I visited Muir Woods National Monument this past week and got to take advantage of the benefits of being a regular at fitness connection. I’ve never had a problem joining a gym but going regularly always seemed beyond me. I learned recently to look at it differently-if you don’t make good life decisions all the freedom you look forward to in your later life will be compromised by a lack of energy and arthritic pain. This realization made going to a gym a necessity instead of a pipe dream. I am looking forward to years of travel and adventure and I don’t want to miss a mountain or scenic view because my knees are bad or I just don’t have the energy.

I will admit being a bit winded but I believe it had more to do with altitude than lack of strength or stamina. I felt fortunate that I had started getting in better shape when I did because if I hadn’t been working out I think it might have made the hike much shorter. We often take the ability to walk where ever we want for granted, I once slipped a disk and was almost bed ridden for a month and when I did walk I walked like the hunchback. After this incident I never took the mere act of walking for granted again and being able to hike up the side of a mountain drove that message home.

Muir woods is amazing, I’ve heard about it from others and it is as big and grand as they’ve described it. My son and I had been to Big Basin State Park, Californias’ oldest state park, where we walked three miles but the walk was on relatively flat ground and not much uphill terrain. We took the ocean view trail in Muir and never actually saw the ocean, the trail meanders around a mountain with some areas pretty steep for the novice hiker dealing with altitude-there were many older and younger than I standing panting along the trail “enjoying the view.” 

Our whole trip was originally planned around a trip to Kentucky and more specifically Dale Hollow Lake. We were going on a guided smallmouth bass trip and hoping the elusive fish wouldn’t skunk us again. I should have realized how far off the map we were when we arrived at the lake with no cell service.

After a long day of travel through the southern portion of Kentucky, a two mile trek deep into the longest cave in the US-Mammoth Cave-a 400 mile long cave system. I was disgusted when they looked at me and asked if I was okay for the tour-I did just fine by the way, just fine. It’s a dramatically large cave right up until you get into the depths where you are squeezing through tight areas-it seems every time we explore a new cave , there is always something different from the wildlife to the stalagmites and cave bacon, for Mammoth cave I would say it was the size of the ceiling and the history  that was literally etched on its walls.

After driving all day, we were ready to relax and enjoy our cabin. Unfortunately I learned that in Tennessee-we needed a youth license even though my son was only fifteen-can’t find his social security card and can’t buy his license without it, try to explain to someone on the phone how to find the paperwork where his number would be-unfortunately very weak cell service and short memory on my part made this very difficult. There was one place where we could use the cell, on the top of the mountain, in a small area where we must have looked like lurking criminals parked on the side of the road in the middle of the night.

Stressful, frustrating evening finishes out a rather exhausting day. Up early to go fishing, misplaced license, unprepared for eight hours on a boat and another day we end up fatigued instead of relaxed. I was the only one that caught a smallie and it was a pretty reasonable size. Now I realize that eight hours on a lake when your not catching anything is a bit tiring especially when it’s unseasonably warm. It always seems that there is a point in a vacation where the fatigue or the cost of the trip catch up with you or perhaps its just the fact that face it, you always forget something or fail to prepare-in the end it’s what you do with it that preserves the memory for the better.

Next on our agenda was Gatlinburg, an amazing ski town in south east Tennessee. I’ll be honest I was looking forward to being in a  town that had lots of people and was less remote. First stop, a small barbecue shop that my son found in man vs food-it was in Knoxville Tennessee-Dixsons’ Barbecue, the idea of finding great places to eat has turned into the texture of this trip and my son has not failed as of yet, Dixsons’ was no exception. A very modest trailer with a very interesting cook who I would have loved to spend the afternoon talking with and in retrospect we probably should have. We had these ribs that had a spicy kick that we have tried to decipher but it was an incredible taste and well worth the trip. The presentation, wrapped in tinfoil and put in a paper bag, felt like locals and one actually did remorse the fact that there weren’t as many true quality barbecue left in Knoxville-we were happy to have experienced it.

I fell in love with  Gatlinburg right away, even before we got to  Gatlinburg. There is a long road through Pigeon Forge with amazing buildings and tourist attractions that felt like we had taken a turn to fantasy land. From Dollywood to the Titanic and wonderworks-we were intrigued by the different activities that we could experience in Pigeon Forge and we definitely will return to explore all the bits of fantasy you can experience just in view of the Great Smoky Mountains. We were on to Gatlinberg and I was happy to get there.

Cannas_from the Cape San Blas Series

I have been walking around in somewhat of a daize as of late. Ideas come in bits of clips, it’s almost like trying to build a house when all you have are screws and a couple of wooden boards-nothing materializes but the parts seem to overwhelm you. I should be patient by now having gone through this process for so many years but it seems the older I get the more profound and extreme the stages seem to be.

Urban Sunset

I sat in front of four paintings for short bursts of time and than suddenly within hours I have several different clarified paths that actually seem to be heading in a great direction. The problem with the creative process is that tomorrow they can all seem like disasters-it’s almost like the creative eye opens and you can see the details that the logical eye seems unable or unwilling to connect. Suddenly the big blob of paint becomes the shadow that instinctively knew where it needed to fill and the form that seemed so cryptic previously lends itself to the correct perspective and the right hues and values. I am about to go in and paint again-not only has this weekend brought lots of painting but my words are actually falling off the page as well-in the creative realm it rains or it shines but oh when it shines it really seems more brilliant than  anything in comparison.