May 13th was my first official Monday as a retired person, so I kicked it off by joining a hiking group that runs organized hikes around Austin every Monday and Friday mornings. My friend Mary Coppinger had told me about this group back in 2021 so I got her to hook me up with the…
We made it Lisboa without incident and after stashing our backpacks at our hostel we headed over to the Lisbon Cathedral (Sé) to get our pilgrim passports. Rich picked out a pizza restaurant with nice shady seats under some orange trees for us to relax, have lunch and fill out the pilgrim passport. It’s…
We’re off to Portugal on Wednesday for our next pilgrimage adventure. Rich and I are walking the Lisbon to Porto section of the Portuguese Central route to Santiago as a “30th anniversary Camino” or caminho, as it is spelled in Portuguese. My left foot snuck into my photo (in the uncropped version) as if…
Celebrating 55 years of life and 30 years of marriage…
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. – Diane Ackerman…
We arrived in Santiago de Compostela yesterday and successfully received our Compostela certificate from the pilgrim office. We’re done with hostels now (woo-hoo!) and have very nice rooms a few steps from the cathedral. We’ve crossed paths with pilgrim friends and already had a few goodbyes as everyone goes on their way…
The walking days are long, but full of beauty. This pilgrim is too tired to post much…
Welcome to Galicia! Saw this on a store front. So true!! Very fragrant and lots of brown squishy stuff…
Monday morning Mary and I set off in the dark for the descent from O Cebreiro to Triacastela. Tristan needed to opt for a taxi again. Even Mary was wearing her sandals since her big toe was too swollen for her hiking shoes. We did have a good day though. Here’s a few photos…
I haven’t had good enough internet to upload photos for a few days. We’re still here; still walking. On Sunday we made it to O Cebreiro, albeit by taxi. Tristan and Mary have been having some foot issues and the extreme uphill and unfavorable weather forecast led us to take a taxi. It…
We had just a beautiful atmosphere at the Cruz de Ferro yesterday morning. The sunrise was brilliant and the pilgrims respectful. A few km from the cross we encountered a very unique hostel and hospitaleiro Tomás. We stopped to play with his kitten Carbonita. Tristan offered to have Carbonita join our pilgrimage but it…
Well the unthinkable has happened and we are all living the Coronavirus nightmare. The Camino in Spain is shutdown as Spain fights its battle against infection and death. I’ve been monitoring the official pilgrim channels and blogs and it is hard to imagine how exactly the trails will be re-opened to pilgrims. They…
I just needed to share these two photo essays. I especially love Drew Robinson’s amazing photography, but also how he shares his Camino so well through those photos. The images over the Pyrenees are just as I remember and he captures the immensity of the sky all along the trail…
“I don’t like either the word [hike] or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not ‘hike!’ Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land…
I am feeling like I need to mourn 2019 for a little bit. Not because it was a good year. It was a mixed year, but it ended in a negative way, which is such a shame…
I admit that I have gotten lazy with keeping up with my commitment as a Keep Austin Beautiful Adopt-a-Creek volunteer. Cleaning the creek was part of my promise to promote a wildlife habitat, live a greener life and protect the environment. It was always something we enjoyed doing as a family and with…
There was a certain serendipity when my sister-in-law gave Rich and me a membership to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology this Christmas. In fact, all the gifts from sister Nancy were bird-themed this year and what a wonderful coincidence because my interest in birding has just recently been re-ignited…
Yes, I know, Christmas is long over and it’s the new year, 2018. Some folks may already be giving up on their well-intentioned resolutions while I have yet to make any…
It’s been a month now since we got home from Spain and I am still processing what the experience meant to me…
Tuesday we took an excursion to the Galician coast to reach the final pilgrim towns that we didn’t have time to walk to. It takes an extra 3 or 4 days to walk to Muxia (where legend says the Virgen of the Boat appeared to Santiago and convinced him to stay in Galicia…
Today we are treating ourselves to a stay in the grand Parador Hotel – Hostal Reis Catolicos, built in the 15th century as a pilgrim shelter. It has 4 cloisters, beautiful vaulted ceilings, tapestries (and bathtubs…
We made it all the way to Santiago yesterday instead of stopping in O Predrouzo after the designated 22 km stage. We arrived in Pedrouzo around 11:30, had some lunch, and decided we were just so close to the end of the Camino that we didn’t want to spend a day twiddling…
A Bucolic Setting We have now walked around 730km with approximately 40 to go. Tonight we are staying in a renovated historic pilgrim hospital in Ribadiso. The river made for a lovely, cold foot soak that we pilgrims really enjoyed. A cow even joined us on our side of the river. Tonight we are being…
We had another fog-shrouded day, becoming a beautiful sunny afternoon. We’ve had some super neat mornings over the last 2 days with a full moon lighting our way through the dark and fog before sunrise…
Spending the night in Portomarin, a pilgrim town that was relocated when a reservoir drowned its original location. Only 4 days of walking left.  …
We are enjoying our days walking through Galicia. The land is green and hilly and we are spending more time along wooded routes. The villages are pretty tiny, with small herds of cows and sheep. There are lots of smallish gardens of kale and other cruciferous vegetables and some late tomatoes…
Some photos from our ascent to O Cebreiro yesterday and then descent down the mountains again today. Yesterday was quite the cardio workout! Somebody described it as being like climbing over the alps from The Sound of Music. The weather has been quite warm too. The views from the top were amazing and we spent…
A beautiful day hiking through hilly vineyards once again. This region is rather wild and Rich was disappointed to see the grapes have mostly been harvested already. Mountains are all around us. We are spending the night in Villafranca prior to a really long climb back into the mountains tomorrow. Rich had “soused trout…
We began our stage today in Foncebadon, a mountain village with a single unpaved street. We delayed leaving until 7:20 so as not to do too much mountain climbing in the dark, only to discover we were in the midst of very dense fog. It was pretty cool…