Friday, May 27, 2016

Virginia State Parks (5/27/2016)

I have been really impressed by the Virginia State Park System.  Naturally I am biased; I am a Virginian since 2000 and worked for the Department of Conservation and Recreation (or DCR) for 4 years before my program was transferred to another agency.  As part of DCR I had some special privileges, including a discount on the wonderful cabins that they maintain in many of the parks.



This past week we camped one night at Fairy Stone State Park.  Regretfully it was only one night, because we had an absolutely wonderful time there.  The camping spots are ok, they were a little packed together, but thank goodness there were only a few campers there.  Naturally there is always this one very inconsiderate camper who invites his or her buddies over at night for a party and then despite the 10 pm curfew keeps on partying until midnight (which we did not here) but then the rowdy friends left the camping site honking the horn of their car all the way out waking us up.  People like that should be zapped straight into hell for being so inconsiderate.  But then their car/truck would go out of control (without a driver) and it would careen right into our tent and wake us up anyway.

Galax was flowering everywhere
The next day we did one long hike to the little waterfall and then it was time for a four and a half hour drive back home.  This visit was way too short, but it was part of my teaching gig in Rocky Mount the day before which was only a forty-five drive to the north of the park.  My family was waiting there for me and we had a good time.

The little waterfall in Fairy Stone State Park
I have been to a fair number of State Parks in Virginia.  Here is my review of some of the ones I visited:
  1. Hungry Mother – Far out one of my favorite parks, it has great cabins and great hiking.  We stayed there once.
  2. Grayson Highlands – We camped there probably 10 years ago.  It takes some driving to get there; it is remote.  It felt Alpine and yes if you like to hike it is great.  It is a day hike from Mount Rogers the highest peak in Virginia.  It is also on the Appalachian Trail.
  3. New River Trail – A great (mountain) bike and walking trail that I visit a lot.  Just look in my label list for Draper and you will find lots of entries form the descriptive to the philosophical.
  4. Shot Tower – On the New River Trail, just interesting to visit.
  5. Claytor Lake – I visited this one for one or two hours for a hike and to look around.  If you have a bass boat and like fishing, this one is for you.  They have nice looking modern cabins.  This one is not for me I like hiking and biking.
  6. Douthat – Another very favorite state park.  Here you can stay in a log cabin that was built in the 1930s, or camp.  Great trails for hiking.  We absolutely love the place.  I have three short entries and photos in my blog on this park; just look at the labels.
  7. Shenandoah – Another great park.  Stayed here two times, both times in spring and enjoyed it tremendously.  We combined nature hiking with visiting some of the wonderful wineries in this area.
  8. Sky Meadows – When we visited, this was only a hiking park with access to the Appalachian Trail and I am not sure if this has changed.  We had a great afternoon hike on the trail.
  9. Westmoreland – Nice park, along the Potomac River, near some nice wineries, Washington’s birthplace, and general Lee’s home.  In other words there is a lot to do and a lot of history and culture to be had.  On the beach you can even find geologic shark teeth.  We stayed in a cabin and had a lot of fun.
  10. Belle Isle – A very new park; it is very flat and good for walking.  There is room for camping and a few cabins for rent (I think).
  11. York River – This is my home state park.  It has great hiking, kayaking, canoeing, mountain biking, and riding trails.  Not camping or cabins.  We enjoy going there and walking through the marshes.
  12. Kiptopeke – Looks great.  We just drove through it to the shore to look at the concrete ships that were sunk as breakwaters just off the shore.
  13. First Landing – A great park with great hiking trails
  14. False Cape – We spent a day in March walking from Virginia Beach to North Carolina and back.  It was all along the beach, looking at wild horses and shore birds.
  15. Chippokes Plantation – Another “home state park”, although I’ve only been their once for the annual peanut festival.  It looks nice for the rest and we really need to rent one of the cabins one of these days.
  16. Pocahontas – We go there for retreats of our church, and DCR had their annual personnel award ceremony there.  It has great hiking, biking and kayaking/canoeing. 
  17. Holiday Lake – I was there once for a conference.  It was nice.  Not much else to say about it.  It was far removed from everywhere.
  18. High Bridge – This is another bike trail.  I did this a number of times and started in Farmville.  I have a number of blog entries on this park as well.
  19. Twin Lakes – Interesting, this is an historic black park.  The cabin we stayed at was right at the lake and was really nice.  It is more a recreational park.  Hiking was fair and not well developed.
  20. Occoneechee – This is a park on a lake near North Carolina (Kerr Lake).  You can guess, this is a park for people who have a bass boat and fish.  It is a new park with great cabins but not many trails.  We enjoyed our stay, but should have brought the kayaks instead of the mountain bikes.  I actually wrote about it <here> in my blog.
So, counting the I have visited 21 of the 36 state parks and I have not been disappointed in any of them.  In fact, I/we loved our stay and will continue visiting them and after this week's short camping trip we will even go camping again.  It is a great way to go back to nature and alleviate your nature deficit disorder. 
Along the trail in Fairy Stone State Park




Thursday, May 19, 2016

Procrastinators Unite (5/19/2016)

Why do we procrastinate?  Beats me, and I even do it at times. 

At work there is another deadline looming and man does it get me riled up.  I work in a certificate program that is in place for 17 years or so, and people's certificate expire either on May 31 or November 30.  About 300 every half year.  Their certificate is valid for 3 whole years.  People have certain requirements they have to fulfill to the eligible to recertify, like taking classes during those three years, enter them in a tracking system and pay a small fee.  Well if you look at the date, you know: THE END IS NEAR!  Just today, I already got three emails from people who have not taken one class yet and have 13 days left to get them all in.  Fun!

This is one thing we seem to procrastinate very well: :The end of war", where we will save the lives of young men.
This is a quote on the memorial bridge over the James River in Richmond from Browns Island

Frank Partnoy writes in his book “Wait, the Art and Science of Delay” that procrastination may be good, at least when it comes to making a decision.  I can see that, on the battlefield, in sports, and in making stock decisions; maybe even in photography, taking that perfect shot.

Susanna Halonen argues in her blog in Psychology Today that procrastination actually improves your productivity and happiness:
  1. You can therefore concentrate on other (important) things and those things are getting done leaving more time for the thing you procrastinate.  (personally I find this a little farfetched, but OK).
  2. Unnecessary tasks disappear with procrastination. (I'll buy that).
  3. Procrastination shines a light on what is most important to you. (maybe).
  4. Procrastination makes you more creative. (Yes, I can really see that).
  5. Procrastination helps you make better decisions. (Partnoy agrees with that)
  6. Procrastination leads to better apologies. (I like this one, and yes I have seen some good ones, even the ones like "I started my last online course at 10 pm om May 31 and the Internet went down" ... oh well).
But you could be lying to yourself as Dustin Was suggests in his article, and that is often where I see the people that I deal with.  It is so difficult not to call them out, to rub their noses in it.  Tell them they are full of crap!

Why do I procrastinate?  Looking inward, my excuse is often motivation and inspiration, not because I know I would be making better decisions or have better apologies; I don't go to war.  Halonen's point 4 speaks to me; once inspired and once it flows I can be darn creative!  Points 2 and 3 are also up there.  But once I am inspired watch out, then my motivation kicks in higher gear.  Like earlier this week when I was working on a new course that I was designing.  It was fun, I was going strong.

However, I am different, even when I am inspired.  I need to think and mull things over (as I also describe <here>).  Sometimes I only get one or two slides developed in a day and I can just sit there and think of how to the class is going to go; about what is next.  It is fun and sometimes very exhausting.

Oh my god I just came up with a great apology why I procrastinate with the development of a new class!



Wednesday, May 11, 2016

To blog or not to blog, that is the question (5/11/2016)

If you are a blogger and read my posts, I have an interesting and a somewhat important (to me that is) question for you.  Why do you blog?  I am not one hundred percent sure why I blog (or actually I have 8 reasons), and that is probably why I have not broken through as this world famous blogger that is making a lot of money with my blogs.  Actually, I don’t even advertise on my blogs, so I have yet to make a penny on them, and really that's not why I do this.  But reading the newspaper this weekend about this famous stay-at-home mom blogging about her trials and tribulations raising kids and everyone following her and making money hand-over-fist, I wonder, am I missing something?  Or should I just quit?  Maybe I miss direction?  I am a dilatant, I know a little bit about a lot of things; l write about nature, training, sailing, stormwater, the environment, human communication and now this kind of stuff.  On top of that I try to show, what I think are pretty pictures that I took during my travels.  On top of that I sometimes mix all these things together together to make my and my reader's heads spin.  Look at the labels on the side of my blog, it is absolutely crazy!  A key word for everyone.  Maybe that's why I have only 100 to 200 or so readers every month.  But who cares?  So why do I do it?  Do I do it for the readers and the followers?  Or am I just egotistical?

To tell you the truth, these are the 8 reasons why I blog:
  1. I started out to share my photographs and dig a little deeper, different and more philosophical than what I can do on my Facebook site or my Instagram site,
  2. The blog became somewhat of a diary, but not a superficial "what did I do on vacation type diary" like Facebook that I share with friends,
  3. I tried to share my passion for sailing and share some of my experiences of fixing up my boat and sailing with the sailing community,
  4. I wanted to show the beauty of some of the far out-of-the-way areas in Virginia that I visit during my extensive travels in the state,
  5. I wanted to share my passion for the environment,
  6. I wanted to share my passion for teaching,
  7. In my first writing class I took in college learned that you need to practice writing and for me the blog hopefully is helping me with my writing skills.  I sorely need this, since I am in the process of writing a book, and 
  8. Finally, this is a good distraction from all my other writing and creative efforts; it is a different way to let my creative juices flow.
So the question remains, if you are a blogger, do you have similar reasons why you blog or are they different?

But that last point, creativity, that is important isn't it?  Why is it important to be creative?  For me it is one way I can enjoy life; a way to look back on a day, on an event, and be:
  1. Grateful for the experiences I have had during the day and during my life.  It is important and fun to record them in words and photographs; to be happy about them and share them,
  2. These experiences, the memories and writing about them nourish the soul,
  3. I’m having fun writing,
  4. It just inspires me,
  5. It makes me think, reason and figure out things like sentence structure and logic,
  6. In some sense it gives me the feeling of human connectedness with you all out there that read my blog, although I don't known you, and 
  7. While it is not part of writing, the getting outside gives me exercise, takes care of my nature deficit disorder, and when I describe it I get to relive it.
Yes,a lot of this harks back to a lot of self improvement books that I've read about purposefull living, such as Dr. Sood's book in my reading list.  But I mean it.  My blog is an expression of gratefulness for being alive (after some of my life experiences), for being in love with my wife, my daughter, and happy the majority of the time!  Yes, I have to remind myself to be grateful when I'm depressed and down.  Dr. Sood teaches us to mention 5 things we are grateful for when we wake up in the morning before we get up out of bed.  Well, I usually write about about them in my blog.
  
On the other hand, if you are a regular reader, why the heck do you come back to this blog?   Because you never know what to expect?  Because of the photography (sorry guys no pictures today)?  Because you are a friend, family or a follower?

I realize that I wrote about blogging before (click <here> to see that entry), and hopefully this is an addendum to that blog and brings it a little further (Just an update, the photography class is well received and I am still having fun).   But yes, there are times I need to soul search,  look inside and try to figure out what I'm doing and why and hope to help you on your way as well!

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Travels in Virginia's Appalachia (April 2016)

April was spent in the far western part of Virginia; in Abingdon to be exact.  I have either had people who expressed their sorrow when I told them this, or their envy.  For example my buddy Ben at the yacht club told me that if Abingdon was on or near the ocean and he could sail there he would move at an instance and I think I would too (but I guess and hope ocean level rise will never make it there).

I tend to stay away from selfies on my blog, but ok, I took this picture on the very first day in April that I arrived in Abingdon at the beginning of the Virginia Creeper Trail.  Amazing that people who take selfies have these terrible grins.
I spent three weeks of April in Abingdon, and yes it could be lonely living in a motel room, away from home, but the first day of each week was with someone from my office, so that was great (most of the time).  On Wednesdays the Wolf Hills Brewery (the local brewery in Abingdon) has trivia night and the first night I was there, two young couples adopted me and I played trivia with them.  We actually won and they got a $25 gift certificate for the tasting room.  So you guessed it, I was adopted by them the two following weeks as well, and every time they saw me I was greeted by them as a long lost friend.  Nothing better than getting a hug from two mid-20-ish (female) school teachers and handshakes from their hubbies, while being away from home.  I don't think you see that happen in a big town.  Abingdon is just fun small town living.

Tasting room at the Wolf Hills Brewery
It was there that I learned that one of the teachers had a run in with the police the weekend that the NASCAR race came to Bristol that weekend in April.  She was tased and cuffed; truthfully not something I would have expected to see happen to this small (5'4" maybe 130 lbs maybe) school teacher.  The three cops let her go once they figured out who she was and what her profession was.  But she had the bruises and the taser mark to show for it.  This well educated and what appeared to me well mannered girl was somewhat proud talking about it, that it took three cops and a taser to take her down.

I am definitively not planning to make this a travelogue, but want to highlight some commonalities I experienced during all three visits.  I felt at home and accepted.  Naturally, Abingdon is not off the beaten track, and Damascus is on the Appalachian and the Virginia Creeper Trails.  So they get a lot of influx from people who are from the outside, but still there is a difference between being tolerated or almost accepted.  I can feel that.  I travel so much that even in local restaurants or so the ambiance or the friendliness of the local waitstaff give you that feeling.  Some people just give you the feeling they really care, others just fake it or don't even do that.  Only once did I feel alienated when traveling out in the mountains of Virginia, but that was only the result of listening to conservative talk radio, which is difficult to escape on the AM when you drive through the area, and so are the religious stations.  I wrote about it on March 4, 2015 in my blog.  Yes people are more conservative and you notice that on the radio.  I sometimes use that as a learning moment, as long as it does not become hate speech and intolerant; anyway NPR almost reaches everywhere.  Otherwise, best to download a book or a podcast.

Walking back along Main street from the restaurant to my motel in Abingdon.  It would great to have sidewalks, but we don't even have those in York County.
The Appalachian region has been in an economic downturn for a long time.  Driving through towns like Pulaski you can see the empty furniture factories and other industrial area.  On top of that you hear about coal mines shutting down and that the area has not really returned from the depression that started at the end of the Bush presidency.  National Public Radio Morning Edition had a whole special on it; click <here> for the link to that program, you can actually listen to it.  It played one Thursday morning when I was sitting in the car and just leaving town on my way back home.  I swore that the next week I would bike part of the Virginia Creeper Trail and somehow end up at the Damascus Brewery that is mentioned in the piece to have a beer.

The Damascus Brewery serves the best Dam(ascus) beer!
Well I did it the next week.  The bike ride was wonderful, I left town and went left as recommended by the bike shop owner, away from town.  Biking through the national forest along a creek was a great experience, but you know my need for nature and my battles with nature deficit disorder.  While I only biked 3 miles out (total ride was 6 miles) it was an easy ride and the beer tasted extra good afterwards.  There I got in a long and very pleasant discussion with a through hiker on the Appalachian trail who stopped over for a few days to recharge his system.  Again, what great experiences to be had, to get off the main road and just take your time to explore and interact with people.  Books can be written about these experiences.

Along the Virginia Creeper Trail, this photo and the first photo are the two bookends of my experiences along the trail.
What did I learn or what stood out?  I did not encounter many African Americans or Hispanic during my stay in the area.  I am sure they are there, but I had none in my classes; I saw none in restaurants not even as waitstaff or cleanup staff, not even at Wendy's, but I did not eat in any Mexican restaurants this time; none of the household staff at the motel was black or Hispanic.  I think I saw one, who appeared local, African American gentleman putting gas in his vehicle when I was doing the same one morning, but that was all.  I don't want to conclude that the area does not have any minorities, but it seems much more segregated.  I also learned that it still is economically depressed, but people in generally seem to have a positive outlook on life.  The people out there are like everywhere else, they genuinely care about their fellow human beings.  But they have an edge, like my school teacher who did not think twice about taking on three cops and getting tased as a result of it (and she was not ashamed of it, to say the least).  They live in a beautiful part of the state, that they should be proud of.