4 Dec 2010 Mele Kalikimaka (since these Merry Christmas wishes are sent to you from Hawaii)
For once my Christmas e-letter is on-line on time.
It has been quite a year. The highlight of the year for Cynthia was seeing Michelangelo's David in Florence. (Thanks Janie.) It is an amazing statue, and amazing to think that he was only 26 years old when he sculpted it. Besides the marvelous art, the Basilica in Rome presents an ostentatious display of the power and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church. The Italian food was another treat for Cynthia, especially at the Hotel Splendido at Portafino. Our guide at Pompeii explained much about the archeology and social customs of the city; the plaster casts of the victims of the Mt. Vesuvius eruption exhibit evidence of ghastly deaths.
My favorites for the year involved visiting friends & relatives and motorcycling. Seeing friends at the 40th MIT reunion in Massachusetts was wonderful. Our Rambo family reunion in Keosauqua, Iowa on July 4th was a real treat with amazingly cool weather. Cynthia and I spent three months "touring the West" on my old BMW motorcycle. Cynthia loved the trip and the scenery, a fascinating, veritable continual kaleidoscope. We visited Aspen, Vail, and Glenwood Springs, Colorado before fleeing the summertime heat into Wyoming and northward to Havre, Montana, where Cynthia's Uncle is buried. Glacier Nat'l Park was wonderful although still too crowded and too hot. After visiting a friend in Moscow, Idaho, we found a nice room at the Best Western in Orafino, Idaho; the balcony has a wonderful view of the Clearwater River, so we stayed a week despite record heat - 104 degrees one day. Next stop was Yellowstone; we found a nice motel overlooking Hebgen Lake and hiked in the Nat'l Park most days for a week. Twice we had reservations to eat at the Old Faithful Lodge but canceled because of weather, once because it snowed on us at 6pm. Riding 20 miles in the snow didn't bother Cynthia, and the clouds lifted enough for us to see magnificent snow covered mountains alongside us.
By the time we arrived in Utah, Cynthia was enthusiastic about hiking. We enjoyed hiking nearly every day as we visited five National Parks in Utah: Capital Reefs, Bryce, Cedar Breaks, Zion, and Canyonlands. It was amazing to see dozens of tall waterfalls in Zion after a series of rainy days; Cynthia counted 37 waterfalls on her side of the bus during the 5-mile shuttle ride. Then we retrieved the car from Boulder and drove over Eagle Nest to Taos, New Mexico, then Santa Fe, and finally Albuquerque where Cynthia took the plane to Houston.
There was more of interest on the drive south and east to Houston. Perhaps most intriguing was the puzzle of Mechem Drive, a main street in Ruidoso, New Mexico; it was named after cousin, Governor Edwin Mechem. The “Valley of Fires” (the most recent lava flow in the continental US) was interesting, but awakening near Cloudcroft to find the windshield covered with solid ice was the biggest surprise of the year, even though the elevation is 8668 feet. At the Texas/New Mexico border, I enjoyed hiking to the highest point in Texas, 8751-foot Guadalupe Peak in Guadalupe National Park. The hike was continuously uphill, and the wind was challenging. I am still awed by those giant windmills generating electricity.
We stayed at Cynthia’s lake house, north of Houston on Lake Conroe, for a couple of weeks before flying to Hawaii for the holidays. Cynthia loves water with expansive views of sunrise and sunset.
Wishing you the best, with love, from Ron Beatty
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These links are on all my web pages:
Eve's Garden Organic Bed and Breakfast, a wonderful, eclectic, artistic papercrete alternative living learning mecca in Marathon, Texas
Rambo family genealogy, Bankston & Bankson family genealogy, the Camblin family genealogy, the Dorsey Overturff family, cousin Jean's Schenck and Hageman genealogy, and