Following Celtic Ways

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2010-04-30T13:18:00.001+01:00

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The Facebook Privacy Fear

2010-04-27T15:22:00.002+01:00

Every few weeks Facebook makes changes

They have to as a path of discovery that works best with the users while helping them cope with the vast increase of subscribers along with a need to sustain cashflow so that we continue to have a free Facebook service.

When ever Facebook makes a change there is always ….

– a panic about learning how to use the new changes, which usually takes less time than writing up and posting messages complaining about the new learning

– a few soapbox cult leader types who set off viral fear generating, god fearing, messages about how our privacy being sold out followed by us been hounded by herds of corporate men in black and the world suddenly finding out that we really do like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

– re-released X File “Lone Gunman” type stories of conspiracy from Facebook, CIA, KGB, NSA, CTU and extra terrestrials all being shared bed fellows, from those who watch too much television, order in too much pizza, never get out and forget what the sun looks like.

– the rise of new “I hate Facebook” groups springing up, all generously hosted on Facebook.

The new Snake Problem

I have almost completed writing a book called “Do You Have A Snake Problem?” after a dream I had, strangely enough days before St. Patrick’s Day. I dreamed someone sneaked up to my cottage with a wicker basket of snakes and emptied them through a window I had left open. I live in Ireland, so you can instantly understand why this is already weird.

There was I with snakes all around the cottage and finding it impossible to evict them. Then a man comes to the door saying, “I understand you have a snake problem, and my service is to relieve you of this”. This happens to be the same man who sneaked up and dumped the snakes in the first place. Out of frustration and passionate desire to be relieved of the problem I said “yes please, where do i sign” kind of thing.

This is a story of so many things in our lives, the way businesses were founded, religions were founded, much of modern education founded, the way politicians get elected and even the way the St. Patrick story is told. I doubt that for thousands of years nobody thought there was anything wrong with their faiths until St. Patrick, or more likely the tellers of the St. Patrick story, told them so – in a way that they believed!

Now folks are looking at the new Facebook changes, like with every Facebook change, as a new “snake problem”, because someone, not of Facebook, told them so …. the very people that release the snakes in the first place!

The Quickie about the new Facebook “Open Graph” system

For most people on Facebook the term “Open Graph” may not be a familiar term. What is immediately visible is the previous “fan” status on pages being turned to “like” and the viral messaging generated by the soapbox fear generating snake breeding gurus telling us our privacy is exposed and supposedly what to do about it.

Facebook is free because it earns income from advertising. For advertising to stay active it has to be responsive or advertisers will go away and there will be no more free Facebook.

As a Facebook person we do not want to be pestered with advertising and comments on matters that are of no interest to us.

My interests are ancient sacred sites, labyrinths, harps, herbs, tree lore, Celtic mythology, storytellers and other things. I list this on my profile like we all do. I list these as its nice to contact and exchange with people of these interests.

I do not want to be bombarded with comments and advertising about gambling, fast cars, fast guns, fast women and many other things. The plan of Facebook’s new “Open Graph” project is to give us what we want to exchange with but not only from comments and the finding of new friends.

When we have interests we buy products, services and entertainment linked to our interests, so Facebook would like to steer suppliers of what we are interested in to us. By doing so it makes it easier for us to locate what we would like and make trades. The people doing the trade feel they are getting value from Facebook advertising so they continue this. Facebook gets its revenue, and we continue to get free Facebook plus continued contact to people, services and things that are useful to us and improve the world we would like to live.

What about “privacy”?

This subject baffles me?

Our computer is not a limb of our body. It is completely detached from us, can be switched off and we can travel miles away from it and even chose to never use it again. What we post on web sites should be regarded as open information available to all, but we do have a choice of what we post. Its its private to you, don’t post it! We are in charge of our own privacy, not webmasters.

Identity theft is a major fear though. I’ve had it done to me and it is a painful time waster to unravel.

I believe a personal web site with a server service you can trust is the best thing and use this as a medium for people to contact you through a masked contact form that gets to your real email address, and then you can reveal yourself to people one to one as you feel safe to. Then all you have to do on Facebook is provide your name and your web site as your contact medium.

For your profile page, you screen which friends you allow access to and can easily purge people you no longer wish to contact and share with. Among your Facebook friends is the superb messaging service which I trust much more than regular email. By listing a group of friends in the heading of a message you can start up your own very private debate forum. What ever is written within this does not go outside of this!

So what’s left on the “privacy” issue?

The stuff you post on your profile?

If that “stuff” on your profile is private, why is it there?

Managing your Facebook Profile

You are totally in charge of what you post on your profile and now Facebook assumes that what you post here is to be shared so you have to decide what’s public. If you just want to keep certain facts about yourself among friends, keep this bound within the very private Facebook messaging service.

In short, your privacy is your responsibility, not Facebook’s. Why post something private on Facebook and then blame Facebook for exposing it. It would be like guys walking around with their penis hanging out and women with breasts hanging out and getting annoyed at everyone for noticing. If you don’t want to expose something about yourself don’t let it hang out! ….. otherwise others will want to share it!

In “Basic Information” in your profile, only expose what you would like others to read and share, with particular attention placed on relationship status, political views and religious views

In “Contact Information” and “Education And Work” be careful only to share what you would like to share. What is the single best most personal protected way people can contact you and understand your status?

This now leaves managing the “Likes and Interests” section where you list your favourite music, books, movies, favourite activities, and a section to be free to talk and brag about yourself. It is this section that is the engine of the new Facebook “Open Graph” as they call it.

It is this section that is shared openly, not the rest about you, other than your geographic location to your nearest town !!!

Facebook “Open Graph” enhancing our lives?

By changing the old “fan” button to a new “like” button, Facebook is deciding to build as a central hub for the distribution of users choices of interests and interests that build their lives.

You’ll find that web sites that join this new Facebook engine will be directing suggestions and information customised for you that has been filtered through your information on Facebook. What needs to realised is that nobody is looking at your name, address, phone number, email address and other identity elements other than your unique Facebook identity and the personal likes you have posted on your profile. Its only your Facebook identity that is circulated, nothing else, but if you visit other web sites while logged into Facebook your browsing cache will tell websites you visit what your Facebook identity code is and it will respond to customise your browsing experience.

Some users will think this is going too far, as Facebook membership was seen just to be a way to see what family and friends are up to and exchange information, photos and links.

What I feel this will do is slowly eliminate the time wasting in our lives from the bombardment of promotions from TV, newspapers, magazines, telemarketers and online spam, the bombardment of luring to goods and services that are not part of the world we wish to live.

In future when we are approached with suggestions they may not even seem like advertising as they will be so close to our interests and personality.

Web One, was the first online world of showcase web sites, shopping web sites and catalogues of information supported by email communications. Amazon, Yahoo, Google, Ebay, CDBaby, and Barnes & Noble became leaders in this

Web Two, was and is the public social exchange, often of the many things on web sites merged with our actual daily lives. Marketing and trade largely moved into referrals, just like the very old ways of trading and business. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube became leaders in this.

Web Three is merging One and Two by revealing web pages to us in the image perceived by our likes revealed and online habits. Amazon have been doing this awhile but Facebook now takes this onto a new wider level.

Some folks are concerned that there seems to be a “battle” for internet ownership, i.e. the conspiracy thinkers, but forget this has only happened by the public taking a mass liking for what is being offered by Facebook, Google and Apple who now be looked at, misguidingly, as the competitors for Internet domination and control. We gave them their positions!

What happens if you uncheck “allow” on Facebook

Facebook provides an option for its members to uncheck “allow” to prevent their “likes” being distributed. There’s a lot of campaigning by folks who live their lives with strong defence against input and sharing themselves , to advise others uncheck “allow”. They indicate Facebook is putting identities and privacy at risk.

However, if you do uncheck “allow” I feel you will cut yourself off from a useful upcoming online experience.

I remember when automatic washing machines came along, and folks campaigned they they could never be as good as hand washing, when dishwashers came along and seemed to be a total waste of money and pure snobbery, and when internet spread, how businesses dismissed it as a “just a place for kids to play games on” and not a serious medium for business marketing and customer service.

I think Facebook “Open Graph” could be one of those things we think we do not want, but once used wonder why we did not bother before. If Facebook do not pull of this idea, someone will soon.

I do not think my own web site or other showcase business brochure type web sites will have great effect by integrating Facebook Open Graph, but web sites that catalogue in some way such as music, video, ticket selling, house selling, car selling, hardware, botanical, tourism review sites and so forth, will find tremendous benefit from linking to Facebook Open Graph, and their web site visitors will be glad they have too.

2010 USA Tour : April 13th, Chicago Day

2010-04-15T08:42:00.004+01:00

Morning

I had plans to get into exploring early, but Claire was desperate for a sleep in and I had a lot of online work to do.

Then a radio station called to ask for an interview with us at 3:30 pm.

The sun outside was getting warmer and warmer, and I was getting cabin fever, and wanted out around town. Claire was keen to honour the radio interview and have a bit more resting before. So I sorted out the cameras, on with the hat and off I went …

Exploring I Go

First, I headed for the beach near where we are staying. Chicago has beautiful beaches beside the very blue Lake Michigan. I was surprised to find the beach empty as well as mainly clean from litter and abuse. A bigger surprise was how people dressed on what I thought was a very warm day. It was almost 70 degrees F and I was in t-shirt and light pants but everyone seemed to be wrapped up in overcoats, scarves, hats and gloves. I suppose that’s why the beach was empty.

After quiet time on the beautiful beach I cut across from the beach to the Navy Pier through a park. The park was empty and out of the bushes I was confronted with a couple of “hoodlums” pleading they had no money to go home and needed my money. Rather than fear I was angry, knowing that the RV rental had just taken our loot from us, so I shouted back “F*** Off, I’ve got to get money to get back home to Ireland ….. and you are on my patch!”. Looking back, a weird thing to say, but it worked, the two “hoodlums” said “sorry man”, and went back into the bushes area. Luckily, I do not think they noticed my cameras to make another assumption

Navy Pier

Navy Pier was fun, looking at the different boats and the different sailing services they offer, such as guided tours of the coastline on speedboats, a tall ship that folks could go out on and learn rigging, and a luxury boat that headed out in evenings with a dinner, champagne and dance combo for $99 a head.

Add to that the various bicycle tours on offer. I was awed by the 4 person bikes, imported from Italy, that seated 2 at the front and 2 at the back, all 4 peddling and one steering. I did not see any of these out and about in Chicago, though.

The pier had various small cafes and bars and I walked to the end past the old ballroom at the end and pondered awhile. There, it was much cooler and windy, but I was amazed at how many land birds were still present as cherry and other trees are planted on the pier.

I was also amused by seeing a city copy patrolling on one of those nerdy two wheel battery powered transporters.

Along the shore

I enjoyed walking the shoreline park from Navy Pier to the Museums Campus peninsula, over a mile away. Lots of seabirds on the harbour walls and the geese loved to be on the park grass resting with very little fear of passers by.

When I reached the aquarium, the John G Shedd aquarium, I walked in curious as it was on my list as places to visit. When I saw the admission price, I realised “not this time”, as I just did not have the funds, even though there was no line, and there is often a line here.

Also I wondered why go into the aquarium on a gorgeous day like today.

In this area is also the Planetarium, the main museum with exhibitions on Mammoths and Masterdons, and another beautiful beach.

I headed across Grant Park and into Downtown.

Downtown Chicago

I started walking through Downtown from the Southside. A little rough but fascinating. It did not take me long to realise parking was less than half price of Northside where we were.

A major fascination of here was the CTA overhead metro rail service. This and its roadways underneath are a feature in many car chases in movies with Bruce Willis, Al Pacino and others having a go. On the southside these roads are like rough back alleys, and I do remember chase scenes in these.

Soon I was into “the Loop” where the CTA rail goes around in a loop in downtown to connect with CTA rail services heading off in different directions. The main CTA building is an outstanding piece of architecture. The CTA overhead rail then hovers over a wide main road that many will be familiar with from the movies.

“The Loop” also features building associated with Al Capone days gangsterism, and I did see some folks having a shot at that to keep it alive. With one fellow, two cops leapt out of a car they left in the middle of the road with lights flashing, a pedestrian woman cop looking like she was wearing four bullet proof vests and not one of them was fitting properly as she ran forward, and another cop dashed out of a cafe. I looked around for movie filming cameras, but this was the real thing .

Chicago is always full of action in the day. It seems like a fire truck is roaring, flashing and alarming every couple of minutes and I started wondering if that was a tourist attraction as I rarely saw this from police and ambulance.

I then saw a “Soul Food” cafe and I had not eaten awhile and know these places serve great food at low prices from my Florida experiences. I walked in, the only white guy there, maybe the first this year or longer, to a call from one of the “bitches” .. “What ya doin’ here boy?” to which I swiftly responded “same as ya doin’ here girl!”. It seemed to break the ice and humour. For $5 I was expecting to get a couple of pieces of fish and some fries. I got what seemed like 20 pieces of fish, real hand cut potato fries and some rye bread. Not the healthiest of foods, but darned good!

Once out of “The Loop” crossed the river, with Venice like scenes, into the Northside and back to the hotel, after being very satisfied with my taste of Chicago.

the search for the Deep Dish Pizza

When I returned, Claire was finishing off the radio interview and soon we were to go off with a son of a school friend of her’s who is a professor lecturer in Chicago.

One of my personal quests of this tour was a real Chicago Deep Dish Pizza.

Claire was not interested in this at all, and our guest even less interested. However, we did all end up in Cue’s and i did have my Deep Dish Pizza, which i have since learned online from friends that this was one of the best in town.

The night before, when parking the car opposite, I saw this old worlde Chicago town house serving amazing pizzas …. and my choice was based just on that. Claire and our guest chose salads while I gorged on a wonderful spinach and veg deep dish pizza. There was enough to bring home to the hotel.

After a wonderful closing night out, back to the hotel and we treated ourselves to the Sherlock Holmes movie, which we had not seen yet.

I was a bit disappointed with it. Well written and clever script, photography that moved from awful to brilliant, acting that seemed like dress rehearsal and what seemed like messy direction. Overall I was quite bored with the first two thirds of the movie, but the last third was excellent and riveting.

Finally some attempt at packing to go home, but soon gave that up. Leaving that until morning.

2010 USA Tour : April 12th, to Chicago

2010-04-14T17:55:00.002+01:00

time to let go

Early morning departure, a lot to do this morning. This is the day to hand back both the harp and the RV.

Sunny, but a little sad morning with the realization this tour is coming to an end. About 50 miles before Chicago we stopped off at a truck stop to send the RV into a thorough wash while we had a diner breakfast.

We believed the harp was to be dropped at Joliet but found there was new instructions to drop it off in Chicago north. That was an interesting experience, unloading in a narrow Chicago street but that happened without a hitch. We were lucky to pull in where a large truck was pulling out.

Next stop was Crystal Lake to pick up a rented car for the remaining days here. No problems there.

Now off to nearby Island Lakes to drop off the RV.

Ouch! The extra charges accumulated from the rental took all of the cash we had left from the tour and left us with nothing for our Chicago stay. We considered taking the car rental back, but that was such a good online deal and we discovered alternatives would cost us the same anyway and be less convenient.

As we left the RV depot we both shed a few tears as we once more passed our wonderful home of the past 4.5 weeks

Both Claire and I managed to get small amounts from our ATMs to have some experience of Chicago.

off to Chicago to play

The RV drop off was about 90 minutes north of Chicago. We headed for a Starbucks with wi-fi to plan our Chicago stay, looking for low cost, reasonable looking and central accommodation.

On arriving I was not aware of the car parking situation. We landed in accommodation in Northside and later discovered south side car parking was half the cost of north side,, but we were tried and went for what we could.

It was a warm evening and the lure to explore a bit was in us. We headed toward the lake shore, but did not quite make it. We found a small Italian cafe and i though i would dive into a deep dish pizza. They did not do these !! Instead we had Sicilian crust pizza and a couple of salads. Cozy cafe with lovely low pricing for high quality food.

The day finished with an early night to sleep. Despite the reputation of Chicago never sleeping, it had gone pleasantly quiet where we were staying.

2010 USA Tour : April 11th, Urbana IL

2010-04-14T15:30:00.003+01:00

to Champaign and Urbana

Both Claire and I over slept and Claire did not feel very well, due to an upset stomach, so we did not get to explore Wookey Hollow and Starved Rock, despite being a lovely sunny warm morning. On the way to Utica we stopped off for fast food. I chose Taco Bell and Claire chose a Chinese take away. Interestingly this reversed common comments about Taco Bell :-)

Around noon we set off back along the flat corn fields landscape of Illinois towards Champaign, and dropped off at our camp site for the night just outside of Champaign, almost in a wide cornfield. There we could shower, change and prepare for our last concert of this year’s USA tour.

We turned up at Jan and John’s Heartland Gallery in good advance time with excellent close by parking. It was great to see both of them again. I was stunned by how the Heartland Gallery has developed further with much more inventory and truly looking like a Celtic gallery, not contrived, but a true presentation of Irish and Scottish art and crafts today. I loved Jan’s Irish Wedding Display along with a list of services for this that they are now agents for.

The Urbana Concert

This was a late afternoon show, and Jan revealed that we were competing with another harp concert show in this small town, at the same time. This did mean that we had a much smaller audience than during the previous two years. Though the audiences of the other years were fabulous both Claire and I thought the concert at Heartland Gallery this year was the best yet. It was so relaxed and exchanging.

This was perhaps a relief for Claire. She still did not feel good from the stomach upset that had caused her to feel weak, tired and just not comfortable. During the first half this showed in Claire’s performance, but the audience did not know different as a weaker performance from Claire is still a great performance. The response from the audience was actually very healing for Claire because for the second set she was back in top form and performed outstandingly.

I did a very different story set from the rest of the tour, both stories in the second half, including a Pottering Harry story I have never told before and have never written down.

We also had a wonderful dance to harp from Philip Johnson from Belfast with his dancing partner Cathy (?) Simpson from Wales. What a treat, what a performance !!!

Cd sales after certainly responded to the audience response. Each person seem to go off with quite a wad of cds. We were delighted with their enthusiasm.

The delightful after show dinner then home party

First, Jan and John took us and treated us to a local Spanish restaurant managed by on of their daughters. What a treat! We shared several plates of exotic tapas in a very cozy restaurant before heading off to Philip Johnston’s for desert of waffles and strawberries.

Finally it was back to the camp site to continue some packing and cleaning before completing this tour in Chicago.

2010 USA Tour : April 10th, Dead Sea Scrolls

2010-04-14T00:05:00.003+01:00

to Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition, Milwaukee

This became a very moving day for us.

This was one of our few “being a tourist” days.

The destination was Milwaukee to view the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition. Thinking that we were entering into a large busy city with no sympathy for parking an RV, I suggested to Claire we parked away from the city and caught a bus in. The State Fair Grounds was the perfect place, free car parking to include RVs and a Park and Ride bus service.

Alas, after 45 minutes no bus arrived and it was getting close to deadline for our entry ticket time. Claire phoned the museum and they advised us of a wonderful nearby City Car Park that could take RVs. When we got there with our trusty sat-nav gps, we were delighted to see the car park easy to enter and lots of room. The car before us entered, but the barrier would not lift for us! There was a sign lit up “car park closed”. Why?

Not too far away we found a space taking up two parking meters, and the notice saying Saturdays had no charge but 2 hour parking limit. We took the chance, rushed into the museum, quick cup of coffee and sandwich, and into the show …..

The Exhibition!

Very, very different to what I imagined, and so, so creatively worked out. The Exhibition was a long winding walkway of different colour tones and beautiful mood enhancing audio.

It started by explaining the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the black market trading that immediately started when the first scrolls were found. There were lots of scrolls found around the Dead Sea. We were then given an exhibition of other ancient archaeology that had been found in the region from the time such as pottery, jewelry and tools.

The exhibition then explained how all of the black market items were bought back and gathered together in Jerusalem for analysis and stitching back together. There were demonstrations of the remarkable techniques used for attaching the fragments.

I wondered if we would actually see part of the actual Dead Sea Scrolls ourselves. We were treated to an original copper plate piece but the parchment and papyrus versions were incredibly clever copy reproductions.

We were shown copies of the pots and fragments of actual pots they were found in too.

We then entered a large room that magically detailed every scroll text found, photos of the fragments, the writings reproduced and the English translations.

Many of these had translations that made no sense. This is probably due to there not being the correct words in English for a direct translation. It like Gaelic. The name Bride or Brigid is a good example, both being shortened from “Brideog na Saigead” which translates as “fiery arrow”. The oak is featured a lot in Bride and Brigid traditions, and it the tree that attract lightening the most. Lightning was an instant source of fire and Bride and Brigid are associated with creating fire, so it is assumed that “fiery arrow” could mean “lightning”, though several neo-pagans have came up with other meanings. This I feel explains the many varied dramatic English translations from the early biblical texts.

One point made by the researchers is that though these ancient scroll texts were written after the birth of Christ they did not include reference to him, but were entirely of ancient Jewish texts.

The final part of the Exhibition explored how these ancient texts evolved into Bibles of different translations and interpretations over the years. Sadly, it did not show how they contributed to the Torah or Qua ran, though some reference to how parts are included is made briefly.

There was a strong bias on the creation of the King James Bible, which is the basis of the majority faith in the USA, and very little on the Catholic Bibles.

I was disappointed that there was no reference to the Ceile De, the Culdee, monks who brought texts to Ireland and Scotland and how they were formed into books, rather than scrolls, and how scribing became a huge industry. I feel Iona is indeed a very important part of this Exhibition story but was sadly left out.

There was an interesting feature on the Masoretes, a group of Jewish scribes who scribed copies of psalms, ancient texts and scriptures that included notation for singing them. These were called “Masoretic Texts”. The Masoretes had to flee the Holy Land, due to suppression, intimidation at attempted extinction of their work at remarkably the same time the Ceili De, Culdees came to Ireland.

The very final part was a beautiful modern hand scribed and illustrated Bible currently under creation that is attempting to translate and adapt the Bible to the modern world. The message of this version was a bold message of suggesting that the Bible may not need to be the tight catalogue of books that it is but of any collection of prophetic works inspired by the scribe.

Some folks may dispute this as being the final message of the exhibition, but that was my understanding, and for others to take a different understanding, to me, demonstrated the whole point of this Exhibition.

Overall, Claire and I were very, very moved by this.

After, I went to the gift shop to get a souvenir “Dead Sea Scrolls Kit” with book and scaled model of a “Great Isaiah” scroll in a ceramic pot, but the scroll was missing when I opened mine, many miles down the road, presumed to now be already on the black market.

Native Americans, Nature, and Ireland

As we were about to leave the museum, wondering if the RV was full of parking tickets, clamped wheels, or even towed away, we were distracted the exhibition next to the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition. I cannot remember the title, but it beautifully demonstrated ways of Native American life and the wildlife and plans of around the USA. It also demonstrated how Native American ways and nature are together.

The impact of this was , profound, not just because of the Native American ways of nature, but because this re-enforced something I advise every person thinking of coming to Ireland.

The common arrangement for visitors is to fly into Dublin, assess that they are going to be completely exhausted on arrival and therefore stay in Dublin two or three days.

Celtic Dreamtime Days are especially for people arriving in Ireland.

Dublin is a busy, bustling and congested city both from cars and people and I feel is not the best environment to arrive in after intense preparation for a vacation.

Add to that, if galleries, museums and gift shops are visited, the items shows may look pretty but may not mean much, especially if you are still tired and time adjusting from arrival, still getting used to the money, language differences, service differences and various other initial niggles.

At Milwaukee, this Native American and Nature exhibition brought back many, many memories of our tour around the USA, and also answered questions about some things we had seen and done. This made this exhibition almost as equally moving as the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition, which would not have happened if we had come here before touring the USA.

This experience has no made me more determined to advise every visitor to Ireland to leave their Dublin days until the end of their vacation to enable them to get the best Dublin experience and the best value from being there.

To me, now, starting an Ireland vacation with 2 or 3 days in Dublin is almost wasted vacation days, while as the end would be a priceless round up experience. Please think about this if coming to Ireland !!

off to Utica IL

The following day show, our last on this tour, is in Urbana IL and is an afternoon show. We wanted to be fairly close to avoid much early morning driving.

We decided on driving from Milwaukee to Utica IL, about 3 hours drive, as we heard the Utica area around Starved Rock was pretty.

We were back at our RV around 7:30 pm, almost 4 hours after parking in a 2 hour limit parking spot. It was still there, not towed away, no clamps, no tickets. Off to Utica we went in the dark.

Our camp site was Wookey Hollow this time, and looked quite good when we arrived at almost 11:00 pm, but not much more to say about this until we awake in the morning.

2010 USA Tour : April 9th, Sauk City WI

2010-04-13T17:00:00.003+01:00

and we stayed on in Circle Sanctuary for awhile

Waking to the warm morning sun in Circle Sanctuary was quite exhilarating. Selena had given us maps of the property, Claire was sleeping in, so I went to explore the many shrines and ceremony sites around this huge wooded and natural reserve.

I returned to the beautiful stone circle and onto the beautiful dog shrine where there were three large brown deer, but they were gone the moment I touched my camera. I could not stalk them as they were very close to me when I spotted them.

I then took myself down the “secret” pathway from the stone circle to pass many more hidden shrine for different rituals in very hidden places. Quite an adventure.

When Claire arose, she decided to take the same walk for herself which i continued some more blog writing.

About noon, Selena invited us to her house for lunch, another warming experience, again seeing many more birds of different colours from her living room window.

After lunch we shared a sacred visit to a hanging rock, a sacred place of native Americans, and it certainly had a calm and sacred feel. Selena gave us sage for sharing prayers, thoughs and blessings here. It reminded me of the hanging rock of Cheaha Park in Alabama and places in Australia close to the aborigines. The spirit presence and sharing was the same, and certainly enhanced by the warmth and sun of this day.

Alas we had another gig to get to, another one we were looking forward to so we had to leave. Selena returned us to the Circle Sanctuary Barn to show us her store of cds, books and literatures. Then very hard farewells and back on the road, this time to Lodi.

Lodi

Our camp site for the night was Smokey Hollow near Lodi WI . We were here last year and loved it. A peaceful wooded and ornate campsite that is truly a resort with incredible facilities for a camp site such as its beautiful sandy shored lake, optional boats from around the world and games. The resort if full of traditional fames courts, covered wagons, animals, resting places …..

Last year it was settled snow both nights we were here, but for this day and night we enjoyed here in warm sun. Very little was open as we were the only travelling campers though some people were renting cabins, yurts and static trailers.

onto Sauk City

This is largely a re-union of travellers of a tour we served in Ireland three years ago, people who have become close friends since, and they bring their friends along too. Some of the people of the tour could not make it this time, but it was still a wonderful gathering of around 60 people I think. This included three members of the family group Wrannock, of Mike, Lisa and the multi talented young Angus. Wonderful music to kick off the concert.

The venue is a Unitarian Church, a beautiful building. Marita arranged wonderful welcoming reception catering and Bob set up the best sound system we have had on this tour. Simple sound system, but sounded magic. This is a venue that needs PA.

Marita performed a lovely union and chanting song to open the second set that truly set the tone for the rest of the event.

Surprisingly I did not take any photos of this day so I’ll have to share one from last year here

and after show celebration

After the Sauk City show we were led away to a nearby village with a German style pub, I forget the village name and pub, where we enjoyed sharing an “all you can eat” fish fry and drinks with former travellers and friends.

This rounded off another incredible visit to Sauk City. We’ll be back.

2010 USA Tour : April 8th, Circle Sanctuary WI

2010-04-11T14:39:00.002+01:00

Anticipation

Ever since Selena Fox, founder of Circle Sanctuary with husband Dennis, invited us to perform at Circle Sanctuary I have been excited. Claire was starting to get weary of this tour, but I somehow knew this day would be a huge re-charge for her.

Little did I know this was going to be one of the best days of our lives !!! …

finding Circle Sanctuary

Getting to Circle Sanctuary first needed a complete crossing of Iowa state, continuing along the Lewis and Clarke tail road of Route 20 between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Once upon a time this would have been total prairie country but now totally farmed for corn, soya, and maybe some wheat. The day was sunny and warm but this is a tiring landscape to drive in. The horizon is a constant vision of the road you are driving, many miles ahead. This is almost total big sky and yellow stalk country with very few towns and the towns are very, very small, but also neat and well kept.

Waterloo, one of the major towns of Iowa, giving us a little relied with its rolling hills landscape and we had delightful falafel and salads lunch from a very nice Pita sandwiches take out.

Past Waterloo we were back in the standard Iowa farming country and was fairly relieved to reach and cross the Mississippi into hilly and very interesting landscapes of Wisconsin. We left Route 20 which I believe makes its way south east to Chicago. We travelled north east towards Barneveld and through the country lanes to Circle Sanctuary.

first feelings at Circle Sanctuary

First, it was wonderful to arrive with some sun present and some warmth, though it was clouding over fast. It was just after 4:00 pm and we were told Selena would arrive in about 10 minutes. I was eager to explore a bit. Claire was eager for a bit of rest and silence.

In the distance I saw an old blue Volkswagon camper and thought there must be a story to that, so I went toward it to venture. From there I looked down to a large labyrinth. Up the hill path I saw blue birds soaring and climbed to try to get photos. The path intrigued me I kept going up through the woods and found the reserve’s beautiful stone circle full of collections for ceremony and beautiful crystals. Beside this was the very moving cat’s shrine.

A couple of minutes walk turned into a 30 minutes exploring adventure. I realised the others may well be waiting for me, and how rude I was being. No need to worry. As I ran back down the hill my return to the Circle Sanctuary barn timed perfectly with the arrival of Selena.

Selena

From the moment you meet Selena, she is a ball of constantly ignited earth woman fire. The warmest of greetings, as if you are the only people in her life, then straight into her beautiful world. First thing that strikes you, or at least me, is that she looks different the photos on Facebook, her web site etc. To meet her live she seems younger, more vibrant, glowing, smiling. I thought i would address this by taking more photos to somehow capture the “real” Selena, but even I did not feel I succeeded to do this in photo either.

Selena immediately guided Claire and I into some of the sacred components of her vast land, the high totem real may pole, the willows, the arches and her beautiful sacred spring well surrounded by prayer, wishing and blessing trees full of cluties where we also met Reed, her land loving, land caring groundsman. After a quite 30 minute tour we were wisked up to her home where another of her staff had prepared us delicious veggie lasagna and salad. It is here we met Selena’s wonderful calm warm husband Dennis, a lecturer in a local university and a very obvious private support and encouragement for Selena. A wonderful, wonderful couple.

We loved Selena’s cat, forget the name, who is equally friendly and welcoming as Selena and Dennis.

For while, before sitting to eat, we stared out of Selena’s huge living room window looking into the woods and the many bird boxes and feeders, watching the many species of birds soaring around. At one point we were delighted to view six red headed woodpeckers at the same time, chasing each other to established their little territories.

Looking back into Selena’s home, its a delightful collection of sculptures, ceramics and other crafts that celebrate the appreciation of nature and the spirit of nature. Here collection is everywhere on every wall in every room and on every item of furniture.

After a wonderful warming meal and conversation it was time to head back to the Circle Sanctuary barn to prepare for our performance for the evening……

performing in the Circle Sanctuary Barn

This is a lovely traditional country style venue. The barn is restored from about 150 years ago, I believe. It is truly perfect for what Claire and I perform. A wonderful audience turned up, I think around 50 people. Selena said it was the first time they have hosted a Thursday event like this.

Since our arrival the sky was cloudy and air cool, but just before the concert start the sky cleared to serve sun and warmth.

The audience was highly responsive and Claire dared to perform more of her own contemporary songs more than Irish songs, and this was very well received. Great sing alongs to Cockles and Mussels and Danny Boy too. Surprisingly, Claire did not sing any of her arrangements of W.B. Yeats poems to song, and some people did ask me some questions about Yeats after the show, not knowing what beautiful songs Claire has created from these poems. Maybe next time :-)

after the show

Claire and I had planned to drive onto to Lodi, to a campsite called Smokey Hollow, after the show, to stay for 2 nights. Selena easily tempted us to stay the night camped in Circle Sanctuary. It was very peaceful there. We did not want to leave, especially after a wonderful evening too.

2010 USA Tour : April 7th, South Sioux City NE

2010-04-10T16:21:00.002+01:00

back on the freeway and highways

From Paxton it is a continuation of the flat plained, flat field scenery, with freeway straight ahead of us and over the horizon. This can be very difficult driving due to the minimal distractions. Our main distraction was the ice on the road, though once past the town of North Platte all signs of ice and snow were fully gone and the day was warming fast. Our new challenge was the strongest winds yet on this tour, 25 to 30 mph and gusting up to 40 mph.

We were delighted to be off the freeway, past Grand Island and be on Highway 30 then 81 taking us through Nebraska farmland and the small towns that support this world. Route 81 was a special relief as it travels north against the strong winds of this day and made driving a bit easier than the side winds on the freeway.

We stopped off for lunch in the sun in a pleasant park outside Norfolk NE, but then it was soon battling the side winds again on Route 20 into South Sioux City.

Route 20? We were back on the Lewis and Clarke Trail again.

South Sioux City Library

Wonderful to arrive in sun and warmth. Good to see Dan Nieman at the library again.

This turned out to be our most intimate performance. Four people turned up.

We were advised it was a combination of being church day, first good weather for some time and a number of possibilities, but low turnouts like these do happen for reasons really unknown and certainly not caused by unpopularity of the artist and venue.

We carried on the show as for anyone else and the four folks attending did seem to enjoy themselves a lot.

After the show it was off to North Sioux City campground, which we enjoyed last year, where the warm sunny day returned to a bitter cold night, but no snow.

2010 USA Tour : April 6th, Paxton NE

2010-04-09T17:29:00.003+01:00

leaving the Rockies

It was interesting to re-discover that only about half of Colorado is of mountains and the rockies while the other half is wild flat plains, prairies and farms.,

After an early morning walk in the Crystal Lake Park where we were camping during a dry mild morning, it was time to head east to Paxton NE

to Paxton

Its hard to say much about this journey. It was a journey of predictable interstate freeway road and a flat scenery of plains, grazing, some crop fields, barns, a few windmills. The weather was kind so no snow, ice or serious side winds.

A few hours later, we arrived at Paxton. It had become cloudy and much cooler. We drove into Ole’s hospitality empire, and extremely useful and general well kept collection of gas and diesel pumps, well stocked large store with emergency car and truck parts, hardware, food items and meals, a Days Inn motel, extremely well kept, car and truck washing, and an RV campsite.

As we drove into Ole’s it started to rain, cold rain. We looked at the RV campsite by the late, that was not as well kept as we saw it last year. In the “office” we asked for the difference between camping and motel rates, and motel rates were surprisingly low and included breakfast. So it was a night in their motel booked.

5 Trails Winery

Claire and I were not sure was to expect here. The idea of performing in a winery seemed odd as we usually perform best in community theaters, churches and house concerts. Any venue with a “party” image seems removed from us. However, by now we had performed in a downtown San Francisco Cafe late on a Saturday night, and in a micro-brewery, and in a merry Easter drinking bash in Utah – all with incredible success and among our best gigs, so we were sure this gig would be good.

Besides, Claire and I were curious about the wines here …….

Paxton NE is a beautiful traditional small farming town, very Nebraska and very much “western trail” looking. It also looked very similar to the town used in a tv series of long ago called “Heat Of The Night” set in Mississippi.

After seeing the classy sophisticated web site of 5 Trails Winery and their equally classy frontage in this country town our curiosity was truly awaken,

Pat Gamet, the owner and host, arrived minutes later and immediately popped our curiosity by explaining how he was really a Chicago Urban Animal, and the same time as introducing himself and shaking our hands. He then went on to quickly explain how he chose Paxton and set up the winery. Pat has roots near Paxton and his father does not live far away. His goal was to bring a bit of a wider world of urban culture to rural Nebraska, and we soon realise he and his beautiful wife Laurie were doing a stunning job.

Pat and Laurie’s “secret” is that they are enthusiastic and extremely warm hearted people who’s spirit is immediately welcoming and relaxing. Nothing gets in the way of them, but instead of being brutal and bullish, they have an amazing ability to bring “everyone along” with what ever they do. They are simply people you want to be around and enjoy being around.

on with the show

Around 6:30 pm the rain turned to snow and getting heavier. We wondered if this would affect the audience arriving, but Pat said, “this is Nebraska, its part of being here”. About 25 people arrived early anyway, and enjoyed some social time while sharing some bottles of Pat’s wonderful wines. More turned up before the show started. For the first time it looked like the men outnumbered the women present.

I am not a big alcohol drinker and certainly never touch any before a show, but my curiosity for Pat’s wines overcame me. I first tried his Frontenac Blush, and his gold medal Frontenac had run out, but I enjoyed the Blush. Recommended as a light through dinner read wine, this is a remarkable tangy and very fruity wine. I found with this and other 5 Trails wines that you really have to forget all the other wines you have tasted. These are very unique drinks and, apparently, this is the nature of all Nebraska wines. They are not New World Copies of what the French and German have produced for 100s of years.

I only drank a glass before the show and I think Claire waited until after before trying their wares.

I had thought Claire’s performance at Shagri La Tea room was stunning and Portneauf Brewing really close, but Claire really excelled herself on this evening and the audience with with her and encouraging all the way. They loved both original and Irish songs. Cd sales were very brisk!

I do not think I gave the best stories performances, though. My best was well and truly at Shagri La Tea Rooms, but they seemed to go down well.

Overall, the natural acoustics of the 5 Trails Brewery social room was stunning and needed no PA.

This was a super show and a wonderful social craic after. Sadly, because the snow was heavy and settling fast some folks who had far to travel left after the first set to ensure they could get home. Those who lived in the town had a great craic with us after.

Of course we tried more wines. Claire enjoyed the 5 Trails driest wine, a speciality wine I forget the name of. I enjoyed a smooth fragrant apple wine.

With the heavy snow, we were very grateful to have chosen the motel stay for the night instead of RV. Hopefully this was the very last snow of our tour ……

2010 USA Tour : April 5th, Denver CO

2010-04-08T05:29:00.003+01:00

leaving Craig CO

It was a cold cloudy morning, but with none of the expected winter weather.

Before we set off met the owners of the site who were very friendly and also had a wonderful general store there. However, keeping to their high pricing where all camp sites so far offer free morning coffee, there’s was a dollar a cup. Then we needed to fill up with LPG gas and their price for that was 30% more than we had paid before. On their side, they seem to have very little RV trade so I can understand their high pricing is to ensure they can afford to stay in business. However, I wonder if their pricing is scaring campers away. Only they could really know that.

It was good to be on the road, back on the wild Route 40 along the side of the Williams Fork mountains and through some more small stage coach stop style tiny towns. Shortly the sky was blue, sun out and the day warm.

Steamboat Springs and beyond

First thing we discovered, as we entered Steamboat Springs, was the RV campsite I had booked, then the manager cancelled, was actually open and quite busy. It is a beautiful campsite in woods and by the river. We groaned.

Add to that the outstanding beauty of the Steamboat Springs town. We would have loved to have spent some time here. Steamboat Springs seems to be both gateway to the Rockies ski resorts towards Denver as well as the pioneering trail of Route 40 we had just been on. The wild west architecture here is at its best and the novelty of the small shops and entertainment is all very luring. Add to that the stunning landscapes around it. There is also a very active free bus service to get everyone around. We would have had quite a ball staying overnight here.

Beyond Steamboat Springs the wild west scenes and small towns stop and are replaced by modern ski resorts that became more frequent as we became closer to Denver. Driving also changes from empty “easy rider” style plains, desert, wild red and yellow rocks to quite busy mountain roads that twist and turn up and down the forested rockies mountains including many hairpin bends and absolutely no pull-ins for taking photos. Shame we could not stop and take more of this in as these mountains are extremely beautiful.

into Denver

As with any large USA city, once you are within 50 miles of it, the traffic is abundant and often gridlocked. With Denver, approaching from the west, this is so true, while also still driving sweeping bends and up and down steep Rockies roads, on a 6 lane highway.

I have heard that Denver is always a young town and this was well established by the driving. In Ireland we have a fear of the “boy racers”, affluent young men in highly paid professional jobs who pour all of their money in zooped up cars and terrorise the roads at the weekend with their high speed and daring jinx while full of drugs and alcohol. They cause about 75% of Ireland’s road deaths. We soon discovered Denver has a large breed of their own, and Claire pointed out that it seemed to be two “girl racers” for every “boy racer”. We had a few narrow escapes from their tail gating, zipping across the front of us to turn right, racing to block gaps and blocking our way if we wanted to make a turn, absolute zero courtesy with their driving.

It was a delight to get into old down town Denver, one of the nicest downtowns we have visited, but watch out for the boy and girl racers who all totally ignore all stop signs and red lights. Note sure what is worse now, these “racers” or the deer suddenly jumping in the road. I think I’ll have the deer.

The wonderful, wonderful Moondance Botanicals

Lovely location and easy parking, and then you walk into the Moondance Botanicals store, to an other world experience of nature dreamtime.

We knew right away this was a perfect fitting venue for what Claire and I do, especially Claire who is very much a star and perfect light for stunning venues like these.

Claire and I performed two shows as more people that can fit the room had booked to come. We had never done two shows one after another so it was a strange experience. Claire did perform a different selection of songs and tunes for each show. During the second set she performed the Connemara Cradle Song beautifully, a song I had never seen her perform live.

Tonja of Moodance Botanicals started each show with a beautiful introduction.

The audience and ourselves enjoyed exploring the inspired botanical products, in the store, for all life’s experiences.

This was a wonderful show for meeting Facebook friends, one of the best shows for Facebook friends actually turning up. I have discovered that Facebook is wonderful for co-ordinating the creation of events, but for getting people along the old ways are best, phoning up friends and inviting them, and asking them to bring friends, and maybe sending emails with links to info too.

then off to camp

Our camping for the night was in the beautiful and well run Crystal Lake State Park, a beautiful large oasis on nature within Denver’s urban landscape.

2010 USA Tour : April 4th, Craig CO

2010-04-07T01:39:00.003+01:00

Along the beautiful Route 40

When we awoke around 9:00 am we were surrounded by deep blizzard snow. As we had no performance on this coming evening, its was back to hibernation for awhile.

When we eventually rose around 11:00 am it was warm to hot sun and snow almost melted, so it was an appropriate time to commence our travels. Today, our entire journey was along the route 40 that we would stick to all the way to outside Denver the following day.

I had driven Route 40 many years ago and it is still one of the last remaining highways of the USA that is still truly an “Easy Rider” type wild west adventure as it meanders over wild grass prairies, around winding passes of unique wild worn red and yellow rock mountains, just like in the westerns movies. We also drove through small town with wide streets, tumbleweed rolling, wood built porch path buildings that have barely changed for 150 years and even a Wells Fargo bank in every small town still in buildings where you would expect the stage coach to still stop by. Sometimes we passed small communities still with livery stables, that I presume were still there to change horses for the passing stage coaches.

A bit of modern reminder came to us as we passed a Greyhound bus, I assume coming from Denver, taking this back route, with its destination board stating “San Francisco”.

We stopped for lunch at a wildlife sanctuary ….

Ouray National Wildlife Refuge

After a beautiful time at the bird sanctuary the day before we wondered if we could repeat the experience again. Indeed, the day had become sunny again, though perhaps not as warm. Again, this was a detour involving many miles of dirt track, though much better kept than at the bird sanctuary.

We enjoyed lunch by a lake with some birds, and beautiful grasses. There was a lookout tower but from there could not see any wildlife. The notice board mentioned we should see mule deer, elk, antelope, maybe coyotes, and porcupines.

After lunch we continued around the refuge’s mapped out dirt tracks, only to find most of them had been shut off from the public.

Though we saw vast amounts of wildlife excrement, especially near notice boards for hunters, probably to find out where they will be so they could be somewhere else, we saw no mammal wild life. Overall, except for a few coots and a couple of geese we saw no other wildlife, so after being a little disappointed yet loving the sojourn in the wild quiet, it was back onto Route 40.

Dinosaur Park

Further west, after passing the beautiful olde west town of Vernal, we were in site of the spectacular Dinosaur Park, a national monument park, and thought we may have better luck with sightings.

Dinosaur Park is vast, spreading over eastern Utah and into western Colorado. It has very unique vast rock formations in all kinds of colours, rich oxide red, yellows, pure whites, greens and a bit of the regular dark browns and greys. Many of them roll to look like rows of scales on the backs of dinosaurs.

It does have a network of roads for exploring, but its road entrance from Jenson UT was closed with a road barrier, so we tried again from the entrance in the small town of Dinosaur CO.

From the Dinosaur town entrance the road was only open for 5 miles, but along just those 5 miles is some of the most stunning scenery within the USA. The rock formations and views are awesome. Of course, photos were taken.

onto Craig CO

After a lovely warm sunny day after leaving the drifted snow of Park City the sky looked threatening again, so we aimed to get to Craig before dark in case we hit night time blizzards again. We still had over 100 miles to travel and the scenery remained wild, rugged and excited and we passed through some more small stagecoach stop type towns. As the sun was setting we saw several herds of mule deer, many of them crossing the road in front of us, so cautious driving indeed. On the side of the road was a stag of beautiful colours, almost oxide red back, some spots of the same colour and the rest of him white. I’ll have to look this up but I imagine he was a reindeer? I have photos and video clip.

Craig turned out to be very different to the other beautiful small towns we passed through. This was a regular, modern, franchise abundant USA town.

We arrived at the Craig RV park just before dark, and it was a bit of a disappointment. The office was closed so it was self registration. This was a former KOA camp site and KOA sites we have stayed in so far have been among the best. There was nothing special about this site at all, but I will not described more. We were more horrified to read their nightly rates, about 30% more than a KOA site. Claire suggested we go back into town and rent a Days Inn, Hampton’s or similar room for the same money. I was tired and did not want to bother to move now. However, when I went to do laundry and found how much they charge for that, I wished I had agreed with Claire’s suggestion.

I had booked us into the RV Park at Steamboat Springs, about 40 miles further on, but the owner cancelled my booking, saying that he was delaying opening up until mid April. Shame.

The bad weather did not arrive though, but the air got cool. We were grateful for not having to perform this evening.

The wi-fi worked here ok and I discovered the weather forecast for the rest of the tour was sunny and warm for the next 10 days in all the places we are going to. We cheered!!

( I wrote this two days later in Nebraska ….. during heavy rainfall :-) )

2010 USA Tour : April 3rd, Salt Lake City

2010-04-06T17:10:00.003+01:00

from snow blizzards to almost tropics

Woke up to freezing cold, icicles, icy road, snow, rolled over, went back to sleep again.

Eventually got on the road just before noon and conditions got worse heading south. More snow, more blizzarding and stronger winds as we drove south towards Pocatello, then at extreme worst as we climbed into the mountain pass south of this city.

Then, on the other side of the pass, blue sky, beaming sun and a lot, lot more warmth !!!

The drive south towards Salt Lake City suddenly became a joy with the warm sun bringing out the colours of the wild plains shadowed by the high snow capped mountains.

By 3:00 pm we were truly ready for lunch so I suggested we visited the Bear River bird sanctuary on the north east of the huge Great Salt Lake, well north of Salt Lake City. We had lunch at the visitor’s centre car park, with great views, but Claire was sceptical of the 12 miles of dirt track road to the sanctuary and then another 12 miles going around the sanctuary.

At first the 12 miles dirt track was tough going and it seemed like it could be a waste of time with very few birds present, but the actual sanctuary was a stunning experience and Claire was so thrilled we made the effort to experience this. The surprise warm sunny weather certainly enhanced the whole experience.

Bear River Bird Sanctuary

The 12 mile circular dirt track at the sanctuary is a dirt causeway in the Great Lake itself. In the north west of the lake its a bit like the Florida Everglades that can be one moment all deep water and then drained into a unique marshy eco system. It was marshy when we visited. The guide says that over 200 species of birds are here. We certainly saw many species in abundance.

The most striking were the tall cranes, the beautiful white with yellow beak pelicans, the various wild geese, grebes, and the amusing coots who find it hard to take off and fly. They accelerate themselves by skimming their feet over the top of the water, looking as if they are running on water, until there is enough under air to lift them. We also saw a big brown skunk, surprisingly quite tame and curious, but watch that tail lifting! Claire also saw a yellow headed weasel pop out of a hole and run.

Such a beautiful experience was hard to leave. We wished we could be all day there, but the upcoming Salt Lake City concert was calling for us to attend and perform.

Salt Lake City concert

Salt Lake City is still one of the most beautiful cities of the USA. Driving through was a bit of memory lane for me, as I lived and worked in Utah for a year around 1990. There were additional new buildings and a very nice useful light railway system since I was there, but the stunning individual architecture of its state buildings, churches and houses still stood out grand. Its a very easy city to drive around too.

Our venue was a large house of the Walsh’s, high up looking over the city. A few years ago I was tour guide and arranged of a Walsh family reunion in Ireland.

When we arrived just before 6:00 pm, 60 people had already turned up and enjoying a lovely appetiser feast prepared by Kathy Walsh. It also seemed like the entire Utah inventory of alcohol was here too, which the early arrivers were already enjoying. If you are not familiar with Utah, Google the words Utah and alcohol to see what comes up.

The noise and laughter of very jolly well fed and well refreshed people made Claire and I wonder if we were suitable for this event. It seemed like the people were ready for wild fun, and what we serve is calm dreamtime fun.

There was no need to worry. As soon as everyone knew it was time for the concert all sat down and around us with complete attention, anticipation and timely engaging participation. This was a perfect audience for us !!! Claire also threw in “Journey Of The Wandering Aengus”, a song of the W.B. Yeats poem, that she rarely performs live, and then only to specific arts and poetry audiences, but these folks love it.

After the first set, something unusual happened. Kathy and Kevin and set this to be dinner time. They had rented a marquee tent for the meal catering. When the Walsh’s were on tour with us, Cathy motivated and arranged some amazing lunch picnics. Talk of her meal catering among this was legendary. Now we were to experience the legend ………

I then thought that a long dinner break would kill of any chance of gathering the folks back together for a second set. How I was wrong. Soon as they knew we were back on it was full attention, support and participation again for a second set that was even far better than the first.

After the second set it was time for dessert, from a wide selection, again prepared by Cathy. Kevin has also set up a remarkable Irish Coffee making station that was very popular.

It did not end there!

A singer guitarist Jim and fiddle player also called Cathy, I think, started up some tunes, both Irish and bluegrass. Eventually Claire joined in on harp, who always says she does not like playing in sessions, and Jim started signing a great selection of songs accompanied by his guitar, fiddle and harp. He sounds like Steve Martin on his recent excellent cd. Steve Martin is a terrific singer and music performer too. Claire then get everyone into Wild Mountain Thyme and Salley Gardens, and everyone finished with a rousing joint chorus “Parting Glass”.

What an evening, what an audience, what a ceili!

This all went on until about 1:30 am and then we left for our camp site, which should have been 30 minutes away in Park City. As we set off the snow sprinkled then got thicker and thicker into a blustering an blinding blizzard within minutes. Our driving was down to a 10 or 20 mph crawl as it was hard to see the road. After almost two hours we literally skidded into our camp site, surprisingly found the electric and water connections under the snow, now a good foot deep, surprising to have water especially, then hibernated as soon as possible ………

2010 USA Tour : April 2nd, South Yellowstone WY

2010-04-05T16:51:00.002+01:00

will we won’t we?

Claire was set for a Good Friday in bed, but as the heavy snow was fast melting due to a gorgeous warm sunny morning I was up early and ready for action.

About 2:00 pm Claire was up and fancied a drive out too, so we were on the road heading towards Wyoming.

how far?

We reached a rest area at a place called Helse, I think, which was the start of being into the wooded mountains and by the Snake River that would lead us towards Yellowstone. The sun was out, it was warm, though snow underfoot had drifted to a couple of feet, so we decided to go as far as Swan Valley and decide from there.

Swan Valley, a real cowboy like “change the horses” kind of place gave a choice of two directions. One said scenic route, also with flashing lights saying it was not passable. I suggested to Claire we take that one, and despite her face going white with a bit of fear of the idea, that was the way we went.

The road climbed and climbed through the mountain valley getting more beautiful as we travelled. No sign of blocked road. Indeed it was well cleared and gritted by snow ploughs. At the highest point, the Wyoming state line, we stopped for a very late lunch.

A snow plough appeared and the driver advised us to turn around and go back as a fierce storm was coming. I was not happy about being kept out of Wyoming so I asked Claire if it was alright for us to take a chance and keep going.

Over the Wyoming border the road descended into some warm sunshine and we saw the storm developing behind us. Our timing worked well.

After some beautiful touring around the Targhee and Teton national forests and parks, also known as South Yellowstone, time had run out, so we never made it to central Yellowstone Park.

We stopped off at Jackson Hole, the beautiful gateway town to Yellowstone. I say beautiful as it is one of the few USA towns I have visited where there was an extreme effort to match and merge the buildings into the landscape. We needed supplies so we visited the Albertson’s supermarket there which is the most beautiful supermarket I have ever seen. Beautiful and supermarket in the same sentence seems quite extraordinary.

The selection of foods, nutritious and healthy foods, was the most stunning I have seen in a supermarket, and great prices too. Add to that, the most amazing, helpful friendly staff I have ever met in a supermarket too.

return to camp

We returned to Idaho Springs from Jackson along Route 26, initially because it was the most straightforward and easiest route. Little did we know this was the best to come for the whole day.

The road follows the Snake River, along its most stunning of scenes, wild bubbling rapids, emerald and olive green waters, beautiful trees and grasses beside it and even icebergs floating along it. Beside this were some real wild west ranches, fully dressed up cowboys with the hats, long coats and twirling ropes moving around truly fat horned “steers”. We also saw mustang horses watering by the river, I assume tamed, but still looked wild and graceful with their long swishing manes.

Then Snake River moved into Jackson Lake, a surreal blanket mass of frozen lake covered with a foot or more of snow.

After passing the source of the lake it was almost dark, and now a time to see a lot of deer and antelope, often crossing the road in front of us. There were flashing signs warning of us of Moose ahead, but we saw none of those. We were also told there was a lot of buffalo around where we drove, but alas we saw non of those either.

Overall, it was a very satisfying and awesome tourist Good Friday day, a wonderful taste of South Yellowstone, a wee bit of Wyoming cowboyism, and finishing with a meal of wonderful tastes of foods from one of the most beautiful supermarkets in the world.

2010 USA Tour : April 1st, Pocatello ID

2010-04-04T17:22:00.002+01:00

detour to the moon

When we set off from Boise, it was misty and threatening with snow falls, but I just did not want our Idaho experience to be just its I84 and I86 freeways. I had already found the previous day’s drive of total interstate very tedious. Claire loves interstate driving due to the ease and speed of getting to places. As she was tired today the interstate with no detours was very attractive.

I looked over to the mountains and wishing to set a course for them, but also worried that such a course would land us in snow storm and trouble getting to the gig.

As we passed a town called Mountain Home this was a junction with Route 20 that would have taken us to the mountains, but it still looked threatening over there. We kept going along the freeway to Gooding, and suddenly the sky was blue and the ice capped mountains looked stunningly beautiful. Claire was driving and I hastily asked, “please Claire lets take Route 26 to the mountains”.

At first, I do not think she was happy with the detour, but I had done a quick flick through Google Maps to find the detour was only 20 miles and 30 minutes different to going the freeway route. Route 26 is a 65 miles and hour speed limit route and very quiet, hardly any traffic. When Claire settled into this I think she actually thought this was a good choice as it did bring us closer to the Idaho countryside and its quaint wide street wild west towns that i feel could be used for western movie sets just as they are.

The highlight of this detour is a mountain pass after the tiny town of Corey that rises up into a plateau known as “Craters Of The Moon” that stretches about 30 miles. There was a lot of snow this high up but the highway was totally clear of snow and ice and still a very easy drive.

The scenery was magnificent, miles of lava rock formed into wondrous shapes from four small volcanoes. There was a sign telling the story of how difficult it was for the west travelling pioneers with their covered wagons.

We stopped for lunch by the visitor’s centre by the volcano mounds. The ranger there seemed to be pleased to see someone to break up his day.

battling all weathers to Pocatello

After lunch it was my turn to drive. The blue sky and sun vanished to present us with a snow storm that took away most visibility for many miles. Claire fell asleep for a couple of hours, which was well needed and extremely benefited the show later, as you will read.

The road passed out of the mountains and back onto plains. I had heard many antelope roamed here and it was almost certain that we would see some. Maybe it was due to poor visibility caused by the heavy snow, but I saw none.

After arriving on the freeway I15 and Blackfoot, heading to Pocatello, the snow quickly stopped to be replaced again by blue sky, sun, beautiful winds, and the strongest wind gusts of this tour. I suddenly found the RV extremely difficult to drive. Pocatello was not far away, though, about 20 miles, and we did reach the town safely.

Portneuf Valley Brewing

This venue gave us the most wonderful experience that neither Claire or I expected! The building is very 19^th century industrial in a very olde world industrial warehousing part of town by the railhead.

The brewery is very old world and brought back child memories of the family brewery of the time. My father’s mother and sisters inherited Bulldog Beers in London. After World War Two, my father was at a loose end, deciding he would somehow return to the family tradition of natural healing rather than be the doctor he had qualified to become. His future was actually quite different, but he did work part time at the brewery while taking on further studies. We had homes in Hertfordshire and Yorkshire at the time and I remember being in Hertfordshire and taken off to the brewery, a building that looked like this in Pocatello, but instead of a railhead the beer was loaded onto barge boats in the canal. I also remember stories that the second Arthur Guinness, who finally launched the famous brew, actually introduced it to Bulldog first as an employee there and they released it as a limited special brew before he came to re-launch it in Ireland.

When we arrived we took the harp up an old ramp and then into a lift to a higher entertainment floor, the lift being worked by a combination of pulling cables and pressing buttons. The stage and entertainment area was like a small Vicar Street club in Dublin. Perfect!

We met Penny Pink, the brewer, in the middle of dumping spent mash after a day’s brewing session. Wonderful woman with a wonderful story of how her micro brewing company was created and is today an incredible success.

Before the concert, I joined Bill Connell and family for dinner in the pub section. Wow! What meals they serve here. The menu gives options of small or large plate. I went for small plate and it was huge! Claire skipped the meal to tune up and have some quiet time. She likes to eat after a performance.

concert in the brewery

Absolutely wonderful! I think Claire performed the best so far on this tour, and i though the night before at Shangri La was stunning. Nice sound system here that really suited her voice and made the harp sound great too.

Yes, it was like Vicar Street, Dublin. The atmosphere and support of the audience was similar. This place sort of made us feel like “stars”. Lots of thanks to Bill Connell, who I met on the Frommer’s tourism web site, who set this gig up, with the help of his family, in very short notice after we had been dropped from an Idaho Falls gig.

I cannot really highlight a top song from Claire on this day as every one was top.

After the show we travelled an hour to Idaho Falls to be ready for a day off on Good Friday, to explore. However, the drive home was through blizzarding snow, so at this point it seemed like Good Friday will be a total lay in Friday.

2010 USA Tour : March 31st, Boise ID

2010-04-03T09:56:00.002+01:00

From Hot Lake into the Idaho prairies

Before leaving Eagle’s Hot Lake we had to investigate the nearby steaming hot lake.

It is beside an old hotel currently being restored. The lake seems to be heated by sulphur, as sulphur smells are strong, and the water is of the temperature of a hot bath. Before getting to the lake, you have to pass through its aggressive guarding geese who aim straight for nipping the toes. Have food ready for them and they are quickly your friends …. then pests.

As we set off from Eagles Hot Lake it was very cold, misty and barely any view of the mountains. However, 20 miles along the road and we entered into warm sun and scenic clarity.

I had expected a mountain drive to Boise, but along the I84 it was a continual prairie journey, largely straight freeway always heading deep into the horizon. I find that type of road very difficult to drive. I can get bored and sleepy very quickly. Claire handles that far, far better than myself, as she finds winding and mountain roads hard to drive, but I thrive on and love those.

Apart from that I cannot write more about this route as I slept through much of it and Claire did do most of the chunk of the driving.

into Boise

I had huge expectations for this town as so many folks have told me how they loved being here, how beautiful it is, and how Boise would truly be my kind of town. Therefore when we were approaching, several miles before, into busy traffic, multi lane highway and the bombardment of the usual chains I began to wonder.

We were early so off to the RV park first to register as it was only a mile away from the Shangri La Tea Room. The RV park was modern, RVs close together but brimming with facilities, and lots of notices asking us to take care of them. It was a wonderful sojourn to shower, change and be our best for Shangri La.

Onto the Shangri La Tea Room

Using our trusty sat-nav (gps) we manoevered through some Boise streets until it said we had arrived. The building we had arrived at looked like a formal government building for taxes or welfare, so I hastily checked to see if I had punched in the right address.

If I had walked a few yards more I would have seen the Shangri La sign.

The moment I walked in it was the veil into another world, a very warm greeting from Toni amidst a beautiful peaceful sanctuary of coloured veils, teapots, packs of teas and their various aromas. This was truly of the Shangri La tradition as when we first arrived ….. we did not see it.

After being there we grew to understand the wonder of what this place was about. Its location was the best it could be, wonderful views of the mountains, in a quiet non-distracting place and supported by a very large useful car park.

Toni insisted we had something to eat first, and their menu is remarkable. It is all vegetarian and vegan and extremely imaginative. I had their wild mushroom miso and a salad and Claire had one of their pasta dishes. We both shared an amazing plate of their home made delicious nachos and salsa. Reading that sounds like from a common menu, but the actual food and its orchestration of tastes I fail to truly describe here.

Then, of course, the tea. I had been told to try one of their own tea blends and I think mine was called “Spicy Mandarin” which was said to be wonderful to enhance breathing and i thought that would be wonderful before performing. Claire enjoyed their Keemun tea.

Tea served here is a ritual and there are egg timers on each table to encourage folks to sit awhile and truly let their tea brew. Each tea pot is served on a ring of hearts with lighted tea candles in the middle. The blended tea is served in glass tea pots so the brewing process and its changing rainbow forming and dispersing colours can be watched.

As we enjoyed the relaxing with our food and teas Bob arrived, and like Toni is instantly warming with welcome.

Also the people arriving grew and grew. It was a large turnout for the tea room this evening. I think about 60 people arrived. The food and tea had given me quite a lift. I was glowing. I think Claire was too as she served one of the best, if not the best so far, performance on this tour. I do not remember a song highlight from this evening as it was all good. I think Sitting In A Green Field was exceptional. The audience was with this show all the way. A young girl even joined Claire with a beautiful Irish dance. The same girl also wrote us a beautiful poem and drawing to take away with us. The Tea Room also had a wonderful stage covered with a Persian rug.

hard to leave

Its always far too brief when we arrive, perform and leave. Farewells are always hard, but this time it was quite painful. We both became very attached to Shangri La Tea Room, Boise and to Toni and Bob as this was truly and expression of themselves, how they think, feel and live.

Their tradition of tea had quite an impact on us as it must have done with so many people. They arrived some years ago into this very conservative town. One by one people discovered that what Toni and Bob offered was the sanctuary they needed and now they have an incredible network of regular customer friends who jointly carry a remarkable uplifting spirit that a network such as this has grown to become.

Toni and Bob’s work reminded me of the early days of “mystical” Glastonbury in the late 60s that started with a small vegetarian cafe, but that is another story :-)

2010 USA Tour : March 30th, La Grande OR

2010-04-02T19:21:00.003+01:00

first day into the Rockies

No gig tonight so the intent of the day is to cover a good distance between Yamhill and Boise ID, where our next event will be. Our destination is La Grande. in fact it’s a place called Eagles Hot Lake a couple of miles, or so, beyond La Grande town.

This is really an almost whole day motoring along the N84 so I think this is going to be a short blog.

Before we set off on the I84 we just had to try out one of the “coffee shacks” that seems to be a tradition of Oregon. These are often garden sheds re-designed to look a bit fairy story bookish. Inside each of these is a state of the art coffee making espresso machine accompanied by a menu of at least 50 type of coffees they can prepare !!! Claire settled for a 2 shot Americano and I had a Reese’s Peanut Butter Latte. Use your imagination with my one, which was surprisingly not too sweet or salty. Believe me, coffee, chocolate and peanut butter go together very well in a drink :-)

The N84 is a modern freeway replacement for a historic Route 30, just as I40 is the modern replacement for Route 66. Route 30 was a highway from Atlantic City in the east to meet Route 101 at Astoria, Oregon, just 5 miles before the Pacific Coast. A lot of this seems to follow close to the route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which established the first large scale friendly trading with first nations and opened a corridor for the white population to head and settle west.

Along the Columbia River, east of Portland, the tourism around both Lewis and Clark and Route 30 is abundant, and so is the dramatic mountain and waterfall scenery.

We stopped at a rest area for lunch to a welcoming of Oregon squirrels running down the banks of the woods to see what we had to eat. Unlike regular squirrels these ones did not hope, jump and move around as if they are highly strung, but ran like a mouse or rat. Of course all are in the same family. Perhaps they were introduced to this rest stop to symbolise the Priarie Dogs, that look similar, and are in the Lewis and Clark journals. These squirrels were so gentle as their hands held our hands to eat from them, or they would take something at eat it slowly and carefully while standing on their hind legs.

The landscape from there slowly changed from mountain to prairie and remained prairie for 100 miles or so, with a surrounding of snow capped mountains all around us. Beside us were frequent passings of bright yellow Union Pacific railway freight trains. The weather also broke from cloud to very welcoming warm sun as we crossed this prairie. Alas, no sightings of its wildlife of antelope and mustangs.

Eagles Hot Lake

It was just getting dark with the full moon rising as we arrived here towards the north east of Oregon. Still surrounded by snow capped mountains, that seemed a bit closer, this camp site was quite unique.

Basic spacious sites, no protection from elements but with full facilities and hosted by an eccentric but friendly and helpful barefoot lady. The site was full of pools, apparently for bass fishing, but we did not try. I thought of investigating the Hot Lake steaming in the distance but the night air was chilling well below freezing fast. Time to get in, lock up and get under the covers to keep warm for the night.

2010 USA Tour : March 29th, Yamhill OR

2010-04-01T17:43:00.004+01:00

storm or no storm

After a night of heavy rain and strong winds the morning was still, it had stopped raining and the sun was trying to peak through. I went for a walk by the river in the state park of the campsite. The river was flowing fast, red from the stirred mud and many fallen redwood logs floating along. Some of them had birds sitting on them floating along for the ride.

Before leaving we had to visit Bullard’s Beach itself which had quite a haunting beauty in this rough weather. There was a quaint 19^th century lighthouse on the headland and a lovely beach that was littered with trunks and branches of redwoods carried ashore in storms. This would be a wood carver’s paradise here, all this free quality lumber for the taking.

So, we set off up the 101 coast road north. Unlike the previous day the road was a little urban with frequent small towns with the trimmings of modern franchise eateries along with motels and RV campsites competing for business.

Eventually, past Florence, the road reached the rugged and more isolated Oregon coastline. Fortunately, though the sea was roaring and waves high the wind on the road was light so driving was easy. The sun was also out and it was much warmer. We believed this was the setting for another wonderful day.

Claire was in the mood for coffee and cafe lunch so we stopped off at a lovely restored olde world cafe in Yochats.

Before going in I thought I had better get online as I had not done for almost 2 days. There was usually a few inquiries about upcoming gigs. This time I was received with emails form folks who were coming to our Yamhill OR event but claimed the weather was impossible to travel in, and they could not believe we could be able to travel in it either. As I was reading this during some warm sunshine I was confused about what these folks were writing about. Did we really have this awful weather, they spoke of, to greet us or were these folks over reacting.

This concerned us because getting to Portland was the reason our tour was extended from 3 to 5 weeks as almost 30 people had written to us to ask us to come to Portland to perform. We took the chance knowing the long extra drive was a challenge on the tour budget but the adventure was calling. We did have a Portland venue but the host of this dropped out and we could not find anyone with an alternative, hence the choice of Yamhill.

Anyway, after some online work we went into the charming cafe for some stunning seafood and very stunning coffee, their own labelled brand. The owner asked about why we were passing and we talked about the tour. The owner then begged us to stay on for the evening to perform at her place as there was a good audience coming. After reading the “can’t travel” emails earlier it was tempting, but we had a loyalty to our host Ronica for the evening so we turned down the offer. I’m glad we did, for now ….. as you will read.

concert in Yamhill

Reaching Lincoln on the Oregon coast we stopped for a break by the shore for a symbolic farewell as this was the furthest North West of USA we were to travel. From that moment on it was the start of our journey east and journey home.

From Lincoln we took the road east towards Yamhill across very different countryside, tame, very fertile, and abundant with grape vines of the wineries along with fields of several other crops.

Yamhill is a beautiful small rural town like something out of Little House On The Prairie. We immediately loved being there.

The venue, the Christian Church, was a dream. We received a warm and very helpful welcome from intern curator Aran who carried the harp and set up a wonderful sound system on the church stage. At this point it was still warm and dry outside

Ronica and family then turned up, a smiling and delightful family group that truly revealed the homely humble good living, good neighbour spirit of Yamhill.

Charlene and Quinn then turned up, having travelled 5 hours from an Ireland in the Seattle Sound to completely fictionalize the “no go, no travel” emails received earlier. However, when they turned up the heavy rain did fall again.

Yes, it was a small audience, about 25 people, but a wonderful, wonderful audience of many ages and mainly young. Overall it was so warming to be in a beautiful church with such beautiful people. There was a lot of love there.

For some reason both Claire and I gave weaker performances compared to the rest of our tour, I think through tiredness from a sequence of long drives, but the audience did not know any different and they still loved and treasured the evening

One man there, I believe was called Goldman, but I’ll have to check on it, a luthier and maker of all kinds of string instruments, also arranges gigs up the Pacific North West. He loved what Claire performed and said there were many, many venues suitable from San Francisco to Seattle and urged we consider a future tour just of those. I think we will :-)

to Chapoeg and bed

Champoeg State Park was our overnight destination, another superb Oregon State Park. Not as well wooded as Bullard’s Beach but still wide spacing, privacy, wide spacing and incredible facilities, all at a very low price. This completed another wonderful day on our tour, and good dreams for the days to come.

2010 USA Tour : March 28th, Bandon OR

2010-04-01T16:32:00.002+01:00

travelling along rugged coast

A long travelling day with no performance at the end, so this was a day for us to be tourists, even if we were rushed tourists.

It was refreshing to waken to a warm sunny morning in the redwoods of Olema. As we approached the shore the distant clouds told us a different weather story was on the way, so we departed on our journey early to get the best of this.

Our journey today started on the winding coast and cliff hugging Route 1. This is a continuation of the wonderful and famous Pacific Highway Route One from Pismo Beach to San Francisco through Big Sur, Carmel and Monterey. North of San Francisco Route 1 is much more rugged and twisting and was a sheer delight to experience and explore as best we could in little time. This road skimmed beautiful isolated full of nature floral beaches, and rose up cliffs to wind its road through the edges, and sometimes the road cut through cliff tunnels.

Sometimes the road would pass through a small beautiful fishing village, and all these seemed to feature the arts as much as fishing. Claire and I discovered many venues along this route hosting songs, stories and music much in the genre of what we do. This started us discussing a San Francisco to Seattle coast tour in the future with little travelling between each gig.

We stopped at a delightful coffee shop in one of the villages, and wish I could remember the name of it, coffee shop and village, as the coffee was super superb and the home made shortbread the very best ever. The cafe had a policy of no wi-fi, no tv, no piped music ….. therefore it was a very chatty cafe, very full and lots of table debates on politics, arts, writings and saving the planet. I think this said something about this area. Also, I was the only man without a beard, though I had not shaved that morning.

and through giant redwoods

Though there were small tall redwood bunches on Route 1, it was not until this road bended east to meet Route 101 that the famous redwoods came into view. Also this was the time that the looming wet stormy weather arrived on the shore, which seemed very fitting for the redwood experience. Alas, the heavy rain made taking photos of these wonderful giants very difficult as the camera and lens was soaked in a second or two. It was tough taking good upward photos.

Despite the wind and heavy rain downfall it was a delight to travel a hundred miles or much more through the forests of these oxygen abundant giants, so tall and so wide, with some of them carved for cars to drive through.

The redwoods were broken up by the large surfing and sea vacation town of Eureka. North of Eureka it seemed liked endless RV parks, casinos, eateries and trimmings for neon style eat and play vacations. Sometimes the road would quieten down to take us through more redwood forests, especially after we crossed the Oregon line, but not as abundant as before Eureka.

arriving at Bullards Beach, north of Bandon OR

It was dark, stormy, but not raining so hard, as we entered the forested state park towards our camp site for the night, quite late, 10:30 pm, as we had stopped many times through this 14 hour travelling day of outstanding Pacific North West beauty. Even in the dark, with the moon slipping through breaks in the cloud, we discovered this was a remarkable state park camp ground. Each RV parking sight had its own tall hedge alcove well away from the next RV. Not only was this wonderful privacy but peace of mind of protection from the forecast of storm winds and rain for the night. Claire and I did end up in a long peaceful sleep, put to sleep by the pitter patter of rain on the roof. It was not cold.

2010 USA Tour : March 27th, San Francisco

2010-03-31T17:11:00.003+01:00

Waking up in El Capitan’s

I believe we woke to a vacationer’s dream. Warm sunshine, the calling of tropical birds and the relaxing caressing sound of crashing waves on a sandy shore.

Claire and I were up early to enjoy a short vacation moment before our day’s travel. We skipped down the flowers and herbs rich path down to the cliff steps and down to the fairly remote golden sand beach to walk the shoreline a little and enjoy our arrival at the Pacific coast. We celebrate having truly travelled coast to coast from Florida beaches and California beaches.

Alas, we realised our time here had to be short due to a long drive to San Francisco.

to San Francisco

Being such a lovely sunny and clear day I would have loved to have driven the stunning and legendary Route 1 Pacific Highway through Big Sur, featured in so many movies. We did drive this during a tour three years ago but just did not have the time for the route this year. Instead we drove route 101, a compromise instead of the relatively boring I5.

This took us through beautiful green rolling hills and past several fascinating California wineries, the USA name for vineyards, that hosted label names we were familiar with but now forget to repeat here. The wineries led into very fertile lands growing all kinds of crops in abundance such as strawberries, cabbages, broccoli, corn, and various beans. Very little coffee. I remember driving California 10 or 12 years ago and seeing lots of coffee plantations, but not now.

Our lunch stop was fascinating among big cactus just coming out in flower with lizards and salamanders darting in and out of them alternating between curiosity and shade.

Like Los Angeles, it seems San Francisco’s commuter belt stretches 100 miles beyond the centre because, again, that where traffic flow quickly turned from an empty “Easy Rider” style “lonely road” road trip to multi lane congested highway. As we approached the hilly city and steps of houses Claire and I were quickly excited about being here.

Entering the city from the ramp on the freeway was daunting as I was anticipating some difficult driving. No need to worry as I quickly discovered that drivers of San Francisco are mainly incredibly courteous and patient, which must be very unique for a USA city. This must be due to a realization that everyone is in the same situation, trying to not only get around the narrow hilly roads but also having to dodge around and flow with the multitude of trams and trolleybuses.

San Francisco is all you see on the movies and more. The charm and beauty of this city is indescribable. Alas, our visit here was far, far, far too short.

The only, and expected, challenge is to find somewhere to park, especially with an RV that probably should not be in the city anyway.

The Melt Cafe

When Claire and I were booked into a cafe, no matter how much we were told it would be good, we were sceptical. Cafes are generally not the best for us. House concerts, community theaters and churches are for us.

When we walked into Melt Cafe we were sure our fears of the place were real, and more ….. but they were not !!!

I am not sure what happened next because we unloaded the harp and props in the busy street where i certainly could not park for long. Even the trolley buses had to manoeuvre around us.

The Melt Cafe owner, Gaynor, was extremely kind and offered to tour around the city with me to find a parking spot. Through this I truly had an unintended guide of the city up and down those famous roads with trams crawling up the hills and rushing down the other side with people not only sitting inside but holding on, hanging on, the outside. I thought this was marvelous to see as it seems like a just and worthy rebellion against the over enforced bureaucratic legislation in the USA that would normally say “you can’t do that”. I was great to see such free spirits daringly holding onto the sides of the trams. I’m not a city person, but to me San Francisco translated as being about “living”. I love this city !!! …. along with New Orleans and Chicago, so far.

After awhile of searching I parked in a bus park and started to get shaved and ready in the RV, ready for doing some of this evening’s show. Gaynor then set off by food to find a parking space. I was risking getting as ticket or even being towed away while shaving by being here, but all was ok. Gaynor returned with news of a found parking space. It was not “legally” available until 10:00 pm and it was 9:00 pm at this time. I said we should take a chance, and we did.

We walked back to the Melt Cafe, almost a mile away from where I had parked, and Claire was in action and had completely wooed an eating and drinking cafe into complete attention and dreamtime. One of the customers DeForrest, had set Claire up with a very nice sound system. He performs in the Cafe himself with a piano player so was very familiar with how to sound good there. Claire had already performed about 40 minutes while we were finding a place to park, so I stepped right into performing my Pottering Harry story, which was received with very humbling rapture, again amazing myself with the response of an eating, drinking audience.

Claire went on to perform a second set for about 30 to 40 minutes but I left out performing the Ogma’s Tale Of The Trees so I could become part of this magical “go for it” multi racial multi age audience that took away every boundary that man has set up between people. Claire’s performance of Essence on the piano at this cafe was so, so fitting for this song. They loved it and understood it.

We left the Melt Cafe with its joy and charm, with lumps in our throats though a desire that we did not want this magical experience to end. Yes, we were melted.

into the forest

RV camping in San Francisco is expensive and not very nice so we decided to camp about an hour out of the city, among the redwoods. To get there needed a crossing over the Golden Gate Bridge. I was hoping for a parking spot to take a photo at night, but could not see any. Also even late at night traffic over the bridge was thick and the lanes very narrow. It took quite a bit of concentration to get the RV over, so my Golden Bridge Experience was far from what was hoped.

Over the other side we soon found that the traffic thinned out to nothing, very different from the south side. Our road was a narrow winding and climbing road that soon took to the coast. It was stunning to look down on lighted San Francisco below. Like in the movies there were various lovers in cars parked there to admire the view … I suppose.

From the coast the road entered into redwoods which looked beautiful at night, and broken up by a couple of beautifully restored and kept 18^th and 19^th century small towns. After about an hour’s drive we were in our redwood campsite for the night. The pitches were very intimate, in tight circles with other campers, quite unique, but not sure of the benefits of that. It was a warm evening. We enjoyed having that again.

2010 USA Tour : March 26th, Moreno City CA

2010-03-31T04:27:00.002+01:00

into the desert

We awoke to a very welcome hot sunny morning outside Bullhead City. I was up early, opened the RV door and was greeted by a couple of ducks, mr and mrs, asking for some breakfast. After providing them with a little snack of broken tacos, which took some manoeuvring with their shovel beaks, I set off to explore and peacefully take in the ultra clear rolling waters of the Colorado River that flowed by where we were camped. There is a little island there like a little lake isle of Inishfree and this was seemingly guarded by a couple of large moorhens or coots.

As usual, we wanted to stay here longer and vacate, but we had to leave to make it to Moreno City in good time and with comfort time to stop on the way. This was our last day on and beside Route 66, and perhaps the most sentimental part of following this remarkable road journey. This was truly the desert section with remains of forgotten relics of cheap motels, diners, reptile pits, gasoline fill ups, service centers and fallen billboards, as we motored from Arizona and through eastern California where the desert became more and more a sand and dust bowl. No towns for over 150 miles, just a few native settlements. Nowhere to fill gasoline. This was getting towards Australian road trip style. The road signs sometime showed we were heading towards Ludlow. One sign of constant life was the very frequent long freight trains of the Santa Fe railway, beside the freeway, each with its boggling long length of railcars.

Ludlow

Getting to this “town” was a curious experiences due to my familiarity with the quaint English town of the same name where I once lived for a few months on a landscaping and garden creation job many years ago.

We arrived and it was Route 66 still alive. Ludlow is a few mobile homes, maybe 10, of resident first nation natives, a few gasoline pumps, a small repair station with a mechanic, a truly back in time motel with only two of its letters lit up and a diner proudly announcing it served coffee and grits.

After some lunch on some barren land here while watching the lizards scurry around we were back on this desert highway towards Moreno Valley.

to Moreno Valley CA

It was not many miles beyond Ludlow that our highway joined the busy I15, Las Vegas to Los Angeles highway at Barstow a strange desert town built up around a huge Santa Fe railway junction hub featuring huge cattle stockyards for loading cattle onto trains and a freight container exchange depot. Barstow seemed to be largely modern and fast growing as a bustling junction town. I’m somewhat surprised big casinos have not moved in here too.

From Barstow to LA, about 100 miles, it was like just one long LA commuting traffic jam along a multi lane highway. When we broke off to Moreno City along the I125, and exterior bypass highway we were soon down to a crawl and wondering if we would make it to Elizabeth’s in Moreno City in time. Fortunately we did, and in good time.

Elizabeth’s at Moreno Valley

When we arrived, Elizabeth was out shopping for supplies for the evening, but when she returned what an incredible warm greeting. Neither of us had met Elizabeth before but she was truly an instant extremely warm hearted friend.

This was the first hosting of a house concert by Elizabeth but like our other first timer, Cindy of Albuquerque you would think she was a true professional with this.

The performance area was as folks walked in the door. Cindy has a large hallway/lobby that creates a wonderful small performance area and even has room for a baby grand piano as well as substantial audience. Her “living room” is her studio and music room.

This became a wonderful show was a full audience of wonderful interesting people. Claire did use the beautiful sounding piano to sing Essence, which is becoming a popular standard on this tour. A highlight was Claire singing her lovely song interpretation of the Yeats “Lake Isle Of Inishfree” rather than the song from The Quiet Man that she has sung at other performances on this tour.

We’ll remember this wonderful evening for the colours, settings and passion for songs and stories told.

to camp

Due to fear of facing Los Angeles traffic in the morning, after the concert at Elizabeth’s we drove 160 miles to a beach side camp called El Capitan’s, north of Santa Barbara. It was quiet and remote and the moon was shining over the ocean.

I’m sure my next blog will share more about this ….

2010 USA Tour : March 25th, Bullhead City AZ

2010-03-31T01:45:00.002+01:00

into Arizona of many landscapes and climates

Today was our longest drive of the tour, but no performance tonight. Thank goodness for that as it was a tiresome drive, but also one of much beauty.

Setting off from Albuquerque at around 10:15 was among sun but with a chilly breeze that was soon to escalate into a several hours of difficult driving through strong cross winds.

Before leaving the RV site I bought a set of Route 66 maps from the local trading post. The next section beside the old Route 66 is perhaps the most interesting, Sadly, Arizona has not made the efforts to preserve its Route 66 section as much as TX, NM and parts of OK are doing.

Much of this part of the route is through tribal country stirring a wonder about how these people live and survive. Their homes are generally very basic and often in need of serious repair. I could not work out if this was due to choices, preferences, poverty, not caring what their homes looked like or just something I would not understand through not being of their culture. These native folks have a lot going for them we do not have so I hope this is due to their choices and not suppression.

The kicks of Route 66

I would have loved to have had more time exploring the many trading posts along I40 that has replaced much of Route 66.

Though I have travelled much of Route 66 a few times before I never really looked into its history, and there is so much more to this “route” than I imagine, and in some ways replicates the mentality portrayed in the story line of Avatar.

I would like to quote the beautiful writing of Jim Ross of www.66maps.com

“Route 66. It is a symbol of American ingenuity, spirit and determination. For millions it represents a treasure chest of memories, a direct link to the days of 2 lane highways, family vacations and picnic lunches at roadside tables. It brings up all the images of going somewhere, souvenir shops, reptile pits, and cozy courts, of looking forward to the next stop, a slice of breezy shade, an Orange Crush. Route 66, its a winding grade, a rusty steel bridge, a flickering neon at a late night diner. It is mountains and desert and plains and forest. America’s Mother Road, all of this and more. Even though it “officially” no longer exists is today the world’s most famous highway.”

I learned it all started in 1924 as a dream of Oklahoma Highway Commissioner Cyrus Avery who had to battle and battle with officials and politicians to establish a trade connecting highway between Chicago and Las Angeles that included passage through Oklahoma. He wanted a Route Number people would remember and Route 60 was available. Other politicians had dreams on having that number for their dream highways and they tried to force Avery to accept Route 62 and to change his route ideas too. An engineer, John Page, advised Avery that Route 66 was still available as a name, and easy to remember, so the highway name was born.

Alas, though planned as an economic boom highway its first use was as a highway of “flight” during the Depression with residents of the depressed mid west travelling to California is search of new life and abundance.

Almost regarded as a flop, the highway took on an important role through world war two carrying troops, munitions and equipment. Alas during these war years no maintenance was done on the road and was strangely the start of its decline.

After the war, ex military men were in the mood to live a new sense of freedom and their memories of military travel along 66 turned into a sense of travelling the route again for freedom and party. It was all an urge to “go somewhere, do something, not be tied down”, and this was all spurred on by Bobby Troupe’s song “Get Your Kicks On Route 66”, that was made more famous by Chuck Berry and later by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In response, the motels, ballroom theaters, drive in movie theaters, diners, soda shops and all elements of party sprung up along the way, often served by enterprising native american tribes who placed rows and rows of huge billboard sings along the route to advertise and lure travellers to their services

Despite this new popularity Route 66 was still not maintained much through the 50s as capitalist highway builders had other plans.

In the 60s these ex swinging G.I.s were now family people so Route 66 became the family vacation route so now the route became full of family resorts, small reptile zoos, picnic stops, and small tribal shops became large trading posts for gift and family shopping that included blankets, food, clothing, toys for the children and novelties.

By the 70s several parts of Route 66 were no longer driveable due to non maintenance and crumbling away. The capitalist highway builders had taken over with their multimillion dollar multi lane interstate highways.

However, the dream lives on with the grandparents, often with their grandchildren, the senior ex GIs, even seniors who were of the earlier flight from Depression. RV parks have become abundant along with full resorts of nice chalets, villas and hotels. Some states, especially TX and NM are active in restoring sections of the old highway to make it safe for enthusiasts to drive the actual original road rather than the modern highway. Several of the trading posts have been restored and look wonderful.

Claire and I just love driving Route 66, and stopping in places, in the spirit it has always been :-)

so over Arizona

Amarillo to Albuquerque provides the first glimpse of wild west with its open spaces and approaching the mountains of NM. Past Albuquerque becomes real cowboy movie country with mixes of red rock and yellow plain, and sometimes white sand, deserts, along with the scattered tribal villages.

Another thing that amazed us was the wonderful use of the Santa Fe railways through here, freight trains passing every few minutes, each one keeping about 150 trucks off the road. One thought was how environmental this all was, and then another thought questioned about how much is consumed that needs this abundant transportation rather than folks buy local grown and made supplies? For every truck taken off the road, plus every truck we saw on the road, compared to the population served, almost gave the impression that consumer demands of the people needed something like one truck on the road per 100 people per day. I’m sure my facts are wrong, but its seemed to be near correct. I should not speak too much on this as this tour of our’s is consuming about $80 of gas every 2 to 3 hours on the road with the RV.

Approaching Falstaff the road is much more mountainous and climbing to 6000 feet. We were up from deserts and their many mini-whirlwinds to be surrounded by snow forests and mountains, ice covered lakes, and tricky ice covered steep decline highways too.

The far side of Falstaff descended into the humid almost Mediterranean landscape of red roof houses, palm trees and larger “white” population.

Bullhead City was a surprise. I was expecting an olde world AZ resort town, and not a bright light multi coloured dazzling mini Las Vegas. It was a relief to find we were camping our RV a few miles past this, around a river bend out of sight of all this to the most beautiful RV camp site we have been in so far. How many times have I said this on this tour?

The site is on a riverside with clear, clean bubbling water, with islands that look like mini Inishfrees in Ireland, beautiful coloured rocks and lovely sounding birds.

When we arrived over dark, it was still bright, perhaps with rising moon. As I watched in the water by the shore, a skunk passed by me. No, it did not squirt.

2010 USA Tour : March 24th, Albuquerque

2010-03-26T16:07:00.004Z

stuck in Amarillo awhile

With a mix of strong winds, wear and tear and large unexpected freeway potholes, several items had become loose, broken off, bent and damaged on the RV, to the point of being dangerous.

As there is an RV service center on the camp site we took the plunge to request a sort out. Now wondering if this was a good choice as he is in regular mechanic mode, finding more things and insisting we have them done, but we are saying “no!” a lot.

Here’s hoping we’ll be away by noon to be at Albuquerque on time. Its a 6 to 7 hour journey if nothing more goes wrong.

off to Albuquerque

Well at least weather is better, no longer snowing, wind dropped some, a bit warmer and a lot clearer.

It is a beautiful barren trek west to Albuquerque. The modern I40 mainly follows the old Route 66 which sits to the north of the highway. Much of it has been restored from the almost disappeared trackway it had become. This year, we did not see anyone following the old road like we did last year. Even we did not follow much of it due to time schedule. Looking at the relics of old motels, gas stations and even a drive in movie theater set off imagination of young adventurers following the song to get their kicks. The small towns that were obviously once alive with these travellers are now saddened ghost towns. I think an illustration of this was travelling through downtown Moriarty where it seemed everything was closed down and boarded up including good Al boy dance ballrooms, exotic sounding western restaurants and fascinating stores.

We filled up at the last existing gas station where a man in well worn bib and braces and ripped cap bought four tins of chewing tobacco, returned to his truck with half its body fallen off, had a shout at his dog roped in the back, and the dog returned a good woof back, then squeezed into the tiny cab of his truck, and after a crunching and squealing of gears, axles and anything else that still remained, was quickly off down a side road off towards the desert and his shack ranch among the elk and rattlers.

Fifty miles before Albuquerque we hit a strong snow blizzard and wondered what was to come, but thirty miles before Albuquerque and the sun broke through. Then descending the mountains into Albuquerque it was blue sky, warmth and the beautiful scenery of the vast snow capped mountains that tower over this flat sprawling mysterious city.

Our campsite for the night is west of Albuquerque city, called Enchanted Trails, a mix of wonderful peaceful and beautiful RV campsite with Route 66 antiquities, memorabilia and memories. This was a stopping point of Route 66 revellers and an old Buick towing an old caravan trailer is still here and still pristine.

The ever growing house concert of Albuquerque

Cindy’s living room is so cozy, we immediately knew this was going to work well. It instantly reminded us of Tayria’s wonderful home high in the NC mountains, and it seems so long ago since we were there.

When Claire started up her first song, I think there were 10 or 12 people present, but we did not mind as these were warm and very appreciating people. We were very content.

Then after every song, 2, 3 or 4 more people arrived, and that not only happened during the first set, but also after the break into the second set. By the end of the show the cozy living room was a very busy fun loving house. I have no idea how many were there at the end. Cindy’s living room is small, so I suspect it was around 30, maybe more, people.

Overall, this was a model house concert to show that anyone can put on a nice house concert. People attending was the best cross section of ages, cultures, and genders I have ever seen in our audiences. It was Cindy’s first try at this. It went very, very well and I am sure she will do it again. Cindy is s superb host and loves the people that visit.

We came away from this show in Albuquerque very, very happy.

2010 USA Tour : March 23rd, Amarillo TX

2010-03-24T16:00:00.002Z

to Amarillo Texas

This is a journey that inspired a lot of singing and jokes from some of our friends around the world.

It was wonderful to, at last, be heading west. There is such a different feel once we travel west of Tulsa. I think this was also edged on by enjoying a sunny warm day. It was windy with gusts battering us hard on the freeway, but when we stopped the wind was warm and that was exhilarating too.

West of Tulsa means quieter road, less traffic, and far, far less quota hungry cops pulling over speeders and cracked back light offenders.

We love the USA and especially the USA people with their humour, optimism and incredible manners (in most places). The severe downside that irritates me and must irritate the people of the USA is the “legal” racketeering abuse on people. There is endless, everywhere you look, signage and notices along with verbal warnings that literally translate as “if you do not do exactly as you are told we have the legal right to empty your pockets, empty your bank account and even max out your credit card”

One incident we had was not having 25c to pay an automatic toll charge and no means of referring, and no change machine by the toll machine and no warning a toll machine was ahead. All I had was some euro coins. They were good enough to raise the toll barrier, but it quickly knew what happened, took a photo, automatically tracked our “tag” back to the RV renters who automatically deducted a $160 fine from our credit card. Total designed racketeering!

We parked outside a business on a Sunday that was closed on Sundays. The tow-away track still turned up within minuted and spotted us so we raced away before being hooked up and charged $500 to be unhooked. We saw a big truck turn in roadway with a notice warning of $1000 fines for trucks turning there. Sure enough a camera flashed on the truck’s tag and that driver will have $1000 docked somehow right away.

Anyway, enough of that “bitching” as I do feel these types of practices are so, so unfair on the USA people and I am surprised they have not rebelled against this unjust racketeering behaviour. “Legal” stealing is a very dirty disease here it seems, yet many folks here support it on the grounds that morality is about “doing what you are told”. It baffles me as people telling me something I accept as guidance and measure it against what the great spirit inside me rates as moral or not.

Back to the journey …..

Yes, we are in the west, less hassle, less pressure, lots of wide open and wild country. This is bliss !!!

Shamrock is Green

Again we had fun pulling into Shamrock TX, just over the TX border in North East Texas. Everything is greener there. There’s green grass while elsewhere maybe brown shrub and it seems all of the buildings are painted green.

When the people there hear Claire’s accent there’s loads of excitement. This time we heard that their St. Patrick’s Day parade and rodeo was scheduled for Saturday March 20th but heavy snow on that day cancelled all that, for the first time they can remember. Now I am wondering if Ireland will start up St. Patrick’s Day rodeos soon.

into Amarillo

After delightfully driving through the Route 66 open plains lands of the Creek, Fox, Cherokee, Cheyenne and Lasoto tribes it was arrival into the Billboard capital of USA, Amarillo. We were very curious about visiting the “Catholic Superstore” promoted by several billboards, but missed it, only to wonder what was sold there such as life-size pope replicas, automated rosary beads, and confession box flat pack kits.

Our RV park for the night was the other side of town and what a delight this site is.

No trees, as there are very few trees around Amarillo anyway, but the park is full of facilities and wonderful people running the “show”.

A lot of space between parked RVs, very level parking places, and water, electric and sewer that work very well.

We had a night off from doing a concert so this was laundry and write up time. Laundry, bathroom, shower, and even work out facilities here are superb. Pricing superb too. Wi-Fi a bit weak though.

The restaurant on site was all pizza and good ol’ Amarillo beef so we headed back to town to try other options. Good ol’ American style buffets were abundant, a type of restaurant that seems to be dying out through much of the rest of the USA. $10 for all you can eat and drink, and terrific quality food too. Claire and I loved the steamed fishes, huge fresh salmons, spicy shrimp, lots of fresh crunchy veggies, sushi, baked and steamed mussels and a finish off from a huge range of ice creams and sorbets. We really pigged out, and despite being cheap buffet was a clean, ambient, nicely decorated and lighted restaurant with delightful staff.

Back to the campsite, we had plans for admin work, but instead it was laundry on and wait for the morning to collect it dry. The evening and night was warm, but the forecast for the morning was telling us something different.

2010 USA Tour : March 22nd, Tulsa OK

2010-03-24T04:21:00.004Z

Road to Tulsa

This is the first of several long freeway drives over the next 5 days so we set off early as today was one of our longest drives of the tour.

It was a beautiful flat plain view sunrise through an a bitterly cold Texan air but it did not take long for the day to warm up into what we feel is quite summery. Barely a cloud in the sky until we reached Tulsa, and even then it was just a slight haze.

Scenically this was not the most exciting drive. Austin to Dallas seem to be a constant continuation of modern enterprises and the endless selection of franchised, mainly food, chains we see all over the USA. The roads were billboard heaven, lots of them all along the journey screaming for attention from passers by. We were highly amused by one advertising “Exotic Jerky available 24 hours” that popped up every few miles until we got to a small log cabin store that sold many unusual flavours of beef jerky and was open 24 hours as chewing jerky is a favourite feast of truckers, one of their ways of staying awake at the wheel.

We were also amused by a ranch called “Fat Chance” and later down the road a ranch called “Slim Chance”. It turned out these were ranches of two Chance brothers.

We pulled into the rest area just before Dallas for a rest, a brunch and preparation for the anticipated complex Dallas road system ahead. There was wi-fi in the rest stop, so we also had a quick online catch up.

In a cubicle in the gents it was interesting to hear the conversation outside. Slim was there! Well someone called “Slim”, talking to a guy called “Bubba”. Fascinating to catch the local Texan dialect. As I came out of the cubicle there was Slim and Bubba in traditional bib and brace overalls and hunting hats. If that was Slim Chance, then he’s a much bigger man than me, but I suspect there are many Slims and Bubba’s in Texas.

Denver was indeed a complex road system snaking us right through its downtown area and beyond into the north. I was so relieved it was not rush hour and our trusty Sat Nav machine led us through.

Another surprise, well not so much a surprise as we had followed weather forecasts, was the amount of drifted snow on the sides of the roads and across the landscapes, despite this being a very warm day now.

Another stop on the way was at the “Welcome to Oklahoma” rest area for coffee and snack then through a bit more interesting wooded hilly, slightly North Carolinish landscape onto Tulsa, arriving in good time just after 4:30 pm after an 8:00 am start for driving.

Concert at the GAST Center

This was a dream concert. The venue, the feel of it, the acoustics, and then the wonderful warm audience.

Add to that the incredible team work and joint support of the GAST (German American Society of Tulsa) and the Tulsa Harp Society

The icing on the cake was the music support of Anam Cronan, who are Dana Fitzgerald Maher and Melissa Schiavonne. These musicians and singers together are stunning angels and I wish we could have had them accompany our entire tour. These people and their music are so special and so fitting within what we do live. Dana really put this entire event together.

Claire performed on top form including one of the best performances of Brigid’s Song I have ever heard her do.

About 60 people turned up. Good size really, and they enjoyed the refreshments and chat after the show. It was also wonderful to hear the stories from some of the German origin folk there. One fascinating story was a man who demonstrated how his last name, an Anglo Saxon name, became converted to quite a common name in Co. Sligo, Rogers.

Good to see some Facebook friends there too.