Happy Place

It's the end of the month which means it's time for P.J.'s monthly photo blog challenge. I thought about this one, then figured that I have a bunch of happy places, things or actual places that I enjoy immensely, so I thought I could make this more about all of my happy places as opposed to just one happy place. I mean, why limit yourself? And I'm sure if I really tried, I could come up with some more, but these are the ones I've chosen for this month's photos and they are in no particular order of importance.

1. It's all about planning

Right now, I'm in the middle of my second round of immunotherapy for my cancer treatment. This is a maintenance round, primarily meant for preventive care, so that's a very good thing. I had my first treatment on Monday and I have two subsequent treatments on the 5th and 12th of next month and then it appears I'll get another 3 month break. What this means in the long run is I'm planning a road trip to Utah and Colorado.

One of the things that has been really frustrating about my illness is it's not really allowed me to plan any kind of trips because I've had appointments, surgeries, and procedures that have take top priority. I get that, but with more free time, I've been able to start planning for future trips again.

I love planning road trips. I love to look at maps and guidebooks and determine what route I will take in order to fully maximize the time I have for this specific trip. This time, the plan is to head to Grand Junction, Colorado and tour Colorado National Monument and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. 

I've been to Black Canyon of the Gunnison way back when I was around 13. This was actually so far in the past, the park was a national monument at the time and has since been upgraded to national park status by an act of Congress. I've never been to Colorado National Monument, but I intend to spend a day at each park and make Grand Junction my base for the three days and two nights I'm in the region. 

And I will be the first to admit that I started planning this road trip too early. I've pretty much set up my itinerary, have my hotels books and know what I want to do each day and I WANT TO GO NOW! But I can't, because of my upcoming treatments. I should have waited until next week perhaps to start planning, but you'll see later in this post that waiting might not have been a really wise choice either, because next week is going to get busy.

2. Papa and Gaga time

We didn't do this very often last year, but once I got sick, time became a little bit more precious and my daughter and son-in-law started having regular video chats with us so we could see the little one. Usually these happen around dinner time, so in essence we get to eat dinner with our granddaughter on an almost daily basis and we live 300+ miles away from each other. This is just one of the many screenshots I grabbed a couple of weeks ago when we were having dinner together.

Just watching and listening to her babble about her day, what's she's eating, her insistence on seeing our two Pooh bears that she knows are at our house, and seeing her new developments that seemingly happen on a daily basis really takes me to a happy place.

I've heard it said that being a grandparent is the best and I've probably said this more than once on this platform, but it really is. And she's coming to visit in about a week. It will be a short visit, but we are both really looking forward to seeing her and her parents.

3. The Wonders of Nature

I will never be not astounded by the wonders of nature around us. It's probably why I love to travel, to experience new things in nature to me. It also allows me to practice my art of photography and although that's developed and evolved over the years, especially with my reliance more and more with my phone as opposed to my DSLR, I still love going out and hunting down that elusive butterfly, or taking a wonderful landscape photo from some place I've visited. This particular butterfly allowed me to get my phone about two inches away from it, almost as if it knew I wasn't going to try and capture it.

My parents instilled in me a love of nature and I fully want to enjoy it for as long as I possibly can. Already in my mind, I'm planning other trips that I can take in the future. 

4. Hiking

I realize this photo isn't the greatest photo, but it really encapsulates what I enjoy about getting out in nature. I've been asked why I never took up mountain biking as it appears as if I'd be a good candidate for that particular type of exercise and recreation and I think it's mainly because I feel that biking would intrude in some of the other happy places I also like to enjoy, like photography, nature and geocaching. I mean, if you're flying by something at 20 miles per hour, by the time you stop to "smell the roses" or pursue the butterfly, the butterfly has already flown away. And so I walk, and I walk, and I walk.

Before I was retired, I was pretty much limited to hiking on the weekends. Now, I just get up, look outside and if the day looks promising, I'll put on my hiking shoes and head out to a favorite trail and enjoy the day. And what's really funny about all this is, as a school teacher, we're used to loving our summers. Now, I would honestly say that summer is my least favorite season of all. It's so dang hot that unless you get up at the crack of dawn and get out on the trail, it's usually pretty miserable out there. It's so much nicer during the cooler months of fall, winter and spring, when you can go out just about any time of the day and get a good hike in without feeling like you've been on a summer death march. Plus, now that I'm retired, I can hike any day of the week, so I don't have to exclusively go on the weekends when the trails are crowded. Nice quiet trails where I can really enjoy nature take me to a happy place.

5. Geocaching

Did you really think I could get through an entire blog post talking about happy places and not talk, at least a little bit, about geocaching? I didn't think so.

So much of the past 22 years of my life has been intertwined by this silly game that I discovered. As one of my friends, who I later introduced to this game said, "Geocaching. It's hiking with a purpose!" Although I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment entirely, I did see where he was coming from with his explanation.

And yes, part of my next roadtrip will be geocaching related. I'm actually planning on hosting two event caches while out on the trip, one in Grand Junction, Colorado and another one in Salt Lake City, Utah. What better way to meet up with other geocachers in the area than by attending an event. I looked at my itinerary and then searched to see if there were already events planned (there weren't), so I decided to host my own morning coffee events. I usually do this when I'm on a road trip, but this is the first time I've hosted two events while out on a trip. It's kind of ambitious for a 7 day trip, but I'm up to the task.

It's always enjoyable to talk with other geocachers about the game. Who knows, I might end up going caching with one of the people who show up at one of my events.

The other goal of this trip is to get the webcam caches that are in the Salt Lake City area. A webcam cache is where there's a public webcam that you need to stand in front of the webcam and either have a friend back home get a screen shot of you, or you can alternately get a screen shot of yourself off of your phone.

I've signed several challenge caches for finding webcams and since there are four different webcams in this area, it's like a goldmine for cachers working on webcam challenges. To put things in perspective, there are approximately 203 active webcam caches, so they are exceedingly rare. Webcams are no longer recognized as "real" geocaches, so these are the ones that have been grandfathered into the system. They are not getting replaced, so when one gets archived, it's gone and there's not going to be one to replace it. That's why when geocachers see there's a webcam close by, they want to get their photo taken, because you never know if that particular webcam might disappear sometime in the future. Of the 10 that I've taken a photo at, only 4 of them are still active.

And there you have it, my take on the theme Happy Place. Please stop by P.J.'s page and see how other people interpreted the same theme.  And as always, please leave a comment. I won't bite.

The Week that Was

The photo is from my daughter's wedding when both of my parents were in their early 80s at the time, but it pretty much sums up the happiness of this past week. My mom turned 90 last week. That in amongst itself is an accomplishment, but it wasn't the only thing that happened in our family this past week. My parents also celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary. And if that weren't enough, my middle child and his partner both celebrated birthdays too.

I've also been meaning to write this for a couple of days, but to top the week off, I had an urology appointment and got a good report back from my urologist.  Everything looks very clean at this time. I will still be undergoing immunotherapy treatments as a preventative. Those will start back up on the 28th of this month for three weeks. I'll then get some time off and repeat the process for awhile. Overall, it looks very good and I'm very thankful for my urologist and all of the nurses who've I've interacted with over the last 8 months.

I don't think I'm going to be using that Rough Roads photo that I've been using for health updates anymore. I can't say I'm totally out of the woods as I think it's always in the back of anyone's mind who has gone through cancer treatment that there's always a possibility of it recurring, but my doctor was very confident and so am I. And as always, thank you for your kind words, thoughts and prayers. They have helped me through this stage of my life. 

Car 54, Where Are You?

I would have missed this it were it not for a plastic American flag I found lying on the ground just up the road on the right hand side of the shot. My wife and I were out on our after dinner walk when I spotted the flag on the ground, so I picked up the flag and took it to the community center which is behind me in this shot. There's a mailbox there designated for used flags to be discarded. I believe either the local Boy Scout troop or the American Legion picks up the flags and destroys them correctly.

Anyway, this old Buick was painted up like an old school Highway Patrol unit. I guess it proves that you also don't have to wander very far sometimes to see something very cool. I've always said that if someone were to give me a classic car of my choice, I'd probably choose an Edsel, but I think this one would probably rank right up there in the top five or so.

So I'm curious. What would your classic car be if you could have someone just give you anything?

Selfie

It's time once again for P.J.'s monthly photo blog challenge. The theme for this month is Selfie and although I'm very comfortable with taking selfies of myself, I'm having a hard time coming up with words to go along with each of the photos, as many of them are very similar in nature. But I will do my best to come up with enough words to cover each selfie that I took this month. And to be honest, most of them are going to center around either my granddaughter or geocaching, so be forewarned. You're either going to get excessive cuteness, or get bored reading about my favorite hobby. But it's what I have for you this month. 

1 & 2 Geocaching

This past month I went a variety of local places to find some geocaches, including a couple of virtual caches. The fact that I found a couple of virtual caches this month is actually kind of rare since I've pretty much tapped out the Southern California area of all of the possible virtual caches. 

There was a challenge cache in our area that wanted us to find 7 icons, ten each on a day. So you'd have to find 10 traditional caches on a day, then on another day, you'd have to find 10 virtual caches, or 10 multi caches. I completed that challenge years ago, but even back then I had to travel down to the San Diego area for a day of caching to get the 10 virtual caches that I needed for this challenge. So to say that I found two virtual caches this month in my local area is actually quite an achievement.

The first shot was taken near Griffith Park in Los Angeles at the L. A. Live Steamers Railroad Museum. The kicker for this particular shot is the museum is only open one day a month, the third Sunday of each month. Now why is this important? Inside the grounds is Walt Disney's old Carolwood barn which used to reside on his family's estate in the Holmby Hills area. It's the barn where he worked on all of his outdoor trains when he wasn't running them on his estate. Yes, you read that correctly. Disney was quite a train buff and he actually had a model railroad that people could ride on in his backyard. The family no longer owns the home and in fact, the barn is the only thing that remains of the house where Walt spent much of his time in the 30s and 40s thinking up, among other things, Disneyland. Since I once worked at Disneyland, I really wanted to visit this and get credit for a virtual geocache, which meant taking a selfie outside the barn.

The second shot is actually Disney related as well, because once we were done touring the museum and the Carolwood barn, we continued in the local area finding other geocaches. As we worked our way around finding caches, we ended up at the front entrance to the Walt Disney Studios which is where I took this shot. Disney Studios are located on Alameda. Myers St. is a side street almost directly across from the entrance and since that's my last name, I had to take a photo of it with me in it. For those of you interested, the geocache is located behind me in that parking lot. Can you see it?

3, 4, & 5 The Cutest Grandbaby in the Entire World

Yeah, I know I'm biased, but I really think she's wonderful. Within the last 6 months or so, we've started an almost daily tradition where my daughter or son-in-law will call us up at dinner time on FaceTime and we'll eat dinner with them, but 300 miles away. During the middle of last month, we didn't get to do that every often since they were on the east coast visiting her other set of grandparents. But I knew our time was coming since she was going to be spending over a week down here while my daughter went through some teacher training classes on-line and then had some bridal things to do because her friend is getting married next month.

We were the designated baby sitters and I'll take that job any day of the week. Last time they were down here, I got a really cute photo of her with my wife's two stuffed Pooh Bears plus her stuffed Pooh Bear. I called it the Council of Poohs and it looked like she was directing a major meeting between all of the Pooh Bears. I tried to get something like that this time, but it never worked out right. I did, however, get a couple of shots of her Pooh Bear in with the selfies as you can plainly see.

The second day they were there, she was fighting her nap and had a partial meltdown. We started to softly sing a round with her and I'm not sure if it was the singing or the vibration of my low voice, but eventually she drifted off clutching her Papa and her Pooh Bear. Nothing, I can tell you from firsthand experience, beats having a small child fall asleep on you, even if you are stuck in that position for several hours afterwards. It's worth it. 

One of the things we discovered while she was down here this time was that she loves to look at photos of herself. The second shot of her with Pooh Bear and me is of us sitting in front of my computer looking through our photo album of all of the shots we've been sent since she was born. This is one the absolute best benefits of photography these days. You don't have to worry about the price of the film since there isn't any. Take as many photos as you want and then cull them later. Or perhaps you won't cull them since they're all so great, because they're photos of your kids and your grandkid. 

I can tell you that she'd sit in my lap for hours if she wanted to see photos and eventually, she'd drift off to sleep for a nice nap if we needed it. This only backfired one time because she was right on the edge one day and I went through the photos and we got to a photo of her and her mom. Oops. That backfired spectacularly at that point because all she wanted was Mama from then on. Hey, you live and learn.

And finally, as I was looking over all of the shots I'd taken this past month, I realized that I only had four good selfies, and it's the 31st of July and it's already evening. Now I suppose I could fudge it and just take another selfie of myself with my grand daughter in the morning since they were leaving then, but then it wouldn't make the challenge parameters. Yeah, my OCD is kicking in here but there are certain principles at work here and I want this to be an honest challenge. So what's a Papa to do? Get a photo of her after she's taken a bath. She's nice and relaxed and happy and it worked out rather well. 

And so we have this last shot. I'm not sure what it is about this shot, but she really does look very relaxed. Maybe she was tired and would soon be dreaming in bed, or maybe the warm water of the bath just really relaxed her. If that's the case, then when she grows up, she really needs to get herself a hot tub.

And there you have it - my five photos for P.J.'s photo challenge theme of Selfie. Once again, please feel free to stop by the link and see what other bloggers have done with their selfies. Please leave comments below. I read each one and try to respond to all of them as soon as they get published on the blog. 

On a side note, if you do comment on something, I have to manually approve each comment. I was having a problem with spammers just randomly coming on my blog and blasting it with all sorts of junk comments and advertisements and so I changed the settings to moderator approval needed. So if it feels like your comment didn't come through, it probably did, it's just that I need to get the email and then approve it before it shows up on the site.

Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom of this. I get to see her again in just about a month when they all come down for my daughter's friend's wedding.