Posts in Category: United States
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
Hells Canyon Adventures – Snake River Rafting
I’ve come to Idaho for a number of reasons, including visiting Ernest Hemingway’s grave in Ketchum, but the top one is definitely to travel through Hells Canyon. It is a ten mile stretch of water on the Snake River just below the Hells Canyon Dam that links Idaho and Oregon in the middle of Hells […]
-
Colonial National Historic Park, Virginia
When I was a boy there was a monthly event that I looked forward to with almost as great anticipation as Christmas morning – the arrival of the latest National Geographic magazine. I loved poring over the maps and looking at the pictures for which the magazine was justly famous. In 1960 National Geographic started […]
-
Philadelphia – A Day in the City of Brotherly Love
On our most recent mid-Spring journey to Florida from Nova Scotia Alison and I decided to stop in Philadelphia for a few days as we’d never spent any time in what is one of America’s truly great cities. Our visit began at beautiful Longwood Gardens which I wrote about in this post and ended with a way too […]
-
Oconee County, SC – 7 Great Reasons to Visit
At the 2017 Society of American Travel Writers conference in Portland, Oregon I had the pleasure of meeting with Ken Sloan, tourism rep for Oconee County, South Carolina. He showed me enough about the county and was so genuine in his belief about its rightful place as a top tourist destination, that I decided to […]
-
Brookgreen Gardens – A Sculptural Masterpiece
It was over twenty years ago that Alison and I first visited Brookgreen Gardens in Murrell’s Inlet, just south of Myrtle Beach. We did it more by chance than planning as we were headed south on U.S.17 for our annual sojourn to Sanibel, Florida and came across this impressive sculpture at the entrance and decided […]
-
Jamestown Settlement – History Comes Alive
You might be tempted to think that the phrase “Where History Comes Alive” is just a bit overused in the context of historical recreations and to a certain extent that is true. But those concerns definitely don’t apply to Jamestown Settlement where historical accuracy, knowledgable re-enactors and a great location on the James River really […]