The Queen’s Staircase, Nassau

Our last port day before heading home was spent in Nassau. Our main objective when we disembarked was to find the Queen’s Staircase. We had thought of going to the beach but decided after climbing the staircase and doing some shopping at an outdoor market that we would rather return to the ship to relax, read, and enjoy our second (of two for the entire voyage) pina colada.

(The Queen’s Staircase is located in the Fort Fincastle Historic Complex and consists of 66 steep stairs that were hand-carved into limestone by 600 slaves. It connects Fort Fincastle to Downtown Nassau.)

I’m not much of a shopper, but we did make a couple purchases on the island. Hubby and I usually purchase some little mementos when we travel. At national parks, we buy books and stickers for our car. Sometimes, we’ll purchase a shirt or a hat. Rarely, we’ll get a little knick-knack. On this trip, I found a cute Bahamas ball cap in a peachy-pink color, and we purchased a hand-carved elephant made from the wood of the Mother’s Tongue tree. We enjoyed a long conversation with the man who’d carved the elephant as he added our names and anniversary date to the figurine.

Later in the day, once we’d returned to the ship and done the lounging and the reading and the drinking, Hubby, despite all of my nagging (as Middle Daughter referred to my constant expressing of my fears for their safety), headed to the Flow Rider surfing simulator once again. And this is when things went bad.

Let me take a quick moment to throw in here that Middle Daughter had fallen on the Flow Rider a couple days earlier and given herself a touch of whiplash. So we knew the simulator wasn’t all that safe.

Anyway…

Hubby took a tumble. He landed on his shoulder. It was WEEKS before he had full function. (Just FYI, apparently someone broke their neck on that thing and was paralyzed.) Needless to say, There was no more Flow Rider-ing for the remainder of the cruise.

Dinner for the evening was Crispy Parmesan Arancini, Lasagna, and Lemon Curd Tartlet. (It was Italian night.) Following dinner, we suffered through the most arduous game of Friendly Family Feud that has ever been played in Royal Caribbean history. I don’t know this for a fact, but I don’t need to. I think everyone there would agree with me, including the cruise staff. Let’s just say that the contestants had no clue how either Rock Paper Scissors or Family Feud worked.

Here are my cruise hints for this post:

Cruise Hint #7: If you regularly dine in the Main Dining Room for dinner and skip a night, you will hear about your absence from your server. (Guess that’s more of an FYI than a hint!)

Cruise Hint#8: I think this goes without saying. Avoid Flow Rider as if your ability to raise your arms, move your neck, or walk depends on it. (Has Hubby learned his lesson? Hard to say. He mentioned maybe doing it again if he gets to a waterpark in the future that has one.)

Cruise Hint #9: If someone in the Bahamas says they’ll let you purchase an item for less, give them more than they ask for.

As for books…

Hubby and I listened to How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny this summer. As this installment in the Inspector Gamache series returned to Three Pines and all the regular characters were back, I thoroughly enjoyed the story.

The Great Fall Adventure Day 3 – Cook Forest State Park

Back in January, I picked a word for the year. That word was “Uncomfortable.” I quickly began to regret my word choice as life seemed to find all sorts of ways to make me uncomfortable…probably so I could live up to the quote I wrote in red gel pen in my bullet journal: “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

(See this post https://100booksin1year.wordpress.com/?s=uncomfortable for more on how choosing this word may have been a mistake!)

Anyway, day 2 of our Great Fall Adventure had clearly launched us straight outta the Comfort Zone and straight into a hiking nightmare. Rain, cold, wet socks, slippery rocks. But we survived. I’m not sure if Hubby felt like life began at the end of our comfort zone that day, but I sure didn’t. I felt more numb than alive after 4 hours in the wet and cold. Now, dry and warm and cozy in our happy home, I can almost look back on that day with, if not fondness, but a small amount of something that isn’t quite nostalgia…I don’t long to return to that day, but I’m maybe…thankful?…for having my limits tested and for finding out that I can do difficult things.

Day 3 of our Great Fall Adventure brought yet another uncomfortable moment, this time in the form of an old fire tower. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

The morning started off foggy. Thankfully, there was no rain in the forecast. We set off on the North Country Trail from the Cook Forest State Park Visitor Center, heading south. The trail was wide and well-maintained, moving upward at a slight incline. It wasn’t long, though, before we were back on rocky terrain similar to what we’d traveled on the day before.

Can you imagine these rhododendrons in bloom? It must be amazing!

Is there anything better than hiking through a moss-shrouded forest? I can’t think of too many things that rank higher.

After many uphills and downhills followed by passing through what felt like a secret passage through the lushest rhododendrons I’ve ever seen (I have serious rhododendron envy right now), we came to it:

The fire tower.

I’d seen it on the map. I’d seen it in a tourism video. I didn’t want to climb it. I knew that I would.

I have a bit of a fear of heights. And that fire tower was tall. It was 87.5 feet tall, to be specific.

It felt like it was 500 feet tall.

A sign on the side declared that only 6 people could climb it at one time. I thought that maybe if you have to limit it to just 6, perhaps it should be limited to none.

We started up and up and up. There were two people behind us, which increased my nervousness tenfold. The top platform (not the very top, as that was closed off) was tiny, barely big enough for the four of us, let alone the six that were allowed. The tower swayed slightly in the breeze, and though I knew from reading an informational sign that it had withstood many windstorms in the past, I was not confident in its ability to handle a breeze. I crouched down, body fully behind the railing as if that would protect me should the tower succumb to the gentle fall breeze, and snapped a few quick photos. I then declared it time to leave. I thought going down would be better than the climb, but it wasn’t. I was incredibly happy when my feet were back on solid ground.

I wouldn’t ordinarily share such an unflattering photo of myself, but Hubby got a candid shot of me on top of the tower that perfectly shows just how much fun I was having.

After the tower, we continued on the trail, which went downhill for what felt like FOREVER. We passed a pair of young men who were coming up the trail just as we started down, and I marveled at how out of breath they were. I commented to Hubby that they were clearly out of shape, despite the fact that they were young and looked to be in good shape. Guess what? I was huffing and puffing and sweating when we climbed that hill on our return trip. I owe them an apology for my thoughts.

We climbed yet another hill as we continued on, eventually finding ourselves in a delightful copse of maple trees that smells just like maple syrup. Soon, we came to a rock cairn and a bench overlooking the mountains. We continued just a little further to a road that would make for a great landmark should we ever return to hike more of the trail in Pennsylvania before turning back. After lunch on the bench, we retraced our steps, making one slight misturn onto another trail on the way back to the parking lot. We quickly righted our mistake, after noting that a bridge we were crossing seemed unfamiliar. Once back at the car, we enjoyed a quick snack before heading north on the trail in the gathering darkness for another mile or so.

Our total for the day was 14 miles.

As for books…

I recently finished The Cactus by Sarah Haywood. I actually wasn’t certain, when I first picked up this book if I was going to finish reading it. Call it the Vacation Book Curse, if you will, that had me wondering if this story was worth my time.

Here’s what happens: I pack approximately 462 books when I go on vacation. I rarely read even one from beginning to end on a trip. Usually, at the end of the day, I’m too exhausted from all of the fresh air and hiking that reading takes just too much energy. Thus, it takes me forever to get past the first 20 pages of a book. Another “thus,” I start to think the book I’m reading must not be all that great if it takes me a week to get through those 20 pages.

However, I persevered when we got home and found that it was actually a delightful book with a delightful main character who grew much between the first and last page.

Pond Ponderings

The sky was gloomy and overcast. Rain was forecasted. We knew we wouldn’t be able to ramble far from home unless we wanted to risk soggy socks, soaking hair, and dripping clothes.

Though we’ve hiked in ponchos before, it wasn’t fun. While our upper halves stayed nice and dry, though steamy under the plastic coat, our pant legs ended up wet and damp socks created a blister-y bad time. (That particular day we’d had an 18-mile loop hike planned but had accidentally turned the wrong way onto the North Country Trail. A few miles in we realized our mistake and ended up doing an out-and-back hike of many fewer miles due to our sogginess and discomfort in the region of my heels.)

So instead of risking a bad time in the rain, we decided to adventure close to home.

Like backyard close to home.

Our “backyard” mainly consists of gardens (flower and veggie), a steep hill, a bog, and a pond. Sometime before our time here, someone created a trail down to the bog that’s like a switchback on a mountain. This singular “switchback” lets one get down to the bog and back up to the house by walking at a lesser steep grade than if we just walked straight down the hill. Bless whoever that was because that hill is so steep Luna struggled to climb up it through the snow one winter. I thought I was going to have to rescue her. It was unclear to me how I was going to haul 60 pounds of dog up a hill through knee-deep snow, so thankfully she finally managed on her own.

With several trees now cut down, we’ve noticed some mystery plants popping up in the bog this year. At least they’re a mystery to us when viewed from the deck. Once we get down there for a closer look, it’s a -bit easier to figure out what they are. The first “plant” we noticed a month or so ago, ended up not being a mystery plant at all but was actually a pitcher plant bloom.

But the plant we noticed a few days ago–appearing from the deck as just a light-colored blob on a stalk–still remains a mystery even after viewing it up close. I’m leaning toward it being Tall Cottongrass (Eriophorum angustifolium), which is a vigorously spreading perennial that grows at the edge of ponds or in bogs. As we’d had a bit of rain the day before, the tufts of white were a bit bedraggled but oh so pretty gleaming in the sun.

This tiny adventure wouldn’t have been complete without a mushroom sighting (Turkey Tail, Trametes versicolor) and a photo of a pitcher plant.

We stood for a while at the water’s edge. Hubby dipped sticks into the water to determine how deep it is (depth still unknown as the sticks never touched bottom), and we discussed how next year we’d finally get the dock he built last summer into place so we can finally explore this pond we’ve been looking at for 20+ years. Then the promised rain began to fall, and our son shouted from the deck that we better get a move on unless we wanted to get wet. So we scurried at a snail’s pace over our rickety “boardwalk” and over a felled tree and up the “switchback,” being careful to avoid a few pesky, partially hidden stumps, and were only a little damp when we made it inside.

As for books…

I recently listened to a short story collection titled The Homecoming & Other Stories by Maeve Binchy. I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection. The entire collection can be listened to in approximately 1 hour.

Finish #16 – Friction

This past weekend was quite a weekend…plenty of time for relaxing, quilting, not relaxing (i.e. hiking through the snowy woods), and, of course, reading.

I finished my second quilt for 2016 a couple of days ago. I had hoped to have it completed by Valentine’s Day. The colors don’t feel Valentines-ish, but the “love” vibe is definitely felt through all of the hearts on the fabrics.

We enjoyed a long walk through the woods on Sunday. The ice and snow were melting, making many of our steps uncertain. At times we’d only sink into the snow a little bit; at others we might sink in to our knees. (And sometimes we’d see bare ground.)

See that photo to the right? That’s when things got a bit dicey. This is our “land bridge” between two bodies of water…usually this spot has a few logs and a bunch of mud. When we arrived there this past weekend, there was only one log and quite a bit of water. We had a decision to make– figure out how to safely cross with the dog or go all the way around the second pond. (At this point it was approaching dusk and a very light sprinkling of water was falling from the sky, making the idea of walking around the second pond not all that appealing.) Daring son made the decision for us by leaping across before we’d fully discussed the situation. He ended up ankle deep in frigid water and had to walk home in wet socks. The rest of us found a couple logs to complete the “bridge” and another log to use as a “cane” to help us make it across the slippery wood. Luna, the dog did not handle the bridge well and chose to bumble her way across with at least one foot in the water at all times. (All in all, it was a great day for her. She had a long walk, got to rub her head all over some suspicious looking snow, AND got to get super muddy once we reached the road to home. Then again, she had to get in the bathtub when we got home…so maybe not such a fabulous end to her day.)

When I wasn’t quilting or adventuring, I did get a bit of reading in, which brings me to my latest finish: Friction by Sandra Brown.

I happen to be a huge fan of Sandra Brown, so I’ve got nothing but good things to say about this book. It kept me hooked. I wanted to stay up late and read all night…but I’m too responsible to do that. (Translation: I’m a horrible crank if I don’t get enough sleep.) Definitely two thumbs up from me for this one.