3MonkeyCircus

Even as we loaded on the plane to Spain, we would have never guessed that just a few days later we would be sitting on the beach in Jamaica.  That unlikely turn of events led to one of the best vacation periods we’ve had in years as it allowed us to check several items on our list - we wanted to have some brainless downtime with no stress and we wanted to experience something new.  The Caribbean has long been on our list, but never rose to the level where we would actually take action on a trip there and now suddenly, we were there for a week to try to melt away the stress of the Spanish fiasco.

Frankly, much of the time was spent just literally doing nothing more than hanging out by the pool drinking virgin pina coladas, or down by the sea staring aimlessly in the general direction of Cuba which was some ninety plus miles away from us.  We also had our share of midafternoon naps, tasty local cuisine, and time burning away pages in the assortment of books we brought with us.  Overall, completely delightful.

That said, it is not like us to sit still all the time, so with some research, we ended up taking a lengthy exploration trip deep into the mountainous interior of the island.  Along the winding, heavily potholed mountain roads, we found ourselves instinctively falling back to thinking in Spanish as we had on our moto ride through Central America.  The heat, humidity, the road conditions, and the sights all reminded us deeply of that trip.  It was an unexpected flashback that frankly brought on a little nostalgia.  Beyond the roads, we ventured to a well known set of touristy waterfalls, the YS Falls, for some photos, some swimming, and some time getting to socialize.

Jamaica is also known for its rum and we thought it would be interesting to go check out the Appleton Estate Rum Distillery which sits on the southern side of the island.  Much more than just a tasting experience, Appleton’s tour goes deep into the history of Jamaican colonization as well as the entirety of the sugar cane industry and how a piece of that eventually becomes rum.

Montego Bay, Jamaica - not what we expected when we booked flights to Valencia, Spain, but then again, the unexpected is to be expected with the circus.  After all, the monkeys have a natural disposition to adaptability to unforeseen circumstances on their journeys.  "But how has this happened?” the reader asks as they sip their morning cappuccino.  While it may be explained away with fanciful tales of pirates or the opening of a quantum wormhole, the reality would be a simple case of a mechanical malfunction on a plane bound from Toronto, Canada to Zurich, Switzerland.  What was expected to already be a long set of flights evolved into hours of delays, followed by hours more of delays, followed finally by a cancellation.  After more than three hours of standing in line with customer service, they had booked us flights days later and expanded our trip by multiple, additional flights.  We were looking squarely into the face of more than 80 hours of living in airports with little or no sleep.

We propped ourselves up on the airport benches designed to be quixotically uncomfortable.  The hours combined to make days and the lack of sleep morphed from exhaustion to anger to hallucinations.  It was in those dark hours that LunaChimp hatched an idea to rescue our sinking ship.  You see, whatever our voyage, it must take us to a land unexplored by our little crew and that land must be one that lengthens the list of recognized countries that we have touched earth in.  Unexpectedly, the slew of Caribbean islands became possibilities.  But with the disgust with airlines reaching a nauseating level, we committed that we must find a way with no opportunities for delays again.  CosmoMonkey and Luna worked their way through the islands with non-stop flights - the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas.  No, no, no.  What’s this?  Jamaica?  It checked all the boxes.  “Book it.” said Astro without hesitation.

“Look at the little crab!” exclaimed Luna as she laid in the lounge chair staring out into the sea laid out before her.

“Do you think I’ll sunburn the tops of my feet sitting here?” Cosmo asked as the hot, humid air blew her hair back.  “I only put lotion on my face.  I don’t want to sunburn them.”

“Do you think the folks back home are going to believe this?” Luna asked back.

So kiss me and smile for me Tell me that you’ll wait for me Hold me like you’ll never let me go

I’m leavin’ on a jet plane I don’t know when I’ll be back again Oh babe, I hate to go

Peter, Paul, and Mary sang it well, but unfortunately, we do know when we’ll be back again.  And frankly,  the hate to go line is completely inaccurate.  Since the pandemic hit, we’ve come up short on having big adventures.  The three of us had been pretty raw about it as two planned international trips – one to Iceland and one to Norway - had sequentially been blown to bits by COVID travel restrictions.  But as we saw that chapter of history disappear behind us, it was time to start exploring again. As we rolled the globe on its axis, there was a glaring gap in our travels.  The gap being especially peculiar as it is not way off the beaten path or distant from many of our previous journeys – the Iberian Peninsula.  And thus began our digging deeply into what Spain and Portugal had to offer.

The monkeys and Sophia all assembled as planned in Denver and we spent the better part of the evening doing final preparations for our launch.  The weather was looking bleak as fresh snows in the Rockies and Southern Wyoming were clearly going to throw wrenches into our plans.  Cosmo did what she does best and developed a set of alternate plans in case we ran into the unexpected.  Which we did on day one of the trip.

Our plan had been to make our way to Eagle, Colorado, drop the motos off, and reverse Section 4 of the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route in the Jeep.  There are several sections of the COBDR which we had not done yet, and this plan would allow us to tick off one of those boxes.  Unfortunately, within the first 40 miles, we ran into a short, but crucial road closure that the US Forest Service had done to protect the soft clay road from damage due to the unexpectedly late rain and snow.  While it might have been a bummer, we looked at it optimistically as it allowed us to shake out a few kinks in our loading and we got to check out an area we had not seen.

Day 2 arrived soon enough.  This was a day which we were eagerly awaiting...  a full BDR day on Section 5 with both the bikes and the Jeep.  While the route itself is not hard, as usual, it provided a few moments of short gasps as some of the more rocky sections followed precipitous old jeep roads.  Those moments behind us, section five took us deep into the remote backcountry along the Upper Colorado River basin through beautiful areas that few people get to explore.

The irony is not lost on us that we moved to Colorado a year ago, have been relentlessly adventuring, and not written a darn thing on our blog about it.  We won’t make any promises that we are going to improve that, but we do have some exciting activities coming over the near horizon – the Wyoming BDR!

For those that don’t know or have forgotten about what a Backcountry Discovery Route is, they are courses from one side of a state to the other using mostly old Jeep and forest roads that stay way off the beaten path.  Back in 2020, we hammered out the Mid-Atlantic BDR in the Land Rover and a rental Jeep accompanied by LunaChimp’s BFF Sophia.  Since moving to Colorado, we’ve picked off large pieces of the Colorado BDR.  Just a couple of weeks ago, the BDR organization announced the Wyoming BDR was completed and the route was published.  We’ve always kept it in the back of our mind that we would knock out another one as a team and even before the WY BDR was announced, we were already scheming with Sophia to run another one.

Today, the team reassembles in Denver where we will launch into the exploration of the northern part of the CO BDR and the southern part of the WY BDR.  This time, Cosmo and Astro will be on motorcycles with Luna and Sophia taking on the route in the Jeep.  As usual, the team has done an excellent job of advanced research and planning so the expectations are high that this will be a grand adventure.  That said, one thing that is always the case with monkey adventures – nothing ever goes to plan and we will surely have some unexpected fun.  The weather is already looking ominous.

There’s no settling into normal on a Backcountry Discovery Route - every turn brings unexpected surprises.  After we worked out a few kinks on day one, the next few days brought unbelievable beauty, fun driving, some crazy weather, and a lot of good time together.

One of the more interesting stops was the Horn Creek Schoolhouse.  It was marked on maps and had been called out on one of the videos we had watched.  That said, we had no idea that we’d find it so interesting.  A family has taken it upon themselves to keep an 1800′s one room schoolhouse as a sort of museum of their ancestors and others that lived in the area.  We spent the better part of an hour talking with Betty and Ernie who told us story after story of the life of a settler in the hollows of West Virginia.  They should be considered a national treasure.

We’ve now traveled over 600 miles of backcountry roads, many of which are dirt, gravel, or just plain ol’ rocks.  We find it hard to even write about the experience and frankly, there were times when we just didn’t take photos because we were so wrapped up in what we were doing.  But we’ve had a lot of time hanging out at mountain lakes or sitting around a campfire making s’mores.  We’ve had a lot of time sitting behind the windshield.

One thing that we’ve seen is that LunaChimp has quickly become an excellent offroad driver.  Driving on off-camber rocky one lane Jeep trails with a 200′ drop off on the driver’s side will tend to encourage good driving skills.  But we’ve also seen that Sophia has become an expert navigator.  Juggling map reading on Gaia, coordinating turns on the radio, or choosing when to switch into four wheel drive, she makes them a formidable driving team.

This morning we woke up at the camp in Catoctin Mountain Park after a cold front blew through, dumping a sizeable amount of rain on our tents and dropping the temperatures considerably.  We weren’t sure what to expect for our last day on the MABDR, but it turned out to be one of the best as we explored section five and part of section six as it passed through the mountains of southern Pennsylvania - simply marvelous.

As we ate dinner tonight at a fantastic Belgian restaurant in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the talk was already turning to other BDRs.  LunaChimp and Sophia had started the research stealthily on others further west.  We’ll see what comes of it.  We close with a shot of three of us just before the final pavement ended on section five of the MABDR.  Tomorrow we start the journey back toward North Carolina by heading into Shenandoah National Park.

Day One on the Mid-Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route. A day of great views, fun Jeep roads, wildlife, and torrential thunderstorms. It’s always an adventure with the monkeys!

It has been quiet in the jungle, or at least on the monkey blog.  That doesn’t mean we haven’t been constantly exploring.  But there comes a time when we need a little bit bigger adventure, and as we normally do, we’ve been loosely planning one for a month or so.

Across the United States over the last decade, there has been a steady development of “Backcountry Discovery Routes.”  In short, they are multi-stage routes that explore the hidden areas of a specific state or region following the path of forest roads and out-of-the-way old highways. With large sections of jeep trails and dirt roads, they were designed for adventure motorcycles, jeeps, or overlanding trucks.

In 2018, a new route was established called the Mid-Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route, or the MABDR. This traverses over 1000 miles from the westernmost parts of Virginia up through Pennsylvania.  We set our sights on this one.  Initially, we had planned on taking the motos, but LunaChimp had a strong desire to bring one of her closest friends; and the evolution of the journey began.  Since Luna isn’t old enough to legally pilot a moto in North Carolina, we decided at first that she and her buddy would drive the Land Rover as a sag wagon to support the two motos.  After an exploration of the first 77 miles of the route, we came to the conclusion that the motos were going to be much faster than the Rover and we would spend most of our time waiting on each other.  Unacceptable to the monkey credo of staying together, we further modified the trip by dropping the motos and adding a Jeep Wrangler to the mix.

Thus, our plan was gelled. A Rover and a Jeep on a journey through the backroads and mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.  Starting this Saturday morning August 1, 2020, we’ll be running the satellite tracker in the Jeep so you’ll be able to see us moving along the track if you want and with a few fingers crossed, we’ll be posting regularly about our adventure.

Between mountain bike race season and LunaChimp’s multiple excursions this summer, this weekend turned out to be the one of the few weekends that we could go on a family adventure.  Since it was a three day weekend, we decided to go big and head to North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  Known locally as OBX, it was a weekend of adventuring and learning about some of the local traditions.

We visited three national wildlife refuges in search of alligators and snakes, we didn’t see either, but we did see more turtles than we could count and a river otter.   We visited Kitty Hawk and saw the distance two brothers from Ohio went in their quest for the adventure of flight, and a shattered propeller that they had from the lessons along the way.  We ate soft shell crab at a beach shack and visited Duck Donuts (North Carolina’s version of Voodoo). We visited lighthouses and sand dunes and experienced a huge thunderstorm that flooded the roads and kept us awake most of the night as it howled through the hotel.  It was a weekend of family adventure, the good, the bad and the unexpected...overall, exactly what the three monkeys enjoy best.

All had been quiet after we returned back from our 11 months of travel.  We quickly settled back into our normal routine of work and school in Oregon. But as with most travelers, things just weren’t the same.  Or more likely, we weren’t the same.  Logging tens of thousands of miles on the road in lands new and different had changed our perspectives.

After a year back, a couple of unexpected contacts to AstroKong awoke the spirit inside of us.  Both calls were from cities just 30 miles apart in North Carolina.  After some weird gyrations through an epic series interviews, we suddenly found ourselves in front of an open door to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Astro headed out first, then LunaChimp rushed in ten days later so that she could enroll in school.  CosmoMonkey watched the last of our belongings get loaded onto a moving truck, and then launched an adventure of her own.  With the assistance of some seriously good friends, the motorcycles were loaded onto a trailer and she hopped into the Land Rover and drove the 3000 miles across the country by herself.

The excitement of deep exploration of a new part of the country is now bubbling over the edges in the Circus.  It’s common for us to sit around a map at the dinner table.  Cosmo has already taken the plunge into the local travel section of the local library.  What have we found?  A wonderful part of the country with an amazing array of natural areas, some of the most polite and friendly people we’ve ever encountered, and a smorgasbord of super tasty food.  We’re giddy with giddy up.

The last two weeks have been intense.  It’s like Frank Sinatra is riding along with us, “And now, the end is near...”  As we overlook the event horizon, instead of easing back, we have pushed harder.  Squeeze that last drop of water from the sponge.  The last two weeks have been intense.

We fully immersed ourselves into the offbeat subculture of whitewater. It seems as if we’ve spent more time in the water than we have on land.  As we type this, our bodies are reeling from scrapes, bruises, tendinitis, burns, and soreness.  We’ve looked over the void of huge drops into cavernous rapids.  We’ve had to vanquish fear as the rivers reached flood stage.  But what was terrifying is now commonplace.  It’s telling when LunaChimp whines about others trying to save her as she frolics in a river hole.

But now, the end is near.  This year has been amazing.  When AstroKong and CosmoMonkey took off and traveled for a year previously, re-entry was very hard.  We knew it would be this time.  All three of us have begun to deal with the depression of “normal”.  As we look forward, we face the uncertainty of jobs and money.  We face the uncertainty of family situations that have surfaced while we were away.  We face the uncertainty of school situations that have evolved since we rode away.  We face the uncertainty of knowing a life that others may never understand.

Speaking of songs, there’s another one we’ve heard a lot lately on the radio.  One of the lines has been speaking to us.  “There ain't nothing, there ain't nothing gonna steal my joy”.  It has become a point of speech for us when one of us starts thinking too much.  “I’m leaking joy.”

Even with all that uncertainty though, we have learned a lot in this last year and how to deal with stuff.  We are tough.  No, no, let’s say that better.  We are tough as nails.  We’ve survived a hurricane, baseball sized hail, tornadoes, motorcycle crashes, a mob of angry protesters, and a couple of deadly diseases.  And we are returning to super good friends and a caring family.  We have a beautiful house in a great neighborhood all lined up.  LunaChimp is going to a National Convention that she was invited to for her travel photography.  We have a new niece/cousin to see.  Indeed, the end is near.  But there ain’t nothing gonna steal our joy. Nothing.

Our last post was pretty much all dramatic photos of the huge landscapes of the Rocky Mountains.  As we entered Rocky Mountain National Park, it was on our mind that monstrously huge mountainscapes were cool and all, but they get a little old.  This strangely aligns with one of the little phrases that we’ve been saying amoungst ourselves as we look out at these grand vistas...  “I wonder how many bears are out there.”  What that question is really digging at is this, at any single point on a hike, you can look down, or look out, or look up, and see just amazing things.  While the panoramic landscape shots look cool, often the little details are what are actually the coolest things there.  Of course we can’t not show some of the incredible places we’ve seen as we spent three days exploring one of the world’s most stunning national parks and the surrounding areas, but we will show a little bit more.

Sitting on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains lies one of the premier whitewater areas in the world…  the headwaters of the Arkansas River.  We had specifically targeted coming back to Colorado to catch the spring run off and delve into some of the many, many whitewater festivals that take place all throughout the little mountain towns.

Our first stop were the towns of Buena Vista and Salida.  Sitting about 25 miles apart, the Arkansas literally runs right through the middle of both little villages.  Both have centered their tourism activities around the river with cute little shops, awesome restaurants, and a heap of outdoor stores hawking climbing, hiking, and whitewater gear.  It was here that we pulled out the raft for a few days and got silly wet. As happens to us sometimes, we get really active and forget to take photos.  We would ask for forgiveness, but we aren’t really sorry. We were having too much fun.

We caught word that the grandaddy of whitewater festivals would be in a couple of weeks so rather than hang out (which we could have easily done) we decided to move north into the heart of the Rockies and come back in time for the FIBArk.

As we travel, as usual, we make detours to pick up geocaches.  Two of the oldest and most famous geocaches in Colorado pinged our radar.  Both included drives and hikes deep into the mountains.  There are some folks that say that geocaching is just an excuse to take you to places you’ve never been before.  There may be some truth to that.  We had to endure the sites of abandoned mines, pronghorn antelope, and eye watering scenery in places far off the beaten path.

Our last stop in this blog post is Mt. Evans.  Sitting at 14,240 feet, it is the highest paved road in North America.  While it lacks the donut shop that Pikes Peak has, it is in a different climatic zone and offers something a little different…  snow…  like 30 feet of it.  It also offers up bighorn sheep, frozen lakes, and a harrowing road with 1000’ cliffs and no guardrails.

After leaving the tornadoes of Kansas, we were thrilled to be returning to the green forests and blue rivers of Colorado.  So as we have been driving and exploring the endlessly beautiful foothills of the Rockies, we can’t help but sing John Denver songs.  Even LunaChimp is starting to get the hang of them.

A lesson that we learned many years ago on our first year off was that big holiday weekends were bad for us.  We get the privilege of visiting near empty parks, getting low rates on accommodations, and getting to hang out with the locals in a more natural way.  As we entered Colorado, it quickly became apparent that Memorial Day weekend was going to twist our “normal”.  Sure enough, throughout the weekend, we had to contend with huge crowds, full parking lots, traffic jams on the highways, and lines for restaurants.  The good thing is that with a few adjustments, we were able to still have fun and get in some solitude (think the opposite of the normal lazy tourist.)

Our first stop back in the Centennial State was Colorado Springs, home to Garden of the Gods State Park.  A beautiful park of sandstone rock towers and fins, we found it unbelievable that the park was free to visitors especially after experiencing the outrageous state park fees in Texas and Arizona.  We spent the morning hiking, taking pictures, and learning about these delicate formations.

Just up the road from there lies the rarely visited Florissant National Monument, home of the Florissant Fossil Beds.  These nearly unknown fossil beds are considered a national treasure by many scientists as they have enormous petrified Redwood trees and the largest collection of fossilized insects anywhere in the world.

Come Tuesday when the holiday throngs had to go return to their whips and shackles, we ventured to the most exciting spot in the area - Pike’s Peak.  This 14,115 foot mountain is one of the only peaks that high that people can drive to the top of.  This makes it the most visited mountain in the United States, and the second most visited mountain in the world behind Japan’s Mount Fuji.  We happened to luck out. The rangers told us that our visit was on one of the most beautiful and clear days that they have had so far this year.  The views were amazing and we were able to partake in the tradition of Pike’s Peak donuts, the only donuts made at over 14,000 feet.  Rings of pure joy we tell you.  Pure joy.

Besides having lots of great parks, one of the things that we love about Colorado is the plethora of fun little mountain towns.  Our favorite sits just outside of Colorado City.  Manitou Springs has a quaint historic downtown area, lots of natural springs, and the laid back outdoorsy mountain vibe that we enjoy.  Flipside of that though, we visited Cripple Creek.  From the pictures we had seen and the description of it, we thought it would be very similar to Manitou. Although the downtown looks cute and inviting in photos, it’s been completely taken over by casinos.  The only places to grab some food were noisy casino restaurants with no windows and spaced out, chain smoking grandmas. We did, however enjoy learning about how donkeys were used in the mining operations in the area, and that once the gold rush went bust, the donkeys were set free.  For over a hundred years now, they’ve had a roaming herd of wild donkeys that occasionally saunter into town.  Not that any of the gamblers notice…

After the long trip home from Guatemala, we spent a couple of days in Houston collecting our belongings and getting repacked for more adventure.  It was bittersweet to leave Houston, as we realized that we are now on the final leg of our year long adventure.  The road ahead is generally north and west, but we made a commitment to pack as much in to these final weeks as we can.

We made our way to Waco, Texas to visit the Waco Mammoth National Monument.  One of the newest additions to the National Park System, it was by far one of the most interesting and educational ones we have visited on this trip.  Our tour guide taught us all sorts of random factoids about Columbian Mammoths (not Woolly Mammoths), including that each one pooped 300 pounds of waste per day and they kept a camel around their herd as a lookout (and warning siren) because they had terrible eye sight.

Leaving Waco, we made our way through Dallas and landed in Oklahoma.  The monkeys memories of previous trips to Oklahoma was that it was all flat, plain, and boring.  We stand corrected, as we found the drive through Southern Oklahoma to be remarkably pretty and green.  A stop at Chickasaw National  Recreation Area proved the point, as we drove around the beautiful forest, lakes and natural springs in the area.

Kansas, on the other hand, was unfortunately exactly as we had remembered it.  Flat, plain, and boring.  We also were disappointed to encounter tolls on the interstates and people that were noticeably less friendly and polite than those we had grown accustomed to in Texas and Oklahoma. We spent a night in Wichita and visited a nearby private zoo that had great ratings on the travel websites.  It did have a surprising array of animals and some interesting animal encounter opportunities, but overall we left feeling grateful for the really amazing zoo we have back home in Oregon.