2020 In Photos

Greetings family, friends and neighbors,

I hope this finds you well and relatively sane as we near the end of a bizarre and tragic year. Due to covid, we have been so physically isolated from others that I thought it might be nice to send a few photos of stuff Jim and I have seen/done since the start of the year. Lots of photos, but I know you've grown very skilled at scrolling! 

As I put together this blog it became all too obvious to me how covid has changed our lives. I have tons of photos of our travels in the short span of pre-covid last winter. Once covid arrived, not so many. 

In mid-January, we flew to Phoenix, rented a car and did a 30-day road trip from Phoenix to San Diego and then up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. Magnificent! It was the way Jim and I love to live - nomads on land or water.

These first few images are from the Heard Museum in Phoenix, one of my favorite US museums.

Below is one of the haunting paintings at Western Spirit: Scotsdale's Museum of the West.

 

We did a special sundown tour at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter-season school of architecture. The light was spectacular as the sun went down.   

We spent a full day at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, where I must have been so taken with the sights and music that I forgot to take photos. If you ever go to Phoenix it's a must-see place! Huge, with instruments and musicians from all over the world playing their music in your earphones as you move from room to room. 

We also loved the Desert Botanical Garden....

In San Diego we roamed around the city and visited the Zoo and other typical touristy stuff. I now find zoos depressing and this will be my last visit to one. On a brighter note, one gorgeous day at an open air market, this young man who calls himself The Typewriter Troubadour, wrote us an impromptu poem on his typewriter:

This is the Del Coronado, and a sand castle on its beach

One grey day we went to Cabrillo National Monument...

We visited several Missions as we traveled north on the CA coast. This was the first one - Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala.

In La Jolla we enjoyed a few hours at the Birch Aquarium where I got some wonderful videos of seahorses, but I still can't figure out how to load videos in a blog.😒  

After leaving San Diego we traveled inland a bit to avoid the busy coastline where Disney World attracts huge numbers of tourists. The next photos I took were in and around Palm Springs, which afforded us some fun time in bars, restaurants, at the beautiful art museum, and great hiking outside the city.

Lots of windowboxes along the Main Street

This was a loveseat padded with red plushy lobsters

Palms with a haircut

Hiking up a canyon 

Glass at the spectacular museum of art in Palm Springs

From Palm Springs we had a brief stopover at Riverside in wine country, then on to LA where we spent several days roaming around the LA County Art Museum, the Observatory, The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Gardens, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Venice, The Last Bookstore, The Bradbury Building, Union Station - so many amazing places to see and things to do. I really loved it all and will return!

Driving further north we stopped at Santa Barbara, which we found disappointing except for the mission, and then ventured on to San Simeon and the Hearst Castle for a day. We stayed in the town of Paso Robles, pronounced by locals as "Pasa Row-bulls", which sort of surprised me. The drive from there to coastal San Simeon was lovely.

We lucked out at the Hearst Castle, having signed up for a behind the scenes tour for which we turned out to be the only takers. Our guide was terrific - we heard lots of stories about galas, guests' secret midnight trysts at the pools pictured below, and more.... 

Further north the next day, we stopped for lunch at Nepenthe to toast my son Jake on his birthday, and to share an outrageous apple cobbler as we gazed out over the stunning view of the coast.

This part of the coast is magnificent

Next stop was Carmel - a great little town for walks along the beach, poking around shops, and trying different restaurants.

Further north we blew by San Francisco to spend a couple of days around Point Reyes Station, then doubled back to SF to spend 3 fun days with Jake. Below are photos of me and my two favorite guys, taken on a chilly ferry ride back to San Francisco from a day trip to Sausalito.

While in SF we also took some nice walks, made dinners together, and spent a few hours at SFMOMA

Soooooo, all of that was only 30 days at the start of the year. We had planned to sail Neverland up to Maine this past summer and leave her there on the hard this winter to be able to jump off more quickly the summer of 2021 to Nova Scotia and other Maritime provinces in Canada. Since we knew we wouldn't be sailing south this winter, we bought a little 20-foot Geo Pro camper trailer and a truck to haul it, planning to do a winter road trip in the Southern US states instead. 

Serendipitously, we bought that camper pre-covid. Once covid hit, you couldn't get RVs or camping gear for love or money. With covid, our Plan B (and C, D, etc...) began to evolve. Not being sure we'd be able to find marinas in New England that would be open for business for fuel and water, we had to dump the plan to socially-distance on the boat by sailing in New England this summer.  As the weather turned hot, humid and windless, as summers do on the Chesapeake, the camper became a wonderful way to stay socially-distanced while exploring nearby MD, PA, VA and Ohio state parks, especially those at a little higher elevation to get relief from the heat. Unlike the boat, the little camper has both heat and air-conditioning. And a Murphy bed, a 3-burner stove and oven, a fridge and freezer, a full shower, a TV for DVDs, screens built into every window and door, a huge awning, 2 solar panels, 2 propane tanks, and 2 batteries. It's excellent! We love it!!

We  camped through the summer and fall in lots of parks and it has been very safe and easy to keep our distance from others and enjoy the peace and solitude of the many hiking trails, lakes and streams.  

We've also visited some interesting places near campgrounds, like historic Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site... 

...and Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water and Kentuck Knob

Mid-summer, Laura and the twins, Ryan and Andrew, who will be 5 in February, visited us one weekend in Annapolis. Although we didn't actually go sailing, they enjoyed seeing the boat, which sits in her slip right outside our living room. We went to town by ferry to get ice-cream, one of the perks of living right on the water in Annapolis.

Jim with Andrew and me with Ryan

Laura with Andrew

Ryan with 2 of Jim's hats

Neverland in her slip in our condo community

Oh, backtrack a sec. Found another photo. I forgot to mention that the camper's awning, which is great for drizzly days and protection from hot sun, has cool lights too for those evening campfires...

Hot coffee, decent wifi for your Pad, and fruit with yogurt for breakfast outdoors. How perfect is that? 

On one of our camping trips we rented a tandem kayak and paddled the Youghiogheny River near Ohiopyle. Most parks have easy access to a lake, river or reservoir, so we also got a tandem inflatable kayak to take in the truck and on the boat for future paddling.

In October when it was clear that covid was bound to ramp up again as winter approached, I flew to San Francisco to see Jake for a few days, knowing we might not get a chance to see each other for many months. I tested negative for covid before leaving, drove myself to Dulles, walked from my car to the gate, boarded a non-stop flight that was half full, Jake picked me up at SFO with the car windows down, we drove home, I took a shower and changed clothes and then gave him a hug. It was a super low-key visit with lots of time outdoors, mostly exploring nearby neighborhoods.

As the weather cooled a bit at home we began to use the boat a little more, sailing to Baltimore, St Michaels and Oxford on the Eastern Shore and some more secluded anchorages to just drop a hook and  hang out. 

While at home we've been doing a lot of organizing and tidying up of files and records, helping out on condo committees, varnishing Neverland's teak, working in our own garden and making new gardens elsewhere in the condo community. 

Of course there's always time to try out new recipes with all meals eaten at home now.  Unlike others apparently, I did NOT make any bread! Before the election I did some campaign work for the Dems. And I've been painting quite a bit throughout the year. I've added new watercolors to my website if you want to check them out at palmerwatercolors.com.  

This year I put together a small arts and crafts benefit for the local food bank. Jim donated 6 wooden pieces, a friend donated 6 reclaimed-glass pieces, I donated 20 paintings and we raised $3,000. One of the watercolors (of the sandbagger "Bear", which is kept at the city dock in Annapolis), was raffled off and we sold every ticket we had for it. 

Jim has become a passionate woodworker and is getting very skilled at both turning wood for bowls, boxes and platters, and making furniture like tables and shelves. Below is a new sapele coffee table and a smaller outdoor patio table, both with a gorgeous live edge. Below that are examples of a vase made of burl, a spalted lidded bowl with a finial and a spalted pearwood box.  I'm so proud of him and his work - who says you can't teach a getting-just-a-wee-bit-older dog new tricks??? 😊😉

Thanksgiving Day was also Jim's birthday, so we went to Williamsburg, Jamestown and the Shirley Plantation on the James River to celebrate. It was about 65-70 degrees in the daytime and sunny - great for walking around outdoors all day to see lots of interesting and historic sites with hardly anyone else around. We came home a day early though - by the weekend people became too numerous to socially distance easily. The photos below were taken at the Shirley Plantation, now a working farm where the 11th generation of family still lives on site in the Great House. Reading and hearing about the history of enslavement at this particular plantation, which at one point had more enslaved workers than any other plantation in Virginia, was very sobering at Thanksgiving, and in these times we are living today.    

The roadway to the Great House

The Great House

Massive trees around the house

A beautiful ginkgo tree in full fall color

Looking up, inside the dovecote

Now back in Annapolis, we decorated inside and out with lights and we plan to celebrate the holidays at home, just the 2 of us. We can't wait to put 2020 behind us and move on. 

We hope for national and global stability, better health and welfare for all, and peace in 2021 for you and yours. 

Cynthia and Jim