I have just returned from a vacation in the American southwest. Even though I had lived in the Arizona desert for 30 years, I have been away too long, so now it no longer feels like home. I was very happy to return to the green woods and fields of Indiana. Here are two travel photos taken near Tucson, Arizona.
In the first photo I am resting on a metamorphic gneiss in Finger Rock Canyon. I had forgotten how steep and rocky the trail is. I was thinking to myself that I am getting too old for this.
The second photo is was taken in the same area of the Santa Catalina Mts. near Tucson. The saguaro cactus were in bloom.
I am unable to travel much anymore because I’m too sick, but about 10 years ago, as a kid, I went to the Detroit Zoo. That’s kind of traveling. And I snapped a picture of penguins behind the glass. One of the penguins is just hitting the water and the others are standing around looking big and dumb.
The thing that’s made me keep the picture all these years is that there is a strange person in the picture, on the left side, who I have absolutely no idea who he/she is.
I don’t have a scanner, but I took a digital picture of the picture:
I will never know who that person is, but I will always have his/her face in my photo album with penguins. Normally with travel pictures, you look at them to remember the things you did and saw while you were traveling. But every time I see this one I don’t think about the penguins at all, but about the strange person I captured.
Nice desert pics. I miss the spring bloom inthe Mojave, which I used to see each year when I lived in southern California. It’s like a Persian carpet is laid over the world there for a little while.
Here are a couple lousy pictures from a trip in northern California; at least they’ll serve as an antidote to all the dry places pictured above:
A fallen tree in Fern Canyon. An amazing place: the canyon is very narrow, and the walls are vertical, and completely covered in large ferns. There are huge-leaved bog plants throughout; it feels very prehistoric. You keep expecting to meet a tyrannosaur:
And that’s me in the canyon. A little while after tis pic was taken, I noticed several very fresh sets of bear prints on the ground, and fresh scat, heading in the same direction I was walking. The canyon dead ends at a vertical wall, so I was a bit worried about meeting the bear(s) on their way out, as I was heading in . . .:
And some elk I crept up on for a photo. That’s the Pacific Ocean in the background; I was lurking in brush just outside of the redwood forest behind me:
Giant Mountain, in Keene Valley. It’s about a three mile hike to the summit, with a vertical climb of about 3000 ft. The Ridge Trail is the way to go-- you get your first view after about 1/2 mile and get increasingly better ones as the hike progresses. Giant is the Easternmost of the major peaks, so when you sit on the summit and look West the entire 6 million acre park is laid out before you.
Although they look vertical in this photo, most of the slides are actually tame enough to climb without ropes-- I’ve done two of them.
I’d be glad to take anyone on a guided tour…
Me siiting on blocks of the Pyramid of Khafre in Giza Egypt, 1993. It is absolutely mindblowing when you come close up to these structures, the sheer size of them!
this is it from afar!
and this is Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem,1993. The markets and souks around here havent really changed much over the centuries!
Normally with travel pictures, you look at them to remember the things you did and saw while you were traveling. But every time I see this one I don’t think about the penguins at all, but about the strange person I captured.
