Tag: nature

South Georgia Islands

As the young ‘uns would say, “O.M.G., the South Georgia Islands are AWESOME”!

Lucky me. I got to spend FOUR whole days there.

I had expected rain the entire time we were there, because I believed the weather reports, but we lucked out.

Yes, I DID get up at 4:45 AM, on the first morning to ensure we beat the drizzle. It was SO worth it. The King Penguins are also early risers, so the welcoming committee was out in full force to greet us .

As a bonus, we also saw elephant seals tussling. We later learned that it was because they were roughly the same size. Usually, they can visually determine which one is bigger, ( and thus the winner, who will get all the “girls”) so no need for contact sport. As Ella, our seal expert explained, elephant seals are lovers, not fighters.

Mostly, they like to “wallow” next to each other.

Some of us opted for a two hour, two mile hike, with about a four hundred foot elevation.

That it took two hours to cover two miles SHOULD have been the tipoff that this was not going to be a stroll in the park. But as Elvis once famously sang “ fools rush in where angels fear to tread”.

Those that know me, will instantly know which term applies to me. My reward? Seeing little guys like this one hiding out along the way.

We started at the beach, way, WAY below. Though the grassy part looked pretty benign, it wasn’t. It was very spongy, but looked deceptively solid. Then you stepped on it and SANK varying degrees. Still, I was glad I did the hike. Not bad for a soon to be 77 year old!

The hardest part, by far, was the descent. Let me tell ya, the next day my thighs were screaming “ What were ya thinkin”? This was an ARDUOUS hike. (My friend Jean will get that reference!).

Our afternoon zodiac cruise was equally spectacular. the photo below just doesn’t do it justice.

So, when we were offered the opportunity to do ANOTHER hike on day 3, this fool ignored the pain in her thighs and continued to “rush in”.

Although the second hike was definitely not as “arduous” as the first, it was not without its challenges. We needed to cross a glacial stream both coming AND going.

Once again, it looked deceptively simple. Once again, it was not. You see, the glacial melt randomly deposited many different sized rocks in the stream bed. Some moved unexpectedly when you placed your foot upon it. That’s why members of the crew were standing in the stream to help us across. I was happy to “volunteer” to perform a VERY important safety drill. When I stepped on one of those moveable rocks, I pitched backwards, almost pulling one of the naturalists into the stream with me. Fortunately, the crew member behind me grabbed my butt and shoved me upright. Sadly, that memorable event was not captured on video. Instead, I offer some photos as an alternative.

The next excitement for the day was when a fur seal charged at me, with teeth bared. No video of THAT exchange either. But I DO have a photo of me with my two new friends, Dorothy and Karen.

I have so many fantastic videos, I could easily make your eyes glaze over and have you mutter “enough, already”. I’m a wildlife nerd, and for ME, I can never have enough of these charming creatures.

I LOVED watching these penguins “porposing” through the water:

One more video and then I’ll stop.

We encountered a bit of a “traffic jam” while waiting for the zodiac to return us to the ship.

South Georgia will be continued in a future post.

Off to The Grand Canyon

Colin Fletcher called the Grand Canyon a “huge natural museum of the earth’s history”. Okay, so I didn’t know who Colin Fletcher was either, until I signed us up for this Road Scholar trip. Now that I am a retiree (excuse me, “lifestyle manager”), I have time to actually READ the suggested background materials.

Colin Fletcher wrote “The Man who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through The Grand Canyon”. Given that the canyon was inhabited by Native Americans for about 10,000 years before the first Europeans arrived, it isn’t hard to imagine that one or two of them might have sauntered from one end of the canyon to the other before he did, but then again, THEY never published their adventures and thoughts. I shouldn’t be too hard on Mr. Fletcher, though. After all, his book was written in the early 1900’s; half a century later, when I was in school, we still were being taught that Columbus “discovered” America, as if it were completely devoid of human inhabitants when he arrived.

So, now that I’ve gotten beyond the title, what did I learn from his book? Other than that I would never, ever even CONSIDER hiking through the canyon, I learned that you can tell the age of the rocks from their colors. I created this little chart so I’d know what I was looking at when we get there, starting from the rim and moving on down to the bottom:

Rock Color Thickness Age
Limestone White 400 feet 225 million years
Sandstone Pale brown 350 feet 250 million years
Shale and Sandstone Red 1,000 feet 275 million years
“The Esplanade”, Limestone Blue gray, stained red 800 feet 450 million years
Bright Angel Shale Layered greenish gray and purple 600 feet 475 million years
“Tonto Platform”Tapeats Sandstone Brown 225 feet 500 million years
Schists Dark gray with granite Depth is unknown Almost 2 billion years

Okay, so I have no concept of what 400 feet (or any of the other number of feet, for that matter) looks like–but when I get there, and take photos, and post them, well, then we’ll ALL know. And we’ll also know how long those bloody rocks have been plopped there.

I do better with visuals. So here’s a picture of where we will be for the week, starting and ending in Phoenix.

grand canyon

This trip will have an added element of adventure. The original plan was that this trip would be my father’s day present to my dad. He and Mike were going to room together, and I would be rooming with my “childhood” friend, Augusta. My dad’s knee became uncooperative, causing him to have to cancel out. Well, I notified Road Scholar and told them to change my roommate to Mike. I then learned that doing so would mean that Augusta might be assigned a female roommate, which wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. So, Mike being an all around wonderful guy, decided to ‘take one for the team’ and agreed he’d be the solo traveler. No, that doesn’t mean HE gets the female roommate. He will only be matched up if there is another solo male traveler. The adventure part? We won’t know how this will shake out till we arrive tomorrow night.

Just think of the possibilities… Mike’s assigned roommate is a Sean Connery look alike, who gazes upon the lovely Augusta and is immediately smitten, causing us to swap roommates faster than your average college freshman. Beautiful sunsets, the canyon as a backdrop..could this be a made for TV movie, or what? Lifetime channel, perhaps?

More likely, Mike will be roommate-less. Hmmm. Maybe we shouldn’t mention that we’ve been married for 37 years. That way, if I am spotted doing the “walk of shame” out of his room some morning, it might liven up breakfast discussions.

So, which part of the blog did YOU find more interesting– rock colors and ages or the possibility of “seniors gone wild”?