bkdunn.com

For Thanksgiving, my brother, his wife, his two kids, and two caged dogs came to visit. The day after Thanksgiving, we did tourist activities. This is the story of those activities.

“Story” is a strong word.

First we drove out to Fort Necessity, the place where George Washington inadvertently started the French and Indian War.

Things I learned there, the veracity of which having not been verified: the French and Indian War precipitated the American Revolution, George Washington accidentally signed a document accepting sole responsibility for assassinating a French officer, his time in the area made Washington a big proponent of the US’s eventual expansion into the Ohio Valley, and most 18th century North American forts aren’t very impressive.

We then stopped at the only restaurant on Highway 40, a Pizza Hut, where there was considerable confusion about what specials were or were not offered. Then we went to Ohiopyle to see the falls:

This is Mr. and Mrs. Telkontar, btw. And the Telkitos. I talked about the falls in a much earlier post in case you feel cheated by lack of additional photos or description.

Then we went to some guy’s house:

I’d never heard of it before moving to Pittsburgh, but it’s apparently the most famous-for-architecture house in the US (Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright). We didn’t have reservations, so we were not allowed inside and were treated like dogs. The waterfalls were nice and the use of stone was kind of cool, but the preponderance of pink concrete was perplexing. Definitely better than the Biltmore Estate, though.

Then we drove back through Ohiopyle and came upon the following waterfall:

It’s named Cucumber Falls due to the prevalence of wild cucumber in the area.

It was starting to get dark, then, so we did what comes naturally to tourists in the Pittsburgh area: ride the Duquesne Incline up to Mt. Washington.

There was probably a good photo there if I could have found something to which to attach my gorilla pod.

And then we went home and debated the relative utility of creche committees.

bkd

The number one source of traffic for my blog is search engines. Crazy, I know. And I like self-evaluation. So, here’s this.

The top 20 search terms used to find my blog in 2011:

1. diy tv stand (and what a stand it is…!)
2. forbes field (I have one photograph)
3. ford trimotor (ibid, but at least this one’s a potentially interesting photograph)
4. diy kitchen table (although it turned out to be more of a writing desk)
5. trigger finger (the ligament inflammation, not the need to shoot people)
6. spooky gulch (referring to the gulch, not to my grad school experiences)
7. b-52 (several photos actually)
8. diy tv stand plans
9. reagan library
10. tv stand diy (it was still a terrible project)
11. gluing wood together (although I can see my info being possibly helpful to someone trying to glue wood together)
12. general sherman (the tree, not the general; anyone looking for the general will have been disappointed)
13. tv stand plans
14. b52
15. ford tri motor
16. diy tv stands
17. flying tigers (one photo)
18. diy entertainment center
19. washing machine drain (one photo)
20. spruce goose (ibid)

In addition, 49 people found my site by searching for the word “clamps”, 33 by searching for “kia jeep” (which isn’t discussed anywhere on this domain), and 30 by searching for “pittsburgh toilet” (and to think that two years ago I’d never heard of such).

bkd

I was there for a conference. By and large it’s a nice place for a conference. It’s like being at work, but with nicer weather. And yeah, I know, I can find a problem with anything. But that’s because there are, in fact, problems with everything.

I am nevertheless comfortable in asserting that Maui is the least interesting of the Hawaiian islands with which I’m familiar. I can see why someone would like it, but those antecedents of “like” would correlate strongly with that someone and I being generally incompatible as co-vacationers. FWIW. Maui would be great for someone who wants nice weather, a mega-resort, a mall with expensive boutiques and galleries, sub-par restaurants, and resort-style golfing.

Here’s a photo of sunset from the hotel pool:

I think it’s a nice photo and all, maybe even enticing. But what amount of time on your Maui vacation could staring at sunsets across pools productively take up? I’m going with eight. The second sunset you stare at is cliché, and by the third one you’re just desperate for meaning. Um, IMHO. So then what are you going to do for the other 6 days, 23 hours, and 52 minutes?

Well, there are a couple things. Maybe even three:

• The Hana area is genuinely nice. It’s slower paced and not dominated by mega-resorts. It seems like a place you would find on Kauai. Except that: (a) it’s a pain to get to — you can romanticize that drive all you want, but at the end of the day it’s arduous and there are only four or five places worth stopping, and (b) since it’s the only place on the island that looks anything like that, it’s necessarily crawling with escapees from all the mega-resorts. Who aren’t necessarily fun to hang out with.
• The drive around the northern part of the western lobe is kind of nice. It’s not all that crowded, not quite as arduous as the Hana drive (I mean, it’s arduous, just not wish-I-was-dead arduous), and has at least one nice little church and a little tidal swimming pool among the rocks in one spot.
• Haleakala is something that’s probably worth doing once, although it’s a long ways up there for maybe a couple of hours of entertainment (with thousands of your co-tourists).

So it’s got that going for it.

Here’s a photo of a bird taken from the lanai of the hotel room at the mega resort that we stayed at (because it was close to the conference):

See that little black bird in the tree? Awcute, right? Except that it’s loud, it’s everywhere, and it’s a non-native species. In a sense, it’s a type for the real problem with Maui:

*Tourists*. And there’s nothing for them to do. No way to disperse. Just sitting around the pool mutually reassuring themselves that they’re doing something interesting.

The place is dominated by the mega-resort whether in Kihei-Wailea, or the whole Lahaina-Kaanapali mega-hotel-opolis. It’s hard to break free from these places and there aren’t a lot of reasons to do so (other than the three above and to buy groceries at Wal-Mart). Maui ends up feeling like the Las Vegas strip, but without all the stuff to do.

If you have to go to a conference and cost has no meaning, it’s a nice place to have a conference. Between sessions you can hang out outside, in January, and it’s warm. Nice. OTOH, you’re still at a conference and, for the most part, there’s not a lot different about a conference session room at the Grand Wailea on Maui and a conference session room at the Will Rogers Airport Embassy Suites in Tulsa.

Then with the opportunity cost. It costs the same to go to Honolulu, only that place has better food, more stores, a “scene”, and several regions to consider exploring. It costs the same to go to Kauai, which has rivers everywhere, waterfalls everywhere, easy-in snorkeling, world-class hiking, fewer crowds, etc. It costs the same to go to the Big Island, which — I haven’t been to. I’m guessing I’d like it better so long as I wasn’t stuck in Kona.

Long story short, I’d like to go to this conference again, but probably when it’s on some other island.

Here’s a picture of water:

bkd

I don’t even know the names of the waterfalls. I didn’t drive, I wasn’t the one planning, so I took very little responsibility for knowing anything. The one was at the top of a two-mile (each way) hike that was named after some gorge. There was a bamboo forest. I’ll look it up. Later.

Everything pictured here is somewhere on the other side of Hana. I like Hana better than the rest of Maui. The hippie vibe is refreshing compared to the tourist vibe of everywhere else, plus it rains more there so it looks greener.

The bridge below those falls:

The gulch is called Oheo Gulch by the way. The trail goes through a bamboo forest. The forest looks like a bamboo forest.

And the falls are the Oheo Gulch Waterfall. Clever. It’s a high waterfall. Sorry about all the portrait-orientation. Waterfalls and trees, I guess.

Dennis took a really sharp photo of me hanging out in the waterfall pool, but I’m afraid it’d end up on some  porn site somewhere. If everyone were Mormon, I wouldn’t have to worry about that. It’d just be a photo of a guy giving a thumbs up from the bottom of a waterfall. Maybe I should move to Provo. Or Saudi Arabia.

Not always a fan of the species.

Also in the gulch:

This is a view of the “forbidden part” of the Hana Highway. The part that’s beyond Oheo gulch. It’s drier there.

So there you go. I think the highway has some other name on this side of Hana also.

In January, Pittsburgh is colder than there.

bkd

Dennis had told me about this secret beach in Hana and stuff. It’s pretty. Not sure anyone would ever swim at it what with the rocks and all. There’s a journey vs. destination story here as well.

The beach is sort of on private property or requires you to cross through private property or something. There’s a hotel there that has signs posted that declaim any responsibility for you killing yourself while trying to get there. Not without reason.

A few photos I guess:

The beach itself:

And I got about 50 more photos that are some variation on that. The tree is in all of them. Seriously, like *all* of them.

On the hike:

• It’s not very far — maybe 3/4 mile from the place where you park.
• But: the trail is pretty dodgy. There’s one part where the footing is poor (sandy and loose pebbles), and the trail is narrow (ca. 12 inches) and slanting off the edge of a cliff (20-foot drop). It’s about a 10-foot stretch, but that’s about all it takes.
• I was wearing flip-flops, which did not grant me goat-like powers of ground adhesion.
• Ended up gashing the side of my foot.
• Alternately, there’s a trail spur that bypasses this section. It takes you off the cliff and down to the beach, then goes back up onto the ledge above. Would’ve been smart. Would have.
• And then coming back up, we came up one trail too early. This too-early trail goes to the cemetery and is steeper than you want it to be. With loose, sandy pebbles.

Cemetery is like this:

For some reason all the stones had Japanese writing on them. On the interesting scale, I’m guessing the story behind that (unknown to me) rates a 3.

bkd

PS, This was a purely Google-driven headline. Thanks, search algorithms: you’ve destroyed blog post headlines forever.

Another year, another full flash memory card. Except it wasn’t full. Not by a long shot. Because I didn’t do very much this year but go to class. What a year! What a year.

I should probably just start posting these on Facebook instead. Just that I kind of want Facebook to fail, so — you know. Also, I don’t remember in which month I got the phone. Probably spring some time.

A giant eagle at Lowe's: a retail allegory.

Because Giant Eagle is the big grocery chain in western Pennsylvania is why. That’s a really big bird, though. And not very shy. And I’m not sure which of the small children there he had his sites set on.

A pan fish I caught.

It’s not as big as it looks. Orrin did a nice job with the trick photography. But the impressive thing in the photo isn’t the fish that was about to be un-hooked, it’s (IMHO) this:

The effects of poison ivy.

Before moving to Pittsburgh, I was barely even aware that poison ivy still existed in the modern world. I certainly wasn’t aware of how, just, ridiculously awful it is. Fortunately, after the fourth or fifth outbreak I figured out a regimen to minimize the damage of the contact. But man, at this point I itch just looking at it. Hopefully none of the poison got on the fish…

Meanwhile, here’s a sunset:

Sunset on Keystone Lake

Also this…

The eastern rat snake that got into my garage.

As mentioned elsewhere, he was a gentleman among snakes. Waited for me to open the garage door before slithering in, then barely complained when I picked him up with my snow shovel and threw him out into the yard. Four feet long, inch and a half thick. They eat bird eggs, mice, and chipmunks.

This next photo was taken at the mall nearest my house (Century III) at about 12:30 PM.

This is the food court.

Interestingly, most of the restaurant spaces were occupied (and the restaurants were open for business). OTOH, you know your mall isn’t doing very well when it not only has two GameStops in it, but it also has two Army recruiting offices. (Would seem to indicate low lease rates is what I’m saying.)

A shirt I wore one day while fighting my cell phone.

Here are a couple shots of Mt. Rainier taken while maneuvering around the breakwater barges in Commencement Bay (Tacoma) in my dad’s boat.

Heading out of the marina

Then onto the open waters of Commencement Bay.

Also while out west this summer, I got to reconnect with some old friends:

This was in Spokane (downtown). It is the most friendly Carl's Jr. I've ever been to. The guy taking orders at the counter actually knew the names of his regular customers *and* knew what they usually ordered. It was almost too much to handle.

The Del Taco in South Bend (Ind.) wasn't as friendly. And South Bend isn't exactly "out west", it was just close enough to have a Del Taco. Food was good, but I got the impression they don't sell a lot of the churros.

And this is a cup of Postum:

And then I went to eBay and saw that a jar of the stuff costs like $400 now because they quit making it several years ago.

All right, then there’s this building on the campus at Pitt that’s called the “Cathedral of Learning”. It was a WPP project. How could it not have been? Anyway, every time I see it I think of the Tower of Babel, although I’m not sure any sacrilege (or language instruction) actually happens there.

And then there was this day when I was thinking that I hadn’t seen an AMC Pacer on the road in like a decade. Then a couple days later I saw this one (with current inspection stickers).

You can't beat the paint scheme.

Or maybe you *can* beat it, I don’t know. I’ve never actually tried.

Anyway, that’s a big enough dump I guess.

bkd

In case you were wondering. Sometimes I get the impression that this place is the capital of good enough is more than good enough. As evidence:

They also misspelled "vitamin". And I'm not sure I want to know what "Dairyplus 600" is.

If they don't want to say where they made it, they could probably just leave that line off.

‘

Not a great place for math, either.

Or maybe I just shop in the wrong stores.

Other than that, everything here remains steady. Always steady.

bkd

It all starts looking the same. I should probably delay publication of this one for two weeks just to get a little air between this post and the last one. Fine, there, I’ve done that: an artificial two-week delay. Now maybe these photos will look exciting, fresh, or, whatever it is that they otherwise wouldn’t look.

So there’s a miraculous story here that explains how I ended up going to Glacier Lake at all. My cell phone (with Virgin) gets no reception between Minnesota and Spokane. That is to say, it doesn’t work in Idaho, Montana, or the Dakotas. When I was heading from Tacoma to Montana, I stopped in Spokane to call my brother in South Dakota to see if he wanted to join me for fishing in Montana. He said he couldn’t make it, so I figured I’d leave Montana Saturday after finishing the Lake Fork hike.

But then when I got to Butte or so, I checked my phone and it had received a text message. Somehow, *somehow*, despite being in coverage no-man’s land, my phone had gotten a text message from my brother saying he could make it after all. And then I found a pay phone and confirmed plans. Yes, they still have pay phones. Everyone who saw me using it was also surprised.

(And: I said the story was miraculous, not that it was interesting.)

Fishing at Glacier Lake was great. The guy at the hotel in Red Lodge recommended it. Good job, guy!

Garry crossing a creek.

Elevation: 10,000'.

Ibid.

Glacier Lake shoreline.

Fishing was, as said, good. Used dry flies trailing behind a plastic float. Mostly 12- to 15-inch cutts. Caught one 12-inch brookie. All were good fighters. Also caught this:

The largest trout I've ever seen.

Two pounds? Two and a half maybe? It was a big trout. Caught it on four-pound line and apparently my knots don’t suck. Took probably 10-15 minutes to get him ashore. He took a lot of line. Awesome fish, mad respect.

Gebrüder (I'm not really six inches shorter than him).

Emerald Lake (in Wyoming!), just below Glacier Lake.

• This is a short hike, btw. Two miles each way.
• But steep (ca. 1,500 feet in elevation gain).
• And at high altitude.
• Glacier Lake is a perfect fishing lake: no grass, plenty of shoreline, lots of places to sit.

And then I woke up. Ended up hiking up to September Morn lake (decent climb!). It’s a cool lake and would’ve been a better place to camp (better sites) if not for the fact that it’s another two (three?) miles from Keyser Brown and another 1,000+ feet in elevation climb. Das Leben ist ja schwer.

Morning reflections in Keyser Brown.

September Morn Lake, where I presume Neil Diamond danced until the night became a brand new day.

A 12-inch brookie I caught there.

A 120-inch brook I crossed there.

View of Keyser Brown and First Lake from the trail above.

First Rock Lake (with rocks).

Big Thunder Mountain.

• Should have spent more time fishing at September Morn.
• Not having a working watch is hard.
• Had serious line problems, but was able to salvage enough to jam knot a couple strands together for fishing up at September Morn.
• Then lost most of the rest of my line hiking back from First Lake and, thus, was out of the game.
• There was a nice fishing hole for nine-inch cutts at the bottom of a cascade between First Rock and Keyser Brown. I thought someone should know.

bkd

PS, More SEO fodder in the title. Sorries.

Mal sehen how that title works out for the SEO.

Originally planned to hike up to Black Canyon Lake and probably to Sundance Pass, camping, I dunno, somewhere. After about a mile of hiking, I realized that I’d just spent seven days at sea level and was now at 8,000 feet and climbing. Objectives were toned down accordingly.

• So ended up camping at Keyser Brown Lake — about seven miles from the trailhead and 1,500 feet of elevation gain (I think the lake is at a little over 8,000 feet).
• Just about passed out trying to get my tent set up.
• Took about 45 minutes trying to get my food appropriately hung.
• Trail follows the river most of the way, although there are some miles where there are trees that get in the way of seeing the river.
• Some dude coming down the trail said he saw a grizzly, but I’ve pretty much determined that grizzlies are merely legendary like, z.B., Sasquatch.
• There was one other dude camping near the lake. He was from Minnesota and so, naturally, he helped me get my rain fly on tighter than it was. I told him he was only reaffirming the stereotype.
• Mountain House lasagna is good, but it’s hard to get all the cheese off your fork.
• The good campsites are all on the back side of the lake.