Tag Archives: travel

Travels with Two Ducks (The Continuing Saga of Little Duck, Episode 5)

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(To see the commentary and photo details, you need to click on the first photo and on each photo as you follow the arrows.)

As promised yesterday, we brought Little Duck along with us in our northward journey to Des Moines to visit my nephew and then to St. Paul to visit my sister, niece, her husband and grand nieces. So far it has been quite a trip, as these photos will bear witness to:

Although Little Duck at first remained in his ceiling seat restraint, as befitted his status as a sometime creature of the air, he soon grew restless.
 
but when Big Duck objected, he had to find other ways to spend his time. He practiced his surfing on the sun visor until we assured him there was no surf in Minnesota.
A few tummy tickles kept him occupied for a short time.
Puzzled by our choice of music, he checked it out on Shazam.
And promptly changed the song.
Then he turned up the volume and changed the song again.
Then changed it again. And again and again.
Exhausted, he took a break from his disc jockeying and had a little nap.
Rejuvenated, he sprang once more into action.
When his attempt at backseat driving fell on deaf ears,
he decided Big Duck needed a bit closer supervision.
Soon he had shifted to the copilots seat.
and after a few driving lessons,
pitched in a little help with the driving.
Until, at the request of the captain, he was put once more into restraints.
He was all too happy when we made a stop in Eldon, Iowa, at the house Grant Wood depicted in his painting “American Gothic”
And of course, being Little Duck, he had to get into the action.
And although at this angle it looks as though he is impaled on the pitchfork,
luckily this cooler version of the original grim pitchfork wielder had no objections to Little Duck making it a trio act.
Then he perched on Big Duck’s knee for the remainder of the trip, relating the stories of his afternoon’s adventure and offering occasional driving advice as well.

Unfortunately, in our rush to get registered in the hotel and to get to my nephew’s house on time, Little Duck was forgotten in the car and so is regrettably spending a night in solitaire.  No doubt he’ll have plenty to relate to us in the morning.  In the meantime, we are having a peaceful rest all on our own!!

The prompt word today is “Pretend.”

Reflecting Pool: (Sanctuary)

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Reflecting Pool

Sacred refuge and snug haven.
A safe shelter from the swarm.
Not a temple or an altar.
Comfortable, snug and warm.
Temple to deep relaxation,
Underpinning of my dreams.
A down comforter to soothe my
Rattled nerves and ripping seams.
You may guess that I’m a loner, but

You would be just halfway right.
Refuges would have no meaning without
A journey to feel life’s bite.
Under covers is a safe world,
Total living through the mind,
Cushioning the greater pleasures
Nurtured when our pathways wind
Around problems to be conquered in the outer world we roam,
Safely leading us in a circle back to the refuge that we call home.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/sanctuary/

Home Traveler

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Home Traveler

A journey’s long, a trip is short.
You trip on the stairs or tennis court,
but you journey into foreign places–
encounter unfamiliar faces.
So when I finally go to bed,
I journey far within my head,
those trips to town forgotten while
I journey mile after mile.
Eschewing trips to foreign places,
I journey into inner spaces.

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/a-journey/

Timely Tourism

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How handy that the prompt for today is “tourist” just as I am starting out on three weeks of travel.  Do you think WordPress has spies? Here is what I see as I spin around on my stool at Johnny Rocket’s (Juan Pablo Hamburgers here) in the Guadalajara airport, right by my departure gate, where I’ve just tried to choke down 130 pesos worth of undercooked fries. (Two nights ago I spent 150 pesos for a gourmet meal and margarita at Viva Mexico in San Juan Cosala.)

So, after two weeks of exhausting preparations to get ready, here I am ready for a few weeks of leisure. Every year it takes me longer to get ready to leave, either because my life gets more complicated or because I get slower. My internet was out again today, so I’m availing myself of airport wifi to post this.  More to come if I can find wifi in any of the U.S. airports.  Denver bound!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/tourist/

Forked!

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1967–Off  on the SS Ryndam on a four month around-the-world study adventure. Ga Ga Dowd was the oldest student aboard. She seemed ancient, but was actually one year older than I am now.  The other two girls, whom I had just met, were to be my best friends on the journey.  They are Susan (in polka dots), who was also a U. of Wyoming student whom I had never met before and Pamn, from Berkeley. I don’t know why the wind chose to blow only my hair.  Perhaps I had invested in less hairspray?

“The Zoad In The Road”
                                                          by Dr. Seuss 

Did I ever tell you about the young Zoad?
Who came to a sign at the fork of the road?
He looked one way and the other way too –
the Zoad had to make up his mind what to do.
Well, the Zoad scratched his head, and his chin, and his pants.
And he said to himself, “I’ll be taking a chance.
If I go to Place One, that place may be hot
So how will I know if I like it or not.
On the other hand, though, I’ll feel such a fool
If I go to Place Two and find it’s too cool
In that case I may catch a chill and turn blue.
So Place One may be best and not Place Two.
Play safe,” cried the Zoad, “I’ll play safe, I’m no dunce.
I’ll simply start off to both places at once.”
And that’s how the Zoad who would not take a chance
Went no place at all with a split in his pants.

Born in a time before television and the internet and even private telephone lines, (we shared ours with two other households), periodicals took on a special importance. We subscribed to three newspapers: The Murdo Coyote (my hometown rag), The Mitchell Daily Republic  and Grit–a newsy national weekly newspaper. My dad subscribed to Saga, Real West, True West, Argosy and probably a few others; and my Mom got Saturday Evening Post, Journal, McCall’s and Redbook.

One special feature of Redbook  over the years I was growing up was that they published the poetry of Dr.Seuss. I don’t know if the poem above was ever published anywhere else, but it was one of my family’s favorites, and I think I still have it out in a plastic storage case with other old letters and paper memorabilia. It is well-worn and wrinkled and yellowed, glued to a piece of cardboard to aid in its preservation.  I think I had used it as one of the poems I chose to memorize (along with “Out to Old Aunt  Mary’s,” ” The Wreck of the Hesperus” and “The Children’s Hour”) when I was in grade school.

I don’t know how much I actually listened to the messages of poems back then, but I do know that something prompted me not to just dream of those forks in the road but to make a decision and to take a chance.  Perhaps it was this poem.  Perhaps it was the fact that my parents rarely held me back when I had a chance to travel or experience something different.  Well, no, they didn’t let me take the Seventeen trip to Europe when I was eleven, but short of that, they encouraged me to reach out and experience life away from the town of 700 where I lived.

When I was a teenager, I traveled all over the state for district meetings for my MYF.  I attended church camps in the Black Hills and Lake Poinsett and traveled by bus to a U.N. Seminar when I was a junior in high school.

When it came time to go to college, I was quick to choose an out-of-state college and in my junior year again chose to travel–this time around the world on the U.S.S. Ryndaam as a student on World Camput Afloat––a university extension of Chapman College in Orange, CA.  We traveled for four months, stopping in countries around the world, studying their cultures, taking practicum side trips and in some cases taking off on our own.  The first country I did this in was in Kenya, where my newly met friend Pamn and I rented a little Fiat and took off on our own to have a few adventures.

My sister told me afterwards that she had been the one to encourage my folks to let me go, telling them it would get the travel bug out of my system, but if you’ve been following my blog for long, you know that just didn’t happen.  Immediatley after college, I emigrated to Australia and after a few years there, I traveled overland as much as possible to Africa, where I stayed for two years. After that travel was a summer and vacation experience until I moved to California thirty-five years ago and then Mexico fifteen years ago.  At each of these junctures, there was a fork in the road of my ife and each time, I made the decision and took it. Nine times, by my own counting, and in that time, although I’ve split a few pants seams, it was more due to local cuisine than to indecision.

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/fork/

Sentimental Journey

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The Smell of Curry

Would that sentiment were only
positive and never lonely––
but all emotions of the world
in sentiment are tightly curled.
Every  memory we cherish
is doubly edged with “live” and “perish.”
In every city, country, land––
bad and good go hand in hand.

The blend of cardamom and lentil
always makes me sentimental.
Odors of turmeric and its ilk,
garam masala and coco milk.
Curry spices being roasted,
degree of peppers being boasted,
chickpeas, carrots, potatoes, rice––
stirring in each thing that’s nice.

What do I think of when I smell
and taste that it is going well?
Bombay and wedding saris thin
sliding down my youthful skin.
Visions of a midnight ride
to cages with young girls inside
sold by their parents and then resold
nightly for a bit of gold.

Traffic, sitar music, fingers
scooping curry––all this lingers.
The beauty of that winsome song
that showed me where the world’s gone wrong.
His action, swift, unthinking, curt
of small coins cast into the dirt
to deflect those who beg and bleat,
surrounding us in every street.

Palaces and then the clash
of children in a world of trash,
the refuse of this giant city
the world they lived in—what a pity.
Back when traveling was new,
experiences were so few
that India changed my life forever.
So, will I forget it?  Never.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/cherish/

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/sentimental/

Hail (Re)Tale

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Hail (Re)Tale

I told my hail story so long ago that I had few followers and even I had forgotten about it, so perhaps you have, too. Or, if you are a relatively new reader, you probably haven’t seen it before. As a matter of fact, the only people currently following my blog who read it were Angloswiss, Ann, Allenda and my sister. (Hi, ladies)– so  here it is again.  Please go HERE to read it.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/sudden-shifts/

Absence No Longer Has the Chance to Make Our Hearts Grow Fonder

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Absence No Longer Has the Chance to Make Our Hearts  Grow Fonder

When I was young, I wandered far from relative or friend.
They had no idea where I’d been or where my trail would end.
Months between our letters and years between each call,
how I fared from day to day they didn’t know at all.

Although I moved from place to place, each new spot I was in
was the only place I was, the last place where I’d been
was fully left behind me. Only memories bound me there.
As I moved ever on alone, Australia to Zaire.

No cellphone in my pocket, no Facebook there to see
what friends had for breakfast or congratulating me
on my latest hairstyle or showing me their hives
reporting the minutiae of their daily lives.

Back before the internet made contact never-ending.
I could simply concentrate on my present wending.
But this was how I wanted it. I wanted to be lost.
To fully live a new life, my old life was the cost.

Absence no longer makes our hearts grow fonder ever fonder,
for it’s impossible to leave our loved ones when we wander.
We see them every day on Skype, each minute a new text.
They tell us about yesterday, then what they’re doing next.

We are no longer absent from anyone we know
anywhere we wander, anyplace we go.
At any given moment, no matter where we roam,
our past invades our present, bringing us back home.

In this era of devices–– laptop, tablet, phone––
we’re in perpetual company. We never are alone.
The longest that we’re ever safe from texting, tweeting, beeping
is probably the hours when we leave them just for sleeping!


The Prompt:  What’s the most time you’ve ever spent away from your favorite person?  https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/my-favorite/

How’s It Going?

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DSC00264How’s It Going?

Whether I’m going near or far,
my choice of travel is always car.
I like to go at my own pace,
to break away from life’s mad race,

to take that road that leads to “where?”
and see what they are keeping there.
At roadside diners to share a yarn.
To investigate that leaning barn.

A tour or cruise or packaged deal
does not account for how I feel.
They’re too much like  our daily life––
alarm clocks, deadlines, schedules, strife.

Serendipity is what sates
while schedule just regulates.
In short, when going over yonder,
I prefer to merely wander.

n response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.”You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, or car? (Or something else entirely — bike? Hot air balloon?)

Foreign Tongues

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I wrote this poem that answers this prompt so long ago that few who are now following me have ever read it.  If you have read it, perhaps you have forgotten it, as I had..

Foreign Tongues

When I was a child, I thought as a child.
In short, I didn’t think.
My faulty reasonings were piled
like dishes in a sink.

While other children responded to
“What do you want to be?”
with “Cowboy! Teacher!” (right on cue),
these answers weren’t me.

When it came to having career talks,
I fear I was a purist.
My answer was less orthodox.
My aim? To be a tourist!!

I thought tourists then to be
a sort of gypsy pack.
Jobless, they were wild and free,
their luggage on their back.

Or in their cars, packed front and back,
traveling evermore––
a footloose, wandering, feckless pack
unsettled to the core.

I saw them passing on the road
just one block south of where
my family hunched in their abode
year after passing year.

I had to wait for 19 years
to earn my traveling shoes––
to assuage my parents’ groundless fears,
abate their travel blues.

I took off on a sailing ship
to visit foreign lands.
When foreign words evaded lip,
I merely used my hands!

Back home, the English seemed to me
common––sorta dowdy.
Instead of “Moshi, moshi”
I had to murmur, “Howdy.”

As soon as school was over,
I hopped upon a plane.
I’d pass my life a rover.
Inertia was inane!

I packed up my regalia
with neither tear nor sob
to head out to Australia
for my first teaching job.

I thought that English I would teach.
It was our common tongue.
Enunciation would I preach.
Oh Lord, I was so young!

My first day there, I heard the word
“Did-ja-‘ave-a guh-die-mite?”*
I found it all to be absurd.
They were joking. Right?

“Don’t come the raw prahn on my, mite”**
was next to meet my ear.
What foreign language did they cite?
It puzzled me, I fear.

I rode, I walked, I sailed the seas
and ended up in Bali.
Said my “Terimakasih’s”
And then, “Selamat Pagi.”

My move to Africa was one
that some folks found quixotic,
but “amasaganalu”
was a word I found exotic.

After two years, I went home.
Wyoming was the next
place that I agreed to roam,
though I was sorely vexed.

For though the words were all the same
I’d learned at my mom’s knee––
(I’m sure that I was all to blame)
they all seemed Greek to me!

California was where I hung
my hat for many-a-year.
There Español was half the tongue
that fell upon my ear.

I liked its cadence, liked its ring.
The words ran fluid and
their foreignness was just my thing
in this bilingual land.

So Mexico is where I’m bound.
I’ve reasons numbering cien.
The main one is, I like the sound
of “Que le via bien.”

 * The American accent version is “Did you have a good day, mate?”

**  “Don’t come the raw prawn on me, Mate!”  This strange retort is similar in meaning to: “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes.” Many Australians have told me they’ve never heard this phrase, but I swear I did–more than once.

The Prompt: Futures Past: As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? How close or far are you from that vision?