Mission Trail in San Antonio

 San Antonio. Such a beautiful city. It is the home where my mother was born, and it’s my ancestral family home. For the first time in years, I was able to get back down there. I was able to visit my grandparents grave, and pay my respects to Moms brothers who were buried near by. It was wonderful! We spent time walking up and down the Riverwalk and the neighborhoods around the Riverwalk as well as the Mission Trail.

The Mission Trail was awesome! 5 missions that were built about 300 years ago. Each mission was integral to the community, providing a community protection and trade. They were absolutely beautiful. We enjoyed walking around each of the missions. Some were in better shape than others, but each mission property had something beautiful and worth exploring.

The best part of all?  I was able to meet up in the park with some of my cousins and we were able to catch up with each other. It was just so much fun! 

I’ve included pictures from the Mission Trail below. Enjoy!

Book Review - The Personal Librarian

Belle De La Costa Greene was the Personal Librarian for J.P. Morgan. At a time when career women were rare, she held a job most people could only dream about. She was responsible for purchasing rare manuscripts and books for the Pierpont Morgan Library. Traveling around the world, she used the power of J.P. Morgan's money to acquire rare and one of a kind items that would enhance the standing of her library.

The character of Belle De La Costa Greene is based upon the real person, who worked for the Pierpont Morgan Library until 1948 - for a total of 43 years. What many people do not know about Belle is that she was born Belle Greener. Both of her parents were of mixed race, and Belle was light skinned and passed as white throughout her career. 

While the story in the book is Historic Fiction, the authors did extensive work to make certain that they matched the historic details of her life as closely as possible. The book itself is a fascinating look at race relations in the early 20th century, as well as the inner workings of a private library and the work that goes into acquiring new materials for a collection of historic books. Remember that Belle was a groundbreaker. A career woman in the early 20th century was a rarity. This book delves into the decisions that she had to make on a personal and professional basis. 

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for something to brighten these cold winter days!

Pierpont Morgan Library has become the Morgan Library. You can find their webpage here:

https://www.themorgan.org/

The NPR News Story about this book can be found here:

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/04/1012600661/j-p-morgans-personal-librarian-was-a-black-woman-this-is-her-story

Author Marie Benedict Website: https://www.authormariebenedict.com/the-personal-librarian.html

Author Victoria Christopher Murray Website: https://victoriachristophermurray.com/ 

AACPL Challenge #42- Read a book by 2 authors. 

Vermont

 We stopped for a few days in Stowe, Vermont. While it is known primarily as a ski town, in the summer the hills are filled with beautiful trails to hike and a small city with so much to see. This beautiful mountain town was a wonderful place to explore! We drove across New Hampshire to get to Vermont. I didn't get pictures of New Hampshire - I was entirely too busy gawking at the beautiful scenery that is New Hampshire. We did not make it to the top of Mount Washington. at that point, I was getting a little car sick. Instead, we stopped in town, walked around for a while and got a meal to eat. 

We did stop by the Trapp Family Inn for a quick look-see. It's a gorgeous Inn, with beautiful views overlooking the mountains. I didn't take any pictures while I was there. I kept getting drawn in by the views. I love Vermont! I'll be back!

Smuggler's Notch State Park.

Upstream from the waterfall.

Along the creek in the park in the middle of Stowe.

We made a stop at Ben & Jerry's. While there were no factory tours due to CoVid, the store was open! They even had Dairy Free Sorbet!

Another one of those beautiful trails! This is supposed to be a snowshoe trail in the winter.

It really seems kind of rocky for snowshoes or cross country skis.

And then we found this wonderful place, the Stowe Mercantile. They had a little bit of everything in the store. Penny Candy! Maple Syrup everything! Knick-knacks, shirts, books, stickers, everything you can posibly imagine. I spent a couple of hours exploring this fantastic place! (Pictures above and below. I have a couple hundred more pictures in my phone, but do we really need that many pictures?)

Acadia National Park, Part 2

I took so many pictures while roaming around the park. There were beautiful views just about everywhere you turned. So many things to see, so much scenery everywhere you looked. And it was Lupine season. I have heard stories of these beautiful flowers for years. But to see them growing in the wild was absolutely divine. 

I'm including a handful of pictures. Like I said before, looking back on the pictures, I do have an awful lot of pictures of rocks! Granted, the rocks are in the ocean, and pictures with ocean water crashing on the rocks are really nice. But when you have 500 or so of them? Not quite as engaging as one would think!

So, here's my first set of pictures of some rocks!

The view down to Bar Harbor from the top of Cadillac Mountain.

I don't remember where this was - we found a tiny parking lot and followed the trail to the end.

Lupines!

The Ocean Path. I could walk this every day.

More from the Ocean Path headed up to Otter Peaks.

Love the views!

Sand Beach

Low tide on the Schoodic Penninsula.

Bubbles reflected in Jordan Pond. 

We walked down these steps to the beach. Wish I remembered the name of the stop! It was on the loop road, and was a pull off after Thunder Hole. 

The bench mark at the top of Cadillac Mountain.

Acadia National Park, part 1

Bar Harbor, Maine.

This was my very first trip to Maine. With any luck, it will not be my last. I love Maine, and there is so much more that I need to see! I feel like I only scratched the surface of this beautiful state.

We spent several days in Acadia National Park.  And I DID get the Park Stamps! Acadia is so lovely.  We hiked. We walked carriage trails. We visited the quiet side. We went to Schoodic. We went to the top of  Cadillac Mountain. And the wildlife! There was so much to see, everywhere. We even got to see the Nesting Peregrine Falcons on one of the mountains that leads up the Precipice Trail. The Park Rangers were in the parking lot with their high powered binoculars they had mounted on tripods and trained on the Falcon Nest. We couldn't see the babies but we did get to see Mom and Dad landing on the ledge with fresh, wiggling food for their babies.

Bar Harbor is a cute little town. We spent a lot of time wandering around town and exploring. I managed to find food that I could safely eat. We ate indoors once, packed lunches and ate on the trail, and picked up carry out a few times and ate on the village green or down on the Ocean Path. 

We never made a sunrise. We were close to the Summer Solstice and I simply could not wake up early enough to see the sky before sunrise. Our hotel room faced East, and every morning we were there, I managed to wake up early enough to see the sun moments after it breached the horizon.

I'll do my best to share a few of my favorite pictures this week. I don't want to do a massive photo dump all at once. That would be overwhelming. Not only for you to look at - but also for the blogger platform to attempt to handle. 

 One really funny thing to note - when we were by the ocean, I kept trying to take pictures of the waves crashing on the rocks. I told husband at the time that I was going to look back at the pictures in about 6 months and say "wow, that's a lot of rocks". January of 2022 as I'm looking back at the pictures, all I can think is "wow, that's a lot of rocks".

So today, here's a few pictures of Bar Harbor. 

 A moments after sunrise view from our hotel window.

Downtown on the green grass, looking out towards Bar Island. Note: parking is a bear.

Yet another attempt at a sunrise.

Moose over Bar Harbor!

Sunset

Such a cute town! 

Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge

We stumbled across this gorgeous Wildlife Refuge, just outside of Newport! Unfortunately, I was not able to get a tamp for my Parks Passport from this park. The visitors center was still closed to the public. But the trails!  Oh my, the trails were absolutely lovely!  I have to admit that it was a little shocking as we were walking down a trail to the ocean to see a sign that said "Never turn your back on the ocean".  As we got down to the waterside trails and I saw the waves and the rocks, I could easily imagine just how dangerous the water can be when storms are approaching. Fortunately, we were there on a day when the weather was beautiful and the ocean was calm We had a fantastic time! We walked the full length of the perimeter trail twice, and then we found a place to break open our picnic basket and eat our lunch.

If you'd like to visit the website for the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge, you will find it here: https://www.fws.gov/refuge/sachuest_point/

Below you will see some of the pictures that I took at Sachuest Point! 

 

 

Newport

For our 30th anniversary celebration, (which was delayed by a year), we toured through New England.  It took us two weeks, we thoroughly enjoyed every single minute, and we can't wait to go back to some of our favorite spots!

Our first stop was in Newport, RI. My husband had an internship in Newport when we were in college. The town has changed somewhat in the intervening years, but Newport is a timeless city and much remained the same. The business he worked for has since moved on and the room that he rented was in a house that 30 years later, looked like every other house on the block. He wasn't sure which house he was in, but I did get to walk through the neighborhood with him as he reminisced about walking to church on Sunday mornings and carrying his laundry 2 miles through town to the closest laundromat. 

It's funny, I would have made certain I had enough clothes for 2 or 3 weeks and then bemoaned the distance from my lodgings to the laundromat while carrying the laundry. He had enough clothes for 7 days, and he made certain everything was either white or dark so that he could do only 2 loads. He explained his logic to me as a stared at him in bemused disbelief. He was in Newport during the winter months, so he was able to wear nice sweaters with white dress shirts underneath. Since he was wearing them under sweaters, he wasn't worried if they got wrinkled after he folded them and put them in his duffel bag.  He gleefully explained that he had 7 dress sweaters, 6 white shirts, 7 pairs of underwear, 7 pairs of socks, 7 t-shirts, 1 pair of jeans and 3 pairs of dress pants. He had bought Dockers, which didn't wrinkle "that much" in the duffel bag on the way home.  

 

I fell in love with the charm of Newport. There were so many things to see, and the business district along the waterfront was bustling. 

 

With COVID restrictions in effect, we were masked when we went into the buildings and we picked up carry out from restaurants and ate down by the waterfront, fighting off the seagulls for possession of our food. You need to be quick with the gulls! I would open my container long enough to get a forkful of food out, and then quickly shut it again so that they wouldn't get into the box.  You'd think they would be wary of people, but no.  They get so much food from people that they see us as such and easy mark. After a couple of minutes of my aggressive food covering, they left us alone and moved on to easier pickings.

 

 

 

By far, one of my favorite walks was along the Cliff Walk. This paved path hugs the cliffs to the ocean on one side, and has the large mansions on the other. My husband remembers being able to see wide swaths of lawn and the big houses from the path. Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy did a LOT of damage to the cliffs and the landscape has changed. Some of the wide swaths of lawn are gone forever. And many of the big houses now have shrubbery and fences along the cliff walk. I did appreciate the homes that I could see! They are beautiful!  And the ocean.... Oh, any view of the ocean is a good view.  The day we walked along the cliff walk and explored the inland neighborhood, I ended up with blisters on my blisters.  My pedometer said that I had walked 30,000 steps that day.  

 

Late spring/early summer in Newport. aahhh.....