TRAVEL and places of interest

Niagara Falls in winter.

Approach to Santa Fe runway in Dave's observation plane.

One of two observatin plane sof this type. NASA has the other.

Cognitive enhancer at Daylight Headquarters. It works.

Boats in a Chinese harbor

Bicycle built for three makes a lot of sense with a one-child government policy.

Dragon by the harbor in Dalian

Carving from Beijing marketplace. About $100 each for window shutter size

Great Wall. In the distance and up close. Quite an ambitious hike. Rode cable car to the top and took wheelie-luge down.

Road to Lanzhou. Dumped off in tiny airport. Boarded bus for 90 minute ride on bad roads and came upon a city of about 6M with highrise buildings... right in the middle of nowhere. Only caucasian I saw there.

Tianneman Square is pretty intimidating.

Beijing before dawn out of my hotel window. Not a dedicated photographer... jet-lagged.

Old and new Beijing: skyscrapers and artifacts from Curio City

Shanghai harbor

Shanghai city streets

Floods in August 2001

Recent trip to Bryce Canyon. Sunsets, Bill the Cat butte, trail rides and, of course, Poodle Rock, the canine hoodoo.

Dinant in southern Belgium. Hom eof Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone. Heard some good jazz down here.

Lenticular cloud over Mt. Shasta during visit Mar 2001.

Looking down into Chamonix and the Aguille du Midi from high up on Mont Blanc.

Composite of the Grand Place in Brussels. Miss that place.

Just what you'd guess. Old Faithful.

Side trip from Sturgis

Galileo's tomb in the Chapel at St. Croce. Amazing trip through this 'cemetery.'

A torture museum in France. I'm not sure what all this stuff does, but it's mostly bad.

Well, as long as everybody's laughing.

Yosemite.

Arizona: Some of the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi.

In Nime, France. A picture of the old coliseum reflected in the gold mirrored windows of a modern building -- somehow strangely juxtaposed in space and purpose.

The old aqueduct over the gorge near Nime. Built in 75 A.D. A 300 ft drop, no barricades, folks strolling casually across the broken stone (not me, I went inside) and not a lawyer in sight.

The Badlands. See Justus and Jared hiking down. Thid was the trip to Sturgis and they loved the Badlands.

Bavaria. We have hiked well up above the valley where Neuschwanstein is located. You can barely make out Hohenschwangau in the distance.

Somewhere near Cancun. I think this was out on the Isle Mujaras.

A couple shots of the sunset taken from the south tip of Denmark.

Taken of swimmers when underwater with an underwater camera. Beach in Greece.

Castle McCrack. Part of the British National Trust and available for lease. We and the Holts leased it for a wonderful Scottish vacation Grant-on-Spey.

Renaissance Fair just outside Novato California.

The headstones of the Clantons at Tombstone Arizona, site of the gunfight at OK Corral.

   Stonehenge:  A drizzly day (what else).  Shot through the fence.  Although there was a group there "communing" with the stones, they had special dispensation and we didn't.

  Nederland:  A beach on the coast.  A perspective study reminiscent of Escher's "Other World" possessing four segments converging on a center point.

  Oostende:  A pier on the Belgium west coast.  This picture happened to be taken during a solar eclipse although that is certainly not apparent.

  A French village.  River ran through the village located about a kilometer from the 'origin' of the river as it flowed up from underground.  Font-de-Vaucluse.  This is the place that had the museum of medieval torture devices.

  Side street just off the main plaza of Luxembourg city.

  Athens.  Our hotel was directly across from this artists 'nest.'  His paintings were for sale on the street but his house itself was a work of art.  Shot from hotel room.

  Waves breaking over the divide in the bay at Oostende.

  The Cinquantenairre, the gateway to Brussels, a present on the fiftieth anniversary of Belgian independence.

  The Temple of 1000 Columns in Chichen-Itza.  Ruins of the Mayan civilization.  It was a wild jeep trip into Chichen-Itza.

  Along the waterfront in Stockholm.

  St. Malo:  French Normandy coast.  An old fort built out in the bay.  It is isolated at high tide by water -- and dry all the way to the fort at low tide.

  OK.  It's true, our boys never objected too much to topless French beaches.  However, the bottomless phone booths were even more of a surprise.  Lacanau Ocean on the Bordeaux coast.

  Stream running through the French Alpine village of  Chamonix.

  We were sitting in a restaurant having dinner, when the light outside 'changed.'  I got up and took my camera outside.  Looking back over the roof of the restaurant, the sun setting in the west had illuminated the glacier on Mont Blanc.  Unfortunately there is not film to do justice to these colors.

  Later that same evening we shot this moonrise from the village plaza.

  Mikonos:  Greek Island.  A row of houses looking like a bit of Venice along the Aegean Sea.  A little outdoor restaurant offers this view along with great calamari.

  Brussels:  The appeal is obvious.  The sky in the building, surrounded by dull grey clouds.  I sat on a curb about 45 minutes, then ran into traffic when the clouds were right.

  Carmel California:  The lone cypress, a well known area landmark.

  Paris:  Otherwise, a relatively straight shot of a familiar landmark.  Digitally modified.

  The castle Hohenschwangau built by Ludwig.  He lived here as he built the fairy tale castle, Neuschwanstein.  He died before occupying the new castle.  Here at Hohenschwangau he would entertain Wagner.  Taken on a foggy night.  We were staying in a restaurant with rooms a bit down the street.

  We arrived at the base of the road leading up to Ludwig's Neuschwanstein at dusk.  We hiked up and caught this eerie first view of the castle in the low light.  

  The next morning was crystal clear.  Justus, Jared and I walked across the bridge behind the castle about 6 AM, then decided everyone should join us.  We went back and got the whole gang.  We stopped at the gift shop to buy gloves and ear muffs as it was quite chilly.  A picture like this was on a post card.   I told the clerk we were hiking up to get it.  Her response was that there are two or three deaths every year of those wanting to get that picture.  It's too long a story but by the time it was over, we had no reason to doubt her.  All alive.

  A Scottish loch.  Photographed about 5:00 AM when the water and air were perfectly still.  We'd visited the day before, but poor light and choppy water afforded no good photos.

  A portside hotel in Kobe, Japan.

  Church in the volcanic crater on the island of Tenerife.  The crater is about 10 miles across and has a rugged, eery landscape that made it a preferred choice for movies like 'Planet of the Apes' and 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.'  The island is wonderful, and in a small radius that can be easily traveled in a day, one can have desert, rainforest, beach, woods, etc.

  The ball court of the Mayans at Chichen-Itza.  The game included an effort to place the ball through the hoop one sees on the upper right.  Scenes around the arena suggest that the game may have been connected with human sacrifices.  What isn't clear is whether it was an honor for the winner or bad news for the losing team.

  The main temple at Chichen-Itza.  Each of the four sides has a stairway like the one seen.   Only this side has been sufficiently well restored to permit it to be climbed.  The one to the left of the viewer (around the side) has a serpent's head at the end of the stone 'rail.'  At the autumn and spring equinoxes, at sunset, the corner of the pyramid casts an undulating shadow along the railing wall which ends in a serpent's head creating the appearance of a great snake god.

  Of course we had to climb it and it is amazing how steep it is.

  China.  China, Indiana, that is.  Part of a long standing project to photograph the 'world' through the cities of Indiana, like, Mexico, Peru, Angola, Brazil... and of course China, as shown here.

  The library in the ancient city of Ephesus (now in Turkey).  The library is located right across the street from the brothel.  Uhh, honey, I need to return this book.

  The public toilets in Ephesus.  So much for the good old days.

  The palace of the Minoan king on the island of Crete, in the town of Knossus.  These ruins are amazingly well preserved from about 1700 BC.

  The church in the main village on the island of Mikonos.

  The mountain top village on the island of Santorini.  The boat docked in what would be the lower right side of the picture.  One could then either climb the flight of stairs up the mountainside or take a burro shuttle.

  In the above village, in Santorini.

  Cancun beach

  The Atomium in Brussels.  A museum with a restaurant at the top.  Was the central feature in a fifties-something World's Fair.  Dated, but still kind of cool.  Body-centered cubic crystal structure. 

Fountain in Kobe

Ronchamps, France.

  Temple in Korea. 

      Niagara Falls.  Amazing and beautiful place.