Category: United States
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California Tripping: Yosemite National Park
“You should ask for her Facebook account now,” Joseph tells me as the bus hisses and slows down at our first stop in the Yosemite National Park nearly 200 miles east of San Francisco. It has been around four hours since we left the City by the Bay at dawn and the bus is set…
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California Tripping: San Francisco
I guess I’ll start by saying what this is – some sort of a love letter. I don’t think I’m the first one to have ever succumbed to romanticism during a prolonged trip to great places. But I can’t blame those people. Traveling exposes our weaknesses, it brings us closer to our fears, and it…
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California Tripping: Los Angeles
Before we know it, the sun is gone. My eyes try to adjust but I can’t figure out where we are. Then just as unexpected as the sudden darkness, I see them. Trees. My vision is a bit fuzzy, but the wide slabs of wood are unmistakable. I’m in a forest. And we’re not alone.…
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2643 Miles: Grand Canyon West
We are greeted with the bad news. We can’t ride the helicopter because unusually strong winds are blowing across the southwestern desert and are preventing flights from taking off into the Grand Canyon West. Instead, we will just have to content ourselves with seeing the portion of the canyon from the Skywalk, a U-shaped cantilever…
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2103 Miles: Salt Lake City
Standing at around five-foot-three – probably around my height – with a smile that never leaves her face, Kim, for me, has become the face of Salt Lake City. She’s not from here, and she’s not even American – she’s from South Korea. But she typifies the quality I have come to love about the…
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1801 Miles: Yellowstone National Park
It’s four in the afternoon and I’m in the middle of a large forest clearing, shivering to the bone. I’m with dozens of visitors looking at Old Faithful geyser – calm as of this moment – inside Yellowstone Park, the world’s first national park and one of the largest in the U.S. The sky is…
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1408 Miles: Black Hills
Early the next morning we head to the Black Hills in South Dakota, a large patch of mountains just off the border with Wyoming. Before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, South Dakota was the home of Sioux American Indian tribes and this bit of history comes alive at the Crazy Horse Memorial, a yet incomplete…
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741 Miles: Arches National Park
Utah – that famed state of red rocks jutting out of great expanses of sand being grilled under a scorching sun that hangs above a cloudless blue sky. This is the land Archaic peoples have called home for millennia, before Puebloan, Fremont and Ute people took over as they scourged for food. Here, water, extreme…
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Cruising the Alaska Panhandle
It feels very much like any morning in a hotel. I get out of my bed, wash my face, and prepare to go to the breakfast buffet. As I close our room’s door, an Indonesian housecleaner walks by. “Good morning!” he greets. Stuffing the door card in my pocket, I greet him back. But as…
The Tourist Gaze 