Postponed

I promised you some exciting travel updates. However, my most exciting trip of the year just got postponed by half a year, so you'll have to wait a bit longer to hear about Egypt. Instead of Cairo, I will visit another city that starts with C and has a pyramid.

Which would you rather visit in December?

Holiday Travel

As promised, here is the next installment of travel blogging. This time we head north to Wisconsin. Clearly, we aren't chasing the good weather. Instead, it's about good food and family.

Thanksgiving day:

Taking a walk in a nearby park.

 Black Friday (sorry, no videos of shopping mobs):

Boys will be boys...

...while I try to get some work done.

Portland

As promised, travel season has commenced. I am enjoying a cup of locally roasted Stumptown coffee in downtown Portland, Oregon. I had to wait in a line that was less than half the length of the Voodoo doughnuts line down the street. I do enjoy a good cup of coffee, but good doughnuts are lost on me.

The first morning here, I went for a run along this river (dodging bicycle commuters everywhere) crossed the river a couple of bridges down, then came back on this drawbridge. There's a nice path along the river, although it is a bit industrial. This town has always reminded me of the city I grew up in... it's the weather, the industrialness, and the feeling that it's probably a nice place to live.

Below is the convention center where I spent that last few days. The highlight is really the gorgeous red trees surrounding it. Inside, they've gone out of their way to be sustainable. They had donation bins for us to dump our unwanted swag, compost for leftovers, recycling for all containers. Yet, they were quite punctual in everything. If the schedule said dinner is 6:30-9:30, you couldn't touch the food until 6:30 (even though it would be setup several minutes ahead of time) and announcements began around 9 to warn you to wrap up your networking because the hall would be closing in 30 minutes.

Red leaves everywhere. We only get yellow leaves at home, so it's nice to see some fall color. Although the trade-off is that they only get gray sky here for a backdrop to the colorful leaves.

Almaty Monuments

The first stop for any tourist in Almaty is Paniflov Park. It's right in the middle of town, near the downtown shopping and markets. There, we found one of the oldest buildings in the city, Zenkov Cathedral, a Russian Orthodox cathedral (the colorful building in the back).

Much of the park is filled with memorials for the two World Wars. We happened to stop by while a vet was proudly getting his picture taken.

Closer to our hotel, we found the newly dedicated Park of the 1st President of Kazakhstan. (Note that he is the 1st and thus far only president.) The first time we went there was at night and it was quite lively.

Troy wandered back there during the day to take more photos.

It's tough to capture the whole thing, but it's a 2-level fountain, with these recreations of rock art under the 2nd level.

Presumably the 2nd level will have water flowing where you see those large rocks on the "steps." They're pretty good about keeping public places clean by sweeping daily.

Next stop: Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, the school that hosted our summer seminar, although we did not meet at the school. If you click on that link, check out those mortar boards! Here is Al-Farabi, the scholar himself in front of some of the newest campus buildings:

Note the Soviet-era building right next door. Can you see a difference in architectural style?

No tour of Kazakhstan would be complete without a sighting of the Golden Man. He's not so golden here on the Independence Monument, but he's been dressed up with some weapons and a flying snow leopard... apparently he's supposed to look like a rocket.

The Independence square has several statues and is a required place to get wedding photos. Couples drive around town all day getting their photos at all the major attractions.

Finally, we have the National Museum of history, housed in one of the last public buildings erected during Soviet times.

Food

People always ask about the food in foreign places, and I have plenty to say and show about food in Kazakhstan.

Included in our hotel stay were three meals a day. This food was described as Soviet style. The breakfast buffet included everything from pickled beet salad to sausages to yogurt. Usually there was some type of porridge (heavy on the cream or butter), meat leftover from yesterday (possibly chicken wings), and occasionally we had some sunflower halva which the Americans fell in love with. Lunch, being the largest meal started with salad, continued with soup and ended with a meat and starch dish. Here's a photo with the salad and soup. Dinner looked similar but without the soup, and sometimes had a fruity-bready dessert.

This cafeteria-style food got old quickly, so we frequented the market at the end of the street. The outside looks like a typical fruit and veggie stand. Most of the produce seems to come from Uzbekistan. Step just inside the door, and you can fill a plastic 2-liter bottle with local beer or kvass fresh from the tap.

The downtown Green Market offered more variety. Dried fruits and nuts:

Horse sausages, a rib, and a load of fat:

Pork is actually not that popular due to the large Muslim population, but who could resist such a photo? And seriously, what does one do with a whole pig head? There weren't sheep or cow or horse heads hanging around. The most common meat is probably lamb/mutton followed closely by beef. Horse is more of a specialty and is usually served as a thin slices of sausage which are quite tender and tasty.

We had a couple of meals in yurts, featuring Kazakh food. The most memorable part of the meal is of course, kumys (fermented horse milk) and shubat (camel milk), pictured below with our Coke chaser hiding behind. The meat you see in the foreground is lamb - various parts. If it doesn't have bones in it, it is probably liver.

Here's a view of the low table inside a yurt with our salads and bread being served:

Meanwhile, the carrots for plov are boiling:

Another typical feast (not in a yurt) featured brilliantly arranged salads (and you can barely see the plate of sliced meat including liver, heart and sausage hiding behind the fried dough).

While we were in Kazakhstan, we were able to try the variety of dishes that people from other areas of the world have brought... most notably Korean dog soup. I personally did not eat this, but was told that it tasted like any other dark meat. The soup is served boiling hot with just broth and meat. Those little white bowls of stuff are things to add to one's own taste.

String cheese.

I'll end with dessert. Every cake is a work of art. They truly look too good to eat! Seriously, I wouldn't eat one because I'm sure it would be a disappointment.

I tried a lovely cupcake with my afternoon tea one day, only to discover that I needed a sledgehammer to get through the frosting and then the cake was really a dry cookie. But it had plenty of sugar, so I was happy.

They like to call kumys the national drink. But from what I've seen, tea must be the national drink. They drink it morning, noon and night... brewing it up quite hot and strong and then loading it up with milk and sugar.

Kazakhstan

So, you've been wondering where I've been the last few weeks? I've been in Kazakhstan. It'll take a few blog posts to talk about the place, so I'll start with this preview:

Our hotel in Almaty, the largest city in the country. We were here for 2 weeks.

We stayed in one of these cottages.

Attending an international seminar (I rarely sat at the table, so you can't see me in this photo.) Ten of us were from the University of New Mexico. Most of the students you see are from Kazakhstan. There were also students from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Russia.

The view from the seminar room, looking south. Those mountains are the Tien Shan. Beyond them lies Kyrgyzstan.

The view from the other seminar room, looking north. In the distance, through the haze, is the beginning of the steppe.

The entryway to our little resort compound. At first, we were told that we could not leave the premises without a local (for our own safety). However, the locals were perfectly happy to hang out at the resort enjoying the pool and free food. Eventually, we ventured further and further afield to explore the city.

Then we took a train to the new capital city of Astana and stayed there for a couple of days before starting the long trek home.

Central Valley & surroundings

This is the continuation of my California trip. We started our trip by driving to Bakersfield and then heading up to the Seqouia Natl Forest and Park with friends. The next part of the trip, we spent a few days in the Los Angeles area, which will be covered in another post; followed by several days driving along the coast north from LA, which will be covered in yet another installment.

So here's the headwaters of the Kern River, in the Seqouia Natl Forest. Pat and Troy fly fished - somewhat successfully - while I knitted. We camped there for a night, which was quite chilly.


We returned to Bakersfield, to enjoy some delicious deep pit barbacue, and the next day we headed up to the Sequoia Natl Park which is home to some really big trees. Staci and Pooky (not her real name) joined us for this hike.
Sorry, no photos of Bakersfield itself. You'll have to make the trip out there yourself if you want to see it. On Thursday, we drove from Bakersfield to Chino Hills, part of the Inland Empire next to Orange County. The San Gabriel mountains separate the Central Valley from LA, and being mountains, we managed to find a dirt road that crosses them. Here's the view from the top, looking back at the Central Valley.We really didn't get a good view of the city as we dropped in from the mountains. It turns out that visibility is really, really bad in LA. See that blue sky in the photos above? You won't see that in the next post.

California Safari

We just returned from a 2-week trip to California, which turned out to be quite a wildlife-viewing trip. It wasn't really planned that way, but here's the list of notable animals viewed, followed by select photos.

• 5 bears - 2 on two different days near Kern River headwaters, then 3 (a mom with cubs) in Sequoia Natl Park the next day.
• Deer innumerable - most notably nestling among the hollow trunks of sequoia.
• Hawks and vultures innumerable.
• Sea lions - including a very friendly pup at Oxnard
  
• Harbor seals
  
• Elephant seals - the young bulls were play-fighting along the shore
• Humpback whales on two days at two different beaches - at Oceano we were treated to several whales jumping up with the front half of their bodies above water, then splashing down hard on their backs. The next day at San Simeon with just whales surfacing and tails slapping was anti-climatic.
• Dolphin on most days at the beach
• Pelicans innumerable dive-bombing for fish, usually right where the dolphin and whales were also eating.
  
• 1 bobcat - it sauntered across the road just few feet in front of us as we were walking around a campground.
• The Budweiser Clydesdales at pasture - okay, they're not wild, but they were just hanging out on a hill next to our campsite.