On the Road

In Europe the best way to get around is by train–and we take the ICE train from Frankfurt to Paris.  This train reaches peak speeds of 315 k/h!  And wait til you pass on oncoming ICE train–wow!  We’re in Paris in about 5 hours.

Paris was overwhelming–we spent a total of two days there–and were mainly sick with the flu.  Mr. Eiffel must have owned an erector set when he was a little boy–we’re awed by the amount of steel here (and the long lines).  What a massive structure.  Our favorite time was walking around Montmartre.

Here we stumble across a street musician; aka “organ grinder.”   I spent last winter rebuilding an Estey portable pump organ and love this music.  We tipped him generously and continued to walk up the hill.

Our next stop was Lyon where we became couchsurfers hosted by a very nice chap named Nick.  Martina found him on the website and we thoroughly enjoyed our evening with him–he is an expert climber/extreme skier and loves climbing in Yosemite.  We will certainly invite him to Alaska!   You rock, Nick!

Being a country boy-camper type, it’s time to move on south to Provence!

It was here that we fell in love with France and most of all our French hosts.  Le Degoutaud is a 100 acre B&B run by the parents of our last summer’s guest, Tibo (see previous post).  We were really in for a treat.  Besides a well deserved mention in Rick Steve’s guidebook, they spoil their guests with home-made apricot nectar, preserves, tree ripe olives, & figs, and of course, locally produced wines.  Le Degoutaud is run by Veronique and Pierre and Pierre’s parents, Hubert and Josefine and we adopt them into our family immediately.  What hospitality!!

How can you top this?  Tibo takes us on a personal tour, through the vineyards around Suzette, and the villages NE of Avignon and Orange.  We drive up Mont Ventoux and see the tip of Mt. Blanc.  I acquire a strong French accent,  and a desire to sample the local wines.

Some of the 100 acres.

Meet Jean David and….

….Chateau Jean David

Martina and Tibo take an afternoon catnap by the pool ala Maxfield Parrish.

Last summer, Tibo and I began an outdoor kitchen here in Kupreanof.  Here he explains the finer points of French country cuisine.    A traditional Provencal dinner is planned this evening.

The outdoor kitchen is fired up, wine arrives along with the best that Provence can offer in culinary treats.  A night never to forget;  and such wonderful hosts!

What else can you wish for…. but a drive to the French Riviera and the southern Mediterranean coastline. Tibo, ever our faithful guide, takes us south to Marseilles and then eastward along the French coast towards Italy. Simply beautiful!

We drive up the tortuous roads above Cassis to the limestone cliffs where climbers prepare to descend.  In the old days, we climbed up, not down but it’s a new world.  Amazing exposure.

Well, I’m dizzy so we drive down to sea level and have lunch in a Mediterranean seacoast town (there are too many to count or remember). Can you imaging rowboats kept this nice in Seattle?  Never.  These Mediterranean French are perhaps the happiest ever.  Next stop–Languedoc-Lunas where we pick mushrooms and enjoy perfect French hospitality!  Stay tuned.

 

In mid September Martina and I decide to revisit Bavaria and to partake in the local customs there–namely Octoberfest.  If you haven’t been to Octoberfest in Munich, you haven’t enjoyed beer.  Off we go via Iceland–pictured here is Reykjavik’s huge church built in the center of the city on the highest hill–very unique architecture and with a huge pipe organ in place.

This is a great way to visit Europe.  We flew from Toronto to Reykjavik and spend three days getting rid of jet lag and checking out the local customs.  Reykjavik is a beautiful town with friendly people–we’ll go back.  Icelandic Air offers non-penalty airfare stops for up to a week’s stay, and cuts the airtime in two shorter flights.  You can’t lose.

Octoberfest is simply two weeks of madness.  Grab your lederhosen and let’s go!

People from all over the world congregate in ten huge tents.  Each tent is about the size of two football fields and houses about 7000 beer drinkers with outdoor seating for another 2500.

Believe it or not, we run into people we know–and the beer isn’t bad either.  Wow!  I want to come back the next night and we do.  I haven’t seen this much cleavage since I studied the San Andreas Fault as a geology student 40 years ago!

Oh boy–time to work off all that beer drinking so off we go on a hike in the very south of Bavaria on the Austrian border near the town of Brannenburg.  I expect to see Julie Andrews waltz out behind the next tree with her kids in tow.  Beautiful countryside–the clouds clear from the valleys below about the time our heads clear from Octoberfest.

We work up an appetite and stop at the Viktualienmarkt right next to Marienplatz in downtown Munich.  Every grape here has it’s place at this display.  In fact, everything has it’s place here; every lawn is mowed, every house painted–not a gutter or shingle out of place.  This is Bavaria.

After 10 days in Munich, it’s off to Paris via the ICE high speed trains!  Stay tuned….

 

Our Fall roadtrip begins again in Orlando where we pick up our trailer and immediately head for the Blue Ridge Parkway enroute to Boston.  The fall colors are supposed to be fantastic and we aren’t disappointed…..

Before leaving  Orlando, we got clobbered with a big rainstorm which dumped 15″ of rain on our tails as we fled north.

Only in Photoshop can you make a big storm cloud look like a nuclear explosion.  It’s time to drive north!

Before we  enter the Parkway, we visit one of our poster sites:  Fort Marion as it was called in the 30s when the WPA poster was created–using the British name.  Today it is  PC correct as Castillo de San Marcos:

Here’s the 30s poster–a beautiful poster design.  There is a shortage of eastern park WPA poster designs so this is indeed a rare poster, yet this park won’t sell it–but Ranger Doug does right here.

Martina with canon–not the camera…..  Incredible history here!

We lumber our way northward stopping at campgrounds on our way up Appalachia.  Here “Ranger Doug” can’t resist playing ranger again–he’s interviewing the modern camper replete with fifth wheel, piggy-backed “Smart Car” towed by a big-rig.

Above is the location of our 75th anniversary Blue Ridge Parkway poster….

….and below is our poster design:

Appalachia….truly a relaxed way of life.

Hiking trail with autumn colors….

Martina models in a neighboring Airstream–art-westeaux.  Never seen such an interior complete with a mounted bull’s head…..

every campground has it’s unique visitors….

This is Mabry Mill–quite a scenic stop and quite functional with a river driven waterwheel.  Essentially, this was the source of power for 200 years, before electricity.  This mill still grinds flour which is for sale.

We drive out the north end of Blue Ridge Parkway shortly after and skirt a storm in Shenandoah arriving in Washington DC for a 1/2 hour meeting with the Director of the National Park Service, Jon Jarvis.  My mission is to host an exhibition of all original WPA national park posters for the 2016 NPS Centennial at the Smithsonian–we have now found 13 of 16 known originals.  And Jon is certainly enthusiastic about my mission.

Since finding one castaway poster in 1973, I’ve republished the historical set of 16 parks plus contemporary designs for those parks that didn’t subscribe to the WPA’s federal poster project.  We now publish over 35 park designs and have  sold over 100,000 reproductions of this fabulous poster collection.  Our goal is to hang a WPA poster in every home in America.

Here Martina and I have finally arrived in Paterson N.J. the location of America’s newest National Park, just signed into law by President Obama–Paterson Falls National Park.   PFNP is located just 17 miles west of New York City at the site of a 77′ high/300′ wide falls that powered America’s first industrial town.

Founded by Alexander Hamilton, Geo. Washington’s Secretary of Treasury, he realized the industrial opportunity here as opposed to relying on the British.  General Washington camped on the fall’s edge during the Revolutionary War….  Quite interesting.

This hydro power allowed the Colt Firearms factory to be located here–also most of the American railroad rolling stock including the engines for the construction of the Panama Canal.

This park will take several years to mature with restoration and interpretation of many buildings and manufacturing plants.

Keep your eye on this place.

We keep driving north to Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.

With about 500-600 restored wooden boats!  Seattle has how many?  Maybe a dozen.  The Wawona was just chainsawed up before risking sinking in South Lake Union….  Shame on the NW Seaport for 40 years of supervised neglect!   Here’s how Mystic restores vessels:

This is a 6 year $8.2M restoration of the last whaling vessel left.  As a former board member of the Virginia Five,  I was proud!

OK–time to store our trailer (near Boston) and jump on an Amtrak train for a relaxed trip to Seattle–just barely beating a huge snowstorm in the NE.  Here we pose beside the modern “Bambi” airstreams and the larger goliaths.  I’ll stick with our 13′ footer….

Enroute across the Northern US, this photo was taken at sunset near Au Claire, Wisconsin where my great grandparents immigrated from Norway–no wonder they later moved to Bellingham!

And this was probably the very same train they rode on….   Minot ND.

Incredibly, we have no photos of our ferry trip from Bellingham to Petersburg–perhaps it’s too mundane for us after dozens of transits.  We arrive late at night to find our home (here, our garden fence) smothered in snow and 41F inside!  Time to fire up our masonry heater and move back in!  Stay tuned.