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?
It’s October! To be fair, it’s been October for awhile, but I’ve been busy doing stuff other than writing.
Life is going well, if you ignore the dumpster fire that is our political climate which affects every aspect of our life these days.
My morning classes are going well. Waking up at 6 am has been easier than I thought, as long as I make an effort to also go to bed early. I’m not sure if my schedule will be changing in the next few weeks or staying the same, but I suppose if I need to wake up at 5:45 am I’ll make that work too.
I’m still enjoying not doing as much performing. My anxiety in that regard is obviously lower, and I read about people doing things that I sometimes first feel jealous over, and then I think, hah, good for them. I’m also not sure I want to take the risks that some people are okay with (COVID-wise) which makes me feel better.
I had a wonderful time teaching my first improvisation group class last weekend—the kids were great and I made it through some but not all of the activities planned. Better to have too many class activities planned than not enough, of course. If you are a violin teacher and reading them and want more info, let me know—it’s technically open to other students as well though I haven’t been advertising too much as I don’t want a huge class either
I also attended my own first Creative Ability Development Teaching Training class this week, and also I have lots of videos of the teacher’s classes to watch. It’s been wonderful seeing the kids respond. I’ve gone a bit crazy with my schedule the next few weeks and I’m treating myself to a variety of courses to improve my teaching and become somehow more inspired. One good thing about this pandemic is that I have been able to totally revamp my teaching thoughts and really put my ideas in order and into practice. I hope my students are benefitting as much as I think they are.
So it’s been busy but fun enough. The weather was lovely on Sunday and Louie and I took a nice walk in Forest Park. We had to wear masks a decent amount, since we were hardly the only people with this idea. I’m hoping we will have opportunities for more hiking and walking in the future, and I’m sure we will. Louie was feeling a bit under the weather over the weekend so we didn’t do anything extensive (in fact, we were avoiding people entirely as he did end up taking a COVID test to make sure he wasn’t sick, and until his results came back negative we didn’t want to spread it!) He’s feeling better now, and I feel confident my slightly runny nose is from allergies and the change of seasons. With that in mind, we ordered a no-contact pizza delivery from Pi on Saturday night, and then on Sunday I had a nice zoom chat with my family and we cooked a delicious dinner.
This was a Blue Apron week…it ended up being delivered on Friday so that meant fancy cooking over the weekend.
Panko encrusted tofu with roasted broccoli and a radish salad.
Cod with a mustardy panko topping, kale, and delicata squash. We certainly haven’t had enough delicata squash lately! (This is a joke because the garden has been producing a lot of the squash, and we didn’t even plant it!)
This was an awesome one: couscous with capers and golden raisins stuffed into a poblano pepper on a bed of yogurt garlic sauce.
I’ve been trying to really do meal planning and having a good time trying new recipes in addition to sticking with some of our favorites. We don’t eat meat, so usually there is one or two fish meals a week and then the rest are vegetarian. My latest favorite website for recipes is Budget Bytes and I linked to a recipe there I’ve tried and enjoyed. Today we are trying white beans with mushrooms and marinara, which looks like delicious comfort food for a Wednesday night.
I must be hungry…I guess I’ll go make some lunch. Louie got a bunch of tomatoes from a colleague so maybe I’ll slice one up with a toasted cheese sandwich or something like that.
Today I shall dedicate to good stuff happening in my life.
1) One of my high schoolers on Friday asked if I thought she was on track to go into music education with the goal of being a music therapist. She’s a junior, and I was excited to hear this. I hope I gave her a good answer, and I think I expressed that I thought she was on a good track though the more she practiced (more carefully) the better. She’s more of a fiddle player and we’ve been also working on theory and rhythm practice. I am excited about her future.
2) Today is my band’s benefit concert at 4 pm. We are playing a short set with another friend playing a short set to raise money for the Oregon Food Bank, in order to help people misplaced by the fires. Check it out, and even better, please donate if you can.
3) I had rehearsal yesterday (responsibly of course) for an upcoming recorded but “live” concert. It will air Sunday, October 11 at 4 pm CST and I recommend you watch. This is a concert that was supposed to happen in late March. It is nice playing with people again. Visit this link to see the information about the Couts Music Series, which I am thrilled and grateful my friend and colleague, Andy Peters, has put together (with funding during these times.
4) I am so far quite enjoying my new early morning teaching job. I’ve sort of made two goals for the next few years and one is to improve my teaching and push myself out of my comfort zone in teaching, which I’m doing through this job and also starting an improvisation class.
My other goal is to be a more confident and creative musician, and playing with my band helps that (by creative I mean, not just playing the same old classical music and worrying about what some dot a composer wrote 200 years ago means) as well as a few other things on the docket. One is a potential opportunity I just found out about yesterday, and the other is a longer-term online course working with a teacher who has ten years experience teaching improvisation and Creative Ability Development to children in order to improve my own skills and my teaching skills.
I have realized I am a bit happier being out of the “rat race” of the freelance world….worrying about who was asking who to play what and how to stay on top of the list for this and that and worrying if you said no that they wouldn’t ask again. It’s exhausting and a bit soul crushing. I do enjoy playing violin, so much, and it’s great to get paid to do it, but I’m just tired of it. And it’s so nice to just finish teaching and then be done, or to have so much more time on the weekends. I enjoy being busy and doing a lot of interesting things, I don’t think I’ll ever be happy just sitting around all weekend or not feeling like I’m making a difference, but taking the ego out of it (freelancing and performing is SO MUCH about ego) is a happier way to be. I will never win the freelance game, because it’s sort of like the Game of Thrones, you don’t win, you just die. And then some weird person ends up on top after you’ve spend years and years practicing, being nice, showing up early, saying yes to things and missing out on so many other opportunities in life. I’m declaring myself officially out, and I will continue to play things if they seem interesting when I’m asked, but I’m not running around, I’m not saying yes for fear of not having another chance, and I’m not going to play things that make me feel bad.
We have gone over to Louie’s family here in town for dinner a few times, and we eat out on the back porch at a socially distanced table. Otherwise we wear masks if we need to go in the house or move around. I don’t normally eat meat but occasionally make an exception.
I snapped a quick picture of the soup course. I had a small amount of red wine as it was the suggested pairing and it didn’t give me a headache at all today, which was good. I think I had about half a glass.
It was getting quite dark on the porch by the time we ate the pheasant, and then dessert was entirely too dark. It was all very tasty! I would recommend ordering from them for a special occasion. There were some things that needed to be heated up and some other things to be done, so it wasn’t a meal you can just unpack and eat, but it was fairly easy to do I believe, and the advantage is that everything is hot when you eat it as well, which is one of the problems with takeout. And did I mention it was absolutely delicious? They don’t do any dietary adjustments or substitutions to their menu, but if you are okay eating whatever is on offer (the menu is listed online so you’ll know) it is a wonderful meal.
6) I just made social plans with a friend for next weekend, just me and her! I haven’t hung out with anybody without Louie since before the pandemic. I love Louie and we are used to spending a lot of time together, but I do sometimes wish I had more of a social life without him, and I often feel we are too codependent. So yay! We also have dinner plans with another couple this weekend (at least tentative) and then I have a million other things to do work wise this week (all fun stuff, but there is practicing to be done.) All of this is good: it’s good to focus my energy on positive things rather than all the bad in the world.
