Getting away and writing
Sep 11th, 2007 by Karen
The deadline for the book of blogging I’ve been working on is looming. So in order to get some uninterrupted writing time, I’m joined my husband in Santa Cruz while he attended a workshop for his work. This is both work and play. While the middle of the week I worked on the book the beginning and end of the week I was on vacation for real. This is incredibly nice because I’d been stressing out about the website redesign. Getting away gave me a chance to not think about it for a while.
The first weekend of the trip I took my husband to Monterey and finally got to drive all the way down (past Hearst Castle) on Hwy 1. The trip afforded some beautiful views but also provided the bonus of elephant seals sleeping on the beach at a place called Point Piedras Blancas. There weren’t any big bull seals; they are only around Dec - April. But there were some immature male seals. Looking at how big they are now I can’t even image how large they will be when they are mature (around 8000 lbs). Another good place to see elephants seals is Punta Ano Nuevo State Reserve.
The second weekend of the trip we got to visit California gold rush country and venture up to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The weather was hot (100+ degrees) but because of the lack of humidity pleasant compared to Houston this time of year. Lassen is a fascinating place to visit particularly if you are married to a geologist how is willing to discuss the geology behind volcanoes. (BTW, Lassen (1914) and Mount St. Helens (1980) are the two volcanoes in the continental US most recently erupt)
In addition to having a volcano, the park has interesting hydrothermal areas (fumaroles and boiling mud pots, etc), beautiful scenery and wildlife.
One thing I’ve learned in my career is that if you work hard you deserve to play lots as well. This trip was that for me and I enjoyed it. Now I get to begin the fall conference push. I’ll be presenting at LITA Forum and Internet Librarian, the off to NYC to present to the NYC Chapter of ACRL in November. Additionally, I’ve got a my portfolio for continuing appointment due, a digital library tool implementation on my plate plus dealing with modifications, bug fixes, etc to the newly deployed site. So having a week to decompress will help keep me sane until the end of the semester
Hooray for Lassen! I love that place, and hope to go back there again before too long. Something about the smell of “fresh” sulfur really clears my head. Glad to hear you got a (well-deserved) break.
Yeah, the sulfur smell is strong and noxious. The thing that really blew my mind was the different noises that fumaroles and boiling mud pots made. My husband described one as sounding like an F16 sitting on the tarmac engine idling for takeoff. I have a little video I took of one bubbling but was too far away to get good sound, which was like my marinara sauce when I don’t tend it properly and it gets away from me. It is a truly amazing place.