South Africa retrospective

Back in 2010, before I created this blog, the Washington Post had the nice idea of increasing its coverage of the World Cup in South Africa by inviting readers who were going to be in attendance to post text and photographs about their experiences at the games and in the country in between the games.  Over my time in South Africa, I posted roughly twenty pieces, some short and some long, accompanied by photographs.  I was one of about a dozen readers who responded; the experience gave me a taste for blogging about my travels and led directly to the creation of this blog, hoping that others can learn from my experiences in planning their own travels.

Recently, one of my colleagues as work planned a trip to South Africa, and I wanted to pointed him to my Washington Post blog to get my recommendations, as I have pointed others to my blogging about Norway, Argentina, Utah, Brazil, Tanzania, and other places for a summary of my experiences and recommendations.  But I noticed that only a small group of the blog posts were easily found, and that the photographs were no longer posted. 

Over the next few weeks, I'll be restoring my 2010 World Cup blog posts online by posting them here, along with the relevant photographs.  I hope others will find them useful.

A Short Visit to Cincinnati

The end of our Midwestern swing this month took us to the city of Cincinnati for a wedding celebration held in Mt. Airy Forest Park.  I have spent a fair amount of time in Cincinnati over the years — when I clerked for Wade McCree on the Sixth Circuit my co-clerk and I divided up three-week argument terms, so I had a couple of ten-day stints there in late 1976.  Since then I have been back for a number of court appearances over the years; Sam and I were there for a soccer tournament perhaps ten years ago.  But this was the first time I had got any real appreciation for Cincinnati at large, and I was favorably impressed by the downtown areas, at least – we were all, in fact, favorably impressed.

A Few Days in Northern Michigan

We drove out to Indianapolis for a family wedding on a July weekend, and had another wedding the following weekend in Cincinnati.  In between, we decided that we would head up to Traverse City, Michigan, where the Nancy’s sister has a house, as well as visiting friends from DC who spend their summers an hour further north in Boyne City along Lake Charlevoix.  It was a relaxing few days.

The drive up took about eight hours; we passed through Kalamazoo at about noon on Sunday and decided to stop for lunch.  Based on guidebook information, our first choice for a meal was Food Dance, but only breakfast is served in Sunday and besides it was going to be a 45 minute wait – plainly this is the place to be on Kalamazoo for Sunday brunch.  So we wandered down the street and ate at one of the outside tables at Olde Peninsula, which advertises itself as Kalamazoo’s first brew pub.  Nancy had a reuben sandwich (it was OK); I liked the salmon cooked with a Beer-B-Que glaze.  To drink I had their own Midnight Stout, which was a great beer.  I liked the beer so much that we picked up a couple of growlers (the double IPA and the Sunset Red) as house gifts for the hosts with whom we would be staying during the week.

We drove northward on US 131 and reached Boyne City in the late afternoon.  Our friends live in an improved old logger’s cabin which, they told us, like several other houses near them, had been dragged across the frozen-over lake in the winter.

Lake Charlevoix was directly across the road, and the weather was plenty warm enough to dip into the water for a swim – cold but not nearly so cold as Stone Pond where we will be swimming in New Hampshire in a couple of weeks!  Our friends grilled some lamb ribs and locally–made sausages for dinner; then we enjoyed watching the sun set over the far end of the lake which was very nice despite the clouds

Our Last Two Days in Texas – Big Bend State Park, Marfa and Fort Davis

After a final breakfast at Posada Milagro in the Terlingua Ghost Town, we drove west along the Rio Grande to Presidio, then headed north through Marfa to Fort Davis, where we had a chance to visit with friends who had retired there from D.C.  Back in Austin at the beginning of our vacation, our host had recommended that we drive west from Terlingua instead of head directly to Fort Davis by way of Alpine, saying that the road west was particularly scenic, and a park ranger back in Big Bend National Park, when we first arrived a few days before, on hearing that we had an especial interest in wildflowers, recommended that we drive west of Terlingua because the wildflowers were already out on display even though it was still early in the spring.

These were good recommendations.   The scenery was dramatic, with good views both of the Rio Grande running between the two countries and high cliffs on both sides of the road

Final Day in Big Bend National Park – a few small hikes and a dip in the hot springs

We began our final day at Big Bend with another breakfast at Posada Milagro and a stroll through the Terlingua Ghost Town’s small cemetery

then drove over to the eastern side of the park for a few relatively short walks.  First was a very careful drive over a dirt road where we would doubtless have been better off with a high clearance vehicle, into the Grapevine Hills

Hiking Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park: Window and Lost Mine Trails

We were determined to get an earlier start so that we could hike a couple of more challenging trails, so we looked for a breakfast place that opened as early as possible.  While waiting for our table at the Starlight Theater the night before, we cast our eyes in the Posada Milagro, which had a simple café that opened for breakfast at 7:30, and it offered wi-fi (not available at our motel).  Although we were enjoying being so thoroughly offline, we felt guilty about making no checks of our email just in case there were any real emergencies.  We arrived at 7:45, hoping to have a quick breakfast before heading to the park to get out on the trails before they got crowded – what we had not counted on was that the café had only limited staff.  The tables were all located outside, some under a roof but some on a patio in front of the café in the open air.  The café was part of a small B&B operation whose rooms were made out of ghost-town ruins; it might well have been a nice place to stay. 

To order, there was a fairly short line up to the counter, but with seven or eight people ahead of us on line, it took a half hour to place our order, plus waiting time to have it cooked.  Breakfast was nice enough, but it was 9 AM before we were able to leave for the park. 

As we drove into park toward the trailheads for the two trails we had in mind for the morning, we noticed that the parking area for the Lost Mine Trail, which looked by far the most interesting, was completely full, so we continued up the road to the visitors center near the Chisos Mountain Lodge.  Hoping that parking would open up later for the Lost Mine Trail, we decided to do the Window Trail first.  This trail, which begins near the lodge, consists of a walk down the valley to a window in the rock where the two sides of the valley come together; we were able to cut out an extra mile of one-way walking by driving down to the campground where we were able to pick up the trail.

Touring Big Bend (Santa Elena Canyon and Chimney Trails) and Staying in Terlingua

I would much rather have stayed inside the park to limit the amount of driving we would have to do in each morning, and because it might have been nice to have participated in some evening ranger programs without having to drive steep mountain roads to get back to our accommodations at night.   Staying inside the park can also be important because many of the popular trailheads have very small parking areas, so it behooves the avid hiker to be at such trail heads before 9 AM, especially when the park is relatively crowded, as it was when we were visiting.  But by the time I was ready to make our reservations for a stay in or near Big Bend National Park, accommodations at the only lodge inside the park were no longer available, and most of the recommended lodgings in nearby Terlingua were taken as well.  

The only choices left were a very expensive resort and the very cheap Chisos Mining Company Motel.   We took the latter.  Everything I read about the place made it sound quite basic, and we got what I anticipated and what we paid for.    The motel consists of two one-story buildings, one near the road at the front of the property and one near the rear, with scattered other buildings in between, which appeared to be residential cabins.  Our room, one of the economy units in the rear (all that was available) was small, with no refrigerator, no coffee machine.  The room had a slightly musty odor, but it was clean.  There were a couple of lawn chairs near the front door and it was certainly a pretty view apart from the immediate foreground

and there were a couple of grills available for guest use.  No shampoo was supplied with the room, and the soaps were so tiny as to be useless – happily I had anticipated that and brought some of our own.  There was another problem on which I had not focused – almost all of the dining options in the area, and the only good ones, were up in the Terlingua ghost town several miles in the opposite direction from the park.  So the bottom line — stay at this place only if all of the other options are already taken.