Adventures in the USA: Houston, Texas

I flew to Houston this morning en route to Central America, where I will be spending a week in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

When I landed at IAH this afternoon, I picked up a rental car and headed straight to Jesse H. Jones Park, only a few minutes northeast of the airport.

It was a lovely, mostly sunny afternoon, and I had the trails in the park mostly to myself.

It was a neat spot, because there is a cypress swamp, and the cypress's have "knees" that stick up out of the water.

I have never seen anything quite like it before.  There were turtles in the swamp, and a magnificent male cardinal;

but, unfortunately, I did not spot any alligators, which was what I was especially keen to see.

After an hour walking through the park I checked in at my hotel close to the airport and then drove to downtown Houston.  I stopped at Minute Maid Park to take some pictures and look inside.

Then I drove through downtown to the Buffalo Bayou Park.  Buffalo Bayou is basically Houston's "river," and they have a nice park system along the bayou with pedestrian/cyclist trails and bridges.  Again I was hoping to see alligators, but I had to be content with some unique ducks and herons.  And also, bats, which actually I did not see, but I could hear them and see their roosts.

Interestingly, there is apparently a large colony of bats underneath this particular bridge.

It was now after 17:00, and I decided to go for dinner.  I had a couple of potential spots picked out, and decided since I had not been able to see an alligator, I would try to eat some.  I went to a place called Beaver's, pretty close to the park.

I ordered "fried alligator, crawfish, and grits."

The green things are pickled okra.  The dish was possibly even more delicious than it was interesting for me.

Tomorrow I am off to Guatemala City and here is my travel plan:

Adventures in the USA: Denver, Colorado (to Panama City, Panama)

April 2, 2015

The weather was lousy when we woke up--snowy and sleety and cold, but we headed for Red Rocks anyway.  

Actually I missed the exit off the interstate, so we headed west further than we had to, but it ended up being the scenic route as we were well towards the mountains before I could turn around.

Once at the park we almost immediately ran into a bunch of deer along the parking lot.

We went for two short walks and saw lots of red rocks, of course; some interesting plants, including at least two kinds of cacti; a tunnel through the rock; and, besides the deer, rabbits and birds, including a robin and some blue birds we didn't recognize.

There's our car, way down below.

Then we stopped by to see the Red Rock Amphitheater, a depression-era project that created a pretty epic open-air concert venue.  It's not quite the Hoover Dam, but a fairly impressive project nonetheless.

From Red Rocks State Park we drove to the other side of Denver, where we dropped the car and shuttled to the airport for our 13:10 flight to Panama City.

The flight was close to six hours, but was actually a pretty nice flight, because my brother and I each got an entire 3-seat row to ourselves!

We were amazed getting off the plane in Panama at how hot and humid it was.  I had arranged a ride with the hostel, and we were met by Alexis and his friend Isabella.  Alexis is a Chinese immigrant to Panama and Isabella is a Taiwanese graduate student on exchange to Panama to study Spanish.  They were pretty interesting to talk to during the drive, which was about one hour long from the international airport (PTY) to Casco Viejo.

We learned, for example, that there are lots of Chinese in Panama, and they originally came here to work on the railroad, just as in Canada.

It's holy week (semana santa), so Casco Viejo was hopping with churchgoers and partiers.  We checked in at Magnolia hostel, and then went for a bit of a walk around the neighborhood.  There wasn't much to see in the dark and all, but we did get some drinks and fruit at a little grocery store and sat in the Plaza de la Independencia in front of the Iglesia Catedral, which was teeming with Good Friday throngs.

Adventures in the USA: Denver, Colorado

My youngest brother and I are en route to Panama City to take advantage of his spring break and my Easter long weekend.

Our itinerary takes us from Edmonton to Denver to Panama City, and we fly back via San Jose, Costa Rica and Houston.

We spend a night in Denver, San Jose, and Houston, and we are only going for a week, so really we're spending half our trip in Panama City and half of it getting there and back.  But that is okay, because it will be a leisurely trip rather than one that involves sleep-deprivation and jet lag, and it will let us see and do things along the way.

Moreover, we are no longer in Edmonton, where there was an ugly blizzard this morning (although I think similarly bad weather is heading Denver's way overnight).

In any case, tonight driving from the airport we detoured to see the Colorado State Capitol, the Colorado Rockies' stadium, Coors Field, and the first Quiznos ever.  We also got to eat a delicious Mexican dinner that included fresh mint limeade and horchata (a drink made from rice, cinnamon and milk).

Tomorrow morning we are hoping to visit Red Rocks State Park before our trip to Panama continues, but that will somewhat depend on what the weather is like when we wake up.

Adventures in the USA: South Florida

Back in Fort Lauderdale, we made our way to Miami.  We had learned some lessons from our trek from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, and so this time there were fewer steps.  However, we still managed to have the trip take far too long and be far too hot, as we had asked Enterprise (the company that "picks you up") to pick us up at the Tri-Rail station.  Somehow this took something like two hours, because they could not figure out where the Tri-Rail station was.    

Enterprise is one of my favorite companies of any sort, and the only rental car company I deal with, but I'm sorry to say that on this particular occasion they really dropped the ball.  In any case, by early afternoon we were in a rental car and heading back to the get-what-you-pay-for Runway Inn (where we were greeted by a friendly lizard outside).

That evening we made our way up to Miami's suburb called Sunrise to watch the Montreal Canadiens play the Florida Panthers at the BB&T Center.  The BB&T Center is a) probably the most beautiful hockey arena I have ever seen and b) typically quite empty.  Tonight, however, vehicles with Quebec license plates filled the parking lots surrounding the arena, and it was entirely packed.  

Our seats were way up and behind the net, but all the better to see all the Habs fans.

And I could still make out the number "1" on the back of Luongo's jersey, only I had to squint.

The game started slow, but got exciting in the third when, just as the Habs fans had begun chanting "ole," Florida scored to tie it.  The game went to a shoot out eventually, and the Habs won.

The next morning we checked out of the Runway Inn and drove to Little Havana, for coffees and Cubano sandwiches.

Then it was off to Homestead, about an hour south of Miami, where we had arranged to pick up camping gear at Walmart.  We bought a tent, two sleeping bags, two pillows, two sleeping mats, and some groceries, all for about $100.  From Homestead we drove about another hour, into the Everglades National Park and to the Flamingo Campground on the Florida Bay.

It was New Year's Eve, and the campground was pretty full, but we were actually given a bit of a nicer spot than we had reserved.

We set up the tent and quickly realized that "no-see-ums" were far worse than massive northern Alberta mosquitoes.  We are horrified at how quickly and persistently we were getting bitten.  

So we jumped back in the car to drive rather than walk to watch the sun set over the bay and a nearby pond.

Needless to say, the sunset was gorgeous, and we got to enjoy it along with jumping fish and flitting water fowl.

We had a hot, hot night, and plenty of bites when we woke up, but the morning was tremendous, and we returned to the pond from the night before on our way out of the campground.

Then we stopped at what would be the highlight of our Everglades visit, the Anhinga Trail.  This trail is relatively short, and mostly consists of boardwalk over what looks like a swamp but is actually called a river.  

We saw many different kinds of fish (which were not photogenic); birds; 

and best of all, over a dozen alligators.  

After a long time enjoying all the animals at the Anhinga Trail, we drove northward to the Big Cypress National Preserve.  We had not been able to reserve additional nights in the Everglades, so we camped our next two nights in Big Cypress.

Big Cypress was somewhat closer to Miami than the Everglades, but still about an hour or so, depending on where in Miami we were trying to get to.

Late in the afternoon of January 1, after setting up camp, we drove into Fort Lauderdale to watch a movie at the Thunderbird Drive-In.  The drive-in is part of an enormous complex including a flea market and who knows what else.  Apparently this place is the second-biggest attraction in all of south Florida, or so their website claims.

On Friday we had our last full day in Florida, and we made the most of it.

We began our day at the YMCA in Miami, where we were able to have a bit of a workout and most importantly a lovely shower (our campground was not equipped with running water).  Then in the afternoon we were in Hialeah, another Miami suburb, at Gulfstream Park, the thoroughbred race track, where we lost a few bucks.  Later that afternoon we headed west to see Cirque du Soleil perform Amaluna in a tent beside Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens.  We finished our evening with dinner at a Peruvian restaurant.

Our cruise was scheduled to leave at 16:00 from Miami on Saturday, so we got up relatively early and hurried into Miami for breakfast and another visit to the YMCA.  

Then we had to figure out how best to get rid of our camping gear.  We had actually figured out a way to pack the tent, which we liked enough to still want, but we had to abandon the sleeping gear.  We did a bit of a dumpster drive-by; hopefully someone in need of a sleeping bag will have found them.

We dropped the car off at Enterprise, and they did us a solid by giving us a ride to the airport, where there's an Enterprise shuttle to the port.  This was quite convenient and saved us taxi fare.  

So that was our time in Florida, as now we were en route to the port, and our ship, the Carnival Glory.

Adventures in the USA: Dallas, Texas

Dallas is certainly not in the Caribbean, but it was where we were laid over for eight hours en route to Miami.  Our flight from Edmonton landed around noon, so basically an afternoon in Dallas was a bonus, courtesy of American Airlines.  

Neither Andrea nor I had ever been to Texas before, so we made the most of it, starting with a 45 minutes, $5 round trip ride into Dallas on the DART rail.

Once in the city we got some Texas BBQ right by the DART station, at Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse.

Then we began a walking tour roughly based on a National Geographic walking tour map I found online.  We saw the grassy knoll and Dealey Plaza where JFK was shot;

the Old Red Courthouse;

John Neely Bryan's cabin;

the JFK memorial (surprisingly unimpressive);

Reuinion Tower;

Pioneer Plaza;

Pioneer cemetery;

City Hall;

Hotel Adolphus;

and Thanksgiving Square, which has obviously seen better days.

We stopped for coffee in the Magnolia Building, the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi, or something like that.

And we also ran into the remarkable complex of First Baptist Church, which integrated three generations of church buildings in a very attractive way.  This was not an attraction on our walking map, but it was maybe the most interesting place we visited nonetheless.

The day after Christmas was probably not the best day to tour Dallas's downtown, because most things were closed and quiet, but we had nearly perfect walking weather, and anyway, it sure beat sitting at DFW airport all day.

You can see all of my Dallas photos here.