|
New Zealand is doubly blessed with spectacular natural beauty and some of the most fearlessly creative people ever to embark on careers in the tourism industry. These were a few of the most memorable places/adventures on my two-month trip to the islands down under.
Got my first up-close view of the Colorado mountains in the early '80s, and it's been a favorite travel destination ever since. I even got a chance to live there for a couple years when I took a job as the editor-in-chief of The New Brewer, a trade magazine for the American craft brewing industry. (Yeah, sometime you just get lucky...) My time there in the foothills inspired me to write a song called "Groovy Town" and you can take the ride with me here. Just hit "play" above.
We felt a little like Lewis and Clark, paddling our canoe down uncharted waters, seeing all sorts of wondrous new sights.
Of course, Lewis and Clark didn’t have shuttle bus rides, number 15 sunscreen, coolers full of soda, or blaze orange life preservers, but what the heck. This is the ’90s. You do what you can.  ALLIANCE, Nebraska – It sits there, silent and solitary, in the middle of the Nebraskan plains. It's a couple miles from any real sign of civilization. It's not on the road to any major tourist destinations. It's not a money-making venture, and there is no admission charged to see it. There doesn't seem to be any rational reason for its existence.
And yet, there it is, all the same. It is Carhenge, one American man's tribute to England's famed Stonehenge, and it is built entirely from primer-gray junk cars. Amsterdam is an intoxicating jumble of old and new, a place where street art, sex shops and cannabis cafes coexist with world-class art museums, well-preserved Golden Age architecture and traditional bruine kroeg (brown cafes).
Pay attention.
So few of us do, says Drake Hokanson. We run from meeting to meeting in our busy daily work schedules. We drive from place to place and seldom take time to talk to a stranger or notice the texture of a wheat field or even just look at the sky. Hokanson is on a quiet crusade, of sorts, to change that.
This instrumental tune was inspired by long drives along the Great River Road in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. It is not one "road" really, but a series of connected highways that have been designated a National Scenic Byway Route through the coordination of the states and municipalities bordering America's great waterway, the Mississippi River.
The global pandemic we're now living through has disrupted our lives in so many ways. Zoom meetings, livestream concerts, online classes and other virtual realities are just some of the many new intrusions into our daily existence. But when it comes to travel, "virtual" is really nothing new at all. In fact, the original virtual travel experience has been with us for centuries.
I am sometimes lost, often mute, and usually ignorant, and I’ve just got to get used to it.
I’m an American in France. An American who doesn’t speak French. This is the perfect opportunity to look stupid in all sorts of neat places, from the Riviera to the Notre Dame Cathedral to the Palace of Versailles, at the train station, a restaurant, a hotel, or just plain walking down the street.  PEGGY'S COVE, Nova Scotia – Nova Scotia, one of Canada's four "Maritime" provinces, is the country's second smallest province. Yet it contains an amazing 7,500 miles of coastline. Peggy's Cove is typical of an old Maritime fishing village. It's located a short drive west of the provincial capital of Halifax on the Atlantic Ocean coast. Lobster traps and well-traveled boats like the Harbour Mist lay in wait in the harbor on a foggy morning in late May.
|
I REMEMBER TRAVELJourneys in sight and sound by Mike Starling categories
All
archives
May 2024
All text, images and music in the I Remember Travel weblog ©Mike Starling unless otherwise noted. Music published by Bean Hoy Music (BMI). All rights reserved.
|
RSS Feed
