Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Today we drove 200 miles round trip, out to the town of Dixon, California, for... Lambtown! It's a weekend fair of all things... sheep.



Up front there were vendors pavilions full of yarn spinners selling yarn, spinners, and knitting tools. Out back, where we spent most of our time, were county fair type demonstrations of sheep dogs and sheep shearing.

The sheep dog demonstrations were put on by an organization called Redwood Empire Sheep Dog Association. As one of the speakers described it, RESDA was founded when a few sheep herders were sitting around on a slow day and one said to the other, "My dog's better than your dog."

And the second sheep herder fired back, "Oh, yeah? Prove it."

Canada travelog #24
Niagara Falls, ON · Wed, 27 Aug 2025. 11:30am.

I mentioned in my previous blog about Niagara Falls that one of my fondest memories from visiting when I was a kid was riding the Maid of the Mist boat tour down in the canyon. When Hawk and I visited her long-lost relatives in Toronto earlier in the week, and we told them about our plans to visit waterfalls in Ontario, they all told us we shouldn't miss the Maid of the Mist tour.

Funny little detail: the Maid of the Mist is a tour that operates from the US side of the border. There's an almost identical tour that operates from the Canadian side, where we are this week. It just doesn't have the catchy name "Maid of the Mist". It actually has a pretty stupid name, like "Niagara City Cruise", or something like that. I mean, WTF? It's not a city cruise. There's no city down here in the canyon. Just enormous waterfalls to look up at!

Well, either way, it was at the top of our list. We booked tickets a few nights ago for the cruise today.



One thing I remember about the Maid of the Mist cruise decades ago is that the tour operator gave us heavy-duty rain slickers, the kind you see ocean going fishermen wearing in old-timey pictures. Well, those expensive slickers are no more. Now they give passengers cheap but colorful trash bags. And no, it's not any better on the US side than here in Canada. The Americans just have blue trash bags.

As the boat neared the first falls and started to pick up a lot of spray I realized that my fancy camera wasn't going to do well. I packed it away under my trash bag poncho and relied on my iPhone for the rest of the trip. The good news is that means it was easy to record video of the falls.



Here's a 3 minute montage of the highlights of the cruise. We first go past the American side of the falls, then into the Horseshoe Falls which are split by the international border, then back past the American Falls as we return to dock.

As cheap as the trash bags were compared to the old-timey rain slickers of years ago, they got the job done. They kept our torsos dry as we got pounded with lots of spray for a few minutes. Our legs and feet took a good drenching, but that was okay as we wore quick-drying hiking clothes knowing we'd get sprayed by the mist, and it was warm out in the middle of the day anyway.

Canada travelog #4
Toronto, ON · Sat, 23 Aug 2025. 4pm.

This afternoon we met the first of Hawk's long-lost relatives in Canada to visit an art gallery. It turns out they were never "long lost" in the sense of having been stranded on a deserted island. It's more like her great-grandfather, when he emigrated from Latvia to the United States in the late 1800s or early 1900s, lost contact with his entire family. He told his descendants, when they asked about their relatives in the Old World, "They're all dead." 😳💀🤦 It's not clear why he told his children and grandchildren this. They believed him, though, as between the Russians and the Nazis it was totally plausible all their relatives in Latvia had been murdered by 1945.

Anyway, the art gallery. I thought touring a local art gallery together was a weird way to say, "Hey, our family has been split for 4 generations, let's get back together," but I decided I would try not to challenge things too much. Modern art has a way of inviting challenge, though. And by the time I was even near the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) I found it impossible to bite my acerbic tongue.

"We're next to the sculpture of an elephant," my inlaws texted me.



"This looks like a modern-art elephant," I texted back, including a picture of the above.

That sculpture, BTW, is titled "Large Two Forms". It's in Toronto's Grange Park next to the AGO.

My inlaws sent their address by naming the streets there were standing at the corner of instead of just saying "The elephant." When we met up I saw this elephant:



"So, somebody saw a pile of discarded leather chairs and cushions at a junkyard and thought, 'These look like an elephant!''" I asked.

Yes, they look like an elephant, my inlaws assured me.

"My elephant looks better," I challenged them. "Plus, I reject your orthodoxy that all elephants have four legs that reach from the ground all the way up to their bodies."

Modern art. 🧐🤪🤣

While Hawk's parents couldn't bring themselves to see things my way, her brother appreciated my view.

"Artists are, by-and-large, people with untreated mental illness or deep personality flaws who find wealthy patrons to fund their ideas... but not psychiatric help," I quipped.

"Shh!" Marty scolded. "You're saying the quiet part out loud!"

Marty then invited me to join him in analyzing a fire hose in one of the gallery rooms as if it were art.

"The loops of hose hung together show order in the face of chaos," I mused. "Though the negative space above the hoses is unbalanced by a tight border with the frame on the other three sides. The technique here is weak."

Do you think I'm being too hard on modern art? Well, consider this centerpiece in the room as we rounded the corner from the fire hose:



"It's as if the artist went camping and was equally inspired by both a picnic table and an elk, and decided to sculpt a combination of the two!" I said breathlessly.

"Either that, or this is a prop from a rejected scene in the 1982 movie The Thing."

Do you think those snarky ideas are too outlandish? Try this real explanation (paraphrased) from a placard in the room:



Now, tell me. If those three explanations, my two plus the one about Rodney King, were offered up in TV game show where a contestant is told 3 stories about an item, two of which are lies and only one of which is the truth, how likely would you pick Option C as the truth?

Also, maybe Canadian artists concerned about racism could confront their own country's racist history instead of banging their pots about the US. Our current toddler-president and his supporters notwithstanding, there are plenty in the US who understand and criticize the shameful parts of our history. It's a level of honest introspection I have seen in literally no other country I've visited.

North Coast Roadtrip travelog #8
Shelter Cove · Sun, 27 Jul 2025, 11:30am

Sunday morning after visiting the Black Sand Beach(es) just north of where we stayed for the night on the Lost Coast we drove back past the inn to the small marina on the south end of town at Shelter Cove.



The first thing you notice at Shelter Cove, after driving past an airstrip— I guess flying is an easier way to get here than driving the steep mountain roads— and a shockingly packed "campground" that is just a parking lot full of RVs and trailers parked next to each other, is a lighthouse. And it's a short light house. Like, the lamp in it (which has been removed) wouldn't have been much higher than about 22' (6.5 meters) above the ground. Why not a tall lighthouse like the classic ones seen all over the Atlantic coast and even around the Great Lakes?

The answer is explained in a historical marker outside the lighthouse. This lighthouse wasn't originally located here, on this flat field atop a low cliff. It was originally built for Cape Mendocino 30 miles north, where it sat atop a cliff 400' above the ocean. It didn't need to be tall since it was already high. Its light could be seen 28 miles out at sea.

The lighthouse went into operation at Cape Mendocino in 1868. It served for over 100 years before the Coast Guard decommissioned it due to its clifftop perch become unstable and becoming too expensive to maintain. The lighthouse was moved here and restored in the 1990s by a nonprofit group.



While we were at the cove we also climbed down the stairs to beach to see the cove. There are rocky shallows here where the innkeeper this morning boasted that, if our timing was right, we'd see all five kinds of starfish in the tide pools. Five kinds of starfish? WTF, they come in 4-, 6-, 8- and 10-armed varieties in addition to the standard 5 shape? 😂

Well, it was a bad day for starfish as we saw exactly zero of them in the tide pools. These were frankly very lame tide pools, just stinky water and weeds. It's nothing like the tide pools at Cabrillo National Monument in San Diego. And the grim weather here is nothing like that beautiful sunny day in February we enjoyed in San Diego.

Of course, it is a sunny day here. It's sunny above the fog layer. As one of my high school guidance counselors years ago loved to say on rainy/cloudy days, The sun is shining, you just can't see it! 😎

Oregon Cascades Travelog #13
Bend, OR - Wed, 2 Jul 2025, 9:30pm

Our Day 2 of this Oregon Cascades vacation has been a very full and fulfilling one. Yesterday was only a part day of vacation because it was also a work day (for me). But today we spent the whole day on leisure, leaving our hotel around 9am and not returning until after 9pm. In the middle we did 3 hikes, visited 6 waterfalls— or maybe more; I lost count— and drove 187 miles.

We left our room at the Days Inn in Bend around 9am. Yeah, we slept in a bit today. I swatted the snooze button until almost 7:30 then took my time getting ready after that. A curious thing is that when we were loading our car just before 9 we saw what late risers we were. The hotel parking lot, which was full last night, was now 75% empty, and half the remaining cars had doors and trunks open with people buzzing around them, loading bikes, coolers, etc. I'll add that to my notes about the Days Inn brand: this one, at least, is popular with the outdoors activity demographic. Unlike, say, the tweaker and drug dealer demographic.

Our first hike of the day was Tumalo Falls, not far outside of Bend to the west. I'll save my notes about the trek and pics of the waterfall for when I write a full blog about it. For now it's added to my backlog so I don't fall further behind in writing about this trip. Long story short, though, Tumalo was amazing. The main falls was almost 100' tall, and there were additional waterfalls higher up on the trail.

After hiking Tumalo it was lunchtime. Being not far from Bend was a plus because we could drive back into town to eat some real food instead of protein bars and water from our trail rations. We found a frou-frou burger place on the west side of town. Hawk got a custom burger made to her specifications with avocado, while I enjoyed a lamb burger with feta cheese and tzatziki sauce.

Fueled up for the next several hours we headed northwest on US 20 over the Santiam pass. Our destination was Downing Creek Falls. The trail description I found on a blog written by a local gal said it was hard to find. She did not lie. We overshot the unmarked dirt road twice. Then, once on it, it was a narrow two-track with no signs of where to go. Between her blog and notes on AllTrails.com we found the right place and enjoyed a stunning falls all to ourselves.

After Downing Creek we headed south back toward the pass and then down into the canyon of the headwaters of the McKenzie River. We then turn back east and headed back uphill toward the McKenzie Pass. Along the way we stopped to hike Proxy Falls. Proxy Falls has both an upper and lower falls on a loop trail. The lower falls is the bigger of the two but is hard to see from the trail. We made up for that by scrambling down a hill, off trail, then walking on logs across a creek, then wet-footing it out into the creek at the bottom of the falls to gaze up at it. Wow. I hope the photos I'll share soon turn out as amazing as the falls did in person.

As we finished hiking at Proxy Falls it was already getting late— almost 6:30pm. We thought we'd just drive up over the McKenzie Pass and down to Bend for dinner. Or maybe stop 20 minutes early in the small town of Sisters. But when we got to the top of the pass the views forced us to stop. Atop the pass, the winding little state highway traverses a lava field. There's nothing but lava rock visible in any direction— except for the tall volcanic peaks in the distance on all sides! And, at the top of the pass, there's an observatory... that's made out of volcanic rock. We couldn't resist stopping and seeing that in the golden light of the setting sun.

Somehow the stark beauty of the McKenzie Pass sated our appetites just long enough to drive back down into Bend. We picked out a Mexican restaurant for dinner and enjoyed plates of enchiladas there. Afterward we ran a few errands: buying groceries for the next day and filling the car with gas. We're back late this evening, but we're planning to get out early tomorrow for a big hike.

Italy Travelog #19
Santadi, Sardinia - Wednesday, 28 May 2025, 1pm

Our organized activity at Club today was a cave tour at the Is Zuddas Grotto in Sardinia. We could have opted for ruins and wine touring, mountain biking, or horseback riding instead but chose this because it was the most up our alley. As a serendipity we learned a lot about Sardinian history from our tour guide on the van ride over here, even though at the cave she handed us over to a cave specialist.



As we started into the cave I wondered if I'd chosen the wrong activity. I mean, limestone caves are basically all the same. And we've seen a lot of them. Maybe we should have done the ruins and wine tasting tour instead... though Hawk doesn't/can't drink, so that's why.



One interesting formation we saw is "Medusa". ...Okay, maybe that's more interesting linguistically than geologically because "medusa" is the name in Romance languages for jellyfish. It's like only we stupid anglophones have a different name for jellyfish that doesn't evoke the Greek myth of Medusa. And this formation does look more like a jellyfish than a demonic woman with snakes on her head.



Anyone who's visited a bunch of limestone caverns probably looks at the photo above and puzzles for a moment, "Wait, what's going on here?" That's because stalactites and stalagmites are virtually always oriented vertically, their shapes driven by gravity. Well, what happened here is that a block of stalactites fell from the ceiling. They're at an angle because that's how the block landed when it fell to the floor of the cave. And note it fell, like, millions of years ago, because of the size of stalagmites growing atop it.



Above I noted that stalactites and stalagmites virtually always form vertically. There's a category of stalactites that don't. They're called helictites, and they can grow in crazy shapes, thin tendrils extending sideways, curving around, forming curls and "S" bends, and even forking.

"What does Science know about why helictites form in such eccentric shapes?" I politely asked the guide, who'd been getting a bit frustrated about the parallel lesson in limestone formations I'd been whispering to a colleague who'd never been in a cave before.

Strangely I'd never though to ask this before. I mean, other cave guides have pointed out helictites, so I've known what they are, by definition, but not the science behind them. To his great credit, this guide had an education answer.

First, there are multiple theories, the guide explained. That's classic science right there. Science includes uncertainty, and true scientists acknowledge when/where it exists— an unfortunate fact that is frequently exploited by demagogues nowadays to dismiss science as wild theories that are merely personal opinion, all equally valid.

The leading theory, which our guide holds, is that helictites develop in eccentric formations because their rate of water flow is so slow that water evaporates quickly. Remember, all these cave formations are driven by the action of water responding to gravity. Rain water seeping through small cracks in the rocks above dissolves limestone. It flows downward along existing formations and forms droplets at the bottom. Rock re-crystalizes from these droplets. But with helictites it's thought that the water flow is so minimal that the water doesn't even form a droplet; it evaporates before it gets to that stage. Thus limestone deposits may form on the side of an existing limestone structure, or— via capillary action— at its upper tip.

Italy Travelog #10
Rome - Sunday, 25 May 2025, 5pm

This afternoon after we finished sightseeing in and around the Roman Forum we walked to the Jewish ghetto. Rome's Jewish population is small; it's estimated at 28,000 across all of Italy. But it's there. There's a historic temple there, a museum/memorial to those murdered by Nazis in WWII and, around the corner, a row of restaurants. Both Jewish and Italian culture are all about "Eat, eat!" 😅



A friend recommended a particular restaurant she'd been to years ago. I think it was featured on Guy Fieri's show. (They've got his picture on their website). Unfortunately it was closing as we arrived. No problem; there are literally six other restaurants on the same block, plus many on other streets. We cruised past several of them reading the menus and settled down at one that had a good combination of fresh pasta and meat dishes.



We shared an appetizer of hummus and pita. For mains Hawk had a bowl of spaghetti pomodori while I enjoyed pasta and "goulash". It was a tomato based sauce with braised beef. It was delicious.

Italy Travelog #8
Palatine Hill, Rome - Sunday, 25 May 2025, 1:30pm

Have you seen Caesar's Palace? No, not the casino in Las Vegas; I mean the real Caesar's Palace. The original, in Rome.

Well, I was just there, atop the Palatine Hill in Rome, and I can barely say I saw it, either. That's because Caesar's Palace, called Domus Augustus (the Home of Augustus), which was built almost 2,000 years ago is today in ruins. And even the ruins haven't always been well cared for.



The palace fell into disuse after the fall of the Roman Empire then crumbled. Many of its stones were stolen—or "repurposed" to build or decorate buildings elsewhere, either in Rome or overseas. Plus there was natural deterioration and an earthquake. Together these left the palace not even a shell of its former self; more of an outline of where something amazing once stood. And it got covered over in dirt.

The ruins were rediscovered in the late 17th and early 18th centuries by wealthy landowners. They did some of the excavation and began "repurposing" all over again. They replaced several of the original limestone and marble walls with 17th century bricks, and turned the area into an open-air garden.

Italy Travelog #6
Rome - Sunday, 25 May 2025, 10:40am

This morning we've headed out on what will be a busy day touring Rome, much of it on foot— the way we like to tour. We started with a walk from our hotel down to the nearest metro station, about a mile away. We could've taken a hotel shuttle, free, to the center of town. But as we still would've had to take a taxi from there to the Colosseum we opted to walk to the train and take the train to the Colosseum station. Riding transit is also part of how we like to tour. We like to see the city like locals. Plus, the train was just 1.50€ each, less than a short taxi ride from the shuttle stop would've cost.



The walk down to the Cipro station was fun. We saw a lot of residential Rome on our way down the hill. One thing that's interesting is how winding and jumbled together everything is. And this is a part of Rome that was built post-1950, so it's not like the streets are based on ancient cow paths. And while the streets zigzag back and forth climbing the hill our hotel sits atop, there are numerous sidewalks/stairs for pedestrians only that shortcut the route down to the train station.

It's interesting to see how close together everything is here. And the cars parked along the street are tiny. An American-style compact car— there are some of them here—looks huge by comparison. Another interesting bit we saw is that there are apparently community trash cans. Every block or so there's a line of dumpsters with labels for trash, recyclables, food waste, etc. It looks like people walk their own trash out to the community bins. That makes trash pickup simpler— and reduces the clutter of every house and apartment building having its own trashcans near the street.



From the Cipro station we rode a train into downtown and changed at the Termini station, pictured above. From there it was just a few stops south to the Colosseum. Ah, how much easier it is to get around Rome than in ancient times!



The Colosseum is right across the street from the metro stop.

We arrived early for our 10:30 tour so we walked around to see the outside of the Colosseum from different angles.



I also used different cameras. For today I'm carrying both my Fujifilm dedicated camera, which captures beautiful, rich colors as in the photo immediately above, as well as my always-in-my-pocked iPhone.

Part of our reason for walking around different sides of the Colosseum was we were trying to find where we were supposed to meet our guide. Apple Maps and Google Maps both sent us on wild goose chases to find the where "Colosseum Plaza 33" was. Different wild goose chases. It turned out our guide was meeting us right at the metro stop. There's a tiny "33" stone above the metro exit. It would've been nice for them to tell us, "Meet us right outside the metro station" before 10:35am.

Georgia Travelog #6
Savannah, GA - Tuesday, 8 Apr 2025, 4pm

As of a few days ago we weren't sure what we'd do today, Tuesday, in Savannah. The weather forecast looked not-so-great, with cool weather and a chance of rain. Well, the weather forecast improved as of late last night. The storms passed through quickly yesterday— though they did make visiting the beach less fun— leaving today with clear and gently warm weather. We decided to do another day of self-guided touring on foot in Savannah today. And what a great day it turned out to be for that!

We started with a simple plan. It was as simple as 1-2-3-: One, search "things to do in Savannah" on the web. Two, filter out from that reasonably short list things we a) already did Sunday or b) generally don't like to do. An example of the latter is anything that feels too touristy... like ride a garishly painted tour bus around town. Three, pick a place to have lunch nearby whatever's left to start with lunch.

So we drove downtown at started with lunch at Clary's. It's a 1950s-ish diner serving a wide menu. And unlike many of the restaurants we turned down in our searching, it's not a gentrified place opened a few years ago designed  to look like an idealized 1950s diner, it's a legit 1950s diner with staff who look like they've been working there for 20+ years. Plus some fuzz balls hanging from the A/C vents that look like they've been there at least that long, too. 🤣

After lunch we walked to nearby Forsyth Park.



Like I noted on Sunday, downtown Savannah is studded with small city parks. We actually passed through a small park, about 1 square block in size, just walking to Forsyth Park. Forsyth is much larger. It has long promenades and a few fountains and memorials.



On the promenades to either side of the Forsyth Park Fountain (yes, that's its name) were artists and panhandlers plying their crafts. We chatted with a few of the artists. I met one who's from France and said she likes Savannah because of all these parks in it. "It's like a European city," she said. "Nowhere else in the US feel like home like this."

The other thing we'd picked out to visit today in our 1-2-3 planning exercise was the Basilica of St. John the Baptist. On the way to Forsyth Park, though, we found another house of worship we were curious to visit— the Synagogue of Mikve Israel.



Jewish synagogues aren't as common as Christian churches, or even specifically Catholic churches. But we seem to have a way to find them unintentionally when walking around. It's like Hawk has Jewdar (Jewish radar). Or maybe it's those Jewish mind-control space lasers MAGA-world was ranting about a few years ago. We waited a bit until the temple was open to visitors and then paid to take a guided tour.

This building dates to 1876 but the congregation Mikve Israel was founded in 1733. It's one of the oldest continuous Jewish congregations in the US. The founding families were immigrants from London, most of whom were descendants of Jews who fled Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition.

This house of worship is unusual, architecturally, for a Jewish synagogue. It looks like a Christian church! And not just outside but also inside, where the sanctum is a narrow, high ceiling nave with a transept (so it's in the shape of a cross!), and there's a pipe organ and a choir loft. The guide explained it's because the architects available in 1876 when the congregation was rebuilding after a fire were only familiar with building Christian churches, and neo-Gothic design was also all the rage. So they made it their own and also became the first Jewish congregation to have musical accompaniment with their singing.



When we visited the Basilica of St. John the Baptist later in the day it was hard not to see the similarities. I mean, the religious content of what's in side is different; one's a Jewish temple, the other a Catholic cathedral. But they have such similar shape (though the cathedral is larger) with the same iron pillars inside painted to look like marble (a common neo-Gothic technique) and stained glass windows all around.

One thing I found refreshing about this Catholic church is that it was open to visitors. So many other historical Catholic churches we've wanted to visit charge a fee just to walk in— and many even explicitly say that visitors are not welcome. So the fact that this one was not only free of charge but also free of "Thou shalt not..." rules for visitors posted on signs around the doors, was refreshing. Even better, a few volunteers inside gladly answered questions from visitors like us instead of sternly shushing us as if merely attempting to speak were a profanity. It's like it's a church that welcomes people outside the faith who come with curiosity and a desire to learn. Imagine that!