My Crazy Summer

In this rainy, uncertain spring, I'm feeling more and more grateful for the crazy adventurous summer I had last year. It wasn't like I didn't feel grateful for it last summer -- I recognized even then how incredible it was, and was amazed that I was living it. But now I think it's even more important for me to cherish the adventure, reflect on it, and share it with my friends. 

For those who didn't tune in with me last summer, I spent two months traveling around Europe with my younger son, Ronan, and a couple of friends. Here's the overview: we started in Spain, in mid-June. One of my dance friends joined us for the first part of the adventure, since she'd never been to Europe before. After a few days in Madrid, we took the train to Oviedo, in Asturias, to check it out for a summer class that I still want to teach. I was hoping for this summer, but...maybe summer 2021 instead. While we were in the north, we took a short trip to Portugal, then returned to Oviedo. After a few more days, we flew to Vienna, Austria, but then we bussed directly to Bratislava, Slovakia. After a few days in Bratislava, we took the train to Budapest, Hungary, to visit some friends, and then continued by train to Szeged, Hungary, to see even more friends. We returned to Budapest briefly, then flew to Bologna, Italy, and took the train to Prato for a chemistry education conference. After that, we flew to Zagreb, Croatia, and met a friend there. After a few days, we took the train from Zagreb to Split. Our friend had to leave after a bit, but Ronan and I took a bus to Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. From there we continued by bus to Dubrovnik, Croatia. At that point we flew back to northern Spain for another week, then back to Madrid to fly home to Seattle.

If that sounds exciting, it was! It was also exhausting - we visiting seven countries, and traveled through 10 including airport transfers. I admit that I was pretty done with airplanes by the time we got back! I really wish that the US had a good train system, though. I love trains. Anyway, I'm going to spend some time reflecting on my experiences as a way to honor how special they were. Looking at pictures of sunny beaches also helps me remember that the sun shines, and it gets hot out -- and will again pretty soon. I'm probably going to reflect on our adventures in random order, depending on what inspiration strikes. So let's get started!

Ronan at the MUJA sign

Probably one of the single most incredible experiences of the whole trip was when Ronan and I were in northern Spain, and we rented a car and went to MUJA -- the Jurassic Museum of Asturias. Or maybe Museum of Jurassic Asturias? It's both. It chronicles the discovery of dinosaur fossils found in Asturias -- the local area. Incredibly, there are a ton of dinosaur fossils in that area. The museum, while small, is nicely laid out, and quite fun. It has many displays with English as an option, but for others it's useful to have a little Spanish available to you. One of the displays showed "dinosaur beaches" - local beaches along the Asturian coast where it's possible to see dinosaur fossil footprints.  At low tide. If you're lucky. We had a car, so I looked at the maps, and realized that one of the dinosaur beaches was just down the hill from us. I had no idea what the tide level was just then, but figured it was worth a shot. 

I had confidently taken back roads on our drive to MUJA (they're more scenic, after all), so I managed to get myself slightly lost before we got to the museum. Consequently, it was already mid-afternoon when we got to the museum, and probably 5-ish by the time we arrived at the beach. 

View from the creek bridge at Playa la Griega, Asturias, Spain

It was clearly a popular beach - I had to circle around to find a parking spot, and eventually we parked on the grass where I hoped was a legal spot. From the car park we crossed a bridge over a creek flowing down to the ocean. The tide was already pretty far out, and (I figured out later) still going out. Perfect timing! It was a gorgeous afternoon, and the beach promised to be pretty special even if we didn't find dinosaur fossils. But at the end of the bridge, we found a helpful sign that looked encouraging.

Follow this path to dinosaur footprints!

The view back toward Playa la Griega, from the footpath.

We followed the indicated path, which skirted the east side of the sandy beach, and wound up a low hillside overlooking a mixed rocky/sandy beach. To the right (south) was a eucalyptus forest, with fern underbrush. 

Eucalyptus forest bordering the rocky/sandy beach.

It was mild and pretty much perfect weather out (as it was for most of the time we were in Asturias. Shhh -- don't tell anyone. If we don't tell anyone maybe it won't get too touristy and crowded.) We passed maybe one other couple on our way. We followed the path up and down for a little ways, and then came to an overlook. The overlook had an informational sign that pointed out various dinosaur footprint fossils that could be seen on the exposed rock just below, and there was a stair going down to the rock. You could just walk on the rock. With the dinosaur footprint fossils. I felt like I was doing something wrong - shouldn't there be guard rails? Shouldn't there be caution tape? Shouldn't there be something keeping people from damaging the artifacts? Maybe. Probably? But at the same time I didn't hold back. And from a certain perspective, what're you going to do? This is an open stretch of coastline, and the rocks are affected by the weather every day, every season. I went ahead and walked down onto the fossilized mud flat that held dinosaur footprints, and let myself bask in the incredible feeling of connecting with the distant past. 

Looking down from the overlook onto dinosaur footprints.

Visible fossils were from both sauropod (the giant, leaf-eating dinosaurs like diplodocus) and therapods (carnivorous dinosaurs.) Do you see the oval + crescent moon shape? Those are back foot (oval) + front foot (crescent moon) of a saurpod. I had no idea that their front foots were such an interesting shape! I had always imagined them rather like elephant feet, both front and back. These fossil footprints show a couple of different sizes of sauropod. Some prints were about the size of a basketball; others somewhat larger. Probably someone has identified what kind of sauropod left these footprints. 

Sauropod front and back footprint

Therapod footprints look pretty much like bird footprints. No surprise, right? I still find it incredible how recognizable that shape is. It looks like my chicken just left that footprint there - except that the footprint was quite a bit bigger -- probably bigger than my hand. Check it out -- just below Ronan's left hand in the photo. You can see its middle toe and the right toe, both with toenails. Pretty cool, right? So yeah, a lot bigger than a chicken -- probably something more ostrich-sized? Maybe a velociraptor? You can use your imagination. 

Therapod footprint next to the cute kid

I am amazed that what was probably a muddy riverbank millions of years ago could have something happen to preserve footprints. Maybe it was the last rainy day before a dry period, so the footprints had time to harden. And then maybe there was torrential rain that cause a landslide, burying the footprints with some other kind of dirt that didn't really mix with the dried mud underneath. And then...lots and lots and lots of time. Wow.

The art of wave-jumping was explored extensively.

We were having so much fun with dinosaurs, and the tide was perfect for tide pools, so we splashed around for a while. And then it was imperative that I teach Ronan wave-jumping. So pretty soon it worked out that we had spent the rest of the evening on the beach. After a while most of the other the beachgoers left, probably to go home and have dinner. We kept jumping waves, and enjoying the balmy water. A light overcast covered the sky, making the light misty and diffuse. We nibbled the snacks that I'd brought, and slowly meandered across the beach, jumping and kicking waves. Days are very long in Asturias in June. Closing in on 9pm I finally insisted that we make some progress toward our car (we were still an hour's drive from home.) We washed off our feet, and reluctantly put our shoes on. We bought chips and ice cream bars in the cafe next to the beach, and called that dinner. It was a pretty fabulous day. 

A healthy and nutritious dinner was had by all.