The Interurban Trolley

I grew up in Goshen, but I have not lived here for the last eleven or so years.  I have recently been staying in Goshen again. One new addition to the area since I left is the Interurban Trolley system.  The first week that I was back in town I decided to ride the line to the end to see where it goes.  I ended up somewhere in downtown South Bend and I could have ridden farther, but decided to head on home again.  It was an interesting ride.  I am impressed with the system.  It is clean. It seems efficient.  It is very different from the no frills industrial approach of the buses in Chicago.  The drivers seemed friendly and knowledgeable.  I was surprised at how many young Amish women used it for their shopping that day.  Here are a few pictures.  If you've never tried it before, what are you waiting for?  Why fight traffic and parking when you can easily hop on the Trolley?

Standing inside the trolley stop at Goshen College looking out.

The Trolley stop at Goshen College.

A view from inside the Trolley.  It wasn't this empty most of the day, just for this picture.

My nieces

Here are some recent pictures just because they are wonderful girls.

Trying on headbands in the store.

Swimming at Grandpa and Grandma's house.

At The Orchard Gallery in Ft. Wayne. If you've never been there, go check it out!

Chillin' in my bouncy seat.

Chillin' in my carseat.

Holding up my bottle by myself! (Okay maybe propped a little.)

Guest Photographer

I have been spending lots of time with my three-year-old niece lately and she enjoys using my phone to take pictures.  It took her some practice to get her fingers away from the viewfinder, but now she is a regular little professional.  Although her preferred way of photographing is to hold the camera within two inches of the surface of the object, sometimes this results in clear and interesting shots.  She also does not have the strength and finger dexterity to hold the phone still while she hits the button.  So even if she gets a picture on the screen that she likes, when she takes the picture the end result is often different than what she focused on.  Even with all of that said, here are a few of my favorite pictures, taken by Kaylee, in the last couple of weeks.

First, a pic I took of her.  She is wearing a bandanna of mine while goofing off and we are trying to teach her how to hold up two fingers in the universal 'peace' sign, but she doesn't quite get there.

Kaylee's pictures

The drawer to grandpa's desk.

The rocking chair at Grandpa and Grandma's house

The play stove at Kaylee's house

Self-Portrait at Kaylee's house

Making Soap

I enjoy making soap.  Several years ago I bought a book of recipes for soap in which you start with lye and about 8 different oils (emu oil, olive oil, castor oil, coconut oil, shea butter) and cook soap in a crock pot.  Chip and I made soap while I was in Vermont.  Here are a few pictures of our adventure.  We scented it with lavender, tea tree, and rosemary and colored it with only blue food coloring, but somehow it turned purple.  It was a complete success, the finished bars are sudsy and smell and feel great.

Chip, with all of the supplies, ready to begin at 7:45 pm.

Chip stirring in the food coloring after saponification.

Chip giving a thumbs up with the soap in the molds at 10:20 pm.

The soap, completed and ready to use, the next morning.

As seen in VT

Chip has a T-shirt he likes to wear that says As Seen in VT.  I spent over two weeks with him starting on Christmas Day, here are a few pictures from Wilmington, VT.

Pine tree in a snow storm.

 The house in a snow storm.

The barn where Chip has his glass studio, first pic in Black and White, the second using the Fish Eye lens.

 Snow storm in Wilmington.

 Chip clearing snow.

The view from the front window of the house.

On December 23

On Sunday Joel and I woke up at the hotel and kept driving towards Indiana.  We had only about a five hour drive for the day.  So when we saw a sign for the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and Museum we stopped in.  I would say it is not a museum that I would take time to drive to.  But, we meandered through just to stretch our legs.  We were the only people there except for the two high-school kids flirting with each other and working the front desk.  After the museum we drove on to Indiana.

The two adult women in this family portrait were sisters, Sarah Ogan Gunning and Aunt Molly Jackson, they were Kentucky protest singers who sang about the coal mines in the '30s, according to the museum sign.  I include this picture because of this country's recent gun debate.  Notice the man holding two children, his hat, and a gun?

An organ at the museum.

Crystal Gayle paraphernalia at the museum.  I was named Crystal after my grandmother, Naomi Crystal, but I was born when Crystal Gayle was popular.

This display puffed out air that you could feel as a way to demonstrate different speeds of tempo.  Here is Joel feeling the tempo.

On December 22

Joel arrived last night and we stayed in Hiawasee.  This morning we woke up extra early, ate breakfast at the hotel and drove up to Blood Mountain. We parked at the Walasi-Yi store and hiked two miles to the top of Blood Mountain together.  This was the first time that I have retraced a piece of the trail.  I enjoyed having some degree of familiarity with the terrain.  It was a beautiful day.  But when we left the car it was only 19 degrees.  Joel has cold-induced asthma, so it was a struggle for him.  We took it slowly and he never complained. (Though two days later he was still wheezing from the day's cold.)  After we climbed up and down Blood Mountain, thankfully it was warmer by noon, we drove to Helen, GA for lunch, coffee, and to see the town.  Then we started driving toward home again, taking our time and stopping when we wanted to.  It was a fun day.

Joel taking pictures of the ice. We were mesmerized by water flowing under the ice, the trickles visible on top of rocks.

View from Blood Mountain, looking toward Atlanta.  It was clear enough that we could see Atlanta, but my camera didn't pick it up.

Joel and then me standing in front of the Blood Mountain Shelter.

The last view of the mountains, from trail.

In Helen, GA there is a restaurant called "Goats on the Roof".  The whole point of the place is that they have goats in a meadow behind the restaurant that have access to the roof of the porch of the building.  And there is some food and turf on the roof.  I am not sure why.  We did not eat there, but we stopped in just for fun.

All along the highway there were spectacular ice formations, we stopped here to take pictures, but it was so bitterly cold that we didn't stop again.

The view opposite from the ice formation above.

We stopped here to fill the car's gas tank.  And laugh.

On December 21

I spent today hanging out in Hiawasee, GA, while I waited for my brother to drive in tonight so that we can go hiking tomorrow.  I got my hair cut and just generally relaxed the day away.  Here is a pic taken along the highway in Hiawasee.

On December 20-North Carolina!

From Bly Gap/ the state line to Deep Gap/ USFS 71 in North Carolina
Miles: 6.8

The sun rises here at about 7:37 am, but you can see well enough to walk without a headlamp by about 7:15 am.  The sun sets at 5:25 pm, but you don't have to turn on your headlamp to hike or make camp until about 6:00 pm.  At 5:30 this morning I could hear the wind and storm gathering and decided to get up and pack my tent before the rain came, so that I could put it away dry, even if it was still dark.  With my new dog I took down the tent, packed everything up and started hiking.  I hiked about an hour with the headlamp before it was light enough to see.

After four miles I reached a shelter, the dog still following me.  The wind and clouds were gathering ever darker, but it wasn't raining yet.  I ducked into the shelter to eat a Cliff bar and study the map.  There I met a SoBo named Glacier.  I told him about the dog that followed me up to the shelter, and another dog wearing the same type of collar and even skinnier came out from under the shelter to greet me.  Glacier said it had been in the shelter when he arrived there after dark last night, and slept underneath the shelter.  He had fed it a few pieces of beef jerky because it looked like it was starving.  It was true that I could see the dog's ribs.  Glacier told me he believed the dogs were bear hunting dogs and the collars had a way of giving radio signals back to the owners.

I debated riding out the storm in the shelter, but Glacier told me that the temperature was expected to drop to 19 degrees tonight with very high winds.  He recommended that I go into town and get a hotel room.  So I sent a text to Gene and he agreed to come pick me up at noon and take me into Hiawasee.  I kept hiking.  About an hour after leaving the shelter the dog ran up a hillside; I guess chasing a scent, I don't know.  I did not see him again.  It began to rain as soon as I left the shelter, and the wind was strong enough to be bringing down limbs.  I was glad that I was headed indoors.  By the time I reached the road at 11:20 am Gene was there waiting for me.  When I reached the hotel, soaking wet, my teeth were chattering despite Gene's heated leather seats.  I checked in, grateful to have the financial resources to buy myself a dry and warm place to sleep for tonight.

The rest of the day was an uneventful rain day spent in Hiawasee, GA.  I did laundry, ate at an All-You-Can-Eat Diner with Terrible food, read a book, and watched TV.

Storm clouds gathering as the sun rises.

The sunrise under the cloud bank behind the trees.

My traveling companion-the bear dog.

On December 19

From Sassafras Gap to Bly Gap- The North Carolina/ Georgia State Line!
Miles: 15.1

Georgia Stats: 78.5 miles, 7 days hiking, one zero day, lots of rain, fog and cold.  My favorite view: from the top of Blood Mountain.

I knew it was forecast to be cold and raining tomorrow, and I really wanted to get into North Carolina on this trip, so I hoped to hike all the way from Sassafras Gap to Bly Gap where the GA/NC state line is today.  But I wasn't sure that I was up for hiking 15 miles in only 10 hours of daylight.  In the cold.

I got to Dicks Creek Gap, still 9 miles from the state line, around 1:00 and took a break to eat some peanut butter.  At Dicks Creek Gap the trail crosses a road and there is a parking lot and about five picnic tables.  I was sitting at a picnic table eating peanut butter with a spoon out of the jar (the first day of this trip I broke my spork in half, so now I have a very short spoon and a very short fork. oops).  I was studying a map and texting my brother about where we planned to meet in a few days when a middle aged man pulled into the parking lot with a large van.  He sat down at the picnic table with me, which was a little bit strange because we were the only two people there.  He had a Georgia road atlas.  He told me that his name is Richard, he is an American citizen and owns a house in Nova Scotia.  He spends six months of the year renting a vacation home here in GA.  We compared his road atlas and my hiking map and shared stories about the places we knew in GA.  Then he pulled out a box and gave me TWO pieces of gourmet white walnut FUDGE!  Then he said he had to be going and drove away.  Mmmm....fudge.

I hiked on.  When it started to get dark and I was still about 3.5 miles from the state line I decided to continue hiking, even after dark, to make sure that I reached the state line.  I knew that after the state line the nearest road was another 6.8 miles, so if it was going to be gross weather tomorrow I wanted to get as close as I could to the road today.  About an hour and 15 minutes after dark I reached the state line.  Yay!  The pictures below make me look a little crazy, but I was pretty excited, and it was dark, so the flash of the camera was kind of disorienting.

The shuttle driver, Gene, had told me that there was good camping at the state line, so about seven steps into NC I set up my tent.  I found a place to hang up a rope for the bear line.  Gene was right, there was a flat area, good running water, and someone else had already created a fire circle.  After I boiled water and ate dinner I was closing my food bag to prepare it for the bear line when a wet nose touched my face. I'm sure that my scream was heard 18 mountains away.  I screamed so loudly that I heard it echo back to me.  I looked into the face of domestic dog.  A black dog.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  I looked around and called into the darkness for a hiker or a hunter, but found no one.  The dog was skinny and acted very hungry.  He obeyed commands, like sit and come.  There was a phone number and name on his collar, so I called it, but no one answered.  I left a message that included my phone number.  He had a collar on that I had not seen before, it looked like there was a walkie-talkie strapped to it.  Eventually I calmed down, decided he was friendly, and crawled into my tent.  He slept outside of my tent, about a foot away all night.  When I got up at midnight to pee he was still there.  Welcome to North Carolina.

View from the Trail

This is a Holly Tree.

A grove of Holly Trees.  This was a pleasant holiday walk today.

I don't know who wrote this, but I was glad to see it on a fallen log along the trail.

A view of the sunset as I decided to keep walking even after dark to reach the state line.

Me at the sign marking the North Carolina/ Georgia border, with my headlamp in the dark.

Most nights I boil water and add it to a dehydrated meal from Alpine Air or Mountain House for my dinner.  Usually I like them.  For some reason, tonight's dinner looks like vomit.  Here is a picture of it before it is digested by me.  But it tasted good.

Here is a picture of the dog's collar.  You can see the corner of my tent also in the picture.