There are not many places I have been where you turn in any direction (if not in a parking lot) and the views are sensational. This is one such place. A place so overwhelming that your senses cannot take it all in. Sensational. And numbing. With the valley located at 6,500 feet ASL, it was crisp, clear and extremely dry. Tough on Florida lips.

Of course it could be better. Without people. There were thousands. Most to all of the trailhead lots were full to overflowing. Some ridiculously so. This place made Zion feel sparsely populated.

Being a complete dork, I did not know that Grand Teton National park is located in a place also called Jackson Hole, a geographic spot, with the town of Jackson on its edge. Jackson Hole is fashionable. And accordingly overrun. Oh well. Ignorance is bliss.

Despite the drawbacks and hoards, I was able to find spots, hikes and more off the beaten path. One simply goes to the mid-trailheads. No people. Did this near a place called Jenny Lake Lodge, for a great walk. Other places too. Was alone in those special places and it was swell.

I thought about how Jeff and Kate would be right at home. I missed them, of course.

The pivotal spots I will remember include Albertsons (food, booze and all–necessary starter), the view from the condo living room window, the incredibly HUGE homes abutting the condo–most, per real estate ads, priced at $4 to 11+ million,

• The Snake River Overlook (gorgeous view, where Ansel Adams took one of his greatest photos)
• Menors [MEE NORS] Ferry area – a homestead built in 1872, with a cabin built by a remarkable woman from the northeast who wanted to get away. And an old ferry to get folks across the churning Snake River, with a period general store still in operation.
• The Jenny Lake road from North Jenny Lake Junction.
• Lunch at Jenny Lake Lodge. (Rooms there, $550/night and up)
• Jenny Lake walk.
• Lupine Meadows Boat Launch & path.
• The rough road taken to the park by mistake which turned out to be a wonderful, traffic free drive with astounding views (Just to west of route 89, the main route to park.)
• The highs in 70s lows in 40s at night.
• The turnouts for views, every one different.
• The 30 mile park loop — to get an overview on the first day.
• And so much more…

All of these I attempted to capture to occasionally relive the moments in a video, located here:

THE TETONS video (4 minutes long)

and the train trip from Chicago to Salt Lake City which got me there:

THE TRAIN video (2 minutes long) – with views on and from the “California Zephyr,” as it is called.

Worth visiting by anyone, though I still prefer the less crowded places.

Over and out.

It is Labor Day, and Dorian influence now being felt.

Darkness growing. It went full- cloudy here in SA an hour ago, darkness growing. Winds now up to 15 mph gusts. This will simply grow and grow. Highs of 50-70+ mph over the next three days.

Darkness is forecast to bring 30 mph gusting. Tomorrow more serious winds hit.

Dorian’s eye is scheduled to pass by in two days — mid-morn Wednesday. But being about 400 miles wide, winds reach way way out.

Most stores closed now. Publix was the last open, but shutting down now. Orlando shut down.

You can see what conditions are like in my backyard anytime> HERE. Not bad yet, kinda like a big thunderstorm moving in, but we’ll see.

I forgot to record this properly earlier for the record. These are the notes in my genealogy records. I have no further info post 2007:

From cousin Tony Tomsic in 2007 — After Dad/Greg’s Slovenia visit
————————————————————————————————————
Tony Tomsic, in 2007 and after I told him I just visited, commented in an email:

“Lake Bled: in the winter it will visually blow you away and a walk around the Lake in the spring is intoxicating……… did you go up to the castle overlooking the lake or out to the island church to ring the church bell? ”

re: RELATIVE IN LJUBLJANA (per Tony Tomsic in 2007)
===============================================
Per Tony (also in his email note of 2007)

“Joseph Tomsic [our grandfather’s brother’s grandson–that would be Greg & Tony’s cousin] does not speak any English, and the dozen Slovene words that I know need a few drinks to kick in. His daughter [name unknown] and son-in-law (John Primoz) live with Joseph and his wife in Ljubljana.”

Picture of Joe Tomsic (our cousin, per Tony) and his wife – Ljubljana, 2007

Like an idiot, Tony did not record the address, phone, or any other contact info for Joe despite visiting Joe’s home in Ljubljana. The dork:)

Ah, Slovenians. If they only wrote stuff down!

Greg NOTE(s)
Tony first, and accidentally in an earlier visit, located Joseph in the village of Hinje (~10-15 km SW of Zuzemberk) by visiting the Hinje Parish church. Hinje is parish/town/county-like name…that is how villages are known, I believe. [In Slovenian: vrh pri Hinjah=villge of Hinje, I think. Can find on Google Maps.]

Hinje is a village, with a parish by that name. It is the Tomsic Family Origin place in Slovenia. Do have pictures of my aunts visiting… somewhere. Maybe posted at online genealogy site.

I learned the location after I visited … too late to go there, though I did visit Zuzemberk and environs. Could not find out before visting because my aunts who visited had passed or in Auntie’s Alice’s case, had deteriorated memory/senility. Sad. But I got very close.

Tomsic Family Origin place – Per Google Maps:

Latitude: 45.784719
Longitude: 14.865296

GOOGLE Maps SHARE Address:
https://goo.gl/maps/mg2SY8uwoFSjUieSA

Hinje, Slovenia – aerial view

Voyager picture looking back at Earth from beyond Neptune:

Words, by Carl Sagan,  to accompany the picture:

… Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, ever king and peasant, every young couple in love, every moth and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless visits by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel to the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

from Sagan’s book, The Pale Blue Dot

… with 6.8 millions pounds of thrust… currently the world’s largest rocket. I woke at 2:30 AM, completely by luck or auto-brain-alarm, rushed to the foot of my driveway and saw it going up.

WOW!!

Bright as moon, easily saw the side boosters separate, and the shock waves from the main booster as it continued on.

BLOGGING!!!

The Day I Met Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

I think wonderfully written.

I own the Red Hen restaurant that asked Sarah Sanders to leave. Resistance isn’t futile.

or,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-own-the-red-hen-restaurant-that-asked-sarah-sanders-to-leave-resistance-isnt-futile/2019/05/14/125b4742-75a8-11e9-b7ae-390de4259661_story.html

I just visited M. K. Rawlings place in Cross Creek, Florida. Yet again. Having been given a personal tour on a day tours are not given, I wanted to share a few things that struck me. Things I was told and saw there. As some know, Ms. Rawlings is one of my favorite writers.

While originally from New York, Ms. Rawlings graduated from the University of Wisconsin. It is a little known school in that northernmost state. But in addition to that, Ms. Rawlings is also known as a writer who lived in and wrote about Florida. Cross Creek in fact. Near good ole Micanopy. And just south of Gainesville.

As to the things that struck me during my visit yesterday, I learned:

How the books on the mantle in the guest bedroom, by Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Mitchell, Robert Frost, and a few more, are in fact editions given to Ms. Rawlings when these people stayed with her in Cross Creek.

About how in the evenings when Robert Frost visited, she’d sit reading her stuff to him while he read his poems to her. In the cozy parlor/living room. (This really got me, I felt something, as I stood in that very room.)

About how “South Moon Under,” her book before The Yearling, came in second for the Pulitzer Prize after Pearl Buck’s Good Earth. Bummer. Of all years. That was four years before she won for The Yearling.

About how she bought the seventy-two acre place for thirty thousand dollars — in 1928. The equivalent of $500,000 now.

About how she had no indoor bathroom, plumbing, toilet or anything of the sort till she sold her first short story, Jacob’s Ladder, for $300. Today’s equivalent of $10,000. Her first commercial success. The bathroom she built in 1931 with her first story funds is still there with the original linoleum. She cherished her linoleum. She did not get electricity until much later.

How Norman Baskin, her second husband, who lived into his mid-90s in the 1990s, provided and then helped place every item in the house as it is displayed today. Exactly where Ms. Rawlings had it located while alive. How he really lived in Saint Augustine, seventy miles from Cross Creek, not in nearby Micanopy as the movie suggests.

About how the real Norman Baskin is the first person, playing an old guy, that actress Mary Steenburgen (playing Rawlings in the movie Cross Creek) meets in town and chats with when she first arrives in Florida.

About how the lady who sued Marjorie for invasion of privacy, Zelma Cason, was really her longtime bosom friend in Cross Creek. A drinking buddy and more. Smoking and drinking and hunting and fishing and boating and riding horses with Marjorie, while constantly cussing like a truck driver. It was her family of creepy lawyers and doctors that was insulted by the family’s portrayal in the book Cross Creek and insisted on the lawsuit. Zelma was forced to go along … ruining both women’s lives.

And there was more. Such a cool, quiet, delightful place. My idea of heaven.

The Russo brothers are Hollywood superstars that Jeff has met and chats with.  They are the duo which did most of the Avenger movies, including the latest, and many many other TV and movie productions. They are a few years older than Jeff and have become legend in Tinsel Town.

When Jeff had a lunch with one of the guys, they were astounded to hear that I went to Collinwood High School. They are from Murray Hill, and Collinwood is an institution to them. In fact, one of the movies they did was “Welcome to Collinwood.” They say Cleveland shaped who they are.

Amazingly, one of the brothers also went to the University of Iowa…  so Jeff and he had lots to talk about, it seems. And hit it off.

Here is a wonderful article from this month’s Esquire about the brothers, and how Cleveland shaped their lives. Nice, I thought. https://classic.esquire.com/article/2019/5/1/two-guys-and-a-studio