What a Country!

I've seen very little of New England so a trip to the northeast was very appealing. Larry and I started in Auriesville, NY at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs. What holy ground! To walk where men were actually struck down and killed for the faith is to be linked directly to those saints. The ravine at the shrine is just such a place and like Rene Goupil and St. Isaac Jogues who prayed the rosary there, so did we. Rene was killed by an Iriquois brave because he had made the sign of the cross on the head of child and the superstitious Indians thought it was sorcery. Fr. Jogues held him as he died fully expecting to be the next victim, but God had work for him to do still and he was spared.

Rene Goupil instructing an Indian child

One of my favorite spots on the grounds was "Theresa's rosary." Theresa was a young Indian girl who learned the faith from the Ursulines in Quebec. She was captured along with Fr. Jogues and his companions and Indian guides. Theresa was staunch in her faith and when her captors confiscated her rosary, she made another from rocks so she could pray it walking alongside the "beads." She later married one of the braves from the tribe, but never abandoned her faith. Like Kateri Tekawitha, she was one of the beautiful Christians baptized and taught by the blackrobes.

Theresa's rosary

First chapel at Auriesville

We also visited the Shrine of Kateri Tekawitha in Fonda. Kateri was born in Auriesville, but was raised in the Indian village located in what is now Fonda. The shrine includes the excavated site where metal posts mark the actual double stockade and the outlines of the long houses where Indian families lived. Not far from the site is "Kateri's spring" where she would have gone to get water for washing and cooking. Our two days in Auriesville were an opportunity to begin our trip as a pilgrimage. We prayed the 20-decade rosary both days and attended Mass at the second chapel built on the grounds in the 1800s. The first chapel is tiny, like a small gazebo, but it is lovely and reminds one how eager people were to honor the martyrs even when they could only build a tiny shrine. 

From Auriesville we visited Vermont and Maine passing through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. What a testimony to the glory of God. If Auriesville was like being with the saints washed clean in the blood of the lamb, driving the highways and byways of the northeast was like watching "the word" creating in all his glory. I'll post just a few pictures to illustrate. The glories of God's world made me pause often to sing How Great Thou Art! 

Sailboat on one of Maine's "ponds"

Scene from an overlook in Jamaica State Park, Vermont

One of the amazing examples of Vermont flora

Nature "reflects" the glory of God!

We met this German biker who visits the U.S. twice a year to bike around our wonderful country with friends. (There were half a dozen of them.) He said his favorite trip was following the Lewis and Clark trail from St. Louis to Portland. 

A New York honeybee collects nectar from asters. Beekeepers say aster honey is terrible, so the bees can have it! LOL!

A Visit to the Vineyards and Wineries along Lake Erie

Last weekend we enjoyed the company of our daughter and her husband in a birthday tour of vineyards and wineries along Lake Erie. The wine and cheese weekend offered a choice of 23 establishments with food and wine pairings. In two days we managed to visit seventeen (and stay sober). We took a little vote at the end on the best food, the best wine, and best atmosphere. It was a delightful weekend with two of our favorite people. And here are a few photos.

Best Food! Tomato, bacon, smoked cheddar soup...yum.

Flowers everywhere...a second Spring for Larry and me

Bed and Breakfast on the lake...friendly hosts and lovely surroundings!

Our companions on the adventure

We didn't dream up that pink elephant!

Just one of the lovely tasting rooms

Time out from wining for a walk in the park

Is that the road more traveled? Vineyards everywhere.

Beautiful stonework at this vineyard and a friendly winebartender

Lemon cheesecake...just one of the yummy dishes served with wine.

Carlsbad Caverns - Wow!

We're used to Virginia's caverns which, compared to Carlsbad, are little mole tunnels. The "big room" in Carlsbad could hold 14 football fields. It was huge, but also very lightly lit. I didn't get many good photos. The real adventure was walking down unaccompanied into the cavern. It's about a mile down to the main level and then a one and half mile loop around the big room. Walking into the black hole reminded me of the old movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth, parts of which were filmed in Carlsbad. The rock formations are a lot less colorful than Luray Caverns because the rock is mostly calcite which is grayish white. They don't have the orange and blues from iron and copper. Using the "night scene" setting on the cameral added color that wasn't really there. We spent an enjoyable four hours in the caverns but were glad to come out again into the light. I don't think I'd enjoy being a bat.

Journey to the Center of the earth begins here.

Beautiful formations all the color of the gray rock in the foreground.

The underground rest area reminded me of an airport concourse with souvenir kiosks and food vendors. 

This picture shows a ladder used by the cowboy who discovered the caverns to go into one of the lower rooms. 

Guadalupe Mountains and Carlsbad

Texas and New Mexico come together in a beautiful part of the country with a tremendous diversity of natural wonders: the Guadalupe Mountains, the Carlsbad Caverns, and the Chihuahuan Living Desert. We spent four days experiencing as much as we could including the 40-year celebration of Guadalupe National Park which offered all kinds of adventures in honor of the day. We took a ride on a replica of Wells Fargo stagecoach. Wow, what a bumpy ride! And we were on an old asphalt road. I can only imagine how uncomfortable it was to be traveling on a dirt road rutted with wagon wheels. Our driver had a little friend riding shotgun and he did a good job. We had no problem with hostile Indians on our ride.

The weather was less than ideal, foggy and misty. We hoped to see Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan, the two highest peaks in the area, but the entire mountain was fogged in. About the only views we had were a few hundred yards from the Smith Spring trail, a loop that started and ended at the Smith Ranch.

We enjoyed the trail passing through a dry desert until we came to the spring, halfway around the trail. What an oasis that must have been for the Indians and the settlers in this arid place! Instead of cactus and scrub brush, there were numerous trees including some I'd never seen before, Madrone. with colorful pinkish bark and red berries. We hung around the spring for awhile resting and enjoying the change in scenery. Then off we went to complete the loop ending on a stretch of paved road that was wheelchair accessible.

Back at the Smith Ranch a group was singing and dancing -- explaining all of their instruments. The two young girls dancing actually are part of the percussion group, keeping the time of the music. What a fun way to keep the beat. We enjoyed watching and I was toe-tapping along with the dancers.

Our fun day ended with dinner at the "best Mexican restaurant" in Carlsbad, NM, Rojas! I agree with the little guy in the picture. Yum!

Hot Springs, Arkansas - what a great small town!

Sunday in Hot Springs a week ago was delightful. We went to Mass at historic St. Mary's, a lovely little church. We were pleased to find another faithful Mass with no liturgical nonsense. The Church had a beautiful stained glass window in the back in lovely pastel colors. I particularly liked a statue of St. Ann with Mary who was holding a scroll. St. Ann appears to be instructing her -- perhaps reading a hard word or explaining a doctrine from the Torah. It seemed like the perfect statue for home schooling moms who are  teaching their young ones to read.

It was pouring rain and thundering when we arrived, but, by the time Mass was over, it was just drizzling. We drove to the main street to find a place for breakfast and ended up at a little cafe Southern Living says has "the best breakfast." It was sweet with wooden walls and a decor I'll call country eclectic. We ate a leisurely breakfast and then went off exploring the town.

We visited a small antique shop and met a man who was transplanted from the D.C. area (McClean, VA). He used to manage the theatrical productions at Carter Barron and, when their funding went south he took a job at a theatre in Memphis with a more generous budget. After he retired he moved to Hot Springs where his dad was living and running the shop and took over. He had two statues of the archangels Michael and Raphael that I took a fancy to. (See here.) I especially liked Raphael's fish. The dealer said most people don't know who he is.

We had a delightful conversation and I marveled, once again, at how small the world is. We once met a friend of Larry's cousin from high school in Wheeling waiting tables at a restaurant in Ponchatoula, LA. I'm serious!

After visiting the Hot Springs visitor center (It used to be a bath house and operates as a museum now.) we decided to take a dip in the public pools ourselves. There were four pools, each at a different temperature 92, 98, 102, and 104. The hottest was too hot for me! I got in and lasted about thirty seconds. We spent a pleasant hour and half there before heading to Lowes to get some items for Larry to repair the cable that connects the trailer lights to the car. Two hundred miles of dragging on the asphalt is not much good for rubber-wrapped wires.


And now a few random pictures from our enjoyable days at Lake Catherine and Hot Springs.

Only one of the old buildings on bath house row still operates as a bath house. This had shops on the first floor. 

This building houses and art gallery.

This is one of the old showers. But it looks like a torture chamber!

How would you like to be closed up in this steam cabinet?

One of the wall sculptures decorating the buildings

This sea god reminded me of my dad in his later life. Very distinguished!

John Wayne Country -- Monument Valley, UT

Thursday-Friday, October 6-7

After our brief snowy stay in Arizona at the Grand Canyon, we moved back to Utah to Monument Valley, a familiar sight to John Wayne film fans. We stayed at Goulding's RV park and they offer a John Wayne western every night for their visitors. After touring the monuments, it was fun to see the movie, The Searchers, and identify some of the rock formations by name.

Monument Valley is on the Navajo Reservation and is operated by the tribe. The 17 mile dirt road through the area is rough and rutted. We started out on our own and, after traveling the first quarter mile, returned to the campground to take the tour. Let their trucks take the beating! The two hour tour could be summarized as "shake, rattle, and roll." Our guide, Irvin, a Navajo, was also a jokester who thought it was funny to drive as close as possible to the edge of a steep ravine. At one point he drove through a rut that tipped the truck so far down to the left I thought we might turn over. He was up front cracking jokes -- "Oh, Mama!"

We toured the visitor center and were impressed with an exhibit created by high school students in New Mexico about the "code talkers" who created an unbreakable code based on the Navajo language for transmitting messages during WW II. Ultimately, about four hundred Indian men were recruited and served in the U.S. Marine Corps as "code talkers." It is the only code never to be broken by the enemy.

 But what I liked best in the museum was a series of photos of Indian grandmothers. To the Navajos the grandmother is the wisest of the wise. She is consulted before all major decisions. As a grandma of 20, I thought that was a great tradition that should be followed by other cultures.

What can one say about the monuments except that they are amazing. To look out over the countryside and see flat desert dotted with huge rocks in unusual shapes makes you want to rub your eyes and look again. Can it possibly be real? The formations have interesting names that relate to their appearance: left and right mitten, the king on his throne, the cock, elephant butte, the three sisters who look like nuns going in to prayer, the camel (who also looked like Snoopy lying on his back), the totem pole, etc.

In addition to telling us a little about the rocks and their names, Irvin described how the Navajo used some of the desert plants we saw for food, basket weaving, building, even for soap and shampoo (the root of the yucca plant). The last stop on the tour was at a hogan (made of wood poles covered with mud without use of nails or any other joining materials - put together sort of like interconnecting pieces of a puzzle). There we met Grandma Bessie who was carding and spinning wool and had a partly completed rug on her loom. The Navajo weavers have no pattern to follow, they carry the designs in their heads and grandmothers and mothers pass the skill on to their daughters.

At the lodge there is a small museum which is in the house that the original owners built back in the 1920s. Harry Goulding was a sheep buyer who was so taken with the valley that he bought a piece of property and established a tent trading post with his young wife "Mike." During the depression when the Navajos were hard hit, the Gouldings used their last $60 to go to Hollywood to meet with director John Ford who was looking for a place to film a western. They had a hard time getting in to see Ford but Harry in his persistence said he didn't mind waiting; he'd brought his bedroll. When he finally got to meet with Ford, he showed him photos of the valley and Ford was so impressed he ended up making about a dozen westerns in the area. Many of the local indians served as extras in the films. The cabin John Wayne stayed in during the filming, which was also used for some exterior shots, is preserved at Gouldings.

Our day and a half in Monument Valley (I kept thinking of the song, I Remember the Red River Valley because of the red dirt that got into everything!) was fun and we had our introduction to Navajo fry bread which is similar to supapia and delicious! Best of all it wasn't snowing although it was chilly.

Looks like we'll get plenty of use from our winter jackets in these last weeks of our trip. Up until the Grand Canyon we were mostly wearing short sleeved shirts and shorts/capris. Temps the past few days have hovered around 50 during the day and down to freezing or below at night. It feels colder though because of the wind and mostly cloudy skies. We are promised warmer temps and sunshine in Mesa Verde, our next stop.

Charmed by Cody and Buffalo Bill

We arrived in Cody around noon and checked in at the Ponderosa Campground, a great choice. The pull-through campsites were close together, but adequate and the bathrooms were immaculate, my primary requirement from a campground. The lady who checked us in was a walking tourist magazine and pointed us to all the great places to visit. We had to choose from among a wealth since we only had a day and half before moving on to Yellowstone. We decided to visit the Old West town only a short distance away. All the buildings are authentic, moved from one place or another. They consisted of a school, several settler cottages, a store, the saloon, a blacksmith shop, the carriage house, Curly’s cabin (an Indian guide to General George Custer and one of the few survivors of the Little Big Horn), the cabin used by Butch Cassidy and his hole in the wall gang, and a cemetery. There was a little museum as well as all the buildings. We wandered around for about an hour and a half. One of the most interesting areas was the cemetery where they reburied a number of people exhumed from other places who were important to Cody’s history. They were moved and reburied thanks to the efforts of a number of Cody citizens and organizations. Several have large monuments. There is certainly a sense of pride in Cody and a reverence for their famous sons and daughters.

As we were preparing to leave, a group of teenagers dressed up for a wild west reenactment arrived. Several of the girls looked like saloon babes decked out in satin, feathers, and fishnet stockings. They were making a movie for their English class on western literature. What fun. We hung around for awhile while they planned out what they were going to do. Several were talking about killing off their husbands. After visiting the town we stopped at a shop/museum nearby that features a large miniature display. It had military forts, Indian villages, pioneers travelling across the country, Indian buffalo hunts, Buffalo Bill’s wild west show, and railroads. What a labor of love putting such a display together and there was no entrance fee. A number of the display areas had audio explanations of the scenes. It was a great 45 minute stop and well worth the time.

The next morning after breaking camp and going to Mass at St. Joseph's (which turned out to be a Communion service because the pastor was out of town at a diocesan priests’ meeting), we went to the Buffalo Bill Museum nearby. It will probably be one of my favorite stops of the trip. The museum is divided into sections on Buffalo Bill, the Plains Indians, Firearms, and Western Art. I loved the section on Buffalo Bill. What a man, very much ahead of his time. He supported women’s suffrage, was one of the first to urge the preservation of areas as national parkland, and believed in paying a decent wage to his employees. His wild west show employed about 600 players and the logistics to go with it were astounding. But what I loved most about the man was his love for family. He and his wife had four children and only one grew to be an adult. There was charming letter from his daughter which she wrote shortly before her marriage telling him what a good father he’d been and asking him to love her husband as a son. Later Buffalo Bill wrote a delightful letter to his newborn granddaughter telling her he hoped she would love her granddaddy even though he was noisy and gruff and not be afraid of the shooting because he loved little children. One of my favorite photos in the display was Buffalo Bill dressed as Santa for some school children. After reading all the exhibits on his life, I was especially thrilled to see that the day before he died he was baptized a Catholic by a priest, an old family friend. What a fitting end to this saga of a good man, one of the most unique characters of the wild west.

One comment about our travels west: so many priests have multiple parishes. The Cody priest had his main church, St. Joseph, and two others listed in the bulletin. In many places we’ve visited, the bulletins show two, three, even four parishes being served by one priest. We are so blessed in my diocese to not have this problem – yet. Pray for religious vocations and good Catholic parents who foster them.

A Cruise on the Mighty Mississippi

We arrived in La Crosse in time for a sunset cruise on the Mississippi on a little shallow boat that goes into the backwaters to spy for eagles' nests and other wildlife you don't see from the big paddleboats steaming down the center of the river.

The park near the dock was the site of a wedding reception and we enjoyed seeing the bride and groom and the festivities. There were fountains and statues and it was a beautiful spot to linger as we waited for departure time.

The naturalist on board told us about the life on the Mississippi as we pulled into channels, one with a beaver dam, as we played I spy on the river.


We saw several eagles' nests (inactive since the fledglings leave the nest by July), turtles on logs, three eagles either sitting in trees or flying, deer walking in the distance on one of the islands, boathouses that float on the edge of the river but don't move (as differentiated from houseboats which go from place to place which we also saw). 

She had hands on nature exhibits: two turtle shells, a model eagle skull (what eyeholes! They can see three miles away.), feet from a red-tailed hawk, a goose, and a barred owl, and other things. 

It was a painless way to learn a little about nature and she drafted several "junior naturalists" to carry the items around the boat for display. When one little girl came to show us the beaver skull, Larry commented on what a dental bill the beaver would have!

It was a delightful and relaxing two-hour respite after several very busy days. Many people out boating called and waved to us.  The river folk are definitely a friendly breed. We saw several with children on tubes being pulled. They were practically flying over the surface. What a river! We'll cross it again on our return trip and it will be like meeting an old friend.

If you've never read Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, I heartily recommend it. .