Blogs from North America - page 7954

Wind and Caves After seeing Mt Rushmore, I ate dinner in Hill City and camped at Wind Cave National Park. Driving along the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway in the dark where you know a buffalo may be hanging in the middle of the road is quite imposing. Also, with California plates, I'd heard from many people that I don't want to do a single thing to warrant a ticket, so I drove cautiously. Here I set up camp for three nights. This park is terrific. The campsites are comfortable, the people who work here very friendly, and it is uncrowded. It is a mix of prairie and ponderosa pines. The herd of buffalo are of original buffalo stock (not interbred with cows), so they are very special and warrant a fence around the whole park. I ... read more

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land. ~G.K. Chesterton July 7, 2007. As we traveled to Duluth along MN scenic highway 61, our first stop was Temperance River S.P. We hiked a section of the river gorge trail. It is amazing to see how the water has worn away the rocks and made a honeycomb. In the contest between rock and water, water will always win ultimately. Split Rock Lighthouse S.P. was out next stop. We took the tour and saw the video. MN operates a Split Rock (SR) Lighthouse as a state historic site. SR Lighthouse was built atop a 130 foot cliff in 1910. The early light keepers must have been brave, ... read more

Towards The LightAnderson FamilyIt begins. The family is coming together. A gathering of the clan so to speak. There will be much merriment and grog to be had. Wenches galore and guilt served on platters of pure gold. From Annie: I love just sitting here at the Warmland Cafe in Duncan, sipping my tea and reading my book while Greg is writing here on his computer, and Joey is pottering who-knows-where, possibly the Red Balloon Toy Store across the road. I'm reading Adam's third book, :The path of the Dreamhealer. About healing people's body energy holograms and mundane things like that. I'll try his imaging exercises and see what I can do with it. Had a lovely lunch at the Shipyard restaurant in Genoa Bay--gorgeous area. This will be the St. Tropez of B.C. one day. ... read more

The San Francisco Zoo. After realizing that getting to the nearest Six Flags park was out of the question, we decided to go to the San Francisco Zoo since the weather wasn’t cooperating, and the site-seeing wouldn’t be any better than the previous day. Considering how much time we wasted waiting for these non-existent buses to get to the zoo, this was an all day excursion. Nonetheless, we had a blast at the zoo. I think our commentary on the animals made the day hilarious, especially the polar bear exhibit. Once we finished up there, waited on a depressing, nearly deserted street for a bus that took us right back where we started, we eventually made it back to the apartment, and got some amazingly delicious thin-crust pizza from a nearby café. After gorging, we relaxed ... read more

West from New York through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota We left New York and headed West determined to put some serious miles behind us. We spent days travelling through the heartland of America where people live in small farming communities, islands of civilization in a vast ocean of corn fields and prairies. On the way through we stopped in Chicago to celebrate American Independence on 4th of July with our friends. Wendy had a great day secretly buying gifts for my impending birthday (a good excuse for some retail therapy). Meanwhile I played a round of fancy golf with Mun and a couple of his buddies at Michael Jordan’s golf club. Meeting this man, generally recognized as the most outstanding athlete of all time, was pretty cool and made my recent ... read more