
The Case for Alternative Facts
March 17, 2017
Your Average Non-Conformist Sorcerer (Short Story – 4641 Word Count)
April 13, 2017Word Count; 1584
The Mini-Vacation
You Deserve
Spring break should be considered a legitimate reason to go on vacation. Because the majority of miniature holidays like this happen to be only brief respites from the normal routine of school, or slaving away at the salt mine, you’re pretty much required to maximize your time off.
The public school where I work had its spring break during the week of March 19th through the 24th. Because I happened to be bed ridden during spring break of last year due to a broken arm, I was bound and determined to make spring hiatus this year a productive vacation.
Now how exactly do you make a vacation productive? Do you cram a record number of activities into as short a period of time as possible? If that’s the case, then the next time you’re raking the leaves in your back yard if you bust your ### right at the beginning and rake at the speed of a schizophrenic lab rat you’ll achieve a record yield, right? Quite possibly you will indeed finish raking the grass in record time, but there’s also a distinct possibility you’ll get sweaty palms, which may result in some nasty blisters forming, and you end up vegging out on the chaise lounge for the next hour. Then you fall asleep, an hour suddenly turns into 2 or 3, and pretty soon you’re totally blowing off doing anything else except walking into the house, opening the refrigerator, grabbing an ice-cold one, and locating the TV remote.
Every other task you’d planned on doing in order to clean up the yard gets put on the back burner and you’ve actually accomplished less than you originally set out to do. This is a somewhat legitimate way to justify not doing anything, and the federal government uses a variation of this theme on a regular basis all the time. Sadly enough, the strategy almost always seems to work in their case.
We’re talking spring break, so definitely a better plan is to maximize your enjoyment of the time you do have off by doing less, but making a supreme effort to enjoy what you do accomplish instead. That’s kind of what my plan of attack happened to be this year. I achieved this by splitting the week into three distinct parts.
The first phase of vacation was a mini trip down to the desert west of Silverton for three days. Two friends and myself visited the area around Bluff, Utah to explore the environment with the results being way beyond my expectations.
Day #1 consisted of a nice hike in order to cure our selves of an extreme case of road butt from driving for four hours. The hike swimmingly achieved this goal, and one of the really sweet things about visiting the desert at this time of year is the fact that you’re getting out of the snow and mud here in the heart of the San Juans. Additionally, the temperature isn’t hotter than the plate of spicy BBQ ribs you consumed on an inebriated dare last weekend.
Speaking of food consumption, after a relaxed dinner, followed by sleeping for an uncharacteristic (for me anyway) nine hours, we rented a set of inflatable kayaks and floated part of the way down the San Juan River the next day. One sweet thing about going into these holidays without any sort of pre-conceived expectations is ending up being totally surprised when something nice like this does happen. Over a decade ago I took some kayak lessons, and this was a great re-introduction to the activity. The experience this go-round was so enjoyable that I can see myself getting back into the sport. Somewhat older and slower at this stage of my life (Age catches up to everyone, sad but true) so I’m hoping this happens, but we can conclusively state that Olympic-caliber kayakers don’t have anything to worry about from my threats. Our river trip didn’t have any class VII rapids (class II if we were lucky), so the bird watching was outstanding in addition to the weather and water temperature being just right. Sunny with a slight breeze, and the water temp. being so perfect I didn’t want to stop when we reached the pullout zone on the river. I’m not making any definite plans at this stage to get back into the sport, so once again if something does happen I’ll end up being pleasantly astonished. The idea still sits comfortably in the back of my mind though.
A second hike took place the following day, and that afternoon I achieved total road butt status once again by driving back to the high country. Phase #1 of spring break mini-adventure successfully accomplished.
Phase #2 of my break was definitely more sedate. My schedule required me to be home for the next three days and while there I took care of all sorts of tasks. Most of them not mandatory for phase #3 of vacation, but still necessary. A few jobs at the school that needed to be attended to, an unexpected yoga class, and more writing, which to me is like breathing. In other words, as Isaac Asimov once said, “If I don’t write on a regular basis, I die.”
The third, and final part of spring break was definitely the best one. I’d paid a visit to Carlsbad Caverns over forty years ago as part of a high school field trip, and wanted to make a return visit one day. The place is located on a far corner of the U.S. map in southeastern New Mexico, and just driving down there from Silverton was an eleven hour road butt ordeal in and of itself. The long, flat drive to southern New Mexico was well worth all the effort though.
The cave is situated in the Chihuahuan desert of the Guadalupe Mountains, and what a gigantic, subterranean hole in the ground. Over three hundred Limestone caves, carved over the past 250 million years, and highlighted in one way by a downhill hike that takes over an hour just to get to The Big Room, an expansive cavern located deep inside the cave.
Before I even visited Carlsbad Caverns I went on the place’s national park website and looked into making reservations for a special visit, The Left Hand Tunnel Tour. Came within an eyelash of hitting the reservation button for this tour, but at the last second decided not to when I started thinking it might take longer to drive down to the caverns in time to make it for a tour that started at 10:30 a.m. Flat tires have a way of modifying these types of rigid timetables.
Partially because the drive is such an intellectually stimulating ordeal, I got to the southeast corner of N.M. a lot faster the next day than I expected. Luck was with me once I got there too, and when I asked the ranger at the information desk if I could still sign up for the Left Hand tour that morning he told me they were there to accommodate their visitors, and put me on the list. As testament to the honesty of National Park Service staff, he probably wouldn’t have accepted a bribe, and even if he asked for one I didn’t have the money to give it to the guy. Once again I was pleasantly surprised.
The Left Hand Tunnel Tour is very cool. Our group rode the elevator to the Big Room, then each of us lit our candle lanterns, and we ventured into an obscure section of the caverns Old-School style. The ranger unlocked a padlocked entrance and our odyssey involved all sorts of what the park service considers “strenuous and somewhat dangerous” hiking. Narrow pathways, walks right along the edge of slightly precipitous drop-offs, odd-looking pools of water, and cave formations all over the place. More stalagmites, stalactites, and popcorn formations than one cave should be entitled to have, and a dark environment that’s way beyond anything the imaginers in Hollywood can ever dream up.
Following the Left Hand Tour, I hiked along the rest of the Big Room pathway, then lucked out one final time and only had to wait twenty minutes before riding the elevator back up to the visitor’s center. Could’ve walked back to the surface, and when one of the rangers mentioned that the elevator wait was over two hours last July 4th the walk option back to sunlight sounded like a definite possibility on that particular day.
The drive back home the next day was the way you want these long car jaunts to be, uneventful. Partially because I did part of it right after the trip to Carlsbad Caverns, I did experience more road butt, but got back home before darkness had set in. As the old cliché goes, Phase #3 of the mission successfully accomplished.
So what can we conclude from last week’s odysseys? You don’t have to spend a lot of money, or visit exotic locales in far off parts of the world in order to carry off a successful vacation. You don’t always have to venture to out-of-the-way locales either in order to experience something amazing. Some of the best sites to visit are right in your own backyard. Although in my case I’ve been known to visit all sorts of out of the way locales in remote parts of the world. Then again, spring break time constraints don’t always allow this so you adapt.