Travel Update 23

We ended the last travel update when we arrived in Tucson. The main reason we were in Tucson was because of Saguaro National Park, which actually has two regions: the Rincon Mountain District and the Tucson Mountain District.

Of course, we visited both districts. We also had a surprising number of friends in Tucson. On our second day there, we met up with Kathleen's cousin, Christine and her partner, Adam. We had a great time catching up over dinner while watching the women's basketball team win the Pac-12 tournament in convincing fashion.

The next morning, we met up with a friend from Kathleen's undergrad days for breakfast. After that, we spent the most of the day at a library, followed by some time at a dog park.

Aiden mastering the "through" command

For dinner that night we met up with the parents of one of Kathleen's best friends from grad school (and the officiant at our wedding), who snowbird down to Tucson in the winters. They were kind enough to feed us dinner, let us shower and do laundry at their rental, which had a beautiful view of the city and surrounding landscape.

After Tucson, we headed towards Joshua Tree National Park with a short stop at the Casa Grande National Monument. As we were getting to Joshua Tree, news about the coronavirus outbreak started to sound worse and worse. We decided it would be best to take a bit of a break from our travels and head home. So, we wrapped up Joshua Tree and drove north.

 

We stayed at some beautiful bureau of land management campgrounds in southern Arizona and California on the way to and from Joshua Tree. Before getting back to Oregon, we spent one night in Redding with Kathleen's aunt and uncle who had just moved up from SoCal.

 

Now we're sitting in Eugene, socially distancing ourselves from people, waiting for this epidemic to slow down. We're not sure yet when we will continue. We're a bit disappointed that we had to stop right as we were getting into the part of the country we were most excited for, but we know that we made the right decision.

Travel Update 21

This week started out in Big Bend National Park, where we met a few people who we've run into before during our travels. The first was a couple from Virginia in a white travel van. We didn't get a chance to talk to them, but they let us know that they recognized us. The second was a woman from Washington, also in a white travel van, with a bus-like door. We ran into her shortly on the Natches Trace Parkway at the Merryweather Lewis Memorial. It's fun to recognize the same vehicles and to be recognized. Hopefully we'll run into some more repeats along the way and get to share some stories.

From Big Bend, we headed north towards our next two parks. We stopped at another roadside picnic area on the way up. The next day, we went and gathered a bunch of park info from both Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad Caverns before heading into the town of Carlsbad to watch the Ducks beat Stanford and all but lock up their Pac-12 regular season championship. In that game, Oregon's star player, Sabrina, became the only player in NCAA history (women's or men's) to achieve 2000 points, 1000 assists and 1000 rebounds in her career. We were glad that Carlsbad had a Buffalo Wild Wings for us to catch the game!

In Carlsbad, we spent a couple days catching up on our blog while staying at a campsite just out of town near Avalon Lake.

From there, we spent the two days hiking around the Guadalupe Mountains, followed by a day in Carlsbad Caverns. 

A few new national park stickers on a dirty RV.

On our way out of town, we decided to stay at Brantley Lake State Park. It was only $14 to stay for the night for which we got warm showers and a chance to test out plugging in our RV. Turns out, our RV is not a fan of grid power. The lights were our biggest issue, which seemed to overheat and quickly start smelling like burning. Without the lights on we could stay plugged in for a big before the 12V regulator box started getting warm and smelling like hot dog hair. So, we didn't stay plugged in long. Luckily the campsite was gorgeous.

Travel Update 20

We started out the week in Norman, OK, and caught up with Kathleen's old Peace Corps friend, Jessica. Kathleen hadn't seen her since they left Guinea, so it was a great overdue reunion. She generously offered us a place to park and take showers at her mother's house.  That, too, was great.

From there we headed south. We stopped by a little town called Medicine Park in Oklahoma, on recommendation from Jessica's mother. It is a cute little town with the claim to fame of being Oklahoma's first cobblestone community. It was a bit touristy, but super cute.

 

Shortly after Medicine Park, we drove into the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, where we saw our first bison! The park was created to help preserve the bison, the elk and the Texas longhorn cows. Bison were almost entirely extinct in North America, only about 550 left before Yellowstone and this preservation were made. They shipped in 15 bison from the New York zoo to start this herd, which took off and is now thriving. Elk also had to be reintroduced from further north, having been hunted out of the area in the early 1900s. The longhorn were added later and are there to be protected as a herd of historical significance. The preserve also gave us some scenic views.

We drove a ways further before settling in for the night at a beautiful reservoir that had free camping by it.

We drove through West Texas quickly; there isn't much there for travelers. It's mile after mile of flat, dry land with the occasional ranch here and there. We made a quick stop in Midland and Odessa, mostly out of curiosity to see the town of Friday Night Lights, but weren't enticed to stay long.

Our last night before Big Bend National Park was a roadside picnic area about 30 miles north of the park. This picnic area had a few picnic tables and fire pits, but most importantly a lovely backyard.

The rest of the week was spent in Big Bend National Park. Check out our posts of the three main areas of the park we visited: Chisos Basin, the Rio Grande, and the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive (Coming soon...). Here's a small teaser of the scenery of Big Bend.

 

Travel Update 19

We started out the week near Memphis desperate for showers. Luckily for us, February 9th was National Pizza and Bagel day and Planet Fitness was inviting anyone to work out at their gyms and get free bagels in the morning and pizza in the evening. We took full advantage of both times, getting two free workouts, bagels, pizza and WiFi to watch the Ducks get their revenge against Arizona State.

From Memphis, we drove to Little Rock, Arkansas, where we took advantage of free scavenger hunt tickets we received though the Let's Roam app we used in Austin. We walked all around the town, seeing sights and learning a bit about Little Rock history.

Little Rock Capitol Building

We ended the day in Hot Springs, AR. There we visited Hot Springs National Park. It got a bit cold that night and made for a really cool looking fountain at the park.

After visiting our 11th National Park, we headed west towards Oklahoma City to try and catch up with a friend of Kathleen's from the Peace Corps. We took the scenic route through the Ouachita National Forest and into Oklahoma. We decided to pass up the Ozarks, even though we heard they were beautiful. They'll be going on our "places we didn't get to, but would still like to see someday" list. We're eager to get to Big Bend and the large cluster of National Parks in that area and want to keep moving.

Travel Update 18

On Sunday we wrapped up Great Smoky National Park and drove towards Knoxville to get another oil change. Monday was mostly a driving day with a stop for a great hike at the Twin Arches. We also wanted to make sure we ended the day somewhere we could catch the Ducks take on UConn in the evening. We tried an Applebees but they didn't have ESPN, so we ended up at a sports bar called Sidelines. We met a bar tender from Seattle who spent time living in Portland. We wanted to talk with her about how she ended up in Kentucky but didn't get a chance. It was a great game, with the Ducks making a statement win, handing UConn its worst loss in their current arena.

In trying to keep up with our schedule of being up to date with blogs before we go into the next national park we spent all of Tuesday at the library, before going into Mammoth Cave National Park for Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday we woke up to a snow! It can get cold in the RV when the weather is bad because our heater doesn't work, but luckily we have lots of warm blankets and the RV warms up quickly if we start cooking or driving. We've had several freezing nights, but this was the first time we saw snow since early October. And the only time we've woken up to it.

On Friday we drove back to Nashville to catch back up with Natchez Trace because we wanted to see the Lewis Memorial, which was further north than we got on the trace the first time. Both times we stayed on the trace we found great free campgrounds. They had flush toilets, nice spots with grills and picnic tables, and nice hikes.

From this second campground we could hike down to the Memorial to the explorer Meriwether Lewis. After he returned from exploring the west with William Clark in 1806, President Jefferson appointed him governor of the Louisiana Territory in 1807. He was traveling up the Natchez trace to Washington to check in with President Jefferson about disputed payments when he is believed to have shot himself on October 19th 1909. Although there are still people who question whether his death was in fact murder.

The official position of the NPS is that it was likely suicide, which is reflected in the monument design. The monument is a column with a broken top, depicting a life cut short.

The weather that day was nice, in contrast to the snow of the day before, so it was a perfect day for a hike around the park. It stayed sunny for our whole drive down to Memphis where we ended the week.

Travel Update 17

After coming back from the Dominican Republic, we spent a few more days in Atlanta with Andreas's family. The only other thing on our Atlanta to do list was a brief visit to the CDC museum. It was an interesting history of the CDC and a great exposure to the concept of public health. It was again further confirmation of what we learned in DC, museums are slightly less interesting when you already have a degree or two in their subject area. But we always enjoy seeing how different groups present the information.

We were all poised to leave on Saturday, but our faucet started leaking. We were worried something may have broken during the sub freezing temperatures Atlanta had while we were in the DR. However, when we disassembled it, it seemed like a o-ring somehow got out of place. Putting it back together made it stop leaking. The whole thing took just long enough for us to decide to wait until Sunday to head out.

On Sunday, we stopped at a disc golf and dog park along the way. The off-leash area was tiny, but we got a good walk in with Aiden, who hadn't been getting much exercise. It seemed like a nice park, but inexplicable there were no dogs allowed on any of the trails outside of the disc golf course.

 

In the evening, we found a a place in Hayesville, NC to watch the second leg of the women's basketball Civil War. We knew we were in the right place because they had an Oregon Ducks flag hanging! One of the owners even threw an O while we were trying to sneak a picture of it.

It turned out to be a very emotional game because of the tragic and sudden death of NBA great Kobe Bryant, who had been to several duck games, met with the team and even built a friendship with Oregon's star player, Sabrina. The Ducks were able to play through the heartbreak, pulling away in the fourth quarter.

We spent that night at a lovely campground in lovely, remote forest.

 

The next couple days we spent working hard on getting this blog up to date. We told ourselves that we would not go into Great Smokey Mountains until that was done. So, we spent a few days in Robinsville, NC near Lake Santeetlah, which had some free camping sites along the lake. It was absolutely gorgeous there in the mountain town.

 

On one of the days, we went to the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest on recommendation from a very friendly librarian in Robinsville. We enjoyed the short, 2 mile, figure-8 hike through the forest before returning to our work.

 

After getting all of our overdue blog posts written, we finally went on to our next national park. Right outside the park, on the Tennessee side, are the towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Both of these towns are incredibly touristy. The latter made us think of a family friendly Las Vegas with tons of arcade like activities, fair style rides, and hotels galore. We took a short video driving through Gatlinburg:



We stayed at the Cracker Barrel in Pigeon Forge and even ate there one night thanks to a gift card we got for Christmas from Hubert and Emily, Andreas's brother and sister-in-law.

This past week has been a lot of fun. It's good to be on the road again without holidays or international trips just around the corner. We do wish it were a little bit warmer though. Looking forward to the southwest.

Travel Update 16

We just spent a wonderful week in the Dominican Republic visiting Kathleen's cousin Anna. It was short for an international trip but we did pack a lot in.

In Atlanta we dropped the kids off with a sitter and then headed to the airport. Since we weren't sure how long that would take we ended up at the airport pretty early and just walked around. While we were wandering a stranger offered us some pizza saying that they had bought too much. Given that we could figure out how he could have a motive to hurt us and we were inside airport security we decided it was probably safe to eat. Free dinner!

We flew in to the capital, Santo Domingo, and arrived fairly late. Luckily we had Anna to come pick us up at the airport, meeting us with fresh empanadas and fruit juice! After resolving an issue with the Uber that had been towed for illegally parking in a place Anna told him not to park, we headed into the capital to a fun hostel, called "Island Life", where we spent the first night.

 

We explored the hostel a little bit in the morning and it was quite cute. There was a central courtyard where breakfast was served that even included a small pool. They also had several hostel dogs. If we had been staying in Santo Domingo it definitely would have been a fun place to spend a couple of nights.

 

 

However, we didn't have very much time in Santo Domingo so we checked out fairly early and went to go walk through the historic district before catching our bus to the north. There is a lot of history in Santo Domingo, because it was the capital of the first Spanish Colony in the New World. As a matter of fact it was founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher Columbus's brother. There were lots of beautiful old churches and we also visited the first hospital in the New World.

 

Then we hopped on an Uber over to the bus stop where we caught the but to Sabana De La Mar in the northern part of the country. The view out of the bus was gorgeous, but the bus was comfortable enough to catch a few Z's since we hadn't gotten a lot sleep the night before.

When we got up to Sabana De La Mar we got a ride on a motor cycle out to our hotel on the outskirts of town. Then we walked back through town to meet a man name Halle for dinner. Halle was our designated tour guide for our adventures the next day in Los Haitises National Park. He was also with the company that had booked us our whale watching tour, so he was able to help us figure out the plans for the next couple of days. He was really friendly and we had a lot of fun with him, both at dinner over the course of the next day. And Sabana De La Mar was a cute little town that we had fun spending some time in.

Central Park in Sabana De La Mar

Hotel where we stayed while in Sabana De La Mar

Restaurant where we met Halle for dinner. 

  

After those two excited days in the north we had a travel day in which we took the same bus back down to the capital and then another huge bus down to Anna's region of Barahona. The long bus rides stop somewhere in the middle of the route to allow people to go to the bathroom and buy some food. The route down to Barahona stopped at an absolutely massive rest area that seemed like the dominican Buc-ee's, with much less branding.

 

Except the "express" busses, all of the buses will pick you up and drop you off anywhere along their route. So when the bus passed through Bombita we hopped off. We spent the next three day in Bombita getting to see how Anna lives her life.

On Wednesday morning Anna put us back on the early bus back to Santo Domingo. We managed to make it from the bus to a taxi and get to airport all by ourselves even with our limited Spanish. We were going to try to use Uber, which wouldn't have required any Spanish, but we got talked into getting driven by a taxi who wanted to take us for less money.

The DR is not without its share of issues, most of which can still be traced back to colonial days. Although the majority of the population has darker skin, people running for government positions almost always have lighter skin and will intentionally make themselves look whiter. The DR is also better off that its island neighbor Haiti. There were several of checkpoints on the way back from Anna's village to the capital where security officers are looking for "illegal immigrants". We were told that this generally plays itself out as them asking people who "look Haitian" (darker skin) to provide identification, and this was in fact how it played out in front of us. Of course, it didn't affect us personally, but it is something to be aware of when traveling there.

Overall we did have an amazing week in the Dominican Republic! To Kathleen it felt like where Guinea could be with about 20 more years of development, and the comparison drawing was constant. It also made her want to get back in the Global Health direction so that she can live abroad again. Andreas loved his time there too but is less sure about wanting to move there.