Photos, descriptions, and observations by Louis Burkhardt & guests
I fly Frontier, proudly, knowing at any juncture a flight might be late or canceled. Once I drove back from Tulsa to Denver because (1) the flight was canceled and (2) the Frontier employee told us, “Oh, and we don’t fly out of Tulsa tomorrow, so you’ll have to find a different airline.” Continue reading “Zion National Park (Angels Landing)”
One year after my previous trip, I repeated the opportunity to visit Chris, a friend from my undergraduate days, and Adrienne, his wife.
This time I came prepared with one request: that we visit the yellow cliffs popularized in the television series Broadchurch. Sometime in the intervening year I had watched and, really, become attached to that scenery. As one of the characters says,
It is gorgeous, and, I confess, once again life imitates art. Continue reading “Southern England: Revisited”
As with “Peru 1,” I’m using some annotated photos, this time from a 2011 trip, in order to put them to rest in a travel log. Laura was already there, as it was the end of a lengthy visit to Bolivia and Peru.
Continue reading “Peru 2 – Sacred Valley (Cusco and Písac)”
No, I have not recently returned from Peru, though I wish I had. Instead, I’m using some annotated photos from a 2008 trip and am converting them into an entry here. There are several unspeakable reasons for this.
Continue reading “Peru 1 – Sacred Valley (Cusco, Machu Picchu & Inca Písac)”
A year ago, I visited and wrote about this area of Baja (Lower) California Sur (South). This current post is brief—some readers are still working through the previous post on Southern England, a short history and tour guide to key spots in that area.
One would think that someone who had both taught Shakespeare and written a dissertation on the Globe playhouse would have made an early visit to England to know what he was talking about. Not I. Instead I waited about 25 years to visit, and not for a professional reason, but for the opportunity to visit Chris, a friend from my undergraduate days, and Adrienne, his wife.
This is adapted from an email Mindy sent (8/14/2017) while on a trip from Missouri to Washington D.C. Between her (un)timely visit to Charlottesville and breakfast in Trump’s hotel, the content may interest more than the original audience (and she’s given me permission to post it). – Louis
Here are the highlights from our (Mindy, Josh, and friends’) time in Washington D.C.
Before we went to D.C. we were in Charlottesville—I don’t have any pictures from it, but it was a really nice town with more cars than I prefer. Josh and I had a great time at a running store where a guy named Turtle sold Josh a new pair of runners and I really enjoyed hanging out with Sarah and Kyle and walking around and looking at the campus and shops and things.
Baja (lower) California is a peninsula comprised of two Mexican states, Baja California and the southern half, Baja California Sur. I spent a week at the southern end, a bit to the east of the Southern Cape, the beginning of East Cape. The nearest city with an international airport is San José del Cabo (Saint Joseph of the Cape).
Flew to Mexico City for a week-long visit with only two goals: meet a friend and return home in one piece. Arriving in the evening, I discovered my cell phone failed to find a signal (guess I forgot to figure that out), but the airport internet service allowed me to email my friend, BR, who was waiting in a different terminal. For fifteen years I had known him, yet we never met in person. Over this time (over the Internet), he proved himself to be a thoughtful, honest man who worked hard, harder than I, translating a gigantic medical book. So it seemed fitting to meet him as a friend, now that I had ended the employment that brought us together.
BR is a medical doctor turned translator. He’s a smart man, often correcting problems in the English text, usually medical inaccuracies but also some grammar.
Getting There
Flight booked, no rental car, no real knowledge of where we were headed: Laura, Rodina, and I were going to fly to Santa Ana (John Wayne Airport) day after Christmas to retire briefly from the Colorado weather.
Newport Beach photos in the Dead of Winter 2014
Recently, I was in Durango to drop someone off at the Colorado Trail and then drove on to Hovenweep (Utah), to admire the 800 year old stone and mud buildings that have survived.
Starting near Molas Pass (which is about 6 miles outside Silverton), I hiked from Little Molas Lake trailhead westward about 5 miles, to spend the (lightening filled) night on the Colorado Trail.
Continue reading “The Colorado Trail as One Can Pick it up at Molas Pass”
During this week, I camped along one of my favorite trails near Boulder. The trail is so nice that it seemed for decades there was an unspoken rule among us hiker: don’t let the masses learn about this place. Now the place is much better known—now being among the places one is wiser to visit during a weekday.
Last weekend I made a quick trip to northern New Mexico, where my sister was working on renting her house.
Normally, I enjoy driving alone, but, tired of my thoughts and my driving, I decided to pick up a hitchhiker just south of Questa (which is just south of the New Mexico border, on HWY 522).
Perhaps my co-worker (whose advice opens the initial post) said “Go to a small town north of Puerto Vallarta … ” because that direction fits my taste better than did Puerto Vallarta.
Continue reading “What I Do When Not At Work (Mexico 3 of 3)”
Tomorrow, I leave Puerto Vallarta for a smaller town, Sayulita, to the north.
Yesterday, walking around, looking at menus, I saw this: “Pork ribs severed with baby potatoes.” The juxtaposition with “baby” made it worth pointing out to the host, who appreciated it, asking me to write “served” on his hand so he could update the sign, giving the sales for that entree a boost.
About ten years ago a co-worker, renowned (in our small company) for violently hitting his mouse and keyboard to the point of destruction as he wrote software code, said, “Go to Puerto Vallarta. It’s beautiful and is not so well known to tourists.”
Continue reading “What I Do When I’m Not at Work (Mexico 1)”