We were supposed to fly out of Jackson Hole Airport to visit Jonmikel’s stepfather for his 80th birthday party, but after one of the driest seasons in recently memory, it picked THIS weekend to dump 50+ inches of snow, proving wrong all those people (including myself) who thought, “Oh no, they NEVER shut down the Jackson airport!”
For three days, we sat in the Snake River Brewery… scheduling and rescheduling flights… drinking and refilling our beers.
So I present to you: 3 days of cask ales!
We did, eventually, give up and wander our way home over Togwotee Pass.
A far-from-complete list of some of the more interesting places I’ve caught some shut eye (aside from the numerous couches and floors I’ve crashed on since that became an acceptable form of boarding):
- On a train from Barcelona to Toledo, Spain, piled into a tiny compartment with 4 other women, each of us taking regular watches against the creepy Spanish men who kept trying to break into our berth
- Perched next to a box of chickens in an old school bus trying to get to Belize
- On a beach when the barracks at my research station on San Salvador Island in The Bahamas got ungodly hot, and I wandered out with a towel to brave the no-see-ums in the tropical breeze
- In a hammock in between fish counts on Key Largo
- In a cabin on a ship, sailing around the world
- Curled up on top of my luggage in a top bunk on a 3rd-class train from Delhi to Agra, India
- On the cold, filthy tile floor in an airport in Chennai, India, when it had to close down because of rioting caused by India beating Pakistan in a cricket match
- On a bench in Havana while waiting for my travel companions to buy old Soviet textbooks at a book fair
- Propped up against my friend Laura while on a bus from Munich, Germany, to Dubrovnik, Croatia, waking only when the military guard in Bosnia asked for our passports and we had to get out and hang for a while
- Again, propped up against Laura on a bench outside of the bus terminal (and inside the red-light district) in Rijeka, Croatia, surrounded by “interesting” characters
- In a train station in Koblenz after drinking 3 bottles of wine with friends when we missed the last train with student fares to Leipzig (I learned how to say “Können Sie die Flasche öffnen, bitte?” expertly)
- In tents on beaches all around the Big Island of Hawaii, through rain and storms and high tides and rowdy locals partying all night long and deliriously close to an active lava flow
- In a candle-lit, sand-floored, open-walled cabana right on the ocean in Tulum, Mexico
- Leaning against a wall and shoved next to my duffel bag in a standing-room-only train from Rabat to Marrakech, Morocco
- Under a wool blanket in a nomad tent in the middle of the Sahara Desert after riding a camel all day
- In the international terminal in LAX with the rest of the vagabond riff-raff for a 5-hour, overnight layover, during which we discovered that in this terminal, the bars close the latest and the McDonald’s opens earliest (by the way, LAX is a pit, and I would gladly pay good money to never ever stop there again)
- In between midge attacks in the thick summer of Arran Island in Scotland
- At the edge of a canyon — The Wedge — in Utah
- Between the wolves and the stars in Yellowstone
Lesson learned from travel: sleep is a precious thing. Catch it when you can.
This is in response to BootsnAll‘s 2012 Indie Travel Challenge, Week 3 prompt: Have you ever studied or taken classes on a trip? What did you study, and perhaps more importantly, what did you learn while on that trip? What would you like to learn on your travels this year? The full description of the prompt can be found here.
The temperature in the cave is about 40 degrees warmer than the air above, and as the Ranger explains that we should bring jackets down with us, he looks out the frosted window into the blowing snow. “Ah, nevermind,” he says, shrugging.
And so we go, through a door that looks more like a WWII bunker than the entrance to a cave, and we begin to descend…
slip sliding down slick rock, wet with drops of water and the smoothness of overuse
a quarter of a mile down, slipping through subterranean slot canyons and in between the tight squeezes of the center of the Earth
hundreds of thousands of years of architecture spreads out before us and crumbles below into the abyss, colored by limestone-clouded waters and the idle hands of exploration
and the drip drip drip of rivers of rock echo through the narrow alleys and the sinewy tendons of stone climb the walls of this urban underground of stalactite skyscrapers.
Great Basin National Park, located in eastern Nevada near Route 50, is open all year round, with limited facilities in winter. Some tours of the Lehman Caves, actually one large limestone cavern first recorded by Absalom Lehman in 1885 and used as a playground ever since, are offered all year. Inquire at the visitor center for more information.
So we tried to include one of those Stop SOPA/PIPA plug-ins, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Is it? Let me know.
But I’m here to support the efforts against these well-meaning but poorly thought-out laws that are up for a vote today. They create a slippery slope from just trying to protect intellectual property rights to censoring many aspects of one of the defining characteristics of our generation: our interconnectedness and our ability to get out into the world without leaving our cubicle. If these laws pass, it will mean that the federal government has the right to censor so much of what we take for granted: Facebook statuses, blogged photos from other photographers, Creative Commons use, YouTube, StumbleUpon. Censorship makes people drunk with power (trust Kat, she knows from high school, when she went up against her principle about censoring the school newspaper), and these bills will make it easier for the federal government and companies to overextend their selfish reaches.
Try out this neat video (which would definitely be censored under the proposed laws) to find out more. And for a little SOPA fun, head over to The Oatmeal.
Along a dirt two-track that comes off a dirt road that branches from a gravel road that just split from a side road of a minor, 2-lane interstate just 10 or so miles east of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere called Austin, Nevada, there sits, in small dips in the hills, Spencer Hot Springs.
We were running late, too late to catch the hot springs during the short winter days, but once we hit Austin, NV (a self-described living ghost town, a relic of the height of mining in Nevada), we decided to push on down Route 50 to Spencer anyway. Nevada is on top of some of the most rockin’ geothermic activity in the world, so hot springs pop up all over the place in the high deserts. Some bubble to the surface well above boiling, and some simmer at lukewarm, and you can find anything in between. We heard of this hidden gem by word of mouth: hot springs enthusiasts whisper news of its existence to each other as discreetly as possible, at once bragging about having found it and hoping that no one else will.
This series of pools, some more isolated for added privacy, are best found during the day, when you can not only see the amazing views of the Toiyabe and Toquima mountains and almost the entire Big Smokey Valley, but you can also see where you’re going. We got most of the basic directions correct, but when it came to navigating the criss-crossing ranch and recreation roads, we had to bring out the GPS.
It was pitch black by the time we arrived, and we had to explore in the cold to find the pools. The first one we came to was the main upper pool, marked by a rough parking lot and a sign that warned: Water from natural springs may be scalding. At one time (and recently, from images I’ve seen), the main hot pool was uncovered and a daunting 140 degrees; the BLM has now caged it to keep people from making foolish mistakes, and the water flows into a semi-maintained pool just below. There is another spring, built up with an Old West-style tin bathing trough, just over the ridge. We opted for the main, more natural pool.
Though the stars above us twinkled brightly in the Nevada sky, we could see a snow squall roaring in from the North. Undaunted, we disrobed, climbed on board the wooden plank, and sunk in, just in time for the blizzard. The steam coiled up around our ears and hair and collected as glittering coif-cicles, and snow piled up on the tops of our heads. But the winter chill kept our beers cold as we hunkered down into the warm depths.
Though I can see why these springs might be more of a day-time, spring or fall destination, it turned out to be a wonderful winter side trip on our journey down the Loneliest Road in America. From what I have heard, even in the height of the Nevada tourist season, you will probably be the only person here, the perfect place to recharge.
To get to Spencer Hot Springs, travel east on Route 50, through the town of Austin, for about 12 miles. Turn south onto HWY 376, and then take a left after 100 or so meters onto a gravel/dirt road. Technically, this road is National Forest Developed Road 001, but you won’t see any markings. Stay on the road for 5.5 miles, and there will be a left that heads up onto a small rise. The springs are spread out on the east side of the hill and are marked by a BLM sign and a trashcan. You might have to explore a little to find them, and there are many ranch roads that go off to who knows where, so I recommend a really detailed BLM map or excellent GPS system (we cached a zoomed-in map on an Android smartphone and it worked wonderfully).
I came across this “cartoon” just today, as I’m sitting here trying to think about being an “Indie Traveler.” The gist of it is: “You’ll never see the end of your own story, so maybe you should throw in some more sub-plots.”
And that’s what traveling has always been for me: developing more sub-plots to a story that is already writing itself. Sometimes those sub-plots take me on group tours of the Serengeti, and sometimes they give me the crazy idea to move to Morocco to teach English alone. Sometimes they take me to Paris and sometimes they take me to the canyons of Utah. Sometimes I’m a student, and sometimes I’m a teacher. I’ve wandered lost, and I’ve wandered aimlessly, and I’ve known exactly where I’m going.
In some of my sub-plots, I’m terrified; in some I’m confident; in some I’m sexual; in some I’m naive; in some I’m just too young or too old or too shy or too in-your-face.
Most of my sub-plots include falling in love. Falling in love with a song, falling in love with an idea, falling in love with a place, falling in love with a single, impenetrable moment. Falling in love with a person, if only for a month, a week, a night. Forever. But always falling in love.
And it’s everything. All the time.
There’s no dipping a toe in or checking the wind speed.
It’s feet first, all in.
Does this make me an “Indie Traveler”? I don’t really know. But what I do know is that these are my stories I’m writing, my sub-plots. And when it comes to being an Independent Traveler, that might be the most important part.
Who’s writing your stories?
This is in response to BootsnAll‘s 2012 Indie Travel Challenge, Week 2 prompt: What do you think make someone an indie traveler? The full description of the prompt can be found here.
There’s a Benihana in Japantown. You can walk in, sit down at a hibachi table and have a chef chop and swish his way to a traditionally American meal of Japanese food. But that’s if you want safe, familiar. But if you wanted “safe” and “familiar,” you wouldn’t have wandered your way into Japantown. So for those of you who want a real taste of this unique San Francisco neighborhood, below is your foodie guide, from posh to budget.
On the high end, you can head to a neighborhood classic: Yoshi’s Jazz Club and Japanese Restaurant. This two-story, open lounge — with high ceilings and an almost warehouse-like feel — bridges the line between the Fillmore Music District and Japantown in San Francisco’s Western Addition. The dark-lit, modern restuarant serves a variety of Japanese fusion dishes, focusing on various seafood concoctions. Many of the meals have unique combinations, such as sea bass and poached lobster in chicory and sea urchin nage sauce and lamb chops in a miso marinade with wasabi mousse, as well as a wide selection of sushi. Main dishes run from $20-$40, so it’s not inexpensive. The performance areas are separate (book tickets and dinner at the same time for the best value), and include low tables and lounge couches. They also have a lounge menu with less expensive options such as burgers and fried appetizers that you can enjoy during performances. It’s called a jazz club, but music can range from rock n’ roll to blues to jazz to traditional Hawaiian shows. Check the extensive calendar for more information. They also have some great student discounts, so visit their website to find out more.
If you’re in the mood for Korean BBQ, head over to Seoul Garden. This small restaurant — hidden upstairs in the Miyako Mall at the Peace Plaza in Japantown — is pleasantly decorated in Korean country style and offers diners quiet, private wooden booths, either with a traditional in-table barbeque or without. If you’re unsure what to get, try the pre-selected full dinner, which has a variety of Korean plates you can try: mandu gook, rice cake and dumpling soup; modeum jeon, cold, pan-fried meats and vegetables, all served with savory soy dipping sauce; kalbi, marinated short-ribs; whole, broiled, salted fish; and noodles tossed with onions and meats. It’s too much food for one sitting, but worth it if you’ve never had Korean food before. If you’re looking for BBQ, ask the server to light up the stove in the center of your table and choose a meat: marinated prawns (wang saewoo gui), strips of rib-eye (bulgogi), or another tasty main course. Your server will place the raw meat on the grill and stop by periodically to turn pieces or add more. All dishes come with about a dozen side dishes that fill the table: kimchis, sugared seaweed, sauces of all flavors and spiciness, and a plate of lettuce you can use to turn your meal into a series of delicious lettuce wraps. And as if that weren’t enough food, you can finish it off with green tea ice cream and fruits. BBQs cost between $20-$30, and main dishes range from $13 noodles to the $39 full course meal.
For a unique, light-dining experience, head over to O Izakaya Lounge in the Hotel Kabuki. This funky restaurant is modeled after the traditional Izakaya lounges in Japan, bars that serve after-work sake and small plates meant to be shared among friends. O Izakaya bills itself as an izakaya and sportsbar, and it’s walls are decorated with vintage Japanese baseball scenes, giving the bar a whimsical, old-fashioned feel. They have a long wine list and feature about two-dozen sakes. For nibbles, they have sushi and modern, Japanese-inspired creations, such as tsukune (chicken meatballs), togarashi French fries with garlic aioli and duck spring rolls. Larger plates include fusion-styled fish and chips, ramen dishes and seafood fishes, most of which can also be shared with friends. Ask about happy hour specials; they have some good ones.
For a tasty budget meal, look inside the Miyako Mall, where there is a small, square and rather unassuming noodle house called Suzu. It’s teeny, tucked in between shops in a bland mall with off-white tiles and quiet store fronts, standing out with it’s bright “NOODLE” neon sign in the window. It’s almost always packed, and people spill out into the thin row of dining around the restaurant’s edge. They don’t have a website, they don’t take reservations, and people are only too happy to put a name on the long list and wait around for an opening. They specialize in a whole slew of ramen, udon and soba noodle dishes, and you can try one of many combinations on the slightly jumbled menu. Tokyo ramen is one of the staples, with pork, an egg, pea sprouts and the usual seaweed and bamboo shoots; the spicy ramen is also wonderfully flavorful and has the perfect amount of spice. Each dish has several options you can try, and main courses are huge and generally cost $8-$12.
Fisherman’s Wharf is a must for most people who visit San Francisco. Piers full of shops and restaurants and various family attractions — including some very entertaining sea lions lounging blubberously on the docks — bring people of all ages to the strip of city that runs from Ghirardelli Square to Pier 35 along the Bay. A historic district once home to the best Dungeness crab fisherman on the West Coast, this area is full of unique, historic buildings-turned-shops, including The Cannery, home to the best draught beer selection in town: Jack’s. You can also find a collection of restored fishing, sailing and cargo ships on the Hyde Street Pier, part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Tickets to tour the ships are available, but they are pretty neat to see from the dock if you’re on a budget.
The Balclutha cargo ship, built in 1886, and Eppleton Hall paddlewheel tug, built in 1914
Further down the way, tucked behind a warehouse arcade and a more-visible submarine on Pier 45, is the SS Jeremiah O’Brien. One of the lesser-known attractions at the Wharf, it’s definitely one of the better historical sites I’ve visited. Not one for history and endless rows of plaques explaining what happened forever ago, I went for Jonmikel. For $10, you can climb aboard one of only two operational WWII Liberty Ships in the world and a rare survivor of Normandy on D-Day.
The all-volunteer crew fires her up and takes her out a handful of times a year, and it made the trans-Atlantic trip to France for the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994.
But this just isn’t a museum of WWII history.
This ship is fully operational and maintained to support a crew that actually lives on board. Kitchen works, toilets work, cabins have personal computers in them.
You can even crawl down into the 5-story engine room that served as the set for the engine room scenes from Titanic.
The crew wanders around on board, willing to answer any questions you may have or weave a yarn about their adventures abroad (many are veterans).
When we wandered below deck, we were immediately greeted by an enthusiastic “Guys, you have to come see this! You’re right on time!”
We entered the steamy depths, scrambling down slick ladders and across catwalks that looked down into darkness. And we stumbled out onto a group of surly, oil greased men, one with a fiery torch in hand. “Hey! You’ve come to see us start up the engines!”
Right on time, indeed. They opened the boiler and lit the oil inside, and immediately we could feel the mass of steel all around us begin to rumble.
Pistons began to creak and moan and shift, and steam began to rise from below our feet. The engineers showed us around, pointing out the oil stored beneath the floors, explaining how this tangle of raw machinery can burn its way onto the beaches of Normandy.
One guy opened the boiler and, handing us a plate of green glass, allowed us to glance into the very soul of the ship, watching the fire and oil spin and spin and disintegrate into nothing. It’s not often you get to poke around in the operating engine of a massive chunk of floating steel.
Afterward, we headed back on deck to explore the ship’s bridge and decks, where we found the big guns.
We spend hours on the ship, much longer than we had originally planned. With so much to see and move around and operate, the SS Jeremiah O’Brien is the perfect playground for history buffs.
So this year, because I was so successful (ahem — I balked at the end there…) at the 30 Days of Indie Travel from BootsnAll, I’ve decided to participate in their 2012 Challenge: once a week, they will post a prompt/question/challenge and we, as travelers, interpret them how we will and post something here. While once a day was a little too committal, I think maybe I can manage once a week. Right? Right.
So here, at the birth of a new year, BootsnAll wants us to talk about our travel resolutions, about Planning for 2012. And no, “Travel More” is not acceptable. BootsnAll made their own list, which you can find here: 18 Travel Resolutions to Keep This Year. They’re asking us to interpret those resolutions to fit our own personalities and desires.
For most of my life, I have always been going after the new experiences: the places I’ve never seen, the things I’ve never done, the cultures in which I have never been lost.
I would always head for that next leap of faith or the leap over the canyon or a leap into a new life. I wanted everything to be new, all the time.
Every trip, every destination was supposed to be something I had never done before.
But starting this year, I would like to try something… new. By trying something I’ve done before.
Both Jonmikel and I have had a lifetime of travel. My family always placed heavy emphasis on traveling, understanding that these unique experiences are essential to raising a world-wise daughter. Jonmikel had a penchant for adventurous road trips and spent his summers visiting his father in Rome, branching from there to Switzerland, Greece and beyond.
When we met, we, too, started journeys of the unknown and un-experienced. All new, all the time.
But thinking of all the great experiences I have had, and hearing his stories of adventures in Europe, I realize how many experiences we haven’t had together.
Places we’ve never been together. Foods we’ve never eaten together. Customs agents we’ve never wigged out together.
In 2012, I want to start going back to places I’ve been, only now I will go with him, seeing the old with his eyes, with my new eyes. I want to take him to India and Ireland…
… and I want him to take me to Athens and the Matterhorn. Places we’ve seen before but never as who we are today, together.
A short stroll from our Painted Lady, past the modern metal pagoda, teak shutters and noodle restaurants of Japantown, we hit Fillmore Street, the backbone of the Fillmore Jazz District. The neighborhood, formerly an ethnic ghetto through the late 1800s, became a business center after the 1906 earthquake destroyed Downtown San Francisco and shops had to relocate. In the early 1900s, Japanese immigrants moved into town seeking work and achieving new-found success in the United States. When President Roosevelt relocated Japanese Americans to internment camps in 1942, the vacant homes and storefronts attracted a new wave of migrants: African American workers moving to the Bay Area to work in the shipyards, and they brought with them their art, music and unique culture. And The City’s jazz district was born.
The district is home to the historic Fillmore Auditorium, which has played host to the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Cream, Pink Floyd, and a slew of other world-famous musicians and featured in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as the center of the 1960s counterculture scene in San Francisco. The main thoroughfare also features a series of jazz and R&B clubs, boutique shops and grungy bars, each with libations to compliment the varied decor. It is in this neighborhood, along this stretch of live music venues tucked into fading brick facades and across from The Fillmore, that we found Rasselas Jazz Club.
This small, tightly-packed club features live music seven nights a week, a varied bill that includes classic and modern jazz, blues and Latin and such musicians as Tracy Chapman, Kim Nalley and Pete Escovedo. The event calendar on their website hasn’t been updated since September, but you can find more relevant information on their recently updated Facebook page. But whatever night you decide to go, you are guaranteed to see a musical performance that only adds to the sultry ambiance and the smooth taste of your favorite cocktail. The interior is dark: dark wood, dark brick, dark lights, dark dresses, each table colored with a small candle that flickers and reflects on the lounge’s brick walls. They have a full bar and a small but interesting wine list; you can also bring your own bottle for a $15 corkage fee. But try the syrupy-sweet Tej, an Ethiopian honey wine.
When we arrived, the place was packed with an elegant looking crowd, and the din was light and happy. The hostess took one look at our party of six with no reservation, smiled, and did some prompt rearranging to fit us in toward the back. The tables are close together and filled to the brim, making the experience that much more intimate. Service is relaxed, so if you’re in a hurry, try elsewhere. This is a place where people sit and linger, enjoying the music and the atmosphere, and appreciate the undisturbed experience. The restaurant features Ethiopian food, and while they do have a bar/appetizer menu with plates such as sliders and pita chips, the real gems are the traditional dishes. We ordered two vegetarian combos, the kitfo (a spicy steak tartare), the doro wat (chicken simmered in a berbere sauce of chili pepper, garlic, ginger, basil and cardamom) and a drunken chicken (grilled in tequila, ginger, garlic and lemon juice over turmeric rice), each for around $15 (this is San Francisco, after all!). The traditional dishes all come with injera, a soft, spongy flatbread that is slightly on the bland side but is fun to eat. Sauces are thick and can be as spicy or mild as you prefer, and it was great to be in a place where “spicy” actually meant it. My husband and I opted to eat our entire meal with our hands, scooping up chunks of meat and the various vegetable stews with the injera that lined the plates (we never miss the chance to eschew flatware!). The steak was juicy and flavorful with a rich, heavy flavor, and the chicken was so tender it nearly fell apart on the plate, and the proportions were ample enough to fill even the hungriest of our crowd. Copious amounts of food make it almost impossible to have room left for dessert, but Rasselas does feature baklava and tiramisu, if you need something to top off the meal.
Many people stop into this small jazz club for the bar scene and the live music, but with relatively reasonable prices for flavorful, spicy Ethiopian dishes, the menu is definitely worth a look. But perhaps most significantly, Rasselas is the perfect place to don your 30s-style cocktail dress and silk fedora, sidle up to the bar, order a slick-sounding martini and pretend to be celebrating life in the Golden Age of Jazz.
