October 2024 – The Destinators

Pasadena, CA

When we moved to Connecticut in 1990, I worked on a team at The Travelers that was lead by Dwight. A firm believer in team-building, he and his wife Colleen hosted several team dinners at their home in Essex, CT, and we got to know Colleen as well. For the next few years, I thoroughly enjoyed the ground-breaking work we did in managed care. and I learned so much – about the healthcare/health insurance business, business politics, project management, people management, team-building – all skills that served me well when I later started my own business. Thank you, Dwight!

Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks

The Great Western Divide of the Sierra Nevada and
headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River

Sequoia National Park was established in 1890. This park includes Mt Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states at 14,505 feet above sea level, as well as 5 of the 10 largest giant sequoia trees. General Grant National Park was also established in 1890 to feature and protect giant sequoias, including the General Grant Tree. In 1940, in an effort to protect more of the unique resources of the area – the 14,000-foot peaks of the Sierra Nevada, Kings Canyon 10,000 feet below, as well as old-growth forests and other large groves of giant sequoia trees – the Kings Canyon National Park was created, incorporating General Grant National Park. Since 1943, the 2 national parks comprising nearly 1 million acres have been adminstered together as Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks.

Get Your Kicks…

Get Your Kicks on Route 66 is the classic 1946 R&B tune about motoring west from Chicago to LA, written by Bobby Troup and first recorded by Nat King Cole. Most of Route 66 has been replaced by the interstate system, although some original segments of the road remain, in varying conditions of drivability. The towns along the old route 66 are proud of their heritage and vestiges of earlier times – gas stations, motels, diners – remain alongside the interstate.

Sedona

We last visited Sedona in 2017 to see our long-time friends Malcolm and Judy, not long after they had retired and moved from New Jersey to AZ. They showed us around their new hometown and the surrounding areas, and, just as we always have, we looked forward to the next time we could get together. Then, in May 2021, Judy passed away. Her death was sudden and unexpected and very difficult for all who knew her, and we were deeply concerned for Malcolm, who’d lost his life partner of 49 years. Malcolm visited with us in VT later that summer on an east coast tour of visits with friends and countless private celebrations of Judy’s life, as he began to heal.

We were excited when we learned that Malcolm had met a wonderful woman, that they’d fallen deeply in love and were embarking together on a new chapter in their lives. Malcolm and Lita were married in May 2023, and we were eagerly awaiting our visit to meet and get to know Lita! Oh, and also Lita’s dog (now Malcolm’s step-dog) Cali.

BGU/ABQ, The Prequel: Weatherford, OK

That unanticipated schedule change that resulted in our visit to Palo Duro Canyon SP on our way to the blues jam in Albuquerque also changed our route. Getting to the park in TX took us straight across OK, instead of heading north to Colorado as we’d planned. Now, my jamming partner Gary and I had been exchanging emails and we had a few phone conversations to decide on a list of songs to do at the jam, but we’d never met and we’d never played together. Well, Gary lives in Weatherford OK and it turned out that we’d be driving through there on I-40, so I asked him if we might stop by (for a few hours at least) so we could run through the songs we’d talked about. He said sure, and his wife Gayle suggested we stay for dinner to have more time to play. I asked if there was room to park the motorhome, which there was, and it was a done deal.

BGU/ABQ: Jamming in Albuquerque

The subject of this post is the seminal event around which our whole trip was planned. I’ve been an active member of Griff Hamlin’s Blues Guitar Unleashed for a baker’s dozen of years, and much or most of what I can now do with a guitar is a result of that. Our blog has a bunch of posts about visits with friends from the BGU forum and we’ve previously documented a couple of these Blues Guitar Unleashed student blues jams (here and here). A year ago, BGUer Larry H. announced his intention to host a jam in his hometown of Albuquerque the following fall (i.e., now). I was interested. Sue and I agreed that a fall-to-early-winter tour of the southwest would satisfy several of our needs, so I upgraded my response to officially ‘very interested’ and when the ‘who’s coming?’ poll opened I was the first one in.