Boats, Boots, Bikes

Sign at the Stehekin Valley Ranch cookhouse. Good eatin' in Stehekin.

 

The Stehekin ferry

Early this month we vacationed in a location we'd never been to--Stehekin, Washington. The trek began with a 3.5 hour drive to 53-mile-long Lake Chelan. Then we had a nearly three hour ferry ride. Finally, a bumpy nine-mile ride up the Stehekin River road on an old school bus to our destination, the Stehekin Valley Ranch. Only the first day of our vacation and I was travel weary. 

After a peaceful rest, the next morning we enjoyed a delicious home-cooked breakfast before heading off to our first death-defying adventure, I mean hike. Take a look at the delights that awaited us on the Rainbow Loop trail. If the photo isn't large enough I'll spell it out for you: bears, cougars, and rattle snakes. So much fun to be had in the outdoors! 😏

 

 

 

 

I was greatly relieved that we saw none of these critters and instead, enjoyed panoramic views of Lake Chelan at the summit of the hike. Sadly, there had been a forest fire two years ago making the trail far less tree-filled than its earlier glory.

 

 

Having made it safely down the trail three hours later, we caught another old school bus back to the ranch. We'd done enough hiking for one day and there wasn't time before dinner to catch a bus to "town" for some souvenir shopping at the general store. There was, however, enough time for an e-bike ride on the Rad power bikes available for rent at the ranch. 

 

75 pounds of bike!

 I have never been on an e-bike and between the pedal assist (so helpful), throttle (tried it once and the bike nearly left me behind), and the gear shifting (too much for me with the novelty of an e-bike), I just relied on the pedal assist and never shifted. My husband, though, was so impressed by the bikes that he bought one for himself just a day after getting back home! 

In retrospect, we didn’t spend enough time in Stehekin, and despite my initial doubts, we’ll probably return. Next time I’d prefer to stick to hikes in the valley and along the river to avoid rattle snakes, bears, and cougars. I’m even up for more e-bike riding.

Happily, the only felines we saw were some friendly ones hanging around the ranch!

Travel Through the Pages ~ Lexa Fisher

 

 

Photo by Jake Blucker on Unsplash

 

While I no longer feel comfortable traveling, I can still visit the places I'd love to see by reading books set in those locations. 

I love books that allow me to walk down the streets, feel the weather on my skin, smell the roses, bougainvillea, or orange blossoms.

No longer having a daily commute, I  have nearly two more hours a day to indulge in exploring new genres and finding new authors to follow.

In addition to traveling to new places through books, I can also travel to times I'd love to visit. My current work in progress has backstory in the late 19th century and my research involves reading not only fictional stories set in this time, but also reading historical accounts of how people lived back then.

Online newspapers going back to the early 19th century have been extremely helpful. Products that were advertised, recipes, and small town news stories paint a detailed picture of daily life and help me create a more immersive story.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

 

Another route I've traveled is down memory lane.This trip helps me add greater detail to my work in progress. What were my grandmothers' kitchens like, their gardens, their basements? The latter were always terrifying to this young child with their low ceilings, dim lighting, and cobwebs everywhere, heavy with dust.

Everywhere I've traveled through the books I've read this past year has been from the comfort of my own home, no reservations needed. I only need time to make a warm drink and settle in with my wonderful travel companion--Miss Bridgett. She's quite happy to sit beside me in a rocking chair as I journey through the pages.

 

Petroglyphs?—Exacta?—Trifecta? Beer and Burger?~by Ralph Duncan

“Hey, that guy at the next window just bet on #1 to win.” “That sounds like a really good bet.  Number 1 just won the last race. And that was my next pick. I am going to put 5 on him right now.” Pretty experienced I was, just having finished the instructions on how to read the Ruidoso Downs Race Program.

Although an obviously sophisticated betting strategy, if not interesting, I should back up and start this story over.

I have made many trips to New Mexico, an adopted homeland for my family and where I spent my collegiate years. Most of the trips in the last 10 years or so have been to a sleepy little artsy town nestled high in the Sacramento Mountains about 2 hours north of El Paso, Texas. I have written about Cloudcroft before. Literally in the clouds, Cloudcroft is named after an English description of a clearing covered in clouds. It is where my parents retired and were buried; in a beautiful mountain meadow in the James Canyon Cemetery, just behind the old “Cowboy Church.”

It is also adjacent to the noted Mescalero Reservation whose tribal members are direct descendants of some of the most famous of Native Americans (namely, Cochise and Geronimo).


This visit however, was to visit my brother and his wife who were also retiring in those mountains and had begun building their home. This, after cruising the Caribbean for about 5 years.

After running errands in preparation for a foundation, concrete pour, and ordering trusses and lumber package, we decided on our last day that we would take off and drive about an hour and half up to the resort town of Ruidoso, also known as the quarter horse racing capital of the country. 

Our trip required us to head down the mountain to the desert floor of the Tularosa Basin. Our plan was to hike the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site trail near Tularosa. The trail is not long, just a little over a mile round trip, but boasts over 20,000 petroglyphs. As much as we were looking forward to this hike, the temperature on the desert floor topped out at over 100 degrees and we decided that it would be too smart for two mature gentlemen to get out in that kind of heat. “Beer and a burger” at Ruidoso it was, then. It was a great drive and a great time for the only two male siblings in our family to do some catching up. 

Now when we are together and begin talking about serious stuff, the conversations usually begin something like, ”Here’s the thing about that….” It was as if all clarity about the particular subject matter would be achieved and all myths and untruths would be dispelled. Today’s topic was tiny houses and the Tularosa Basin. Today those topics overlapped, with many very tiny houses, most occupied and some deserted, scattered out into the desert. The Basin itself has its own history, which would eventually come to be significant to the US as a whole.

Stretching over 150 miles, north to south, it started out life as an ocean. Over time, as the scars on the mountain slopes reveal, the ocean dried up and formed what is now the stretch of gypsum sand known as the White Sands National Monument. It is also home to the White Sands Missile Range Nuclear Test site and site of the world’s first atomic bomb detonation. We also know it as the Trinity Site.

Covering the requisite mileage on the desert floor, we left the heat of the desert for the cooler (about 15 degrees) mountain retreat of Ruidoso.

It was a learning experience and a lesson in how to read a racing program. What’s the bet? How do you place a bet? How do you pick a winner? Your guess is as good as mine. But, it was a good day to spend with a brother. 


Two days after I arrived back home my brother texted me this headline from a local newspaper.


“Authorities say a visitor has died on a hiking trail at White Sands …” Temps were 99 degrees plus.—Glad we picked the beer and burger.

Visit Ralph's page to view his artwork and read his past posts

Passport in My Pocket ~ by Author Elle Rush

After two years of saving and planning, we’ve bought plane tickets for a trip I’ve wanted to take for thirty years. This fall – finally – I will be heading to the lands of Avalon and Hogwarts. United Kingdom, here I come!

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel, but never to Europe. Now we

have two weeks to experience a thousand years of history. We will be touring Edinburgh Castle, checking out Hadrian’s Wall, visiting Bath for all things Jane Austen, and running around London until our shoes wear out, including a rest stop at a West End Theatre performance. We don’t know if we’ll ever return, so we are doing as much as we can in the limited time we have.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my hometown of Winnipeg. Last summer we did a stay-cation and hit a bunch of tourist spots that locals generally don’t bother with. But spending our vacation days at home was a choice we made in order to save for this trip of a lifetime.

While I grew up with Canada’s “Anne of Green Gables” and America’s “Little House on the Prairie”, I also read my fair share of classics set in England. Sherlock Holmes and I dashed off on many adventures from his flat on Baker Street, Jane Austen took me on many a stroll through Hyde Park, and Agatha Christie probably set at least one murder in one of the small country villages where our train will stop. Soon I’ll be able to see them for real. My imagination has already visited a thousand times and I fully believe it will live up to the expectations. 

Since I’m a writer, I hope to come back with a dozen story ideas and a hundred places to set them. It would be so cool to be able to set scenes in a London pub and be able to make it authentic. Or to describe the noise and confusion of Piccadilly Circus. Who knows, maybe my readers will end up with a Scottish hero, accent and all!

I’ve set books in other locations that I’ve visited. The couples in

my Resort Romance books have visited Cuba, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. If I learned to snorkel or wandered through a Mayan city, my readers can, too. Writing those books was almost as good as having another holiday. (Almost but not quite. Even a book can’t overcome a blizzard outside your window in January, no matter how good your imagination.)  I hope to do the same with my UK adventures soon.

I don’t think anyone resents travelling for fun, but it isn’t possible for everybody. If you can’t do it for real, I hope you can do the armchair version. Whether it’s non-fiction tour guides, history books, or novels, you can get away any time you like. Reading is almost as good as the real thing. Plus, inevitably you get much better pictures in a book. You won’t have random photos of your shoes appearing in your camera roll, and nobody’s heads will be cut off.   Bon voyage to you and your future adventures!

Elle Rush is a contemporary romance author from Winnipeg,Manitoba, Canada. When she’s not travelling, she’s hard at work writing books that are set all over the world. From Hollywood to the house next door, her heroes will make you sigh and her heroines will make you laugh out loud.
   She has degrees in Spanish and French, barely passed German, and has flunked poetry in every language she ever studied, including English. She also has mild addictions to tea, her garden, bad sci-fi movies, and HGTV.

Photos supplied by Elle Rush