My daughter Jennifer and I headed out for a quick spring break trip to southern California this week. My primary interest is following the Texas Longhorn softball team at the Judy Garmin Classic at Cal State Fullerton; Jennifer’s is to spend time with one of her closest friend, Mariza, who lives in Oceanside where her US Marine husband Frank is stationed at Camp Pendleton.
We arrived on St. Patrick’s day, so naturally our first event was a block party in downtown San Diego Wednesday night, where we hooked up with a couple of Frank and Mariza’s friends.
Mariza, Vince, and Jennifer
Thursday was dedicated to Longhorn softball, In-N-Out burgers for lunch, then more Longhorn softball, then a sushi dinner at a cool lilttle place called the Love Boat back in Oceanside.
Nadia Taylor scoring her walk-off solo homerun against Arizona State
Lunch at In-N-Out!
Shelby Savony (21) being congratulated on her go-ahead homerun in the Horns’ impressive comeback win over San Jose State. Down 8-3 at one point, the Longhorn offense exploded for 10 unanswered runs in the final 3 innings, to improve their season record to 22-4.
More photos from this trip on my Flickr site, stay tuned and I’ll try to keep posting updates throught he weekend.
The week began with a whirlwind overnight roadtrip to Austiin to attend a Jackson Browne solo acoustic concert with my sweet friend from high school, Molly. Then I crammed three notable events into the weekend - another overnight roadtrip to Nocona to attend W.R. Tucker’s Nocona Nights, which this evening featured Tommy Alverson, Davin James, and Brian Burns. Saturday night was a UT-Nebraska football watching party at my nephew Jeff’s home in Frisco, and then Sunday I wrapped up my fun-filled week with a laid-back Susan Gibson performance at Joni Beard’s Clubhouse Concerts, Upstairs at the White Elephant Saloon in the Fort Worth Stockyards.
For three years now, Autumn in Texas has begun for me with the Rice Festival at Fischer Hall in the Texas Hill Country. Thanks to global warming, October is the new August, so we have to wait until November to get temperatures down to the 60’s and 70’s. Combine that beautiful weather with the gorgeous Texas Hill Country landscapes, and an antique little country dancehall where I’ve seen magic happen, and you have just about the perfect weekend excursion.
Festival highlights for me this year were Eric Taylor on Friday night, and then Kevin Welch, Darrell Scott, and the Band of Heathens on Saturday. Just one great act after another building up to probably the best performance (by BOH) I’ve seen in my three years of Rice Festing. Honorable mention to Tom Russell, Friday night’s headliner, and the Austin Lounge Lizards, a virtual standup comedy act set to music. The Rice Festival 2009 was another one for the ages.
It’s been a couple of hard weeks at the day job, so I sought some renewal in music and nature this weekend, and scored on both. I hopped down to Galveston via Houston on the Company Plane, treated myself to beachfront accommodations and then had a completely magical evening visiting with and enjoying the music of Shake Russell, with bandmates Doug Floyd and Mike Roberts, and as a special treat his friend and singer-songwriter extraordinare Michael Hearne sitting in. For three hours on Friday night, I was able to take Michael’s advice from his song “Evergreen,” and simply not worry about things that don’t matter these days.
I followed up the Friday night musical renewal of spirit with a Saturday morning commune with nature experience, at the Armand Bayou nature preserve in Pasadena, near Houston. I think I’m gonna get serious and follow my Flickr-friend Gary’s lead and get me a kayak. I got good some good shots, but I know the guys in the kayak (like Gary) are the ones getting the GREAT shots.
Musical lineup for this three day mini-festival included Larry Joe Taylor, Tommy Alverson, Jason Boland, Jed Zimmerman, Cody Gill Band, Jason Eady, Charla Corn, Josh Abbott, Mike McClure, 80 Proof Band, Davin James, Tejas Bros, Matt Martindale, Rich O’Toole, and Reckless Kelly.
My friend Rich and his lovely wife Michele rescued me from an all-work, no-play week in New York. We met up Thursday evening and enjoyed some local brews (Brooklyn Brown my new local favorite) and then we had dinner at Angelo’s Pizza, right next door to the Late Show with David Letterman theater. Strolled down Broadway and had a great time. New York is definitely more fun when it’s combined with good friends, good food and a good buzz.
The bug was first planted a few years ago, when my father-in-law and his wife came back from an Alaskan vacation with photos that grabbed me immediately.Spectacular scenery, wildlife, quaint and quirky little towns – it seemed like such a refreshing alternative to the “standard” cruise vacation to the Caribbean or Mexico or whatever.So, an Alaskan trip went onto my radar screen.
Then, a year ago, a guy I have worked with for years took his family on an Alaskan cruise, and came back with a two-thumbs-up review, and, knowing of my interest in photography, he strongly recommended that I get serious about planning a trip.
So I did.The spousal unit was not so keen on the idea, but my next travel companion nominee, my older brother, needed no sales pitch – he was onboard instantly.We started looking into packages, pricing and timing, and after a couple of weeks of schedule coordination and research, we settled in on a mid-June trip on Princess Cruises.Mid-June is still “early season” and pricing has not quite reached the peak levels that hit from late June through the end of August.For the most part, this seasonal aspect all corresponds to the running of the salmon back from the sea into the freshwater inland rivers for spawning, which draws the bears to a number of specific hunting grounds where bear-watching tours/excursions are pretty much guaranteed to get good results.By going early season, we missed these bear-watching excursion opportunities; the tradeoff was saving about 10% or so on the cost of the trip.
So we booked a 12 day trip that included a 4 day land package on the front end, and then 8 days on a cruise ship.Our land package itinerary started in Seattle, with an overnight at the Doubletree at Seatac Airport, then a flight the next day into Fairbanks.Overnight in Fairbanks, then motorcoach to the Princess Denali Lodge at the entrance to Denali National Park, overnight there, and then two nights a couple hours away at the Princess McKinley Lodge near Talkeetna.We then took the Alaskan Railroad from Talkeetna to Whittier where we boarded the cruise ship and then sailed back down the Alaskan southeast coast and the Inside Passage over the next eight days.
Princess (as well, I’m sure, as the other cruise companies) has all kinds of various permutations on these cruise packages and itineraries.Throughout the tour, we were encountering folks who were doing Princess tours where they had already cruised and now were doing the land tours on the back end.There were people who stayed 2 nights in Denali and only one in Talkeetna.Many folks only did the cruise portion, skipping the land tours.When we disembarked the ship on day 12 of our cruise, there were people who’s itinerary had them staying on the ship for another couple of days.
With all these seemingly endless options, it might seem overwhelming and you might think you would have to have a travel agent help you figure it all out.But for us, it really wasn’t that difficult to hone in on the tour that sounded most appealing to us, given our schedule and budget.We did virtually all our planning, selections, and browsing online directly without the assistance of a travel agent or a warm body representative from Princess.It’s all surprisingly well organized and understandable (even to me as a first-time cruiser) on the Princess website.
Before proceeding with my daily travelogue, here are a few general tips we learned along the way.
If you’re going to do a land/cruise combination, you should make every effort to do the land tour first, then cruise.The land portion is at times quite hectic and tightly scheduled, with activities beginning BRIGHT and early (for example, our Denali National Park Natural History Tour began at 7:15am).It’s advisable to tackle this most active portion of the vacation at the beginning, rather than at the end after you’ve already spent a week on the cruise ship.
On the ship, if at all possible book at least a “mini-suite” where you have a private balcony.A great deal of time is spent in what they call “scenic cruising,” and while there is indeed quite ample space on the public area decks for hanging out, nothing beats the convenience of doing at least some of that scenic cruising while sitting on your own private balcony, lunching on an Alaskan seafood smorgasbord, washing it all down with Alaskan Amber beer, and with all the amenities of your room (bathroom, TV, refrigerator, camera equipment, etc.) mere steps away.
Excursions – A number of extra-fee land and shore excursions are offered by Princess, where you book and reserve the excursions through Princess.The benefit of booking through Princess is convenience and pretty much guaranteed availability; the downside is you pay, sometimes excessively, for that convenience.We booked a glacier flightseeing tour through Princess that was $259 per person; when we stopped in the K2 Aviation office in Talkeetna a few hours before our scheduled flight time to see if there was an earlier tour available, we saw them selling the exact same tour (same flight we were booked on) for $140.They gave us an upgrade (longer flight, glacier landing) for free, which was a $50 add-on, so we ended up “only” over-paying by $69 per person.I have to say, I wasn’t happy about that.I don’t mind Princess making a reasonable add-on for the service their tour booking people provide, but c’mon, almost double?The differential on other excursions was not that huge, but all I can say is, caveat emptor.
When you book, you’ll pick a dining option – traditional seating or “anytime” dining.Unless you’re looking to experience a real-life “Love Boat” experience, go with the anytime dining.It’s the same menu with significantly more flexibility in timing, casual dress is acceptable, and you’re not “locked in” with the same people at the dinner table every night.The “traditional” dining crowd seemed to be heavily dominated by the seniors on the cruise; the “anytime” crowd was a much more varied age demographic.
This year’s festival was, as usual, a fantastic lineup of some of the best Texas music acts working today. And this year, although rain threatened a couple of times, there were no monsoons and no tornadoes - just spring weather with mild temperatures. The only weather annoyance was that west Texas wind, which starts, I think, in Stephenville.
Personal highlights for me included, on the Lone Star Beer Acoustic Stage, performances by Michael Hearne, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Chuck Pyle, Sisters Morales, Walt Wilkins, Susan Gibson, and, the undisputed blew-me-away performance of the entire festival - Michael Martin Murphey.
On the Coca Cola Main Stage, I thoroughly enjoyed Johnny Cooper, Band of Heathens, Tejas Brothers, and the Rusty Wier Band (unfortunately Rusty was unable to perform).
My Texas music buddy Raymond and I got up with the chickens and headed down to Luckenbach, Texas this weekend to attend Ray Wylie Hubbard’s First Annual Grit ‘n Groove Music Festival. After 5 hours of driving (which wasn’t all that bad because it was a beautiful spring day in the Texas Hill Country) we were rewarded with 10 full hours of awesome Texas music, in the truly magical venue of Luckenbach.
Highlights of the day for me were
Gurf Morlix - I’ve heard a couple of songs from his new CD on KHYI-the Range, including his very cool homage to infamous athest Madalyn Murray O’Hair (”Madelyn’s Bones), but everything took on a whole new dimension seeing him perform these songs live. And then later when he was fulfilling lead guitarist duty in Ray’s full band set that closed the show, Gurf burned it up.
Carrie Rodriguez - a late addition to fill in for Patty Griffin who had to cancel due to a family emergency, Carrie turned in her usual stellar performance, highlighted by a new styling of one of my favorites - “50’s French Movie” - that was mesmerizing.
Band of Heathens - I can just never say enough about these guys. Colin, Gordy and Ed are so overloaded with individual talent that just explodes exponentially when they put it all together, my only worry is that they won’t be able to continue such a high intensity in their songwriting and performing indefinitely. On the other hand, they’re so good they might not even be near the peak of their creative output. I’m rooting for the latter.
Fay and Shelley - two true Texas music fans. These girls (they’re 30, that’s “girls” to me) came down to Texas from British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, respectively, just for a 4 day whirlwind tour of Texas centered on this 1-day music festival. Fay brought custom leather guitar straps she made for several artists, and I was happy to help facilitate her presenting the gifts to Ray, Gurf, and Hayes Carll, who all accepted them with grace and sincere gratitude. Reflecting on the few hours I spent in their company, I remain blown away at their pure love of this music, and their free spirited courage to just come on down to this strange land and trust that the people they encounter will be as warm and friendly and helpful as they are by their very nature. Fay and Shelley turned the day into a true peace-love-hippie fest for me.
Chowing down on the best chicken and sausage gumbo I’ve tasted anywhere, washing it down with Shiner Bock beer, on a picnic table under shady liveoaks in 72 degree light breeze weather, while simultaneously people-watching, rooster-watching, and people-watching-rooster-watching.
I enjoyed this short weekend trip so much I’m seriously going to plan and execute a more extended Texas Hill Country vacation that will include live music, exploring all the state parks in the area, river running, wildlife photography - there’s just tons of stuff to do in this beautiful region of Texas.
