Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
These are photos of the ongoing volcanic eruption in Iceland taken on March 24 – my birthday. It’s nice to be able to celebrate in such awesome surroundings!
A view of the Geldingadalur eruption from the south coast.
On The Road – Christopher Mathews – An eruption in IcelandPost + Comments (30)
On the Road: Week of April 12 (5 am)
Albatrossity – Spring 2021 in Flyover Country #1
Christopher Mathews – An eruption in Iceland
🐾BillinGlendaleCA –
Kody Kastel – California Photos
Elma – South American Fauna
🌺 I bumped one of our regular submitters that I had scheduled for Tuesday (sorry Steve!) so we could have recent pics on the active volcano. They were submitted just a day or two ago, but it’s very timely, hence being moved to the front of the line.
Also, is anyone else planning to send in Paris pics?
I have several more sets of pics from Brazil, and I am slowly working to get those selected and organized for future On The Road submissions. But right now winter has just moved out and made room for spring, birds are moving, flowers are popping, and it just seems like time for the 2021 version of Spring in Flyover Country. Brazil can wait!
The appearance of spring migrants here also means the disappearance of some of our more notable winter residents. These include, naturally, dark Red-tailed Hawks, who grace the plains states only in the winter season. So farewell to this lovely adult western Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis calurus), who may be in Alberta or British Columbia by the time you read this. This one is even more interesting that usual; it has a light-colored iris. Usually by the time a bird is in its second winter, the iris has darkened and become very brown. For some reason I’ve seen a lot of second-year birds with a light iris this season, and many of them have been of the western subspecies.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Spring 2021 in Flyover Country – #1Post + Comments (12)
I’ve been pining for tropical vistas, tropical fish, balmy breezes. Not sure why… So I looked through photos of some of my fairly recent travels. These are of a visit to an island on the Caribbean side of Panama. The island is mostly a national marine park and has no roads to speak of. There’s a village, Old Bank, at the northwestern end. A western-style resort at Red Frog Beach, a few eco resorts. Otherwise, not too much. Perfect for us. We left by boat from Isla Colon and headed to a small, off-the-grid (obviously) resort on a former cacao plantation.
We arrived in the port town of Almirante from Volcán by car. A long, hair-raising journey on mountain roads that cut from the Pacific to Caribbean side of Panama. Imagine coming around a curve on a narrow, twisting road and seeing just a few feet ahead that the road bed has dropped abruptly ~2 feet. No warming. Lots of fun challenges like that. Anyway. In Almirante our car was secured in a large chain-linked pen full of cars and we caught a boat taxi to Isla Colon. Then roller-bagged our way to the lodging suggested by the resort. This one. A small bungalow with room doors secured by padlock & key. The next morning our ride arrived and we headed to Isla Bastimentos.
On The Road – way2blue – Isla Bastimentos, PanamaPost + Comments (14)
I spent 5 weeks in China at Spring Festival time in 2010. Since my son was teaching in Yulin, in northern Shaanxi province, I had a local home base and a personal guide and translator for lots of adventures. Plus, we were guests of local families for holiday celebrations, and Jamie’s department got my visa extended so we could could team teach for the first week of spring semester.
We spent the first week in Beijing and the rest of the time in Yulin, by my choice. To travel far and wide, we would have had to spend hours on packed, smoky trains during what is reportedly the world’s largest annual migration. All you had to do to get a feel for it was to walk past a train station and see the crowds.
For me it was the trip of a lifetime. The food was wonderful (I missed it for years afterwards), the people and culture were fascinating, and the chance to live a tiny bit like a local person in a place that is so very, very different from home – that was priceless.
I arrived in Beijing after a sleepless 30-hour journey from my home in rural Maine. Late in the flight we were warned that if we showed any symptoms of swine flu, we’d be taken directly into quarantine. All I could think about as I walked past the gizmos on poles, supposedly detecting fevers in the passing throng, was that if they didn’t let me see Jamie I was going to have a meltdown.
But all was well, and we settled into our tiny hotel room and took an evening walk. I had my first food in China from literally a hole in the wall between two stores, a tiny gap where a man had set up a griddle and would make you a wrap with whatever filling you wanted from his small selection. I don’t remember what we had, but it was tasty, and we ate our wraps as we strolled around looking at shops and people. After that I slept for nineteen hours, until Jamie tapped me on the shoulder and said, “If you don’t get up you’re going to miss Beijing.”
I wrote a travel blog at the time with a lot more about topics like food, bartering, traffic, the holidays, etc. Feel free to go over there for more stories. (The pictures are mostly gone because they were stored on Picasa, which is now, sadly, defunct.)
This first set of pictures is a sampler. Later sets will be more focused, but they’ll all have a smattering of food, Chinglish, air quality, transport . . . and cute kids.
After my long nap we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, where this shot was taken. It was February, so we were often walking around in light snow.
Jepp and Tom Ryan homesteaded in the Lost Horse Valley in 1896 near a spring and the Lost Horse Mine. The spring provided water to the mine, 3 miles away. The Ryans built an adobe house and quite a few outbuildings.
After the gold boom died out in the early 1900’s, a number of folk tried their hand a cattle ranching at Joshua Tree and surprisingly didn’t do well. There’s not much left of the ranch house, just the slab and some walls primarily due to a fire in 1977 and vandalism.
It’s a short walk from the Ryan Campground, but there was no parking there, so I ended up hiking from the trailhead on Park Blvd (the road that runs though the northwestern portion of the park). The trail starts off with sand but the ground firms up pretty well after that.
The longer trail passed some really nice rock formations which even inspired a rare B/W infrared treatment. At one point it looks like Joshua Trees were planted in a row leading up to that formation. Most of the photos (7/12) were shot with the IR camera using the IRChrome filter. I’ve interspersed the visual shots amongst the IR shots (they’re the ones with green Joshua Trees).
Black and White infrared view of this interesting rock formation along the trail.
On The Road – 🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Ryan RanchPost + Comments (21)
Myanmar has been in the news lately and I have been thinking about a trip I took there in 2016. My spouse and I got married in January, 1987, in Hawaii, where we were living at the time. We discovered the joys of Thai food in Hawaii — in those days it was hardly a blip on the radar in most of the U.S. — and decided to go to Thailand for our honeymoon. While there, we were chatting with a fellow traveler who had just returned from a week in Burma, and we decided we would take a side trip and see it for ourselves. Alas, in those days it was very difficult to visit Burma and we were unable to set up a trip.
Fast forward 30 years and we decided to return to SE Asia for our 30th anniversary, and this time we were determined to visit Burma/Myanmar. Thanks to the country opening up, and the existence of the internet, we easily booked a one-week package tour Myanmar. It was a glorious trip, the people, the sites, and the food were wonderful.
Our trip started in Yangon (formally known as Rangoon). On our first full day there we visited several famous pagodas (temples). As an aside, “temple” is a general term, “pagoda” refers to Buddhist or Hindu temples, and in Myanmar, a “stupa” is a spire-like part of a pagoda that usually cannot be entered. Someone correct me if I’m wrong!
The most spectacular site we saw in Yangon was Shwedagon Pagoda, which we visited in the late afternoon; our guide told us it is best viewed as sunset. The site is huge, with an enormous golden stupa surrounded by many mini-temples. The setting sun lighting up the stupa was spectacular.
On The Road – evap – Myanmar, December 2016, Part 1Post + Comments (13)
Send in your Paris pics if you have them. Photos for Springtime in Paris don’t have to be Spring photos – it’s just that we will be featuring the photos as a series in the springtime. Plus, I thought Springtime in Paris had a nice ring to it.
On the Road: Week of April 5 (5 am)
Albatrossity – Brazil 2011, part 2
evap – Myanmar, December 2016, Part 1
🐾BillinGlendaleCA – — Scheduled, Classic edition
JanieM – China, Part 1/8
way2blue – Isla Bastimentos, Panama
🌺 And now, part 2 of Albatrossity’s 2011 trip to Brazil. Such amazing creatures, and the Scarlet Ibis is amazing!
The second half of our 2011 trip to Brazil was spent near the mouth of the Amazon, in the city of Belem and on the island of Marajó, a delta island that is larger than the state of Maryland, or approximately the size of Switzerland. But before we get to those, I will add a couple of images from our time near Manaus.
One of the creatures that we all wanted to see was a sloth. And we did see quite a few, including one mom with baby. She did not get out in the open for a family portrait, but this guy did, and you can see that is a three -toad sloth, specifically the Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus variegatus), which is the most widespread sloth species.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Brazil 2011, part 2Post + Comments (20)