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Shidelers travel for adventure and find it
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| Bev and Philip Shideler inspect a Loggerhead turtle on Loggerhead Key which had been wrapped in strands of plastic. “He lost a flipper, but was a fighter and was released into the wild,” said Bev.Contributed Photo |
By SANDRA MUSGROVE, Contributing Writer
As Bev Shideler completed her talk at the ACMSI (“Little ol' ladies in tennis shoes”) luncheon, I was hooked and nearly ready to sign on and begin adventures I'd only just discovered.
On trips taken with her husband, Philip, Bev's word images were intriguing, inspiring, sometimes fearful, and often downright laughable. She made it clear their lengthy trips were all of these, as well as affordable, even in retirement.
Born in Florida and moving to North Carolina as a child, Bev earned a bachelor of science in education from Western Carolina University, focusing on geology and marine biology. She began teaching in High Point, NC. Then, as a newlywed, Bev and Philip moved to San Antonio.
Recalling a hiring interview in San Antonio, Bev said, “I think I was hired after I sat, puzzling over how to spell my last name.” After time passed, she explained to the interviewer, “I'm newly married and so nervous, and I can't recall how to spell my new name.”
She taught for 18 years in San Antonio's Northeast School District and 10 years out of state while Philip worked for USAA in San Antonio and in other cities, until their retirements in 1996.
Today, after 47 years of marriage, they look back and recall the many vacations and trips they took with their two daughters. With summer vacations, they roamed the nation by trailer. They visited Washington D.C., Mount Saint Helens, Port Isabel and Yellowstone National Park. They traveled in all directions across the nation. Thirty years ago, as the family pulled up their trailer stakes to leave Yellowstone, they conversed with a couple working at the park's gift shop. The couple took jobs, for pay, often including housing, in a variety of places. Though Bev also regularly traveled for academic conferences and work, Bev and Phil never forgot the opportunities explained by the couple they'd met years before.
As retirements neared, they made plans to pursue their own work/vacation plans. With retirement, the Shidelers moved to Rockport, joining earlier settled family members, until they again began travel, work, and vacation adventures. These stops included The Smokey Mountains, North Carolina's Outer Banks, and the Florida Keys where they worked at a Winn-Dixie grocery on Big Pine Key.
At Colorado's historical working gold mine in Cripple Creek, they co-managed a park area. With Rockport as home, they roamed freely and comfortably.
As Philip packed up preparing to move on from Washington State's Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, Bev said she decided to venture onto a nearby beach. Walking among boulders and massive timbers, she paused often to understand sounds. She watched immense waves hurl boulders and timbers onto the beach as if the waters shook themselves free of their burdens.
At yet another ocean-side spot, Bev spotted a giant tree growing from a cliff-side rock, prompting her to crawl out, far above crashing waves below.
“I'm not foolhardy,” she said. “With my leg over each side, I edged out until I was beyond the continent of the United States.”
In 2003, the Shidelers took a job north of Tucson at the 8,000-foot high Mount Lemmon's National Forest Campground. Having driven down the mountain's narrow road to a dental appointment, they joined a number of evacuees from that year's Aspen fires. Four days later they returned to retrieve their rig, though they remained in Tucson another 10 days as Phil helped transport mountain firefighters. Then, again, they headed home to Rockport.
During one of their periodic trips to the Florida Keys, they put their names on a waiting list to volunteer as caretakers at the Dry Tortugas National Park. Asked if they could come immediately, they diverted from their Rockport path to Florida.
Fort Jefferson, located on Garden Key, was built in the mid-19th century to watch over shipping traffic in and out of the Gulf of Mexico. On that first trip, they tented and worked at the bookstore and helped with maintenance, repairs and cleaning, until moving to a guesthouse on distant Loggerhead Key, near the area's lighthouse.
Bev said they had satellite television, no phone, but constant radio contact, solar electricity and water provided by reverse osmosis.
Travel is by boat or seaplane. Daily they walked the beach, gathering treasures tossed ashore by the sea's treacherous currents.
In 2004 the couple again returned to the key - but for an extended three months. Often they had visitors - Cuban refugees dropped off by persons unknown. Radio calls brought authorities to transport them to the mainland.
In August, 2004 Bev and Philip waited out Hurricane Charlie, as it battered centuries old, weathered Fort Jefferson.
Home again to Rockport, until 2005, again to work at the Dry Tortugas. This trip they felt the fury of Katrina, as its eye-wall passed overhead. With radio lost and major battering outside the Fort, a number of people were trapped, but survived.
Adventures continued. More Cuban refugees, including a priest, a parrot, and a dog among the drop-offs.
The Shidelers returned to the key in 2006 and will go again this year.
On trips taken with her husband, Philip, Bev's word images were intriguing, inspiring, sometimes fearful, and often downright laughable. She made it clear their lengthy trips were all of these, as well as affordable, even in retirement.
Born in Florida and moving to North Carolina as a child, Bev earned a bachelor of science in education from Western Carolina University, focusing on geology and marine biology. She began teaching in High Point, NC. Then, as a newlywed, Bev and Philip moved to San Antonio.
Recalling a hiring interview in San Antonio, Bev said, “I think I was hired after I sat, puzzling over how to spell my last name.” After time passed, she explained to the interviewer, “I'm newly married and so nervous, and I can't recall how to spell my new name.”
She taught for 18 years in San Antonio's Northeast School District and 10 years out of state while Philip worked for USAA in San Antonio and in other cities, until their retirements in 1996.
Today, after 47 years of marriage, they look back and recall the many vacations and trips they took with their two daughters. With summer vacations, they roamed the nation by trailer. They visited Washington D.C., Mount Saint Helens, Port Isabel and Yellowstone National Park. They traveled in all directions across the nation. Thirty years ago, as the family pulled up their trailer stakes to leave Yellowstone, they conversed with a couple working at the park's gift shop. The couple took jobs, for pay, often including housing, in a variety of places. Though Bev also regularly traveled for academic conferences and work, Bev and Phil never forgot the opportunities explained by the couple they'd met years before.
As retirements neared, they made plans to pursue their own work/vacation plans. With retirement, the Shidelers moved to Rockport, joining earlier settled family members, until they again began travel, work, and vacation adventures. These stops included The Smokey Mountains, North Carolina's Outer Banks, and the Florida Keys where they worked at a Winn-Dixie grocery on Big Pine Key.
At Colorado's historical working gold mine in Cripple Creek, they co-managed a park area. With Rockport as home, they roamed freely and comfortably.
As Philip packed up preparing to move on from Washington State's Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, Bev said she decided to venture onto a nearby beach. Walking among boulders and massive timbers, she paused often to understand sounds. She watched immense waves hurl boulders and timbers onto the beach as if the waters shook themselves free of their burdens.
At yet another ocean-side spot, Bev spotted a giant tree growing from a cliff-side rock, prompting her to crawl out, far above crashing waves below.
“I'm not foolhardy,” she said. “With my leg over each side, I edged out until I was beyond the continent of the United States.”
In 2003, the Shidelers took a job north of Tucson at the 8,000-foot high Mount Lemmon's National Forest Campground. Having driven down the mountain's narrow road to a dental appointment, they joined a number of evacuees from that year's Aspen fires. Four days later they returned to retrieve their rig, though they remained in Tucson another 10 days as Phil helped transport mountain firefighters. Then, again, they headed home to Rockport.
During one of their periodic trips to the Florida Keys, they put their names on a waiting list to volunteer as caretakers at the Dry Tortugas National Park. Asked if they could come immediately, they diverted from their Rockport path to Florida.
Fort Jefferson, located on Garden Key, was built in the mid-19th century to watch over shipping traffic in and out of the Gulf of Mexico. On that first trip, they tented and worked at the bookstore and helped with maintenance, repairs and cleaning, until moving to a guesthouse on distant Loggerhead Key, near the area's lighthouse.
Bev said they had satellite television, no phone, but constant radio contact, solar electricity and water provided by reverse osmosis.
Travel is by boat or seaplane. Daily they walked the beach, gathering treasures tossed ashore by the sea's treacherous currents.
In 2004 the couple again returned to the key - but for an extended three months. Often they had visitors - Cuban refugees dropped off by persons unknown. Radio calls brought authorities to transport them to the mainland.
In August, 2004 Bev and Philip waited out Hurricane Charlie, as it battered centuries old, weathered Fort Jefferson.
Home again to Rockport, until 2005, again to work at the Dry Tortugas. This trip they felt the fury of Katrina, as its eye-wall passed overhead. With radio lost and major battering outside the Fort, a number of people were trapped, but survived.
Adventures continued. More Cuban refugees, including a priest, a parrot, and a dog among the drop-offs.
The Shidelers returned to the key in 2006 and will go again this year.
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| Barnes selected as 2007 Art Festival poster artist |
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ZAGDA wrote on Feb 14, 2009 3:53 PM:
Instead of presenting this to the scientific world in a peer reviewed journal, these guys publish it in this book in an attempt to sway public opinion. I could go on as many of the statements in this article are misleading, or blatantly ludicrous. Suffice it to say, it looks to me like this book is much more about influencing public opinion than any scientific review of whether human activity is causing climate change.
It is sad some people will believe this as fact. "