In the early 1940s my grandparents bought a cattle ranch on the San Francisco peninsula, in the Santa Cruz mountains west of Palo Alto, off of the California 35, which is also known as the Skyline Boulevard. My mom and her sisters and brother moved to the ranch at relatively young ages and did most of their growing up there. Eventually my grandfather left the ranch to pursue other ventures, while my grandmother decided to stay put and established on the ranch a nursery specializing in California native plants.
Category: Music
Music festivals, jams, open mic’s, shows, camp sessions, etc.
Sedona
We met Malcolm and Judy while riding tandem bicycles just a few weeks before we got married, so this friendship goes back 31 years. They recently retired to Sedona, Arizona where they’re exploring their new southwestern playground and remodeling their new home. From Lake Powell, we were so close that not visiting was not an option. Delightful visit!
Jamming with Stringbreaker
Last October in Memphis at the Blues Guitar Unleashed (BGU) Live gathering, several of us jammers stayed at the Tom Sawyer Mississippi River Campground in West Memphis, Arkansas. Among that crew were Michael (known as Stringbreaker on the BGU forum) and his wife, Kat. Michael and Kat live in Moab and they told us we should stop by if we were ever passing through there. Ding ding ding!
Continue reading “Jamming with Stringbreaker”
Moab
This is our first visit to Utah canyon country, and likely not our last. It’s magical! And we’ve only just begun…
The Compound, Los Lunas NM
Our foray into New Mexico was actually another blues guitar visit. We’ve met my friend Steve twice before in real life, and he and I have been friends online through the BGU forum for several years. Steve told me, in a reply to a forum post I made last year in which I detailed the states we planned to visit, that there was a mistake in my list – I’d left out New Mexico. Well, to me that sounded pretty close to an invitation to visit the legendary Compound within which Steve and his lovely wife Hyacinth reside, and I vowed not to make that mistake again this year.
Colorado Bleu – Deux
Regular readers may recall that last year took us through Colorado’s Front Range area, where we met up with my BGU brothers Chris and Frank for a drive-by blues jam. Well, that was so much fun that when the map for our trek to Utah began to take shape and quite naturally aimed itself for Denver, it was an easy decision to try for a repeat. An excellent time was had by all! More pictures below.
The plan
Ha! You were thinking we might have one!
We really enjoyed our approach to adventure planning (others might call it non-planning), well honed on last year’s adventure. We set an intention to explore one or two areas of the country, then connect them up. As we go along.
Neither one of us has ever been to the Southern UT/Northern AZ canyons, so we’ve set aside the month of May – after the snows, before the heat and crowds – to hike, bike and generally check out this gorgeous and unique terrain that is so unlike New England. We’ll know when we’re done, and at that point, we’ll likely head north as the temps turn into summer. We’d like to see Glacier National Park. Then, we’ll likely head to the left coast, visiting friends and family, looking for music jams and enjoying fun places until it’s time to come back to New England.
Unlike last year, this adventure will require some ‘re-positioning.’ We most enjoy poking around slowly, following the wind and sound of blues. For the first few weeks this year, we’ll travel slightly longer days in a more or less direct line to Moab, threatening to visit any friends and family that may be along that line.
Of course, we’ll adapt as we go along…
Epic planning…
No excuses are needed to reminisce about our 2016 adventure. We’ll talk travel with anyone who’ll listen not just to be polite. And fond memories pop up every now and again.
As we start planning the next adventure, and consider how to make epic even more epic, we look back to 2016 for lessons learned – what we loved and plan to continue and what we’d like to do differently.
So here’s our 2016 trip summary, keepers and things we’ll do differently…
Beaufort Blues
This is Walker. Walker lives in Beaufort, NC, which is pronounced “Bo-Fort.” (If it were pronounced “Biew-Fert” you’d be in an entirely different town in South Carolina.) Walker’s humans are named Carlos and Hope and they have a band called the Beaufort Blues Project (1st pronunciation), or BBP.
St. Simons Island Blues
We’re expecting to be back to Vermont in less than a week. As we close in on the end of our time on the road, our schedule is losing a lot of the elasticity to which we’ve been happily accustomed (and wouldn’t my English teacher have been proud of that phrase?*).