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Another Blue Penny

Blue Penny Quarterly – iBooks Edition 

 

Finished up another big project last week. This year marks the 20th Anniversary of the Blue Penny Quarterly, a digital literary magazine my friend Doug Lawson started not long after we met. We made a little splash this time with a special edition.

We’ve collaborated on the publication for a few years now. He does all the promotion and reading of submissions, winnowing down to four or five of the best per issue. I put it all together in a hopefully attractive package, and a downloadable format.

This time there are two formats. As before, in addition to stories there is photography and video commentaries from the authors. New is the iBooks version, which is available on the iTunes Bookstore for free. It’s formatted for iPads, iPhones and even iBooks on a Mac:

Link to iTunes Bookstore

 

As in the past, there is also a universal PDF format, with embedded links to the videos. Both versions can be downloaded directly from the Blue Penny site here:

Blue Penny Quarterly Summer 2014 – 20th Anniversary Issue

This is something we both do in our spare time. There’s no money involved, either for the writers or for us. Just something we do to provide a venue for interesting new writers, some of whom have gone on to win awards and publish novels.

If you have any interest a small submission fee for stories, please have a look. If you have a story, submit it. We would love to see it:

Submissions for Blue Penny Quarterly

 

 

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Chesapeake Float ~ Deal Island

Deal Island Skipjack in Wenona Harbor 

 

It’s only 10 miles from Crisfield to Deal by water, but it will take most of an hour to drive there. The edges of the shore are deeply frayed. Water and land trade places back and forth so often it’s hard to tell which is which. To get around the ingresses of water, you have to go miles inland all the way to 13, make a short jog north, then one turn and head back out again. On the way, you cross over broad expanses of beautiful open marshes, places not quite land and not quite water.

 

 

 

The place names here have a curious history of their own. On the way to Deal Island is Dames Quarter, where we’ll launch later today. The original name was Damned Quarter or Quarter of the Damned. Deal Island, not far beyond, was originally Devil’s Island. The grim names allude to a time when they were havens for some very rough characters who preyed on shipping up and down the Bay. Appropriately enough, the only thing separating The Devil from The Damned is a place called Chance.

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Epic Road Trip ~ On to Portland

 into the Columbia River Valley

 

So, let’s review:

  • We left Virginia in warm sunshine.
  • Had snow in the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies.
  • Passed a toxic waste spill contaminating a river in West Virginia.
  • Polar Vortex deep freeze and broken pipes in St. Louis.
  • Snow storm in Missouri.
  • Winds near hurricane force and Ground Blizzard in Wyoming.
  • Train wreck in Utah.
  • Rainbows and more snow in Idaho.

If you’ve been following along for the past several months, and have been keeping count, you realize this all just in three days. We left at noon on the 8th. It’s now the afternoon of the 11th. By the end of this day we’ll be in Portland.

We still have a long way to go. We need to cross all of Oregon.

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Epic Road Trip ~ Idaho

 

 

Even in the dark we can see this is a different landscape. (I say “we,” but Emily is sleeping.) Hills are rounded, not craggy like the mountains we just left. Valleys are broad pans, and the highway undulates through them. Everything bears the mark of those biblical floods pouring out of Utah. It’s an empty landscape, scoured bare of people, too, apparently. The one gas station we see in the distance – a single light glowing in a nimbus on the otherwise dark prairie – is closed. We need gas again, soon.

This is the approach to the Snake River Valley: a wide, flat, elbow shaped plain, the dominant feature of southern Idaho. Though a river runs through it, as did those those epic Old Testament scale floods, it is not just another alluvial valley shaped by water.

No, that’s not what made it. Massive terrain altering floods not good enough for you? Ok, how about this: Multiple super-volcano super-erruptions. BAM! ‘at’s what I’m talkin’ about.

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Epic Road Trip ~ Utah

 down to Utah

 

Averting vehicular catastrophe in Wyoming, we’re entering a region of the country rife with past catastrophes – both human and geological.

The Wasatch Range forms a rampart between Salt Lake and the rest of the world. Contrary to common sense, we don’t go up into the mountains; we descend into them. From Evanston, and then in the mountains themselves, we’re winding down narrow canyons beneath the peaks, and the road drops steadily over 3000 feet.

Like a walled medeival city, there are few ways through the mountains to the Promised Land of the West. Gates are small, obscured, and fortified against ingress. All supplicants are channelled into easily defended chutes like livestock.

Just beyond the border with Utah, we enter the first chute, the mouth of Echo Canyon. For hundreds of years, pilgrims have funneled through this spot – bowed their heads, shuffled their feet, and prayed. Places through here have ominous names: Devil’s Gate, Devil’s Slide, Hells Gate, etc..

 

Devil’s Slide

 

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Epic Road Trip ~ Wyoming

Crossing Wyoming – Time Lapse Sample 

direct video link

 

The six hours it takes to cross Wyoming will be the most treacherous of the whole trip.

 

 

 

Wyoming is the least populated state in the country. It also has fewer people per square mile than any state except Alaska, which is 7 times larger, and almost a third of which is above the Arctic Circle. Wyoming is pretty desolate. A hard place to live, with crazy extremes in temperature – a highest high of 114° down to a record low of -66°F, at places just 100 miles apart.

It’s a big, high, desert. Only Nevada and Utah get less rain. What rain does fall, lands in the mountains in the far northwest corner of the state. They strain the last bit of moisture from the air like a sieve. But for that rain in the mountains, Wyoming would be the driest state of all. Those mountains, however, are beautiful.

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Epic Road Trip ~ Colorado

Front Range in morning light

 

It’s 11:32pm when Colorado finally rolls under the wheels, supplanting stubborn Kansas. Except, it’s really 10:32pm, because it’s now Mountain Time. We’ve been up for 17 hours, driving almost non-stop for 15 straight, and still have a long way to go.

 

Dash Cam

 

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