An update to rival Rafia's

I realize that my blog will never, ever, compare to Rafia's blog both in her dazzling visual array and culturally relevant content.

Yet, I will try to update my blog. An ongoing project at work is to go through our manuscript collections and discover which ones need a finding aid, which ones have a finding aid but only in a printout from an ancient word processing system, and which ones have a finding aid but lack essential information as required by DACS. After my spreadsheet is complete, I will develop a plan for processing collections and completing finding aids for collections that have been minimally processed (Hey, Earlham has always believed in MPLP), develop the easiest methods for getting the legacy finding aids up to current technology, and update the finding aids that just need a few more pieces of information. At the same time, we are going to implement an EAD project in the next year.

Most of the students and researchers I have talked to like the idea of having more information available regarding the content of our collections, but what they really want is everything digitized so they can search it and view it without having to come in. I'll get that done in the next couple of months, probably.

On a personal note, my mom is visiting this weekend and I'm looking forward to it! I'm also looking forward to Thanksgiving, when I will take my first days off since I started work in July. I love my job, but I know I'm going to be ready for a day off or two by then.

Planning for Another Trip

I started my job at Earlham College in July, and I love it. I'm very happy and the work is challenging. I'm contemplating writing more about some of projects I'm working on, but we shall see. Meanwhile, I'm planning my next road trip. This means having to save as much money as possible as I have to start repaying my student loans next month. Anyway, I'm going to take a road trip in January to visit my good friend Rafia who now lives in Arlington, Texas. I'm going to take a few days to drive down there and visit Graceland, the new B.B. King museum (tentative), Port Neches TX where my grandfather was born, and San Antonio. Then it is on for 3-4 days hanging out with Rafia!

Stay tune for possible updates.

Almost home

I'm in Moline Illinois tonight. There is a really great Thai restaurant I found called Exotic Thai, and the green curry was excellent. Some woman who claimed to be doing a study on communication sat down with me and asked me a bunch of questions. I figured she was going to start trying to get me to join a cult, but I think she honestly was taking a class on communication and had an assignment to talk to strangers and try to figure out their communication style. She said I was "balanced."

The Omaha Zoo is fantastic. It had a staggering number of animals and a couple of really great environments, especially the Desert Dome. It did feel a bit old and some of the panels need to be updated, like the Siberian Tiger needs to be renamed the Amur Tiger (I think this is now the commonly used name to be more accurate geographically). Anyway, if you like zoos, I say this is a must see.

Well I'll be home tomorrow, just gotta drive through Chicago and the boring drive on 94 in Michigan.

Catching up on food

My old nemesis from the first week of the trip returned--the wind. In Nebraska of course. There were tornadoes not too far from where I was in Colorado, so at least so far I have avoided anything that bad. Otherwise I took the drive pretty easy today. The wind ruined the excellent mileage I've been getting--most of the trip I've been getting 44 mpg but today that didn't happen, naturally once gas prices did in fact hit four bucks at one station.

Well, this entry is mostly to announce I made it to Omaha and am planning on visiting the zoo tomorrow before driving across Iowa. Also, I ate at Red Lobster tonight. When I was a kid that is where we would go for nice meals out and I have very fond memories of the place. The cheddar biscuits make it worthwhile. For most of the trip I tried to find locally owned restaurants, and was mostly successful. But I've succumbed to chain restaurants the last two days. Some of the places I ate at I barely mentioned earlier or didn't mention at all:

Local Ocean Seafoods in Newport: fish caught fresh daily from Newport or nearby. They have great fish tacos.

Georgie's Beachside Grill: It was connected to my hotel in Newport, but had a great ocean view and pretty solid seafood, especially the clam chowder. The places was always full of locals which was good because it wasn't just tourists in there. They have great pancakes and french toast too.

Baked Alaska in Astoria: I had a simple salmon club sandwich that was great, but the best thing here (besides the view of the Columbia River) was the sweet potato salad.

Urban Cafe in Astoria: The crab quesadilla was delicious. The only thing it wasn't that long after this meal I got sick; I guess it depends on the incubation period, but it is possible it was this meal that made me sick. Oh well, it tasted great! I'll just assume it was something else that made me sick. Probably the vast amount of free cheese I ate at Tillamook.

Tequila's Mexican Restaurant in Cortez Colorado: really popular local joint with great food. The pinto beans I ordered instead of refried beans were great, as was the chile relleno. Great salsa too. Highly recommend.

Rosita's in Scottsbluff: I already mentioned this place for the chips and salsa. I should mention not to go here if you are on a diet, but it was great food.

The Thai restaurant I ate at in Portland: I cannot remember the name, it was a little hole in the wall place mostly doing carryout orders, but it was delicious, especially the spring rolls. Also the Thai restaurant in Astoria is outstanding as well.

Out of the brewpubs I visited, Tablerock in Boise and Bridgeport in Portland stand out. I went to Rogue Ales in Newport, but hated the atmosphere. It was smoky--too smoky--and the people in there were all kind of rude. Beer is great though. Maybe I picked a bad day to go there.

Freaky Sand Dunes

The drive from Cortez Colorado to Denver was absolutely beautiful--drove through some great mountains, with lots of mini waterfalls seen from the road from the melting snow. I also stopped at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. This place was a monument up until 2004, when it received park standing. The park is pretty small, but the dunes are interesting. Kind of freaky, in part because the locals use the area as a beach and in part because of the proximity of snowcapped mountains . There is a creek/river that runs right by the dunes, with very low water, and there were hundreds of kids splashing around in the riverbed and then running in the sand. The kids were also screaming, and I have to admit this annoyed me, so I had a picnic and moved on to a part of the park without kids. You can climb the dunes, but I really didn't feel like it. I took a shortish hike though.

Dunes:

Mesa Verde

This might have been the best day of the trip. Definitely one of the best. I'm getting ready to check out and drive to Denver tonight, but here are two quick pictures (more tonight, I hope):

Arches and Canyonland

Words cannot begin to describe the beauty of Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park. So here are a few of my favorite pictures from today (yes that is me, and I think it is a good picture--must be the sunglasses), and a link to all of the pictures.

Utah

Clark Planetarium saves the day

Yay, I seem to be well and had pizza for dinner. I stayed in Salt Lake City today and visited Clark Planetarium, which is located in a downtown mall. The mall was boring, standard stuff though it it is all open air which I guess makes it better than the average mall. The planetarium I thought was a lot of fun. I watched two of the shows in the Hansen Dome Theatre, one on the ultimate universe and one on black holes. They were both great. It was fun to look at all of the free exhibits and relearn everything I learned back in seventh grade science (and a lot more).

Planning on getting up early and heading to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks!

Salt Lake

Well, it turns out I started eating solid food too soon (last night). My stomach just can't take it. I feel great otherwise and someone managed to walk a mile and back to visit Temple Square and take a tour of the Great Salt Lake and the Kennecott Copper Mine, while only drinking gatorade and water all day. And I still have a ton of energy and really want some pizza, but I dare not eat today. I may take another day to rest here before heading to Arches National Park and Mesa Verde because I really can't see visiting either of those places just subsisting on Gatorade.

Now that those gory details are out of the way, I did indeed visit Temple Square today, and even took a tour led by two very earnest missionaries from South America. The tour was mostly about getting people to request more information on Mormonism but occasionally they slipped in a fact about a building or so. Here is a picture of the tour guides praying or something in front of a statue of Jesus with a mural of the universe in the background:



A picture of the temple:



A couple of people left the tour in disgust, but I stuck with it out of curiosity. And I have never seen so many missionaries. They were everywhere. I wonder how you land that job for your mission? I guess I could have asked, but I have to admit I did not want to encourage them. Anyway, I'm fascinated with religious history and religions in general, so I looked at this as a learning experience, though I have to admit the whole setup is...weird. It is a beautiful area and I respect the Mormons for moving out to a desert after being persecuted, but I'm not going to understand the whole be with your family for eternity, including dead relatives that they have to save or something. Among other things.

I'm glad I took a tour instead of having to drive today, though the people on the Great Salt Lake tour were mostly annoying middle aged women who would spend hours in the gift shop buying copper jewelry. There is nothing wrong with this, and I will be middle aged before I know it, but I was reminded why I generally hate taking tours--slow moving people who actually buy the junk in gift shops--I've been wondering this entire trip who buys this stuff, now I know. I know, I should be nicer...but...anyway, the Great Salt Lake was pretty cool:







After that, the tour went to Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine, a huge copper mine that can be seen from outerspace. The museum emphasized their environmental stewardship which is hard to believe, but then again who doesn't use copper every day? The mine was huge:





A few remaining trees:

Made it to SLC

Feeling much better today, though still weak. I visited Golden Spike National Monument, which is where the transcontinental railroad was finished. I was going to visit the Great Salt Lake, but was tired and the drivers here are insane so I checked into the hotel and am doing laundry. I'm annoyed with my hotel because there was no soap in my room and there are a bunch of teenagers running around. Here's hoping I can eat tonight and will be completely better by tomorrow.

I forgot to mention I saw Mount St. Helens yesterday while driving...pretty cool. I'd like to visit the monument, but yesterday was not the day for that.

After driving in small town traffic I almost hate to be in the city...but I'm looking forward to checking out Temple Square, then I signed up for a guided tour of the Great Salt Lake and some mine, because I just don't want to deal with driving in this city. I'll take an isolated highway any day!