Chaos Leaves Town

The first 2 months in Orlando passed quickly and I was enjoying the wonderful sunny and mild weather. And the Seahawks were heading for the Superbowl. I entertained myself by watching previous games of the season, and last years Superbowl over and over. I also attempted to find a Sports bar…no luck nearby. I did finally find one that would be a 20 minute drive that looked like it would be lots of fun to watch the SB at but could not find a ride. Lost Lake is so far out in the boondocks that it takes 15 minutes to get practically anywhere. So a taxi ride was way too expensive. The town of Apopka, which I’m only 4 miles from, has a population of 45,000 so it’s weird that there’s no taxi there. Every taxi I called, even Uber, would tell me it was too expensive for them to leave Orlando and come clear out to Apopka. Orlando was where the money was for taxi drivers.

I asked around the RV park and people did have plans for the SB, but none were heading to a sports bar. And buses out here took so long to get anywhere, and nowhere near where I wanted to go so they were out of the question. Sure, I could drive my RV, I’ve done that before when I wanted to see a game, but eventually I said screw it, I’ll just stay home and watch by myself. So I had my own little SB party. The RV park was like a ghost town, so many people were gone somewhere else for SB parties.

And I also tried to find a reason to go to Epcot center. You guys know that a day ticket is $108??!! Wow. The last time I went to a Disney style park like that it was only $50 odd bucks. That’s how long it’s been. Food would be hugely expensive there. Also parking would cost me $50 because of the size of my rig…I checked. So we’re talking about a $150 to $200 day. A bus from nearby goes right there, but takes 8 hours of travel time. One way. Yikes. But I really, really considered going. Also, I planned a visit to Key West. But each time I got it arranged, something came up, one time it even got all cold, windy, and wet there on the week I planned a visit. Damnit! So basically, I didn’t go anywhere in Orlando, or Florida expect this one RV park. Hurump.

And soon it was February, and the Superbowl, featuring the Seahawks. My team!! And they really looked like they had it in the bag, didn’t they? WTF??!! Passing on the goal line with plenty of time and 3 huge running backs on the roster?? What the hell where you thinking!? Damn. OK, done with football until next August.

Before I knew it, it was March. I’m sitting at my picnic table after taking some pictures of my windows I’d just worked on, and this wasp lands next to my left elbow. It’s carrying a green worm it’s size…that’s still wiggling. I’m watching it while it just sits there…resting I think. After about a minute, it flies over to my right side and plugs the worm into this hole. Then it acts like it’s stinging the worm…and depositing an egg. Damn. Then I realize this whole time, I’ve been sitting there like a dummy watching this drama unfold with my camera in my hands! Got this one shot.

Still had pretty good weather. But I was still here after almost 5 months because the poor bastards up north had one of the severest winters on record. It was the topic on the nightly news for months. I wanted to visit the gulf states for sure, but not when the roads were all icy, and it snowed 2-3 times a week up there. The rest of the time, it’s sleet, or heavy rain. But always cold.    Continue reading →

Since I don’t have a schedule, I’m staying at the Harvest Moon RV park in Adairsville, Georgia for a few days instead of just overnight because…why not. Weather was beautiful, park was very nice, I needed to get my laundry done, the usual. WiFi sucked but…meh, I’ll survive I suppose. Adairsville has a humid subtropical climate most of the year. But not while I visited. Very nice. During the days, 70’s, at night in the 50’s. Adairsville used to be a small Cherokee village until they were forced out in 1838 by land thieves based on the Indian relocation act. An illegal bill that was struck down by the Supreme Court after the Cherokee people sued for redress. The Cherokee were known as one of the Civilized Tribes as they had early on in the 1780’s adopted and tried to integrate into ‘white’ society. President Andrew Jackson ignored the SCOTUS ruling in favor of the Indians and forced marched them on the ‘Trail of Tears’ on which nearly 5,000 died. Asshole.

There’s hardly any Indian history left around here, after it was brutally destroyed by the land grabbers that flooded this area after the Indians were forced out. There is, however, a pioneer graveyard right behind this RV park.

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As I was preparing to just head south, I decided, hell, maybe it would be fun to stop by Fairfield, Iowa, where Shelly had gone to college, gotten married, was the star of the local production of “Once upon a Mattress”, and lived for many years. She’s been gone for years, but still has friends there.

Perhaps I’ll visit one of her and my current internet friends, Cat. Cat still lives there in a big ol’ house, it was on my way, and Fairfield was near where I’d have to stop for the night anyway. A quick phone call, and yes, I could stay out in front of her house for the night. So, I visited with them after arriving, we went out for dinner, I crashed in my RV out front of their house, and next morning, was back on the highway. And the storm had slipped south again. As I was leaving town, it wasn’t all that bad. Most of the rain had been earlier in the morning.

But here you can see the clouds are going to be with me for a while. Getting close to St. Louis and it’s not let up that much. It’s only been ‘sprinkles’ though.

My plan was to find a low cost RV park on the outskirts of St. Louis, and take public transportation into town to visit the Arch. I’d seen it from the freeway while passing in past trips, but never gone up the arch. Sounded like a fun thing to do though. I’d spent some time online at Cat’s place to find this RV park near St. Louis. I should have taken longer.

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My daughter, Michelle, had moved…from Walla Walla, where she’d been living for several years since her divorce, to Golden Valley, Minnesota. She’d met a guy online and ended up moving to Minnesota to be with him. Ain’t that sweet?

Anyway, I leave Walla Walla early morning after the nice visit with family, and head north. I only visited with family for one day though, because by now it’s September 26th and I wanted to get to Minnesota before the weather turned wintry anywhere along the route. According to the long term weather predictions, I had the best chance of an uneventful trip if I traveled at this time. I headed northeast actually, since my mapping program said that’s the best route. I’d get to go through Prescott, Dayton, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, and beyond. And I’d get to travel through country I’d not seen in 40 years. And just one days drive would get me clear to Great Falls, Montana or there abouts.

Wheat field just outside Walla Walla.

We have windmills here too.

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After resting up at my brother’s house just a couple weeks, I was surprisingly ready to travel again. At least in my comfortable RV. Pretty happy I wouldn’t have to live out of a carry on bag for a long while. I was ready to head north to avoid the heat of the desert. Off I went on June 30th. By July 1st, was enjoying the cool air of the Mt. Shasta area and later that day, I was all set up at Rolling Hills RV Park in Fairview, Oregon. Not my favorite RV park in the country, but it’s just so damned conveniently placed near my friends.

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Well, folks, these are my last few days in Europe…

Here I was in the suburbs of Dublin, in an apartment built in the 1850’s for coal miners, with nothing touristy nearby, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the apartment. I was mentally and physically exhausted by travel. Living out of a carry on bag had it’s advantages of course, but it’s limitations as well. While I was in Paris I thought it might be cool to go to the west coast of France, rent a house and hole up there for a month, but figured I might miss out on visiting all the other places I’d been since. Prague, Berlin, London, Bath. So I’d kept moving. And eventually, that takes some travel enthusiasm out of you. My host has a large video library and I ended up doing nothing but watch movies and surf the net.

While web surfing, I discover there’s a road in Northern Ireland named Ballymongan. That is interesting because I was just doing some random searches for my family name, Mongan, and found that it links to Ballymongan. With the suggestion in articles I’m reading that’s where my family hails from originally. Back in the states I’d spent 100’s of hours researching the families Irish roots but had never stumbled onto Ballymongan. I had traced the surname Mongan back to the year 630, but had never pinpointed an area of origin this concisely. Ballymongan is basically just an ‘area’ of Ireland now. The family is fairly scattered. Three hour drive NW of Dublin, and less than an hours drive due east of Donegal.

Back in the early 1960s, one of my distant cousins had traveled to Ireland and came back with pictures of what they said was the Mongan family castle. I remember looking at them, and it’s as you would expect, the pictures showed a ruin. Still, if I could get over there to Ballymongan and perhaps find a long lost relative, maybe visit the castle if it’s still there, that would be cool.

So I ask my host if he’d have the time to drive me over there. I’d pay for everything of course. Unfortunately, he’s too busy to make the trip. So close, yet so far.

I start trying to find some means of transport over there that would work and find an AirBnB apartment to stay at…but travel exhaustion was hitting me hard. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. My European trip was over. I just wanted to get back home, sleep for a week, and then rest for a month without traveling anywhere. To hell with it. I checked ticket prices for Irish Air and bought a ticket for a couple days on that gave a $1,000 break on the price over a flight tomorrow. When my host got home later, I asked if I could stay another night (I’d only booked 2 nights). Necessary for that airline ticket price discount. But turned out he had another guest showing up the day I wanted. So back online, I find a nice hotel that was having a price special and reserved a room. This would put me right downtown Dublin so I could do a walkabout whenever I wished while I stayed there.

2nd Day in Dublin…

Next morning, showered, had breakfast, cleaned up my messes, locked up and dropped my key in the mailbox slot as I trudged off into town. And as I passed a gentleman my age behind his fence, I asked where the nearest bus stop was? He stares at me for a few moments, mumbles a couple words I couldn’t make heads or tails out of,  turns and walks back into his house. What the hell? I had my Android tablet set up with GPS mapping and decided to hoof it instead of taking the bus. It wasn’t all that far. That would give me more of a personal view of Dublin and her people.

Soon I was near the river, just a couple blocks distant. My GPS mapping was working fine as I walked into a newly rebuilt area with fancy condos, a hotel, government buildings, a small park, the works. All spruced up. Without a single fukin’ street sign on any street corner, or on any building like they do in so many cities. WTF? This huge area had absolutely no help for someone trying to find an address. There weren’t even any building numbers I could find. And my GPS got confused around this time. I think it was because of being surrounded by highrises.

Now, I knew I was only a few blocks away from where I wanted to be, no biggie, but it would have helped if the city of Dublin would have required building contractors to install street signs in this large area of town. Wow. I did find a city crew working in an alley and I got to talk to the foreman a bit. I was laughingly complaining about the lack of street signs after I’d gotten directions from him and he didn’t believe me. Until we walked into that new area and I pointed it out to him. He’d never noticed. Funny.

Following his easy directions, I was soon right where I wanted to be. This is the main drag and the hotel is nearby. I haven’t been yet, I’m approaching it though. Dragging my bags.

This statue is on O’Connell Street, downtown. Sort of the city center. A way on is O’Connell bridge that has some famous history. But, remember I was sick of traveling so I didn’t bother to investigate the history of Dublin.  Everything is nice and modern. They even have a trolley system.

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Since I now had a full blown cold, I wasn’t going to travel, mainly because my next junket was to fly to Dublin. If you’ve ever flown, you know the pounding headache you can get if you have a cold at the same time. So that was off the table. Besides, it’s fun, interesting, and informative here in Bath. Really enjoying my stay.

I pleaded with the nice gurl who always seemed to be at the hostel’s sign in desk to get me into a room where there aren’t too many people so as to protect as many as I could from the germs I was spewing out fairly regularly as the cold symptoms peaked. She did her best but the 4rd night I was there I ended up in a 10 person room as the smaller rooms had been booked by groups of people traveling together. My bunk was a bottom one, in a fairly large room, and apart from the main grouping of bunks. So that helped, and it was her doing. As the roommates came in downstairs, she’d warn them about my cold and I did the same up in the room. Yes, I did try to get a private room but those too were booked. Some of them weeks in advance so it wouldn’t have been fair to those people for the hostel to cancel on them. And, I did keep my Nyquil very close at hand and keep a cover over my mouth as much as possible. Gah. No fun.

Since I spent so much time in the hostel’s seating/dining area, thought I show some pictures. I’m on a not-very-comfortable vinyl couch. Nearby is an electrical outlet for my tablet, and a handy cup of coffee. The bar and kitchen are off in the direction of that blue sign above the entryway. They have a few big screen TVs and I soon found that this bar was fairly popular with the local Aussies who would come in here en masse, packing the joint while they all watched satellite broadcasts of their favorite rugby team that had reached the finals back home. That had happened two nights ago, and was to happen again tonight. I didn’t mind of course, it’s kind of fun being around a bunch of fans whooping it up during a game.  It was funny, but I knew what the rugby schedule was by now, and a guy with a thick Aussie accent who had just arrived to stay in the hostel, as he passed me he muttered something about missing the rugby match. I was able to point out that no, he hadn’t. That it was on the tellie, here, tonight. Gained a new friend and someone to talk to for a time.

Don’t remember what the hell this is. Looks like part of the hostel though.

Oh, wait, yes, I do remember. They had a basement club. This is the main room early on so there’s no one here. Big screen TV. Sort of looks like a speakeasy.

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Today is going to be a thrill ride into the English countryside. Really. I’d booked myself on a countryside tour with Mad Max Tours and was pretty excited about it. If it hadn’t been for my cold, now in it’s 5th or 6th day, I’d have been much more enthused. We are heading for Glastonbury, Cotswolds, & Stonehenge! Yea!

The company uses a minibus which seats 16. I’m to meet the bus just a couple hundred yards from the hostel, but first, I walked over to the Avon to try to get a nice picture of the tour boat I was on the day before. Unfortunately, the boat wasn’t there this early in the morning. And I don’t know where they hide. I didn’t see any of the big tour boats moored anywhere along the river when I took the tour yesterday.

This V shaped water step is for water retainment. It’s function is to back up water so it’s deep enough in this area for boats. The slack water on the left fronts the weir gate and the tour boat parks there along the wall in the slack water. When the Avon is in flood, they open that gate to let excess water run off. It’s a fairly modern fix, even though the metal works of the gate look aged. The Romans had to raise part of the baths at one point because of the recurrent floods, so flooding was an ongoing problem for thousands of years in this area. I’m a little curious about why the Romans, famed for their excellent water engineering skills, didn’t do something extraordinary about the flooding to protect the baths. Perhaps they did, but the evidence has been destroyed.

Water works like this helped maintain a constant volume of water flow so that the downstream water wheels, used for powering industry, had consistent power. There were a few water wheels in this upper portion of the river as well but the damming slowed the flow upstream from here, making the downstream section a better choice for siting a water wheel. I didn’t visit any mills but I believe there were several in Bath downstream from here during medieval times.

I had enough time to get a better shot of the Grand Parade. I am disappointed that I can’t find a history of it. I’m pretty sure that the tour boat guide told us it had been built for women only, and may have been built atop a Roman walkway. The story was fascinating, but that’s all I remember about it. I did find this info on the Parade Gardens. I’ve included the link here because of the excellent photos of the area. The Gardens are just beyond the buildings in this shot, that tree there peeking up on the left is actually in the gardens. And just beyond that is the Abbey Hotel where I would meet the tour bus.

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Next morning, it was obvious that the cold had taken strong hold of my immune system and was shaking it by the boots. Laughing in the face of my do nothing white cells. Dribbling out various orifices like columns of soldiers on the way to attack more innocents. Blah. Hack, cough.

I seem to be drifting into hyperbole here, it actually wasn’t too bad. I could feel the cold for sure, but a slug of Nyquil (or was it Dayquil?) every four hours really knocked back any symptoms. I’d had worse colds, this one was comparatively mild.

Had a leisurely breakfast and sloshed down a pot of coffee while web surfing. It was afternoon when I finally ventured out clutching a pocketful of tissues. My choice of activity was to wander over to the river and maybe take a boat tour up the river. I was curious about whether or not there were any Roman ruins upstream. As you can see, the weather was glorious. Mild, warm, plenty of sunshine. And this is the river Avon. Though Avon just translates as River. And it’s not the famous Avon. That’s a different river. You’ve heard of it I’m sure. I had about a half hour to kill while waiting for the next cruise so the next few pictures are from the general area of the boat dock.

This is the Pulteney Weir. Note the slack water on the left. It’s slack in front of the weir that’s thrown open during floods. The old mechanism was pretty interesting. The doors, gears and works are all old metal craft designs. Should have taken a picture.

There’s Bath Abbey in the distance. I think that’s a hotel in the foreground.

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It was interesting to wander around Bath my first evening here. And the hostel was old and quaint. A pub, restaurant and hostel all in one 3 story building. Here’s an interactive map of the street the hostel is on…Belushi’s is the building at the end of the street and on the left: Green St., Bath This street is typical of many in Bath. If you walk towards the church there at the end of the street and turn around, here’s Belushi’s…

I had the free hostel breakfast in Belushi’s the next morning. Kind of sparse but, you wouldn’t starve. Here’s a shot of the reception area that I found online. It’s probably a copyrighted picture and it’s not being used here for commercial purposes (except indirectly), but as an example of their fine establishment. If I knew who to ask, I’d get permission:

Pretty nice here, huh? In the mornings, those tables are pushed together and breakfast goodies are set on them. I tried ordering an eggs, bacon, and toast breakfast here one morning and got the same undercooked toast, bacon, and runny eggs I’ve gotten for breakfast several places in Europe. Don’t understand what the cooks in Europe have against thoroughly cooked bacon, or eggs for that matter.

I spent many hours here during my stay, and also in the other section of the bar where they’ve got overstuffed furniture. This hostel, like all the others I’d stayed at in Europe, has brochures of various excursions you can take and I could tell that first morning that I might need to stay a little longer than the 3 days I’d originally planned, because of all the cool things tourists could do I’d found presented in the brochures.

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