This Makes No Sense At All

When Susan and I are training, or these days, when Susan is still recovering and my body needs to walk, we have a local walk of about ten miles. The incentive is a local bakery, five miles away. A croissant and a coffee primes us for the return. The bakery is at 300 feet elevation, we are at 1100, so mostly down for the first half, and up all the way back. This is a two or three times a week trip, so we seek out little variations, always keeping in mind the distance to the nearest restroom. That means keeping tabs on any construction going on midway either direction, and the associated porta-potty. One of the variants goes down the bear route, where three wood sculptured bears are to be along the way.   This last walk was my day for yards with character or at least interest: They continue up the driveway, representing many happy hours We are having a drought year, so this brown metal sculpture blends right in. A block or two further on This rout...

This sock had elasticized top Chances are, you hot weather hikers have seen something like this. That's my leg you're looking at, yesterday's view, and not much of a concern to me since I knew what it was. The first encounter was a scare - on Susan's leg while hiking in France, and we had no idea what it was. Just it came on while hiking in very hot weather, and was right under the elasticized band of her sock, warm to the touch and puffy, but not painful. A wider, more brilliant band than you see here on my leg. A few days later, the whole foot started swelling in a major way, all the way from toes to half way up the shin, and extremely painful. That ended up with us going to emergency, where a severe infection was diagnosed, treatable with antibiotics, but we had to cancel the trip and it took two weeks for the swelling to subside. The doctors were unable to determine point of entry for the infection. They did x-rays for hairline fractures - none. Final though...

I love hiking and traveling. Each trip brings experiences I want to remember forever. I'm sort of shy though, about assuming others will share the same feelings. Galapagos is the exception, and possibly Torres del Paine . If a trip to the Galapagos Islands is in your realm of possibilities, do your best to make it happen. The Galapagos part of our expedition was an organized two week trip by Wilderness Travel . We added on Otavalo and Quito, Ecuador on our own, since we had gone so far anyway. Since we've got back, I've looked at a number of Galapagos trip offerings from various companies. There is a huge range of content, and I'll make some comments later on what to look for in a trip. But... first look at a video I put together that is just a series of images from the trip, set to music. Watch it and then decide whether to read further: Galapagos 2014 - two weeks on the Mary Anne Almost the entire Galapagos Islands are in the National Park, and tourism is stri...