Christopher Merle

Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, but first I need more coffee.

Category: Travel (Page 2 of 3)

Goodbye Australia

September 29, 2013 /

We’ve seen a fair bit of Australia on our first trip here from Victoria to South Australia to New South Wales. Here’s just a sampling of pictures. I must say Australia is quite expensive. It is it’s own place, but there are many cultural elements from both the UK and the US that will be familiar to Americans, leaning more towards the UK in customs but the US in commercial arena. It’s been a good trip. Wife got a lot accomplished with her work which was the reason for the trip and I was able to do some work remotely (I’m a web developer).

I will say this if you ever go to Sydney and/or Melbourne be sure to do the I’m Free” walking tour. They’ve been doing they Sydney tour for about four years and the Melbourne one for about a year. If you liked it, you tipped the tour guide what you thought it was worth. We gave them $30AUS for each tour. You’ll learn there is quite a rivalry between the cities, as a tourist Sydney is easy to take a liking to it, but Melbourne requires a little more work to get to know and once you do you’ll take quite a liking to it as well.

Grand Final Parade in Melbourne

Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge

Kangaroo and joey in Wagga Wagga

We’ve travelled more this year than any other. We did a 6,000 mile road trip that made a triangle route from Arizona to Oklahoma to Montana and back to Arizona. In Montana we briefly stepped over the border to Canada. We went to Virginia. I went to California. Been to Texas twice and we still have two more trips to go for Texas, one flying and one driving. Then there’s another overseas trip that is in the works. So I can we’ve been coast to coast and border to border in one year, and the furthest north and furthest south in one year. Well, technically the trip planned will not be our furthest north ever and we won’t actually go cross or go to the Mexican border.

Street art in Melbourne

Goodbye Montana

June 28, 2013 /

Well, just spent the last three weeks in Montana on Lake Flathead. The view changed every day. This is a panoramic shot in the predawn hour today (I used AutoStitch so there’s there is some distortion). We got to go up to Glacier National Park and Waterton.

Lake Flathead

A few of the highlights besides the magnificent Glacier National Park and driving the Going to the Sun Road: Glacier Distilling, East Shore Smoke House (ate there four times, I can recommend the sweet potato fries, the Buffalo Burger and the Wild Sockeye sandwich, not to mention their excellent Montana beer selection), Richwine’s Burgerville in Polson, MT (an old style mom and pop burger joint with good burgers, huckleberry shakes and frozen huckleberry lemonade), and high tea at the Prince of Wales Hotel overlooking Waterton Valley (I think the high was from the price) When you drive to GNP go up the east side of the lake, it’s much more scenic than the west side. We didn’t get to see much in the way of wildlife. Saw a few deer, plenty of birds, and some bison at a distance on the National Bison Range. No bears, black or grizzly, no moose, no mountain sheep :-(.

My only minor regret is NOT playing on the 9 hole golf course at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo. BTW SKC is a very nice tribal college. It functions as a community college, so enrollment isn’t limited to just tribal members.

Montana

June 26, 2012 /

We got back from our second trip to Montana. My wife taught for a week at UM in Missoula. For the weekend we drove up to Glacier National Park and stayed in a cabin at Lake McDonald Lodge. Alas, the Going-to-the-Sun road wasn’t open yet so we only saw a fraction of the park. Of that fraction we saw was immense and gorgeous. The only wildlife we saw were prairie dogs and some birds. We plan to go back.

Missoula, at least downtown Missoula still has it’s old small town charm. Very walkable. Almost, a Something Wicked This Way Comes feel to it (sans Jason Robards). Replete with carousel down by the Clark Fork River. If we were rich, I could see spending parts of summer up there and escape the ever warming Tucson.

I did do one short hike at Avalanche in GNP. Didn’t go all the way to the lake because I’m still recovering from a minor knee injury, but I took some great photos including this one.

Was hoping to say hi to a friend while we were there. Email probably got caught in their spam filter, and didn’t want to pester them in case they were busy.

From Exit 0 to Exit 880

January 4, 2012 /

“The sun is riz, the sun is set, and here we is, in Texas yet.”

Won’t delve too deeply into our holiday travels just where we’d been. Our journey started in Tucson. Stopped for the night in Van Horn, TX then on to Austin, TX for two nights, over to Lake Charles, LA overnight then up to McKinney, TX for the next three days. Up to Tulsa Christmas day. There for a whole week then to Albuquerque for another overnight stop and then back to Tucson. Got to see a lot of family and friends along the way.

We didn’t drive the entire length of I-10 in Texas as we detoured through the Hill Country to get to Austin and then another state highway to Houston to join back up with it. You enter Texas at Exit 0 in Anthony, TX and leave it at Exit 880 in Orange, TX. All I can say is unless you have to drive it, don’t.

Karine Polwart

June 9, 2011 /

Melissa and I recently went on a 10 day musical tour of Scotland with Jim & Susie Malcolm. We had an amazing time. Every night but one our group had a private concert. All of them were good but some of them stood out a little more than the others. One of those was by Karine Polwart. I wasn’t that familiar with her. I’d heard of her and I learned she sang one of my favorite songs, "Follow The Heron". Cathie Ryan has recorded it among others. There were other great performers including Karen Matheson. I purchased her CD Scribbled in Chalk and I’ve listened to it quite a bit. She’s an amazing lyricist. Here’s two of her songs: "Follow the Heron" and "Hole in the Heart".

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