Travels!

Welcome to my travels! In this section I’ll share one of my passions, traveling and vacationing outside of Southern California. My wife and I are huge fans of road trips, which we started doing to save money when vacationing with our children. We explored much of the Southwestern United States with our children as they grew up. Our family spends at least one week a year in the Eastern Sierra so those galleries will be very rich and family centered. More recently we are exploring Europe. I’ve included galleries from London, Amsterdam, and Bruges, Belgium. As time allows I’ll add galleries from France and Italy.

Travels

Utah Road Trip 2020

Here are images from our Utah road trip during the 2020 pandemic. After months of lockdown in our Southern California home, my wife Carole and I took a week-long vacation to Utah. The state had opened up all it state and national parks. It was very short window before the state started reeling from Covid-19. Being well acquainted with Utah from many previous visits, we purposely chose to spend the bulk of our time hiking and photographing along lightly traveled Utah Highway Scenic Byway 12. We made very brief visits to Zion and Bryce National Parks, but concentrated on Capitol Reef and the Escalante area. We drove the backroads of Cathedral Valley, banged our heads on the low doorway of a recreated Anasazi dwelling, navigated the petrified sand dunes of Snow Creek State Park, hiked to Calf Creek Falls, trekked in search of petroglyphs and Pueblo ruins along the Escalante River, walked around Butch Cassidy’s childhood home, experienced sunset at Kodachrome Basin, took in the charm of Panguitch, and gawked at the grandeur of Cedar Breaks National Monument. True to form, the state was gorgeous and we had much of it to ourselves. I hope you can take a mini-vacation here yourself as you travel with us in your mind.

Travels

London

I first visited London as a teenager when my mother took my brother and sister and I on a 22-day, whirlwind tour of Europe. I returned in 1984 for a delayed honeymoon. In 2012, I covered the London Olympics (see my sports page), crisscrossing the city for weeks to attend the competitions. During the games I worked constantly and had no time to be a tourist. So, sixteen months later, on the winter school break, I returned with my entire family. It remains the only trip where we’ve all traveled together outside the country. Despite the varied tastes of young adults, a grandchild, and their parents, the trip was a huge success. The highlight for the family on that trip was a visit to the newly opened Harry Potter Studios where the sets and props of all the movies were on display. As the parents paying for this trip, we required our adult children accompany us to six iconic tourist sights in London, and then let them spent the remaining time wherever their hearts desired.

Following that big family trip, Carole and I began to travel the week after Christmas to Europe and primarily London. We ticked off the main list of tourist attractions and repeated a few we love (Westminster Abbey, Borough Market, Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Gallery). Now we feel very comfortable in London. One of our favorite activities is to overshoot our destination by a few stops on the Underground, then walk a few miles back through the city. That way we see parts of the city not on tourist maps. We have traveled there 4-5 times now, I lost count, and will continue to return when possible.

London is, of course, the center of the historic British Empire, and my ancestry is primarily British. Carole is half Welsh, half Austrian/Hungarian. So the culture and history of Great Britain fascinates us. Now, I know far too much about the succession of British royalty for an American, but I am an unabashed Anglophile. This is a big gallery but I think you’ll enjoy it as a mini-vacation to my favorite city.

Travels

Convict Lake

Our annual Mammoth Lakes vacation always includes a day trip to nearby Convict Lake. It is the perfect family hike or kayak paddle. There is a three-mile loop trail that hugs the shore passing through multiple environments. The north side of the lake is exposed and full of sagebrush. At the west end of the lake, a boardwalk rises over the creek that feeds the bright blue lake. It’s here that my family picnics and the grandkids wade in. On the south shore, fishermen work the deep waters and giant pine trees grow. This is where the snow collects and wildflowers flourish in season. On the east end of the lake, tourists often stop to take in the grand view, with Mt. Morrison and Laurel Mountain towering above. It’s here where we launch our large kayak to glide across this easy access, High Sierra, gem.

Travel

Bruges, Belgium

On New Year’s Eve, 2018, Carole and I stood in a public square with 30,000 residents of Bruges and sang Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, as champagne bubbled and fireworks exploded. It is obvious why this small city’s population is proud of their home. Bruges, often referred to as the Venice of the North, is an incredibly well preserved example of a  medieval city. I’m sure that much of the inspiration for many a Disney film and park came from here.

A canal circles the city and the streets are all cobble stone. Modern signage and architecture is completely absent. A visit feels very much like time travel. The town center held a Christmas Market and ice rink during our visit. It’s perimeter is dominated by the bell tower made infamous in the film “In Bruges”. Nearby, the Church of Our Lady has the world's second highest brick tower and Michelangelo’s “Madonna and Child”, one of the main art pieces recovered from Nazi theft, documented in the film “Monument Men”.

Travel

Utah Road Trips!

When our children were still in public school, we took a lot of road trips to avoid the cost of airfare, and to be outside most of our time. Utah, and a few homebound swings past the Grand Canyon, Arizona, provided several trips then. A few years ago, Carole and I revisited the highlights of the state and a couple of sights we’d never seen. We’ve been to Zion NP and Bryce Canyon NP several times, but we’re bigger fans of Capitol Reef NP and Arches NP. You really can’t go wrong in the southern half of Utah when it comes to incredible landscape. Just editing this gallery makes me want to return.

Travels

Highway 395

For over 3o years my family has traveled from Orange County, California, up the backside of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, along Highway 395. We were headed to vacations in Mammoth Lakes and Yosemite National Park. Small towns along the way, Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine, and Bishop, are towns we gassed up in but eventually became towns we revisited on shorter weekend trips. We’ve hiked out of the trailheads, played in it’s meadows, explored the Manzanar War Relocation Center, and walked through the ghost towns. We’ve stepped back in time at the Laws Railroad Museum and driven high into the White Mountains to visit the oldest living trees in the world at Bristlecone wPine Forest.

One Friday afternoon, after a long work week, Carole and I sat in a fast food restaurant anticipating a boring weekend at home. Then we had a nutty idea. Let’s book a cheap room at the historic Dow Villa Hotel, in Lone Pine, CA, for the night and take off right now. We fought the horrid traffic leaving Southern California for the high desert and Las Vegas, but once we jumped on Highway 395, near Adelanto, the sailing was clear and the road familiar. We arrived at 10 pm, and went to sleep.

Waking up at dawn and walking out on the balcony is always a soul satisfying experience. The rising sun kisses a huge wall of granite, the High Sierra, and the tallest peaking the lower 48 states, Mt. Whitney. Just below the giant mountains are the Alabama Hills, a large BLM area of dramatic rock formations used as the movie set for many iconic Western films.

This is a magical place that I visit as often as possible. Hope you enjoy the ride.

Travels

Japan

In April 2009, I traveled around Japan with Orange County Register travel editor Gary Warner, illustrating a handful of stories he was writing. We dubbed the trip the “Second Best of Japan” since we visited Nagasaki, the second city to have an American atomic bomb dropped on in WWII, and the second largest Buddha in the country at Kamakura.

We were working a story about baseball in Japan and the involvement of American players. We visited Koshien Stadium, home of the Hanshin Tigers, which is the oldest and most revered ballpark in the country. We were amused by the beer girls who strapped a keg to their backs and delivered draft beer to fans in their seats. The seventh inning traditional balloon release was a spectacle. 

In Fukuoka, we explored Canal City mall, a massive complex reminiscent of Orange County’s mega malls.

In Nagasaki we started our tour at the Peace Park before spending some somber time at Ground Zero and the Atomic Bomb Museum. 

We stayed at the Yokohama Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan at the time. From there we took a train to nearby Kamakura to see the Great Buddha and the nearby Hase-dera Buddhist Temple and gardens.

In Tokyo, we broke the rules and snuck photographs in the Imperial War Museum, where WWII Kamikaze suicide pilots are revered as divine. A side-trip to Tsukuba, to see the sister-city of Orange County’s Irvine, gave us the experience of the masses commuting in and out of Tokyo. Our final night was spent staring out the window of our 50th-floor hotel rooms at the Ritz-Carlton.