See Hawks

Gettysburg

cecil — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 13:56:18 +0000

Our visit to Gettysburg was educational, moving, hot and too short. We wanted to see the battlefield but didn’t want to be tied to a tour bus schedule. So, we opted for a recorded audio tour. The local tourism bureau has cleverly marked a specific route with signs directing drivers where to turn and where to stop for the “audio tour” (although our tour added some unmarked points of interest). There are at least four different versions available depending on the time you have available. We opted for a 3 CD package and were not disappointed. We decided to take the long version of the tour with an average completion time of 2 1/2 hours. It actually took us 4 1/2 hours and we kept up a pretty good pace. The roads, obviously constructed for the tourism trade, are mostly one-way so drivers can park almost anywhere and anytime they like.

Neither of us are really Civil War buffs (unlike our niece Caitlin!), but listening to the recount of a battle while you are sitting in the exact spot it took place is very moving. As the narrator on the CD described the scene before us and pointed out the tree lines where the enemy troops were emerging we could hear the shouts of soldiers around us, the battle cry of the advancing enemy troops and the ever increasing sound of gunfire and cannons. It made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. We were entertained by a number of interesting stories while we moved from point to point. Stories like the General who hid in a pigsty for 3 days. The young man from Pennsylvania who had gone to Virginia and joined the confederacy and now found himself fighting against his own brother on his own family’s farm. If you are ever fortunate enough to visit Gettysburg the audio tour is a must. Get the 3-CD pack.

From a military tactics stand point there are many historians who enjoy discussing the “what ifs of the battle. The main battle of Gettysburg came when General Lee of the confederate Army attacked the Union forces who were dug in on Cemetary Hill. He suffered 28,000 casualties – a third of his entire Army. Union losses were 23,000. What if he had not done this? Some analysts think that the entire outcome of the war may have been different, with the confederate army capturing Washington and winning. Gives pause for thought how things in our country may have developed if this battle had gone the other way. You can Read More Here

INGRESS

Since we are mostly seeking unique and AP the tour of the Gettysburg battlefield was made to order. The route has monuments and memorials lining the route and nearly all of them were portals, and most were low-level blue when we got there. You can see from the IITC captures below what we had. We ended up with a total of nearly 500k AP and 400 uniques – all of which we split. But we still have about 8 million AP left to level 16!

Round on the ends and high in the middle

cecil — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 13:18:10 +0000

Marty and Linda

Our week in Ohio was a trip back in time. Linda attended her 50th High School Reunion (Watkins Memorial HS, Pataskala, Licking County, Ohio) and was reunited with Marty, her childhood BFF. (They were Best Friends Forever before anyone ever invented BFF. ) We have been trying to reconnect with Marty for years and finally relocated her through a Facebook friendship with her daughter. They won’t lose touch again! The majority of the 99 graduates in her class still live within the county.

Linda spent her youth in these parts but I have only traveled through Ohio on the way to or from some of the coasts. Having lived in California and Washington for so long, so many things about this part of the country had slipped our minds (Both of our minds are quickly becoming slippery places.) There are lots of bugs here! The lightening bugs (AKA Fireflies) are amazing to watch, but their numbers are diminishing due to spraying. Most of the towns and villages have colonial era homes lining the streets and they all seem to have screened porches. (Did we mention there are bugs here?) Driving between the small towns we saw vast fields of corn growing everywhere. I remember the expression “knee high by the forth of July” to make sure the crop was maturing well. Much of the corn here is over 6’, so it looks like it will be a good season. The various weather pattern is always interesting as we move to different parts of the country. Thunderstorms are not common back home in Washington, but they are a regular occurrence here. And they bring with them strong winds, hail, very heavy rain and occasionally tornadoes. Also in contrast to our weather at home, these thunderstorms come up quickly. It can go from clear skies to horizontal rain in a matter of minutes. It is hot here, usually in the 80’s, but more important is the humidity factor. The higher the % the warmer it feels hence we get the “feels like” temperatures.

It was great visiting Linda’s brothers again. They both live within 15 miles of Kirkersville, the small town in central Ohio east of Columbus where they were born and raised. The town has not aged gracefully and a lot of it has changed. US Route 40 runs down the main street in town with it’s one street light. On weekends, the city made most of their revenue by ticketing cars speeding through town.

Where the Bison Roam

Linda Downing — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 18:13:39 +0000

Custer State Park, SD was on our way home from the Wind Cave. Rather then take the same route we decided to take a short cut through the park that was labeled on the map “ Wildlife Loop Road”. Little did we know what we would see along the way! Let us start out by explain that there are no buffalo in North America. Yes, you heard right. The animals we commonly referred to as buffalo are actually “Bison”. Nevertheless, the term “buffalo” appears everywhere – even the park brochures. I recon they just don’t want to embarrass Buffalo Bill. The park maintains a herd of 1,450 head that are allowed to free range over the parks 71,000 acres.

The road is a narrow two lane 18 mile road that meanders through the prairie setting following the lay of the land. It was a beautiful slow paced drive and we were enjoying the scenery. Coming around a bend in the road we saw a field full of bison in the distance. We pull over and immediately stated taking pictures of the herd. The valley was full of a mixture of bulls, cows and calves. All were grazing and meandering casually with no particular destination in sight. As we slowly continued down the road, we encountered animals closer to the road. They crossed the road right in front of us curious, some stopped directly in the roadway ignoring the traffic jams they were creating. One cow stopped to nurse her calf while we all watched and waited for them to finish and continue without a care in the world. Camera at the ready, we were snapping pictures one right after the other out the window of the truck. After awhile they moved on and we went on down the road. We noticed many wallows (muddy holes) along the road favored by the bulls for relaxing while chewing their cud always keeping a watchful eye over the herd of cows and calves.

Next we encountered a lone bull pronghorn antelope standing along the road calmly feeding on grass which we can only assume is sweeter by the side of the road. He looked up when we stopped but calmly went back to eating not interested in us at all. Later we had a small herd of female antelope come bounding down the hill and across the road to take a refreshing drink from the nearby watering hole. Some deer were also spotted off in the distance along the tree line.

Prairie dog town, as you would expect, was full of holes. Every so often you would see a sentry sitting high in the area ever watchful for an intruder. If you were quiet other members would emerge and scurry from one hole to another. They were a pleasure to watch as they went about there day looking for food. So much to see, so little time. It was getting dark and we needed to return to our home on wheels for a good night sleep.

Wind Cave National Park– Black Hills of South Dakota

Linda Downing — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 16:02:40 +0000

After leaving the Mammoth Site, we headed to the Wind Cave National Park just a few miles up the road. We are both cave nuts…so this was a great exploration opportunity. Luck was with us as the tour we selected was starting in just 30 minutes. This gave Linda enough time to look thorough the gift shop but not buy anything unless she was willing to carry it on the 1-1/2 hour “strenuous” underground tour. We selected the longest tour as it took us on all three levels of the cave basically combining the other two tours into one. The ticket holder was warned of its 450 steps…including one flight of 89 steps…but that did not deter us. Although near the end of the tour, the steps leading to the top level and the way out did seem a nearly insurmountable goal for these weary adventurer!

The Wind Cave was named for small openings on the surface which allows the cave to “breath” depending on the atmospheric pressure on the outside. In fact, that was how it was discovered by a teenager who explored 11 miles of the cave on his own. The idea of exploring a cave of this size with just a candle and string would make it difficult to measure. He later set up a small business guiding tourist through the cave at $2.50 which included a buggy ride and overnight accommodations (it was 1881).

This is one of the longest, oldest and most complex cave systems in the world. After a century of exploration, over 145 miles of the underground honeycomb of tunnels have been explored with more undiscovered. The tour we choose covers 2/3 of a mile, traversing several layers of the main tunnel (top, middle and lower) that loop back and forth over themselves. Outside the temperature was 90 degrees but as we entered the cave we were soon putting on our jackets. This cave is unique from other caves in that it had less active water flow. There are very few dripstone formations such as stalactites and stalagmites. However, it is known for its “boxwork” formations; extremely rare in other caves. These are mineral deposits that developed in the cracks of the limestone. As the limestone eroded away the deposited minerals remained, leaving lovely formations, “boxwork”, on the ceiling of the cave. Taking pictures was difficult due to the limited lighting but we hope you will like those we were able to get of the cave formations. Note particularly the one looking straight down following the yellow-marked stairway. Every step down we were thinking, “We have to come back up these”. In fact, the cave is so complex that we never actually covered the same passage twice.

Mammoth Site–Indoor Paleontological Site

Linda Downing — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 13:35:11 +0000

We have always wanted to go to a dig but wanted to see the real thing. While looking through the tourist brochures…yes we do read the local handouts to see what attractions are in the area…we discovered a day trip to Hot Springs, SD. It is an amazing story of the discovery and the willingness of one individual to forgo personal wealth to preserve our history. In 1974, a developer, while excavating a small hill for a housing development, discovered bones and tusks unearthed by the grader blade. He immediately stopped construction and contacted the University to come to the site to investigate the discovery. Needless to say he never completed the housing project but sold the property, at cost, to a local non-profit citizen group that was created to preserve the site. Finally, in 1980, the site was added to the National Natural Landmark list.

The site contains the largest concentration of prehistoric Columbian and woolly mammoth bones discovered in the world. How did this happen? It started with a sink hole that filled with water with luscious vegetation surrounding the area. Animals were attracted to the area for an easy meal and a cool dip in the water. What they didn’t know was that once they went in they could not climb back out due to the steep angle of the slippery sides. Their fate was sealed. Alternating layers of unfortunate animals and sediment filled the hole for thousands of years until it was full and mounted over concealing the area for 26,000 years.

This is an active dig site where bones and tusks from 61 different animals have been discovered to date. It is likely that there are more is to be discovered but at this point they need to discover what is underneath the existing bones that would need to be removed. A ground penetrating machine was brought in to determine what secrets lay below but unfortunately the bones were in hot water for so long that the bones and surrounding earth are the same density, meaning ground penetrating radar can not distinguished bones/fossils from the surrounding soil. Next step will be to bring in sonar to see if it will do a better job of exploration. Only about 20% of the known site has been uncovered to a depth of about 20 feet. They have drilled a core sample that proved there are bones at least an additional 40 feet under the current dig site. No one has any idea how deep the sink hole was or for how many thousands of years it was “collecting” unwary animals.

An interesting fact is that all the pelvic bones discovered to date have been identified as male! There have been many theory’s abound on this fact however the most logical is that young males are kicked out of the herds at an early age. The males being bigger and always hungy (those of us with boys know this to be a fact) were foolishly attracted to the easy source of food. Although I like the theory that the females may have nudged them over the side! LOL

South Dakota, It’s not just the mountain

cecil — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 01:21:41 +0000

As it turns out, the west end of South Dakota held a lot of adventure for us. We will start with Mount Rushmore, as it has been on our “must see” list of for several years. Linda visited when she was young, but I have no memory of it and don’t think my family ever made it here. All of the photos I have seen of this place have been from a distance, but I still wanted to see it. We spent the late afternoon hiking to the base of the mountain and then returned for the evening ceremony. We were pleasantly surprised at both how close they allow you to get to the actual sculpture, but also with the emphasis the U.S. Parks Service has put on the significance of the four men honored here. In the slide show below you will see how close you can actually get to the mountain as well as some the night scenes.

The evening ceremony was quite poignant. The Park Ranger spoke for a few minutes then they showed a moving film about the many hurtles overcome by Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt in order to insure our freedom. At the conclusion of the presentation, all current and former military servicemen and women were invited to take the stage for the lowering of the flag. You can see Cecil onstage just a little left of center, wearing his “Bounty Hunter” cowboy hat. Part of the evening ceremonies included lighting of the sculpture. It just appears to float in the air when it is illuminated. I hope the photos in the slide show will give you a sense of how magnificent this place is.

And now this: You may find this article interesting concerning the new sculptures on the opposite side of the Mount Rushmore: Click Here

Next up: We visit Mammoth Site, Wind Cave and Custer Wildlife Park.

INGRESS

We found lots of portals in the general area of Mount Rushmore, so in addition to just getting uniques, we did the mosaic-mission. But then, in scanning the local area, I discovered a portal that demanded investigation. I discovered THIS LINK while scrubbing with IITC. It was not far off the road and only required a short hike and my handheld booster to reach. I managed to hack a few keys and got a proof-of-presence selfie. Someone at Niantic is either really gullible or has a sense of humor like the smurf who submitted this. I did a little research and discovered where I think this came from. Here is the same link to the article that I added at that is at the end of the last paragraph in the normal blog section above. Click Here

Salt Lake City, Utah

Linda Downing — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 02:59:03 +0000

“Temple Square” is the centerpiece of Salt Lake City. Although we probably should have, we didn’t fit the tour into our Salt Lake City visit. We arrived here ready to explore and to get to know the area. We found it pretty but very dry and hot…hot…hot! We have had low 100’s to high 80’s but mostly in the 90’s. Really hot for us as we are used to the milder Seattle weather. Some light winds have helped cool off in the evenings. Thank goodness for the air conditioner in the 5th wheel to keep it bearable.

Our plan was to take Salty (our little dog) with us on our travels but it is way to hot to leave him in the truck when we get out. He gets to stay home and enjoy sitting on the back of the couch in air conditioned comfort while we are out and about exploring the local sights and the town. Our older black lab, Pepper, did not join us on this trip. He is 12 (that’s like 87 in dog years) and it is just getting too difficult for him to get in and out of the truck and RV. Plus his sight and hearing are failing. Cecil is like that too, but we couldn’t leave him home.

We spent all day Saturday at Liberty Park – the oldest and most prominent park in Utah. Established in 1882, Liberty Park is a local favorite with open space, beautiful trees, water park, picnic area, an aviary and lots of walking paths throughout the 100 acres. We both spent all day there on Saturday (see Ingress section below), walking from one end to the other several times. Visiting the horseshoe pits, duck pond and aviary park and especially the shady benches thoughtfully provided around the perimeter trail.

The Peace Gardens are located on the banks of the Jordan River in Jordan Park and became a reality in 1947. Twenty-eight countries are represented at the gardens, maintained by the Salt Lake City Parks Department, where they are planted with colorful flowers and foliage. Much of the landscape and decorations are reminiscent of the subject country in each area – pagodas in the Japanese area, Greek sculptures in the Greek garden, olive trees in the Italian gardens, etc. Paths led you throughout the park and they even allow dogs. Many mature trees provided shade to break the heat. We took lots of breaks to sit in the grass and relax while not running from shade tree to shade tree. Lots of families were enjoying the sun or shade and being outdoors.

We also had a chance to visit The University of Utah campus located in the hills above downtown Salt Lake City. It would be a challenge to go to classes here because it is spread out over a large area. However, students much younger and more resourceful ride bicycles, skate boards or the transit system to move around the area. We remember when walking across campus was not a big deal…now we get breathless walking from building to building never mind going up and down stairs.

We spent some time visiting Heritage Park – located on the east side of Salt Lake City. This is the location where, on July 24, 1847, Brigham Young first saw Salt Lake Valley that became the Mormon pioneers’ new home. There is a reconstructed village as you would have expected to find in that time period. Did we mention the large number of LDS church’s in the area? They are almost as plentiful as Starbucks in Seattle…only a slight exaggeration!

INGRESS

Aegis Nova was our first Anomaly on the ground. During Obsidian we served on the fielding team. Even as much as we like to field, being in “the trenches” for a cluster war was lots of fun. Being on a great team helped a lot!

The predictions leading up to Saturday, June 26th (Anomaly Day) were a bit ominous. Salt Lake City is traditionally a Resistance held area and based on the number of registered players they out numbered us. Never the less, we intended to do our best – and have fun! We were assigned to cluster team #2 and met with the whole team on Friday night. We had visited several farms (some blue) in the days prior and reached our suggested inventory levels by Friday night. We were ready!

Our assigned area was Liberty Park – an area we were not familiar with. Well heck, we are not familiar with ANYTHING in Salt Lake City. Our team worked well together, the team captain kept all of us on task and informed. We captured our first destination portals from a blue team that was already on it and held it throughout the first measurement period capturing one of the first shards of the event. By the end of the second measurement the blue team was going into a panic and began trying to block us with links instead trying to capture and control destination portals. Although we didn’t have contact with them our link teams were obviously hard at work as we saw blue lose link after link and green links appear inbound to the destination portal that we were defending.

The scores were coming to us as rumors, and all indicated we were winning. At the final measurement we all knew we had won. There is some discussion of Niantic actually changing the scores, but here is what we have as “final” right now for SLC. Enlightened: 699, Resistance: 603. That puts Salt Lake City in the win column for the Enlightened. With only Tokyo left in this Anomaly the overall score is Enlightened: 17, Resistance: 7. This means no matter what happens in Tokyo, the enlightened have won this anomaly! Enjoy some of our photos:

Anomaly in Salt Lake City

cecil — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 01:11:19 +0000

We are off on another adventure and, as usual, are still amazed by the places Ingress takes us. By the way, for those of you who might be new to our blog the top portion details our traveling adventures and the many things we see and the places we visit.

Suspension bridge in Kennewick, Wa

The second part, under the heading INGRESS, details what we have done for our Ingress team, the Enlightened. It is the game of Ingress that determines where we stop and for how long. This trip will keep us away from home until well into December. On the agenda are the following: Ingress Anomaly, “Aegis Nova”, in Salt Lake City on June 25th; Ohio for Linda’s 50th High School Reunion in mid-July; Florida is the end of the line for the eastern section for our annual stay with son Mike and his family; and finally we will make our way back to Colorado to spend Thanksgiving and my 70th birthday with my twin sister Susan – it’s her birthday, too! Then home before Christmas (no early snow in Snohomish County, please.)

Departing Granite Falls on Friday, June 17, 2016 our first stop was in Stanfield, Oregon just across the Columbia River. After driving all day we wanted to at least be in a different state when we stopped for the night. We set up the RV and the next day we drove into Kennewick, WA to do a mosaic banner mission (shown in the Ingress section) of their beautiful suspension bridge.

Next was on to Idaho. We have stopped in Hagerman before, but had never spent any time visiting the area. The photos in the slide show are from the Thousand Springs State Park Malad Gorge unit on I-84 in Idaho. The 250 ft deep canyon runs for miles. In the park there are spots to pull over and peer into the gorge at the Malad River below. Viewpoints from a bridge and along the road leave you in awe of the forces of nature. There is a 60 ft waterfall under the foot bridge which would be a big surprise for any uninformed rafters.

We visited this particular park because it had an Ingress portal there with a link that had to go. More on that in the Ingress section below. Once again I marvel at all the wonderful and surprising places our Ingress game has taken us.

Salt Lake City and the Aegis Nova Anomaly are next. Arriving Tuesday, the 21st. We will be in SLC for a full week.

INGRESS

During this trip we have decided to always stay at our stops for at least two overnights. That gives us a full day to play. Linda is still big on mosaic banner missions. She has her Onyx SpecOps badge but that hasn’t stopped her. I, on the other hand, have inclinations toward fielding. We have reached an informal agreement that we do missions for a day and field for a day. So far that plan seems to be working, but some of our stops will require at least two days.

On Saturday morning we awoke in Idaho then drove back across the Columbia into Kennington, Washington. Primary objective was the mosaic banner of the bridge. Those 18 missions were in the bag in under 3 hours. There was a long driving L8R farm in town that we had planned to BIOBID, but after reaching inventory cap we started blowing things up. It defeated the purpose of getting enough gear needed for the anomaly and then using it all to blow up the farm. After a few battles we headed back across the river to our home on wheels.

Next stop was Hagerman, Idaho and my day to field. Couple hours drive East to farm keys at an anchor, 3 hours west to second anchor and back to Hagerman for the spine, clearing as we drive. 15 layers, about 75K MU and the total stood for 3 checks. The west side stood for another 2. It put Linda and I as #1 and #2 in the regional stats, but that was not a surprise since the Res average was only 3K in this region (and there isn’t much MU). Thank goodness for Pokemon to ease the pain of time spent farming keys.

Salt Lake City Anomaly does not look promising. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but the entire area is pervasively blue and there is a Res BAF that has been over the entire city for like 20+ checks. I contacted my team lead and said I would drive out into the desert to bring down the anchor if they would coordinate blockers to prevent a re-throw. I was told they were burned out. So it is still there!

This is not going to be a fun Anomaly if we get trounced by the Res because the Enlightened of SLC are “burned out”, but I am still determined to do the best we can and to keep my mouth shut.

Westward Ho!

cecil — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 03:37:22 +0000

The time has come for us to start the return trip to Washington. Bidding a sad farewell to Mike, Staci and the grandkids we hit the road on Tuesday, January 5th. We decided to drive for 5-6 hours a day then stay an extra day to see the local sights. This plan worked out well and we stopped in Tallahassee, Florida for the first night. This was our first visit to this city and we drove all over downtown and visited several parks in the area. On to Mobile, Alabama for our next overnight stop. The good weather left us at this point as the freezing weather hit us hard. Dipped to the 30’s with a nasty wind that had us quickly digging in our wardrobe for long sleeve shirts and heavy jackets. We turned the furnace on but found both propane tanks empty so relied on the electric heater until we got them filled. Moving on to Shreveport, Louisiana we stopped at Diamond Jacks Casino. Very nice park located next to a railroad, which seems to be a requirement for most RV parks these days. It was also right on the Red River which is very high right now due to the most recent floods in the area. Walked over to the casino to check out the area but was surprised to find it was very small compared to Las Vegas standards. Cold nights but warm days we knocked the ice off the awning as we left in the morning headed west to deep in the heart of Texas…well maybe just inside the border!

INGRESS

Ingress Report: We had hoped to level up to 15 by Christmas…shopping and grandkids delayed us with school pickups and short hacking days. Moved our self imposed day to New Years week which passed way to fast. So we decided to level up at the same time in Shreveport on our anniversary date for playing. It took us awhile to get everything set up but once again we both became Level 15 agents at the same time. We are both headed to the highest level…16…for Ingress only a mere 16 million AP away. Onward and upward as we collect uniques and missions on our way home.

Homeward Bound – 2016

cecil — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:11:48 +0000

Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas (2), Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Washington, Home.

We are starting the new year headed back home from Florida. 3,600 miles over 22 days (weather permitting). We are going to be flexible and these things will undoubtedly change, but here is the rough draft of our plan.

We are going to make mostly 2-night stops this trip instead of the 1-nighters we used to do. In some cases 3-4 nights at the same spot to enjoy the sights and visit with family. We are also going to limit our trips to 400 miles a day or less, although the Nevada to Idaho stretch is actually 496 miles, and that makes a really long day. Always learning from problems experienced in prior years travels…even at our age. No comparison please with old dogs and new tricks!

Leaving later in the year has made us watch the winter weather and the mountain passes. We are disappointed as we are planning on missing California this year. Hopefully this will make an easier trip through the mountains and we’ll make a separate trip to visit family and friends there later on in the year.

Ingress

We are both over 23,800,000 AP on the way to 24 million for Level 15. So close! We could possibly put a 100K+ day together today – we’ll see. On the trip home we will plan on doing some quick unique captures and possibly a few missions after we stop and then throw fields the following day. I expect to see a lot of parks and graveyards so we can maximize the number of uniques for the short time we ‘ll have at each stop.

Looking forward to getting back to Granite and putting that all back. I’m sure Tall Vanilla Chai will be glad to see us as he has been struggling to keep that part of the region green. Keep it up, bro – we’re on the way!