Taste of Kiwi: Blog of Author Shelley Munro

1. Yosemite, California – just beautiful. I’d visited before but it was much quieter this time due to both the petrol prices and a recent fire that had scared visitors away. We had a perfect day with excellent visibility.

2. Grand Canyon, Arizona. This canyon is awe-inspiring.

3. Petrified Forest, Arizona. My husband and I both enjoyed our first visit to this park. The petrified forests were fascinating.

4. Mesa Verde, Colorado. Hot and dry. Busy but well worth a visit for the peek into the cliff dwellings of the Puebloans.

5. Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado. I didn’t know anything about this park until I visited but I loved the black rock and the deep canyons. It was stark and beautiful.

6. Rocky Mountains, Colorado. We didn’t have the best weather here. At the top of the pass it was freezing and sleeting. Ranger Michelle answered some of my many questions while I was here and we saw lots of animals at the lower levels before it started raining. A lot of trees are dying here after being attacked by the pine beetle.

7. Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. We walked around the base and saw our first snake here.

8. Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana. An interesting place to visit although, man was it hot on the day we visited!

9. Yellowstone, Wyoming. This is a huge park and you need to spend a few days to explore it fully.

10. Olympic, Washington. This park covers both forest, lakes and mountains as well as part of the coast. Crescent Lake was gorgeous and we also enjoyed exploring the coast.

11. Mt. Rainier, Washington. I loved my visit here. The spring flowers were in full bloom and it was really pretty.

12. Lewis & Clark, Oregon. We didn’t know much about Lewis and Clark and after visiting Fort Clatsop we came away much wiser. This pair of explorers had great people skills and seemed well liked by everyone.

13. Crater Lake, Oregon. One of my favorites. It’s so pretty here. I could look at the lake for hours.

My special guest today is Terry Spear who also writes young adult stories as Terry Lee Wilde. Today she’s talking about Vampire In My Dreams, which is currently available in both e-format and print from Samhain Publishing.

Thanks so much for inviting me to guest blog with you today, Shelley!

I write both urban fantasy werewolf and vampire adult and young adult stories. My newest release is The Vampire…In My Dreams, a 12-adult romantic suspense.
Read the rest of this entry ?

I received my cover for my upcoming release from Samhain Publishing. My debut book for Samhain actually! Tea For Two is a contemporary tale about a woman who reads tea leaves. She tells a small white lie and the secrets start to escalate. i.e. they come back to bite her in the butt! Tea For Two is set in London and I had fun returning to London even if it was only in my writing. Here’s the cover. What do you think?

Tea For Two releases on 14 October, and by the time this posts I should have an excerpt up on my blog.

According to an article on my local ISP home page pole dancing is not sex. It’s a sport. This weekend the European pole dance championship took place in Amsterdam.

“Everything which we do requires so much strength. You train your legs and your muscles. It has nothing to do with eroticism. You have no time to think of that!” said Jeannine Wikering, the 26-year-old competitor for Germany who came third.

Here’s the link to the Reuters’ story. Pole Dancing Championships

I must admit I was curious so I googled pole dancing. Who knew there were so many people who participated in pole dancing and so many contests for the best pole dancer? I sense a story brewing…

What do you think? Sport or sex?

In promo news I’m participating in the Coffee Time Romance Alphabet Authors promotion. Come over to the forum, enter my contests, enter the contests for the other authors. Author friends – both published and unpublished please feel free to post an excerpt in the Guest: Presidential Suite/Visiting authors thread. You need to register for the forum but it’s free and a great way to promo. Mention my name when you register and I get brownie points or let me know and I’ll send you an invitation. Use the register link to get started if you’re not already a member.

Here’s the link to the forum: Coffee Time

The subject for today’s post says it all. I’m home again and I have the flu. I feel pretty miserable and think I’m going to crawl back into bed. Mr. Munro seems to be on the mend. He no longer sounds like he’s coughing up his lungs, which gives me hope. I will make it. Neither of us are very good patients and our house isn’t a pleasant place to live at the moment.

We collected our little dog yesterday. I think my father and sister were relieved to hand over the responsibility. Scotty has put on weight and seemed to be happy to get home, despite the requisite bath.

Our holiday is almost over and I won’t post again until we’re at home. We’ve had such a great time and seen so many wonderful places.

Yesterday morning we wandered around the gardens at our hotel. Here’s a sunflower shot. I like sunflowers. They always make me smile when I see them.

Crater Lake is beautiful. Mr. Munro and I have visited before and this time we stayed at the lodge. A forest fire made the air hazy but it was still very pretty. We wandered along one of the trails and relaxed, soaking in the views. It’s a lovely place to chill out.

Mr. Munro has caught the flu and spent all night (or what felt like all night) coughing, sneezing and blowing his nose. He’s a little better today. Hopefully he’ll shake the worst of it off after a good night of sleep. We’re driving back to San Francisco tomorrow to catch a flight home. I can’t believe how quickly the last six weeks has gone.

Another short post today. Yesterday we drove from Prineville to Cottage Grove, passing through lava fields and in the afternoon driving around to see covered bridges. We’re staying the night at a lovely resort called Village Green. We have our own private garden plus there are 14 acres of garden for resort visitors to wander around. It’s really lovely and deserving of a post of its own.

Here’s a shot of the lava fields. You can see where they have flowed around some trees, leaving them standing while the rest of the area was destroyed.

And here’s a shot of the Stewart Covered bridge with our rental car. The bridge was constructed in 1930 and restored in 1996.

We’re off to Crater Lake National Park tomorrow. Unfortunately there are wildfires around and some of the roads have been closed. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

The internet link is really slow today but I think I can load one photo. We visited the John Day Fossil Beds yesterday, which were really fascinating. Scientists are still discovering new species of plants and animals on a regular basis.

This is a shot of one of my favorite beds. The minerals in the soil (from volcanoes) make the rocks look blue/green in color.

We’re off to look at covered bridges today. Guess what will be in the next blog…

USA has some awesome National Parks. We’ve visited Olympic, Mt. Rainier and Mt. St Helens during the last few days.

I mentioned a little about Olympic in the last post. It’s a huge park and it covers both rainforest, lakes and mountains as well as the coast. My first shot today is of one of the tide pools on the coast. We were lucky enough to visit while it was low tide.

Mt. Rainier National park was beautiful. The day was clear and visibility good. I was disappointed during our last visit because we missed the wildflowers. This summer seems to be later and they are in full bloom. We wandered around the portion of the park called Paradise. The name is perfect because it is indeed Paradise.

Our final visit was to see Mt. St Helens, which erupted in 1980 causing great devastation. The area has regenerated but it’s still easy to see the damage with matchstick-like tree trunks, the lava flow area plus the side of the mountain that collapsed.

Of the three my favorite was Mt. Rainier but I’d recommend a visit to any of the three if you have a chance. They’re all beautiful.

I enjoyed our time in Canada, and we’ve decided we’ll return to Vancouver Island at some future date to catch the places we missed. After Campbell River we traveled to Port Alberni where we stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast called Cedar Wood Lodge.

Stamp Falls

Our hosts were originally from Utah but were very knowledgeable about their new home. They suggested we visit a local beauty spot called Stamp Falls Park. We heard the magic words salmon and swimming and off we went. Mr. Munro swam with the salmon and took a few photos, although they were hard to catch on film because they moved so fast. The water was too cold for me. I was content to watch the salmon leaping from the water and to soak in the scenery. The fish ladder that the salmon use to navigate the falls was fascinating and we watched their struggles for a long time.

Gabriele – if you’re reading this you’ll laugh because we had dinner at the Little Bavarian Restaurant. It’s very popular with the locals and the people at the B & B booked for us. We were lucky enough to get a cancellation and had a wonderful meal. It seems quite a few Bavarian people settled in British Columbia and Washington. The food was yummy and it was easy to see why it was so popular.

On the way to Victoria we stopped at Coombs to view the Goats on the Roof. There’s a wonderful food market here where you can buy all sorts of delicious treats. The roof of the building is covered with grass and several goats graze up there during the summer, much to the amusement of the tourists. The goats were shy when we were there but I did glimpse one.

We also visited a town where all the buildings are painted with murals depicting the history of the area. They have some very talented artists. And thanks to our B & B hosts, we stopped off at Cathedral Grove where they have some very large Douglas Fir which were over 300 feet high and very old.

Victoria is beautiful, albeit touristy. The harbor is pretty and the parliament buildings look like a castle. At night they are lit up with hundreds of lights.

We ended up going whale watching. I’ve been fascinated with orcas or killer whales since I wrote an orca shifter story a few years ago. We spent about an hour with a Transient group of orca. They’re the ones that eat seals, whales, birds and other animals rather than fish. They travel from place to place unlike the Resident orcas. This particular family group had a new calf – about two days old, according to the naturalist onboard. Because of this they moved at a slow pace and didn’t do any deep dives. We also saw lots of fur seals and seabirds. It was a fun outing and much more rewarding than the bears!!

At the moment we’re back in the USA at Crescent Lake in Olympic National Park. We’re staying at Log Cabin Lodge and our room looks over the lake and forest clad mountains. Before we went into dinner several deer were grazing in front of our room. It’s a real slice of heaven and you can bet the story ideas are popping. We walked into the main lodge after reading about the depth of the lake – over 600 feet in parts. I was muttering about the Loch Ness Monster and we sighted a painting and a small card about the local sighting of a strange monster in the lake. Obviously I’m not the only one with a vivid imagination!