Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Return of the Wanderer & Women are Angels

Well I am back!
We are now heading into the late summer and so far I have not had much kite surfing since spring.
However I have had other fun, oh yes and a birthday but more of that later.

I was supposed to visit my good friend Nick and his wonderful other half Carolyn on the west coast, that will have to be delayed a while as Nick has had to deal with a difficult test of his tenacity for life. Luckily from the sound of things all is going according to plan with the support of his personal angel (Carolyn) and the medical staff helping him through this difficult time.

So my motorcycle has been put to good use and instead of the west coast it has carried me to equally delightful places in the mid west of the USA.
Of course none of this would have been possible without my own angel, she who shall be obeyed :-))
While I was gone for more than three weeks my angel ran the home and business enabling my eyes to delight upon the wide variety of landscapes my trusty steed happened to arrive at.

With some encouragement from others in my motorcycle group I departed for three rallies in South Dakota and Wyoming with a side trip to Moab between no2 and no3. I shared each part of the trip with a friends, some from home and some made en voyage.

Having traveled in the general area of the mid & south west before (not on a motorcycle though) I thought I had an idea of what to expect but I am always surprised at how wrong one can be on ideas about travel.
Not having done a long trip (10,667 Kilometers) of this nature for many years the changing view around every corner or over every rise made it quite tricky to pay attention to my driving safely.
I will not try to cover the trip in any detail or we would be here for the duration! but I will say the beginning of the journey in Ontario allowed me to re visit familiar locations and oh yes pick up some books on Photography at a used book store I had not planned on stopping at (thanks David) , they were cumbersome so I had to have them mailed home. But wait this was only my first day out what would the rest of the trip bring.
How about this for starters, early morning in Oacoma

And then it was time for Canyon country to begin!
Spearfish Canyon, a very pretty place to see.
Then there is the variety of the floral side to nature.
No idea what this is but they grow under very dry and difficult conditions, like us sometimes.

Even underground I found amazing stuff, no I did not take the bike down a mine but visited one that turned out to be dry as far as financial content was concerned so it has been a tourist item since the thirties.
I shall leave this one to your imagination.

Time for some liquid refreshment I think, well we did have horse power :-))
A remnant of the old west? maybe!

There are still a lot of cowboys and cattle you may run into them as we almost did.
Altitude, something else to pay attention too, I did suffer a little but it was worth it.
And colours too, vibrant even the soil and rocks, every moment to be savoured.
But you cant stay away forever that would spoil it for the next time, besides had a birthday party to get home for. So I made tracks for the homestead and my angel.
Not only did I have my cake, and ate it too, very nice but I had some great friends to share it with.

So Nick you and I share more than one thing in life, we both have Angels to take care of us !

Well folks I could go on about things since the last posting but I have to go have supper.