Funny thing

The folks in the southwest of the country are a little proud.

 You can’t get much further away from Dublin. 

Day 36

 You get yesterday:

The Burren —

Inisheer, Aran Islands —

The rock walls are ubiquitous 

Shipwreck on the east side looking toward the “mainland”

O’Brien Castle and a Napoleonic era watchtower 

Cliffs of Moher, bottom —

Hags Head

You might recognize this

O’Brien’s Tower, elevation 702’

Cliffs of Moher, topside —

A shamrock in the wild

Now do you recognize it?

The gateway to O’Brien’s Tower

Cornelius O’Brien built the tower for visitors to view Galway Bay, the Aran Islands, and the Cliffs from an even higher vantage point. 

It’s the cave from Harry Potter 

Land the Half Blood Prince

Day 19

 

A river runs through it.

Yesterday was a really nice day. 

This morning it was cold enough to snow here . . .

. . . and it did!

It didn’t stick. 

MB posted a short video on the koobecaf. 

Warning!

Started a post on March 24.

It went nowhere.

This isn't much better.

We are on the road, rails, in the air, and a short boat ride until the middle of June.

If you a follower on the koobecaf, you'll see what we are up to.

The labels, below, are a hint.

Where are we now

 Yesterday’s photo was at Icy Straits Point, Alaska, where bears outnumber the people four to one, and average around 1200 pounds. 

Today we’re at Juneau, Alaska’s state capital. We shared the port with three other cruise ships, all with a lot more than four times as many passengers than ours. We have about 900.

The day started early with a bus ride to Mendenhall Glacier. 

Mendenhall Glacier is only 13 miles from Juneau and accessible by road, which makes it extremely popular. 

Then we caught a boat to to go whale watching. 

We also saw a bear, eagles, and orcas. 

Then we returned to Juneau and documented we were here 

In ‘n out

 We made our way into Yakutat Bay to view Hubbard Glacier.

It is six miles across it’s face and up to 400 feet tall. 

We waited for one ship to leave, and another waited for us. 

No words . . .

 . . . almost

  Another eagle

A pod of orcas

Holgate Glacier 

Das boot*

 

Yeah, that’s not it.

It’s around here, somewhere. 

Here it is, Viking Orion, our home until August 31.

And here’s an eagle. 

*the boat (with apologies for my limited German) 

Travel day

 It isn’t often Mt Rainier shows itself this well

 Next stop, Fairbanks 

Miles and miles

 

From Cheyenne, Wyoming to Wells, Nevada yesterday. 

We should be home later today. 

Out of order

 . . . but also yesterday

We crossed the Mississippi 

Spelunking?

 Carlsbad Caverns NP

I came up with my own names for the last two:

Kinda looks like the Grinch in the second photo. 

The third photo looks a lot like Jaba the Hut. 

We also visited Guadalupe Mountains NP, but MB gets all the glory of photography for it. 

Where were we?

 Oh, yeah . . .

Colorado is noted for its Rocky Mountains.
We'd driven through them a little over a week before, but it had been dark most of that time because we'd started out at some unnatural hour.
We weren't in such a hurry this day so we drove west on I-70 with the idea we would head north and drive through Rocky Mountain National Park.

The weather was gorgeous.
It was about a two hour drive to the south entrance to the park.
The scenery is spectacular and the road traverses the Continental Divide.

Yep, it says 11,307 feet

We were halfway to the park at this point.

There's a visitor center just outside the entrance, so we stopped to see what the highlights of the park are.
Almost the first thing we heard from a ranger was there were issues with the highway at the highest part of the park, something about ice.
We decided to go ahead anyway.

About ten miles into the park we stopped again.

You can't get there from here!

We were informed that the road might open that afternoon, but they were still removing ice from the pavement near the next summit.
We were determined that we'd see the park so we reversed direction and drove back the way we'd driven, not quite back to Denver.

So we saw a lot more than we'd planned by taking back roads through the foothills to Estes Park and entering the national park from the east side.

The long way around.
When we reached the east entrance we found that the road had been opened about a half hour after we turned around.
We also found that we were not going to be able to get to the Alpine Visitor Center at the top of the park before it closed.
Besides the wind was really gusting that late in the day.
However, we did get some pretty spectacular views.

I'm gonna strongly suggest that you click on the images below to get the full effect

Even then you can't imagine how spectacular it is.

For our next stop we drove to Loveland, CO, where we stayed the night.

next, Wyoming

Monday update

It has been some time since there was a "real" post here.
The Muse has had little to do with that.
Portability is the culprit.
Living is portable blogging only works really well on a computer.
Even commenting is a challenge with a phone or tablet.
But I'm pretty sure that's all been mentioned before.

It's really all about change.
You can resist, but it really is futile.
It happens anyway.

Don't believe me?
Go back to where you lived 40 or more years ago.
Odds are that all but the permanent landmarks look different, if they even are still there.
For example:
I was born in San Francisco and can tick off more changes than you can shake a stick at*.
But I will use another example: When I was eight years old my widowed mother remarried and we moved our new family to Menlo Park, on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Just across the county line to the south is Palo Alto, which gets its name from a redwood tree near the railroad bridge that crosses San Francisquito Creek, the county line.
The tree was probably named by Gaspar de Portola way back in 1769
It was a really old tree and very tall.
The tree was visible from some distance along the El Camino Real (shortened to ECR by those who cruised it regularly).
Today you can't see that tree.
It's gone about 50 feet shorter than it once was.

It seems like all of the other landmarks from my ol' stompin' grounds  are missing, or have undergone major transformations, as well.
Classmates lament that everywhere we hung out, all through our school years, are gone [is gone?].
It's kinda fun to remind them that they're not there any longer, either, and they don't look the same.

I'm not really sure what has inspired this post, or even if it's inspiration.
I was just thinking about how we are more accepting, if that's the correct word, of  instant change than we are of those that occur subtlety over time.

I'm pretty sure that the one change that irritates my classmates the most that many of them cannot afford to buy the house they were raised in* (if it is even still there).

that's life

*Buck's not around any more but he'd let me know about where I left that preposition.

I forgot something

Imagine that.

I like maps (clicking on them will enlarge.
These kinda give you an idea of our sojourns while on Maui.

In order of the days and lacking the walking parts:

th... th... that's all folks

What day is this?

Somehow the count is screwed up.
Doesn't really matter.
Today is day seven, but thepictures are from day six.

We knew we were going to either drive up to the top of Haleakala or around to the east end of the island on the Road to Hana.
The determining factor being if we could see the mountaintop when we stopped for gasoline.
The clouds were already beginning to cloak so it was tne low road for about fifty miles along the coast.

Now, I gotta tell ya, the highlight of this road is that there are more places on it than I could count where it isn't wide enough for a linedown the middle.
Also, it is not a lightly traveled road and there are tour buses.

We pretty drove straight through.
It only took about an hour and a half.

Yeah Hana harbor has a beach.
But there are lots of beaches on Maui.
The next stop was as we returned.

The black sand beach at Waianapapa [sounds a lot like whiney pineapple] State Park.

Yes, it is scenic.

A little further down the road we saw evidence that some folks have difficulty sharing the road.

There are almost as many waterfalls along the road as places wbere it's only one lane.
It was a worthwhile drive that we can now tell others they shouldmake.

We arrived back at our accommodations in time to view the sunset   . . . again!
I turned around in time to observe that the mountain, Haleakala, was no longer entirely encased in clouds.

We observed a large number of Green Sea Turtles passing by the beach, in the water.
They poke their beads out of the waves, kinda like a submarine snorkeling.
Somewhere in the following picture, near the bottom, there is one doing exactly that.

Then four of us had dinner.