[sic]

I’ve written before of the single bag of local coffee we purchased at the airport in Kigali on our way out of Rwanda back to Kenya when we visited Africa in 2005 and how it turned out to be the best coffee we’ve ever had. After we’d quickly emptied the bag I tried on several occasions to arrange shipment directly from the company since their beans weren’t available in the U.S. Eventually I connected with their marketing manager who kindly informed me via email that a 12-ouncer would run me $7 — not including shipping via DHL, which would be $265.

It was good coffee, but not that good.

Fast forward a few months ago and I get an email from a Doug Sherman in Massachusetts who wrote me because I believe he’d either found my trip pix on Flickr or my journal of our travels in Africa and had some questions about a Rwanda excursion he was thinking about making with his wife during their upcoming trip there.

In the exchange that ensued I encouraged him to take advantage of the opportunity and answered his questions as best I could and at the close of one of my emails I think I practically begged him to bring us back a bag of coffee. He said he’d be happy to.

It arrived yesterday. And while it is a different company (COOPAC) than that which produced the bag we bought we’re nonetheless brewing up our first pot of Café de Maraba in anticipation as we speak. Thank you Doug!

Occasionally I’ll scroll back through the time machine that is my photo archive and in this case I ended up all the way back to early 2004 before slingshotting back forward to the summer of 2005 and our Africa trip, in particular this shot taken on our last morning in Zanzibar when I waded out a few hundred yards nto the Indian Ocean at daybreak for what turned out to be a sunrise made all the more glorious and spectacular by the flat calm of the shallow water and the multiple layers and textures of the  clouds (click to triplify):

More than two years removed from it the image took some getting oriented too, since being a lifelong Californian I’m used to the sun setting into the sea, not rising from it.

IMG_4650.JPG

Originally uploaded by Wildbell

Random photo of a gecko we found hanging out near our hotel suite when we were in Zanzibar in the Summer of 2005.

But instead of amassing them in one big set I’ve built a Thanksgiving 2007 collection broken down into smaller sets of the specific places Susan and I visited. Captions and details of individual images forthcoming.

Saturday morning was spent with one last wander around downtown Charleston before saying goodbye and finally getting a move on up to the Magnolia Plantation, where we spent a few hours wandering the gardens before getting ourselves over to Charleston International Airport to board a 7:17 flight to Atlanta and from there climbed onto a 9:25 jet back here where we touched down a few minutes past 11 p.m. L.A. time and were home around midnight to find all our animals safe and mostly sound.

By mostly I mean that Shadow began manifesting some odd symptoms that our pet sitter called and told us about Friday night that either could have been a stroke or an ear infection (she’s otherwise mobile and alert, but with a marked loss of equilibrium, “drunken” walk and a head tilt to one side) and they ended up taking her to our vet yesterday and keeping us posted.

The vet thinks it’s none of the above and are running blood tests because they think it might be kidney related, noting that her blood is excessively thick. We’ll know more tomorrow when the results are back from the lab.

But in the meantime she’s happy to see us, as are all the animals — even moreso us seeing them — and we’re going to work hard chilling and milling around our own little plantation today.

UPDATED (8:49 p.m.): Further regarding Shadow’s condition, Susan went searching onling and her efforts seemed to have hit a diagnosis square on the head: Canine Peripheral Vestribular Syndrome.

If you’d never heard of Murrells Inlet (where we’ve been since flying in Wednesday morning), it’s quite the wonderful little place and yesterday Susan’s mom gave us a tour that included a walk around the saltmarsh, a cemetery visit, and a walk through the landmark Archer Huntington residence called Atalaya.

On the early morning stroll along the length of the Marsh Walk, we encountered not just the statue of apparent local legend Bubba Love (known as “the Mayor of Murrells Inlet”) but the man himself who’d just returned from a high-water oyster harvesting excursion and allowed us to take pictures of him as he was shoveling his susbtantial haul off his boat to be later put on today’s menu.

Among the avian specimens around the way we saw greater egrets, great blue herons, eastern brown pelicans, turkey vultures, grackles, gulls — and best of all: a bald eagle soaring overhead (click to doublify the digizoomtasticness):

Being a fan of cemeteries, the one we visited was especially enjoyable thanks to the huge live oaks growing there dramatically draped with Spanish moss. Unlike the walled-off cemeteries of Los Angeles, this one was like many found throughout southern communities: wide-open and accessible at all hours with residences situated just across the street.

Our last stop was the remarkable Atalaya Castle, the sprawling winter residence of Archer Huntington completed in 1933 (SoCal connection: Archer’s father was Collis Huntington whose nephew was Henry Huntington of the Huntington Library & Gardens in San Marino).

From there we got back with plenty of time to relax the afternoon away before an excellent prime rib dinner prepared by Susan’s mom.

This morning we’ll say our goodbyes and be off down Highway 17 southbound for Charleston where we’ll spend the day exploring that city’s remarkable history and then tomorrow tour the Magnolia Plantation before getting on a plane back for L.A.

For Susan and I this month has historically become a pretty solid time of travel. Our first November together back in 2004 when I was a docent for the L.A. Zoo I was thrilled to be selected to be part of the volunteer crew that got to spend three days on a remote part of the remote Santa Cruz Island assembling breeding pens for the endangered Channel Island foxes there. A week later we spent a weekend in Death Valley and for Thanksgiving a couple weeks later we flew up to Reno for a drive with her mom and stepdad up to Redding where her grandma lived. The next two Novembers were a little less far-and-wide, with only Death Valley in 2005 and only a flight to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for Thanksgiving with her mom and stepdad in ‘06.

This year we were back at it full force. A couple weeks after my mid-October trip to Orlando, Susan had to go to Chicago for a four-day conference at the beginning of the month. Five days after she got back we were in Death Valley for a quick weekender, and tonight (if the fog isn’t too thick for take-offs and landings) we’re getting on a late-night flight for another Thanksgiving in Myrtle Beach by way of Atlanta. the Friday after we’re going to stay an extra day and drive down to explore Charleston before flying back home Saturday.

I’m packing light, which means no laptop so I’m not sure if I’ll be near the computational means to post while we’re away, but I’ll toss the odd/occasional phonecam snap up on Flickr and certainly have some stuff to show and tell once we return.

In the meantime I hope you have and yours have a Happy Thanksgiving!

You’re gonna wanna click the above
Eureka Dunes panorama thumbnail

First off props to my beloved Susan because I gotta say it takes a special woman who says “hell yeah!” when I tell her that I want to drive out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with our two dogs and spend the following day next to a the biggest pile of sand in California and then come home the day after that.

It was sooo worth it. Five and a half hours spent Friday night rolling up the 14 to the 395 to Big Pine and then the 168 up, up, up winding roads dodging brazen jackrabbits until going down, down, down to where the pavement ran out then dodging even more jackrabbits until we found the turn off for Eureka Dunes and 10 miles later we pulled into the deserted campground, stepped outside into the blessedly still but chilly (but not as bad as we’d expected) 1:30 a.m. air under as many stars as there are grains of sand in the dunes and decided we’d save the tent pitching for daylight and sleep in the car.

Four and a half hour later we were up with the dawn and it was even colder (but still wonderfully windless and deserted), and soon the coffee was percolating on the campstove and coyotes were yipping somewhere unseen in the distance and then the sun popped up over the eastern mountains and immediately began warming things up and we had breakfast of corned beef hash, bacon and eggs and as we raised the tent we openly wondered if we’d somehow lucked into getting the entire monstrously magnificent Eureka Valley to ourselves.

A short time later we had our first lookeloo: a fella in a sedan pulled out to take a couple photos and move on and by 11:30 it was still all ours ours ours and decidedly in the low 80s and gorgeous and so Susan and Ranger and Shadow and I hit the dunes. We didn’t make it to the 700-foot top, opting instead to romp around up to about 400 feet or so before heading back for ice-cold Coronas at camp and a nap that was disturbed occasionally by the passing trains of two-wheeled and four-wheeled offroaders, the latter stopping long enough to be overheard saying “That’s some impressive freakin’ dunes” before heading off.

At sunset we had a couple visiting pairs of people who parked nearby and made quickout and back trips onto the sand before coming back to their vehicles and leaving.

We did end up with a neighboring camp, but they had the fine sense to set up about a half mile down the road. As darkness fell, we got the fire going and had a great dinner of steaks and veggies and cheap red wine bought at the Stater Bros. market in Mojave. Afterward we marveled at a couple of bats and their acrobatics through our camp picking off moths drawn to our lanterns.

I tried my hand at several five and 10-minute timelapses of the starry skies but after losing patience I joined Susan and the dogs in the tent and appropriately bundled up we were all asleep or getting there by 7:30 p.m.

Up again at 6 a.m. to another phenomenally windless and glorious day I got a morning campfire going and coffee brewing. After breakfast Ranger and I had another romp to about the dunes’ 250 foot elevation, then came back to break camp with Shadow while Susan and Ranger headed out for one last visit to the sandy stuff.

We were packed and on our way by 10 a.m. as planned, leaving us enough time for a sidetrip to the Manzanar Interment Camp off 395 outside of Lone Pine. By 4 p.m. we were home to find all the cats had been well cared for by my mom. Afer unpacking we dropped the rental SUV back at Hertz and since then he dogs have pretty much been sacked out from their fantastic journey and Susan and I have been pulling pictures taken off our cameras, including that 18-shot 180-degree view posted above of the south end of Eureka Valley and the dunes.

Without a doubt everything conspired — the weather, the lack of other people, the location, the light traffic out and back — to produce one of the best camping experiences ever. Plenty more pictures to come. Later.

First it’s back to the grind of doing dishes and sleeping in a real bed.

UPDATE (11.12): My Flickr photoset found here; Susan’s is here!

This has been a pretty hectic couple weeks at work and it’s been a bit of a scramble at home, too, what with Susan traveling and us falling behind in finding a petsitter while we’ll be in South Carolina for Thanksgiving. Though our go-to sitter was booked, she referred us to a wonderful gal who we met Wednesday night and will be able to take care of our zoo while we’re across the country.

On top of all that we’re taking the dawgs with us and going to Death Valley’s Eureka Dunes this weekend, so getting all the logistics and provisions and transportation squared away  (and mom onboard to cat-sit), added to the franticality.

It’s going to be an interesting outing unlike any other I’ve made out to one of my favorite places on earth. We’re driving out to the ultra-remote and primitive camping area at the foot of the amazing 700-foot tall pile of sand in a rented Toyota RAV-4 tonight — and leaving late… like around 8. So we’re not even going to arrive until well after midnight. Then if I have the energy I’ll somehow manage to pitch the tent in the pitch darkness and we’ll pile in to sleep until morning. That, or we’ll just get as comfortable as two dogs and two humans can get in a mid-sized SUV for the remainder of the night and make camp after daybreak.

Saturday’s gonna be spent climbing to the top of the dunes, and surveying the rugged great wide opens of Eureka Valley and just generally hanging out and decompressing and listening to the deafening silence that is out there. After dark I’m hoping the skies will be clear because Comet Holmes is out there moving around above the northeastern horizon and that would be cool to get some nice timed exposures of its visit. After another night we have a leisurely breakfast Sunday, take a last look around and load everything and everybody up and get on back home.

That picture above is from two years ago this Veterans Day weekend and my first and only visit to “Yoo Dee” back with Susan in 2005. I came back on top of the world only to have the rug pulled out from under my life the next day by the zoo which kicked me out after six years of faithful dedicated service as both an employee and a docent. When something so crap happens so close to something so cool it can’t help but sully the memories. So it’ll be good to finally go back and make some new ones.

My earlier post this morning described the uneventfulness of the flight. That’s not to say the wait at the gate went as smoothly. I guess I temporarily blocked it perhaps as a sanity-saving measure, but fellow contributer Cutter’s post this morning about cellphonetards brought the recollection back in full technicolor:

While waiting for my L.A. flight last night in Orlando International Airport being bombarded by the inconsiderate noise and action generated from a recently arrived brood of spoiled children, the oldest of which wore a t-shirt emblazoned with “It’s almost boring how I always get my way,” I was then brought mercilessly into part of one side of Blackberry-bearing, bluetooth-headsetted man’s cellphone conversation, which consisted of him being the center of his universe while yelling the following: “But you have to quantify it! (pause) Yeah no, but you have to quantify it! (pause) It has to be Quan. Ti. Fied. Of course it is — of course it’s quantifiable! Right: quantify it.”

As the bastard continued expounding at ridiculous decibels upon the benefits and needs of quantifiability, one of the restless romping kids decided it was the perfect time to trip over himself and tumble into my legs where crying commenced in full. And right at that very moment I knew I had two choices: 1) kill everyone with my bare hands and strangle anyone else who objected with the laptop charger or, 2) get up and away, lugging my carry-ons to wait out the now-boarding call over by the saner pastures of the overpriced newsstand.

Tough call, but I opted for the latter.