Bath and Beyond

            I’m safely ensconced in my Bath, UK Bed & Breakfast after a long but incident-free travel day. The only minor glitch was that the train from London to Bath took nearly twice as long as scheduled due to a route “diversion following a gas leak near Didcot, which is causing severe disruption to train services.”  I was exhausted at this point, but any aggravation was offset by recognizing my massive luck at being on this train at all. I had scheduled a later train but managed to board this one, only to discover that the one I’d originally scheduled, and several others, ended up being canceled. Whew!

After settling in and showering, I took a short reconnaissance walk and saw what looks to be Bath’s version of the Ponte Vecchio.

 

Pulteney Bridge

Now, after several hours of sleep, I’m awake at midnight Bath time, hearing all sorts of raucous Jane Austen fan tourists milling around outside. I’ll begin my own in-depth exploration in the morning.

I don’t usually post airplane photos (or poems), but my first short flight from Sacramento to Salt Lake City today was quite picturesque. I got a great view of Folsom Lake, its dam, and Folsom Prison which is regular cycling territory for me.

 

The red arrow indicates Folsom Dam and its humongous spillway. The yellow points to Folsom Prison.  The blue, to the American River and the so-called "new bridge." 

After passing over the Sierra Mountains and Lake Tahoe, we flew over dry and sparsely populated areas of Nevada and finally, over the Great Salt Lake. I remembered flying this same route many years ago while reading Melissa Kwasny’s poetry collection, which inspired the poem below of my own (just found way deep in my laptop.  I think it dates from around 2010).  

by Linda Jackson Collins ~2010