Magical Myanmar 2018

We had so much fun just hanging out with family in Yangon.  It's hard to summarize it all in one blog.  So we decided to give you a general idea of our days playing with Sir William and his parents and friends, and then do special blogs on trips and tours.

We arrived in Yangon late on December 18, 2018, and flew home on January 5, 2019 -- over 18 days of fun and frolic!

When we got to the kids' home in the American Club in Yangon, we were greeted by these wonderful works of art!  No wonder we fell asleep with dreams of our grandson dancing in our head.

William wasted no time putting NaiNai to work.  He thought that they should compose a "red chair" photo to be added to Kathy's Facebook "Red Chair" album:

William's talent and patience for puzzles is remarkable.  We all joined in on this jigsaw puzzle fun, and William thought it would be a good idea to show off the results:

He loves Legos, and it turns out that one of the highest-rated toys for STEM education for his age group is a Lego robot that a child can build and then program by coding with a special app on an iPad.  Here, Dad consults with William about the proper programming to make his robot car move along a designated path:

There was lots of lounging and gabbing.

Mom and William both take swimming lessons on Sunday morning.  Each Sunday, we walked over with them to watch them show off their natatorial skills:

William still likes building blanket forts.  He and NaiNai are somewhere in there:

One of the best parts of our visits are the numerous parties and happy hours the residents of the American Club have among their families.  There are lots of kids and games.  The guys all show off their BBQ and smoking skills.  Here, Matt is checking out his smoked chickens and ribs:

Meanwhile, at the dinner party, the son of one couple that are friends of Matt and Weina caught this whopper just using a dipnet in Inyo Lake, along the shoreline at the American Club! 

GuGu Katie brought along a special Dickens Christmas kit, complete with poppers and hats.  Matt and Weina tried their party hats on --

-- and so did William and Katie!

Later in the visit, Matt's Mom, Joan, and Aunt Janet, joined us. After a shopping trip to the Spirits shopping mall downtown in Yangon, we all stopped for a scrumptious lunch of traditional Myanmar cuisine:

Matt and Weina do not decorate heavily for Christmas, but their tree is gorgeous, and the walls of the dining and living rooms are graced with beautiful decorations.  Here, late on Christmas Eve, before William worked his special magic on the presents, the Christmas tree glowed with anticipation:

One of the ornaments on the tree, handmade by William, says it all:

God bless us, every one.

Phabulous Philly Phun!

Hi Blog!

We're back! We took a short hiatus from blogging as we traveled about in December and January. Our adventures started with a flight to Philadelphia to visit with our Philly Phamily. On Saturday, December 7, 2018, the Miller/Davis/McNee/Scranton ladies got together for a day of cookie baking. Sisters - Eileen, Sue, Barb and Kathy got the batters beat.

All the while, the next generation had a ball! Here BriAnna and Vicki show off their mad scooping skill.

The end result:

The bakers assembled for a group photo. From left to right, Top - Jen, Eileen, Kathy, Barb, Sue. Bottom - Michelle, Vicki, BriAnna. Front and Center, our littlest baker, Holly. (Missing from the photo was Katie. She had to run home to walk her puppies.)

After the cookies were divided up and exchanged, we retired to Katie's new apartment in Center City where everything was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

While Katie worked during the week, we stayed home with the puppies. Ruthie and Maggie made great supervisors as we put together more Ikea furniture.

The week was filled with coffee shops, puppy walks, hardware stores and a trip to the Center City Christmas Village. We had a chance to sample a few restaurants in Katie's neighborhood. At the end of the week, we received a visit from Dave's brother, Laird, and his wife, Risa. They drove all the way down from Albany to spend the day playing Chuck-luck and eating pie.

 (Our PPPR -- Pie Per Person Ratio -- was just 1:5, but Oh! the quality!  That pie came from Grandma's Kitchen in Albany, New York.)

Before Laird and Risa left town, we joined them at their hotel for a great big brunch buffet. Here, Dave is enjoying the warmth of the fake fireplace in the hotel lobby.

One last puppy walk before it's time to head out. Ruthie has Maggie's back; while Maggie is all ears.

We finished our week by attending the annual Paxon Hollow Pollyanna Party hosted by Eileen and Tom. The coolers were full, the coffee table piled high with snacks and the buffet loaded with all kinds of Italian goodies - pasta, sausage, meatballs and salad. Of course, there were plenty of deserts, including those famous Christmas cookies. The extended family circled the snack table, watched footballs games and exchanged presents. 

A new addition this year: the Pirate Beverage Pillage. Participants brought a mixed six pack of their favorite beverage - craft beer, wine, wine coolers, mixed drinks, hard soda and local craft soda. The offerings were laid out on the table and numbers were drawn each round. On your turn, you could pick from the pile or steal from a neighbor. Once a beverage was stolen three times, it was yours to keep. Unfortunately, we were about to get on a plane, so our six pack went to Katie.

Here Jen and T.O. eye their next acquisition.

As the party wound down, we said our pre-byes, good byes and bye-byes and drove to Newark International Airport to catch our flight to Hong Kong and then on to Yangon. We had a great visit with our Philly Phamily and can't wait to do it again next year!

Dear William, We're Camping in the Desert

Dear William,

We're camping in the desert.  There are a lot of other RV's here with us.  You can see some of the RV's in the photos below.

There aren't very many plants in the desert.  Winnie-the-Pooh would call this the Hundredth Acre Wood because it's so small:

This desert is also very flat. There are some bigger mountains in the background, but Baxter found a big hump of dirt.  We decided to name it, "Baxter Mountain":

This desert has lots of cactus.  The cactus in the photo below are called saguaro cactus.  They always seem to look like aliens with their arms stretched up in the air:

We took a picture of our shadows.  We tried to stretch our arms in the air just like the cactus:

Lots of our friends are parked near us in their RV's.  Some of them have puppies.  This dog's name is "Bella."  She could be related to Bubu because she is also a poodle.  However, Bella is a standard poodle, which is much bigger.  We think Bella believes she's a human because she likes to sit in chairs with the humans:

Some RV'ers even bring their pet birds!

The desert is very wide, flat and dry.  When we took a hike out into the desert one day, we took this video of Nai Nai twirling around and around. She twirled so much she got dizzy and almost fell over!

We hope you like these pictures of the desert.  We'll find some more interesting things out here to show you in our next message.

Love,
Nai Nai and YeYe

The Pumpkin Patch, 5 Palms, and More

This was our last day in Anza Borrego State Park, so we undertook three small adventures that have been on our list.

OVERLOOK TRAIL

We took our coffee for a longer walk early this morning, up to the overlook above our campground at Borrego Palm Canyon.  Before long, we were at the top, looking out over the valley:

The view down to our campground was pretty awesome:

This was what we saw the other direction, up Palm Canyon, beyond the primitive campsites:

We had heard about Pumpkin Patch, so we did some research and found sketchy directions out across the desert from Highway S-22.  Our off-road adventure started at Arroyo Salado.  We dressed Dusty up in an off-road whip so that other off-roaders could see us above the desert scrub.

5 PALMS

Driving out Arroyo Salado, we headed for our first destination:  5 Palms, a small group of palm trees that just exist by themselves out in the middle of nowhere.  We headed out Arroyo Salado --

-- and David climbed out at a critical point to build a cairn to mark the turn we made into the bigger wash:

We could not find reliable directions.  The roads and junctions are not always well signed.  And, most importantly, there are lots of junctions where you must simply use your instinct as to the proper choice.  As Yogi Berra was quoted to say:  "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."  We did.

Somehow we made it to 5 Palms without backtracking.  Kathy celebrated with the four remaining palm trees.  One poor palm was lying nearby on a sand dune, probably done in by climate change (you can see the base of its poor trunk just in the foreground).

We couldn't stop to mourn because we still had further to go.

PUMPKIN PATCH

Our ultimate destination was Pumpkin Patch.  We had the GPS coordinates and just followed our hunches along washes and over ridges toward our destination.  Ultimately, we found it!

The Pumpkin Patch is a unique geologic feature consisting of thousands of rocks called "concretions."  Not all concretions are formed the same way.  The concretions at Pumpkin Patch were formed much like a pearl is formed in an oyster.  Sand that is wet can stick to any small object such as a pebble, an insect body or a piece of shell.  When the sand dries, it hardens in place, like concrete.  More surrounding wet sand sticks to it after a rain, and then dries.  Over time, this concretion hardens into rock because of pressure from rock and sand above it.

The Anza Borrego pumpkins are round because they were eventually exposed and then sculpted by desert winds that smooth and round them.

Kathy found one "pumpkin" that had split open, showing the layers of concretions that formed it:

We strolled around and through the Pumpkin Patch and then, having satisfied our curiosity, climbed back into the Jeep and made our way back through the washes and over the ridges, following the GPS track we had made on our way in.

Some of the tracks were serpenstine slides through deep sand:

As we neared our entry point from the highway, the terrain opened up and we had beautiful views of the mountains around the area of Borrego Springs.

By 2:00 pm, we arrived home, just in time to do a number of chores to get ready for our move from here back to Phoenix -- where we will store the motorhome and Jeep in preparation for our flight home to Philly and then on to Myanmar for Christmas and New Year.

You might not hear from us again until 2019, so this is to wish everyone an early "Happy New Year"!  Keep on following the uncharted tracks and looking for those diamonds in the rough.

Exploring Palm Canyon with Ginny and Eric

November 20, 2018

Hi Blog!

As we travel about, we do our best to keep in touch with our friends just in case we get close enough to pay them a visit. Our friends from Schenectady, Ginny and Eric, were camped just over the mountain from us near Julian, California. On Thursday, we drove over the pass to their campground. The first part of the drive was spectacular; however, we soon found ourselves in rain and fog. Because of the rainy weather, we ended up spending the day eating, drinking and talking. By Friday, the weather had cleared and Ginny and Eric came over the pass to our campground. We decided to take a hike!

The Palm Canyon Trail leaves right from our campground. No need to drive to a trailhead. Eric stops to admire the ancient palm trunks that were washed down the canyon.

Borrego Palm Canyon is a watery haven in an otherwise dry landscape. Yesterday's rain made the wash even washier! Ginny and Eric practiced using their trekking poles to cross the raging river!

Dave took a little time off the trail to examine the rocks. Most of the granitic rocks in Anza-Borrego formed beneath a continental volcanic arc along the western edge of North America.

As we continued our hike, we had to cross back across the stream. We took a minute to look back down from whence we came.

Eric decided to take a minute to look at the surrounding hills to see if he could spot the bighorn sheep. Ginny decided she would just take a minute and be good looking!

Before long we got our first glimpse of the palm oasis.

Fed by an underground spring, these California fan palms have survived for generations.

Kathy tried to take a closer look, but the stream was running high after all the recent rain. Some intrepid hikers waded across the stream in order to get up close and personal with the palms. We decided it was best to keep our boots dry.

We decided to take an alternate route on the way back down. This route s higher up the side of the mountain and afforded us great views of the valley below.

We made frequent stops so we could admire they clouds and cloud shadows as they passed over us.

We followed a trail originally created by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). As we happened upon one of their stone benches, we decided a rest stop was in order.  No room for you, Dave!

We finished our hike and returned to a crockpot full of turkey gumbo! 

Great hike with great friends followed by great beer and great food. It doesn't get any greater! Looking forward to meeting up with Ginny and Eric in Quartzsite. Until then, stay thirsty my friends!