http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Slowfeet/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Slowfeet en-us Sun, 26 May 2013 06:41:36 +0000 Sun, 26 May 2013 06:41:36 +0000 We have been back a few months now and it is time to try to sum up. I warn you now that this is a longer post than usual. Apologies for that but I have added subheadings so that you can flick through to the interesting bits as you wish.If you are planning a trip around the world there is a mass of information available. Blogs were a great source of information for us. Profiles of countries regio http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Queensland/Obi-Obi-Valley-/blog-698264.html An amazing surprising complex country Scenery that gives you a look at every landform and landscape that provides constant spectacle. A road system built to facilitate military movements during the Eisenhower days that now carries Americans up and down back and forward constantly. An excellent road system that in large part could handle more maintenance. Wonderful national parks in the co http://www.travelblog.org/Oceania/Australia/Queensland/Nambour/blog-682281.html We will put up another couple of posts about this trip. We need to do our normal thing and provide a wrap of the USA and we want to provide the trip statistics so that anyone who is interested can see what it cost how far we travelled and how many countries we visited. That sort of thing. We have also developed some 39rules39 for travellers and we will put them up as a bit of fun and maybe http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/California/Los-Angeles/LAX/blog-666694.html There are competitors for the title of the world39s greatest canyon. Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet is said to be considerably deeper and longer than the Grand Canyon. Colca Canyon in Peru is also deeper and longer than the Grand Canyon. Tara in Montenegro touts itself as second to the Grand Canyon but alas it looks like Tara is number 4 at least. We haven39t seen Yarlung Tsangpo yet but http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/California/Death-Valley-National-Park/blog-665125.html Our return visit to Colorado was mainly about catching up with people we had missed on our first run through. On that occasion we had scuttled pretty quickly out of Denver up to the Rocky Mountains National Park and points north. This time we wanted to give Denver more of a go and work south and west. We had vague plans of ending up in Utah at Zion National Park or in Arizona at Monument Valley an http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Arizona/Monument-Valley/blog-663296.html Tell people here that you are going to take a run through Texas and they tend to smile a little nod mention San Antonio and perhaps Austin but other than that well ... I didn39t believe them. After all discerning people on both sides of our family have lived in Texas. New Mexico gets slightly better reviews but then you mention Kansas and your credibility as a discerning traveller is sho http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Kansas/Dodge-City/blog-662413.html Louisiana doesn39t always get such a good rap . True over the years it has probably earned its reputation for corruption in governments hot steamy weather a shambolic approach to reconstruction of its principle city and high crime levels. None of these factors did anything as far as we were concerned to outweigh the allure of possibly of catching some good blues cajun and zydeco music an http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Louisiana/Lafayette/blog-660869.html Some very nice time in the Great Smoky Mountains meant that we needed a decent drive to make Charleston that night. As a drive it doesn39t really rate against many we have done previously but we did leave ourselves with a trip of a little over 350 miles late in the day. The rain that turned up after we came through the mountains into North Carolina developed into a substantial downpour as we m http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Mississippi/Natchez/blog-660149.html The Museum of Appalachia39s Tennessee Fall Homecoming is a bit of a mouthful for the title of a Festival but it promised to have over 20 different mountain music and bluegrass bands playing so we decided it was worth a look. We weren39t too sure what a 39homecoming39 might involve but it was pretty clear it had something to do with a gathering and probably of people who were coming 3 http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Tennessee/Clinton/blog-658223.html A visit to the South was always high on the list of places we needed to get to in our trip around the USA. The history is interesting the people are said to be different but most of all the music that comes out of this part of the world is very much to our taste. We wanted very much to get to see and hear some Appalachian mountain music. A bit of bluegrass would be acceptable if we could find so http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Tennessee/Nashville/blog-657951.html Gone to my ladies headI tried to tell my womenbut they don39t believe a word that I saidApologies to Jimmy Reed for lyric amendments.It didn39t take much more than a walk along Broadway on the night we arrived for my daughter to inform me that she could live in this place. My wife wasn39t far behind. There are a lot of lively cities around the world but New York does seem to take the c http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/New-York/New-York/Manhattan/blog-656507.html We aren39t actually conducting a competition to determine the best waterfalls in the world. We haven39t checked out Venezuela39s contender the Angel Falls yet. But we are prepared to say now that Iguazu in Argentina and Brazil leads the pack. Victoria MosiOaTunya on the border of Zaqmbia and Zimbabwe is at least number 2 and a powerful challenger for number 1. Niagara f http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Massachusetts/Boston/blog-656000.html We have handed over authorship of this post to our temporary travelling companion and permanent daughter who has joined us for a few weeks to check out just a little of the USA.Coming off a 27 hour journey from Brisvegas being accosted at the JFK Airport arrival gate by Kenny Rogers and his much younger third wife was a bit of a surprise. Then I rubbed my tired eyes and they turned into my pare http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Virginia/Richmond/blog-652383.html Another CanadaIt has been more than just a little nice to have to decipher the road signs again driving through Canada. We have had to do this many times during the last few years but since arriving in English speaking countries it has all changed. Surprisingly that can be just a little boring. The nice thing about the Canadians is that they put the French up there with English right alongside http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/New-Brunswick/Pocologan/blog-648925.html It is good to be in Canada again. We have travelled over some of the high points of the west previously and this time we want to see some of the east. The country has played a significant role for members of my family. My Mum was born here 89 years ago today but her family left reasonably quickly thereafter seeking a better life than could be found at the time in Regina Saskatchewan. My father http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/Canada/Ontario/Kingston/blog-638127.html You can39t stay out in the parks and countryside all of the time. Cities have their place and some of them should be visited. How else do you get to see how they work understand how the people there operate start to appreciate the sometimes subtle differences in culture that may be most apparent where big mobs of people congregate And it is not necessarily an appropriate performance measure http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Michigan/Saint-Ignace/blog-636297.html Enough of these gentle piney woods easy going animals and benign although cool weather. Time for some dramatics. This post takes us down through more of the Rockies across Utah and Colorado keeping an eye out for roaming Sacketts there back up into Wyoming through a bit of Nebraska into and across South Dakota Minnesota and Wisconsin and into Illinois and Chicago. We have covered http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Illinois/Chicago/blog-635433.html Yellowstone is a very popular destination so at this time of the year particularly you would expect it to be mega busy. And it was definitely that. A visit to Yellowstone seems almost to be a rite of passage for many people in this country. Everyone wants to go or has been. Add a high level of domestic tourism to the very considerable interest of foreign tourists in the world39s first nationa http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Wyoming/Grand-Teton-National-Park/blog-634632.html ... Where the sun don39t ever shineI shiver39d the whole night through.Being able to tell a tetradonta from a miniata or even a black wattle from an elephant ear is not much use to you in this part of the world. This part of the North American continent is full of what we have been happily calling 39pine39 trees. We were wrong of course but that hasn39t diminished the enjoyment o http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Montana/Glacier-National-Park/blog-633427.html Leaving San Francisco felt a lot like the beginning of our planned trip around the USA. Although we have been here a couple of weeks now picking up the vehicle that should be ours until November and heading north it seemed to us that we were really on our way. There is still a need for us to properly equip ourselves for the journey. We will do that progressively over the next couple of weeks.The http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Washington/Aberdeen/blog-632196.html