by Jeff Drake | Oct 18, 2019 | 2019 France & Spain, Uncategorized
Well, in yet another clear case of “life interruptus,” my hopes for finishing my Alva Noe consciousness blog before leaving on our next overseas adventure have been dashed. Why? Because I was too damned lazy and besides, we are off to Europe tomorrow!...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 17, 2019 | 2019 France & Spain, Uncategorized
Provence (Roussillon) It’s always surprising how long the wait seems before going on vacation, then suddenly you’re traveling and soon, before you know what is happening, you are back, the vacation is over and you’re thinking, “Wow, that was fast!” And for this...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 16, 2019 | 2019 France & Spain, Uncategorized
Truffle Hunting! On our trip to Italy in 2017 we paid to go on a truffle hunting excursion. It was a bust! Climate change had delivered several years of drought which is anathema to truffles. To boot the Italian truffle hunter spoke barely any English at all and knew...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 15, 2019 | 2019 France & Spain, Uncategorized
Carrières de Lumières and Vincent van Goh France, of course, drips with history. One thing Lisa and I always love to do when visiting someplace with lots of history is to read about the area we’re traveling to in order to discover any interesting historical tidbits...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 14, 2019 | 2019 France & Spain, Uncategorized
Provence Outings and Carcassonne During this trip we drove all over the Lubron Valley, visiting small towns and plus beau villages. There are all sorts of churches throughout France and the Dordogne. Interestingly, so many of the monasteries are Cistercian, the 3rd...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 13, 2019 | 2019 France & Spain, Uncategorized
Sarlat-la-Canéda & environs I’m going to wrap up France with this post, then I will do one more final post about Barcelona. All with photos, of course! After one evening in Carcassonne, we got back in the car and drove to our final French destination,...
by Jeff Drake | Oct 12, 2019 | 2019 France & Spain, Uncategorized
After 3 days dealing with reordering and moving literally thousands of files between external drives and getting my Lightroom catalog back in order and two days of visitors, I finally can finish this travel blog. I have to get ready for a trip to New Jersey tomorrow...
by Jeff Drake | Aug 20, 2019 | Travel
We just returned from a cruise to Alaska, a trip I undertook with some trepidation, given the rather not-so-good experience we had with a cruise to Mexico in 2013. For Alaska, we went with Celebrity, Mexico was the Princess cruise line. Our itinerary for Alaska: 08-02...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
A number of factors caused my wife and I to recently take a rather (for us) sudden trip to Utah. We usually spend more time planning for an upcoming trip, but both of us felt the need to “get away” for a few weeks. Our house was becoming somewhat of a weight on our...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
The name “Capitol Reef” is kind of misnomer. I first thought that it might be some kind of ancient primeval coral reef that had been exposed due to erosion, but I was wrong. It turns out that there is a relation to the ancient sea, but only in the sense that the rock...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
The good times continued in and around our next stop, Bryce National Park. This park contains one of this country’s most spectacular geologic sights, the Grand Staircase – Escalante National Monument (more on this below). We’d been hearing and reading about a...
by Jeff Drake | May 15, 2019 | Travel
The last leg of our trip takes us to Big Water, Utah. This town is near Page, Arizona, which is home base for all things that are Antelope Canyon. And this was our primary target! As I mentioned previously, Antelope Canyon is on Navajo land, which means the Indians...
