All 26 entries tagged Travel

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 7: Arches National Park at Dawn, Las Vegas at Night

Arches National Park at Dawn: http://www.nps.gov/arch/index.htm

If Delicate Arch has any significance it lies, I will venture, in the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the senses and surprise the mind out of its ruts of habit, to compel us into a re-awakened awareness of the wonderful – that which is full of wonder’ – Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
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Arizona, Route 15

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Las Vegas

: 27 Jul 2010 18:58 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 6: Arches National Park

Pictures all of Arches National Park: http://www.nps.gov/arch/index.htm

Perched high above the Colorado River, the park is part of southern Utah’s extended canyon country, carved and shaped by eons of weathering and erosion. Some 300 million years ago, inland seas covered the large basin that formed this region. The seas refilled and evaporated – 29 times in all – leaving behind salt beds thousands of feet thick. Later, sand and boulders carried down by streams from the uplands eventually buried the sea beds beneath thick layers of stone. Because the salt layer is less dense than the overlying blanket of rock, it rises up through it into domes and ridges, with valleys in between. – National Geographic, Guide to the National Parks of the United States

Most of the formations at Arches are made of soft, red sandstone deposited 150 million years ago. Much later, groundwater began to dissolve the underlying salt deposits. The sandstone domes collapsed and weathered into a maze of vertical rock slabs called “fins”. – National Geographic, Guide to the National Parks of the United States

Footprints tracked across this living community may remain visible for years. – National Geographic, Guide to the National Parks of the United States

: 27 Jul 2010 18:50 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 5: The Black Canyon and Colorado National Monument

Gunnison, Blue Mesa Lake

Imagine chiseling two parallel walls of hard gnesis and schist running the length of Manhattan and standing higher than two Empire State Buildings stacked one atop one another, with water as your only tool. At the inconceivable rate of one inch per century, it would take all of human history just to cut through five feet of rock. What you see from the rim [of the Black Canyon] is the product of two million years of patient work. – National Geographic, Guide to the National Parks of the United States

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

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Black Canyon of the Gunnison

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Colorado, Route 50

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Colorado National Monument

: 27 Jul 2010 18:42 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 4: Driving into the Rockies

Colorado Springs, Garden of the Gods

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Colorado, Route 50

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Colorado, the Continental Divide

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Gunnison, the Wanderlust Hostel

: 27 Jul 2010 18:31 |  Tags: Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 3: From Kansas to Colorado

*Kansas Countryside*

Love a place like Kansas and you can be content in a garden of raked sand. For ground it is the flattest. Big sky, wheat sea, William Inge, bottle clubs, road houses – Falstaff and High Life, chili and big juke road houses – John Brown, Wild Bill Hickok, Carry A. Nation, cockeyed Wyatt Earp, Pretty Boy Floyd, and shades of all those unspoken Indians. Out there on the flat, in a wheat sea, on the spooky buffalo grasses where the ICBM’s go down into the shale and salt of a prehistoric sea wherein the mighty mosasaurs once roamed and the skies were not cloudy all day. – Earl Thompson

Lake Wilson, Kansas

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Lake Wilson, Kansas

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Colorado Springs

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Colorado Springs

: 02 Jul 2010 06:00 |  Tags: Travel United States |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 2: Indiana, Illinois, Missouri…

Lake Carlysle, Illinois

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Missouri Countryside

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Jefferson City, Missouri

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Jefferson City, Missouri

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More Missouri Countryside…

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: 02 Jul 2010 05:51 |  Tags: Travel United States |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Roadtrip from Pennsylvania to California: Day 1: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana…

Pennsylvania Mountains near Black Moshannon

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Ohio Countryside

: 02 Jul 2010 05:27 |  Tags: Travel United States |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

First Day in North Wales

Coming into North Wales gives me a feeling of expectation. I remember travelling here when I was a teenager and still nervous about speaking Welsh in the North. I think that the North Waleans are rather like the Basques – sometimes brusque, occasionally unfriendly, but the North Waleans seemed like real Welsh, although now I realise that I only felt that way because of ingrained ideas about linguistic purity that still exist in Wales. I haven't spoken Welsh to any North Waleans yet, as I am still feeling a little shy. But I will when I have a chance.

: 24 Jul 2006 15:48 |  Tags: Poetry Travel |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mexico City

Follow-up to From Heinrich Heine´s 'Vitzliputzli' from The Midnight Heart

We arrived in D.F. yesterday for the journey home. Straight away a taxi driver tried to con us. The taxis in Mexico City are very dangerous, at least for gringos anyway. He made us pay an extra three hundred pesos for the journey and we had to pay him or he would have dumped on the side of the road. All the time he continued to smile as though nothing was wrong. I began to feel very negative about Mexico, or at least about Mexico City. That is until the next morning we walked out onto the zocalo which was a cacophany of different sounds. A piano recital of Rhapsody in Blue was in one corner, while in another there were bouncy castles and a fayre for children. In another corner, Mexicans were protesting about the 'murder' of a politician who was involved in preventing the drug trade. In another corner, huge pictures of Communist Russian thinkers and leaders were hung.

: 26 Sep 2005 01:25 |  Tags: Mexico Travel |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

From Heinrich Heine´s 'Vitzliputzli'

Follow-up to Extract from John Dryden´s Play The Indian Emperor from The Midnight Heart

Yet I shall not die – I cannot
For we gods are like the parrots,
Live as long and moult as they do,
Moult like them and change our feathers.

: 23 Sep 2005 20:11 |  Tags: Mexico Poetry Travel |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem