I was thinking the other day how I often feel like I’m just counting down the days…counting down the activities each day until the end of the day. Is this normal? How do we live in the moment when the moments are all the same and feel unending but we know that it’s because we are living through a bad time? Am I just depressed?
Anyway, it was a normal week. Cats, a little recording of Christmas music, lots of students. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving Break and having some time off…it’s funny how weekends aren’t enough for me anyway. To be fair, I’m doing an online workshop for 10 hours this weekend so I’m pretty busy. We aren’t 100 percent sure on what we are doing for Thanksgiving (well, it’s mostly because I know what I want to do which is just eat at home, but Louie is waffling a bit and feels like we should try to eat with his parents who live in town, but I feel like that’s needlessly risky) but otherwise we are hoping for decent weather (unlike today, which is raining) so we can get in some good outdoor activities. I also want to do a little baking and make some cranberry things, and then decorate for Christmas. I don’t plan to decorate as fully as last year when I had company, but I’d like to make the place a little festive. That will happen AFTER Thanksgiving
A selfie while waiting to record two Christmas songs for an upcoming Opera Edwardsville video performance. I wore a festive holiday, as you can see. I am excited to see the video for that and also really excited to hear the recording of A Winter’s Tale that I did with the students at St Louis University.
These guys took my seat when I had a short break from teaching. It was a bit of a challenge shooing them out of there! Kind of like herding cats.
I had a dream the other night that I overbought bananas, that we had 5 bunches of them in the fruit bowl, but that I also kept finding a bunch of them in nearly every basket and on every end table throughout the house! This was the same night I also had a dream that I was visiting a friend who said that they don’t wear masks but that it’s okay because as they are talking they move their hand up and down really fast to dissipate any virus in the air. Weird night.
I can’t decide if my early morning job is giving me a nice structure to my day or making me absolutely miserable with exhaustion. I think it’s somewhere in between. Last night I slept from 10:30 to 7:30, and only got up one time, and woke up to a nice rain, and I feel great. I know parents do this kind of thing all the time, but there are a variety of reasons one chooses not to be a parent, and while sleep wasn’t the main one for me, it is something I get to have for myself. I also haven’t been sleeping well for the past four years, especially lately, so it was nice to get a solid 9 hours rather than tossing and turning and maybe getting 5 to 6. I do enjoy doing the classes for students, and that age group (4th and 5th graders) is an age group that tends to really enjoy my sense of humor, so that’s good.
Thanksgiving dilemma: do I order dinner for 4 (for 2) to have leftovers and it’s NOT twice as much as dinner for 2? Or just dinner for 2 to be reasonable? I might still supplement with some bread from another place and a home baked pie and homemade cranberry sauce or relish. What would you do?
I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest. I know that times are still tough and we have to get through the next few months, and this is bad week for COVID cases, but I feel like maybe we can do something different in our country.
Fall is here, and it’s been a gorgeous month. Having more time to enjoy it on the weekends has been nice too.
The leaves are so gorgeous and the weather this past week has been unseasonably warm and wonderful!
COVID cases are bad here…I keep waiting for another shutdown. I’m already working from home still so hardly anything more can affect me, but Louie has been teaching classes in person. Exponential growth is a scary thing.
I do feel like the days are all the same though…I can’t decide what exactly I miss about my old life, but I miss it. I miss the freedom of it all the most. If everybody wore masks, we would get some of our freedom back, but that’s not the country we live in.
I thought about trying to book some sort of getaway for us over Thanksgiving, but if we are going to go somewhere and just be stuck avoiding people who aren’t taking the virus seriously I’d rather just stay home. I’m hoping the weather will be nice over Thanksgiving (it OFTEN is) as we have a couple of hikes further away that we might try. I also have a little more frozen fruit in the freezer that I want to turn into jam, and there are always baking ideas! There’s no shortage of things to do: my reading list is long, there’s plenty to do around the house, etc, but as far as things that take you away from the everyday…it’s harder. I just have to remind myself that I’m lucky to still be so busy with work, lucky to have a nice home to live in (not everybody would agree, but I like it), and lucky to have so many things to do.
I’m enjoying the semester for the most point: my new teaching position has given a focus to my days, and makes me get started really early in the day (class starts at 7:15 am) which means nights have gotten earlier as well. It works well, but makes some days long. At some point it will be in person rather than in my living room, but not this calendar year. And I had a great time teaching a tiny Improv/CAD class on Saturday, and plan to go to weekly classes in the spring.
This week I’m recording some music for a Christmas Concert, and I’m waiting to hear the final recording of the play I helped create music for last month. I also finally finished all my MMTA judging (so many fantastic student performances!) and I’m still participating in some teaching seminars. I’m getting tired of it all and need a break soon, so Thanksgiving can’t come soon enough. I’m not sure what we are doing, if we are going to just do Thanksgiving the two of us, and cook or order takeout dinner from somewhere, or try to do some sort of dinner with Louie’s parents where we mostly wear masks and stay far apart. We know just the two of us is the safest, but there are inherent risks in other activities, such as driving in a car for a three week road trip, and perhaps having a mostly masked dinner with a few other people who have also been being quite careful is okay? I also like the idea of getting a dinner from a restaurant and supporting them (I don’t want to make Thanksgiving dinner for two).
What are you doing for Thanksgiving, do you know yet? How are you holding up?
It is a beautiful sunny day. I hope that’s a sign.
I’ve been busy. Teaching, grading, practicing (especially improv stuff), working on creating and recording music for a play, judging students for an online MTNA competition. It’s been a lot of fun and a lot of learning and challenging myself, but it’s been a lot. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving week: I’m taking the week off from private teaching and looking forward to doing some canning, baking, cleaning and decorating the house, and hopefully some getting outside too, weather permitting. This weekend looks lovely as well.
Let’s hope there is some good news in the election results. Our COVID numbers are terrible here. My zip code is particularly bad, which means that we give a wide berth on walks. I am still working from home with the occasional thing out, a few errands, visiting with friends here and there but only outdoors (that couldn’t happen for a while with a lot of rain and cold weather, but this weekend looks lovely), and takeout or cooking. We have tried to limit takeout to once a month, but got it twice on Louie’s birthday week and tonight might be tempting!
We had a nice hike at Forest 44 Conservation Area last weekend. We chose it because it is never crowded. Someday we can go places that might be crowded, and someday we can go farther away, but not now.
I had to go on the campus of St Louis University last weekend to work on the play I mentioned, and it was so beautiful! Fall is such a gorgeous season, isn’t it?
So we left Silvergate and headed East, the direction home. We wanted to drive the Beartooth Highway en route. Well, Louie did. I was happy to let him drive as I don’t like windy roads!
Oh! I forgot to add this photo from the previous post. Our “Cabin” at the Grizzly Lodge. (You can see it behind the car and the awning).
It wasn’t quite as nice of a drive on the Beartooth as we’d experienced before because there was CONSTRUCTION and we were stopped for awhile at first. But finally we got going and as always, the views were amazing.
We always pass places that look like nice hikes and places to camp, but we never do much as we are en route. Such beautiful sights just off the road though!
You can see the road there! This was the top, the Beartooth Pass.
Louie wanted to stand on the snow.
There were a lot of motorcycle riders around, probably on their way to the super spreading event at Sturgis. We tried to keep our distance.
The highway ends in Red Lodge and we stopped there for lunch at a place called the Red Box Drive-In. I think I got fried shrimp and fries?
We kept driving then (I drove for awhile, since we were out of the crazy roads) and headed into the Bighorn mountains. We had reserved a spot at Island Park Campground in the Bighorn Mountains. It was a small campground down several miles of dirt road, and we were a little worried about the rain, but the place was great once we got there.
It was a vault toilet only place but the toilets were clean and the host was really nice. We tried to just relax and enjoy the evening. We were right by a pond with a little meadow on the other side.
We walked down to the pond—you can see the tent back up in the trees.
At night we heard something splashing around in the water and I shined my light towards it. We saw a pair of eyes glowing at us, which was sort of terrifying at first. Finally we discovered it was just a deer so that wasn’t too scary!
The next day we continued driving through the Bighorn Mountains, and took a side road called the Crazy Woman Canyon Drive. I wasn’t “crazy” about the name, but the drive was very cool. You definitely wouldn’t want to drive it in anything without higher clearance though. There were some campsites along the way and nice places to fish probably.
Pretty cool as you can tell! We enjoyed the drive though it had some technical parts.
After that, well, we headed to Nebraska. We did have to go through South Dakota briefly, but didn’t stay long (we were sort of boycotting South Dakota because they didn’t think COVID was real) and ended our evening at Chadron State Park in Nebraska. We set up our tent and went for a short hike on the Black Hills Overlook Trail.
There was really interesting scenery! We also ran into a family who were from Missouri—they saw our license plate and struck up a conversation with us.
We enjoyed a nice campfire and a good night’s sleep.
The next day we packed up and headed for our last official stop: Carhenge. Carhenge is a bit out of the way but not if you plan on it. Interesting fact (which I learned later) is that my dad spent a week or two in the area at Alliance helping on a combine crew one summer when he was in college. That was before Carhenge was made so he didn’t get to see it.
We were glad we made this stop. It was ridiculous but really cool and fun.
And that was it. After visiting Carhenge, we drove along the Sandhills Scenic Byway through Nebraska for a few hours—definitely nicer than just driving on I-80, and then we joined the interstate and headed to Missouri. We stayed a motel past Kansas City which I have blocked (we were not impressed and would not recommend) the name of in my head, though we had delicious Thai takeout nearby, and then got home around noon the next day. The cats were safe and sound but happy to see us, and we were glad to be home and safe. Time went by and it didn’t seem we caught COVID on our trip, and I was glad we went. It was just what we needed at the time, both to get out of the house and see other places, and to be able to leave the house without being really scared and panicky. I think we were as safe from COVID as we could be, and we never set foot inside a building without a mask on.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip! Until the next one…it’ll be regular blog posts for awhile now.
I am aware of the fact that over a month has gone by since the last trip recap, but I have had this on my to-do list and so today I shall proceed. Life has been pretty busy at home, even without the usual concert schedule (mostly because I still managed to take on more work, which is both great and not great.)
We woke up at Bridge Bay Campground again, for our last full day in the park. Our plan was to go early to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and hike the South Rim to Clear Lake Trail we had done about 5 years before.
You can’t get from Bridge Bay to the Canyon area without running into a bison jam though.
Or without seeing one just out standing in his field. This one had some branches stuck on his horns, how embarrassing for him.
We easily found the place to park (I remembered it from the previous time) and set off on our hike. I believe it was supposed to be about 5 miles RT or so. The beginning was beautiful, with great views of the Falls, Canyon, and the Yellowstone River. Some of the path seemed different than before and I think they had rerouted some of it and fixed up other parts. Also Uncle Tom’s Stairs were closed, but I had decided after last time that I was done climbing up and down those stairs anyway. (It’s not the climb, it’s that they are open metal stairs along the side of a steep cliff near a rushing River.)
This was the sort of view along the way.
Now, this was one of the more crowded hikes, as we figured. We did have masks on for the crowded parts, though not enough other people did. Another note: if you are a hiker or a walker, don’t take the shortcut paths that the park service has worked so hard on marking with signs NOT to take, take the slightly longer way so they can grow out the vegetation and stop the erosion. I get so annoyed when people can’t just walk around, especially when it is really clear you are supposed to.
We saw a little deer along the way as well. I think it was a few here, but only one in my photo. I suppose one of the downsides of waiting over 2 months to write a blog post is that I’m going, hmm, how many deer were there, was this near where I stopped to pee in the woods? and truthfully, who knows. Maybe Louie has pictures, but he is just as behind at going through them as me!
The South Rim trail meanders along the South Rim of the Canyon. (And yes, there is a North Rim which we visited the previous year and weren’t planning to bother with this time.) You can drive and park at various lookouts but it’s much nicer if you are able to just walk.
There are varying rumors and stories of how the name Yellowstone came to be. One is because of the yellow rocks by the Canyon area. I would buy it!
You can see we are getting farther from the Falls.
Selfie! I believe this was at Artist Point, the most popular lookout along the South Rim.
Next the trail meanders into the woods and heads towards Lily Lake (and then Clear Lake).
The trail also goes by a variety of thermal features. It wasn’t as magical this time through, probably because we’d already seen them, and also it was getting HOT! and it was very sunny.
There were some people annoyingly camped out along the lake, not camped literally, but they had chairs and were just hanging out for whatever reason, and they were sitting in a way that they tended to be in almost any photo you tried to take. Which is super obnoxious when you are still 2 miles from the parking lot!
Anyway, Clear Lake is green and is pretty acidic due to the thermal activity and whatnot. I’m not a geologist, but it’s something like that.
Then we walked through the blinding sunlight to get back to the parking area. We decided after that to walk to the Brink of the Upper Falls since it had been closed the previous year for construction. It was a neat little walk because it went over what used to be a bridge taken by cars but was now just a footbridge. The bridge was built in the 1890’s first as a wooden arch bridge and then was replaced by this one in 1914-1915. It is no longer used by cars—I know I read somewhere when it was replaced for car use but I can’t find it now.
Anyway, it was a fairly short walk (less than a mile?) to the Brink of the Upper Falls and we were glad we popped over. You can also imagine the Brink was crazy busy, probably the most crowded place we had been.
After that we headed south. We didn’t have any more specific plans but thought it would be fun to drive to the South entrance of the park so that we would have driven every mile of the main roads during our 10 nights here.
We made some stops along the way at random places.
I think this might have been Lewis Lake or another Lake and I looked up and realized the trees were just like that!
As we got further south we could see the Tetons and suddenly regretted we hadn’t decided to spend some time there. Don’t get me wrong, we loved our Yellowstone time, but there are always more places to visit, and now we want to see the Tetons again. I think another year, after COVID is done will be better, as it’s a smaller park with more people crowded into a smaller area.
After getting all the way south, we headed back up north towards Bridge Bay again. There was a gravel bar along the Lake that Louie wanted to check out—it was a long gravel bar that you could walk along.
Anyway, we finally got back to our tent site and we were early enough that we took showers with our portable shower set up.
We had an early night, with a nice fire first to burn up all the wood.
The next morning we packed up and headed out. Our end of the day stop would be out the Northeast Gate of the Park, a cabin in a tiny town called Silvergate. But first, some stops along the way, of course!
We had to go by Mammoth again in order to get out of the park through the north (the more direct route was closed due to construction). We went into Gardiner again if I recall and thought we’d get another smoothie but the place wasn’t open yet. We also checked email and such and then headed towards our hike destination for the (early afternoon) day. Slough Creek Road. People said it was a great road for seeing wildlife in the morning and evening, but it was the heat of the day. Oh well.
I wasn’t feeling too good by now for whatever reason, maybe too many peanut butter sandwiches and peanuts, but we decided to do the hike—it was an out-and-back, and we were only planning to hike about 4 miles. The hike could continue for miles and miles and one could backpack, and we definitely saw people in the parking lot returning from and getting ready for such hikes.
In any case, I was a little crabby for this hike: it was hot, I was tired (we both were) but you know what, the scenery sure was beautiful! So we hiked along, and at one point a guy was coming towards us and he stopped and was telling us that there was a young black bear that had been on the path and he managed to scare it off the path finally by throwing rocks towards it and he thought it wasn’t following him anymore. I was confused by what he saying at first and asked did he want us to hike with him but he said, no, he was just telling us, that we might see it, and if we got the Ranger cabin and didn’t see it we probably were fine. Okay! So Louie wasn’t sure if I’d want to continue, but I figured, well, we’ve got our bear spray, that guy didn’t seem too scared, and he said the bear wasn’t bothering him too much. So off we went, singing and talking to make noise.
This may have been some of the most gorgeous scenery in the park. Well, with the exception of the Lake Yellowstone area.
So we saw the cabin, and that was basically where we planned to turn around. We hadn’t seen the bear yet, and I thought, well, maybe we’d better do our plan and turn back in case going on meant we DID see the bear. We also ran into a father-son hiking team and were telling them what we’d heard but they already knew and had had a bear story of their own. Well, we went on our separate ways, and we turned back, and then suddenly, Louie saw the bear, up on a ridge right near the trail. So we stopped and watched, and then lost him for a minute, and then he was right up on the trail ahead of us.
So we had choices to make, do we stay nearby to keep an eye on the bear, who seemed to be slowly meandering down the exact path we needed to take, or did we stay 100 yards away, but then we might lose track of the bear and inadvertently get closer again? We decided to stay as far away as we could keep him in sight. We figured the bear knew we were there, but the bear didn’t seem bothered by us, so we wanted to keep it that way. We kept talking and saying nice things about him while walking down the path slowly. Finally after what seemed like an eternity, the bear had gone off the path quite some distance, so we slowly walked by (and then walked backwards for some time) until we felt a safe distance had passed. It was scary but thrilling!
Here’s a video of it!
We finished up the hike then, telling a few more hikers we passed about the bear so they would be ready, and then got back in the car. We headed through Lamar Valley again…it was getting gloomy with rain looking likely, so we decided to head out to Silvergate, with the idea we might come back in later. Along the way we saw that a couple on a motorcycle had left a small bag at a parking pullout as they left and we tried to get their attention to tell them. Louie was honking and we were waving, and we almost caught them but they sped off. We felt bad for them, and we felt bad because people around us might have thought we were jerks…we may have yelled at them just in front of a bison jam, but then we never did get them to understand, and then we felt bad all around: that a motorcycle couple would think we would be angry at them and honking for that reason, that we missed enjoying the bison jam because we were trying to get their attention to tell them they left a bag on the ground, and ugh, just tired and probably the aftermath of seeing the bear.
So we went to the Grizzly Lodge in Silvergate, and checked in to our cabin. Their COVID protocol seemed to be to sort of avoid people but not wear a mask. It was a bit strange. We also met an old couple who seemed nice enough but told us that there weren’t any restaurants in Silvergate open past 5 pm and also the man was wearing a MAGA hat, which didn’t make us feel very good. It turned out he was lying or mistaken and that in fact there was a nice restaurant right next to the hotel than served dinner until normal dinner hours.
Our cabin was cute, but wasn’t really a cabin as I was imagining as it was right next to the hotel.
We got cleaned up and then went for dinner at the Log Cabin Cafe. We ate outside and we felt okay about this because we could see that the tables were well spaced out. The rain seemed to have either passed through or missed us, so it was a nice evening, except for some mosquitoes.
I
I had the trout dinner and it was delicious. This was the first time we had eaten at a sit-down restaurant since Atlanta in March, and it was really nice to have somebody bring your food and drinks and then take your dishes away!
The next morning we ate breakfast there and it wasn’t quite as good due to the service. The server was overwhelmed (I think they must have been understaffed) but we still got a decent meal outside, but it started pouring right after we ate and I’m sure some outside people got wet.
We had originally thought we might go back into the park but once we left we were done. It was time to move on and start heading home.
Okay, I’m going to stop there and leave one more post to get us home. Keep your eyes peeled, it won’t be long!
I thought I’d just pop in really quick to say hello. I worked through the weekend, but only because I took a really great online teaching seminar. I have a small addiction to online seminars, but hey, it’s not like there are any concerts to spend my money on. Well, actually the symphony here is putting on some small scale concerts, but I haven’t considered this because 1) they are only selling 100 tickets or something and 2) I don’t want to be inside with 100 people for an hour. Besides which, I’ve learned a ton, and my lessons are full of even more stuff for kids to learn.
Every time I think I get some great ideas figured out on how to teach and help my students get better, wrenches get thrown in. It’s not a straight line from, accept new student, make them commit to practicing 5 to 7 days a week, move on. Life happens, and even families with the best of intentions have issues with practicing regularly. So there is always a lot of troubleshooting! I also probably have a few students who I should encourage to move elsewhere, but it’s most for attendance issues. I do bug my students about their practicing, I ask them how much they practice and how often, and they sometimes get defensive, but it’s not a privacy thing…practicing between lessons is the only way to make any progress. A weekly music lesson won’t do a damn thing without practice in between.
Anyway, the weather has been really lovely lately. I’m still waiting on two butternut squash from the garden, but nothing else seems to be growing anymore.
I’m working on an interesting project this month with a local college, doing music for a play. It’s not going to be a live performance, due to COVID, but a sort of radio-style performance in which I will play some violin music in between scenes and acts and such. Rehearsals will be on the weekends (see, I get to work weekends again, haha!) and I’m looking forward to starting this weekend. It’ll mean I won’t have my free weekends almost all month, but it isn’t a huge time commitment. The director is the woman who wrote the Runaway Cupcake which I played in a few years ago, and she was great to work with, so I’m both nervous and looking forward to it.
Well, I’d better get moving on my day. I had off this morning and yesterday from my early morning class, and the same next week. The school is transitioning into in-person class…I’m not yet sure how that will affect us yet, but at some point we will be back in person. I guess that’s okay if we are all wearing masks and the classes aren’t too long—it looks like things are working out well for that sort of thing.
Sometimes I can’t believe we live the way we are, can you?
