#101. enjoy 4 all girls days (3 of 4)

All girl day #3

Who: BAC (Bitches Adventure Club)  This is the name J, H, and I have given ourselves.  There are tests for entry including how many days one is comfortable wearing the same underwear and how much make-up one takes camping.  We have yet to find anyone else who can hang with us.  Maybe we smell.

What: 3-day girls getaway weekend

Why: Because we wanted to return to Black Canyon during a hotter time for comparison.  Yeah, right, for comparison.

When: 05/20/10 - 05/23/10

Where: 1 night at the Hacienda Hotel, 3 days kayaking Black Canyon (Colorado River from Hoover Dam to Willow Beach), 2 nights camping

So this somewhat of a repeat trip from the #1 of 4 Enjoy 4 all girls days.  What can I say?  Black Canyon is simply amazing.  A natural sauna cave, a couple natural hot springs, very rustic camping which pretty much means very private camping - and it is right along the water for private beach access, easy kayaking in a beautiful serene environment, incredible slot canyons to hike.  It really just doesn't get much better than this.

Thursday:  We decided to head out after work on Thursday this time around so we could camp for 2 nights giving us an entire day devoted to doing whatever we wanted along the river instead of hurrying to find a campsite and get set up on day 1 and hurrying to take down and get to the end of the river for our pick up time on day 2.  The extra day was perfect.

We decided to skip the Vegas nightlife this time around and just stay at the Hacienda Hotel in Boulder City.  This is the parking lot that we meet in to get our kayaks and a ride to the river drop off.  The place is cheap, as in $27 for 2 queen beds cheap.  It's a huge place too with full casino, live entertainment, and places to eat on the bottom level.  The live entertainment while we were there was Chewy and Danielle, a husband wife (we asked) musical/singing duo.  The BEST entertainment has to offer in these parts.  At times during the night we could not stop laughing. 

We somehow ended up hanging at the bar, making friends with some boaters.  It was a huge group of guys who come to this place to boat and party once a year.  The stories were twisted and confusing and involved the death of spouses, cheating girlfriends who then married one of the other guys so even though the group was all there they were all split up and not speaking to one another, as well as 30-year olds who still lived with their mothers, and lots of other stuff that made my head spin...or maybe that was the shots.  I felt like we had just held a huge therapy session by the time we left!

Friday:  So we weren't exactly as refreshed as we could have been come Friday morning, but we seemed to manage just fine.  Here is the accumulation of our gear.  You can surprisingly fit a boatload of stuff into a kayak...all in dry sacks, of course.

Just starting out an the base of Hoover Dam.  That's the new bridge!

Before we even set up camp we had to figure out how to keep the beer cold.  It was blistering hot outside, but that river water was ice ice cold.  2 engineers and an education guru.  We had this one in the bag.

A view of the campsite when standing at the water's edge.  There is some great hiking in the slots of those rocks.

A view of the campsite taken from the tents.  Our own private beach!  We each brought a bundle of firewood, but ended up hauling it all back out because it was so insanely windy all weekend.  We chased one of the tents after first setting it up.  Take 2 involved large rocks on the stakes outside the tent as well as large rocks around the inside of the tent.  Crazy stuff!

We put that private beach to great use.  It was so hot the first day that we spent a good portion of it in these seats or lying on the ground with our feet in the water.

We learned about these sticky little prickly leaves on one of our night hikes.  The slivers on these things are so so tiny, and they grip like super glue if you just brush against them.  We learned the best way to get them off is to rub 'em with a rock.  This might not have been our first choice which led to some fine detail work with some tweezers.  Poor J!

Saturday:
The breakfast of champions:  oatmeal with blueberries, almonds, and butterscotch schnapps syrup. 

Saw a few bighorn sheep during this trip which is pretty hard to do because they blend in with the rocks so well.

Real women drink river water...through a filter first, of course!

The trail leading to the hot springs...

The ladder leading to the hot springs.  This thing was pretty sketchy and didn't have much traction for wet shoes.

But those hot springs are oh so worth it.  This one had a lot of hot spots that kept us moving around a bit. 

Posing with the sign because I'm just so damn classy.

And why I gave the pose I did!  Yup, keep your head above water in those springs or you could, um, die.

Sunday:
Hanging out with our duck friends Gary and Mary.  They seriously hung with us for the entire time we were there, leaving and coming back all throughout the day.  They were none too fearful about getting close to us.  We on the other hand weren't real keen on being crowded by the duck duo.

Trying to head toward Willow Beach for our scheduled pick up time.  It was so beyond windy that at one point we had to hold on to some trees growing out of the water because we were still floating backward even while paddling with all our might.

Our November '10 trip had to be postponed because the sickies were going around, but we are on the books for April so we don't lose our November deposit.  I suspect we will be heading back here at least once a year for years to come.

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#097. Thank 3 people who have bettered my life (1 of 3)

Thank you #1 was given to my urogynocologist on July 15, 2010.  He is the one who helped me find the right combo of oral meds as well as a cocktail of meds delivered directly via catheter to my ever-problematic and painful bladder.  I also gave him a stuffed bladder (from Iheartguts) just to lighten the mood.  I have the same stuffed bladder sent from Me hanging in my work office.

Dr. Tarnay,

I'm not quite sure how to even go about thanking you for all you have done so I will start with giving a view as to how you helped change my life.

Before meeting you I had been battling near constant pain for around 3 years. I was frustrated with the unpredictability of my bladder flares, exhausted from the multiple day and night trips to the bathroom, and trying to figure out how to come to terms with continuing to live (and I use that term loosely) this way . I had rearranged and re-engineered how I lived my life by placing a bunch of band-aid work arounds all over my symptoms in hope for a moment of relief.

I was failing.

It's hard for someone to understand how horrible you feel when you appear to look and act fairly normal. It's even harder for someone to believe that you are in serious pain when you are able to manage holding down a full-time job and perform day to day tasks. What they miss are the adjustments that were made for me to come across this way or how they evolved over the years. The best description I can come up with for others to get what living with the pain was like is to explain that instead of being able to yank your hand away when you touch a flame, imagine you are stuck holding your hand just slightly above that flame, but never moving it away. The flame might burn hotter or closer at times, but you will never know when. There is no real relief or break or a way to escape it. It became my new "normal". Over time I learned to just live with it and adjust my life accordingly the best that I could. My "world" became smaller, my smile less available, and my quest to always have bathroom access to ward off that pain took precedence over anything else.

I was miserable, but there was nothing I could do.

By the time I consulted with you I was rarely wearing jeans as they were too constrictive and I drove with only one hand as the other was used to keep the seat belt away from my abdomen. Riding in the car was often uncomfortable from the bumpiness and I lived in constant fear of being stuck in traffic with no bathroom access. I missed many work days and between the frustration and pain spent many others at my desk in tears. I felt embarrassed as I was always excusing myself or making excuses to use the restroom. I never knew day to day how I would feel and rarely made plans to avoid canceling last minute. I stayed away from activities where bathroom access was limited or those that "might" cause a flare. Intimacy was complicated and painful and generally avoided. I never felt rested as I was up so many times during the night.

I was a slave to my bladder.

At my first appointment you told me that you would find a way to help me feel better. I wanted to trust you, but had been down that road already. Many others wanted me to believe it was all in my head or not as bad as it seemed, but you took my pain at face value and vowed to fix it. Getting to today was not all smooth sailing, but you didn't give up and for that I am appreciative beyond words.

In the past few months I have been hiking all over Yosemite and Death Valley - all day kinds of hikes. I have been kayaking down the Colorado River. I have been caving and biking and running and snow shoeing and camping and...and...and. I have plans for a backpacking trip, canyoneering, a trapeze class, rock climbing, and beyond. I have a goal to run my first half marathon next year and will be able to honor my dad on the 11-year anniversary of his death later this year with a 100-mile bike ride* to raise money for MS (the disease that afflicted him). I haven't needed to get up at night for a few months now and am even able to sleep a little later than I have in years. Oh, and I can now wear both jeans and a seat belt.

I am back to LIVING.

Thank you for believing me and sticking with me and helping me. Thank you for not just allowing me to listen to my body, but for using the information to the best of your abilities to find a workable solution. Thank you for encouraging my crazy, overly-detailed pain graphs and for even consulting other specialists with them to make sure you weren't missing anything. Thank you for being open to trying unconventional methods and for not giving up when the first attempts only produced lukewarm results. Thank you for being there to tag up after every in-office treatment and for finding a long term solution for at home care.

You have changed my life in ways I can't describe and for that "Thank you" hardly seems like enough.

Forever Grateful,
Brenda
p.s. Please feel free to share this with any of the wonderful residents I met while under your care or any in the future... or really anyone you feel could benefit from it.


* (not part of the letter):  Unfortunately, the bike ride didn't happen as it occurred the weekend before we climbed Mt. Whitney.  Mt. Whitney is via permit and we didn't get to pick the date.  I had to be realistic and pick one or the other...  Hopefully the bike ride will happen this year (2011).

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#095. Go on 15 "new to us" dates with M (1 of 15)

M and my dating pattern is pretty standard:  Go out to eat on Saturday night.  The End.  We are oh so original, I know.  Pretty much the key to his heart is through good food (ie a juicy steak with a side of potatoes in his world).  Trying to break out of this habit has been a slow going process.

Way back in April, M and I (me begging, him obliging) headed out on a Sunday afternoon to check out the wildflowers in full bloom.  The original plan was to take his antique car, but he wasn't really in the mood so we compromised:  sans the antique car and add the antique dog.  Yup, we decided to take Miss Molly the Wonderdog (as in wonder why we kept her) along with us so she wouldn't have to spend the whole day home alone.

Old girl knows how to ride in style.

First up were the California Poppies.  Our plan was to head to the Poppy Reserve in Lancaster, CA, but as we drove up to the gate we were met with a No Pets Allowed sign which clearly wasn't going to work.  We headed back down the road to an amazing field we had passed just minutes before and got out to walk around and take some pictures.  The place was packed, but the view was incredible.  I have no idea why we hadn't done this before and know we will most definitely do it again next spring.

From there we headed a round about way to go north on I-5 toward Gorman.  Stopping wasn't really feasible, but there was so much to see.  The windows went down and I took some shots at full 75-ish mph motion. 

First the view from the freeway was full of beautiful fields of green...

which soon became speckled in orange, purple, and yellow for awhile.

And there were briefly some spots of brown and grey.

Then the yellow took over.

Really took over.  I so wished we could have stopped and snooped around this shed.  I was in love with the patchwork design from the road and think there was potential for some fun shots.

After a whole lot of driving to a destination that now slips my mind (but is okay because we never did find it), I requested a roadside stop to hop a fence for a little trespassing action in a farmer's field to get a better view of these.

These guys didn't seem to mind.

I so just wanted to swim in these...

But this one had obviously had enough (as had the person attached to her leash).

So homeward bound it was.

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#101. enjoy 4 all girls days (2 of 4)

All girl day #2

Who: J1 and H

What: another girls getaway camping weekend

Why: Because getting out the city seems to heal my soul and Death Valley is too damn hot to go to in the summer

When: 01/14/10 - 01/17/10

Where:

I suspect these photos are too big and may be a pain in the ass, but I'm giving it a go because I'm new at this stuff. For the few of you who read this, could you please let me know how horrible this is to view?

And on with the show. So off we went for another girl's adventure. We had some things planned such as who was bringing what for food as well as toilet paper and we knew we were headed to Death Valley, but where we were staying and what we were planning to do was done on the fly in a "Oh cool, I want to stop here!" kind of way.

The Badwater area is the lowest point in the western hemisphere @ -282ft. We didn't make it there this go around, but the visitor center alone is pretty low itself.



We left work early on a Thursday and made it to the semi-infamous haunted Amargosa Hotel.


It is listed in the national registry for haunted places which I didn't even know existed until now. An excerpt from the article in the link above:

The atmosphere in Room 32 easily gives visitors the creeps, but there is no known story that relates to the room.

Unlike Room 24 of this section, which has been nicknamed "the baby crying room."

Many guests at the Hotel report a baby that wails all night. Some even complain to the management in the morning, when in fact there were no children present in the Hotel all night.

Everyone who visits the hotel reports that certain rooms have very characteristic scents.

One room smells like perfume while another room smells like lilac. The smells are pleasant, but Regnell said, "We don't do anything to make the rooms smell like that. They just do."

Staff can't do anything to make the rooms smell differently either. No amount of air freshener or clean air can clear away the scent.

This mirror separates the restored half of the hotel from an area in disrepair known as Spooky Hollow. I thought it gave the hallway a good "The Shining" kind of feel.


The halls were just plain creepy and the rooms have not been updated or maintained very well in the last few decades to the point of no television or alarm clocks. There were several unoccupied rooms that had open doors which didn't help matters at all, but I still haven't gotten over watching "The Exorcist" at the age of 9. Okay, so it wasn't so much just the movie, but the fact that when I asked my mom if "that" (a person possessed) could actually happen she told me "Maybe...I don't really know". True Story. So after walking past the old opera house at night and peering in the sheer curtains to see ghost like manikins peering back, we opened a nice bottle of wine and called it a night.

The next morning we had breakfast at the local cafe attached to the hotel. There was one woman who was cook, waitress, and cashier. Sweetest lady who asked us all to sign her guestbook. Upon not being able to finish the pancakes that were bigger than my head, she told me that her pot-bellied pig would be happy to help me out. My friend J wanted to know what the woman was going to do with her leftover bacon...Fortunately she had a dog to feed that to. LOL.

And then we were off to set up camp. We decided on Texas Springs Campground as we were thrilled to get an end spot. They also had fire pits and flush toilets which won us over.


And how about the view...


After setting up camp we headed over to the visitor center to get maps and pointers on what we would have enough time to do and/or see in our couple day stay. We were intrigued by the number of ghost towns and settled on hitting Rhyolite, NV for a quick stop. The woman at the visitor center told us that on the road to Rhyolite we would see some "art" off the side of the road and that no matter how much we weren't interested in seeing it now, she bet money that we would stop when we came upon it.

She was right.

Now I'm no artist and have zero eye for art so please excuse my ignorance, but really did they need the blond bush on this one?

It's made out of cinder blocks to give you a scale for size. It is massive. I have a shot of the reverse side too and all I can say is baby got back.

This piece of art we all really liked. An over sized mosaic tile couch in the middle of the desert. It reminds me a bit of the Saturday Night Live skit with Lily Tomlin in the over sized rocking chair.


There were a few other massive structures like a rusted metal penguin standing next to a miner as well as some random items like tools, pots, shoes, pretty much whatever all nailed to a giant telephone sized pole. What really made us pull off to check out this art though was this:


This is a rendition of The Last Supper. I would like to tell you that we did not play the part of the disciples (or Jesus) because I suspect it might be offensive to religious people, artists, spirits, and likely grandparents everywhere...so I won't tell you. I will say that people were not made to fit in every one of these "ghosts"...allegedly.

Next up was Rhyolite, NV. It was a cute little ghost town that had been full of hustle and bustle from 1905 until about 1920 during the gold rush era. Some of the highlights:

An overview of what is left of the main "downtown":


What is left of the bank:


One of the old mines:


An old Union Pacific wooden railroad car...Please disregard the fat roll. I obviously have not started on goal #030. (Do 300 sit-ups a week for 8 weeks).


The grave site of the town's favorite prostitute. Classy...


Last but not least was the bottle house which is made out of glass bottles (duh). This was pretty cool, but I am a bit of an engineering nerd so the art part of it was lost on me.


Seriously, how cool is this thing!


Next up was a little off roading on Titus Canyon. This stop took us to another little ghost town called Leadfield which established a post office in August 1926 that closed down in February 1927. The rush to this place was built all on rumors. There wasn't much to see, but the drive to get there was full of views like this:


This is ironically the only place any of us got cell phone reception during our entire time in Death Valley. I happened to look at my phone to see what time it was (because I was hungry!) and upon learning I had bars, the vehicle was stopped and we all texted our "people" to let them know we were alive, where our campsite was at, and that we would likely be out of contact for the rest of the trip...

So my hunger was soon met with what I consider to be the best sandwich ever. EVER. The 3 of us discovered this concoction on our Black Canyon kayaking trip and they are now our lunch of choice while camping...every single day. The spread: bagel, salami, provolone, lettuce, avocado, chipotle mustard. Heaven in my mouth which makes me sad because we agreed that these sandwiches are for camping/hiking only and not an everyday at work kind of thing.


And because we like to have a theme, we picked up this little diddy too. I think going to Death Valley without these might be some kind of crime.


At the end of our off road adventure we entered Fall Canyon. It was starting to get dark (and cold), but we ventured off on a short hike to watch the sunset and check out the rocks and view.


Hiking back...


The evening was spent cooking and drinking wine by our fire. We had a couple of late night "hikes" around the campsite to just get out of the camping area slightly. The stars here were nothing like I have ever seen with the Milky Way clear as day. We spent probably a good hour each night just lying on the cold ground away from it all staring at the stars and chatting away. Peace beyond words.

On Saturday we did some more off roading in Cottonwood Canyon. J's 4WD golden nugget was a real trooper through this one. We finally decided to park it and go on foot. Another great hike with views like this:


And adventures like this:


And fun like this:


Night 2 was a pretty good repeat of night 1. It wasn't until our last oatmeal camping breakfast the next morning that we discovered butterscotch schnapps makes a pretty damn good "syrup". Breakfast of champions!

On our way out of Death Valley, we made a few pit stops. By far my favorite was our hike through Mosaic Canyon. It is made up of giant slots to hike through and is where I want my ashes scattered when I die as it is probably the most peaceful and beautiful place I have ever been. (Please someone remind my hubby of this if something ever happens to me...). (-;

Beauty beyond words. The pictures just can't do this place justice...


More of my little slice of heaven:


Our next stop was probably a close second for trip highlights for me. We hit Aguereberry Point which is at an elevation of 6433 ft. The road crawling up the last section to the top is not wide enough for 2 cars. I am not sure who has the right of way for 1 going up while another is going down, but the dropoffs on this bad boy were enough to make me glad we didn't have to find out.

This is what we saw when heading to one of the great photo viewpoints:


These guys meant business with computers on site for panoramics, black capes to block light, and cameras that made my D90 look pretty inadequate. I did see one D90 there, but it was lying on the ground and not in use. LOL.

I captured this with mine, but would love to see what those guys were getting...


One last shot (of the 224 I took over the weekend) before my camera battery died...


We did briefly hit the sand dunes at the beginning of the day and the charcoal kilns toward the end. The kilns were so cold there was still snow on the ground. Laugh all you want at my weenieness my cold weather friends. I've served my cold weather time. I think the kilns went something like, "Did you get the picture? (with H's iphone) Great, let's get out of here."

And that we did.

I will be back to visit again because the pictures I took just can't do this place justice. It is somewhere that has to be lived and felt and explored to fully grasp it all. If I were rating these adventures, this one would get 5 stars. My new happy place.

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