Cades Cove: History Is So Much Fun!
While visiting Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we spent a day at Cades Cove. Twenty-seven miles west of Gatlinburg, Tennessee and once a thriving farming community, it is now the park’s major tourist attraction, receiving more than two million visitors each year. We enjoyed the trip between the town and the Cove, on a [...]… | more |
Sego Canyon: Rock Art Glory, Mining Town Ruins
One of the most enjoyable things we do in the southwest is search for petroglyphs and pictographs, the rock art made by the native peoples. Sometimes we come upon them as we hike in canyons and at the base of cliffs. Sometimes we find information about them in books or online, and then we go [...]… | more |
No Place is So Beautiful that the "Magic of the Marketplace" Can't Ruin It
Estes Park, Colorado, is the gateway town to Rocky Mountain National Park. Much of its downtown was destroyed by flood in July 1982 when the Lawn Lake Dam burst. It was soon rebuilt, and those who oversaw the reconstruction did a good job. People still live in or close to the central business district, and [...]… | more |
Every time we visit Pennsylvania, we notice the air pollution. According to a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Physicians for Social Responsibility, Pennsylvania’s air is the second most toxic in the nation. Much of the pollution comes from coal and oil-fired power plants in Pennsylvania and nearby states, but there are [...]… | more |
We first visited Estes Park, Colorado in June 2004. We stayed at the Discovery Lodge motel, which offered a pleasant setting at a reasonable price. The town is nestled in a “park” surrounded by the Rocky Mountains, under the majestic gaze of Long’s Peak, at 14, 259 feet, the highest mountain in Rocky Mountain National [...]… | more |
Ten Years on the Road, Part Two
I grew up in western Pennsylvania. There were woods nearby, and while I often played in them, their wonders—the trees and birds, the changing seasons—escaped me. I never asked why the robins flocked to the neighbor’s yard in the spring or marveled at the bushes glistening in the sun after an ice storm. I didn’t [...]… | more |
Ten Years on the Road, Part One
We’re driving in a dust storm somewhere in the Navajo Nation in Arizona. We’ve just passed “Church Rock,” and to the north in Utah is The Valley of the Gods. We can barely see the road, and the tumbleweeds are dancing on the highway, careening off the windshield and dashing madly across the desert. 660 AM [...]… | more |
"That Which is Full of Wonder"
There is something astonishing about rock arches, and every time we see one, we marvel that nature could produce such works of art. How can there be such a thing as Landscape Arch, the longest in the world, an impossibly thin span of 290 feet, stretching like a rainbow between its sandstone moorings and made [...]… | more |
We were in Las Vegas, a cheap stopover on our way to a month or so in southern Utah. Our hotel, South Point, is on Las Vegas Boulevard but far south of the Strip. It’s a good place to stay. The staff is friendly, and our room, which was larger than our old New York [...]… | more |
These Homes Were Made (and Paid for) by You and Me
When we lived in Pittsburgh in the 1990s, my mother came to visit for a few days. She always wanted to see the Henry Clay Frick mansion, so we drove to Wilkinsburg, just outside the Pittsburgh city limits, to see it. Frick was the chief lieutenant of Andrew Carnegie and the architect of Carnegie Steel’s efforts [...]… | more |