Happy Anniversaries, Parks Canada

Canada's equivalent of the US National Park Service celebrates its 125th this year. But wait! There's more!

Happy Anniversaries -- plural "anniversaries" with an S is correct, as Parks Canada (and also Parcs Canada in our officially bilingual neighbor to the north) -- celebrates and celebrates and celebrates. Currently, the agency is responsible for 42 national parks, 167 historic sites, nine historic canals and three national historic conservation areas. Like trivia? Point Pelee National Park, between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario is the smallest and also the farthest south -- farther south, in fact, than New York City. The farthest north is Sirmilik National Park on northern Baffin Island, also the area where the earliest signs of human habitation have been found. Parks Canada/Parcs Canada certainly has a lot to celebrate.

2010 - 125th anniversary of the year (1885) that Cave Basin was established as a natural reserve to protect Banff Hot Springs. Two years later, it became the nucleus Banff National Park, Canada's first national park.

2011 - 100th anniversary of the creation of the agency now called Parks Canada/Parcs Canada

2012 - 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, commemorated and documented at numerous National Historic Sites close to the Canada-US border.

2013 - 300th anniversary ot the Fortress of Louisbourg, a faith reconstruction of a fortress built in 1713 to protect French poessesions in what is now referred to as Atlantic Canada.

Sites and Blogs with Names Similar to Travel Babel

With tens of thousands of blogs and websites, I found just a few similar domain names

I do occasionally check the number of visitors to this blog, but today I'm feeling puckish this morning and suddenly wondered how many other blogs and sites I could find quickly with names similar to my Travel Babel blog. I immediately found another Travel Babel in Poland. Its URL is almost identical to mine, but without the hyphen between "Travel" and "Babel."

Flipping the words around, I also found a Swiss tour operator called Babel Travel that organizes adventure trips to North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. There's a Travel Babble in Canada, a site that doesn't seem to travel far beyond Toronto and offers information for visitors traveling to that wonderful city. And I came upon a dead-end URL for a website called My Travel Babble that was once a domain name of Bob and Claudia Brill, " two people with extensive travel experience," says the Google search page. And I found a lame YouTube video titled "Travel Babble" of two blokes sitting around in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris and describing their time in Paris with only some words audible .

60 Hours of Capricious Front Range Weather

Four seasons in 2+ days. Boulderites don't need to travel. Weather variations come to us.

If you live in or have been traveling to Boulder, Colorado, starting this past Wednesday, here's the weather you would have experienced:

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Wednesday afternoon, gray.
Wednesday early evening, hail.

Wednesday later in the evening, regular rain. Then downpour plus thunder and lightening.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Thursday morning, gray.
Thursday mid-day, blue sky and sunny.
Thursday afternoon, clouded over.
Thursday evening and Friday morning, rain ranging from drizzle to deluge.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Friday late morning and early afternoon, rain that became sleet and then, heavy, wet snow.

Friday afternoon and evening, alternating rain, drizzle and gray.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Saturday day morning and early afternoon (which is now), gray and cloudy, then clearing and finally sunny.

All the photos above are of our front or back yard during a classic April on Colorado's Front Range. Bottom line is that if you live here, you don't have to travel at this time of year for a change of climate. For visitors, April weather can be an hour-by-hour surpirse. For my part, I love it.

Staycation for the Birds

Non-migrating avians have been bellying up to our heated birthbath and flocking around our feeder

A flock of robins (below) has all but taken over the birdbath.



The bird feeder atop a pole stuck into the ground attracts smaller birds (below) until a (relatively) large flicker chases them off.

Squirrels patrol the snow (below), picking up any scattered birdseed, and occasionally, the neighbored fox comes around seeking a squirrel to snack on (I've never caught Foxy with my camera, but trust me that s/he lives nearby).


Meanwhile, Johnny Cash, the Cat in Black (below) is an avid birdwatcher. He really doesn't care to go outside into the cold -- especially when he might get his paws wet in the snow.

Classic Gloucester Schooner at Home in West Coast Harbor

Down to the seas in a self-made ship: Leland Parsons's magnificent accomplishment

I spent a couple of days last week with my friends John and Marcia Sullivan, also East Coast transplants now living in Marin County, north of San Francisco. One sunny day last week, we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge, through the city after the rush hour and continued southward on the coastal road. We stopped at Pillar Point Harbor, a few miles north of Half Moon Bay to look at boats, breathe salt air and enjoy warmth and sunshine.

Tied up on a dock paralleling the quay was a vision from the 18th century -- a schooner with wooden masts, canvas sails gently luffing in the breeze, varnished wood, gleaming brightwork and orderly lines hanging from wooden pins. What an unexpected vision in a watery neighborhood or working fishing boats and more prosaic pleasure craft.

We stopped to chat with the trim, gray-bearded man tidying the tidy boat. I asked him how old the boat was, and he replied, "The simple answer is 40 years old but in the water since 2005." He told us that his name is Leland Parsons and shared snippets of the story of this marine dream come true -- that of building a traditional boat from the keel up, a labor of love he and his family had shared over many years.  

The beautiful boat built in the style of a Gloucester fishing schooner is called the "Frank Edmund." It is late 18th century in appearance but features such 21st century safety and comfort accouterments as navigation and communication instruments, modern marine "plumbing," safety features and even a washer/dryer.

Reporter Gary Warth of the North Bay Times, who had known Parsons and his family in San Diego, wrote "Former Poway boat-builder still living his dream aboard schooner Frank Edmund." Parsons, originally from Gloucester, Massachusetts, is an expat New Englander, like the Sullivans and I. He, his wife Cecily and their sons built the boat for the possibility of sailing around the world, but the "Edmund's" home port this sheltered marina with shorter charters up and down the California coast on the ship's log.

Parsons invited us to come aboard and look around below, which is as beautiful as topside -- plus the addition of Oriental-style carpets.

The "Frank Edmund" is the Parsons' dream fulfilled. When we were aboard, for that short time, we briefly and vicariously shared such a dream.

Snowmass Provides Sensational Skiing

Conditions were perfect at the largest and most varied of the four Aspen ski areas

There were days over this holiday period when Colorado's snow-covered highways were challenging to drive or when bone-dry roadways were choked with rush-hour traffic. There were times when the process of obtaining a lift ticket was so frustratingly slow that I thought everyone in front of me was buying a slopeside condo at Snowmass, and times when the liftline seemed endless because children's ski classes were loading onto the resort's six-passenger Village Express. But nothing, and I mean nothing, mattered once I started skiing.

Truth be told, I am back from several of the very best days of skiing I've ever had -- a perfect way to close the year of 2008 and shift the 2008-09 ski season into high gear. Snowmass had received 15 or 20 inches of snow in the few days prior to my arrival and had packed the snow down so the winds that accompanied and followed the storm it didn't blow the snow into the back of beyond. And did I mention a series sunny, wind-still days?

The Aspen Skiing Co. has invested a lot of money to upgrade the lifts and mountain restaurants at Snowmass, and the biggest and most varied of the Aspen area's four ski areas is better than ever. Here are recent improvements that I especially like:

• The new beginner area at the top of the Elk Camp gondola. Kids' classes can ride up and down on the gondola. Steps away is a wide, gentle slope served by a covered moving carpet.
  
• Novice slope on Assay Hill seemed to have more classes than I remember from recent years. Have they done something to improve it -- or is it just more visible now that nearby Base Village is closer to completion and less of a construction site.
  
• Slight relocation of the Sheer Bliss and an upgrade to a high-speed quad helps traffic flow on the parallel trail.
  
• Construction of the impressive Kahana terrain park beside the Elk Camp Gondola.


• Replacement of the old Sam's Knob on-mountain restaurant with the very attractive new Sam's Smokehouse (right), with a casual cafe-style area, a sit-down dining area, a new menu and fabulous views. Even the ladies' restroom is gorgeous -- and it's on the same level as the restaurant rather than down a flight of stairs!

I/we are fortunate to have hospitable friends who years back built a ski house across a small, snowy street from the Adams Avenue trail. This is the third or fourth year in a row that I've stayed there and skied at Snowmass for a few days over the holidays. Much as I like the other three Aspen areas, because each has its own distinct appeal, the convenient "commute" to the slopes has been such that I have only skied Snowmass. Happily. Very happily.

Travel Thumbnail: Oklahoma City National Museum and Memorial

This is the seventh of a series of periodic reports on specific places I've visited -- and which you might want see to as well.

On the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, this poignant memorial bears witness to a great American tragedy

The Place: Oklahoma City National Museum and Memorial

The Story: Who can forget the horror of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by two crazed individuals with a grudge against the federal government? Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols conspired to detonate an explosive-filled rental truck. Six-and-a-half years before 9/11, these misguided young Americans, whom no one would take for terrorists by their appearance,  committed a deadly act of terrorism against their fellow citizens. The blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of eight, and injured an additional 680 people..

In addition to scarring the survivors and demolishing the Murrah Building, the blast changed the face of downtown Oklahoma City. In all, 324 buildings within a 16-block radius were destroyed or damaged, totaled 86 cars and shattered building glass in a three-mile-square area. Property damage was more than $650 million, but the damage to the collective American psyche was incalculable -- partly because the tools of their terrorism were so ordinary: a rental truck loaded 

Both McVeigh and Nichols, clean-cut and unremarkable in appearance, were Army veterans. Part of the US army oath is, "...solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic..." They themselves became the very domestic enemies against whom they had once sworn to protect the country.

My Experience: I arrived in Oklahoma City in the evening for a conference. On that mild autumn evening, I left the hotel and walked along quiet streets. The walk took only 15 or 20 minutes, and I didn't know what to expect. I walked up a few steps to the outdoor memorial -- a reflecting pool and sculptures of metal chairs atop lighted cubes, one for every victim -- and was not alone. Other visitors walked reverently along the paths. It is a powerful site, and I walked back to the hotel in sadness and humility -- glad to have had a solitary experience.

Later in the week, as part of the conference itinerary, I visited the museum -- powerful too but also heartbreaking. Many of the exhibit rooms were poignant and personal. Children's toys. Glasses, Keys. Shoes. Office equipment and supplies. Ordinary artifacts of ordinary lives cut short in an instant by two ordinary-looking men packing an ordinary agricultural product into an ordinary truck. How, I wondered then and still wonder, can anyone feel such rage?

Cost: It costs nothing to visit the outdoor memorial. The museum is open Monday through Saturday, 9:00 a.m. 6:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults and $8 for 62+, military with ID, student aged 6 to 17 or with college ID and 5 and under, free.

Oklahoma City National Museum and Memorial,  620 North Harvey Avenue, Oklahoma City; 405-235-3313.