16 posts tagged “travel”

We had hoped to spend this past weekend huntin' for corn snow up around Tioga Pass, but the forecasted precip did arrive, and came in wet enough to encourage us to hit Mammoth for some resort skiing instead. 

While we knew it would be a wet storm, we didn't factor in the ridiculous winds that kept most of the mountain shut and made visibility optional.  We skied anyway, but quit midday when goretex layers had become saturated, and headed to our digs at June Lake, where the weather was windy but not so wet.  Since neither of us had really walked around the town of June Lake, we figured a faux-urban hike would be a way to see parts of the area we tend to overlook for the more exciting hiking trails of the nearby Ansel Adams Wilderness.

In doing so we discovered a bit of history - June Lake, like many other Eastern Sierra towns, had a mining history.  Its history was a mere 5 years (1924-29) but resulted in a fair bit of ore from the various shafts located in the slope above Gull Lake.  Who knew?

Coupled with the first pilgrimage of the season to the Whoa Nellie Deli, where we were rewarded with amazing vistas of clouds and the Sierra Wave along with our fish tacos and mango margaritas, it ended up being a lovely escape from Tahoe.

I have no idea how people like my mother do it - the insane travel itineraries (6 states in 4 days or something like that).  Heck, two cities/states in a week just about did me in this week.  Which is why I'll never ever be able to work in sales (that and I'm a pretty marginal salesperson).

This week's travels took me hither and yon to both Keystone (CO) and Fallon (NV).  Two seeming opposite destinations, but the reason for both visits was for travel conferences.  One was for mountain travel, the other rural - you guess which goes with each destination.

While I had been to Keystone once when I was 14, I had no memories of it.  I now know why.  It's a generally nondescript place, a resort 'town' stretched out over a few miles of roadway, peppered primarily with lots of grey and earthtone condos, one or two hotels, and a few restaurants.  And yes, a ski resort.  It was a short trip, and frankly I wasn't all that fascinated with skiing Keystone, so I left my skis behind.  That this was the first time I didn't ski at one of these conferences speaks volumes for my uninterest in Keystone (not skiing).  

In fact, I was so uninspired by the place that the only photos I took were of Lake Tahoe on the flight back.  The views definitely helped justify the bumpiness the plane encountered flying between the mountains.

Fallon was also a new place for me, and actually had more character than Keystone.  I wasn't expecting much, but in addition to the strip malls, few casinos and swath of Highway 50 that runs through it, Fallon has a naval air station, a decent Holiday Inn Express, a smallish conference center (one large room), and a pretty groovy art center housed in a renovated schoolhouse.  While the latter may sound more like Oregon, I learned that there's a pretty rich rural arts community in Northern Nevada.  So Fallon definitely can claim to have more culture than South Lake Tahoe in that respect.

But between the flying, the shuttles, the driving, and the exhaustion of socializing (never something that comes naturally to me), I was pretty wiped out by the time I got home yesterday.  Even after 10 hours of sleep last night I'm not sure I'm quite back to normal.   I truly don't know how other business travelers do it - years of built up endurance?  I applaud you guys, as it's not easy.

While there's talk of recession and even auto companies are trying to get in on the Federal cash giveaway, economic hardship didn't seem apparent in San Francisco, which was bustling this weekend.  We headed down there for a brief visit, and between the hordes of people we saw everywhere we went (Ferry Building, Union Square, California Academy of Sciences, Ikea, etc.) and the chaos in most of the stores, it didn't seem to reflect the current economic woes we keep hearing about.

That said, it was also unusually warm - 80 degrees in San Francisco proper on Saturday - so it might just have been the heat that made people crazy to swarm and shop. 

We've been in Bend this week visiting with N's parents.  While it's been more work focused than past visits, we did make it to Waldo Lake on our drive up.  Our timing was good, as the next day a fire broke out not far from this part of Willamette Pass, closing the road and leaving the area very smoky.

Of course the day we rode it was gorgeous.  I took some photos of the burn area at the north east end of the lake, which is starting to show signs of life.  My camera doesn't do it justice but the color contrast was very dramatic.

N's parents live on top of a hill in West Bend, and the views - both sunsets and sunrises - are fantastic.  This one was taken the morning after the fire had broken out.

Sadly, that's been the extent of the adventures this week.  Between work, prepping for the two classes I begin teaching next week and helping out with house chores (like helping N move a tremendously heavy stone sculpture from the back of the house to the front), it's kept us busy.  Lest I come across as a total martyr I should admit that I have made it a point to catch up with friends who now live here as well as enjoy Bend's fabulous municipal pool.  Just no 25 mile mountain bike rides as such.

During our trip to Switzerland, I was amused by the many examples of bad translation that we encountered.  I nicknamed it 'Swinglish', though N noted that 'Fringlish' was probably a better term, as most of the examples were French to English translations.  While not quite on the par of Engrish it made me giggle.

While in Fribourg we took a day trip to the Gruyere region, the land of both the famed cheese and the Nestle chocolate factory.  It’s classic Switzerland – rolling green hills, dramatic steep mountains, lots of cows, and an old castle perched on a hilltop. 

 

And while you’ll find the typical fare there, including a history museum in the actual castle, complete with a hilarious multimedia ‘spectacle’ presentation that included a jester narrator named Shalimala, you can also visit a gallery with the works of the artist responsible for the design of the film Aliens.  Scary mutant statues and 15th century history – who knew they went together?

 

After a surprisingly relaxed flight, thanks to a dose of prescription drugs, I'm slowly recovering from jetlag with ample Swiss cheese, wine and chocolat.  We landed in Zurich yesterday morning, and after a coffee and a shower at N's mom's flat, went into town to hit the H&M sale and buy some maps for our hiking trip.  She and her husband live in a gorgeous old building that handily houses the school he teaches at.  From their place it's a short hop on one of Zurich's many regular trams into the town center, and it was comforting to see how familiar the places looked.  Bittersweet, too, for we learned that his mom's looking to leave Switzerland to be closer to family, so our regular trips to visit her may not come as regularly.  Quelle tristesse.

Views from the Zurich flat are nice...

 

A few photos from the Chasseral, as promised earlier.

 

 

We got back from Vail late last night, after a whirlwind 5 days.  This trip was my annual business trip to Mountain Travel Symposium, which is held in various destination ski resorts each year.  Having never been to Vail, I was curious to see what it was like.  Call it competitive research.

The mountain (or mountains) is huge, with lots of gentle, interstate wide groomed runs.  We timed our trip with new snow, and found lovely light Colorado powder in Blue Sky Basin.  Not a lot of challenging terrain per se, but the conditions made even the nearly-flat runs fun.  But I have to admit that the I-70 is hardly a great backdrop for a place that's considered a world-class ski destination.  Lake Tahoe has the advantage when it comes to scenic beauty.

It being Vail, we knew we'd be able to eat very well, and among our various meals out, the one at Centre V Brasserie stood out for its kick ass mussels and awesome cheese plate (it's not easy to find Reblochon and Tomme de Savoie in Tahoe).  It may have been a contrived Rock Resorts planned experience, but I'm not going to complain.

Our last night, the town of Vail had a big outdoor reception at the new Arrabelle Square in Lionshead Village for all MTS attendees, including food & drink (which embarrassingly enough ran out within the first hour and a half - more embarrassing because the Vail folks were bragging about how well stocked they were for the event.  They obviously do not know the mountain travel industry that well!).  It was supposed to showcase the 4 seasons at Vail, and involved odd mixings like ball room dancers and acrobats.  Oh, and a live performance by Super Diamond, which was awesome in its kitschy ode to the great one.

Overall a fun trip, but I'm not planning a return visit on my own dime.  There are too many other great resorts out there to try.

Just returned from a brief trip to Las Vegas for the Nevada Governor's Conference on Tourism.  Normally I only attend this event every other year, when it's in nearby Reno, so it was interesting to see how different this conference is when it's hosted in Las Vegas (hint: it's very different).  I didn't see much of Vegas per se. In fact, once I entered the vast bowels of Caesars Palace, I did not leave the building until the next day when I left for the airport.  The concept is a bit frightening, but Caesars and its environs - conference center, shopping center, restaurants and all the other amenities - are pretty large, and as I didn't have a whole lot of down time, I didn't have the energy to see how Las Vegas has changed in the 6 years since I last visited.

Overall, the conference was fine, with some unusual highlights including watching Celine Dion toss her hair and give breathy and dramatic thanks as she received an entertainer/service award from Governor Jim Gibbons, and getting the 2008 Liberace commemorative calendar as part of the conference shwag.  Frankly, the calendar was more exciting to me - who knew there was a Liberace calendar?

And the one thing that struck me during my stay was how much Las Vegas has outgrown its infrastructure.  McCarran Airport cannot handle the amount of people it has coming through, and as a result, the security line takes upward of an hour to go through, and depending on the time of day, a 15 minute drive to the strip can be closer to an hour.  All this, and the Las Vegas tourism folks were boasting about all the new rooms they're building.  I can't imagine what the airport will look like when those hotels are completed.

While I'm in New Orleans for a conference, I was lucky enough to be able to join a large group of people doing a 'Travel for Good' service day at a local elementary school, organized through Hands On New Orleans.  About 150 of us scraped paint, built a basketball court, planted flowers and other beautification tasks.  It was pretty amazing, all the more so because the day began with a bus tour around the devastated areas...including the upper and lower Ninth Wards and the Gentilly neighborhood, all of which suffered destruction. Seeing how the lower Ninth resembles a third world country *still* was shocking.  Services and utilities have been slow to return (if at all) as there's concern there will not be enough population to serve to be profitable.  And in the classic chicken vs. egg syndrome, people are loathe to return if there's no power or heat, so it's a perfect storm of stagnation...and blame.

Frankly it makes Tahoe's politics and post-fire recovery look insignificant.

However, there was a silver lining in the cloud called the post Katrina recovery, which was how much we were able to accomplish at the Murray Henderson Elementary School in 7 hours.  And how excited the kids were to see a basketball court.

The whole notion of Travel for Good is intriguing - something I would love to do again.  It's a great way to connect in a different way with a place like New Orleans, and is so needed here.