Category: travel

New Year, New Adventures

While I have trimmed back the amount of traveling I’m doing this year to fewer trips, they are going to be bigger adventures. 😉 Of course, with less long distance trips, I hope to ride my horse more, and take small trips with hubby in our camper to see the sites close to home.

Grandson and his wife.

To start with Hubby and I are going to visit a grandson and his wife in Clovis, NM, then hubby’s sister and her husband in Killeen, TX, then on the way back to Oregon we’re swinging through Arizona to visit with a writer friend and her hubby. She’s been wanting us to come to Arizona in the winter for several years so she could take me to some of the historical Indigenous dwellings and petroglyphs. That will be a fun winter trip.

Then I’ll be attending the Left Coast Crime conference in Seattle in April. I have always enjoyed this conference when I’ve attended. I like the fun things we do with readers, and I learn more about other authors.

With only a short respite at home, I’m staying at the Oregon Coast with two of my besties for a week. There will be writing, chaos, and lots of laughs!

Rockaway Beach last year.

New people have taken over the Sumpter Flea Market that I attend with Mary Vine every Memorial and Labor Day weekend. They are changing things up. We are discussing if this event we have attended for nearly ten years may have priced us out. We’ll see.

Mary in the book trailer at Sumpter.

I need to sign up for the NIWA booth at La Pine in June. I’ll do that as soon as I finish writing this post. It’s a three-day event in La Pine, OR where I and another member, Andretta Schellinger, sell books from NIWA authors at the Rhubarb Festival. 

Then there is a possibility that I’ll be attending Author Jacquie Roger’s annual event in Idaho. She had it usually in July. The event has gone from a three-day event in Silver City to a one-day event in Homedale, ID.

Then! The trip I’ve been dreaming of for a while. My oldest daughter, a granddaughter, and I are heading to The Netherlands, Spain, England, Scotland, and Ireland. We’ll visit family in The Netherlands and Spain, then off for an adventure in the UK. We have our lodging taken care of, but I’ve been watching airline flights. Does anyone have any suggestions on which airlines are the most reliable, cheapest, and comfiest? Or any tips on getting a reasonably priced ticket? The prices are all over the place. The thing I do know is that we need to book directly with an airline and not one of the third party markets.

After that trip, I’ll do a few local bazaars and the Holiday Market in Portland with NIWA. I’m looking forward to the year so I can get to the fun trip in the fall.

Holiday Market 2023.

I have several books planned to write and hope to keep the momentum going with my audiobook sales. Which I’ll talk about in my next blog post.

I hope you have wonderful plans for the year to give you something to look forward to.

Deluge of Life

Ever feel like you will never get something accomplished? Even if it is something that you can accomplish?

That’s where I’m at. November is such a busy month. I have two long writing/book events which will take up two weeks. I have a book I would like to have finished by the end of the year, I have audiobooks I need to upload to make into audiobook bundles, I am learning new things to hopefully get those said audiobooks selling, which leads me to even more things I need to do for the audiobooks.

And then there is life outside of the writing. Hubby is finishing a barn that has had poles in the ground for 15 years. While he is doing most of it by himself, he does need my help for certain things. Like lifting the metal roofing up to him.

Hubby on the roof, the piece of metal against the hay that I lift up.

There is also my desire to decorate the house and soon start baking. Not to mention working on the quilts for the two grandkids graduating in 2024 and Christmas presents. One of my favorite things about Christmas is finding the perfect present for my family and friends. I think even if it’s a trinket or bauble, if it has something to do with their favorite things, it makes them smile.

Today, I didn’t take my usual morning walk so I could sit down at the computer to write this post and get some more words on the Work in Progress- AKA The Pinch book 5 in the Spotted Pony Casino Mystery series. My friend and I spent a weekend at the Chinook Winds Casino and resort on the Oregon Coast last spring so I could research for this book. I’m finally getting around to writing it. And I’ve discovered there were some things I should have researched while I was there. *sigh*

I’ve sent an email to the casino, but I fear they won’t reply because I didn’t ask about staying there, I asked questions about how the place is run. They would rather take my money and have me visit than help me with logistics for my book.

I will continue using common sense and hope I get things right. Or if I really need to get the answers, it might mean a trip to the coast for hubby and me in December. 😉

There are so many things I need and want to get done before the end of the year. I’ll have a tight schedule next year too as I try to get back to publishing 4 books a year and also take a month-long trip to Europe with my oldest daughter and a granddaughter. I can’t wait for the trip, but I have to. It won’t happen until September next year. I’ll have more about it in future posts. As it gets closer and I get more excited, I’m sure I’ll have posts about how we planned and booked everything.

That’s all the dithering I have on life at this time. My next post will be about the 20 Books Vegas conference I’m attending next week.

Southernmost tip of the U.S.

I can now say I have been the farthest south you can go in the United States. On my trip to the Big Island of Hawaii my friend and I went to the southernmost tip of the island. We were told about this spot by a local when we asked her what places we should see.

One morning we got up, had breakfast and packed a cooler with water and snacks and headed south on the Hawaii Belt Road or Mamalahoa Hwy. When we came to the Point Road, we turned down that and found a dirt area at the end of the road where cars were parked and there were porta-pottys and a snow cone vendor.

We walked over to the forty-foot cliff edge and peered down into the beautiful crystal-clear water. I loved the colors and energy of the sparkling ocean.

A man had just jumped in. I took a photo of him. He looked like a native swimming in the water. And come to find out, my friend started talking to the man’s wife. He was from the island and they were visiting from Seattle. She also dove into the water with him down below to help her swim around the point to climb up the rocks. There was a ladder down the side of the cliff, but she was too short to reach the rope that would get her to the ladder.

Another one of their friends jumped. I snapped a photo of him jumping.

There were also to boys fishing from a hole in the lava that was back about 60 feet from the ocean. The hole looked like it went down forty feet to water that washed in and out with the tide.

A young man and a boy were fishing off the edge of the cliff as well. The boy made my friend nervous. He would stand right on the edge as he cast his pole. They had large black garbage bags tied to their lines to pull the hooks out farther into the ocean. They were trying to catch ahi, tuna.

After hanging around there a while, we followed a trail that took us to the southernmost point. It was a beach made up of dead coral. It was sad to see so much bleached coral broken in pieces.

We didn’t take the hike or the drive around to the green sand beach.

Leaving that area, we ended up at Punuluu Bakery also a place the local woman told us to enjoy. We did enjoy the pastries and the lunch we bought there.

And that wraps up another day we enjoyed in Hawaii.

Book Happenings

My latest Gabriel Hawke book, Damning Firefly, will be releasing the end of this month. If you don’t want to miss purchasing it, you can pre-order it in ebook format.

Book 11 in the Gabriel Hawke Series

A church fire.

An unconscious woman on Starvation Ridge.

Gabriel Hawke, fish and wildlife officer with the Oregon State Police, helps with a fire at the Lighted Path church before heading out to check turkey hunters. He discovers a car wedged between two trees and a woman with a head injury reeking of smoke. Is she the arsonist?

Hawke encounters the county midwife gloating over the burnt church and learns she and the victim in the car know one another.

Two seemingly separate events lead Hawke to a serial rapist and a county full of secrets. 

Universal link to pre-order: https://books2read.com/u/bQeBDZ

Hulihe’e Palace

One morning we decided to walk farther north than we had previously. We found more shops, restaurants and a resort. But the fun thing we came across was a summer home of the Hawaii’s royalty.

It was complete in 1938 and became the personal residence of John Adams Kuakini the Governor of the island of Hawaii. It was built by foreign seamen and missionaries. They used resources on the island such as lava rock, coral lime mortar, koa and ohi’a woods.

Walking around inside the structure I mentioned to my friend the walls were really thick. Three feet says the pamphlet. I thought maybe two, by width of the windowsills. It is a beautiful building with tall ceilings and massive furniture. There are two floors come in at 3600 sq feet. there was also a basement with 2 cisterns. The cook house could be accessed through the dining room. There were also other small bungalows on the property when royalty lived there.

The last royal to own the property was an adopted heir of Queen Kapi’olani. the next owner was Mrs. Allen who died a month after purchasing the palace. The home remained vacant for 10 years.

In 1925 the building was purchased by the Daughters of Hawai’i to keep it from becoming hotel development. That is who operates and attends to it as a museum.

There are many items in the house that were purchased or given to the royals. What fascinated me were the long sticks with different shaped, what looked like lamp shades covered with feathers. Because my curiosity was aroused, I asked the woman docent who was there what they were. Feathers were treasured. with all the brightly plumed birds on the islands, the colorful feathers were deemed fit for royalty. Many photos you see that depict the leaders/royalty of Hawaii, they are wearing capes that are covered with feathers.

These feathered “lamp shades” on sticks were carried in front of Royalty when they walked around outside their homes. It was how they were recognized when travelling about the islands.

The lanai of the home has breathtaking views of the ocean across Kailua Bay.

BOOK HAPPENINGS

Starting this week, you can follow the Silver Dagger Book Tour for my new -Cover reveal for the Halsey Brother Series/ Halsey Homecoming tour. There are prizes awarded for following and adding your name to the raffle.

https://www.silverdaggertours.com/sdsxx-tours/the-halsey-brothers-series-book-tour-and-giveaway

Hiking the Edge of a Crater

Our next stop was the Kilauea Visitor Center for the Kaluapele volcano caldera. Here we entered the park and strolled through the visitor center learning about the Kilauea Caldera which is an active shield volcano. Meaning it is a low-profile volcano looking like a warrior’s shield sitting on the ground. It is formed by highly fluid lava. Steady eruptions are what make the dome like volcano due to the slow of the fluid lava.

After leaving the visitor center we drove to a trail that went along the edge of the caldera. There were a lot of different foliage, and we struck up conversations with people from the states as well as other countries. The trail was dirt with lots of roots sticking up to catch a toe on.

We also saw a couple of cracks in lava tubes that ran under the path where we walked.

Looking down into the caldera we could see people walking across the crusty floor of the crater.

See the trail where people hike?

We thought we were going to get to a lava tunnel, but we came to another parking lot and thought maybe we missed the tunnel. We turned around and walked back only to discover we hadn’t missed it. We drove on and found the parking lot that we’d walked to and found the tunnel across the parking. Only there were so many cars there we couldn’t find a place to park to explore the tunnel. So fair warning, when you get to the end of the path from the first parking lot, cross the second parking lot and you will find the tunnel.

I love happenstance.

While my friend and I were vacationing on the Big Island of Hawaii, we’d set a course each day for one place and then stop along the way when we came across something that intrigued us.

That’s how we came across a pretty park with history on the southeast shore of Hawaii. We were headed to Volcano Park when we saw what looked like the remnants of a pier from the highway and a sign that said Whittington Beach State Park. I pulled down into the park and we looked around.

We found two “ponds” of water that came from the ocean but were caught in what looked like ponds. They made good swimming for the people at the park. There was also a woman fishing from the lava along the shoreline and a man taking shade in one of the covered spaces to picnic.

Following our curiosity, we headed toward the poles sticking up out of the water with a few boards still attached. there was also a rock and concrete wall sticking up in a small inlet behind the pier. We wondered if it had once been a navy site during WWII or what. After taking photos and discussing it we headed on to the volcano park.

On our return to where we were staying, we pulled out our computers and started googling Whittington Beach State Park.

The park is located on Honuapo Bay which means Turtle Cove Bay. It is home to the Green Hawaiian Sea Turtle. The park was named for Richard Henry Whittington in 1948.

The first pier constructed in this bay was in the early 1800s. When the Europeans arrived, it was already a thriving fishing village. A drought in the 1840s hurt the economy and in 1868 a hurricane and tsunami wiped out the pier. By 1880, the pier was once again active with shipping island crops via train to the port and fishing. By 1930 the port supported a large sugar cane plantation.

But the remnants you see today happened after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The U.S. military fearing Japan would see the pier as a way to gain footing in the islands bombed by pier, leaving what you see today.

That was just one of the wonderful things we learned this trip.

A Hawaiian Gift

August, I was gifted with a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. A person my hubby has helped out a lot offered us the use of their condo in Kona. Unfortunately, the time of year didn’t work well for my hubby. It was the middle of haying season. However, he told me to go and take a friend. He didn’t have to suggest it twice. 😉

We arrived in Kona on August 8th and August 9th we discovered a small coffee plantation and roasting operation. The Kona Le’a Plantation is on the Mamalahoa Highway. We were just out checking the area and my friend spotted the sign for the plantation. While I’m not a coffee drinker, she is.

I learned a lot about a coffee bean, how they are roasted at this operation, and my friend sampled the coffees. She preferred the air roasted coffee to the fire roasted. We were told it would have a smoother less weighty taste and she confirmed it.

She also explained a pea berry. It is the full bean, both halves still firmly connected. When the halves of the bean stay together, they have more oil and more flavor. When a bean is dried and it falls into two pieces, it is drier and will crack in the roasting process. A whole bean stays together during the roasting and holds in the oils, only roasting out the moisture. It is a premium bean.

Air Roaster
Fire roaster

The air roaster is a faster way to roast, cools faster, and gives a smoother taste, it is also easier to set and get the quality of roasting than the fire roaster which can burn the beans if a close eye isn’t kept on the temperature. Also, the fire roaster doesn’t cool down as fast and can end up giving the beans a burnt taste. The longer, darker roast has less caffeine than the shorter roasting time which is the lighter roast.

Coffee Plant

The Kona Le’a Plantation is also all organic. Coffee cherry skins and husks are composted and put back in the ground to give future crops nutrition. Green waste is trucked in and used at mulch and weed control.

Coffee beans. Need to be maroon or deep red before being picked.

The beans are hand harvested. They also roast beans for other small coffee farmers.

While we were there, we were treated to a tasting of not only coffee, but also honey, Hawaii fruit paste, and chocolate covered pea berries. I liked the honey and the fruit paste, but even though the roaster said the wonderful chocolate would temper the pea berry, I tasted more coffee than chocolate.

While I am not a coffee drinker, I can appreciate all the work that goes into making the coffee so any people do drink.

Tamkaliks Ceremony

The third week of July, I attended the Tamkaliks Ceremony held in Wallowa, Oregon. My brother, sister-in-law, and I arrived Saturday morning before the horse procession. This is where members of tribes who once lived in Wallowa County ride horses around the dance arbor. A riderless horse is led by one of the riders. This symbolizes the ancestors who have passed and any tribal members who were lost the past year. They ride slowly around the arbor, and begin singing, until they finally dismount and enter the arbor.

Every time I witness this procession it makes me emotional. The reason I write the characters I do, is to show the world how the Native Americans revered the land that gave them life and how resilient they are to be proving they are the stronger people.

That morning we joined in the Friendship dance and watched the naming ceremony, passing of the pipe ceremony, and gift giving ceremonies from the families of members who had passed since the last Tamkaliks celebration. The princesses who were at the celebration ranged in age from 6 to teens. I enjoyed hearing each of them tell us about themselves in their language and then repeat it in English. I love that the young people are learning more and more about their culture that had been stolen from the grandparents and great grandparents.

Around noon we headed to the Wallowa Historical center to look up information I wanted for the current work in progress. Then we had to go to the Josephy Center in Joseph for my brother to pick up his artwork and that of his daughter and wife that had been on display.

That evening we went back to Wallowa and watched them honor the veterans and the contest dancing. The beautiful regalia was breathtaking. The young men put on a show, with their bobbing, stomping, and twirls. The women’s dresses and shawls were colorful. Many dresses were made of the beautifully tanned deer and elk hide adorned with shells and elk teeth.

A wonderful thing happened that I had hoped for when I decided to go Tamkaliks. That was meeting someone who would guide me with my Native American characters. While sitting and watching the ceremonies in the morning, there was a woman below us who answered questions and taught a young couple how to say her dog’s Nez Perce name. I felt she was so willing to teach non-Indian people her culture she might be a good person to ask about helping me. When I finally got up the nerve to talk to her, she was open and willing to work with me. She said her new job was working with people like me to understand the Nez Perce culture. I gave her my card and she gave me her name, email address, and phone number. I’m excited to start working with her.

It was a wonderful weekend, gathering information for my books and immersing myself in another culture.

Flat Tire and Inspiration

Over the past weekend I drove to Wallowa County on a research trip. Those that read this blog and my books, know that my Gabriel Hawke series is mostly set in the county. I had two, well, three reasons to go to the county.

Reason one was to attend the Tamkaliks Ceremony. It is a powwow held every July in Wallowa, Oregon. And while I did attend and came up with some ideas to add to my books as well as made a great contact, this post isn’t about the powwow. That will be the next post. 😉

Reason two, the current work in progress (WIP) has a couple of scenes set in an area I have never seen in person. I’ve heard stories and looked it up on Google Earth and an Oregon Atlas & Gazetteer. I had this feeling I needed to see the area.

Reason three, I couldn’t find anywhere to tell me why the area was named the way it was.

I left Thursday, spent the afternoon and night with our oldest daughter in Cove, OR and wandered on to Wallowa County Friday morning. In the county there is an old town named Maxville. There had been a lot more talk about it the last few years. They have an interpretive center for the town in Joseph and even had a day when you could take a tour of the area. I had a prior commitment and couldn’t make it. So I decided to take a look on my own on the way to my brother’s in Enterprise.

I turned at the sign on the highway that said Maxville 13 Miles. Then I turned on my phone’s GPS knowing I was headed onto dirt roads that wove through timber. My phone told me I had arrived when there was a long drop in a wooded canyon to my right and a steep hill on my left. I didn’t see anything that remotely looked like old buildings or a logging camp. I went farther and discovered a road that went off through the woods with a sign that said no motorized vehicles.

Nia and I got out and walked up the road a bit, but didn’t see anything other than a deer, a squirrel, trees, wildflowers and bushes. We returned to the car and turned around. What I was searching for was a logging camp that was set up in the woods in 1923 by a logging company out of Missouri. They brought Black loggers and families to the county to work at the camp. The unincorporated town lasted about ten years and the families slowly moved away as the logging died out. My curiosity about history had me wanting to see what was left of the town. But I didn’t find it.

We made it back to the highway and my brother’s house. There I told my sister-in-law about wanting to learn the reason behind the name Starvation Ridge and take a drive out to see it. We first went to the Wallowa County Historical Center in Joseph to see if we could learn anything about the naming. No one there could help us. As we left there my brother called and said he was off work what were we up to.

We told him of my desire to go to Starvation Ridge, so we swung by the house and picked him up. We had a good discussion about the name on the way out and I was glad I’d decided to see the ridge in person. It wasn’t what I’d expected from the shots on Google Earth. The road was made of fist-sized and large jagged rocks which made driving a slow process. And the area I thought I knew from the satellite images didn’t look the same from ground level. It helped me better understand the lay of the land. Which in turn meant changing a couple of scenes in my WIP.

This is where the flat tire comes in. I turned around and immediately one of my tires lost twenty pounds of air pressure. We crept to a spot where there were fewer nasty rocks and in the shade. My brother changed the tire with my SIL and I helping. We made it back to the tire store before they closed and had the tired fixed and put back on.

The next day while we were attending the Tamkaliks Celebration, we ran into a person who knows a lot of Wallowa County history. He couldn’t tell us what we wanted to know but he suggested we try the Wallowa Historical Center. And we found our answer in a thick book. I wanted to know how Starvation Ridge got its name. It wasn’t near as interesting as the stories my brother and his wife thought were the reasons. It was named that by Billy Smith who left his sheep on the ridge so long they ate all the grass off of it one year.

And that was the essence of my research trip. My next blog will be about the Tamkaliks Ceremony.

I’ll leave you with a photo I took of a chipmunk.

Our Latest Alaska Trip

We spent a week in Alaska this month to attend a grandson’s graduation and wedding. We left on Sunday and returned the following Sunday. We put a lot of miles on the rental car and saw a number of places we had talked about seeing.

Ice in a river.

The first day we tried to sleep in but daylight comes earlier in Wasilla than it does in SE Oregon. And the sunlight remains high until 11 pm. We were driving around and didn’t realize how late it was getting until someone looked at a clock on the dash. Day one in Alaska we drove around acquainting ourselves with the venues for the events we were attending. On that drive we spotted a moose, but it flashed into the trees before we could get our phones ready to take a photo.

Day 2 we woke bright and early to drive to Fairbanks, a city my hubby has wanted to see for some time. On the way, I took some pretty photos.

view going by Denali State Park
River at a rest area where we stopped.

We ate lunch in Fairbanks, checked out the town, purchased chocolates at a fun sweet shop and headed to North Pole, Alaska. Not far off the highway there is a huge building called Santa Land. You can see reindeer and walk through a large building filled with Christmas ornaments and decorations while Christmas music plays. And yes, we purchased some souvenirs. 😉

Santa Land

From there we drove toward Glenallen where they had water flooding the highway. Luckily we had a small SUV to be high enough to get through the water.

Driving through water in Glenallen

We arrived back in Wasilla at 10 pm. It was a long day! But a fun one counting all the moose we saw and getting some good photos.

Day 3 we drove out to see the farmland around Wasilla and visited with family.

Day 4 was graduation day. We caught up to other family that had arrived for the graduation and attended the event.

Day 5 we drove to Whittier. We had attempted this trip years ago but there had been so many cars lined up to go through the one lane tunnel that we left. This time of the year there was little traffic. We were only four cars back from the lead car. The man-made tunnel to get to Whittier is 2 1/2 miles long, with a train track running down the middle. The entrance to the town is shared by cars and trains. There is a stop light on both sides of the tunnel that lets traffic go through every half hour. Here are some tunnel photos.

Tunnel entrance
Going through the tunnel. (Ignore the buggy window)

In the other side is a picturesque harbor town. Lots of fishing boats, a few restaurants and souvenir stores. A large apartment complex for the people who work at the businesses to live. And a beautiful old lodge that was being renovated. We had really good meal at the Swiftwater Seafood cafe.

View from where we were eating.
View of some of the businesses.

On the way out as we waited for the light to change, I took a photo of a glacier. I didn’t catch the name of it.

Day 6 we hung out with family until the wedding. It took place outside at Tailrace park. The setting was picturesque. The highlight for some of us was a kayaker paddling behind the officiate during the ceremony. I grabbed a photo of that.

Day 7 we headed home with lots of memories.