Category Archives: Travel

July 15, 2024 · 23:38

It’s Going To Get Worse Before It Gets Better

I’m talking about the world, folks, US politics specifically. We have a long way to go before the November elections and even if we get a best case result out of that (I’m eternally optimistic, but I remember 2016…) it’s going to be insane and chaotic.

So, again, here:

Go find a place like this! There were birds and fish and trees and grass! Turn off your damn phone! (These pictures were taken with a DSLR, not my phone.)

There were folks swimming and kayaking and fishing. (And waiting for the eclipse on this particular morning, but let’s focus on the big picture here, folks!) You can do that too.

It will lower your blood pressure and make you less likely to stroke out. Which would be a really stupid way to go, especially since it won’t make one iota of difference to the evil bastards that are screwing up the world. So stay calm, live to a ripe old age, and if necessary, do it to spite them!

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Health, Photography, Travel

July 13, 2024 · 23:11

In Need Of Calm

Time to step back, take a breath, and let some of the adrenaline burn off. Let’s go to a happy place.

Mount Ascutney in Vermont, of course. Maybe a third of the way up the trail from the parking lot to the summit, still on a reasonably flat stretch, there’s a spot where the tree canopy opens up and it’s sunny and the ground is covered in ferns.

I always make a point to stop there for a while. It’s quiet and beautiful and very, very green.

There are insects and bugs flitting about and I could hear birds (cardinals), but other than that it was dead quiet. I was lucky – while I was there, no one else was hiking along the trail to interrupt my reverie.

Behind me to the left the hillside climbs very steeply and there are some “small boulders the size of large boulders,” and through the trees you can see the mountains off in the distance (looking toward New Hampshire and the Connecticut River to the east, I think, maybe?).

Even if we can’t go to the “Ascutney Sea of Ferns” in person tonight, perhaps we can go there in our heads for a while and leave CNN, NYT, WSJ, and Twitter behind. They’ll be there when we come back, but in the meantime, our blood pressure and anxiety levels can drop back down to safe levels.

I’ll see you on the trail!

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Photography, Travel, Video

July 6, 2024 · 23:32

Two Honkin’ Huge Panoramas From Ascutney

Normally I post reduced sized files on this site, just because I’m paying for storage space, I’ve been posting for a long time, and I don’t want to use up all that I’m already paying for. But today, because I love these two images so much and want to share them with you so badly, I’m going to give you the full-sized files of the two panoramic views I took from the top of the observation tower on Mount Ascutney three weeks ago. Where normally I’ll post files between 1MB and 2MB in size, these are 16M and 17MB files. Click on them, blow them up, go looking at them in all of their glorious detail.

This covers about a 300º field of view. On the far left, the microwave towers are to the southwest of the observation tower. Moving to the right in the image, we’re looking toward the east, over the Connecticut River valley into southern and central New Hampshire. You can see all of the ski trails on Mt. Sunapee, and the small town is Claremont, NH. Moving to the right hand side, the Franconia Range of mountains is visible in the far, far distance beyond the foreground northern shoulder of Ascutney. On the far right side of the image we’re looking back to the west into Vermont.

Again, about a 300º field of view, so there’s a lot of overlap between this picture and the first one, with the view to the west on the far left of this image and the far right of the upper image, the microwave towers to the south in the middle of this image, and the view to the east into New Hampshire on the far right here.

I could have sat up there with a pair of binoculars and a backpack full of cameras all day long.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Travel

July 1, 2024 · 22:53

One Step Back

Thank goodness for the multiple steps forward in our lifetimes, because it feels like we took a HUGE step backwards today. It’s scary enough to see the damage, racism, incompetence, and outright treason being carried out for the last decade or so by one of the two major US political parties, which led to the deaths of over a million Americans from COVID in the last five years among other small details, but even with some of the evil, stupid, vile decisions that have come out of the increasingly illegitimate Supreme Court in the last few years, today’s tops them all. By a number of definitions, we are no longer a democracy. If the President is above the law, then we don’t have laws, and if we don’t have laws, we’re a failed society.

That’s on top of some of the personal angst going on, including the annoying pain and dental problems that don’t seem to be getting better.

It seems that my feeling of impending doom about July 2024 might have been justified. It’s not like we can’t expect the worst from the evil chucklefucks in the GOP and far-right white supremacists who want to take us back to the Fifties. (And that might be the 1850’s.)

So let’s stop doomscrolling and just breathe and calm ourselves. The Calm app helps, and here’s a picture of a peaceful, warm, beach and seagull, to help.

Tomorrow’s another day, I still (deep down) have faith that folks are good, and together we’ll get through this.

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Filed under Photography, Politics, Travel

June 30, 2024 · 23:19

Goodbye June 2024

While there was definitely “room for improvement,” (I’m looking at YOU, dental health!) I’m trying to accentuate the positive, so I went back through the month’s pictures. There were a few high points and things that didn’t suck.

(Photo: Ronnie Willett)

Mid-parade – tell me again why they start down at the bottom and walk uphill (it’s not THAT steep or that much of an elevation rise, maybe 50-75 feet or so over two miles) when they used to do it the more sensible other way around?

Never ignore the moon.

Always go out to a play, even if it turns out to be a bit on the “Meh!” side. (I was NOT the target audience.)

The stairwell where ten years ago I almost woke up the entire hotel in the middle of the night, wanting to scream and yell when the Kings won the Stanley Cup in double OT.

(Photo: VT park ranger Pat)

At the top of the observation tower on Ascutney, sweaty and probably smelling bad, but unbowed.

NEVER turn down a window seat and NEVER sit there for the whole flight with the window shade down.

I wish that I didn’t have such a feeling of impending doom about July.

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Filed under Photography, Travel

June 27, 2024 · 23:59

A Rogue Beaver?

While walking through Springfield, I found this:

It’s a telephone pole near the town Commons (where the baseball field & park is) and across the street from the cemetary.

Did this get hit by a car or some piece of heavy equipment or is there a rogue beaver wandering around town?

Our old house was only about 200 yards down the hill – I’m about 99.999% sure there isn’t any water around that might be home to a beaver, so I’m going to go with something man-made or accidental. It was the only pole I saw with this sort of damage and it did leave me wondering.

A small town Vermont mystery!!

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Filed under Critters, Photography, Travel

June 25, 2024 · 23:48

Tree At Castle Rock

As you’re walking/hiking/climbing your way from the parking lot near the top of Mount Ascutney to the actual top of Mount Ascutney, you have the option (assuming you’re a masochistic, delusionsal fool who has conveniently forgotten that you’re 68 years old and you sit at a desk all day) of going off on about a 0.2 mile side trail pretty much straight up to get to Castle Rock. I couldn’t recall ever having gone that route in the past, and they had a BOGO special on delusional that day, so off I went.

It’s not so much extra climbing and altitude gain as it is going the hard and steep way just to see a big rock with a view. I had a good time and apparently lived.

You’re probably still 100 feet or so below the summit and off to the side, but the views are nice as you pop out of the side of the heavily forested mountain and can see for quite a ways.

Sitting on Castle Rock and looking back in, there are a great many trees that look like this. The Vermont winters can be brutal, cold, icy, and windy, and the first rank of trees next to the rock are fully exposed to those elements. They’re doing their best, but they regularly get the shit kicked out of them. Yet all of them still had some fresh, green spring growth somewhere. They weren’t dead and they weren’t giving up.

And when I slipped and almost fell off of the freakin’ rock, they were there for me to grab onto.

These trees are my favorites. We are kindred spirits.

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Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography, Travel, Weather

June 24, 2024 · 23:42

Big Sky, Small Wing

Back in the 1970’s, Mount Ascutney in Vermont was a leading location for those experimenting with hang gliders. To this day, there are side trails off of the four primary trails up and down the mountain that lead to launch sites.

From the observation tower at the top of the mountain, I spotted the tiniest dot in the big sky, a rainbow wing of a paraglider.

(To Pat, the nice park ranger I met up there, who was asking about the difference betweeen a paraglider and a parasail, I apologize for getting it backwards. This is a paraglider, a parasail is typically towed behind a boat. My bad!)

Click on it. Blow it up, I’m giving everyone the full-sized file.

We’re looking east, across the Connecticut River into New Hampshire. I believe that’s Mount Monadanock in southern New Hampshire.

As good as this view was, I’ll bet that our flyer had a better one.

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Filed under Flying, Photography, Travel

June 20, 2024 · 22:36

Vermont Flowers

Yep, I took a gazillion photos, and I’m going to inflict them upon you share them for days and days.

There were wildflowers everywhere. Alongside the road, the parking lots, the trails on Ascutney…

Daisies, bluebells, clover, and some I can’t ID right off the bat. Wonderful!!

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Filed under Flowers, Photography, Travel

June 19, 2024 · 22:34

Skyscapes, June 19th

Back in LA, it’s clear as a bell during the day and cloudy, gloomy, and foggy every morning (“May Gray” has turned into “June Gloom” – IYKYK) but last weekend in Vermont there were some wonderful clouds almost every day.

I just wish that it had been a little bit more cloudless at night. Those stars the first night were spectacular!

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Filed under Photography, Travel, Weather