The South... It Shall rise again!

So, I came down South... for perfectly logical reasons too - Atlanta's on the way to Cancun from Boston; I've friends to visit down here; and the contract I was finishing up at work was for a company in Atlanta - meeting them face to face seemed like a good idea. So, first off, hooray for seeing Duke friends whom I haven't seen in a while:

Irina and Michael, at their house in Atlanta. Last time I'd seen them was in Seattle, and they were still proud residents of Boston, Massachussets!

The family Maggee: Matt and Kristin, along with Julie and baby Kyle. We have seen each other merely a year ago, but they have added a new member of the family since then!

So, hanging out with friends was goal #1 in Atlanta. Finishing up work was goal #2, but that's hardly worthy of any photographs, or much of a blog mention. Goal #3 was to explore Atlanta a little bit, and so, on Saturday, we all set off for Stone Mountain. Which was a fascinating place... A bit of a history revuw: see, here I was thinking that back in the 1860's, we had us a bit of a Civil War - there was a number of reasons for it, the South fought bravely, but eventually the North won, and, though it took a while, the South has generally embraced this. Save for an occasional Dukes of Hazzard fan with a Confederate flag in his garage and a 'The South shall rise again!' on his mind. Well... it turns out that this notion may be a little more wide spread than just your deranged Daisy Duke fan in his garage, as Atlanta has constructed a beautiful called Stone Mountain. (Which happens to be one of the most visited tourist sites in all of the South.) And it's apparently a very tastefully done monument to the Confederacy:

The Confederate leaders: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson

Now, personally, I'm a little torn on this. On one hand, it is all a part of history, and should by all means be remembered and properly appreciated. On the other hand, the South lost, and shouldn't we be moving on by now? It just seems a little odd that this isn't a private display, but (I presume) a state-sponsored one. But hey, that's where I get to "it's the South! And it wouldn't be the South if it wasn't just a little weird! Or if it made sense! I mean, grits!? Really?"

Fortunately, Stone Mountain isn't just a perplexing monument celebrating the losing side in a war 150 years ago. It's also an 825-foot tall rock that you can hike up, which we promptly did. Both kids in tow! And a local Christian group doing the hike at the same time as us... And also this guy. But we made it to the top in fairly short order and were treated to a spectacular view of our surroundings:

I had no idea the city Of Atlanta was in the middle of so much forest!

Don't want to walk? Just ride the Sky Lift!

So... that was Atlanta. And the South. Fascinating... interesting... a little weird! Apparently still more than a little put out about a certain General Sherman burning most of the state of Georgia to the ground...

Hello Blogosphere!

Have you missed me, blogosphere? I've rather missed you... It's hard to believe that my last post was almost a year ago! Lest you be afraid, I have not run out of exciting and exotic places to visit... I've just been short on time to report on said visits. But, at this particular moment in time, I'm back on the road! (for a mere month) - which ironically enough gives me more time to blog than being back home in Seattle. I suppose not having a job helps. Today's trip brings us to the Lands of the Maya - Central America, but we'll get to that soon enough, the starting point was in Boston - to watch the Boston Marathon:

First come the super elite women

Followed by some slightly less super elite runners, who are actually willing to acknowledge the crowd

And then the super elite men show up

And eventually you start to realize that there is a LOT of people running this marathon! And qualifying is a pretty high bar...

Now, when I say super elite, these guys finish the marathon (26.2 miles) in just over two hours. This year's temperatures were quite high for the marathon - peaking at 88 degrees(!), so they didn't quite set any records... yet the winning time was 2:12:40 for the men and 2:31:50 for the women... which I would term fairly ridiculous. But then again, I don't like running all that much, especially not for 26.2 miles! But, we weren't just here to watch the insane Kenyan runners (and the insane ones did still have some trouble with the heat - apparently several of the top runners had had to drop out because of leg cramps due to the higher than normal temperatures). We were specifically here this year because, Kelly, a friend from Seattle, had qualified for the Boston marathon last summer and was running this year, so Erica and I were there to cheer her on:

Kelly and Lora celebrating at the finish line - we did a lot of cheering for no leg cramps... And just the general having of a good time - Very good, very good, yay!
Now rewinding a bit from the finish line, the Boston Marathon hits Wellesley College at just about its halfway point, and Erica, a Wellesley alum herself, had been telling me all about the spectacle that is the Marathon running through campus. So we promptly headed off out there to watch most of the Marathon. And the Wellesley ladies did put on quite a show for the runners

The main road through Wellesley, lined with Wellesley students cheering the runners on... hunting to collect a few kisses

Largely by utilizing some hilariously creative signs - Erica and I may have stolen this one for ourselves; it just seemed so utterly appropriate.

Erica also has a lot of friends in and around Boston (who were kind enough to let us stay with them!) - Karla came out to watch the marathon with us and brought along the runners' #1 fan: her cute 15 month old daughter Vivian. Seen here doing her best to urge the runners on through the heat!
Marathon day was actually fairly exhausting - from being up at 8 to make it to Wellesley ahead of the runners, to fighting our way through the crowds to make it to the finish line, to the 88 degree weather, it was a little tiring. You know, not exactly 'I just ran 26 miles' exhausting, but a little tiring. Fortunately, after meeting and congratulating Kelly at the finish line, our plans for the rest of the day called for a perfectly relaxing barbecue with some of Erica's old Boston co-workers. So, sightseeing and such had to be saved for another day... and, in fact, we had saved it for the day before (look at us be all prepared!), when we headed off to have a look at the Wellesley campus (yes, we saw the marathon from Wellesley as well, but there wasn't much sight seeing involved at that point).

Erica, seen her full of glee to be back on campus (and to play tour guide)

After a little while, I started to realize that Wellesley actually reminded me quite a bit of the Duke Campus - lots of Gothic architecture; a tall phallic symbol sort of thing towering in the middle of it all; the entire campus essentially being surrounded by a forest... and then!

Naaaaaaaaan! Nannerl Keohane was the Duke president when I was there (and we didn't much like her), and where did Nannerl come from!? Well, apparently, she'd been president of Wellesley College just before making her way down South to Duke. And Wellesley hangs portraits of all the former presidents, seemingly just to drive the point home for me (they also have fun stories about how the one and only time they had a male [interim] president, the campus had been struck by lightning... twice! So, there's that.)

There were, admittedly, a number of pretty stark differences from Duke too - for one thing Wellesley is a women's college (Erica frowns upon my referring to it as "an all-girls' school"), so all the students we saw on campus were women... which after a while started feeling a little weird. Especially, since none of them were having pillow fights. Wellesley is also quite a bit smaller than Duke, so it really seemed like a miniature version of the Duke campus - the chapel is smaller, you can get across campus faster... the lake is, well, the lake's actually bigger. But the campus as a whole was smaller!

All in all, Boston was a lot of fun, and a nice way to ease back into a month of traveling - seeing a bunch of friends, getting chance to visit Wellesley, and watching a world-class athletic event. And at that point, it was time to head South! Aiming for Cancun and Central America eventually, but with a layover in Atlanta for a few days to see more friends and finish up some work... More to come!

Making the [National Park] Rounds

At some point, I came to an odd realization: I've seen more of the natural wonders of places like Mongolia, Argentina, Nepal, and New Zealand than I have of our very own U.S. of A. This didn't seem right - there's no shortage of natural wonders to see in this country of ours ... so, over the past twelve months, I've started making a conscious effort to check some of the more famous American outdoor sites off the list.

Let's begin in upstate New York just under a year ago - the Niagara Falls:

Iguazu's still bigger, but Niagara is mighty impressive

Traversing this grand country of ours (by rail) for a couple of days brought me to the Great Plains, and pretty soon, I was staring at one of the grandest man-made outdoor sites in the world:

South Dakota's Mount Rushmore

Which brings up some philosophical quandaries - it surely is an outdoor site, but it's not exactly natural... I say as long as it's a National Park, and is one of the more heavily visited of American sites, it belongs on this list!

So, moving right along - likely the single best known of America's natural wonders, and certainly the grandest (no pun intended) is Arizona's Grand Canyon. This one, I'd actually been to once before, but that was all the way back in '99, when I was such an un-seasoned traveler that I didn't even have a digital camera. All fixed on the visit this past March:

The Canyon was glorious and snow-covered shortly after sun-rise on this early spring day

So, Niagara, Rushmore, Grand Canyon... how to round that bunch out? Right - Yellowstone! You don't get a lot more authentic with your outdoor sites than the gigantic tract of land comprising the world's first National Park. So, early June, just under a year since having started this latest journey of discovery at Niagara Falls, I landed in Yellowstone to join my parents for a week of sightseeing at this grand national park.

Yellowstone, looking positively other-wordly with geysers smoking all around

The geysers are constantly going off - this one is simply [and appropriately] named "The Grand," seen sending a powerful spray of water up here

When not exploding, the thermal features are busy smoking (a bit menacingly) and creating an astonishing array of bright colors. The Grand Prismatic Spring pictured

I didn't have much time to research Yellowstone before arriving - it's huge, there's a bunch of geysers, a lot of wildlife - no shortage of sites to see. The details of these sites we learned en route - none disappointed. Yellowstone is actually amazingly vast and diverse, it's not just Old Faithful and the rest of the geyser bunch - traversing the park puts you through an ever-changing cavalcade of scenery: the geysers and the hot springs give way to the lakes, waterfalls, and rivers, which merge into the Canyons, which lead you to Lamar Valley - "America's Serengeti," dubbed so for its wide mixture of wildlife out easily in view. And then, there's the Mammoth step springs up in the North-Western corner of the park, which simply defy classification altogether. Click here for a hundred or so pictures of the best of the park, but a few more of the highlights:

A pair of buffalo playfully fighting early in the morning... all of 20 or so feet away from the road

Mom, dad, welcome to the blog! The three of us at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone - not quite the Grand Canyon, but pretty Grand nonetheless!

And eventually, you might start thinking, "you know, one thing that's missing here? That's some big ol' mountains - up close and personal! There's snowy peaks off on the horizon, but couldn't they have planted them a little closer!?" Well, never fear - just drive South for two or so hours (and the one thing that annoys me about American National Parks is that you do absolutely have to drive everywhere) and you are surrounded by those snowy elusive peaks, smack in the middle of the Grand Teton National Park, dominating the valley of Jackson Hole:

The Teton Range

The mountains rising up above Jenny Lake on a beautiful, sunny day out in the park

And at this point... I think it's safe to say my American National Parks are beginning to catch up to all those other far off lands. Sure Yosemite, which I'm yet to see, makes a strong argument for being in the top five (and it remains high on the list), along with Alaska's Denali, Hawaii's big volcanoes, Florida's Everglades, Montana's Glacier National Park... who knows what else! But a few at a time, and so far, over these past twelve months, I'm off to a good start. Mt. Rainier, right here next to Seattle, continues to beckon to be climbed as well, and that may well be the next piece of American Nature to conquer, as I keep hoping/planning to summit this year... If I can get there before July 24th, it'll even fall within a year of Niagara!

So pretty... so beckoning! Not even nearly as tall as the mountains in Nepal, Bolivia, Peru... it must and shall be conquered!

Still not convinced about the variety of natural wonders to be seen in this vast land of ours? A few more picturesque destinations from the year past:
The Tulip Fields in Washington's Skagit Valley
Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada and the Rocks of Sedona, Arizona
The Mountains of Utah
A different perspective of Mt. Rainier, still just outside of Seattle
The Playa of the Burning Man festival... one of the most spectacularly amazing settings
Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay - did you know it too is now the domain of the National Park Service?
Victoria Island and its Burchart Gardens are in Canada, but I'm willing include the great land up North in this little exhibition!
Devil's Tower, on the great plains of Montana (you're gonna have to scroll down some)

And a couple more natural sites of note rewinding another year back in the way back machine: Lake Tahoe and Crater Lake.

Taliesin West

I rather hate lumping Taliesin into the 'Arizona's kinda weird' category. Not because Taliesin isn't weird - this workshop and architecture school established by Frank Lloyd Wright certainly is quite weird and unusual, it's just that its airy, geometrical, modern designs are exactly the kinds of weird that I like! But then again, I did enjoy the dateshakes and the ocotillos too, so maybe it does fit after all?

Just take a left on Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd

And in short order, you will arrive at Taliesin West (symbol pictured)

Main building, full of airy, geometrical, modern designs

Frank Lloyd Wright, the uber-famous architect of the early 20th century, had his main base in Wisconsin. He'd named that base Taliesin. At some point (in the 1930's, I think?), he realized that winters really sucked in Wisonsin, so he promptly came out to Phoenix, Arizona, bought a large parcel of land and proceeded to construct Taliesin West - a place that was to become a winter headquarters for his operations. Soon enough, it became a studio and a prestigious architecture school as well. Wright was a lot more into inspiration than he was into details, so he was happy to put through the would be students through rigorous training, but it took another fifty years before the school was to become a fully accredited institution.

These days, Taliesin West continues to function as an architecture school and a design studio. It is now occupied year-round and is a permanent home to some thirty students, but you can also come by and take a fascinating tour - trying not to disturb the work of the students and getting a chance to experience some of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural brilliance firsthand.

One of the buildings in the complex, featuring symmetrical protruding spikes

Inside one of the buidings. Featureing a design drawing of one of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings

Heloise Crista was once of the students here - now a number of her statues is featured in the courtyard. 'Being in the Moment' pictured here.

And this will conclude the 'Arizona is Weird' introspection. We had a good time in Arizona actually - Grand Canyon, Sedona, seeing friends, going to a couple of spring training games, having a date in Dateland, learning about the life and times of Frank Lloyd Wright... it was all quite interesting. Arizona as a whole though, this land of retired 'snow birds' and immense urban sprawl, did strike me as just a bit nonsensical. All in good fun, of course!

Next stop on the whirlwind adventure of the South West was a weekend in San Diego, but I'd been to San Diego many a time before, what with my parents having lived there for over ten years now, so it doesn't seem quite as interesting and exotic. Besides, it was over two months ago now, and I've since moved to new interesting and exotic sights, seeing how I'm composing all this from right outside the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone Naitonal Park, so I'm going to skip posting about San Diego. If you want a quick glimpse at what we did there, including the funky natural environs of San Diego's Wild Animal Park, click here for a full album of the Southwest, including all the best of San Diego!

PS. Yup, it took another three weeks to get from composing this over by Old Faithful to actually posting it - apparently, working does not leave a lot of free time for blogging... Erica may be able to catch you up on adventures in San Diego though, dear Blogosphere. I will aim to post something about Yellowstone eventually - give it another month or two, just to be safe!