Review: Extinction

Extinction

By Douglas Preston

Pretty gripping drama; had me throughout. Not everyone dies in the end, but close enough. He was way too obvious in setting himself up for a sequel.

This was a much more realistic depiction of reviving long-extinct species than Jurassic Park, but then of course, the science has advanced a great deal since Jurassic Park. It’s all quite very believable…except for one big and pretty annoying “loophole” the author allowed himself. After decidedly stating something to be impossible (so far), he suddenly decided it was possible and didn’t give any explanation about what was different in this case or why the mistake was made. Sorry I can’t give details without revealing a crucial plot point.

Ignoring that anomaly, I highly recommend this.

Trespassing Across America

One Man's Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland

by Ken Ilgunas

Lots of good reading here—adventures, introspection, history, geography, climate, and above all, humanity. So many stupid humans stuck in their belief that JOBS are worth any destruction of nature, the planet, and even human lives. And what is sad about this, is that the Keystone XL will not create all that many jobs and the few that it does create will be of poor quality.

The author knows, he saw the kind of jobs oil pipelines create. And he talked with the people working them. But he ends the book on a note of careful optimism—for one thing, there are a lot of people and more every day that oppose the construction of new pipelines. And for another, what humanity has been able to do implies there are unknown and unanticipated things they can still do…if only they have time to try.

As far as the travel adventure goes, it’s depressing as heck. He writes much of the whole private property vs. trespassing issue and points out that only in America are people so obsessed with ownership of land. Even Canada has a more sharing approach to the land than we do. It’s sad.

I myself own a small chunk of land and I don’t get all upset if someone walks over it—it’s only if they mess it up or make noise or build a damned pipeline across it that I would get angry.

Review: Northbound With Theo

Northbound With Theo: A Man and his Dog Thru-Hike the Appalachian Trail at Ages 75 and 8

By Soren West

This is strictly a trip report, not a memoir. I learned little about the author, his history and family, other than the report of the sons and daughters of his current life that helped him survive the journey. And in a way, that makes sense—he’s not a young person “coming of age” on the trail and he’s not a middle-aged person who makes a life-changing discovery. There is little introspection in this report, period. A good bit of present-time detail, but not much meanderings of the mind. 

That made me like it less than I have other such trail adventures, but I still liked it. It was just a little too matter of fact for my tastes. 

I was also disappointed that he didn’t find time to make many notes of the trail and the places he went. He has a lot—certainly more than I ever find the time to write down—but I wanted more. So just a little wishful, finishing up.

Still worth the reading.

Magnus Goes North With Summer, return day

Tuesday June 17

Big rain with a little thunder at 7:30. Stopped by 9. The normal drive home, about the same distance as the drive from Grandmother Lea’s house, on the same crappy US-69 and US-75 roads.

Bye, pretty lake!
 

 

LESSONS LEARNED

1. When reserving a COE park on a weekday, if there’s a pull-thru site right next to your back-in site, take it. My logic is typically to take the spot at the very end of a loop so that I have a way to walk Molly without walking past another campsite, but that logic can be carried to extremes. I think I got burned too many times in the state parks up in Pennsylvania and Maryland. But in that last campground there was a pull-thru site right next to ours and it wouldn’t have been any better to have one versus the other for dog walking. So in cases where they’re practically side-by-side, I need to go for convenience over location.

 2.     Don’t buy the Better Oats instant blueberry oatmeal; it’s too sweet. 

 3.     Adding a bag of sauerkraut and some frozen green beans to amp up my vegetable intake is good. But maybe not Kimchi, or at least, not a great big jar of it. I got awfully tired of eating it every day.

 4.     Put away all stuff on my bedside table first thing in the morning.

 5.     US 75 thru Oklahoma isn’t all bad but it goes through a lot of small towns

6.     Don’t stop at Love’s in Atoka. Too small and hard to get out of.

7. Always print a campsite map

8.   When choosing overnight stops to keep our driving distances short, give a little attention to locations of diesel fuel truck stops.  A 4:12 minute drive used during planning can turn into a 4:48 drive due to having to go out of the way to get fuel and then take little crappy roads to get back on the route.  This wouldn’t have been a problem if I learn to keep all legs under three hours except the first and the last.  Then an out-of-the-way fuel stop won’t ruin our day.

9.     Lots of birds on the great plains in June. And ticks, too. But that’s the way of things.

 

Magnus Goes North With Summer, Day 21

Monday June 16

Temperature said 64 but it felt warmer. No wind and only a light dew.

Headed toward home. We left at about 9:15 for our last stop, Walnut Creek Recreation Area (aka COE Campground) on Lake Osage, Oklahoma. It was supposed to be a 3:24 drive but the route taken by the new trucker app took us down a rough, narrow road with no center line for at least 12 miles. We could only make 25 mph on it and even that shook us to the gills. I, being a human being, would never have chosen that route. But so  be it—Ed is having to relearn all the stuff about route planning I already learned.

But that’s his choice and I’m okay to let him learn his own lessons. In future, though, we’ll cross-check the app’s routes with the ones I chose in advance. Typically I’ll do that and add it to the driving plan, or at least do it on the day before the drive.

 

Written on arrival:

Sorry to leave Sand Hills, which is as pretty as a golf course and heavily touched by the hand of man. But here, the opposite. The campsites have new concrete pads and the roads inside the park are great, but otherwise it’s as wild and natural a place as anyone would want. Huge old trees, squirrels and birds all over, the reservoir in the distance making a scenic view through the trees. Just lovely.

I was being smart for once and not going for a walk as soon as we arrived. It was about 2:00 or 2:30 and just about the hottest time of the day. The weather for Osage, OK says high of 88 and low of 72, with rain likely tomorrow morning. 34-percent chance of it…hmmm. Maybe.

However, trying to sit inside and work on the computer was not a great idea. It was FREEZING!  I had a heavy blanket on me and I was still cold.

If we come to this campground again, note that 45 is a very nice site with a walking path that goes out to the point and to the water. It would be a great sunset point, although the view would be through trees. There’s a concrete pad out there, but it’s not a tent pad.  Many ticks—in my note I counted 4 ticks during the short walk.

Tons of birds--Summer tanager, blue-gray gnatcatcher, bluebird, orchard oriole, great horned owl, peewee, chipping sparrow.

 

That night Molly had a weird episode. She acted like she’d been poisoned—her head kept swaying left and right and she couldn’t seem to see very well. And she was drooling. But she was otherwise okay and quieted down nicely to sleep. Next morning her vision was okay and she acted normally, although she ate a lot of grass and threw up twice. All good. Whew—very worried for a bit.

 

REVIEW Walnut Creek Recreation area (aka COE Campground) on Lake Osage, Oklahoma

Site 43 back-in 50-amp W but no sewer

Deep in the woods with a big lake visible through trees

The campground is heavily wooded and feels very remote (and quiet!!!), which is lovely. The sites are very nice and appear to have been recently redone. There are concrete pads with new sod in places; 50-amp electricity and water hookups.  There is plenty of space around them and they are fairly long. 

There were only a few people there on a weekday in late June, although I could see that on a summer weekend at full capacity it might feel crowded.

There were lots of big trees, not exactly what I’d call a mature forest, but pretty open and spacious all around.  Our site could see the lake but it wasn’t close enough to walk to (without bushwhacking and getting covered with ticks). Site 45 has a social trail that goes down to the water but I didn’t see a good fishing spot there.  Down the road a bit there was a horse trail which looked pretty overgrown, but also a “multiuse” trail that seemed a little more clear.

No one was at the gate and we did not see a campground host, but didn’t need one so we didn’t go looking for one. Several roads that led down to the lake were closed off—it looked like they’d had recent flooding and the water level was still high.  I think there were some boat ramps that were still open but didn’t go down to see.

Magnus Goes North With Summer, Day 20

Sunday June 15

I didn’t sleep on the floor as planned. My hip and leg were horrible all day. I’m thinking it’s mainly the seated position during the drive causing the pain and it’s aggravated by the bed, but I can’t prove it. 

 

We went over to the Firehouse Café for breakfast. It’s in Hutchinson, about 10 minutes away. Very poor coffee but very good biscuits and gravy.  My eggs were ordered ‘over medium’ I think, but they were over easy--very runny.  There was so much gravy that it would have been impossible to eat it all. You couldn’t even see the biscuits underneath it all.  But Molly got to enjoy my doggie bag leftovers.

The fireman's pole

If I’m ever in this town again, I’ll definitely eat breakfast here. But I’ll do a half order of biscuits and gravy and then add on another biscuit plain. So I can put some jelly on it. So far as eggs go, I can make better eggs myself. But I never get biscuits at home, gravy or jelly or not.

After that I took Molly for a short walk, then tried to go jogging. We ended up on a horse trail through sand, which was horrid. I couldn’t jog in the loose sand and the horse hoof prints made the surface freakishly bumpy. 

 Lark sparrow

Probably the Bell's Vireo--yeah, sure.

So I retired my jogging gear and went out to walk the woodlands trail. And take a picture of a Bell’s Vireo. I took a trail that went through woods and ended at picnic tables by the road, so I assumed that was it. But it was very short, so we went on down the original trail and eventually came to a marker for the Woodlands trail. We went down it for a while—it was woods, too. Nice and shady. The day was getting pretty hot by then (it was after noon) and the shade felt good.

But soon it was time to give up and go back. No Bell’s vireo showed its pesky little beak although I heard them all around me.  It’s a fussy scramble of notes—fulfrfrurfleefefe dee, fulfrfrurfleyefefe duh.  Sometimes skipping the dee part; sometimes the duh. The birds are very shy and hard to see, but at one point when I stood completely still for long enough, one came out in the open to look at me. (That was yesterday when I didn’t have the camera)

We should come back here any weekday or even a weekend in the off season. It’s a very nice campground. There were cuckoo, killdeer, lark sparrows, red-eyed vireo, Bell’s vireo, Mississippi Kites, field sparrows, bobwhite, indigo buntings, probable orchard orioles, turkey in the distance, and a couple of ducks in the pond.

Funny there were no meadowlarks. I thought they were everywhere.

 

REVIEW: Sand Hills State Park site 43 69/2=$35

More like a resort than a state park

This place was brand new and felt like a swanky resort instead of a state park. The sites are huge with concrete pads and gravel driveways. We were in a full hookup site, #43 I think, which was at the end of the circle closest to the entrance building and the dumpstation.  All of the neighboring sites on our side of the loop were were stacked side-by-side like sardines—way too close. The site on the other side of us (site #1) was a decent way away, and the site across the drive from us was well spaced. That is the only negative thing I have to say about this place--the full hookup sites are too close together.  But the W/E sites around the other side of the loop have nice spacing.

In addition to 50-amp FHU, we had a picnic bench, firepit, lantern pole and a large, covered charcoal grill. And a nice little shade tree behind us. There are large trees in and around the camping circle, but none close to the sites that I can see. So don’t count on shade…but then you don’t have to worry about tree branches peppering your roof in a blow, either. And no problems with satellite internet, either.

The host in the office was very, very nice. We did have to buy a day use permit in addition to our camping fee.  The rule appears to be that for every motorized vehicle entering the park you have to buy a day use permit. Which means that a truck + trailer would only need one sticker but a motorhome + towing would need two.  But the camp host agreed that since we’d only be driving one vehicle at a time, one sticker would suffice.  Don’t count on that being true for a different camp host, however. She may have been exceeding her authority in permitting it.

All in all, a lovely place.  The camping ring surrounds some little ponds with frogs and turtles. (And flies and gnats, but not many mosquitos).  The trail system is extensive, with a decent map but a lot of social trails or pipeline crossings that make it confusing at times. But it’s not so large that you could get lost for long, plus, you can see a communications tower or two in the distance and occasionally hear the road noise.  The little road coming into the park isn’t heavily trafficked, but it seems to be used by local drivers as a shortcut to home.

If you’re a birder, you’ll see Mississippi Kites sailing around the clearings and you’ll be enchanted to hear all the Bell’s vireos skulking in the bushes along the trails.