It's Not A Secret, It's Just Off The Beaten Path

 


When we travel, we like to get off the beaten path.  Indeed, my wife Fiona was born in a place off the "beaten path".  There are a surprising number of things to do in places that are off the beaten path. 
They are not hidden, but can be difficult to find, which makes them a little more enjoyable. 

 

The last few days on the Isle of Lewis, in the remote northwest of Scotland, have been full of activities and things to see.  In the main city of Stornoway, there is a big impressive castle on a hill overlooking the town.  It's just been renovated, and includes a nice museum.  

 

And the history of this place runs deep, clear back to the days of Stonehenge.  In fact, there are the Standing Stones of Callanish on a remote hilltop near the Atlantic Ocean.  It's an amazing place; the setting adds to the atmosphere.  Some of the stones are twenty feet high. 

How did the stones get here?  Who erected this puzzling arrangement?  Why did they do it and what does it represent?  After much study and research, these questions remain unanswered.  There are some ideas on who, what, and why, but nobody really knows ...

And how did these fine folks live?

So, what was life like for the early Scots in the old days?  Well, you can see for yourself as it's preserved in many restored sites.  Life was harsh back then, but somehow those folks stuck around, and even today that region remains a rugged and challenging environment.  

I was fiddling around with this picture and added the text graphic, it looks like a brochure cover!

 

They built most things out of stone so we have evidence of their lifestyle.   It's a rocky island so there are plenty of building materials.  It takes a lot of careful effort to build like this, but once done, the structures last for centuries.  

And for all its tough appearances, there are places of beauty and tranquility all around.   The Castle Grounds is a great place to hike, with a variety of trees and the Creed River running through it.  The brown color of the water comes from peat, an almost coal-like soil that gives Scotch Whisky it's distinctive color flavor. 

 

They even burn peat in their fireplaces, like coal, to heat their houses.  It gives a very identifiable smell that reminds Fiona of "home".   

This trip was a special treat for Fiona because two of our grandees were along to see how and where she grew up. 

A person might wonder, while walking around these ancient ruins and castles of old, how would we preserve our own history?  Will people in the distant future be puzzled by our buildings and formations?  

Will we take care to honor the past?  Or is it more like what happens in reality ... a farmer, plowing his field, hits a rock and wonders how that rock got there, and the archaeologists show up and identify a "prehistoric" civilizations that did this - so long ago we can't even explain why?

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Oh, and one last thing - the these islands are known for their connection to the production of Scotch Whisky, as mentioned above.  We took a tour of one distillery, (that also makes the top notch Harris Gin), and they have Whisky in barrels aging for release in a few more years.  All Scotch Whisky is aged, and has to come from Scotland.  One such barrel, or cask, is shown below, with the owners name on it. 

  

  

How Far Away is Home? It Depends ....

We passed through Inverness on our way here, it's at the north end of Loch Ness, you know, where the monster lives ...

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We have traveled on from Aberdeen Scotland to another place in the last couple days.  The journey included in sequence: a long walk, a bus ride, train ride, bus ride, an ocean going boat, and a car.

The weather was nice when we left Aberdeen.

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What is the destination worthy of that effort?  None other than the Isle of Lewis, off the north west coast of Scotland.  It's where Fiona comes from and much of her family still lives. 

 


You see, Fiona was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides (pronounce Heb-rid-dees).  She left home to go to college where we met, in Aberdeen.  

One of the goals of this trip was to see the fam, you know, the rellies, the Scottish side of our family tree.  There are a bunch over here.  And to top that off, on the boat, we connected with our daughter Alison, and her clan (Husband Brandon, and boys, Jackson and Sam).   They are here visiting as well.  

The roots run deep here on this Island, much of it in and around the main town of Stornoway.  Fiona's brother Duncan and his wife Donna and family live here, along with a few other apples that didn't fall far from the tree.  

The fact is, these are a bunch of wonderful people, we love 'em, and today we had a wonderful foodfest with all of 'em.  

We expected mixed weather and this is what we got.  Today was almost like a winter day in Oregon, rainy, windy, wet, foggy, and a bit cold.  
What a change from the last few hot sunny days.

There are several places we will see in the next week.  We're just getting used to the time change and so forth, but we are ready to go!

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In the meantime, on the train yesterday, we came across a wild bunch on a "hen party" - like a bachelor party for girls.  They were having a rowdy time on the train and they had an inflatable doll - it was a male and it was, ahem, anatomically correct.   I had to be careful with the picture, I could only show the back side!  

Granite Countertops? How About a Whole City of Granite?

A reflection from a pond in one of the beautiful parks in Aberdeen. 

 

 

Aberdeen Scotland - The Granite City

Fiona and I find ourselves today in Aberdeen, on the north east coast of Scotland, sitting right on the North Sea.  This place used to be booming, but has hit some harder times recently, as the price of oil has dipped.  

In fact, the original oil boom of the early 1970's brought me to this city as a young lad in search of work (more below).  It is here that I met my wife Fiona, and we've come back to spend a couple days here revisiting our old stomping grounds. 

The City

For over 300 years, granite quarried from the nearby hills supplied the building material for the growing city of Aberdeen.  Although gray in appearance, this particular granite has a high concentration of mica silicate, which can make it sparkle in the sunlight.  

I tried to capture some of the twinkling granite, but it didn't come out very well.  

 

The use of granite construction is obvious throughout the city, and has earned Aberdeen the nickname of The Granite City.   Of course, this stone lasts a long time, and the most of these grand buildings have already lasted a few hundred years.  

After spending the last couple days here and looking around, I would describe this as a no-nonsense kind of place.  It has a serious, organized, well-built atmosphere about it; it's clean and well maintained.  

However, one might not describe this as lively, or creative, or inspiring.  I'm not saying it's bad here.  Some places are wild and wonderful, but they have potholes and the street lights don't work.   

Not here.  This place is ship shape. 

It was so many years ago ...

I came here forty-five years ago, broke and desperate.  I had been traveling around Europe with my friend Paul, and ran out of money, and prospects were slim.  I got a job here on the North Sea oil rigs, which turned out to be dangerous work.  

And I met a young Scottish college student named Fiona.

She and I have come back to pay a visit here and have a look around, with more travel later in the next week.   Things have changed here in Aberdeen, but also remained the same.  The place where we originally met has morphed into something much different. 

But many of the old haunts still exist, in much the same fashion as 1973 when I was first here.  This is a city not only built of granite, but full of beautiful parks.  We spent much of the day walking through them. 

There is no better way to experience a place than just walking, and we did plenty of that today.  Much to our surprise, the weather today was fabulous, sunny and almost 80 degrees Fahrenheit.   We covered almost 14 miles, and enjoyed every minute of it.

Aberdeen has been recognized as a champion of British green parks, and that's saying a lot in this country, which probably has the best parks and gardens in the world.  

We went to Johnston Park, rather on the small side, which was rated the best park in Britain a few years back.  For good reason.  It was charming and beautiful in its simplicity.  

And there was the massive Hazlehead Park, several hundred acres in size, with every ingredient a park should ever have, including a large maze.  

It's always interesting to visit a location that holds a key place in your life history.  This is one of those places.  

It's Hard to Miss, The Mighty Mountain, and Many Ways to Enjoy It

Every year for the last five years we've taken our grandkids on a week-long summer trip.  It has become known as the "Harvey" trip, because we usually rent an RV (get it? RV = Harvey!).

But this year we changed things up a bit, and rented a house in Hood River for a week.  Actually, it's near to Parkdale, on the northern slope of Mount Hood.  

This is a shot of the grandees, on the fence near our Airbnb house.  

The view here from the house is fantastic, and everywhere you look, Mt Hood fills the sky.  What a sight!  Many of the pictures in this blog post contain that compelling image of the mountain. 

There are lots of things to do here, and we've been busy.  In fact, we like to stay busy when we travel  - and trying to keep these little ones entertained, active, and eventually worn out - is a challenge.

Today was great and started out with a morning hike in the woods along a river.




Then before lunch we went to the nearby town of Parkdale, where there is a park with a stage where the kids could horse around.  In fact, there was a statue of a horse there, including a little girl as part of the statue ... interesting. 

  
After lunch, Fiona wanted to visit what turned out to be a rather amazing lavender farm, with more views of ... you guessed it, Mt Hood.

I also captured this picture of Fiona through the window of a shed at the lavender farm, I thought it was a cool view.  It was pretty windy. 

Later in the afternoon, we made our way down to the river, in this case, the mighty Columbia River. On the way there we were blessed with the view of another mountain.  

This was not Mount Hood, although admittedly it looks kinda similar - it was Mount Adams, on the other side of the river in Washington State.  It brought back memories of mine: I climbed to the top of Mt Adams about 20 years ago with my son Lewis and several other friends.  It's actually slightly taller than Mr Hood.

The setting for all this is nothing short of spectacular.  The Columbia River cuts a deep gorge on its way to the Pacific Ocean, and along the way the Hood River flows in, along with many other rivers such as the Deschutes, the John Day, and further upstream, the Snake River.   And in Portland, the Willamette River also joins the party. 

And no mention of Hood River (the town) would be complete without a view of the plethora of wind surfers and kiteboarders and other forms of water borne adventure on the windy Columbia. 

You Call This Old? Well, Yes, As a Matter of Fact ...

I've always been fascinated with the Old West.  

Of course, in the greater scheme of things, the Old West is not that old, compared to the Pyramids of Egypt, Ancient Rome, the days of the Bible, or even King Arthur ... and the Mayan Ruins. 

But hey, by our (rather historically recent) American standards, this stuff is old ...

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In May, 1804, Lewis and Clark set out on a journey of discovery to new lands that had never been seen by descendants of the Europeans that had settled the United States.  They were commissioned by then President Thomas Jefferson to explore the newly acquired lands of what was to become Western America.

Their epic trek became the thing of legend ...

They reached the Pacific Coast of Oregon in November of 1805.  They did not return to "civilization" until September of 1806.  They spent two and a half years crossing some of the most rugged and spectacular landscape in the world, enduring tremendous hardship.  

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Well, I've been spending the last week or so covering the same ground.  Only I did not endure tremendous hardship - I was driving a Toyota Prius Hybrid rental car at speeds up to 85 miles an hour ... but I digress. 

After leaving the Yellowstone, I dropped off my son Lewis for his return home by airplane from Billings Montana.   Before he departed, we visited the nearby battlefield of Custer's Last Stand, in the Little Bighorn Valley.  That particular episode of American history probably deserves its own blog post, but it's not the point of this story.

Later that same day, near sundown, I made a trip to another iconic spot - Pompey's Pillar.   This is a little known historically important place, where William Clark (of "Lewis and Clark") carved his initials into a significant rock formation that is the only surviving testimony of the their trip through that remote region. 

Even today, that part of the West occupies space among the wide open regions of our imagination.  It's a long way from anywhere, except maybe from Billings, Montana which .. frankly, is also a long way from anywhere.  

As evidence of its somewhat unknown location, I've been to Billings many times over the years, and this was the first time I've ever laid eyes on this place. 

Using a reference to modern times, it's not far from the the Interstate 90 freeway that runs across the northern US to the Dakotas and eventually Minnesota, Chicago, and ultimately ... the Atlantic Ocean.

As mentioned earlier, I arrived in the afternoon of a summer day - July 1st, in the brilliant light of a western sunset.  I was struck by the singular feature of this rock, which stands alone on the banks of the Yellowstone River.  

It is sometimes surprising to find a compelling major historical site that nobody knows about. 
This location was visited by William Clark on July 25, 1806 - and how do we know this?

Because he carved his name in the rock.  

Apparently this rock was an important place for the indigenous native American Indians, who had been here for a couple thousand years before "white men" showed up.  And there were numerous rock carvings (known as Petroglyphs) on this out-cropping, so what did Mr Clark do? He added his name to the collection. 

And it still exists.  To this day, it is the only verifiable and visible surviving evidence of their passing through this area - 212 years ago!  

I don't know about you, but I find this kind of thing fascinating, especially being there in person and trying to absorb the remote nature of the location - and framing it in the modern time we live in.  

In fact, it's now a National Monument, and the intent is to preserve this location well into the future.  In the last few years, they've added a fancy visitor center. 

Without a doubt, it is a tremendously commendable achievement that these intrepid explorers risked life and limb to traverse the wild unknown lands that have become the Western United States.   

And it seems ironic to me that I make this statement (and blog post) on such a day as this, the 4th of July, which celebrates the birth of our nation.  

One of The World's Great Treasures

It was 38 degrees when we woke up on Saturday morning to begin our day in Yellowstone National Park, much colder than we expected.  The weather had been mixed and a bit rainy for the last couple days, and we were hoping for a good day to see the wonders of the Yellowstone ...

We started out early (5:45 AM) to get a jump on the anticipated crowds.  This turned out to be a good idea, but that makes for an early wake up and a well thought out plan - and no breakfast.  But since this was a major destination, we took things seriously, and were ready for a long day. 

Entering the Park through West Yellowstone, you immediately encounter the park entrance gate, and because of the early hour, there was no one there.  We had been advised of this, and addressed the admission fee and charged ahead.   At that early hour, even on a Saturday of the upcoming 4th of July week, there was almost no one on the road.  Traffic can be a real bummer in many National Parks, and for visitors to Yellowstone, I would recommend this early morning approach. 

There is so much to see and do, and around every corner there are spectacular views, geologic wonders, amazing animals, waterfalls, geysers, and eye popping natural beauty.  

One of our first activities was traveling along the Firehole River, so called because the hot steamy water from the thermal springs flows into the river and it looks like ... it's on fire. 

Waterfalls are almost too numerous to count, and are almost without compare.   The frequent winter snows were melting, providing peak flows to the rivers that criss-cross the park

No trip to Yellowstone is complete without seeing the abundant wildlife.  And we got lucky, following a good sized herd of Buffalo along a hillside, and then watching them cross river near us and travel up into the nearby woods.  Fantastic!

And - of course! - there are geysers and thermal hot springs everywhere, and these are some of the best known features of the park.  Such as Old Faithful, shown below.   This grand water spout goes off every hour or so, and we were lucky enough to see it erupt twice.

And across the Geyser Basin (or was it Geyser Hill?)  there was this glorious relative, known as Lion Geyser.   It was about half a mile away and went on for a long time ... very photogenic. 

Although we were warned constantly about Bears, with advice on how to avoid getting eaten, the closest we got was this stuffed example in one of the numerous lodges.  It was about seven feet tall, with big teeth ...

And speaking of warnings; we were reminded regularly about not straying off the path and goofing around on top of a potential geyser.  They look harmless, but can shoot out with surprising power and heat at unpredictable times!  Don't try this at home!

I couldn't resist including this picture below, of a thermal hot springs that comes up under water in the Yellowstone Lake, with the snow capped Wind River range of Wyoming in the background.  

  

Probably the most spectacular spot of all

 

The Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River as it enters the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is simply astonishing!  The colors are so vivid and the contrast to the green forest and blue sky make for a very dramatic scene.   I guess that's where the name for this place comes from. 

On our way out of the park, we took the exit at the far north east corner which crosses from Wyoming into Montana.  There was no shortage of amazing sights and scenery.  Not included in this set of photos were the growing herds of buffalo.  We probably saw maybe four to five hundred roaming the high meadows of Yellowstone. 

We passed the aptly named Tower Falls shown below, and eventually made our way out of the park and up into the vast Rocky Mountains, and breathtaking high peaks.  

In fact, it took your breath away in more ways than one.  Not only were the scenes amazing, but so was very high altitude.  When this picture below was taken, we had just come over the Beartooth Pass - which is 11,000 feet high!  Talk about thin air!

 I had the distinct pleasure to spend the last few days with my son Lewis who - although having been to Yellowstone many years ago as a small child -  got to experience this visit like a very first time.

As a nation (and citizens of this planet) we owe a debt to those who came before us and had the foresight and vision to set aside and preserve this unique place for future generations.