Project Prep

 I was just reminded by my "this time last year" photos that it has been a while since I've really travelled, and even longer since I shared a post! I've been dealing with the dearth of travel excitement by creating my own adventure... with hand tools, a new bench, building a few things. 

The view from here isn't bad!

The first project up was prepping the shop for a winter of construction. The bench was set up, but we still needed to install the fireplace for coziness and a tea/whiskey shelf for further coziness! Smalls had a set of oak pallet boards that gave me practice with planing, basic joinery, and making useful things. I took a week off work in November and got the bulk of the fireplace installation finished, and we hung the tea/whiskey shelf shortly thereafter.  I think it all turned out rather cozy! 

 

The next week off was a different construction project, this time a hay barn for horse feed. Smalls found plans online for a post and beam style barn. We lap jointed the main beams, recruited cousins to lift the king posts and ridge pole into place, and then I spent a week cutting double birdsmouths and putting the rafters up a few at a time. There was one night with high winds where I was a little nervous, but it was still standing in the morning! 

 

My part of the project essentially ended when the structure was up. Smalls car-decked the walls, then put metal sheeting on the roof. It is now stacked full of hay, the horse blanket is out of the "she shop," and the grain is only steps away from Ru's breakfast bucket. 
Concurrent with all these projects, we did all of the ground work for the "real" projects... that next! 

New benches and old drawers

I bought a bench. It's been my biggest non-travel purchase in a while and makes a world of difference when I'm working with my now-working planes. My evenings are now comfortably filled with shavings and bits of random projects...

Homebound adventures (with old tools)

Once the wave of realization that I was grounded and isolated for the forseeable future receded, I realized that my life really wasn't going to change much. I work from home 3 weeks out of 4 (more or less), and my community/family is, for the most part, elsewhere. Sure, I really miss working from coffee shops or pubs for the enjoyment of a different venue. Writing greeting cards from a park is hardly the same! But for the past year, my main means of leaving the house has been on foot, and neighborhood walks are as enjoyable as ever. Figuring out how to replace the exploration stimulus was my bigger worry. Fortunatly, I have a garage of old tools that I'd been planning on working on since... well, I bought the jack plane for $7 at Shipwreck Day in high school. It's been collecting dust and rust since then! 

History Nerds blitz Philadelphia

From what I write here, you would think that work only sends me to interesting places, and that my adventures when not travelling for work are frequently nearly as interesting. It's a classic case of selection bias; if I don't think it was interesting, I don't write about it. When I am given an opportunity to explore someplace interesting... well, it ends up here. In January, I was sent to the center of old town Philadelphia. It was too much history and cool stuff to explore on my own, so Dad flew out half way through the week, and joined me!

End-of-year hikes, et cetera

Even after the jaunt up to Cascade Falls (near Blacksburg, VA), I was still on the hunt for through the end of 2020. Most of these I found closer to home, a sort of scouting mission to map out what is fun and accessible in the immediate area. One of the surprises I found was a state park near Camas, where water drops from Lacamas lake over a series of falls into the Washougal watershed. The popular trail was moderately busy, although I think that forecasted cloud-bursts kept many people at home. I finally invested in the last piece of waterproof gear I needed (socks!) and was packing heavy, but the sun came out between light showers, and I stayed dry!

End of 2019 travel...

I may have had a bit of a travel hangover after Scotland (not a real hangover, we did more sampling than drinking), but that didn't mean that I didn't travel a bunch. Here's an overview of where I went in the last 3 months of last year...

Sunset at home, looking at Mt Hood

Scotland VI: Glasgow, and Goodbye

I’ve been putting off writing about Glasgow, tried writing about it twice, but it's been hard to get my thoughts on (digital) paper. Glasgow was different from Edinburgh, different from the Heilan' towns we visited, and different from the German cities and towns I know so well. Aside from the lilt of Scottish accents, it had more the spirit of Berlin than its neighborly brother, Edinburgh.

Glaswegian humor: the government tried to make the Duke of Wellington less accessible
by putting him on a plinth. The cone re-appeared on his head the next day.

Scotland V: the Road to Invararay

We had to return the Vauxhall on Thursday afternoon, but were in no particular rush to get back to Glasgow. Instead, we plotted a winding route through Argyle, looping down to the Campbell clan seat at Inveraray before returning to Loch Lomond and truly starting the march back to Stuttgart. Once again, I found myself both enjoying the challenge of driving on the left (my lane placement had much improved) and frequently wishing we had set up A as a second driver. It's hard to gaze up the craggy shoulders of a Ben while keeping your eyes on the road! With a frequency and style particular to Scotland, the landscape tripped us into gasps, oohs, and ahhs at regular intervals. You never knew when a castle would appear between the trees just as a patch of sunlight skidded off a hill to illuminate it! 

Kilchurn Castle in a splash of sunlight

Inveraray Castle is a famous stop-off on Highland tours, and although the structure one sees is largely 17th-19th century, its roots are medieval. The part that we (and a tour bus of Swiss tourists) were allowed to tour through included Rob Roy's sporran, displays of weapons that were probably used during Jacobite uprisings, and a supposedly haunted bedroom... next to a room full of family memorabilia. Elephant polo trophy, anyone? The house is still the residence of the current Duke of Argyll and his family.

Some of the bayonetts have notches in them...

Nearly as impressive as the house were the grounds, including a large formal garden and both wild and of woods. The clouds had broken as we walked the crushed gravel paths and wove around dripping foliage. Bits of elegant stone architecture lured us deeper into the grounds and away from the tour busses. We didn't have time to take the full Woodland Walk, but we crossed one of the Stone Bridges and followed the road towards a white tower. It was just another of those moments where we thought we had stumbled into a fantasy story, or at least into a Jane Austen novel!

A pausing for an Austen moment

 

Our Inverary wanderings were fueled by Roxy's Cafe in Oban. When I woke up that morning, I realized it would be the last "real" morning in Scotland. The focus on the next day would be getting to Edinburgh, then getting to the airport, then getting to Stuttgart. One of the joys of travelling with a coffee- and book-loving friend is the shared joy of finding a cozy space, enjoying a drink, and opening individual books to read or write. So it was that I had my last stomach-bursting dollop of clotted cream, sandwiched between Buckley-sized meringues. It was a lovely farewell to the Highlands, as we returned to Glasgow and tried not to think about the fact that we had less than 24 hours left in Scotland...

Buffalo-sized meringue, or meringue-sized buffalo? 

Scotland IV: Oban

I grew up in a ferry town, so I know that there's something to be said for "Island Time" that extends to the ports that tether those islands to the mainland. Wind, tide, and mechanics are the deciding factors in when "the boat" leaves, or if it leaves at all. We were already a little windblown and soggy when we arrived in Oban, but ready to brave the elements when we hurried to the ferry dock to catch the 11:20 boat to Mull. What we learned is that yes, the 11:20 boat would be leaving, but they were expecting to cancel all later sailings due to weather... in other words, we could get to Mull, but there was no guarantee we would get back. Since our rental car was due in Glasgow the next day, we decided to use this stranding as an excuse to slow down and explore Oban.

Oban might not have amounted to much more than other villages along Scotland's west coast, except for the fact that the railroad came there in the Victorian era. With the railroad came tourism, and with tourists came the sort of 19th century architecture that I've come to expect in coastal UK towns; stone hotels growing up several stories, brass bannistered and capped with slate roofs. We discovered several other remnants of Oban's 19th century boom as we explored. Fortified with tea and flapjacks (hint: not a pancake) from the Little Potting Shed cafe, we climbed the hill to McCaig's Tower, which gave us a view of the town and a starting point for more urban hill walking. The "tower" itself is an eponymous monument to Mr. McCaig's family, and encircles a lovely, wild garden.

Our wanderings took us through neighborhoods and up to a hill on the south side of the harbor, then back along the promenade to the north side of town. By this time the sun was trying to come out, and the reason for our cancelled ferry became evident... the wind was blowing out of the NorthWest at what I estimated to be a "small craft advisory," at least outside the harbor. Inside the harbor itself, the water turned a slate grey colour. We had donned all of our layers at this point (long sleeves, insulators, jackets, scarves...) but still found ourselves wind blasted by the time our distillery tour came around!

The ferry we would have taken back from Mull docking in a harbor full of whitecaps 

the "just let me get my hair out of my face" selfie

 If I'm being honest, I was more concerned about missing our scheduled tour of the Oban distillery if we were stranded on mull than I was about getting our rental car back to Glasgow. It turns out that I rather like a nice whisky, and Scotland is known for exceptional whiskys (Scotch being that subset of whiskies that is made of malted barley and aged 3 years + a day in Scotland).  The Oban distillery has been at it since the 1790's, and they are rather good at it! I was happy to learn that my home state contributed the pine for their newest Washback (the tubs where fermentation happens), and thus contributes indirectly to the creation of Oban's fine product. Of course, our tour included a taste straight from the cask. "Cask strength" whisky comes in at 50%+ ABV, which is diluted to 40%+ ABV for packaging. Much of the final flavour comes from the casks themselves, so our guide couldn't tell us what the final aging process entails. Regardless, the final product was delicious!

 

Scotland III - Exploring the West Coast (Dunstaffnage)

Ft William was the northernmost point on our Highland Loop. On Wednesday morning, we packed up our trusty Vauxhall and wound our way back down along the coast towards Oban. Our plan was to wander leisurely southward, catch the ferry in Oban, and spend the afternoon duffing about on the Isle of Mull. Things didn't go exactly as planned, but plans are flexible, and we had a stellar day regardless. It helped that our first stop was a castle, which we would have missed except that it popped up on Google Maps as I was looking at our route!

The MacDougall family chapel at Dunstaffnage 

Scotland II - Highlands and Hiking

  "Did it rain much?" "Did you have sunny days?" "How was the weather in Scotland?"
          - Yes, Yes, and Wonderful.

Honestly, it rained every day. We had blowing rain, light mist, torrents, spits, sprinkles, still fog, and and more. We walked outside in sunshine and were wet by the time we got to our destinations. Did it matter? Not really. Only when we thought about it did it become a problem. Thinking about the hike in the rain kept us from hiking up Ben Nevis, and it shouldn't have. The times we copied the locals and said "Nae bother," we had grand adventures.

Scotland I - Edinburgh

This is part 1 of a 4-part series on my trip to Scotland with A - Stay tuned for segments on hiking in the Highlands, sitting in on a "session," visiting a whisky distillery on the west coast, and Glasgow!

Last Friday we boarded our flight from Stuttgart to Edinburgh, touching down in what we would later term "not really raining" between the green fields flecked with woolly backs. There is a convenient light rail which took us within 5-10 minutes' walk from our Air BnB, then we were out to find some food, a pub, and gear up for a full day tomorrow...

An afternoon deluge was followed by a brilliant double rainbow!

Burg Hohenzollern

... And I'm back in Germany! Truly, I just landed here again (from the UK, not the US, but more on that next week). This trip started out the way the last one ended; with a visit to a lovely Swebian castle, perched on a hilltop above farms and villages. Wanting to make a hike out of it, we parked in the little town of Bisingen and slowly made our way upward. I felt a bit like a peasant, watching the towers grow taller as we approached! 

Secret Cities (New Mexico Hikes)

I spent a week recently in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, working in what was once a hidden city. Los Alamos is a town even smaller than my hometown, but with a few thousand more scientists! In fact, it would likely still be a small farm land if the US government hadn't set up its central nuclear research facility there! The statue of Mr Oppenheimer in the park downtown still overlooks a stream of researchers, machinists, technicians, etc. towards the bridge that takes them to the state-of-the-art facilities on the other side of the canyon. While I didn't actually get to see the research center, I did take advantage of the wonderful hiking that was so close to town! 

Moonrise at Sunset over a distant Santa Fe

Skyline Divide

While we were wandering about the Alps, Jon (J2) told me about a Pacific NorthWest hike that we definitely needed to do when we got home. In his words, it was "the best views for the amount of effort that you put in." Mumsy is training for Kilimanjaro, and I needed a recovery trip after hiking the Enchantments a few weeks before... so on a weekend while I was still in Washington, we headed up the mountain!

 

Enchanted

I've had this hike on my bucket list for a while. To overnight camp there, you need to win a lottery... or, take it on as an 18+ mile thru-hike. Having a weekend free and a cousin willing to commit to 12 hours of suffering (also, to leave at the other trailhead), it was on! 

the top of Asgard Pass

Silver Falls

Feeling a little bit of Euro-travel hangover, I got out of the house my first weekend back to check out some new trails in Oregon. Silver Falls State Park is just over an hour from home, filled with incredible basaltic rock structures threaded with 10 waterfalls and one heavily beaten trail.

Burg Hohenneufen, und Auf Wiedersehen

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland! Another trip in the books, we're homeward bound. We did a little final shopping in Stuttgart, including a visit to the tower at Killesberg and some refreshing Schorle (fruit juice mixed with sparkling water, coming soon to a cider pressing near you!) in the park. We missed out on visiting the museum of Jon's new employer (the Mercedes-Benz museum is closed on Monday, Google lied to us!), and Jon had blisters from previous weeks of hiking up and down mountains, and it was bloody hot... but the Apfelschorle was all the more refreshing for it!

Am Bodensee (on Lake Constance)

In our tasting flight of a trip (Jon's description of our sampling of middle Europe), Jon had requested that we go to Switzerland. The default train route from St Anton to Stuttgart passes through a corner of Switzerland, but what if we took a different route and stopped for lunch there? After changing trains twice and my second visit to Liechtenstein, we reached the Romanshafen Harbor ferry terminal.

St Anton in the Clouds

St Anton is one of my favorite places on the planet, so of course it was one of the stops on our trip. This time it was a bit different than I'd ever seen it. Thanks to the heavy snow last winter and cool spring, there was sill snow on the mountains and most of the huts were closed. So there was no return to Darmstädter Hütte this trip, but we made some new friends and got a taste for the mountain life!