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Jamaica Revealed

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.

Will we go back to Jamaica?  Probably not as there are so many cool new places to go.  Did we enjoy it?  Absolutely and we would highly recommend the beauty of the island and the people for anyone willing to hop a flight down there.

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Aktook's Planetary Rescue is ready for placement. It is an #Arduino powered #geocache where solving the special sequence disables a satellite that is about to destroy the earth. #alienattack by 3monkeycircus @ http://ift.tt/1PHUYmx

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The Ad Hoc Masters

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.

“Nope.” replied Astro after he took a long pull off his pineapple licuado.  “Not a chance.”

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Leaving, On a Jet Plane

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.

We type this collectively as we sit in the Toronto Pearson Airport on our way to Valencia.  Our Spanish is already coming back to us.  ¿Me recomienda un lugar para bailar?

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The BDR Experience

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.

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BDR Revisited

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.

Saddle up the horses boys.  It’s almost time to ride.

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The Outer Banks

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.

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Colorado BDR

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 end of the day saw us taking a few detours along the course to avoid obvious thunderstorms, but we still finished strong in beautiful Steamboat Springs.  After an excellent dinner and a walk about town and checking the weather and road closures, we had worked up a new plan to skip the BDR section 6, which we had previously done, and make a dash deep into Wyoming.

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MABDR Day One

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!

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The Mid-Atlantic BDR

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.

As a teaser, we encourage you to look at the official MABDR YouTube videos.

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The Blue Ridge Parkway of Virginia and North Carolina

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The Great Monkey Migration

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.

So come on.  The circus tent is up.  The beds are made.  The barbecue is smoking.  The evenings will be filled with laughter and talking story.  Y’all are welcome round here.

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The Heart of the Beast

It is has long been our usual guideline to avoid large cities.  They are crowded, dirty, and have nasty traffic.  But after running into the first $57/night campground along the coast here in Southern California, we were pressed to look into alternatives.  Hotel rooms, even for the bottom tier approach $200/night along the coast.  Should we stick to the coast and soak up a couple of really expensive nights, or head inland?

We made a stop off at a Starbucks in Santa Monica for a cup of burned coffee and free WiFi.  While Astro and Luna battled over a chocolate croissant, Cosmo started working her magic.  In less time than it took for Asto to finish his coffee, Cosmo had a proposal – a startling one at that.

While Luna and Astro get a kick out of lane-splitting, Cosmo abhors it.  Which is why we found it odd that she suggested that we ride I10 to the core of LA – into the heart of the beast.  She had found an unbelievable deal at a posh hotel near Disneyland.  Turns out that once school starts, the crowds vanish and the bigger hotels have high vacancy rates and last minute deep discounts.  For little more than we paid for a dusty campground in Malibu, we booked into the 9th floor of the Hyatt Regency.  With a little more finagling and some serious negotiation with a resistant Astro, we also grabbed cheap tickets to the park.

To our surprise, mid-day traffic through LA was heavy, but not bad, and no splitting was necessary.  We pulled into the hotel just 45 minutes after leaving Santa Monica.  Our arrival though reminded the two older monkeys of something that they had done repeatedly in the past.  They would often book cheap tickets and hotel rooms in the casinos in Las Vegas.  Not for the gambling, but because there were fantastic rock climbing area just outside of town.  Each evening, they’d arrive back at the hotel looking like Pigpen from Peanuts – dirt caked and a cloud of dust poofing off of them with each footstep.  The visual was much the same when we pulled in amoungst the limousines at the hotel.

Rather than being met with disdain or repulsion though, the dirtbags were met with interest and rapid fire questions. “Where are you from?”  “Where are you going?”  “Holy cow!  Really?”  “How long will that take?”  “That’s really cool.”

Tonight, we rest in the heart of the beast.  It’s really not too bad here.

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Soldering madness sets in as we put together Aktook's Planetary Rescue. #arduino #geocaching #wearenerds by 3monkeycircus @ http://ift.tt/1Pn7hjC