What a Wonderful World (An #AtoZChallenge Post): W is for White Sands National Park

A sign near the visitor's center parking lot says "White Sands National Park"

My husband recently re-retired, and we are front-loading travel. My #AtoZChallenge posts this year will explore our travels--some pre-retirement, some post. Today's location: White Sands National Park in New Mexico.

White Sands National Park is aptly named. We took the mile-long Dune Life Nature Trail to learn more about the flora and fauna of the area, and were rewarded with finding several animal tracks in the sand.

Lines of little tracks from some unknown animal decorate the sand

While the sand dunes seem inhospitable to life, some trees defy the odds and somehow manage to find enough moisture to live.

A lone tree, with roots visible above the sand, grows in the white sand

The sand even covers the road, as this sign so helpfully tells visitors:

a sign at the side of a sandy road states, "You are now Driving on Sand"

We decided to try out the most popular activity at White Sands National Park: sledding down the dunes. The visitor's center offers sled rentals. We picked up a sled and headed to the sledding area. The video below shows my husband demonstrating how sledding should be done:

And here I am keeping things real, somersaulting off my sled at the bottom of the hill:

I head-over-heels recommend visiting White Sands National Park!

Come back tomorrow to see where in the world we'll visit next!

Ten Things of Thankful: Live from Oregon, part 2

stock photo of old computer monitor When I was 10 or 11, I remember sitting next to my dad in our living room and reading computer code to him as he entered it into an Apple computer. We would finish the exercise and he would hit enter (or was it "run"?) and wait expectantly for the green type to appear on the screen. If we were lucky, the whole conversation would occur. Most often, there would be an error either in my dictation of the code, or in the typing of the code. We would then go painstakingly back through the lines, character by character, to find and correct the error. After what seemed like hours (and might have been), we would succeed and the computer would finally run the entire program. It was magical! My dad designed and built an earth-sheltered, passive solar home decades before solar panels were commonplace. He also was on a 9-month waiting list for a Prius, when hybrids were not seen on every street. While my dad is definitely on the cutting edge of technol...

Monday Mentions: Equate Crutches

Have you ever needed crutches? I hadn't, until a week ago. I'm pretty sure I strained a muscle while running a half-marathon. (That sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? I'm not actually that cool; the last time I strained a muscle it was from carrying too many shopping bags at once.) In any case, I found myself in need of some crutches. I sent my husband to the store to get some. Photo: A pair of crutches leans against a wall Not that crutches are all that complex, but because I hadn't used any before, I wondered if I could figure out how to adjust them to fit me properly. I shouldn't have worried. John came home from Walmart with their generic store brand of crutches, complete with instructions. First, I needed to take out a long bolt that went through the hand grip. Then I needed to find my height range, push down two metal pieces, and slide the crutches until the little metal pieces came up in the hole near my height range. (Having two people for this...

What a Wonderful World! (An #AtoZChallenge Post): Z is for Zion National Park

Visitor Center sign in Zion National Park My husband recently re-retired, and we are front-loading travel. My #AtoZChallenge posts this year will explore our adventures--some pre-retirement, some post. Today's location: Zion National Park in Utah. Zion is a bit of a shibboleth. People from outside of Utah (or those who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) tend to pronounce Zion as "ZIE-on." Locals (or tourists who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) use more of a schwa sound, pronouncing Zion to rhyme with lion. However you choose to pronounce it, it is an amazing, beautiful national park and has some amazing hikes. The last time my husband and I visited Zion National Park, we entered from the east, and traveled through the mile-long Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel. It is an engineering marvel, completed in the 1920s. Before we passed through the tunnel, though, we spotted a group of bighorn sheep, including some babies...

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