America – up to 900 lbs!  They are shy and stuff themselves on domestic corn.  Good eating, we hear!

Outstanding visits with dear people included Cousins Steve, Sue, Kiley & Julia  in Boston who made us feel wonderfully welcome for a week in their lovely home near Boston. And Bill Campbell gave us an intimate glimpse of the Vermont hills, his home away from Anchorage.  Thank you!

Vermont home of Bill Campbell of Anchorage

Last:  a few funny/peculiar signs:

• On Blue Ridge Parkway:  High Collision Area Ahead. We could hardly wait to get to that part.
• Sudden Icing on Road (multple interpretations possible, e.g., wedding cake? Or something more threatening…?)
• On Hattaras Island, fancy sign advertising new upscale vacation homes destroyed by recent Hurricane Irene: Dare to Dream the Impossible Dream. Oh dear.
• Summit Closes 5:00 (sort of like a government office)

We're heading now for the Great Smoky National Park, after having traveled a day on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a road that exists solely for the sake of the beauty of the trip.  We continue to be challenged, thrilled, and loving our adventure.  

  

Vancouver to Syracuse

At the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone Leaving Alaska to escape winter and travel across the Rockies and northern US in late October may not be sensible, but it has been uncrowded and fabulously beautiful. Since leaving Vancouver we've been on the road for a month in our little camper van IRV with travel cat Vesta. Anyone reading this blog probably knows we spent weeks in Vancouver to celebrate and help after the birth of grand-twins Chloe and Claire to Camille & Alex. Willow came too, from Scotland, yay! She drove down The Highway with Craig while I first helped with the babies. Gail, Willow, Zoe, Camille and Chloe & Claire We're presently at the end of a great stay with Craig's brother Glenn and partner Theresa near Syracuse, NY. Upstate New York has subtle and seductive charms.  We never knew it to be so rolling, trees so monumental, grounds so spacious, homes and villages so dear. Urban sprawl is not a part of this rural scene. Aidan and Caleb with Craig & Glenn on the Erie Canal After experiencing snow in awe-inspiring Yellowstone with some harrowing blizzard driving, we decided to hunker at Glenn & Teresa's to avoid a much greater snowstorm. More than 2,000,000 are without power due to  a record early snowstorm in the NE. Oddly it is clear and beautiful in Upstate New York.IRV's rear-wheel drive and no snow tires suggest we head to the deep south before long. But first a stop in Boston to visit nephew Galen and fiance Miya in Cambridge, and cousins Steve and Susan Owen and children Kiley and Julia and explore the city. Sapsucker Woods at the Cornell Ornithology Lab in Ithaca The autumn foliage remains devastatingly beautiful, and a recent light snow added to the drama. Some birds remain, such as the red-bellied woodpecker, cardinals, cedar waxwings and bluejays. The famed Cornell Ornithology Lab in Ithaca is a bird haven, even in the late fall.  We plan to catch up with some of the departed ones later in Big Bend NP, Texas. We're learning delicate dance moves in our small rv as we prepare each meal on board.  We're getting the routine down, read books aloud from the extremely helpful iPad, and may watch a movie for the evening entertainment.  One backing-into-a-ditch experience at night on a deserted road taught us a lot about the dimensions of our wheel base (and the kindness of mortals).  After having leaky windows and  luggage compartments repaired in Syracuse, we feel increasingly at home in IRV. A few highlights of our journey: North Cascades National Park, Washington Pronghorn antelope in the Shortgrass Prairie at Badlands National Park, South Dakota Bison in Yellowstone & Badlands We inadvertently came between a few bison and their herd.  While we contemplated diving over a steep bluff into a creek, they decided to take the high path and avoid a confrontation. Whew! Chimney Bluffs on the shore of lake Ontario look like a mini Badlands.  Just in front is a woodland  plateau giving way to vineyards and apple orchards. Very dramatic with the lake behind! These Ice age remnants, clay drumlins 150 feet high from lakeshore, erode a foot or more per year. The real Badlands National Park, South Dakota Description not required.  Giant graffiti or high art? (no pun intended, really).  Great for surrealists at heart. Hot pools of endless depth and clarity, colorful bacteria (thermophiles) and boiling temperatures over the active super volcano which is Yellowstone. There are more geysers and other thermal features here than all other sites in the world combined.  Who knew?  We didn't and were happily blown away (luckily not literally!). PUS gigantic waterfalls -  300 feet -  falling into a world class (yellow) canyon. Oh, yes, and a huge lake, and....mountains and animals and rivers.....  Eastern Montana Big Sky, Big Country Listen to Tom Waites "Burma Shave" for an atmospheric accompaniment  Glacial erratics in the Adirondacks. We daily learn many things, especially what a magnificent planet we live on, and how fortunate we are to be able to see so much of it, along with the kindness and generosity of people along the way.

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9:22:00 AM

by Craig & Gail

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