Mammoth Caves caping trip, Day 0 (April 9th 2009)

Late Wednesday afternoon my boss suggested i take the Friday off as it was not worth driving for 1 hour each way for just 4 hours of work, ( nice boss, right!!) as my workplace was having a half-day in lieu of Easter celebrations.I was mighty glad to hear it as I have worked hard for the last three months at my new workplace without a single vacation day (i.e. apart from the weekends which usually race past doing household chores and getting some much needed rest ). My new workplace doesn't allow any "paid" off-days for the initial six month period, at the end of which I get 1 day, and at the end of the first year I get total four off-days (sucks big time!! ). At the end of the next year I will be eligible for eight to nine days, but it seems like too far away to even think of now. These vacation days are so less that I can’t even think of taking them to go to India at least not after the end of the 3rd year, when it becomes like eleven to twelve days. So looking at this year ahead and seeing very few chances of going anywhere this was a welcome relief. I’m not complaining (on second thought ,maybe a little !!..lol!) but merely stating that it’s no use going camping on regular weekends as the big National Parks are so far away. I do plan to go on day trips or one day camping trips in the summer weekends to nearby Sate Parks in Illinois,Missouri or Indiana. Anyway as soon as I found out about it, I frantically started to look around for a one. Over the last couple of months I had done some research on National Parks and have categorized them according to the number of days it would take:

• Weekend trips – State Parks in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana etc.
• 3 day trips – Mammoth Caves National Park, Big South Fork National Park etc.
• 4 day trips – Badlands National Park, Shenandoah National Park etc.
• > 4 day trips – Yellowstone National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park etc.

By the looks of it "> 4 day trips" are not going to happen this year.

I needed to decide on a NP by Wednesday night, as I had to pack all my camping stuff so that I can go directly from workplace on Thursday. My first choice being Big South Fork National Park near Kentucky and Tennessee border. As I wrote on my face-book regarding my impending trip a friend inquired if he could join, which would have been nice, but as it turned out he couldn't’t as some urgent work came up which he had totally forgotten. Unfortunately i take along a huge amount of stuff with me while camping:

• A Big Suitcase with my tent, sleeping bag & pad, gas stove, lantern etc (permanently stays in my car);
• A Small Suitcase full of clothes,as there are very few chances of taking a shower i prefer to change clothes at least once a day (contrary to what i would do if had stayed at home for the whole period..hehehe!!) and my slow poke laptop (which i plan to switch from XP to Ubuntu pretty soon to see if that runs any faster);
• Video camera $ camera bag along with the tripod;
• 2 comforters, a pillow and a woolen blanket (vinmo's "soft" blanket liked by many a delicate bodies..lol!!), which are also a permanent part of my car now;
• A shoulder bag full of different kinds of chargers for all my electronic gadgetry;
  
• A Backpack full of utensils, first aid and paper towels.

The last two were also a permanent part of my car until they were stolen recently :( (my fault being, i kept them in the back seat rather than in the trunk).After packing all these stuff in my car I went to work Thursday morning eagerly awaiting the end of the work day so I can start my first journey of the season. But during the lunch break I found out that there were severe thunderstorm warning throughout the weekend for Big South Fork. This drastically changed my plans and I started to look for another place. Not eager to go to a weekend designated trip (look above for definition) on a 3 day vacation I finally decided to go to Mammoth Caves even though rain was forecast over there as well, but on a less severe scale and sporadically . I guessed if it is raining outside better to go and visit the caves as it will be too soggy and dark outside anyway. But photography inside the caves brought forward me having a bright lens ( unfortunately all my lens, apart from the 105 MM macro are dark, i.e. have a small aperture size). As my friend had mentioned that he had bought a 50 MM f/ 1.8 lens and that I could borrow it if I needed to I decided to ask if he can lend it to me for the weekend. Luckily he said yes if i could pick it up from his place on King’s drive, which i gladly agreed too.

I studied the NP map and decided to stay in the main visitor center campground so that I don’t have to worry about the ferry timing which controls the time to go to the other part of the national park where most of the "above the ground" trails, bluffs and scenic drives are. I even called them up to confirm if they allowed after our campers. I also tried to reserve a site but only the "first come first serve" sites where left. I looked at which cave tours were available for the spring season and printed them out, but decided against reserving them online as I thought there won’t be too many people at this time of the year (and you can't imagine how wrong I was about that) .

The big disadvantage of picking that 50MM lens was that the detour took me extra three hours driving through traffic. It’s weird that I get heavy traffic similar to that of on Friday (which is understandable) on I 55 south. I think its because Thursday night is college night! and people start to celebrate the weekend long before it actually starts. Anyway to get to Mammoth Caves I had to cross Indiana, which is straight drive to the south through Indianapolis. It’s surprising that in the last seven to eight months where ever I have gone apart from Saint Louis I have passed through Indianapolis. After a six hours of "just driving" I reached the camping site at around 2:30 AM. The ranger was not there, but they had all the paperwork ready for after hour/ late arrivals. The campsite rates where $ 17 per night and I was supposed to put the money and a filled out form in a kiosk, but since I wanted to pay by credit (did not have the exact change anyway), I decided to just find myself a quiet site to camp and pay up in the morning like I have done so many times before.

I took a campground map from the kiosk and drove around the farthest camp loop twice o look for a secluded spot so that the noise (from pitching a tent) does not disturb nearby campers in deep slumber. On second time around the loop I found a place to my liking and as I pulled up in the parking spot I saw a small family of deer’s grazing at the place. As I stepped out of the car the deer’s give me an innocent look or two before quietly walking away. It was a warm, clear, star studded night and I felt amazing (almost as if this was my home) to be out in the open under the sky after a long time. Recently while searching for camping "tips and tricks" I stumbled upon “ Widow Maker” which refers to dry overhanging branches during fall winter and early spring which are susceptible to fall on innocent campers :D. Looking up, I only saw dead branches like a witch’s fingers covering the entire site. I Looked around for some evidence of previous such happenings on the ground and finding nothing decided to camp underneath the thickest of all the overhanging branches (don't know if that was a stupid idea, I am open to suggestions) . I kept the engine running to provide me with some light (I forgot my lantern batteries and my torch) to get the base of the tent pegged down, but later as my eyes got used to the darkness I switched it off and finished putting up the tent by the moon/ star light. It was already 3:30 AM before I got everything inside the tent and got ready to go to sleep. I decided against waking up early for sunrise as that would probably have given me around two hour’s of sleep at the most (not a good idea at the start of the trip) ,thus putting an alarm for 7:30 AM. I felt stiff but not sleepy ,but as I lay on my comfortable bed (made off comforters) listening to the sounds of night (occasional chirping of some night bird, rustling of the leaves and breaking of tweaks under the feet of some animals or just plain old wind and tiny drops of rain hitting the tent) i don't know when sleep crept in.

It has been a BAD BAD!! BAD!!! week

"Ravings of a Restless Mind" !! well the mind has been pretty restless over the last few months but it hasn't raved at all , and maybe that's why it has been so restless, who knows !!! . As i forcefully drag myself to start writing a new blog post on paper before i type it out (if i do it at all). The way things have been ( i haven't posted anything since Jan 4th), it might be never :D. I feel bad that i have started so many series but haven't completed even one :(. Most of the times be trying to be a perfectionist to post all the blogs after i have sorted and retouched out all the pictures ( and there's a lot of them) which has converted this blogging thing a dead zone. So from here on i write down the post and will update it with pictures and videos later as i go along. Lets see how long this plan lasts!! lol!!.

It has been a BAD BAD!! BAD!!! week :

1. Somebody broke my car window over the last weekend (found out Monday morning while going to work);
2. Initially i thought only my backpack with some utensils and first aid kit was stolen but later found out he/she (can't be gender biased these days..lol!!) have taken my 2nd favorite FOSSIL bag along with all my electronic gadget chargers and a single leather glove(and as promised on FACEBOOK will mail the other if contacted, as it a waste for both of us).
3. Got a toll violation (crime committed 3 months ago) as my I-pass failed to act when i was driving the rental car because some girl named "Nancy Fast" (not kidding , true name) rear ended me with her sonata, her reason being she braked but the car didn't stop. But off course Miss Fast!
4. Got a late payment fine for house rent because it took the check (USPS) 8 days to go from Lincoln Park to downtown. I think if i had just dropped the check on the street it had a better chance of getting there on time..hehe!!.
5. Got a parking ticket for parking 15' near fire hydrant. Now this particular Fire Hydrant on Deming Street is towards one side of the 30' yellow "No Parking Zone" mark on the pavement. I thought since its not encroaching the yellow mark its OK , as otherwise there will be 45-50' of no parking space, which in L Park is a crime. I am contesting it , lets see how it goes. But the city being bone dry of funds(so they say!!) i don't expect logic prevailing over orthodox legal rules.
   
6. Plus some family related issues , made the whole week one of the real BAD one in recent past.

Since I haven't been raving about personal things for a long time, guess it's time i do a short recap of the last few months.

Well i started working at a new place since early JAN 09 in a company called USADrives Inc. specialized in making urethane belts. The work place is 26 miles away from my place in L.Park and my daily commute takes me through lake shore drive and I-55 the two worst traffic areas, which gets rock solid with cars when it rains, snows or even drizzles. BTW, worth mentioning is that i got a speeding ticket on my first day at job, just outside the office (made me 1/2 hr late) and it was a harsh one (my boss warned me of the cops in the locality but alas too late). For those people who are pragmatically strict about rules, YES!! i was speeding . I was over the speed limit by an earth shattering 10 MPH (driving 40 mph at a 30 mph zone). Luckily the fine was just $65 and a 3 month probation (at the end of which points against my DL would be removed if i didn't have any more moving violations). I hope that's the case (3 1/2 months have passed) and haven't received/got any of those yet. But with my bad luck going on it might show off next week.

The second most important thing was that i got over my recent crush/infatuation. I am an emotional weakling in that section and it makes me imagine the person involved to be too perfect in everything. My infatuated delirious mind rejects every good advice from friends and family and puts the said person on a pedestal believing that she has the same ideological believes i have and is willing to die or live by it. But when these delirious cloud faded away i saw the truth, as her portraying to be something she is not. I fell for a girl thinking she is the one who likes to walk against the traffic but guess its was just a facade to try to be different and was (still is) very good at keeping it up, and that's what i hate the most (i.e false portrayal). Anyway i sound bitter but i would say i am lucky!!. :D.

Another thing i have noticed is that people don't like to return other peoples money (guess its a good trait if you have it yourself ,not the people you lend money too..hehehe!! but unfortunately i am a sap in that department too). I have heard excuse like "they are waiting for meeting me next time "(which unfortunately doesn't happen frequently) , but there are numerous other way to send money if you really want too without meeting physically. Miss CM owes me some money, but she always says she will give it the next time we meet, and as its not that frequent , she starts with a line that "she forgot". On one occasion "she said she forgot and will give it to me the next time", when we were in her apartment (she could have just given it to me right then :O). And guess what, this is the same girl who used to transfer money as soon as possible when we were just mere acquaintance. Looks like the closer you get to a person the more hard it is to get money back from them (shouldn't it be the other way around... lol!!). And she is not the only one, Miss R and Mr GG are in line....Guess its the peoples mentality that if you ask them politely (i.e without any dramatic fanfare, they presume you must not really really want it back :O). Why can't just "i can't" be enough and mean what it means and i don't have to add words like "really" to make it more believable. If i mean "i could/should/would/might" i would use "could/would/should/might". We are stuck in world where we need things to be hyped to the nth degree to seem natural/normal. Seems like we are "screaming wolf" all the time and we all know how that is going to end.

Like it has been said life always throws curve ball at you when you least expect it, sometimes this brings a lot of misery and sometimes it brings a minuscule smile , which at the end of BAD BAD Week seemed like a oasis in a desert (hyped up!!! :D). And a concerned voice from a totally unexpected person did the same on a gloomy Friday work day.

P.S: I did go camping on the Easter weekend, details of which will be coming long in the next post.(soon i hope!!)

Chicago-St. Louis-Philidalphia-Washington-St. Louis-Chicago....part1

So many things have happened since my last blog. Even though i have started to write some but haven't been able to complete them, plus there are so many other travel blog series i started and posted the first one,but haven't been able to add to it that it seems almost futile to start another of those series.
But the highly optimistic streak in me keeps on telling me that its the right way to go. So i find myself staring at another defeat of logic against my whimsical idiosyncrasy. Anyway, making the best of the situation i made some small ground rules to make the thing go faster, but from my past experience i have learned that some how my mind is programmed to break the rules...hehehehe.

So to start off i drove to my sisters place in my Black Volkswagen Jetta (very nice car but the upkeep is back breaking..:( ) on Dec 24th' 08 afternoon. The drive was quite uneventful apart from the fact that i got the car back from the service station in the same afternoon. On 25th went to my BIL's sister's place and spent some quality family time. We also watched a Hindi movie "Golmaal Returns" which was full of cheesy jokes , but since i have lost my sense of enjoyment of Hindi movies it was little bit of a bother but luckily there were just 2-3 songs and they skipped the songs, so was not that bad. As we watched the sunset in their backyard while sipping tea and munching on some Indian snacks, i felt sad to be living far away from family.

sunset from the backyard in Chesterfield, near St. Louis, MO

We left after having dinner and chit chatted some more. Luckily i had my GPS with me, which even though is slow to "recalculate" ,at least makes sure we reach home eventually :D. The closing down of the I-64 for 3-4 miles near my sister's places makes it a nuisance to move around as i have to switch of the highway avoidance in the GPS for the part of the way or completely.

We were planning to leave next day 26th Dec'08, evening (as my BIL had to go to work) and stop near Columbus, OH for the night before driving on to Philadelphia, PA next day. For information's sake the drive time to Philadelphia is little bit more than 14 hours and Columbus is almost in the middle.

Since there was nothing much to do in the morning i decided to go to the St Louis Art Museum, in Forest Park quite close to my sister's place. Forest Park, which says it is the bigger than Central Park is very nice place with winding roads and bridges and small ponds or fountains. Since it was in winter the trees were bald and were not much of a view but my sister tells me that the park is very nice in fall.

I probably did half of The Saint Louis Museum as its not a big museum (the biggest ones in US so far encountered by me is MET in NYC and the Art Museum in Philadelphia; Chicago is smaller but its artifacts are of the same level as the other two), but it still has some good artifacts in patches.

Head of Christ, French or Flemish,1500-50

Head of St. Roch,French,late 15th century

St. John the Evangelist,German,c.1500

Diptych with Virgin and Angels and the Crucifixion,French,Ivory,c.1340-60

Augustus Saint-Gaudens:1859-1907,American, Bronze,"The Puritan" ;c.1899

They have some good painting from the masters like Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne etc , but just on of each. But the big (covering a entire wall) by Monet is their centerpiece. The simplicity with which Van Gogh makes his painting (without putting much paint, sometimes you can see the bare canvas below) , but depicting the scenario or expression with the strokes is absolutely astonishing.

Claude Monet;1840–1926,French, "Water Lillie's",c.1916-26

Vincent van Gogh;1853–1890,Dutch, "Stairway at Auvers",c. July 1890

Pierre-Auguste Renoir;1841–1919, French, "The Dreamer",c.1879

Paul Cezanne ;1839–1906,French, "Bathers",c.1890-92

I am very meticulous about giving proper captions to pictures in put of artifacts from museums even though it takes me a hell lot of time to find all the details. But i spent a lot more time in for these stuff as they don't have a updated collection list/catalog on their web page (www.slam.org) which is surprising but quite expected as they definitely don't have the financial power the big museums got. So i found myself spending countless hours painstakingly going through each entry of their catalog twice before i proclaimed them not having an updated list. So, if you see artifacts not marked up,its just because i didn't find the exact detail of it, but they are all from St Louis Museum.

The have some good Asian (mostly from Chinese origin) stuff and just couple of Indian sculpture (an ardahnariswar and one nataraj, both probably from the Chola period). The mask below is one of their flagship artifacts and is on their flyer's but not on their online catalog (which is bad as per me)"Decorative Applique",Chinese(Western Zhou dynasty),Bronze,1050-771 BC

"Wine Vessel",Chinese(Western Zhou dynasty),Bronze,late 11th century BC


"Grain Vessel",Chinese (Eastern Zhou dynasty),Bronze,first half 6th century B.C

"Guanyin",Chinese(Northern Song dynasty),Wood,11th century

"Covered Censer in the Form of a Lion-Dog",Chinese, Yuan Dynasty(1279-1368 AD) or Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD),Bronze with gilding


"Usnisavijaya" (in the back), Tibetan,Bronze,19th century



"Bust of an Unknown Man",Roman,Marble,A.d. 160-180



"Reclining Pan"(in front)attributed to Francesco da Sangallo(1494–1576),Italian, Marble,c.1535
"Judith and Holofernes"(Rear front);Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574),Italian, Oil on Panel,c.1554
"St. John the Baptist"(Rear back);Michele Tosini(1503–1577),Italian, Oil on Panel,c.1570


"Powder Tester";Picino Frusca (1640–1704),Italian,Gilded bronze, steel, and wood,2nd half 17th century

"Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland";Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706–1775)
German, Porcelain and bronze with gilding,c.1736

"Corn Set";Russel Wright (1904-1976),American,Chrome plated glass and brass,c.1934

The museum also had a lot of contempory and modern art, but me not being a big fan of thoose , so concentrated on the other stuff, but will cover them on my next visit. I think the major section i missed this time is the african artifacts and portions of the european stuff along with american and native indian art.

It was nice to see many people in the musuem as i strongly belive on can not proceed in present and future properly without knowing ones past (and i am saying it in a very broad sense, meaning not my immediate past as an indian, but my entire past as a human being).

Anyway after i came back from the museum and resrved a hotel for the night, we had to wait till 5:30 pm before starting off as BIL couldn't come back early enough as he had hoped. On our way to the hotel "Days Inn" on I-70 near columbus, OH we stopped at Denny's (as per my plan to introduce to my sis and BIL to all the food joints..:D). But i can promise you my sister is not going to enter another Denny's anytime soon..lol!!..as its was beyond too greasy in her view. we reached our hotel around 2PM as they are one hour ahead of us :(. The hotel was nice for the price and we had a good nights sleep before starting the next leg of out journey in the morning, but that's a different post (keeping my fingers crossed that it will be the next one, and not become the first entry of a series blog like so many others before it).

P.S: added two ancient Chinese artifact details :D (Jan 14th 2009)

Copyright@ 2008 Rahuljit Pal

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