Archive for September 2024
Feeling Feverish
I’m a hot mess. Right in the middle of sharing descriptions of our adventures in Iceland, I find myself in a foggy fever-induced sleep for hours on end, with no appetite and my lungs congested in the worst way. Is this a souvenir I picked up during our trip?
After starting as a nuisance cold, my symptoms settled into my lungs, which is typical for me. For days, I bounced between seeming better and then feeling worse. Yesterday morning, I woke up with a fever and made an appointment to be seen by a doctor.
Her diagnosis was that it had become pneumonia.
Let’s review:
- Lingering shoulder pain has led to an MRI and diagnosis of a small tear in my rotator cuff.
- Pain down my left leg was attributed to pressure on the nerve in my lower back.
- Tuesday morning, my right hand and wrist are punctured by thorns bad enough I consult with a nurse at our clinic.
- Thursday morning, I am diagnosed with pneumonia.
I have an appointment on Monday for a consultation with an orthopedist regarding the information in the MRI of my shoulder. I’ve had two sessions of physical therapy to learn new exercises I can do for my shoulder and back. The puncture wounds on my wrist haven’t shown any symptoms of infection, and the pain is subsiding, so the threat from those wounds is waning. I have started antibiotics to treat my pneumonia and the incessant coughing has calmed considerably.
But, really, I’m starting to feel like I’ve suddenly been jinxed by some gremlin that has a grudge against my good health.
Pardon the interruption in my descriptions of our Icelandic adventures. I was just getting to one of the big highlights that happened on our second day. Here’s a hint:
I’ll tell you all about it if my health continues to improve and I can get myself up out of bed.
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Iceland Arrival
We booked our airline tickets more than a year in advance of our chosen dates. We flew to Detroit to catch a plane to Reykjavik. That doubled my challenge of getting through security checkpoints without major complications. Cyndie and the Wilkuses enjoy TSA precheck privileges, so they went off and left me to fend with the standard security.
Yes, I forgot things in my pockets and had to double back and make a second go of it. Rookie traveler.
We flew overnight with a plan to sleep on the plane and be ready and raring to go upon arrival. That only sort of worked. We were all a bit bleary-eyed as we navigated our way through the airport and to the car rental office.
The process wasn’t exactly smooth, but it ultimately played out flawlessly. The agent mentioned car doors getting wrecked, and I asked how often that happens.
“At least one per week,” was her reply.
That triggered our establishing a mantra of Doors/Diesel/Dings to remind us of important details about our vehicle. Mike did the lion’s share of the driving and did a great service of parking in a direction that kept the wind pushing our doors closed instead of ripping them open.
We packed all our gear in and headed for the first scheduled stop on the itinerary Cyndie created: a bakery for coffee and pastries. Next, we found a grocery store and loaded up on lunch fixings. From there, we headed east along the south coast for our first waterfall, Seljalandsfoss.
The only way I knew that name is by looking it up just now on a copy of our itinerary. I was helpless against the local language and didn’t even try to cope with pronouncing the collections of letters forming words. If I heard someone else speak, I could try to mimic the sounds I was hearing, but the results were rarely pretty.
The waterfall, however, was gorgeous.
This beauty offers the feature of being able to walk behind to see the falls from underneath. We put on our rain pants and jackets and joined the conga line of tourists snapping photos and getting doused.
What did I do? I took a photo looking straight up, of course.
It’s a little disorienting.
It was official. We had arrived for the first adventure of our visit to Iceland. We learned how to pay for parking at each attraction. We made use of our rain pants right away. The rest of that first day included another waterfall, a lighthouse, a black beach, and, ultimately, a modern hotel on the Ring Road in the village of Vik.
After dinner at the hotel, sleep came easy.
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Iceland Trip
We are home from our great adventure of 10 days exploring portions of Iceland with our great friends, Mike and Barb Wilkus. Iceland is a very special place on this planet, and we are grateful that we were able to experience it in surprisingly nice weather and successfully achieve everything we planned without a glitch.
I found more trees than I expected!
But there was plenty of landscape without.
We hiked to a lot of waterfalls.
We saw a fascinating amount of varying geology that provided dramatically more vivid evidence of the earth’s history than where we live in Wisconsin.
We soaked in a number of geothermally heated pools and hot tubs, of which there are few photos out of respect for other bathers’ privacy and desires to avoid getting our cameras wet. We were able to experience the awesome spectacle of a glacier in real life, even as it was melting away beneath our feet. And finally, the good weather provided multiple nights of viewing the Aurora Borealis displays, which was a primary objective for Cyndie.
That was a special bonus.
There are many more photos (taken by all 4 of us) and stories that I hope to present soon. The planning for this trip began almost two years ago and included consultations with a travel agent and advice from one of my Brainstorms internet community members with first-hand knowledge. (Many thanks, JH!)
I cannot take any credit for preparations as ALL of the work was done by the other three. They collaborated to arrange our flights, rent a vehicle, plot a route, book rooms in different hotels and an Airbnb on a farm, and even make reservations for meals at some restaurants. They even packed necessary bags to facilitate grocery shopping so we could make our own meals at times and picnic in the car for lunch on a few different days.
Despite my distaste for traveling, particularly by airplane, the fact that Barb and Mike are such wonderful friends and Iceland is a place of such spectacular things to see and experience made it easy for me to truly enjoy this adventure.
There were only a few instances where I was reminded of the famous photo of many teams of mountain climbers waiting in a queue on the approach to the summit of Mount Everest. It was a rare instance when we were able to experience uncluttered views of waterfalls, volcano craters, geysers, or beaches. Early morning proved to be the secret to being the first car in the parking areas.
We didn’t have to deal with much in the way of precipitation in our locations, but high winds were a common occurrence. It made cool days into bitterly cold ones, threatened to hyper-extend door hinges in a moment of inattention, and even challenged our abilities to remain standing a few times. Made it feel like we were on an adventure, it did.
That was a fabulous trip, and I am lucky to have been included. I plan to write more about our experiences in the days ahead.
Thanks for returning to read after so many repeated days of tree trunks. I hugged our mother tree on our walk with Asher yesterday morning.
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Wintervale Big Trees 12 and 13
[John and Cyndie are supposed to be home by now from vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike. I decided to give myself one extra day before getting back to live posts because my original tree survey left out two beauties that I added later and I was on a roll when scheduling the big trees before we left.]
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The twelfth tree is an oak located outside the sunroom windows. It stands in the middle of our septic system drain field. It seems unperturbed by that fact.
Measuring a circumference of 134 inches, this oak is calculated to be approximately 200 years old.
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The thirteenth tree is the oak beside the driveway up by the house where delivery trucks have snapped low-hanging branches and stick debris constantly litters the pavement.
Measuring a circumference of 137 inches, this oak is calculated to be approximately 200 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 11
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The eleventh tree is an oak located between the kennel and the woodshed. My brother, Elliott climbed into this tree with ropes to trim some branches for me many years ago. That meant an awful lot to me. What a gift.
This tree is the second largest of the survey, just one inch bigger than its neighbor, the tenth tree by the kennel, and six inches smaller in circumference than the Mother Tree.
Measuring a circumference of 139 inches, this oak is calculated to be approximately 200 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 10
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The tenth tree is an oak located up the hill from the mother tree. It is beside the kennel where Delilah used to look up into it and bark after squirrels she knew must be up there, whether they were, or not. That drove me nuts.
Measuring a circumference of 138 inches, this oak is calculated to be approximately 200 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 9
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The ninth tree brings us back to the oaks again. It also brings us back to the crown jewel tree I’ve already made a reference to in an earlier post. It is the tree we are calling the Mother Tree. It is deserving of another look. A year ago this tree dropped so many acorns we started referring to the trail that passes beneath it as “ball bearing alley.”
Measuring a circumference of 145 inches, this mother oak is calculated to be approximately 220 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 8
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The eighth tree is also a maple. It is located just beyond the bird-pecked tree, near what we call the “Middle Trail.” There isn’t anything particularly distinguishing about this tree but its girth caught my eye and earned it a spot in the survey. Deservedly so. I left the vine in place for the photo to show what we need to constantly address. I uprooted it and pulled it off the bark immediately after taking the picture.
“Be gone with you, $*@%# vine!”
Measuring a circumference of 105 inches, this maple is calculated to be approximately 150 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 7
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The seventh tree is another maple. From behind the labyrinth, I walked to the trail that leaves the backyard at the bottom of the hill near the red raspberry garden. It may not be long for this world as the reference I gave the tree is “bird pecked.” It looks like a variety of woodland creatures are hollowing residences out of the body of this noble gem, both up high and down low.
Measuring a circumference of 95 inches, this maple is calculated to be approximately 135 years old.
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Wintervale Big Trees 6
[John and Cyndie are currently on vacation in Iceland with our friends, Barb & Mike Wilkus. While we are gone, I am featuring the results of the big tree survey I did in August on our property.]
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The sixth tree is an oak located in the woods behind the labyrinth. It lost a large limb a few years back and the debris from that still hasn’t been fully processed and cleared from beneath it. I fear the cleanup is one of the things on the “todo” list that may never truly get done to completion.
Measuring a circumference of 125 inches, this oak is calculated to be approximately 180 years old.
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Relative Something 