Posts in Category: United States
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Fort Sumner – America’s Unfinest Hour?
After visiting White Sands National Monument, I went to Fort Sumner, New Mexico to visit Billy the Kid’s grave and instead found a far more important story, that of Bosque Redondo and the forced ‘Long Walk’ of the Navajos and the confinement of the Mescalero Apaches. It was one of the lowest points in history […]
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El Paso – Be Prepared to be Surprised
When El Paso was announced as the 2019 SATW conference site in Barbados in 2018, I know a few eyebrows went up. After all this organization has been hosted by New Zealand, China, Iceland, Germany, Mexico, Bermuda and a number of much bigger American cities to name only a few. Was El Paso, at less […]
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Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument
We had just wrapped up our visit to southeastern New Mexico with a visit to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands National Monument and it was now time to start heading southwest. Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southwest New Mexico is not easy to get to, but well worth the effort as you will be […]
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911 Memorial – A Must Visit in New York City
This is a photo of Manhattan taken only minutes before the first plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and changed the world forever. Nobody who lived in North America will ever forget exactly what they were doing when they first heard the news. Unlike other tragic […]
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The Iroquois – Location is Everything in NYC
I’ve made no secret over the years I’ve been writing this website that I’m a big fan of the Small Luxury Hotels brand. You’ll find posts on SLH hotels in Rome, Venice, Nairobi and even my native Nova Scotia among others on this website including The Quin in New York City. Recently Alison and I made our […]
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Universal Studios VIP Tour – Worth Every Penny
Anyone who has read many of the posts on this website will know that I am not a big fan of the artificial and that includes theme parks. You will find only one other post on a theme park and that is about a trip to Legoland in Florida with my oldest grandson two years ago. The […]
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Joshua Tree National Park – Two Beautiful Deserts
On a recent spur of the moment trip to Las Vegas, which did not overwhelm us, Alison and I decided to explore some of the southwest’s natural wonders starting with Death Valley, which was truly amazing in winter. We followed that up with a drive to Palm Springs and then Indio which we used as […]
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Death Valley in Winter – Simply Awesome
I recently made my first and possibly last visit to Las Vegas which lived down to my expectations. After five days of total artificiality I couldn’t wait to get out of town to see something real, experience something natural and breathe fresh air. Looking at a map of the west, I realized that Death Valley […]
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Ketchum Idaho – Hemingway’s Last Stand
Ernest Hemingway is one of those writers who people have little ambivalence about – you either really like him or you hate him. Whether these dispositions are based on his actual writings or on his unabashedly mysogynistic lifestyle doesn’t seem to make a difference. I can overlook his adulterous womanizing, lying and ridiculous braggadocio because […]