Category: Travel

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #184 – Travel Has Taught Me

Posted in Alaska, Louisiana, Photography, Texas, Travel, Utah, WildflowersTagged , , , , , , 37 Comments

“To Travel is to Live” – Hans Christian Andersen

Travel has taught me that there is beauty everywhere you go if you just take the time to look around. When we were traveling by RV, we always had several major destinations for each trip. At first we just drove between destinations without taking much time to enjoy the places in between.

The more trips we took, the more we enjoyed the out of way places that are often overlooked by travelers. Lake Bistineau State Park, Louisiana was one of those places.

Cypress Trees in Lake Bistineau State Park

I’ve learned that traveling opens up opportunities to try new things, even things that terrify me. Our hike to Delicate Arch at Arches National Park is a perfect example of this. I’m scared of heights and almost didn’t make the hike when I read I would have to walk along a narrow ledge with a shear drop off. With Henry’s help and encouragement, I made it. The payoff was this fantastic view.

Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, Utah

I learned that asking a local is the best way to find out about the area, the history, and the out of the way places to visit that don’t show up in tour guides. One year we spent about two months wandering around Texas when the bluebonnets were blooming. A ranger I met in one of the state parks gave us directions to a scenic drive on a dirt road that we would have never discovered if we hadn’t asked.

Texas Bluebonnets

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” -James Michener

Travel has taught me I can learn more about a lot about a place by having conversations with people who live there. At the beautiful Russian Orthodox Church in Ninilchik, Alaska we met two women who manage the gift shop and maintain all the graves. They grew up in Ninilchik together and lived with relatives in Anchorage to attend high school because at the time there was no high school in Ninilchik (there is one today). They graduated together in 1950.

Gift Shop for the Russian Orthadox Church in Ninilchik, Alaska

Travel has taught me to try the local foods. We have enjoyed barbecue beef brisket in Texas, pasties in Michigan, Indian Tacos in South Dakota and Arizona, New Mexico cuisine, local seafood in Florida, Washington and Oregon, pork tenderloin sandwiches in Missouri, Dungeness Crab straight off the boat in Alaska, and so many other delicious things we can’t get at home.

Dungeness Crab, Haines, Alaska

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”― Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s quote describes exactly why Henry and I chose to go on our cruise in January. I’ve learned that every day is a gift. None of us know what tomorrow will bring. A single phone call, doctor’s visit, or an unexpected event can change your life in an instant.

St. Kitts

“Life is either a great adventure or nothing: – Helen Keller

Many thanks for Amy’s challenge Lens’Artists #184: Travel has taught me

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #183 – Memorable Events

Posted in Photography, Sunset, TravelTagged , , , , , , 36 Comments

The Wandering Dawgs just returned from an amazing Caribbean Islands Adventure filled with many memorable events. Our first ever cruise was supposed to be an Alaska inside passage trip in 2020 which we booked in 2019. Then COVID came along and the cruise was rescheduled for 2021. When that one was also cancelled we decided to try something different and booked a January cruise which included some Caribbean islands and a trip up the Amazon River. A few months ago the Brazil portion was cancelled and our itinerary changed to nine Caribbean islands in 8 different countries, starting and ending in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico required a negative COVID test to enter the country. The first of our memorable events was receiving the negative test results the day before our flight!

Everything went smoothly after that. Our flights were on time and we arrived in Puerto Rico on Monday, January 10 for a two night stay at a hotel in San Juan before our Wednesday boarding on the Viking Sea. The most memorable event that first night was watching our Georgia Bulldogs win the college football National Championship from our hotel room.

There were too many memorable events to feature in one post. Here are just a few of the most memorable.

Walking the beaches of the Caribbean just soothed my soul. Our first beach was in a U. S. National Park on St. John, United States Virgin Islands
Each rainbow was spectacular. This rainbow in Dominica was one of several we saw during our journey
Swimming into a cave in Ti Tou Gorge in the rain forest of Dominica was my most memorable experience – Thanks to Henry for this photo
One of the many sunsets we enjoyed. This was from our last night on the ship

Did we love our first cruise? A thousand times YES! It was the trip of a lifetime that can never be duplicated. The weather was perfect, the seas were calm, and each island brought new adventures. With a full crew of 450 and only 150 passengers on a ship with a capacity of 930 we felt like royalty the entire time.

Many thanks to Ann Christine for asking us to share memorable events. Be sure to visit Ann Christine’s Lens-Artists #183: Memorable Events

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #173 – Interesting Architecture

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Tina’s challenge this week is to show interesting architecture – whether in our back yard or around the world.

My first three images don’t have anything in common except I like the architectural details of each of them. The image above is from the Art Deco District in South Beach in Miami. These next two are from two National Parks in the United States.

  • Quapaw Baths on Bath House Row in Hot Springs
  • Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite National Park

The rest of my images are of interesting houses of worship. The first is from Alaska and the rest are historic houses of worship in Savannah, Georgia.

Russian Orthodox Church in Ninilchik, Alaska
  • Independent Presbyterian Church, Savannah, Georgia – the movie Forest Gump begins with a feather floating up to this steeple
  • Congregation Mickve Israel, Savannah, Georgia – the third oldest Jewish Congregation in the U.S.
  • Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, Savannah – construction began in 1873
  • Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, Savannah, Georgia

Many thanks to Tina for this Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #173: Interesting Architecture

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #159 – Postcards

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Our final guest host for the month of July is Ana Campo of Anvica’s Gallery. Her challenge is Postcards. She writes about thinking about how many postcards were used in the past “to congratulate, as a souvenir of the places we visited or simply as collectibles.” The above image is a real post card I brought back from our trip to Hawaii.

Once upon a time, when long distance phone calls were too expensive, before Facebook, Instagram, WordPress blogs, and many other internet options were available, travelers would mail postcards to their friends and family back home.

I love receiving postcards so when we were planning our first RV trip across the U.S. and Canada I knew I wanted to send postcards to our grand children. I have kept up that tradition for all our trips, whether we were gone for a few months or just a few days. I enjoy picking out the cards, writing to them about our adventures on the back of the card, and even searching for a mailbox to mail them.

The cards usually were 25 cents each and sometimes I could get 5 for a dollar. I still have a collection of extra cards that never got mailed.

Sometimes as I edited photos from a trip I would find one almost identical to a postcard I had purchased! For this challenge I chose to show three postcards and my similar photos. The cards are in the left column with my photos in the right.

I hope my grandkids had as much fun receiving the postcards as I had picking them out, writing them, and searching for a mailbox to mail them.

Many thanks to guest host Ana for this fun challenge. Be sure to visit her original post at Lens-Artists challenge #159: Postcards.

It was my pleasure to host last week’s Lens Artists Photo Challenge #158: Along Back Country Roads. Thank you Tina, Ann-Christine, Patti and Amy for inviting me to host. Many thanks to every one who contributed to the challenge. Your beautiful photos took me along back roads of the United States and Canada, and around the world to South America, Europe, the U.K, India, Kuwait and many more amazing places. Thank you!

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #158 – Along Back Country Roads

Posted in Photography, Road Trip, TravelTagged , , , , , , , , , 158 Comments

I am honored to be guest hosting this week’s Lens-Artists photo challenge. As I pondered what topic to choose for the challenge I thought about how many of us are happy to be able to travel again. For this challenge I am asking you to show us your images that show your interpretation of going along a back country road. It can be a road where you walk, go for a bike ride, take a scenic drive, go off-roading in a jeep or four wheeler, or a road you take to get somewhere.

To me, a back country road can be any road that’s off the beaten track. The road can be paved, gravel or dirt. It can be one that takes you through farmland, desert, forests, quaint small towns, or in the middle of nowhere. It may even be one with quirky roadside attractions or funny signs you see along the way.

When we go on a road trip we enjoy getting off the main highways for a more scenic drive. Recently, we have even started avoiding interstate highways altogether. The header photo at the top of the page was taken on the Dalton Highway north of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Have you ever driven by a dirt road and wondered where it went? That’s just what we did one time when taking a scenic drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. We couldn’t resist turning on the road in the first image below. I don’t remember where we ended up but the beautiful stream shown in the second image ran beside the road.

Sometimes the only way to get where we want to go is on a dirt or gravel road. These next three images are examples of some we have taken in our adventures.

The Great River Road in Arkansas follows the Mississippi River
Top of the World Highway in Yukon Territory, Canada
A steep dirt and gravel road to Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina

On a recent trip to Orlando, we traveled over 1,000 miles without driving on an interstate or major highway. It was heaven not dealing with semis or drivers passing us like it was the Daytona 500.

The roads were paved, two lane roads with little traffic. There were some fun things to see as we drove along.

Bison farm near Darien, Georgia
Woodbine Fire Museum and Antique Shop on Highway 17 in Woodbine, Georgia
Businesses just outside the Ocala National Forest, Florida
I wondered where this road went in the Ocala National Forest
Lunch was delicious at this popular local restaurant in Salt Springs, Florida

I’m honored to be one of the guest hosts for the month of July while Tina, Ann-Christine, Patti and Amy took the month off.

In your post, please include a link to my original post and use the Lens-Artists tag so everyone can find your post in the WordPress reader. Be sure to check out the first three guest hosted challenges.

John Steiner of Journeys with JohnBo – On the Water

Anne Sandler of Slow Shutter Speed – Black and White

Bert and Rusha Sams of Oh the Places we see – Getting Away

Next week on July 31, please visit Ana Campo of Anvica’s Gallery for her challenge – “Postcards.”

I’m looking forward to seeing where your back country roads have taken you!