Mary Anne and Steve’s Travels

…and sometimes other stuff

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Étude begins

It’s been quite a while since I announced that we would replace Impromptu with a new Nordic 40. What’s been going on since then, you may wonder. Construction has been delayed by the twin curses of the pandemic: labor shortage and supply chain delays. Whether they can make

by Steve

Les Musées de Tacoma

OK, why the French? Search me. As I said in the last post, this voyage is light on photos. Just a few things that caught my eye. If you are in Tacoma with time on your hands, I recommend a visit to both the Washington State Museum of History and

by Steve

Going Down…

I published a ton of photos of South Puget Sound last year. Since we’re covering a lot of the same ground (er, “water”) this year, I’ll just post photos of a few things I found attractive or unusual. From north to south…

by Steve

One More Thing

During our first visit to Petrified Forest National Park, I asked: Here’s what I don’t get about petrified wood: how come when the organic material is replaced by minerals, it generally comes out still looking like wood? I mean come on, minerals come in every color of the

by Steve

Painted Desert - Part 2

We left the charms of the El Rancho in Gallup, New Mexico, drove west on Interstate 80 for an hour or so, and re-entered the Petrified Forest National Park at its northern entrance. We were early. The park had just opened for the day, not too many people were around,

by Steve

Home of the Stars

If you find yourself traveling along Interstate 40 near Gallup, New Mexico and in need of a place to lay your head, you could do worse than to check yourself into the El Rancho Hotel. It’s an historic hotel built by R.E. “Griff” Griffith, the brother of film

by Steve

Soda Water

The area along NM Highway 4 south of Los Alamos has a number of hot spring spas. Perhaps it’s because the Valle Grande volcanic area is nearby. One hot spring, rich in calcium carbonate, slowly built the Soda Dam through pretty much the same process that forms stalagmites and

by Steve

A Matter of Scale

The Earth will kill you. This green field beckons. People seem to have a hardwired affinity for green. This particular patch is deceptively huge. There are herds of elk roaming down there that look like ants from there I was standing. In fact, the meadow is fourteen miles in diameter.

by Steve

Visiting Dr. Atomic

Prior to the Second World War, there was nothing much to Los Alamos except for a private boarding school for rich Eastern boys and a few homesteaders. When the government decided that Los Alamos was just the place to try to develop an atomic bomb in complete secrecy, the boys

by Steve

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