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Who can resist visiting a National Park Service Monument with the curious name of Tuzigoot? The word means Crooked Water in the Apache language but it preserves remains from peoples who arrived around the year 1000 AD to take advantage of water resources to grow corn, beans, squash to supplement their diet of deer and other game. And they also grew and wove cotton for garments and trade—the prized Pima cotton label we now look for on clothing and bedding labels.… Read more
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Everyone says don’t miss Sedona. They were correct!
We turned off the freeway about two hours north of Phoenix to follow the road to Sedona winding through desert plants surrounded by small yellow butterflies flittering around flowering shrubs.
Another few turns brought us to a halt to stare in awe at the magnificent sight of orange and dark red sandstone sculpted into giant spires, plateaus, canyons and massive rock escarpments all constructed by the gods of wind and water over eons.… Read more
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Anacortes on the north coast of Washington State and our stop before moving on to Orcas. The town was formerly somewhat of a backwater but has recently become a destination for water-oriented retirees attracted to small-town living, gorgeous views of saltwater with passing cargo ships, pleasure craft and fishing boats, and easy access to the San Juan Islands.
We were amused at the many cutouts of historical figures and current workers that decorate buildings as we drove toward the ferry dock.… Read more
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A barefoot man wearing a loincloth and a traditional short cape made of ti leaves walked by me as if deep in thought. When I turned to watch him, I could see his black hair cut high on the sides and left long on top to fall around his shoulders. Without looking to right or left he strode away from the Great Wall defining the Pu’uhonua, Place of Refuge, during ancient Hawaiian times.
He projected power and I could not help but wonder if he was a chief or priest.… Read more
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Hilo isn’t exactly what one typically pictures of Hawaii – white sand beaches, luxury hotels, blue sky. Instead, it’s truly tropical with rain, clearing, and more rain – ten feet a year on average. BUT, it has food, a foodie’s idea of heaven along with parks hosting enormous banyan trees and bamboo. On the Island of Hawaii (known as The Big Island) it’s a world away from the condos and golf courses that dot the dry, Kona Coast, side.… Read more
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The weather report was bad but a winter getaway called to celebrate our anniversary — a week early because everything was booked for our day which is Valentine’s Day. We decided to stay on the largest island in the town of Friday Harbor, the county seat of San Juan County made up of an archipelago of four lightly populated islands and a spray of others that adjoin those in Canada that continue up the Inside Passage.… Read more
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Woody Guthrie’s famous song written in 1941 to extoll the virtues of dam building on the Columbia River and its tributaries is not the subject of this story although the effect of all that damn dam building (some eighty) is one of the causes of the demise of the salmon fishing and canning industry that once powered the booming economy of historic Astoria Oregon.
The small city sits a few miles from the mouth of the Columbia where the river empties into the Pacific Ocean in a roiling combination of swift and silty fresh water fighting the ocean tides and storms.… Read more
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Tired, oh so tired by our semi-lockdown due to Covid, we decided to take a quick getaway to an island we can see from our living room. An island with almost no virus cases. Feeling secure, we joined the line at the ferry dock in the nearby town of Mukilteo for the twenty-minute cruise to the tiny town of Clinton on the south end of Whidbey Island.
Named for Joseph Whidbey, Master of HMS Discovery, who along with expedition leader Captain George Vancouver, explored the island in 1792.… Read more
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I’ve always wanted to see the cranberry harvest on the Washington Coast. So, when it looked like the weather gods would smile for a few days on the usually rainy Long Beach Peninsula in the far southwest corner of the state, we decided to drive four hours from our home. In no hurry, we took secondary roads, more scenic than the freeway. They wind through logging country where we dodged the loaded trucks whipping down the road toward mills to add to the piles of logs (called cold decks around here) waiting to be turned into lumber.… Read more
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After experiencing the wild exuberance of the Vigeland Sculpture complex, the Oslo City Hall is a model of sobriety with its red-brick exterior and rational layout, entrance courtyard with fountain and carvings from Norse myths, and long central hall flanked by two towers. Instead of naked writhing people, the artwork is reflective of the Norwegian character based on foundation myths and history.
While there are oil paintings and ceramic plaques, such as these honoring women,
much of the artwork in the interior of the grand building is in the form of fresco, a medium I particularly like.… Read more
