Preparing for Lift-off (Balloon Festival: post 1 of 4)

Last Wednesday I was able to squeeze in a visit to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, the biggest event of its kind in the world. We got there at around 6:30, and stayed for about an hour and a half. I apologize for the multiple posts, but Picasa seems to be limiting to me to 4 photos per post.

Laying out the balloon


"I love the smell of propane in the morning"- test-firing the burners


Large fans blow hot air into the balloon


Inflation in progress

Our Stay in Český Krumlov

Talking about our day in Český Krumlov, a town in the Czech Republic, is "out of sequence". But I wanted to put up a link to a news article, because I don't know how long the link will be valid.

The article explains "Disability Day- a Day Without Barriers." This was an event that took place in Český Krumlov while we were there. It's the reason why we had the surreal experience of wandering through a medieval town after dark, listening to the sounds of Pink Floyd's The Wall reverberate off the castle walls...

Still More from New Mexico

For some reason, my blogging software wouldn't let me post these photos all at once.

Red Hot Chili Peppers


View from our hotel last night. This is the first time I saw the Sandia Mountains without clouds.

My conference is now in full swing (I'm blogging this during my luch break), so this should be the last of my Albuquerque photography and blog posting.

More from Albuquerque

Yesterday my alarm went off at 5:00 am, and I staggered out of bed to go see the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. Unfortunately, I opened the curtains to my hotel room and saw nothing but rain. The good news is that I got to go back to sleep. Later in the day, I took a short trip to Albuquerque's Old Town area.

San Felipe Neri Church




Scenes from Old Town

In addition to wandering through the art galleries and a few gift shops, I also visited the American International Rattlesnake Museum, which is actually much more interesting than it probably sounds.

Hiking in Albuquerque

Fate, or rather work, took me to Albuquerque, New Mexico this weekend. My conference started this evening, but I flew out a day early to see more of the city. The flight from Denver was under an hour, and after grabbing my luggage and renting a car, I drove straight for REI. I walked in and told them I had one day in town and wanted a hike. The hike I had planned was to take the tramway from town to the top of the Sandia Crest and walk along the top. Unfortunately, the tops of those peaks were in the clouds, and, well, I know what the inside of a cloud looks like. The folks at REI were extremely helpful, gave me a number of options, and even helped me print out a map for my chosen destination.

I hiked up Embudo Canyon, on the south side of the Sandia Mountains. The trail started off looking like a city park, but after half a mile from an Albuquerque subdivision I was crossing into a National Forest Wilderness Area. I hiked up 3.2 miles up onto a ridge, with almost 1800’ of climbing. The lower stretches through the canyon itself had a running stream and lots of willow tree and other vegetation. Past the narrows, the canyon widened up into meadows of yellow Rabbitbrush and (unidentified) purple flowers. There were so many flowers that the air smelled of them. The birdsong was constant as well. The upper stretches were a more typical pinyon pine mix. Views were constant, and cactus was everywhere mixed in with the shrubbery. A very cool hike.

Lower Stretchs of Embudo Canyon


Me on the top - right before taking this picture, I managed to tip over the tripod and send my camera lens-first into the dirt

View down to Albuquerque


Flowers on the trail

After checking into my hotel, I had dinner at Los Cuates, recommended by my coworker Randy Mayes, who grew up in Albuquerque. Outstanding Mexican food. If this day was any indication, Albuquerque is a pretty cool place

Austria Vacation Log: Day 14, The Redemption of Wien

We were still wiped out and tired, in part because of the previous day’s travel, in part because of the hike 2 days before, and partly just exhaustion from traveling for so long. We got a late start and didn’t make it to the Hofburg until near 11, when the crowds were in full force.

The Hofburg Palace

Hercules statue at the Hofburg

The Hofburg was the royal palace of the Hapsburgs in Vienna, the seat of their power as they ruled first the Holy Roman Empire and then the Austria-Hungary Empire. We started the museum complex by wasting far too much time in the porcelain and silverware section of the museum- we didn’t realize that you could skip it entirely. The Sissy museum was also a waste. Sissy was the nickname of Empress Elizabeth, was basically a petulant and spoiled Barbie-doll type that was married to Emperor Franz Joseph. But the people liked her, and a cult developed around her, similar to the cult of Princess Diana in the late twentieth century. Finally we got to the Imperial apartments, which I found very interesting. Franz Joseph, one of the last emperors, was a real workaholic, but I guess that’s what you do if you take the job seriously. Sissy’s apartments were also interesting. They showed the room where she spent 2-3 hours a day to get her hair done. When she washed it, it took an entire day (it was ankle-length, and washed in raw eggs and brandy. Hmmm…)

After seeing those three museums, our feet were throbbing. We relaxed with a table at the Café Griensteidl and had a good lunch. I had fettuccini in a cream sauce with mushrooms and smoked salmon, while Dorinna had the cheese spätzel. We finished off the very good lunch with Esterhazytorte, my favorite cake in Vienna. Sweet and creamy, but not too heavy.

After lunch we headed for our next destination- the Neue Burg Museums, part of the Hapsburgs extensive art museums. The Neue Murg contained a large museum of armor and weapons. It was cool, but there was a lot of armor. I think we must have seen armor from every Hapsburg empero who ever lived. Unfortunately, the museum was very hot. We tried to look at the musical instruments collection, but I was just too beat to really enjoy it. Ditto with the sculpture. I just about collapsed into a small café opposite café Demel. Water and a Viennese coffee really helped. We then explored the fancy shopping streets back to our hotel for showers and a little rest.

Neue Burg Museums

We had dinner at Ferdinand Zwickl-Beisl. The food was good- I had goulash with sausage and beer. Unfortunately, a loud group of young Americans and Canadians moved in, and the atmosphere went to hell. We beat a hasty retreat to Brezel-Gwölb, a restaurant which Rick Steves describes as “an atmospheric place for a glass of wine.” He was right- picnic tables on the cobbles of a tiny alley. We sat at a table with a German couple (“Sind diese Plätze frei?”) I managed to speak almost entirely German with the waiter. It was fairly amusing: “Könnten Sie einen guten weiss Wein emphelen, bitte?” I asked, which means “Could you recommend a good white wine?” He babbled on in German for a while, far too fast for me to understand. I just pointed to one on the menu and said “Zweimal dieser Wein, bitte.” (“Two glasses of this wine, please”). But what made the evening magical is that it wasn’t long before the couple sitting next to us switched to English and started talking. Sabine was a social worker, working with deaf people. Frank does logistics for a catering company. They were from Köln (Cologne), Germany. We talked together for about 3 hours. Since we had just been lamenting our lack of personal contact with Europeans, so this really made our day. It’s hard to describe in words, but these experiences, chances to talk with people from different countries and cultures, are always the highlight of our traveling. It was a very late night indeed when we finally stumbled back to our hotel.

Stillwater Canyon Trip, Day 5

Today would be our last day in the canoes. Our destination was Spanish Bottom, a popular campsite on the Colorado River. The guide told us that finding campsites could often be a problem, so we tried to set out early. A few miles below Spanish Bottom is the start of the Cataract Canyon rapids. Going over these rapids in a canoe would be borderline suicidal.

And so we set off, paddling down the Green River to the Confluence with the Colorado. The character of the river changes here. Although the Green River is actually bigger than the Colorado, the joining of the two rivers makes for one very big creek indeed. Life jackets are required by the park service, and for good reason: whirlpools and eddies are everywhere, much more powerful than the placid Green upstream. While not white water per se, the currents were big and powerful, and required almost constant attention.

As you can imagine from the description above, Spanish Bottom is a popular campsite, both with folks floating the Green, and with rafters heading farther down the Colorado. For this reason, there is a campsite registration book about a mile upstream from Spanish Bottom. Landing here to sign the book was the most difficult part of the entire trip. The current, a strategically placed rock, high water, and a steep bank made landing almost impossible. Kevin and I took three tries before I was finally able to land, and even then he had to stay in the boat to keep the canoe from floating downstream. But sign in we did, and not long after that we beached the canoes at Spanish Bottom.

After setting up our tents, we headed off for the biggest day hike of our trip. Spanish Bottom provides access to The Maze, a district of Canyonlands National Park that can otherwise only be reached by 50 miles of 4WD roads. In particular, a steep climb up from the river provides access to The Dollhouse, a region of sandstone pinnacles, geologically similar to The Needles on the other side of the river.

Kevin and Dave hike up to the Dollhouse


The Dollhouse

We spent the day hiking around, scrambling on sandstone rock formations, enjoying slickrock expanses, sandy washes, and great views all around.

The Dollhouse

One really nice area was a “joint”- a fissure between the rocks that was as tall and narrow as any slot canyon.

Mark


Me


Paul in a narrow section

The hike concluded with a side trip to the Surprise Valley overlook and the ruins of a granary from a long ago tribe of Native Americans. Our last evening on the river ended with a spectacular moonrise over the canyon walls, and the draining of our remaining alcohol supplies…

Moonrise over the Colorado River

Austria Vacation Log: Day 13, The Disappointment of Wien

It has been much too long since I last posted about last year's Austria trip. It was a bit embarrassing to be in Vienna earlier this month, and realize that I hadn't blogged about my last trip to Vienna. The good news is that earlier this week I finished cataloging all my slides from that trip, so it should be easier now to bang out the last few episodes. This one sounds like a downer, but my opinion of Vienna improved as the trip continued.

Today we said goodbye to the idyllic village of Hallstatt and traveled by train to Wien- the capital city of Austria, and the former heart of the Holy Roman Empire. The English name for the city is Vienna, of course. The travel started off easy with a boat ride back to our train. And we knew which way the train went this time. We made our connection without a problem, but the trip felt very long for some reason.

When we got to Vienna we had to find the U-bahn (subway), buy tickets, and get on the train. The subway was very hot, and then it stopped at a station for longer than usual. An announcement came over the loudspeaker. I could make out the words “13 minutes” and saw everyone around me groaning and sighing. Clearly this train was going nowhere fast, so we bailed and went for the surface. We walked several blocks down a busy street, hot and crowded, with our heavy packs. We were tired and cranky, and this was perhaps the low point of the entire trip. Thankfully we found another subway line, and took that the last few blocks to our hotel . The manager was very friendly and showed us to our room. We got a bit worried at first, as the room was in an old office building behind the main hotel. But the room itself was fine- decorated in antique furnishings, it was big, had a separate bathroom and toilet, even a kitchenette with a freezer (ice cubes!). We relaxed, showered, and I even checked e-mail.

Then we went out to see the city. My initial impressions were not too good. Crowded. We tried to follow our guidebook’s recommendation to ride the tram around the Ringstrauße- a circular street that surrounds the inner city. It took us a long time to find the tram, then it was just too crowded. We bailed after 2 stops and started wandering on foot. We got out the map, and found our way to Stephansdom, the great cathedral.

Most of it was covered with scaffolding- with advertisements. I thought that was a pretty tasteless use of the church. All of the streets were crowded and packed. Even the plague monument, which looked like it might be really cool, was completely covered with scaffolding. Bah. We found our way to Am Hof square- where they were setting up for a carnival or something. This really wasn’t a good city for taking photos- I shot less film in Vienna than any place we visited. We found the Restaurant Ofenloch, recommended by our guide. All the tables were reserved- we could have one if we were gone by 8:00. This is gemütlichkeit?

We started the meal with an aperitif of champagne mixed with elderberries. It was good, even if it sounds like the punch line of a Monty Python joke. The meal was good- especially the soup with dumplings. I had Wienerschnitzel with real veal, the first time I’ve done that in memory. After dinner we kept wandering, and I got my first hint that Vienna wasn’t that bad. Maybe the friendly American couple we met in Michaelerplatz (from CA, taking a tour with a college professor to study the history of the Hapsburgs. We ran into them by chance the next night), or the opera singer singing underneath the Hofburg dome.

We ended the evening by finally taking that Ringstrauße tram tour. We were both exhausted and slept great.

Timing is Everything...

Yes, that's the same building shown below. The only difference is the 15,000 protesters.

Hungarian Parliment

Yes, I'm behind on my blogging, and yes, it will be a while before I start sharing trip stories from our Hungary/Czech trip. But that doesn't mean I won't tease you with some photos before that.

Here's the Hungarian Parliment building, from across the Danube.