Bozeman to Billings under the Big Sky

Well, it's day six of our life on the road and I have to say that I have quietly put aside all my fears about living in a container the size of my hobby room. RVing is simply a ton of fun and not to be missed, though it's not without it's minor -- and sometimes major -- problems and inconveniences.

Like last night in Bozeman, Montana, where the RV park was achingly beautiful, our individual space wonderful and level, and the laundry room totally vacant and waiting for our load of towels. Absolutely everything about our experience there was great except their WiFi was on the fritz due, not to their equipment (I could connect to their router) but due to the local phone company's faux pas. We had fun anyway, especially when we got to tour the owner's greenhouse where they were growing absolutely prize-winning tomatoes.

We've found the some things just don't go your way no matter how prepared you are. Like today when I attempted to park on a quiet city street in Bozeman so I could dash around the corner and buy a circular polarizer filter for my SLR. Little did I know that the pool of water next to the curb hid a park bench-sized hole that, when the motor home's tires to dropped into it a good six inches, the coach tilted crazily and brought the refrigerator's rooftop evaporative cooling coil's plastic housing in fatal contact with a century old tree planted in the parkway. The result was one largely destroyed cover. That kind of fun stuff.

On the other side of the coin, the things you get to see and the people you get to meet make you quickly forget the pain and suffering and make you realize that things just don't get much better in life than when you can cruise the highways of America searching for adventure and literally find it around every corner.

Today Concetta and I make an absolutely amazing find in Bozeman in the form of an attraction called, "The Museum of the Rockies." Wow! What a place! We wandered the halls for at least a couple of hours looking at everything from Dinosaur skeletons to plains Indian crafts, from horse-drawn wagons to natural history exhibits. It was all so well done that we just hated to leave. When lunch time came and our stomachs told us we needed nourishment we headed for the RV to have lunch. But before we'd gone far we discovered that next door to the museum they were hosting a full-fledged Chautauqua surrounding a nineteenth century farmhouse. There were exhibits on period gardening, vintage firearms, weaving, kitchen chores, music and singing, antique machinery, and, well, you name it. It was all so colorful and exiting looking, we determined to go have lunch and then come back and take in the fun. All this meant that we didn't hit the road until 2:30 in the afternoon. Still, we made our next port of call, Billings, Montana. From here I think it's a short jaunt to the Custer Battlefield park.

Just a word on Bozeman itself. It is one of the nicest, cleanest, most historic looking towns we've seen in many years, certainly the most attractive place we've seen on this trip. Since we were intent on both finding a photo store for the purchase of my filter and finding the Museum of the Rockies that had been advertised on the freeway, we did a considerable amount of roving around. Here can be found block after block of vintage homes, all well kept, and a main street which boasts several blocks of well tended commercial buildings. I know there must be the inevitable ugly parts somewhere, but we never saw them. Santa Fe, New Mexico used to be my favorite "other place" I might see myself living if I had to leave Carson City, but I think I'm going to move Bozeman, Montana into the front-runner spot for future re-location. It's just that charming. Concetta, for her part, liked my buddy Charley seims' neighborhood near Portland, Oregon. Granted, Portland is mighty pretty owing to the fact that everything is so green. Unfortunately it gets that way because the rain falls steadily for months at a time. Everything turns green -- your lawn, your foliage, your roof, the cover on your boat. You get the picture.

Our route this trip involved us driving north from Carson City, Nevada, as far as Washington State just south of Seattle. At that point we started East with an intended destination of somewhere on the east coast -- Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, or somewhere further south. Along the way we intend to visit a couple of days in Connie's girlhood state of Ohio. Other than Ohio, the only places that we wanted to make sure we saw were The Custer Battlefield and Mount Rushmore. Now, with our arrival in Billings, we are close to the site of General Custer's defeat and we hope to be able to take that in tomorrow.

Of course there are lots and lots of other places we'd like to see, especially a couple of Civil War battlefields such as Gettysburg and or Antietam, some nautical areas such as Mystic Seaport or New Bedford, and some great New England covered bridges and century farms. We're pretty much winging this whole trip based on what looks interesting on the map. Yes, I know we're missing tons of interesting things which will have to wait for another trip, but we prefer not to plan so tightly that no time is left for stumbling over something interesting like we did today in Bozeman.

One of the things we've been doing is listening to books on tape as we travel the more mundane stretches of interstate. Naturally, we try and avoid the interstates as much as possible. But, as we experienced in Helena yesterday, sometimes you can't get here from there unless you include a bit of divided highway. There ARE roads from Helena to Billings that don't involve interstate driving but had we taken those particular roads I'd still be driving instead of sitting here typing.

Anyway, our book on tape for the last several days is really THREE books on tape by Bill Bryson. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Bill: "William McGuire 'Bill' Bryson, OBE, (born December 8, 1951) is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of North Yorkshire for most of his professional life before moving back to the US in 1995. In 2003 Bryson moved back to Britain, living in the old rectory of Wramplingham, Norfolk, and was appointed Chancellor of Durham University

Bill is just the wittiest, most marvelously well spoken writer I've come across in a long, long time. I've read many of his books, most recently "A Walk in the Woods," which I thought was wonderful. Bill has a way of stringing together the same old words we all use in such new and inventive ways that he has me pounding the steering wheel with laughter every time we listen. Give Bill a try. I think you'll like him.

Well, Concetta just poked her head out of the bedroom and asked if I planned to come to bed sometime soon. I guess that means it's getting late. Actually, I'd like to get a little reading in before lights out, so for now I'll say, Ciao.

Moving in on Missoula

Today we traveled from Spokane, Washington, to Missoula, Montana -- just not right away. The first thing we had to do was track down a new gas cap for the motor home. Yesterday, realizing that sometimes it becomes necessary to share the wealth, I decided to be magnanimous and leave my gas cap atop the pump in the Shell station in Ellensburg, Washington. I'm sure it was found soon after by someone who desperately needed just that design of cap. I felt good about it all day. But before we could hit the road this morning we had to track down an RV center (they had no caps) and then an auto parts store so that we wouldn't be strewing gasoline down the interstate and maybe get pulled over for polluting. Once that chore was complete, we were able to gas up and be off. My new cap is a locking one so that I can leave the keys in the cap and thus be reminded to return it to its natural place.

Our next goal, once we ventured out of Washington and into Idaho was to find my long lost buddy, Pete Blackmore, who, along with his wife of many years, had left the over-crowded confines of Carson City back in the nineties and moved up to the pristine environs of lake Couer d' Alene in Idaho. Specifically, he was living in the tiny (population 200+) town of Harrison just south of Couer d' Alene itself. Man, what a wonderfully beautiful place!!! You leave the interstate and wind your way slowly slowly for miles around the lake on a tiny two-lane road. It's a little hair raising in a thirty-foot motor home but the scenery is definitely worth it.

Pete, a native of Thetford, England, had worked with me at a printing establishment for all of my nine years in the business. In fact, Pete and I had at one time been offered ownership of the business when the owner retired. But along came an offer of a state government position and away I went, never to hang around with Pete again. I've been sending him Christmas cards for years but all I had was a post office box. Still, I thought that since the town was so small more than one person would be able to tell me where to find him.

As fate would have it, Concetta and I stopped in an ice cream parlor and asked to see their phone book. I easily picked out Pete's number and dialed the phone. Unfortunately, only his son, Simon, was home and I soon learned that Pete and his wife were off to Couer d' Alene to do the weekly shopping. Much disappointed, we headed back to the motor home parked right on the main street. As we approached we passed a woman putting the finishing touches on her sidewalk sign advertising her Wine-tasting shop. As we lingered there next to the motor home the woman stood, and came toward us. I recognized her instantly as Pete's daughter, Julie, whom I hadn't seen since she was a young girl but whom I instinctively recognized. "Are you Julie," I asked as she came abreast of us.

She got a big smile on her face and said, "Yes. Do I know you?"

I proceeded to tell her about my association with her dad and we soon fell into a lively conversation about Carson City and what her family had been up to all these years. During the course of the conversation Julie invited us up to her wine shop and we spent a lovely half hour sampling her supply of "fruit" wines, not derived from grapes. The wine was wonderful, had about 14% alcohol, and we selected a couple of different flavors (pear and Italian plum) and thanked Julie for a very nice experience.

The town had a very nice picnic area just up slope from the lake and we spent an additional half hour eating lunch before we packed up and headed back toward the interstate and our intended route to Montana. We arrived in camp here in Missoula about 5:00 p.m. and Concetta immediately set about fixing some lovely trout given to me by my buddy, Jeff, from Public Safety, some chard from our garden back home, salad, and a bottle of Menage a Trois. For dessert, we had more blackberries carefully (and painfully) picked by the roadside in Oregon.

The motor home is behaving very well and I'm getting quite comfortable handling it. I even had to back it into the camp spot tonight which went off without a hitch. My only complaint is that in order to make our rendezvous in Ohio sometime after the 12th I'm having to bypass a lot of stuff I'd really like to stop and see. Of course the downside is that there would be days that I wouldn't get anywhere at all. The route we're taking is truly beautiful. We've never spent any time in the Pacific northwest and the area obviously deserves a lot more attention in the future. I'm not exactly sure where we're going tomorrow except to say I'm headed toward the Custer battlefield national park in Montana and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Beyond that, who knows. I do have a date to visit George (Legislature workmate) Aldrich's mother in Wisconsin, so we'll be heading generally in that direction.

I've tried numerous times to upload photos for this segment of the blog, but the WiFi connection here at the Missoula RV park refuses to let me for some reason. So, until next time, I bid you ciao and great traveling.

Singing in the Rain

Day 4 – Yakima to Spokane

Yesterday we traveled from Yakima to Spokane in the beautiful state of Washington. Much of the terrain looks like our home, the Carson Valley, with vast fields of green carpeting the valleys and sage-covered rolling hills ringing the fields. In other valleys, ones where cover crops like wheat (or maybe hay) had been grown this past summer, a short-cropped golden carpet flowed away to the horizon interrupted only by the lazy patterns carved by a myriad of farm machinery wheels in the stubble making it look as if someone had been more interested in art than in farming. Quite a beautiful sight. To heighten our experience, the sky as we headed eastward, billowed with rain clouds and bristled with the occasional lightening strike; an awesome and magnificent vista. Only later, as we neared the end of our drive, did the skies open up with their long-promised rain and envelop the landscape.

Concetta had navigated us to a KOA in Spokane that we truly hoped would have some vacant spots since it was the only one that the AAA guide had recommended. When we at last arrived and discovered that the camp did indeed have a number of open spaces, the check-in clerk asked me what sort of space I’d like. “One where it’s not raining,” I said, for by then it was raining like mother nature had to get a month’s supply on the ground so she could go on vacation. Fortunately, I was able to get the electric and water hooked up and get myself back inside before I needed to be rung out like a sponge.

The day started out with us looking for two things: one, the Yakima Trolley museum; and two, a Ford dealer so I could discuss my “Check Engine” warning on the dash. We wandered around for some time finding neither when I suggested to Concetta that we feed a fictitious address into the GPS for the trolley museum since the guidebook was kind enough to offer none. Miraculously, the fictitious address turned out to be almost exactly correct and we were soon at the front door – only to discover that it was closed. Sigh. Oh well, on to the Ford dealer which I assumed would be on the main street of town just like the Chevrolet dealer we had already seen. Unfortunately, locating the dealer was not to be and before long we found ourselves back in the vicinity of the freeway on-ramp that we needed for our journey north. Promising to check the next town for the sought-after dealer, we headed for the town of Ellensburg hoping to have better luck.

Ellensburg was where we stopped for coffee yesterday morning to post the previous blog. McDonalds has easy-to-use WiFi and surprisingly good coffee. I usually have the blog roughed out in Word Perfect (yes I own Microsoft Word, but consider it to be an inferior product) and just have to upload to the web. As you may or may not know, I bought a remote uplink device for this trip sponsored by Virgin Mobile/AT&T. But as yet I have not been able to connect with it. The device will talk happily with the mother ship at Virgin. I even downloaded the manual in PDF format this evening. But when I try to get to Google or AOL it simply tells me that it has timed out. No other explanation. Not sure how to outwit it, but for now McDonalds is my savior.

Anyway, after blogging and drinking our coffee we headed for the neighborhood Ford dealer using instructions offered by the girl serving our coffee. And her directions turned out to be spot on. Moments later we were pulling up in front of the service entrance to Ford and serendipitously caught two service employees smoking outside on the sidewalk. I jumped out and approached them with my problem. “Do you want me to pull it into the service area?” I asked.

“Nah,” the older of the two said. “We can check it out right where it sits.”

And that’s just what they did. Ten seconds later one of the chaps emerged from the building with a tester of some sort. Maybe a minute after that he’d hooked the device up to some place under the dash, run the test, and ambled over to tell me that his tester indicated the problem was with the emissions system. “Probably just a leaking vacuum hose. Plastic you know,” he said. “You probably don’t need to worry about it and can just track it down when you get back home.”

Now how is that for fortuitousness? I thanked them, hopped back in the truck, and was on my way in less time than it took to type this blog entry. I was stoked to say the least.

For most of the trip from Ellensburg to Spokane we shunned the interstate and traveled the back roads of America, just like the American Pickers. I didn’t dare suggest to Concetta that I while away the afternoon rummaging through any of the two dozen antique shops we passed, but it was fun to think about it. We don’t really have any room to bring antiques along with us anyway. Still, I’m going to pick one out one of these fine afternoons on some little-traveled country road and bring home some treasure. I promise.

Taking to the mountains

Day 3 – Portland to Yakima

If you payed attention to my previous blog entry you know that around noon yesterday we had decided to head for the Pacific Ocean west of Kelso, Washington. As fate would have it, we decided quite on the fly not to head West but East to Yakima via Highway 12. There was no deep thought involved. The highway just looked like it transected some pretty exciting and scenic country, running as it does between Mount Rainier to the north and Mount St. Helens to the south.

Indeed the country has been as beautiful and sparsely populated as you could ask for. Route 12 is just a two-laner, and as such attracts far less traffic than the interstate. Dismissing the occasional speeding lumber truck cruising just scant feet from our rear bumper, our sojourn up Route 12 was a dream.

Enter the subject of road construction. Now I have to admit that we were forewarned that road construction on Route 12 would cause as much as ninety minute delays. But as I often do, I chose to disregard that warning, assuming that ninety minutes was probably the longest we could expect and the actual wait would turn out to be a far smaller chunk of time. So it was that we rounded a corner and encountered a road block complete with a very friendly female roadblock attendant who duly informed us that we could indeed expect one 45 minute delay just beyond where she had stopped us as well as an additional 90 minute delay further up the mountain.

“Of course, you could go that way,” she informed us, pointing off to her right. I looked over to where she was pointing and saw a two lane road even narrower than the one we were on. “That way leads to break-a-heart pass,” she said, or something like that. “Not really recommended for motor homes, but you could give it a try. Adds 22 miles to your trip.”

With images of Desi Arnez and Lucille Ball trying to bend their long, long trailer around tiny hairpin curves high in the mountains and barely keeping the whole rig from tumbling into the yawning chasm, I said, “No thanks, we’re not in that big a hurry.”

And that’s how I came to have time to work on this blog entry. The typing table was a little tipped since we were sitting on perhaps a 15 degree upslope angle. But at least the computer kept sliding toward me and not away. I thought about getting out the wheel chocks that I had paid big money for back in Carson City’s Wally World, but then I thought, hey, the 18-wheeler behind us would have to slide backwards first before I could.

In the end I was caught figuratively with my pants down as before I had gotten firmly into the third paragraph of the blog I heard a shout and Concetta said, “better get the truck started they’re pulling out.” I didn’t get to shut down the computer, stow my glasses, or much else and had to dive into the driver’s seat, start the truck and be off before the aforementioned 18-wheeler ran over the top of us.

Fortunately, we never ran into the second road block. I think that dinner time had inevitably called away the asphalt workers and they just went home and left us to continue our journey in peace. Ultimately I had been right from the beginning. Our total wait had been about thirty minutes.

Once over the mountain we coasted down into Yakima and headed for the RV park that Concetta had found in the AAA guide book. We were feeling pretty good. The wait had been shorter than we expected, the sun was shining on us, and it looked like we’d be in camp with plenty of daylight left. We went on thinking just like that right up until the moment we rolled in the driveway of the RV park and up to the office. There, displayed for all to see, was a sign that said, “Sorry, full for the night.”

“Oh, NO! we chorused. But after a moment of feeling sorry for ourselves, we set off in search of the only other AAA sanctioned RV park in Yakima. But when Concetta fed in the address, the little GPS came back and said, “Sorry, no such place,” or words to that effect.

By this time I didn’t really even know where in the city of Yakima I had landed. So, we did the only sensible thing in such an eventuality, we parked the coach and tried to call the second RV place, which was a state-owned and run park. On the first try I got a fax line. Ooops! We tried a different number. But this time no one answered at all. Okay, there was an 800 number listed, too. So, I tried calling that. This time I thought someone answered. Only problem was I had reached a recording, and the man who narrated the message must have been eating a peanut-butter sandwich while the tape was rolling. He sounded completely unintelligible and just a tad dim-witted to boot.

So, we decided to do the only other sensible thing we could in such a situation, stop and ask someone who was sure to know: a motel desk clerk for instance. I pulled the RV across the street from a handy motel and started for the door. But who should pull up in front just at that moment but a cab driver. Even better, I thought.

The cab driver proved our salvation. She knew right where the park was located and inside of fifteen minutes we were rolling in the front gate. Of course both of us were holding our breaths as we waited to see if this new park would be filled to the brim also. But no, the place looked completely empty. Once we got to the rear of the park where the RV folks were directed we did find a couple of dozen rigs in attendance, but we easily found a nice spot for the night.

So, serendipity had triumphed again. Yesterday morning we didn’t even know precisely where we were headed except to say generally north and east. By yesterday evening we had found a park, got a fire going, had barbecued chicken, roasted corn, salad with cucumbers from our garden, and, for dessert, blackberries that we had picked beside a country road yesterday. Everything turned out just fine even though we’d been a tad uncertain at times. Today, I have no good idea where we’re going except to say we hope to visit the Yakima trolley museum before we leave town. Otherwise, well, we’re headed generally east until we reach the Atlantic Ocean. I hope that every day is filled with as much serendipity as possible.

Stay tuned.

On the Road Again -- this time in the U.S.

Day 1 – Carson City to McCloud

Sunday we slept in until about 6:00 a.m. and then went about getting ready to leave on our much anticipated cross-country adventure. We had spent the previous two days intensively finishing up the loading phase of our thirty-foot Tioga motorhome. I had spent several weeks figuring out just what should be brought along in the basement area of the coach. Things like wooden blocks to aid in the leveling at camp sites, tools for (hopefully) any occasion, and water and sewer hoses and attendant fittings, as well as more mundane things like folding chairs and a table, firewood, and a ladder to aid in extending the awning. For the two days before our departure, we had concentrated on a bit more cleaning and then packing our clothes and all the needed groceries and other supplies that would allow us to survive on the road.

It has been at least two decades since Concetta and I have been camping and, for me, well over forty-five years since I had been RVing. When I was teenager, my parents had begun traveling the west in a Ford pickup and a small, borrowed, aluminum travel trailer. I think it could not have been more than twenty feet long and was perhaps even shorter. I remember it as a sort of aquamarine and white, in stark contrast to Dad’s 1963 red and white Ford Pickup.

Because stretch cab pickups had not been invented yet, Dad had fashioned an aluminum canopy over the pickup bed and, for seating, acquired an old brown and cream-colored Studebaker front seat where brother Cliff and I would ride as we wandering the byways of the six or seven western states. Here Cliff would sleep and I would be studying each and every passing rustic town, farmstead, and roadside attraction. At that time I was absolutely addicted to western Americana. Dad seldom stopped but I took in as much as I could from the bed of the pickup. Actually, I didn't mind being out in the open air at all. I got to see more, I think, than I would have in the cab. Cliff and I even slept under the canopy at night.

Our current adventure finally began just after 10:00 a.m. as we headed north on Hwy 395 through Reno and on toward Susanville, California. The drive was through mile after mile of farm and ranch lands, punctuated only occasionally by civilization. The truck ran as smooth as glass and despite that fact that we had loaded it with every possible thing we might need, in every possible situation, it still pulled the hills with ease at 55 to 60MPH. We never tried to do more that about 65 miles per hour so as to afford us easy stopping should trouble crop up. By around 4:30 p.m. we reached McCloud and Concetta directed to the campsite she had picked out for us, a wonderful park-like facility with spaces for nearly a hundred RVs. Our camping experience was about to begin in earnest.

Concetta eased us into the evening with some vodka and cranberry juice cocktails, some cheese, salami and crackers, and a couple of comfortable chairs beneath a spreading Ash Tree. It has been a long, long haul getting to this vacation and as we sat there and clinked our (plastic) wine goblets we toasted our success. Both of us had been hired for the legislative session which mandated us starting work back in late 2010 and, for me, working through June. Concetta worked even longer, right up to last Thursday, so the coming of the road trip was especially long-awaited for her.

Dinner that first night turned out to be steak, though the RV park we chose in McCloud did not have barbecue grills so the steaks had to be cooked in the RV.
After dinner and dishes Concetta insisted that I produce the Scrabble game so we could have our usual contest played in the glow of the Coleman lantern. Miraculously, we weren’t bothered by any bugs though during our steak dinner about a dozen yellow jackets came calling. This didn’t prove to be a problem since I had purchased a bug and fly zapper that looks sort of like a badminton racket. The device runs on a couple AA batteries and actually electrocutes any flying pests if they touch it. Most of them were not inclined to touch my murder machine but after some coaxing they were quickly dispatched and dinner proceeded as before.

After the Scrabble game it was back to the RV for some much needed showers and then to bed. This was the first time, of course, that we had tried out the shower and to our relief it works fine. We had intended all along to take the RV out on a dry run for a day or two to make sure everything worked, but alas, there simply wasn’t time.

The Tioga has turned out to be quite comfortable. I’m so glad that I held out for a unit with the built-in banquette seating. Since we’re not traveling with a group of people we can leave the table set up for the banquette.

The following day, Monday, we once again got rolling around 10:00 as we made our way up I5 toward Portland and a rendezvous with my long-time hiking and traveling buddy, Charles Seims. Charles has a cute little bungalow filled with antique electric trains and other antiques and a garage full of antique autos. He and I have known each other since we were kids together in Altadena and enjoy many of the same interests.

It was kind of a long haul to Portland since we started so late so we didn't really stop for any site-seeing. We rolled up to Charles' door about dusk and then walked down the street to his favorite local restaurant for some truly wonderful Italian food and a glass of wine. After dinner, Charles and I reminisced until late over bottles of Corona and then, thanks to the wine and the beer, I had a wonderful nights sleep. This morning, after a short tour of the neighborhood in Charles' 1964 poppy-red Mustang, we hit the road once more. I think that this is the point that our adventure really begins because now we don't really have anywhere we have to be at any specific time. We just rolled off the freeway here in Washington State and once I update this blog we're headed west to the Pacific. We're going to try and stick to the secondary roads and I'll be including photographs on a regular basis. The remote connection device that I purchased to provide me with the Internet seems to connect but won't allow me on line -- at least yet. Not sure what's wrong, but I'm typing this in McDonalds over a crispy chicken sandwich and a pretty darn nice cup of coffee. So, until later, I'll say ciao.

The Flight(s) Home

As I think I've said previously in the blog, I spent quite a bit of time on the planning end of this trip working with the airlines. This involved the on-line reservation via Cheapoair.com (whom I'd never heard of before) as well as spending much time on the phone with the airlines themselves.

The most time was probably taken up with insuring that at least two hours existed between the landing of one flight and the taking off of the next flight. I'm an absolute fanatic about having sufficient time between flights to cover any contingency. When there are three legs outbound and three legs inbound on your journey, the slack time between flights can become critical. On this particular trip, we didn't have any problems outbound with the planes being on time. But inbound two out of the three flights were an hour late or more, which would have been disastrous if I hadn't booked intelligently.

I also spent much time on seat selection. Though many might think selecting seats is not that important, I always insist on having the aisle seat and the middle seat for Concetta and me rather than the window seat. This insures that you don't inconvenience anyone who might want to sleep the whole flight away. On this trip, it took at least an hour on the phone on two different occasions to finally nail down the seat assignments for all six flights. Thanks to all that careful planning and diligent phone work, the flying part of our trip came off flawlessly.

Like anything else that lots and lots of people want to do at the same time and place, flying can be a gigantic pain. One of the things that made our experience as pleasant as possible is the carry-on luggage. You see some folks who buy the biggest darn carry-on bag possible in order to, what? Put something over on the flight crew? Then they struggle and struggle to get the stupid things on board and into overhead bin. Take my advice, check one big bag and buy a carry-on about half the legal size with a good set of wheels and a telescoping handle and let it go at that.

Our carry-on bags are easy to get on the plane and easy to get in the overhead. Don't put any clothes in them except some clean underwear and socks in case they lose the checked bag for a day or two. Into mine when the computer and the Nikon, two things I wouldn't dream of checking, and all the electric stuff like phone and laptop chargers, etc. Into Concetta's went the above-mentioned clothes, the medicines, the GPS unit, her headphones (always wonderful to have on an airplane), and a few personal items.

We also take what the airlines call a, "personal item." Naturally, for Concetta the personal item is her purse. For me, I have a small bag about ten inches high, six inches wide, and five inches deep that holds my reading book, my headphones, the passports, the boarding passes, my journal, my glasses, and a bunch of other stuff like a tiny flashlight and a bottle of Tylenol. This bag, which I found at Target, is just perfect for sliding under the seat ahead of me.

By the way, our checked luggage is a rolling duffel bag which has a telescoping handle. This soft-sided bag has a host of separate compartments, won't be damaged from having a ton of other luggage piled on it, and with the handle extended it's easy to put your small carry-on above it for wheeling both around the airport. To make them extra visible on the turnstile, we bought a couple of those fluorescent yellow canvas belts that you wrap around the bag and clasp. We also use the TSA-approved combination locks on the the main zippers to deter crimes of opportunity.

Yesterday, you may remember that I booked us into the airport Hilton in Rome to make our appearance at the terminal at the required hour extra easy. That turned out to be a wonderful idea, one that I intend to use in the future. Staying at the Hilton allowed me to get rid of the rental car the day before, thus cutting down on the stress that always results from trying to turn in the car and get to your flight in the same time period. The Hilton had a van and a very helpful driver who deposited us at the proper terminal at the proper time and we were on our way.

This time we rented from Avis instead of Eurocar. Though the Italian woman at the Avis desk didn't seem to care much for her job the day we arrived, I'd have to say that my experience with them was largely positive. Four years ago our experience with Eurocar was a slightly different story.

Anyway, that's it for now on the subject of airlines and baggage. Next time I'll go into what we packed and what we should have left home.

Ciao.

The Adventure Winding Down

Today started early, about 5:30, as Concetta and I made ready to tackle the last leg of our Greek/Italian adventure. We tried to get into the breakfast room just when it opened because our hotel, the Villa Maria, is playing host to a couple of busloads of Brits who've proven to be a tad noisy when cooped up together in a small space.

Though the food is certainly nothing to brag about at the Villa Maria, the hotel is clean and the staff friendly. It turned out that the extra nice room they gave us when we arrived late was a tad expensive, but not quite as bad as I expected. We did enjoy having the nice patio attached to our room.

Sorrento is a tough place to move around because there's only one road in and out. With all the Italian guys and girls on their motor scooters, the tour buses, delivery trucks, zippy little Fiats, and pedestrians stepping into the street from all directions definitely slowed us down a bit. Probably best to arrive or leave on a Sunday as yesterday the streets were much less crowded.

Our little GPS decided to have a go at us one more time as we wended our way toward Napoli where we would catch the A3 to Rome. Once again, though the sign said go left for Napoli the GPS said go right for another chance to get completely lost amid the ancient neighborhoods surrounding the docks. This time, though, we ignored the little prankster and relied on our intuition to head us north.

The next bit of fun we encountered was the chance to be marooned inside a very long tunnel as some sort of crash up ahead brought traffic to a standstill. Neither of us is very comfortable being in tunnels, especially since on our last visit to Italy we were blocked in a tunnel that quickly began to fill with smoke. At that time we had visions of having to abandon the car and sprint for the end of the tunnel we'd just entered. Thankfully, just as the smoke began to look threatening, the traffic suddenly began to lurch forward and we were soon out in the fresh air. We never did find out what caused either the hold up or the smoke. This time, thankfully, we had relatively fresh air -- not counting the contributions from Diesel trucks and buses -- and after a half hour we got rolling again.

Once we reached the A3, we really started to pick up speed. In the past the maximum speed I felt comfortable traveling on the Auto Strada was 140 KPH. Even at that speed the German cars sailed by me in the left lane like I was peddling a bicycle. Today, since the road was so smooth and the traffic so light, I cranked the big Passat up to 160 KPH and we got to Rome in super quick time.

Our first mission once we got to the Rome airport was to find the Airport Hilton where we would be staying. I wanted to check in and take the bags to the room before we returned the rental car. All this worked exactly as planned. The check-in went very smoothly. We made contact with the porter who would drive us to the airport tomorrow morning and we were in our room by just after lunch time. Our next task was to return the car, which always makes me nervous. But this time, with our Avis car, the clipboard guy briefly looked the car over, had me sign a credit card slip, and told me I could leave. I've never seen anything so easy.

Our next task was to go to the Continental ticket desk and check on our seat assignments, a job which should have been dead easy. Au contrar! Because U.S. carriers demand a higher level of security in check-in, they now have their own terminal. For awhile we tried to walk there, occasionally asking non-English speaking passersby where terminal five might be. Finally, a flight attendant, in her pretty broken English, let us know that we had to ride a shuttle bus there. Since the shuttle bus stopped just scant feet from where we were standing, that turned out to be easy. But when we arrived at terminal five, things didn't exactly look right. I tried asking the shuttle driver if he would be back to pick us up, but he just shrugged.

Here things got even more interesting. When we went into the terminal, we found not a soul working there. We looked at each other. The scene reminded me of those sole-survivor films where everyone in the city is dead and only one person is left to wander the deserted streets. Now and again a janitor or similar workman would appear and disappear just to show us not everyone was dead, but for the most part the terminal remained empty. Right about then an elderly couple appeared and informed us that the terminal was closed for the day and no one would be back until the next morning. They, as it turned out, had bought a $50.00 cab ride to the airport to change their flight only to find the terminal closed for the day. Their only choice was to go back to their Rome Hotel -- another $50.00 cab ride -- and come back the next morning. We felt really sorry for them.

Soon after we four gathered in the parking lot and tried to interest someone in our plight. We really didn't know if anyone would be back for us. Why would a shuttle bus come to a closed terminal? The elderly couple tried to use the "wheelchair ordering" intercom to the main terminal to get information, but the person at the other end kept wanting to know if they needed a wheelchair. The conversation would have been pretty amusing if it hadn't been so tragic. Finally, the elderly couple wore the intercom person down and she told them that the shuttle would indeed come back for us.

As it turned out, once Concetta and I were back in the room we easily pulled up our Continental reservation and seat assignments on the PC (finally our last night in Italy we have in-room Internet access) and all looked in order, which I could have accomplished in the first place. But I wanted to have a real person in front of me just in case I had to argue for a certain seat setup that the computer refused to give me.

So, here we are, just chilling out at the Airport Hilton and taking it easy. We are both genuinely sorry that our adventure is over AND very thankful that we will be back in our boring old existence for awhile. At least we won't have to be incessantly looking for the universal "WC" wherever we go. So, I hope you've enjoyed hearing about some of what we've experienced. I apologize for the lack of photos this time. I was very disappointed to learn that the Aegean Odyssey had locked out the passenger's picture uploading ability. In the future, I will have to be even more vigilant in ferreting out suitable hosts for our traveling pants. For now, I bid you the Italian "do-all" greeting, Ciao, and buona fortuna in your traveling future.

The GPS isn't always on our side

This morning Concetta and I set out to undo the questionable karma we had accumulated yesterday on our visit to the island of Capri. Our plan was to visit the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in downtown Napoli where many of the archaeological finds from Pompeii and Herculano are displayed. Now Napoli is one of those cities that most people, even Italians, will advise you to avoid if you’re driving your own car. Take the train. Take the bus. Hire a cab. But under no circumstances should you drive yourself. Naturally, the intrepid Happy Wanderers enthusiastically ignored that advice.

The drive to Napoli started out perfectly normal. We set the address of the museum into the GPS and it quite correctly set our direction north from the Hotel. Of course, in Sorrento there’s only two ways to go, north or south, so it had a 50/50 chance anyway. After fifteen or twenty minutes we found ourselves on the outskirts of Napoli at a “Y”. We probably should have wondered when the GPS insisted on the left fork when the right fork pointed to our destination, but we went ahead and followed the direction indicated by the GPS. An hour later when we’d only gone a couple of miles, we finally turned off the GPS and began navigating by intuition. In between, we were as close to completely lost as you can get in Italy, which is pretty darn lost. For at least thirty minutes the little electronic wonder had insisted on returning us to the same "no outlet" street with a big piece of earth moving equipment sitting in a field where the road ended. No matter how we tried to outwit it, it would see through our subterfuge and take us back to view the earth mover again. We did see some mighty fine urban gardens in our continuous circling and re-circling, which is something I didn't expect.

Actually, I don’t usually mind being lost. I’ve had some great experiences and stumbled on some very interesting sights while lost. This time, however, was different. This time – at least after the first half hour – I got the distinct impression that the GPS was out to have a good time with us. The first thing you have to understand is that the GPS has a hell of a bad time pronouncing Italian street names, which are not only twenty-seven syllables long, but have inflections on different syllables than Americans are used to hearing. So when the GPS says turn right on Colle Grimaldi Su Mare, it comes out sounding like CollegrimaldisumaRE, emphasizing the very last syllable as though it was all one word. So, while you’re trying to figure out just what the darn thing just said, you’ve passed the intended street and the GPS immediately begins to fire more streets at you in order to correct your previous lack of expertise.

Now, I have to tell you that I actually like driving in Italy. Even though I’ve driven in both Rome and Florence, which are probably just a tad easier than Delhi, India, I really haven’t encountered any insurmountable problems. In my experience the Italian drivers are more polite than American drivers. While driving with them you just have to learn to assert yourself or they will not let you into the stream of traffic when the highway engineers funnel five lanes of traffic down to one and don’t provide any merge signs. You just have to “nudge” your way out just like they’re doing.

But there is one thing that truly terrifies me when thinking about driving in Italian cities: the thought of being funneled into a one-way alley that proceeds to get smaller and smaller until it deadends. Finally, you can’t go forward any more and there’s no room to turn around, and there’s a couple of cars or scooters behind you. Up to now, though I’ve been darn close to that situation in the past, I had never experienced my worst nightmare; not until today. But our feisty GPS, sensing that I have had life much too easy for the past month of motoring around Italy, quite intentionally and I might say, belligerently, sent Concetta and I and our very large VW Passat into the bowels of a very run-down section of Napoli this morning with the clear intention of ruining our day. In the end we were lucky. The dead-end alley that the GPS sent us down, the one where the Passat could barely squeeze between the parked cars on both sides, the one that was two blocks long, did not somehow come complete with another car to follow us to our doom. AND, through some miracle of fate, at the very end was a spot just big enough to put a king-sized bed and in which I somehow managed to turn that darn Passat by creeping three inches this way and three inches that way in a tight little arc to where I could finally retrace our route and escape. After that, I say, bring on Delhi, India. I’m ready for it.

Anyway, after my heart quit beating at twice it’s normal rate, we ignored the advice of the GPS until I had found the A3 on the Autostrada on my own and once again pointed the car toward Napoli proper. Once on the A3, the GPS had no choice but to behave itself, so we turned it back on and it soon deposited us in the driveway of the Museo.

Since most guide books tell you to be very careful in Napoli, I suppose that many people avoid going there. But I have to tell you that Concetta and I had an extremely enjoyable morning there viewing the artifacts from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculano. The have some of the most magnificent statuary that we seen on the trip. AND, they have some absolutely terrific displays of coinage that was uncovered, sometimes in the hands of victims of the pyroclastic flow from the volcano, and sometimes buried “secretly” under houses where the owners had their own private bank. One of our favorite displays was the glassware. I bet you wouldn’t even think that glassware existed two thousand years ago, but it did. We were just dazzled by the workmanship and the intricacies of design.

While were at the Museo something just amazing happened to us. We looked up at one point to find a young woman standing nearby whom we knew. We had only recently been keeping company with her as she was one of the staff members on the Aegean Odyssey on which we had taken our cruise to the Greek islands just a few weeks ago. The ship had embarked a new set of passengers in Athens after we left and was now cruising the coast of Italy. Incredible that we should be at the Museo on exactly the same day at the same time.

After navigating our way back out of Napoli, we set our course once again for Sorrento and a late lunch. To your great joy, we managed to find an Italian restaurant that advertised “Slow” food on their sign and we spent a very pleasurable hour munching on Paninis and drinking wine and talking with a couple who hailed from, of all places, Long Beach, California. I can tell you if you’re thinking about traveling to Italy, or to any country for that matter, the best thing about the trip will turn out to be the folks you meet along the way. Last night we spent dinner with a couple of guys from Quebec, Canada, who regaled us with tales of their travels together much as we regaled them with ours. They were completely delightful, and we could easily have spent a several hours eating with them. The food was just so-so, which surprised us since we’d eaten their four years ago, but the instantaneous comradeship we enjoyed with them will stay in our memories for many years.

Lastly today, while walking back to the hotel after lunch, we stumbled onto a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition that, while small, was very interesting and wonderfully quiet and lightly attended (tough to find during tourist season in Italy). It also allowed me to practice some Italian on the museum attendant who spoke as many words of English as I did her language. So, here we are, about to enjoy our last night in Sorrento. We’ve had our ups and downs here, but I’d have to say, mostly ups. If you come here, please don’t come during the high season. I’d wait until October, though days may be too cool for sun bathing. But hey, to heck with sunbathing. There’s just too much to do in Italy to sunbath anyway.

We visit the Isle of Capri

Four years ago when we visited Sorrento with Concetta’s sisters, Phyl and Paula, Concetta and I visited the Isle of Capri, which is just a short ride by jet boat from here. That particular visit, we had a simply marvelous time hiking to the village of Capri that lies several hundred feet higher in elevation than the harbor. Though most tourists opt for the tour busses or taxis that line the quay waiting for customers, we chose instead to walk and take photographs of the beautiful gardens that seem to be everywhere.

This year we weren’t quite so lucky. We hadn’t been on the jet boat more than a few minutes when a tour pitchman descended on us and talked us into spending twenty Euros apiece to get the “special treatment” that only he could provide. I was initially going to send him on his way, but the couple with whom we had been sitting proclaimed that they were going to do it and why not give it a try. The only thing that interested me was that he promised to take us higher on the mountain to visit Anacapri, another, smaller village that we had missed on our first visit.

As you might guess, good ol’ Luigi sang to us, told us wonderful stories, and generally entertained us as we boarded his tiny bus and made our way up the most diminutive piece of highway you’ve ever seen. This ribbon of blacktop promised to allow two buses to pass safely while clinging to the cliff-face hundreds of feet above of the bay, but I don’t think I was the only passenger holding my breath at such encounters. After we arrived at Anacapri, ol’ Luigi shamelessly spent the morning herding us from one relative’s shop to another’s just to let us “take a look.” Midday, we found ourselves in his cousin’s restaurant for lunch where we had a small plate of pasta, a glass of wine probably imported from China, and a frozen dessert of some indefinable sort.

It was about this time that Concetta and I split from Luigi’s company and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring on our own, which is what we should have done in the beginning. Unfortunately, by then the sun had drifted behind a bank of clouds making photography impossible, so we did a little window shopping, some hiking around the tiny lanes that descend into the canyons, and then we rode the funicular railway back to the harbor and caught the ferry back to Sorrento. As days in Italy go, it was not one of our best. But hey, we’re getting ready to venture out into the tiny lanes that wend their way from our Sorrento Hotel down the mountain towards the sea. We’ve had some very fine dinners while wandering down there, and I have high hopes for a repeat performance.

Dashing north for Sorento

Friday morning dawned clear and beautiful from our patio at the Angela Hotel on the Island of Sicily overlooking the cloud-shrouded Mount Etna volcano. We headed down to breakfast as usual, but we sensed since the hotel staff had not contacted us about our stay having been extended due to some last-minute cancellation from another guest that we would have to leave our new-found haven. Concetta and I thoroughly enjoyed our breakfast on the terrace overlooking the volcano nonetheless. Around ten, we loaded up the car and headed down the mountain. We were lucky once again as the hotel van was headed for it's morning drop-off and was going just the way we wanted to go. Thanks to the van, we had no trouble finding our way to the main highway for our trip back to Messina and the ferry.

We had plugged in the GPS to guide us but for some reason we kept choosing the wrong routes and making the little machine irritable. Finally, we turned it off and used our wits to find the ferry. With the Davis luck running high, we found the ferry entrance, presented our ticket, and boarded just as the doors were ready to close. We were, in fact, the last two or three cars allowed on board.

When we first boarded the ferry for Sicily we sort of cowered in the car unwilling to get out and leave our luggage to the unknown. This time, we locked the car, and found the upper decks so we could enjoy the voyage. It was great. Then, when we unloaded, we easily found our way out of the embarkation area and down the road to our next destination, Reggio Calabria. There, Concetta wanted a chance to see the 6th century bronze Greek statues at the local museum. We thought we had found at leaset the general location and, after finding a killer parking spot, we set off on foot to the museum. We stopped several local residents to ask the location, but finding no one who spoke English, we were not successful in walking to the museum. However, as a last try, we stopped a man in an orange shirt and asked him about the museum's location. Thankfully, he knew exactly what we wanted and pointed us in the correct location. Retrieving the car, we drove there and spent a wonderful hour viewing the exhibits.

After our museum visit, we talked about just where we should go at that late hour -- around 2:30 p.m. -- that would allow us to find a hotel. Even though it seemed like a long shot, we decided we'd make the dash for Sorento and, however late we arrived, we'd book a stay for three days and do some exploring around Napoli. At times, I certainly regretted our decision, as the sun sank lower and my lunch of one banana and half a scone began to play on my mind. Finally, after battling traffic through a dozen construction sites and the Friday-night madness of the Sorento coast, we arrived at our destination, the Villa Maria Hotel in Sorento, the hotel where we stayed four years ago. It was nice to be back on familiar ground.

Thankfully, we arrived in time at our Sorento hotel to find dinner still in progress and a room ready and waiting for us. It's always hard to "wing it" in a place as popular as Sorento and I had little confidence that we'd find a vacancy. But luck was with us once again and we now have a cozy room on the third floor. Concetta and I drank a whole bottle of Italian red between us for dinner so this blog may have an error or two that I've missed. But, for now, all is right with the world. We've traveled several hundred miles today from the foot of the Mount Etna volcano to the foot of the Mount Vesuvius Volcano. Things can only get more interesting from here. Until then, I bid you Buona Notte! Ciao.

Tramping around Taormina

This morning Concetta and I decided to spend our day in old Taormina strolling the narrow lanes and alleys, visiting the shops, and – what else? – scoping out the best place to find a bit of pasta for lunch. Our Hotel, the Angela, offers breakfast at 8:00 a.m. on the terrace so we didn’t have to jump out of bed until well after after 7:00 a.m. After a light meal of granola, yogurt, scones, and fruit – and, naturally, several cups of black coffee, we headed for the hotel van which was headed downtown at “half nine,” as the desk clerk put it. My intention was to get some photos before the sun gained its straight overhead zenith in order to get those bluer skies and longer shadows to accentuate all the wonderful old stone buildings and colorful shop fronts.

In one way, we felt a little bad for not seeking out some tour or other that was headed for an archaeological site or ancient Greek ruin or something, but the truth is we’ve grown a little tired of those things and decided that we’d just wander the town and take photos and look for food. It turned out to be one of the nicest days we’ve had on this adventure. We had no time limits and no destinations. We looked at ceramics and local wines and baby clothes. We had time to wait until the proper “models,” like girls in long summer dresses, wandered into my photos. We even had time to wait until everyone wandered out of the photo. I always look for “models” who have on bright oranges and reds and blues, but usually have to count on Americans to fill that bill. For some reason, Europeans tend to like black, a color that doesn’t do a thing for landscape photos.

The best thing we visited this morning was an open-air Roman theater that dates back a couple of thousand years (probably built on the foundations of an earlier Greek theater) and has by far the best setting of any of the ancient theaters that we’ve visited. The seats are cut into a hillside hundreds of feet above the Mediterranean and the theater audience would have as a backdrop to the actors the wide sweep of that awesome blue sea far, far below. The grandeur of it takes your breath away.






The second best thing we stumbled over today turned out to be the parco publico (municipal park) that clings to the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea perhaps six or seven hundred feet below. The park has been designed with long tree-shaded walks, bright flower gardens, and dozens of nooks and crannies where you could find a comfortable bench and enjoy a quiet conversation. In a city full of buzzing motor scooters and tiny Fiats dashing to and fro, the park came as welcome a surprise as a desert oasis.

After a lovely hour in the sanctuary of the park, our tummies told us it was time for that bit of pasta. Minutes later we had retraced our steps into the heart of the old city and had chosen Il Baccanale for our lunch. I settled on the lasagna. Concetta passed on the pasta and chose an omelet just for a bit of change. For dessert, along with our espresso, we decided to share a lemon ice just because it sounded so cool. Our restaurant hosts, for reasons unknown, treated us to a glass each of almond liqueur, which I promptly added to my espresso for some extra kick. As we had done all day, we took our time with lunch and didn’t resume our wandering until after 2:00 p.m.

Concetta was anxious to spend some time on our terrace with her book so around 3:00 p.m. we made our way back to Hotel van’s pickup spot and we were back in our room by 3:30 p.m. There, we checked our email, got our showers, and spent the balance of the early evening taking it easy – or rather, Concetta took it easy. I’m here typing the blog. LOL.

Around 7:30 p.m., we plan to walk up the road to a dinner spot we’ve heard about and see if we can finish off the evening with some more great Italian food. I’ll let you know how that turns out. Until then, I bid you buona notte. Ciao.

Ci Vadiamo in Sicilia

For the last five days we’ve been enjoying a wonderful visit with Concetta’s cousin, John, and his delightful wife, Helen, at their vacation town home in Cenadi, Italy. To give you a bit of insight into what Cenadi is like, visualize miles and miles of low rolling hills with virtually every inch covered in vegetation of some sort. Olive groves march off in orderly rows in just about any direction you look. Fig trees grow everywhere, both in gardens and along the edges of farm fields. Around every bend in the road you see a wonderful profusion of grape vineyards and gardens nestled in beside “rusticos,” or ancient rock houses. And wherever you don’t see carefully tended gardens and orchards, you see wonderful stands of chestnut trees, wispy fern-covered fields (where the wild mushrooms hide), and dozens of other species of trees I couldn’t begin to identify. Amongst all this beauty you find, just here and there, tiny villages full of wonderful old stone and stucco houses with red-tile roofs, bright colored entryways, and even brighter-colored laundry hanging from ancient iron balconies. Below those balconies, wind skinny two-lane roads, so narrow that you have no choice but to slow the pace of your life down and take in some of this rustic beauty, even if it’s for just a moment.

We love to come to Cenadi for the people as well. On either side of John and Helen’s house are good friends named, of all things, Montesano. As some of you know, Concetta’s last name is Montisano. The spelling was changed from the original Montesano spelling when the family immigrated from Centrache, a town just down the hill from Cenadi nearly a century ago. Though the neighbors are probably not relatives (Montesano being the third most common name in the area), we have come to love those folks like they were our own relatives. Frank and Isa on the north side are the family who are offering to sell us an apartment in their building if we would like to have a base in Cenadi from which to explore Italy more thoroughly in the future. Yesterday we had a marvelous lunch with Frank and Isa comprised of such a quantity and variety of wonderful food that I didn’t want dinner five hours later. From Isa’s pasta, fried peppers, wild chicory, lightly battered mushrooms, and to-die-for salads, to Frank’s homemade wine, we feasted like Kings and Queens for at least two hours. For dessert they brought out a plate of home-grown figs and other fruits that was a beauty to behold. That, along with ice wine and a triple dose of espresso made me want to sign the purchase agreement right there and then.

And then there’s the Montesanos on the south side, Tony and Maria. Lovely folks they are and there’s no mistake. The Montesanos “south” always have us to lunch or dinner when we come to visit, and this time was no exception. On Monday the four of us (Me, John, Helen, and Concetta, met at Tony and Maria’s for a whirlwind feast of everything from pasta to roast chicken with rosemary potatotes, stuffed eggplant to garden-grown salad. Of course Tony had his own homemade wine as well. In fact, just last night I was privileged to photograph Tony and his nephew, Giovani, carrying crate after crate of freshly-picked grapes to dump into the hopper where the stems would be stripped off. Tony is 70 years old, but he could work circles around me. After putting his thirty or forty crates of grapes through the stem-stripper, he went to his nephew’s house to do the same job. After that, it was a friend’s turn. He told me he didn’t finish stripping grapes until 10:30 p.m. What a guy. Before we left, I had a chance to get to know Maria better by sitting with her on her patio for an hour and stripping the dried beans out of the center of a whole bunch of string bean hulls for use in next year’s planting. As a reward, Maria gave me a whole package of beans to plant in my garden.

Of course, it was very hard to say goodbye to John and Helen, but since they’re getting ready to fly home to Canada, we had to bid them a very fond farewell and bon voyage. They made us very, very welcome over the past few days, even taking us sight seeing and shopping and letting us use up a bunch of their satellite Internet time. Breakfast was our favorite time of the day as we sat and planned the day’s events. I’m sorry I forgot this morning to sample the fig yoghurt (they get loads and loads of better flavors here), but the coconut was terrific. John and Helen are lovely hosts, and we hope to visit them again some time soon.

Around 9:30 a.m. we had the car all loaded and Concetta and I headed off down the mountain into some dazzling blue skies and toward the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. We hit just a tad of fog as we gained altitude at one point, but most of the drive was heavenly. We didn’t have to rush since our goal was the east coast of Sicily, and we decided that we could easily do that in half a day. The journey here to Sicily turned out to be a tad more complicated than we thought, but by 3:30 p.m. we had reached our destination village of Taormina, just down the road from Messina where the ferry boat deposited us. We were expecting close to pandemonium in our ferry experience, but in truth, it wasn’t that bad. The Italians are sometimes a bit stingy with their road signs, which can make for some tense moments, but for the most part we purchased our ticket, got in the proper line, loaded up when the ferry docked, and got off without so much as a single problem. We had been warned that all hell can break loose when you’re trying to exit the ferry because they try to funnel four or five lanes of traffic off the ferry to one lane exiting the disembarkation point. In our case, we boarded fairly early in the process, got placed right behind an ambulance with the blue lights vigorously flashing, and when it exited so did we. In fact, we were the number one car down the exit lane. Some piece of luck!

So, our next bit of uncertainty resulted from my insistence on not making any reservations on Sicily. I wanted our choice of lodging to be based solely on accident if possible. Though that sounds a bit daft, I like at least occasionally to let serendipity take control to see just what adventures can result. Before we left this morning, and quite at the last minute, John gave me some Internet searches that Helen had performed some time ago when she wanted to go to Sicily. From that stack of searches, Concetta and I picked out a likely target for our night’s lodging based on whether they had Internet or not. As fate would have it, we found the Hotel Angela without much difficulty, drove up and parked right in front, and discovered that they indeed had space for us. We would have liked three days, but they could only guarantee two at this point. I’m hoping that someone ends up cancelling, but if not, we’ll head off down the road to see just what other adventures we can turn up. At the moment our room is located high up on a cliff face overlooking both the Mediterranean and the slopes of the active volcano, Mount Etna. It almost seems that we have a view that goes on for several lifetimes. I’m not sure what our plans for the evening are going to be, but the hotel runs a shuttle down the mountain to the old part of Taormina where there are a vast selection of restaurants and shops. So, pardon me while I finish getting dressed. I’m starting to get hungry and I haven’t eaten anything but a banana since breakfast. I’m starting to fall away to a shadow.

The photo above was taken from our bedroom patio after we returned from dinner. Quite by accident, I think Concetta and I stumbled onto the very best restaurant in Taromina. We got the full white table cloth treatment followed by the best ravioli I've had in years and years. The wine was superb, the service excellent, and the view was much like what you see above. We stayed the full course from anti pasti to gelato and coffee. I could eat there forever. When we were done, the hotel called for us with a van. What a place!

Tomorrow we'll probably explore a bit around here and then, who knows? Stay tuned.