as long as Mother Nature doesn’t interfere, it looks like Bonneville National Speed Week will be happening.
as of July 20 the long course has 8 miles of nicely groomed salt and the 9 mile will be groomed by Speed Week (August 11). the short course has also been groomed 5 + miles and the rookie course has 3 good miles.
that’s what we like to hear!
photo courtesy of the Southern California Timing Association
while on my way to Calistoga today i noticed Mark West Springs Road, Mark West Quarry and Mark West Lodge….who was Mark West?
as it turns out there was indeed a Mark West and this is his story.
in 1834 Governor Figueroa of Mexico visited Sonoma County on a mission to establish a presidio which was to be named Santa Anna y Farias. he selected a site on Mark West Creek that later became the property of Henry Mizer near a well known redwood tree that was still standing in 1877.
this site was to be colonized by a group of Mexicans called the Cosmopolitan Company. the leaders of the Cosmopolitan Company arrived in Sonoma County, disagreed with the head of the government there, and left Sonoma County never to establish the presidio of Santa Anna y Farias.
the Mark West Area is only a small part of what made up Rancho San Miguel acquired by land grants from the Mexican Governor Alvardo in 1840 by William Marcus West. there were 23 land grants confirmed to original owners in Sonoma County. the men to whom land grants were given were Jacob P. Lesse, John Fitch, John Bautista Rogers Cooper, John Wilson, and Mark West. Cooper, Wilson and West were brothers-in-law to General Vallejo.
in 1840 Mark West acquired the Rancho San Miguel land grant which included 6,663 acres between the Mark West and Santa Rosa Creeks. it supposedly was the “richest body of land of the same number of acres in the state. there was not an acre of it that would not produce from seventy-five to one hundred bushels of wheat.”
on the Rancho San Miguel, Mark West built a great adobe hacienda and established a trading post and post office near the beautiful stream which now bears his name. in exchange for the land, Mark West agreed to furnish cattle skins to General Vallejo and cut trees to supply lumber for the Mexican government. unfortunately Mark West was a terrible businessman and so it is sad to note that in 1877 “none of his descendants owned a foot of his splendid estate which (at that time) was worth over half a million dollars.” Mark West did leave something of value behind though – his name. (Mark West lies buried on a stony point, up Mark West Springs Road.)
information courtesy of The Mark West Area Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Center
photo courtesy of The Sonoma Heritage Collection
i’m now fully booked for my trip to Colombia next year. i’m super excited.
since i wanted to use miles for the airfare i had to lock in my dates relatively early. reward travel is really nice, but it can be limiting at times. i ended up reserving in the beginning of May 2017, and the trip will be three weeks.
i start in Cartagena and end in Bogota, with stops in Santa Marta, Medellin and Armenia. as part of the Santa Marta portion i will be participating in a 5-day trek to Ciudad Perdida, “the Lost City”.
i booked everything through a tour company called South America.travel and they were fantastic. i worked with Martin, and he was knowledgeable, friendly and responsive. plus he wasn’t pushy at all.
i have a long time to wait until this adventure begins, but i love having this trip to look forward to, whohoo.
Santa Marta photo courtesy of expedia.com
Blogger out, WordPress in. and that is what i have been doing in my spare time, creating, importing, editing and cursing the new version of international geotastic.
right? you know you looked at this blog and thought, “wait, didn’t it look completely different last time i looked at it, like 3 years ago?” it’s true, it now looks and acts differently, but the voice is the same my friends, all me, all the time!
it has been quite the experience i must say, because remember……i have said it many times, i am not tech savvy. AND, when i originally started this whole blog thing i tried WordPress and found it completely daunting. but hey i got this up and functioning and i think once i get the swing of things it will be great.
please note that i did import my old blog into this new blog and i did my best to make it all look pretty, but some things just won’t format correctly and i’d lose my mind if i worked on it any more.
i hope you enjoy this new format and if you have any suggestions on how to make it better please let me know.
logo courtesy of wordpress.org
i took a social media course this past week, which was eye-opening on a few levels. even though i have my own business and this ever-so-popular (cough) blog, i don’t use social media except at work. i advertise my business through different sources and why would i publicize this blog? i don’t feel the need to jump into the wide, and time-consuming world of social media for my personal life. i’m just not into broadcasting that much about myself. i do have an Instagram account with 12 followers. yep 12…..i’m big time. i am glad i took the course though, which i did for my M-F job, as i do manage some social media there, because i met the nicest person CC from Colombia.
CC said, “you must come to my country, it’s so beautiful”. really, do i need more incentive than that? no. why haven’t i thought of visiting Columbia before? no idea, i do love South America, and it is gorgeous. i was looking at photos online and reading a bit about it…i must go. so that is where my “big” trip of 2017 will be, Columbia. so let the planning begin. i’ve contacted a tour operator and i’m just waiting to see what kind of itinerary they can come up with for me.
while trying to find the name of my Peru tour operator this morning, i realized that gremlins have attacked my blog again and photos are missing from posts. you know i can’t leave little boxes with x’s in the pages, even though it’s content from 2011. i just can’t do it. thankfully as far as i can tell it’s just one 3-day trip i need to fix. if i had to do all of Argentina again, i might have cried.
you know you want to….it’s on the tip of your tongue……”don’t cry for me Argentina, the truth is i never left you………” yep, i went there.
photo courtesy of cntraveller.com
i love vacation. now vacation is done and it’s back to reality. it seems like a lifetime ago that i was sitting on a beach enjoying a tropical drink listing to the waves. sigh, it was just last week.
a couple of things became clear during this last trip. the most important, i’m done travelling by myself. maybe because i live alone (ok, not really alone, alone with kitty) solo travel just isn’t fun. and when i say solo travel i mean me going to one place and hanging out by myself, like my trip to Puerto Rico and Mazatlan last year. trips where i’m on a tour like Argentina and Peru, that is different, because i’m with a set of people the whole time. even in Argentina the week alone in Buenos Aires, not as much fun as the rest of the trip. i like talking with people, seeing familiar faces and sharing experiences.
i’m fairly certain i can get a friend to vacation with me, it all depends on where i go and what i’m doing i suppose. a lot of my friends have kids, so they would probably enjoy a little respite sitting poolside drinking fruity beverages with little umbrellas in them right?
so now i sit, with my itchy leg, waiting for the next trip. not much going on over the summer……a quick trip to Tahoe for Fathers Day, fingers crossed for Bonneville in August and then Northern Lights in September. if i manage to get somewhere else before Bonneville i will of course post, but it may be quiet for a bit. don’t worry though, i shall return!
you might remember from a previous post that the main reason i chose Puerto Rico for my vacation was to see the bio-bay. i found out when i confirmed my kayak trip that the bay hasn’t been very bright the last 5 months, and i was told that i should keep expectations low.
i went to one of three bays in Puerto Rico, El Farjado. it was the closest to the hotel, but not the brightest. the brightest right now is in Vieques, which is a ferry ride and an overnight away. maybe next time i visit i can make it over there.
i went out with Island Kayaking Adventures, they were a great group and did a good job with the trip coordination and guiding. we took off from Las Croabas Park and we were in two person kayaks; i went out with a nice Mom and little girl from North Carolina, her husband and son were in a different kayak. the kayaking through the very dark mangroves was 30 minutes and we ended up in the bay known as Laguna Grande. it was a cloudy night so that made it a bit bright, but the tour guides had a tarp for us to hang out under so we could see the glow of the micro organisms, the dinoflagellates.
it was barely visible, but you could see a little something when you swirled your hand around in the water. i won’t lie, i was sad at the lack of lights, but having a little girl in the kayak so happy to see the “sparkles and glitters” in the water definitely made me appreciate what the bay did have to offer.
sorry, no photo of the sparkles. i didn’t even bring the camera, which was a good thing. it would have been soaking wet and there is a good chance it would have a new home at the bottom of the Laguna Grande.
photo courtesy of ikapr.com
i wrote a whole post with photos and everything, and deleted it by mistake. really? f#$@!
let’s try this again.
one thing that i haven’t done on this trip is a tour, and you know how i love a good tour. i realized that one reason i like tours so much is that since i travel solo, tours offer me the opportunity to spend a short amount of time with a group of people. granted, sometimes the tours aren’t that short (Peru and Argentina) and the people can being annoying, but you get my drift.
i tried to book a tour to Old San Juan (OSJ) but there weren’t enough people interested, so no tour. i either had to hire a guide/driver or rent a car. the rental car would have been the less expensive option, but how can you sight-see and drive at the same time? i’m glad i had a guide, as he gave me some local history along the way to OSJ and a brief description of what was what in the town itself.
then i was on my own for the next 5 hours. i saw the two forts that were built to protect Puerto Rico from invaders, Castillo San Cristobal and Castillo San Felipe del Morro, the Cementerio Maria Magdelena de Pazzis, the capital building, San Jose Church, San Juan Cathedral and lots of colorful buildings. there was also no shortage of arts and crafts/gift shops.it was a fun day, but i wish i had some company along the way.
a friend would have reminded me to put sunscreen on my shoulders. doh. thankfully the guide was willing to stop at the drugstore on the way home so i could get some aloe.
Castillo San Felipe del Morro
the first sign of really being on vacation…..sleeping in. i get up early, usually at 5:30 AM, but today wake up time was 10 AM, oh the sheer luxury of it all.
the rest of the morning went a lot like yesterday: up, gym, breakfast, and pool. but i did go to a different pool and i went to the beach. at the pool i ran into a couple of ladies i met yesterday. sisters, here for their birthdays (3 days apart), from South Carolina. we got to chatting, and they mentioned the were going to the rain forest, and asked if i wanted to go with…so nice if them!
the El Yunque rain forest was really pretty. we stopped at Coca Falls, a viewing tower and then and another falls that you could wade to and stand under. it was about a 35 minute walk each way, a narrow but paved path and slightly steep and slippery at parts. in my opinion, completely worth the time, but i’m really glad i didn’t pay to take the tour, it was expensive and i didn’t need a longer hike with a lot of people.
i arrived in Puerto Rico yesterday afternoon, but was so sleepy i couldn’t manage to post anything.
in theory taking a red eye flight is a good idea, you don’t waste a day flying and usually it’s a more cost effective option. both of those things factored into my flight decision a year ago when i booked the trip. but then when i looked at the flight details on monday i realized that i had a 3 hour layover, not awesome. the travel went smoothly, even the layover (which started at 5:30 AM) but i was SO tired when i got here that i had late lunch and took a nap, which then turned into bed.
so, where exactly am i? the Wyndham Grand Rio Mar Beach Resort. i’m staying on the Margaritaville side of the resort, which is fairly new and pretty nice. although i am a Wyndham owner, i don’t belong to Margaritaville, so staying here is a treat. of course the idea is they have you stay in the nice new part and then you’ll want to upgrade your membership. i might be tempted but currently there are only two Margaritaville resorts, here and St. Thomas. both are beautiful spots, but not as easy for me to get to, as say, Hawaii or Mexico.
so after sleeping a very long time, i woke up at my normal time and went to the gym. what? did i say the gym? yes i did. my room is on the same floor, so there is really no excuse not to go. especially when it’s early in the morning and there isn’t much else to do.
i decided to just hang out today and get the lay of the land. the day went like this: quick owners meeting with breakfast and tour of the fancy pants M’ville rooms, investigated tours & car rentals, bought some staples for the fridge, went to the pool, checked out the spa, grabbed some dinner and now i’m enjoying a truly bad Lifetime movie starring Jennifer Beals. vacation is the best.
