Review: The accidental veterinarian

 

The accidental veterinarian

 by Philipp Schott

More expository and less episodic than I’d hoped from the title. Which is my mistake for not reading the reviews first. But still enjoyable—I love reading about veterinarians and the pets they treat, and of course as he continually points out, the people of the pets.  If a veterinarian truly hates dealing with pet owners, he will be truly unhappy with his job because that’s a big, big part of it.  But he enjoys all that and seems to come out fine.

 So there are lectures about things like heartworms, holidays, and inappropriate pets. And there are also amusing stories about things dogs eat, inappropriate pets that turn out just fine, and very odd people who put up with absurd (or dangerous) situations because their pets call the shots. Or at least, their pets as the humans perceive them to be thinking.

 Nice little book but I don’t think I’ll read the sequel.

Review: Where the Rhododendrons Bloom

 I was sadly disappointed in this hiking blog turned into a book. I read travel stories because I like to travel, of course, but I read other people’s stories because I like to see how the travel changes them. I want to know everything—where they come from, how they experienced the world around them, and how they changed along the way. Set against the backdrop of mountains, bears, and funky other hikers, I’m still anticipating a highly personal adventure and I want to come out of it knowing the person and wishing I were them.

But this book just didn’t do that for me. It seemed to be good, at first, but soon devolved into a rather boring and repetitious listing of each days happenings—

I met Strider, Hip-hop and Whirlybird at the shelter and we drank a lot of beer and did whiskey shots; I went to my tent and got up and bought snacks at the gas station and hiked another fifteen miles, then we met up with Jaybird and Freddy-Snacks and had trail magic, and then I hiked with Sunshine for another five miles and stopped at the shelter where they had a case of beer and we drank a lot….

I met the names, but not the people.  And the roads she traveled might as well have been city streets, for all the outdoor wonder she wanted to share. She mentioned the outdoors but only as a backdrop to the shallow-copy humans she met.

I’m exaggerating a little, but I was finding myself skipping a lot of pages. The minute she leaft the trail and hit a party scene, I figured I might as well jump ahead for a bit.  But hey, this is HER adventure. Hike your own hike, as they say. I’m sure a lot of people will love reading it.

Review: Ordinary Grace

 Ordinary Grace

 by William Kent Krueger

Awesome book. Very much a religious moral lesson, but not at all silly about it. In the epilogue, the author explains his purposes in writing were to explore a family caught in a series of painful events and also to write about the small town Minnesota of his childhood. He did both things very well.

 

Review: The Living Medicine:

The Living Medicine:

How a Lifesaving Cure Was Nearly Lost—and Why It Will Rescue Us When Antibiotics Fail

By Lina Zeldovich

I’m very conflicted writing about this. It was a great bit of history and well told, all about the persons and personalities that led to the discovery and ultimate re-discovery of the bacteriophage. These are viruses that prey on bacteria; when carefully cultured, purified, and tested, they can be used therapeutically to great effect.

To sum up the mystery of “Nearly Lost”, I’ll briefly explain what the book is all about. They were discovered independently in several places, and used therapeutically to great effect in Eastern Europe. She spends much time writing about their champions and how the research proceeded. But in Western medicine, they were mostly discredited and ignored—antibiotics worked as well and were a lot easier to create. Until, of course, antibiotics stopped working.

It's a fascinating story and I only have a few complaints to share. (None of which should interfere with your enjoyment of this book) One, she tends to spend a lot of words on the love stories and female companions of the scientists who are the subjects of the book. I found that boring and mostly pointless. Two, there are an awful lot of episodes described that follow the same pattern: person gets an infection; person is at death’s door and nothing will help; patient’s family/doctor/lover insists on getting a bacteriophage treatment; patient experiences miraculous recovery.

Okay, once or twice is enough!  It seems to repeat this over and over.

And third complain, the book seems to consistently downplay (and at first, ignore) the issue that bacteriophages, like any living thing, can mutate. And so can bacteria. So a treatment that once worked can stopped working, and also, even the most careful of scientific process can have unintended consequences. Toward the end of the book, these issues are mentioned. But then she’s back on her endless applause for the miracles of bacteriophages.

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Return day

Tuesday, September 2

The slide-out managed to crack and croak its way in, far enough that we could travel. What a horrible design that is!  Ed thinks it broke because he hadn’t been lubing it, on account of the Lippert manual saying that those slide-out mechanisms didn’t need to be lubed. But he has it on good faith from an RV repair expert that no, that is wrong. They do need to be lubed and if you don’t, a big repair bill is in order.

So we will see.

I’m hoping the rest of the trip will hold little of the *adventure* we’ve been having all along. No more losing the routes; squeezing up hills and down narrow roads; bashing the side mirror; having the water heater break on Day 1; bashing my little toe on Day 1 and battling pain ever since; loose dog in campground; hearing the large slide-out rack slowly tear itself up; taking a wrong exit and having to wait for a train and then still missing the driveway into the truck stop; having to back out of a parking space at a rest stop. Or any other adventures.

 

NOTES

1.    On long trips set a max miles deviation from the route, and stick to it.  Maybe 10 miles is a good limit.

2.    Go ahead and pack all the non-perishable foods that will be needed for the whole trip. There’s plenty of room and it’s a pain in the butt to have to shop for them halfway. I’m thinking things like iced tea, soda, popcorn, candy bars. In other words, the junk food.

 Good-bye little fuzzies!

 

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 27

Monday, September 1

Why do these little fuzzy guys love hanging out on our jack stands? 

We were ready to be leaving Tennessee, even though our route was on secondary roads at first. It soon got better. 

I’d chosen a Love’s in Memphis, and Ed had it programmed onto the app. But he somehow managed to exit the highway one ramp too soon—I noticed it but not after it was too later to revert. There was no way to get back on, so we rerouted; waited on a train to cross; and then when the turn into Loves finally appeared, Ed wouldn’t take it—it looked like the turn was a little further down but it wasn’t. So we ended back up on the highway.

No matter; there is always another Love’s. We went on to Palestine, AR or some such burg like that.

Ed is tired and I’m tired. Having to walk the dog many times a day is one factor in that--I have to be responsible for every bit of exercise she gets anytime we don’t stay in a park with a dog park. Which is pretty much every time. We had two dog parks this trip, if I remember correctly.

And I’m also tired of the constant contact with Ed’s television, and the near-constant contact with other people and dogs in the campgrounds. It’s tiresome—to me—to have to listen to other people’s chatter and to always have to keep an eye out for dogs off leash.  Also I’m a little disappointed that it’s been a trip of so few birds other than the marvelous few hours at the Wildlife Refuge. 

For our last night, we ended up on the Arkansas River near Little Rock. Again.  We’ve stayed at three different locations with that same description—cool, huh?  First was the COE park on the northern suburbs of Little Rock. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s a very nice park with sites right on the river.  My main issues with it are driving, because it’s on the north loop and we don’t typically need to go there. Plus you have to circle around through a couple of neighborhoods and business areas to get there.

That was a couple of years ago. Then this time, on the way up we stayed right in the heart of Little Rock at the Downtown Riverside RV Park. Cool place, with that big bridge you can walk over. I’d definitely do that again, and if my toe ever quits hurting I can jog all the way across and down around the little parks on the other side.

Here at the end of the trip we stayed at Willow Beach Campground, a COE park south of Little Rock off the I-440 loop. And it’s my favorite so far. Nothing much to do or see, but the sites are well spaced apart, they’re right by the riverbank and have great views, and there is a big marsh over toward the day use area. With a grassy walking path and benches.

The only drawback to this place is a purely seasonal thing happens to be occurring right at the season we were there—every time Molly and I walked close to the river, we were swarmed by thousands of little flying bugs. Damselfly nymphs, maybe?  I’ve seem them before but never in such profusion. They didn’t bite or scratch or anything, but they clung. Hideous!  I probably swallowed some.

For Molly’s long walk we went to the end of the day use area and back, which was pretty boring, but we came back by the great big swamp you can walk around. (We didn’t—I was tired). The swamp was mostly dry but was bordered by these gorgeous flowers—

Strange signage in the park. I had no idea that one of the many branches of the trail went through here.

 Actually one other drawback is that I had to listen to someone’s loud music as I sat outside to write notes. So inconsiderate! It wasn’t all that loud but still almost as annoying as the constant television in the Magnus motorhome.

 

REVIEW: Willow Beach Recreation Area Scott AR

Easy fishing along the Arkansas River

Although this place was really close to the I-440 loop around Little Rock, it was so quiet and tranquil you could imagine you were out in the boonies. The only noise was a very occasional siren in the distance and our neighbor’s radio across the drive.

Large sites, well spaced. Ours backed up to the Arkansas, not too close or low down so that we would be swarmed by mosquitoes, but very pretty for sunsets. It was back-in with an asphalt pad; 50-amp electricity and water; dump station on the way out. The dump station hose did not have threaded ends and you couldn’t disconnect it, so we couldn’t do a tank cleanout.

The road into and out of the park was very nice for a COE campground—narrow, but newly paved. No one was at the gate, so we headed to our site and met a host in a 4-wheeler on the way. He checked our reservation and told us how to get there, including the information that there was a circle turn-around drive at the end of the loop. Easy and hassle free—my favorite.

Since it was a weekday in September, there were no big parties going on.  Just a handful of people fishing or picnicing here and there. We walked the dog to the day use area and back; not very exciting. But there’s a swamp along the road coming in that has a mowed walking path all around it.  It would have made for a pleasant dog walk.

Magnus to Mass., with Jamestown Jaunt, Day 26

Sunday, August 31 

Note at the time: People in Tennessee are fat and they drive instead of walking. It’s a pretty place nonetheless.

Ed backed out of the spot. It was scary, but not as bad as I anticipated.  He was able to back straight, between the trees, and go uphill beside the playground. And from there just head straight out, along the road in front of our site. I watched carefully, and no scraping occurred.

On to Chickasaw State Park near Jackson, Tennessee. During the drive I noted that the trees are just beginning to turn in the hills of Tennessee. Lots of brown and yellow breaking up the late days of green. Other than that, I noted that the drive was not very memorable but somehow it took an hour longer than I’d planned. It took us a while to back out of our campsite and to dump and hook up the Jeep (none of this included in the drive time.) 

And then we had a small adventure at a rest area. There were no spots free, so Ed pulled in behind a pickup truck with a U-Haul. We didn’t really fit there, but it was close enough.  But when we were ready to leave, the U-Haul driver was still working on his load. So Ed backed backed up the Motorhome with me sitting in the jeep and holding the steering wheel straight so that it didn’t jackknife. With the engine off, that was hard.

Two cars came into the rest area while we were performing the maneuver, but too bad for them. They just had to wait—a punishment for being so stupid as to pull into the “Trucks” side of the rest area instead of the “Cars” side.  On the way out, we noticed that there was a car taking up one of the truck parking slots further down. But not a single other one of the truck spots was empty.  Makes you wish that a trucker would come along and just kind of push the car out of the way.

The rest of the drive was okay. But I have to add a note—Chickasaw State Park is 30 minutes off the interstate to the south of it, which is way too far for an overnight stop on the way home after a long trip.  Tomorrow we won’t have to go all the way back north to hit the Interstate—Memphis is due west of us—but we’ll still have a half-hour or so on secondary roads. Probably two-lane, too.

Other than the drive, I kind of liked the place. It was really pretty. The RV camping loop kind of sucks—the sites are spaced out okay but there’s nothing to see except your neighbors opposite.  There’s a sidewalk behind our site which leads to the bathroom, which was nice.  But the place was pretty much completely full of campers on this Labor Day weekend.  I’d booked a pull-thru site but somehow put it down as back-in on the trip plan, so we unhooked and re-hooked the Jeep unnecessarily. No big deal but a stupid waste of time.

Also we couldn’t find the check-in station, so before re-hooking the Jeep I decided to drive around and figure out where it was. Ed was on the top of the ladder putting up the starlink, Molly was tied up to a pole, and I had just gotten into the Jeep and started to pull away when I heard dogs barking. Molly was one of them. I backed up and ran around only to find the situation under control—the neighbor opposite us had a dog who’d pulled his leash and ran over to have it out with the intruder. Ed had descended the ladder and the neighbor had scurried their fat butt over; between the two of them, they’d separated the dogs. I don’t think anyone got bitten but if they did, I hope it was the neighbor dog’s owner.

So I resumed my journey, only to come up behind a park ranger truck circling the campground. I followed, intending to ask them where to check-in, only to find them stopping at our site. They were delivering the tags for people coming in that day.  So I didn’t have to go anywhere after all.

Too bad, though. Later when Ed and I took a walk to find the bathroom and give Molly some exercise, I couldn’t figure out how to get to the lake. So instead we took a trail up to an old water tower hidden in the woods. Interesting and I saw a pine warbler, but we didn’t get to see the lake or get a trail map. Later when I took Molly for a short jog, I went the opposite direction and found the lake about 15 minutes away. There was a walkway that appeared to go all around it, too. But I didn’t get time to take it.

And I hope that’s all the adventure for the day. Although later I took a second walk, trying to get a picture of the flycatchers on the wire. Merlin had flagged a yellow-throated flycatcher, which didn’t match the ones I was seeing. But try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

Unknown flycatcher, darn it!

 

To sum up, Chickasaw has asphalt sites, nice spacing. Full hookup. Not exactly “charming” but more than adequate. The rest of the park was really nice, with tennis courts, swimming area in the lake, fishing, horses, bats flying around the horse pasture in the evening, lots of trails.  There was a lot of noise both in our camping loop and over across the lake in the other camping loop, but it was a weekend and that’s to be expected.

The bathroom shower was really nice. There were two in the ladies room.  In both cases the water from the shower got your shoes wet, but the rest of the stuff stayed dry. And the water was hot with good force.

So, I’d say yes to a return trip, but only if our route takes us this far away from I-40. Maybe if we’re headed to northern Alabama or something.