Blog

We keep coming back to this park. There’s trails at sea level, there’s a trail going to almost 14,000 feet to the snow-capped summit of Mauna Loa, and there’s plenty trails in between. On two recent trips, we backpacked to remote areas where we pitched our tent. This time (March 2014) we stayed at the… Continue reading Hawaii Volcanoes National Park 2014

The hotel duty manager warned me: Honoka’a shuts down by 8:00 p.m. That’s why I’m here. It’s time to go out on the town. At night, this old sugar cane town takes on an unfamiliar hue, reminiscent of sepia-toned photographs from a different time.  I wonder what is going on. The sodium street lights seem… Continue reading Honoka’a after Dark

Honoka’a Theater, still operating. There are many Hawaiis. There’s the Hawaii of shiny resort hotels, shopping, and activities for purchase. Then there’s the Hawaii of rusting corrugated iron roofs. And there’s the Hawaii of trails that predate Cook’s first encounter back in 1778. I like to wander through these Hawaiis.I’m currently staying in the little… Continue reading Old Hawaii

Poster on my office wall It’s hard to beat a journey that starts with deicing fluid rumbling onto hollow metal. Before you know it you’re six miles above a perfectly blue Pacific. Then, just as the sun is thinking of setting, you arrive in HNL (Honolulu) to a terminal with walls open to fragrant tropical… Continue reading Castles in the Air

We were riding the Delhi metro when we became aware of dirty looks, and, oddly, all the other passengers were female.  Then it dawned on us we had stumbled into the women-only coach. The fine for this infraction was higher than for riding on the roof, and it was being regularly enforced.  The subway train was moving, we… Continue reading Walking into Forbidden Places

This picture evokes vivid memories. April 2013, I’m underground in Tokyo, in Ikebukuro Station, the second busiest train station in the world with over 2.7 million passengers a day. I never walk up on the surface of Tokyo. I’ve just arrived from Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku, the nether regions of Japan, to catch a train back out of… Continue reading Ikebukuro Station

United Crushers, Dinkytown, Minneapolis Recently, a friend and I “walked the Green Line,” a light rail line between Minneapolis and St. Paul which starts service in June. Along the way, many structures caught our attention, including the “United Crushers” grain silos in Dinkytown, Minneapolis. The silos have been disused for years. There is no “United… Continue reading Urbex Lite

Frozen Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis Kilauea caldera, Hawaii Big Island “Why do you live in Minnesota?–The winters are too cold. You should move.” I hear this from a person who brought up a family in a Minneapolis suburb. When her husband retired, they moved to a new subdivision in the Arizona desert. There is… Continue reading Frozen Lakes and Lost Places