None of Your Business!

image from nbclatino.com

In my last post I voiced my disgust with the liberties police take on a daily basis in regular, unthreatening situations, and I wrote that nobody seems to have a problem with it. Not enough to do anything about it, anyway. This, of course, is not completely true.

When Doris Lets Me Down

(Image from mappery.com)

The Evolution of X recently wrote a post about maps versus smartphones. Unlike E of X, I do like using the narration on my smartphone. It saves time, money and gas.

When I look at a map to get somewhere in a city, I have to look several times because I have a memory like a sieve. Now, looking at a map while driving is never a good idea, not to mention

Raft Books: My Excuse For Browsing

I’m not big on collections. I used to be. I had all sorts of collections. If I saw something I liked, I would start a collection. Until I felt that I was surrounding myself with things just for the sake of surrounding myself with things, and I got rid of most of them.

Inventive Roads From . . . the Netherlands

This is cool. And Dutch.

Martin Chuzzlewit in the U-nited States

(Image: charlesdickenspage.com}

Since I’ve been blogging about Victor Hugo’s stories, let me jump over to England and Charles Dickens.

This winter break I had the bad luck to get the flu. For days I could barely get out of bed. But every cloud has a silver lining, and this cloud’s lining was that I got to read Martin Chuzzlewit in a few days.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

I was very tempted to use a bridge photo, but that would be a spoiler for a future post. I like this one, too, though, because it shows reflections of different things in different sections.

In Yellowstone National Park, dogs are allowed in cars and campers, but not outside except for in the campsites, on leashes. I took this picture of a small dog in a huge RV in a parking lot near a waterfall. I was wondering when I was going to use this picture. Thanks for the challenge!

 

Emigration List: The Bare Necessities

As I was going through recipes for Thanksgiving, I came across a small list from almost nineteen years ago. I always come across this list around this time of year, because I keep it in my recipe book. Which, the last couple of years, I only open around this time of year.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal

(Image from Wikipedia)

The lava flow of the Valley of Fires in New Mexico was formed about 5,000 years ago; it’s one of the youngest lava flows in America. The vegetation still looks like it started popping up rather recently. And in geological time it has.

Click here for a short but informative video about the Valley of Fire.

FIve of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done

A much younger R

Well, let’s see.

Literally one of the hardest things was the first time I dived off a diving board. This was in a swimming pool in Switzerland. I was twelve, and on vacation with my then best friend Dees. We went to that pool several times, and she dove in like a pro. Toward the end I finally took what was meant to be the plunge. But it was a belly flop instead. Although the term belly flop doesn’t really cover it. A flop sounds soft. This was not soft. In fact, I can still remember just how hard it was, slapping flat onto that water. Very hard indeed.

Some Black and White Rockies

September 11, 2001: Where Were You?

They say that any American alive at the time can tell you exactly what he/she was doing when JFK was shot in Dallas. September 11, 2001 was one of those days as well.

American International Dissociation and the Melting Pot

Cartoon by O’Farrell

One of my readers asked me a while ago to give my take on the apparent ambiguity between the American “melting pot” diversity and America’s dissociation from the rest of the world.  Well, here it is.  My take. I’m fully aware that I’m generalizing the heck out of this, but the question itself is generalizing, so that makes it totally okay.

The Rockies: The Ending

Okay, I’ve put it off long enough. I’ve managed to prolong our vacation through these photo posts, but now I’ve come to the end. Not that there won’t be more photo posts about the Rockies, but they can wait.

The Rockies: Bear? Where?

So we saw bison and elk, and two wolves at the river’s edge. They were playing and taking their time, and people were taking pictures from the other side, but just when I was finally almost close enough to start taking killer photos, they decided to leave. Aaaarrrghhh! The photos of the elk in the previous post were my photography high point of the vacation, and these wolves were my biggest photography frustration.

The Rockies: Elk

The other animal that we saw a lot of in Yellowstone was elk. Apart from when you’re in the car, it’s not a good idea to get too close to bison, but I got pretty close to a beautiful male elk. I think I was about eight feet away at some point. That’s also not recommended; the grammatically annoying signs everywhere say that “all wildlife are dangerous”.

The Rockies: Bison

Apart from the mud volcano and the mud pots and a few fumaroles at the beginning of our day, we mainly saw animals. So many that we never got to the next geothermal feature. And mostly we saw bison.

The Rockies: Mud Volcanoes and Sulfur Pots

The next day we woke up to find ourselves in a wonderful campground, with lots of trees and little trails going off behind our site. Not that we spent any time there. We left after breakfast and didn’t come back until well after dark.

The Rockies: Jackson Hole and on to Yellowstone

So the last three posts were all about one day, and it still wasn’t over. We got to Jackson Hole in the evening. You can tell by the gas station that it’s a prosperous town.

The Rockies: Oh, the Horror!

This series of posts wouldn’t be complete without me complaining at least once. So here goes.

I didn’t fully appreciate how clean Colorado is until we crossed the border into Utah. And Wyoming is worse. Every roadside and every rest stop is trashed. When we got down from the RV, we immediately had to watch where we walked, to avoid all the broken glass, and I regularly picked up trash that was in the way of a good picture. And all this despite the steep fines for littering.

The Rockies: Or Rather, The Plains

I drove after the stop at Big Sandy Reservoir, and being in control of the breaks meant that I could pull over a lot to take pictures.

After that reservoir we drove through the endless plains of western Wyoming. You can drive for tens of miles and not see a single structure, other than the barbed wire fencing along the road.

The Rockies: Big Sandy Reservoir

After our afternoon and night in Rock Springs, Utah, we drove on up to Jackson and then east to Yellowstone. B was no longer nauseous. He was drinking water and holding it in, and eating some jello at my insistence. He still didn’t feel all that great, but that was understandable after the day before. He got to lie on the couch while we drove, strapped in, of course.

The Rockies: Dinosaur National Monument

We backtracked slightly the next morning to squeeze in Dinosaur National Monument before going on the Yellowstone national Park, or at least Jackson, Wyoming.

The Rockies: Let’s Just Forget About Counting Days

Okay, where were we? After State Forest State Park we drove clear across northern Colorado to Utah. Not so many spectacular mountains, more rolling landscapes of the high desert.

What Happened? All Will Be Revealed

Hi folks. Just a short note to let you know I have not forgotten my blog. Nor have I vanished from the face of the earth. I have a legitimate reason for suspending my Rocky Mountain trip updates for a few more days. So don’t unfollow me just yet. More will come, I promise.

The Rockies — Who Gives a Heck What Day

After Rocky Mountain National Park, we drove to State Forest State Park, where we were practically guaranteed to see moose. That would be nice, especially a bull moose from a little closer up. But no such luck. Not a moose to be seen.

The Rockies: Day–I Have No Idea What Day

The next day we spent driving back east to Estes Park from our campground in the western part of RMNP. We had seen two bull moose the day before, but from such a distance to be uninteresting in photos. So imagine our surprise when we saw a mother moose and her baby calmly munching willow leaves not more than twenty feet from the road.

The Rockies: Days — I Lost Count Already

We took the smaller scenic route to Rocky Mountain National Park from the Black Canyon (highway 50 east to just before Salida, and then north on 24 through Leadville to the last bit of Interstate 70, but honestly, I think going straight up to Interstate 70 from Montrose would have been more scenic. Except for Blue Mesa Reservoir, the biggest body of water in Colorado. It goes on and on as you drive east on 50 from the Black Canyon, and it’s worth seeing. Especially if you’re used to lakes always being surrounded by trees. Here the desert comes right down to the water’s edge.

The Rockies: The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

The next day T had to work, so he stayed in the RV while the kids and I went along the rim trail that ran from just outside the campground to the visitors center. The walk was about one mile along the rim of the canyon, but it took us an hour and a half, because there was so much beauty to take in, and so much breath to catch, since we weren’t used to the altitude. Here are some of the many, many pictures I took during that walk.

The Rockies: Day 2

We spent all of the second day driving from Durango to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We had driven the road from Durango to Silverton before, and we had taken the old train as well, but it’s spectacular every time.

The Rockies: Day 1

For the next two weeks I’m having a photo blog of our trip to the Rocky Mountains.

The first day we left Austin in the evening and drove to Fort Stockton, in west Texas. I didn’t count that first day. But the next morning in Fort Stockton, I was the first one up, so I took a walk around the campsite. It was just an ugly campsite in the middle of nowhere, for people on their way from somewhere to somewhere else, but there was a very short trail into the desert. The sun wasn’t up yet, so I was hoping to see some critters.

Where Are You From?

In my previous post I asked what my readers would like me to write about. I realized later that I would be in big trouble if I got no reply. Would that mean that no one is interested in what I say? Or they don’t care? Or what if I have no readers that day? Would reposting the question be too desperate? This could very well spell the end of my blog. But fortunately someone did reply. Phew, thanks, Hanneke, for averting my existential crisis!

Mount Snowdon in the Spring

Well, I’ll wait with the scathing post. I was cleaning up the slides I’d scanned a while ago. I used to have slides instead of photos. So I saw them even less than photos. That’s one of the things I love about a blog. I can see my favorite pictures and share them with whoever is interested.

Anyway, I didn’t clean my slides very well before scanning them, so I was doing that in Photoshop last night. Amazing!

A Bit of Uncharacteristic Mushiness

Okay, for those of you who think I’m too negative about America, let me confuse you again.

Do I seem schizophrenic to you? Well, that’s because I am. Not clinically, but being Dutch in America, I can’t help being in a permanent schizophrenic state of mind. Depending on what I’m

Walking Down Virtual Memory Lane

Photo: tageo.com

I visited a nice blog with photos of Enkhuizen a while ago. My parents lived there for a few years. in the Westerstaat. It has a link to Google Earth  and it was great to stand in front of the house!

I told myself I should do that more often. There’s nothing like Google Earth if you’re a homesick emigrant. Or just getting older and wanting to go down memory lane. Well, now I can.

The first place I went was Collaroy, in the state of New South Wales, in

They Landed Where?!?

I recently discovered Ted Talks, when a really good and amusing Ted Talk video about book cover design was going around on Facebook. It has since become my new magazine of choice.

I especially like to select the videos that have been labeled “jaw-dropping”.

It Could Be Worse

And now for something completely different. Click here for some beautiful photos from Rumania that put our recession into perspective.

Crazy Teen Driving : The Dutch Version

In early summer of my senior year of high school in Bilthoven, the Netherlands, I cycled from Eemnes to my school (about a 45-minute bike ride) when the weather was nice. Otherwise I would take the bus and the train.

Top Ten Things I Miss About Holland

• 

  photo: Autumn Arnold, Peanut Cheese

  Not worrying about money, or getting fired, or getting sick, or not being able to retire, or how to pay for the kids’ colleges.

• Having all my friends within visiting distance.
• Having seven weeks paid vacation plus vacation pay (like a thirteenth month’s salary).
• Going to the doctor or hospital without my wallet.
• Walking around the Saturday market and buying big, beautiful bunches of flowers that last for weeks and only cost a few euros.
• Traveling by train. Relaxing and looking out the window with a cup of Earl Grey tea instead of sitting in traffic.
• Taking the ferry to England and hitchhiking to the Cairngorms or the Lake District or wherever, and hiking around, camping in the wild.
• Cycling for the purpose of getting somewhere.
• Sleeping with the windows open (scorpions would crawl in if I did that here).
• Watching a decent documentary on TV without having to subscribe to HBO.

Tourist Flowers

Knowing that they are considered quintessentially–or stereotypically–Dutch, like windmills and dikes, I refused to like tulips for the longest time. I felt they were tourist flowers.