Category Travels

Can’t Get There from Here

The repairs for which the road residents were first given a heads-up for completion in October of last year (after Hurricane Michael removed most of Goose Creek) is finally happening this week. And since October we’ve been driving through water,…

Friends in Low Places

Still unpacking from our whirlwind trip to and from Missouri and have a few images to share. The one above, from a favorite regular dinner stop on the way up. Last time we were there, a guy fell off a bar…

Minnewaska: Ulster County NY Catksills

Sorry, we have house guests and such so only a link to some images from the recent NY trip this morning. First use of a new “story-telling” app called Grapewise. Maybe I missed some of the potential for this tool…

Catskills Part One: Kaaterskill Falls

Kill this. Kill that. Fishkill. Peekskill. Fresh Kills. Say what? Okay. It’s a Dutch term meaning creek or waterway (a vestige of the area’s colonial past) and found its way into Catskill–ONE name for this dissected assortment of variously protected…

Klingon Devil Pods: Trapa natans

And it turns out that the name we gave it– “Devil Pods”– is one of the historically-used “common names” for this plant. It took us a while to finally conclude that it was indeed a plant, since the pods seem…

The Creature (Dis)comforts of Air Travel

It had been months in the planning. A college buddy invited me to his home in Westchester County, NY. On Saturday I would speak at the Pound Ridge Reservation Trailside Museum. On Thursday and Friday he and I would hike…

Alien Airspace: Coming to Take us Away HaHa

We will some day go to visit my daughter’s family on the NC coast and actually enjoy the unique landscapes and nature of that place–such as have managed to survive hurricanes, strip malls, subdivisions and military installations. Surely there are…

Refugium

Refugium: an area where conditions have enabled a species or a community of species to survive after extinction in surrounding areas. An area in which a population of organisms can survive through a period of unfavorable conditions;  an area of relatively unaltered climate…

Studying About Those Good Ole Days

Sorry. I have just a minute this morning before rushing off to a dentist appointment in Blacksburg. Some of you may have suffered the dissociative results in panoramas when people move as you’re panning. It can create some bizarre amputations and other…