For a city that tends toward excess, Las Vegas can be pretty tame if you let it be. Although, really, why else would you go to Las Vegas other than to indulge in the excessive? It’s a man-made wonder that screams “PLAY ME!” “WIN BIG!” “SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!” Continue reading
It’s a long road from Big Sur to Las Vegas, requiring many stops, including the requisite morning coffee. By the time we got to that coffee, we’d already put in a good day’s work: packing up the campsite and lugging it the .3 miles to the car in the parking lot. Continue reading
As we drove through Big Sur on our way to Andrew Molera State Park a few miles to the north, where we were hoping to pitch our tent for two nights, I was surprised to see that Big Sur is not a town at all, but instead, like Coney Island in co. Down in Northern Ireland, it is merely a spot on the map, and before you know it, you’ve passed right through it. A store here, an inn there and a few restaurants scattered along Highway 1 and that’s it, except for signs for campgrounds along the way. That’s what we’re here for – a couple of nights of camping and checking out the vistas here by the ocean in Central California. Continue reading
Saturday afternoon at the beach, but first, lunch at the Lazy Daisy in Santa Monica Continue reading
As we were driving up the ribbons of concrete into Los Angeles late on a Wednesday afternoon, my mind wandered back to the last time I was here – November 2008 to see Van perform Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Continue reading
San Diego has a great rep – and it’s easy to see why. Beautiful weather, on the ocean, what’s not to love? Location, location, location – and it works for me. I’m not sure why it is, but the West Coast has always had me under its spell. Continue reading
We gave Arizona short shrift, although some might say that by taking in the Grand Canyon, we’d seen the best the state has to offer. Tucson and Tombstone will have to wait for another day. Texas is dry, New Mexico is dry and Arizona is drier still … our bodies needed to get out of the dry and get quenched Continue reading
In my lifetime, I must have seen hundreds of pictures of the Grand Canyon, each different from the last, each quintessential. If a picture does indeed speak a thousand words, I’ve read volumes on this place. And yet I knew nothing of it. The more pictures I saw, the more mysterious this place became. Continue reading
At some point back in Albuquerque, we’d made a change of travel plans. Plan A had been to carve our way north through New Mexico from White Sands to Albuquerque, on to Santa Fe and Taos, then head up to Four Corners, where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet at one point. Continue reading
Santa Fe – the mecca of the southwest. Given its history, it’s amazing that Santa Fe didn’t turn into a ghost town, let alone become a mecca. Continue reading