4 years later and it’s still a great story …

By the time Phil and I got near the front, people were pretty impatient. They were putting 3 to a chair, and when a couple in front of us got on, the lift operator looked to us and a few others for one more. Phil said, “We have two,” and to make himself better understood, he held up two fingers. The lift operator gave Phil the middle finger and said, “One!” Phil was very surprised, as was I. I turned and saw that Phil was using the baseball symbol for 2 outs, his index finger and pinky. This is very Read more…

October Travel Adventures

October’s going to be one of those awesome, crazy months for Mary and me. We’re only in Tacoma for eight days in October. 8 Days! That’s it! Crazy. Our travels are going to take us to Charleston, SC for a wedding; Minneapolis, MN for a convention; and … Italy! We will be in Italy for 13 nights. Highlights include Venice, Florence, Tuscany, the Cinque Terre, and Rome. I’ve been to Italy before but this will be Mary’s first time. Expect some travel blogging (as usual) and maybe some gelato reviews along the way. Until then, blogging’s going to be a Read more…

This Park’s For People

I was recommended Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" before our trip to Utah in June. It's a memoir of Abbey's time as a ranger at Arches National Park. Mary read it before the trip, and everywhere we went at Arches she'd mention something about Abbey. I read it after the trip and really loved it. The experience of the park in the 1960s was very different than the park today. Abbey's vision of a National Park is that all visitors should be greeted by a 50 foot tall statue of Smokey the Bear that says this: A noble vision, to be Read more…

Speaking of iPhone photos …

This photograph I took of the Hotel Del Coronado was selected by a city guide website in San Diego for use on their guide page! They asked me a few months ago if I was willing to let the photo be in their pool and I found out this morning it was selected. There's no money in it, but it's still a nice way to start the day.

iPhone as travel camera. Not bad! (with clear skies)

The iPhone was made to take pictures at Arches. Look at the colors in the photos. Every one I’ve posted so far has come from my iPhone. And autostitch, a paid program I spent $1.99 on, has done a fabulous job on the panoramas (see Landscape Arch and Delicate Arch panoramas). I just take the pictures, tell Autostitch which ones to blend, and it does. So handy! As a Posterous blogger, I use their app to create galleries, which instantly tweets it, puts it on Facebook, and adds the pictures to Flickr. It’s incredibly easy. Where the iPhone doesn’t perform Read more…