
Ho ho ho everyone and welcome to the 2020 edition of the Weissler Holiday Gazette. What can we say about a pandemic year, except good riddance?
Continue reading Good Riddance 2020Ho ho ho everyone and welcome to the 2020 edition of the Weissler Holiday Gazette. What can we say about a pandemic year, except good riddance?
Continue reading Good Riddance 2020Another day trip! Feels so good to be out and about. The target of this trip was Fort Bowie National Historic Site, ruins of the Army fort that existed for 20+ years in the late 1800s. First stops included birding at the Benson sewage ponds (birders go to all the best places!) and the Twin Lakes Golf Course in Willcox. Then it was onto Fort Bowie, on probably the hottest day of the year. From the trailhead it’s a 1.5 mile hike to the ruins of the fort, with interpretive signs along the way. The visitors’ center was closed, but we were able to refill bottles there, and relax on their porch with our picnic lunch.
Continue reading Fort Bowie National Historic Site – June 20202020 has been a challenging year so far. We did enjoy a wonderful trip to Chile and Argentina in January, but then COVID-19 upended everyone’s existence. Planned trips to Portugal and Spain (April) and Colombia (June) were rescheduled to 2021, and staying home became the norm. And while we’re luckier than most, in that we live in a rural area and it’s easy to enjoy outdoor activities such as biking and hiking while social distancing, by June we were getting pretty antsy and just wanting to go *somewhere*. So, off we drove to the Chiricahua National Monument, a couple of hours away, on a much-needed day trip. Somehow, going to a national park just says “vacation”!
Continue reading Chiricahua National Monument – June 2020January 2020 we returned to Chile, part of the deal Liza made with Robert for her 60th birthday (party or trip? trip!). We wanted to return to the lakes district and stay in Puerto Varas, where we had finished a cycling tour in 2017. Building on that idea we also wanted to go birding and do some wine tasting. Our itinerary took us from central Chile to southern Patagonia, and over the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina.
Continue reading Chile (and Argentina) – Jan 2020Winter is coming (first snow on our local mountains as I write) so that means it’s time for another edition of the Weissler Holiday Gazette, the annual missive that has taken many forms since its debut in 1993.
Continue reading Ho ho ho, it’s that time again!October we were on the road, once again with Brooklyn friends Mark and Joanne Guralnick, for more national and state parks, national monuments, etc. The main goal on this trip was to get to three in southern Utah that have long been on the bucket list, and somehow we’d never gotten there: Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands. But as always seems to happen on a driving trip, we tried to cram as many other locations in as we could! And we did much better on this trip understanding the geology along the way.
Continue reading Arizona and Utah Parks – Oct 2019We finally managed a trip back to Arkansas in coordination with Liza’s mother Alpha, to spend some time with family, but also to see some sights that had escaped us on many prior visits. We met up with Alpha in Dallas (thank you American Airlines for neither flight being late) and continued on to Little Rock. After telling the rental car company no, we don’t really want the behemoth SUV to drive down the road (seriously, a choice between an Expedition and an Armada … what are we, the Spanish off in search of gold?) we stopped in for “dinner” at the Flyway Brewing Company in Little Rock before continuing on to Hot Springs.
Continue reading Arkansas – Sept 2019What started out as a trip to Germany for a family event – a symposium honoring Adolf Weissler, Robert’s great-grandfather – quickly grew into a bigger trip encompassing Iceland and Scotland. The joys of retirement – no need to hurry home! This could probably be three posts, but we’ll try to do it in one.
Continue reading Iceland, Scotland, and Germany – June 2019In February 2019 we set off on a long-awaited birding trip in South Africa, from Cape Town to Kruger National Park, with Birding Africa. Our tour was bookended with several days on our own in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Continue reading South Africa – Feb 2019We decided this year to spend the Christmas holiday in New Mexico, to do some birding (sandhill cranes, rosy finches, etc.), see friends, and enjoy the cuisine (“red or green?” being the standard “which chile sauce do you like” question). We packed quite a lot into a one week trip!
Continue reading New Mexico Christmas – Dec 2018