All posts filed under: Heritage Travel

Posts about travels to places around the globe that reflect our shared heritage

Stadium Memories

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Some people read 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die and think about how many they can check off in a year.  My quest is more modest:  to visit all the major league baseball stadiums in the next ten years.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through my list, but I have to admit that given stadium demolitions, I’ve had to make up my own rules about what counts.  Essentially, I’m just trying to get to at least one stadium  per team. So along that line, I wanted to let you know there’s a great online story – accompanying a magazine feature in Preservation – of Yankee Stadium memories on PreservationNation.org.  If you like baseball stadiums and/or baseball stories, check it out. FYI, this has been a good year in my quest.  So far I’ve visited three new (for me) parks this year:  Oakland (with Anthea and all the folks from the Trust’s Western Office), Coors Field in Denver (with Mountains/Plains Office Director Barb and Dolores), and – of course – the new Nationals Park …

A few “classic” photos

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I mentioned in an earlier post that my daughter Claire took black & white photos during our western trip on my old film camera that she calls “the classic.”  We just had that film processed (since Claire doesn’t have access to the dark room at school during the summer) and I thought I’d post a couple of her shots for all to see.  The shot above was taken in the church yard of the 1760 mission church in Las Trampas, on the High Road to Taos.  Claire said this was her favorite of about 140 shots she took during the trip.  The second photo I’ve posted is from Acoma, where Claire took two full rolls of film.  She loved the mission church at Acoma, so I’ve posted a shot she took of the bell tower early in our tour of the site.  There are so many great opportunities for photos at Acoma — the buildings and landscape are so evocative both individually and together.  In the photo at right, I liked the interplay of the …

Rafting the Rio Grande

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We awoke early this morning as we were heading out to raft the Rio Grande River south of Taos (see photo at left).  As everyone in town had promised, the rainy, cool evening gave way to a beautiful, sunny, yet cool morning.  Bundled up with fleeces, but in our quick-drying shorts (i.e., bathing suits and gym pants) we shivered our way to the little town of Pilar to meet with our guide from Far Flung Adventures. Claire has a classmate named Pilar, so we began by taking 12 different photographs around the “Pilar Yacht Club” (actually, a little hole in the wall – see photo below) so they could post a Where in the World is Pilar? album for her Facebook page.  Then we met up with Hank, Bill, and Erica – the three Far Flung Adventures guides. After a quick safety lecture, we joined up with Hank – a late 50s river guide, metal artist and all-round outdoors guy who was perfect for the four of us.  With Andrew and Claire in the front, Candice and …

Great Little Towns; Wonderful Drives

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After our visit at Mesa Verde, we took off on the short drive to Durango on Saturday morning.  But along the way, we passed the historic little town of Mancos and saw a sign for the Absolute Bakery & Cafe.  Since we love small Main Street communities AND we were ready for breakfast, we pulled over.  Mancos has a small historic downtown, and the Bakery & Cafe was in one of those older buildings.  We found a wonderful menu, a soundtrack of late sixties and early seventies songs on the stereo, and an eclectic mix of patrons.  More than once, one of us said, “This place would fit right in at Takoma Park” (the DC/Maryland neighborhood which has a great counter-culture 4th of July parade and is the area’s only nuclear-free zone – as approved by their City Council).  It has been a while since I’ve heard so much Steppenwolf, Neil Young, and Jefferson Airplane that early in the morning! After breakfast, we visited a nice local arts cooperative and then took off for Durango, …

Home of the Cliff Dwellers

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We had been told by friends and colleagues that Mesa Verde was a special place.  But until we saw the stone communities, hiked the canyons, climbed among the cliff dwellings, heard the rangers tell the stories of the Ancestral Puebloans, and took in the majesty of the landscape, it was hard to comprehend its wonder. We spent two days at Mesa Verde National Park and the lack of internet connectivity…not to mention the lack of televisions in the hotel rooms…helped us focus on the people and their stories.   It made for a very special visit for our family. On the first day, we arrived in time to visit the Spruce Tree House site (see photo above), which is easily accessible and a good introduction to what we’d see the next day.   With our appetites for the site visit whetted, we satisfied our appetites for food with a great meal at the Far View Lodge’s restaurant. The second day was full of hiking and climbing.  All four of us began the day by visiting the Long …

Bluff(ing) our way to Canyon de Chelly

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When last we were in the land of Internet connectivity, we left you in Bluff, Utah – population 320.  After driving through Monument Valley with a stop at Goulding’s Trading Company for some great Navajo tacos, we arrived in Bluff to spend the night at the historic Decker House Inn.  We were met by Sandy the innkeeper in one of the town’s more substantial homes, and shown to a wonderful double room where we could all spread out.  Needless to say, Andrew and Claire were pleased! Bluff is located in the middle of a very harsh landscape of red sandstone and deep gorges.  The town was settled by Mormon pioneers in the middle of the 19th century, and some of the buildings from that era (such as the Decker House Inn) have survived.  Even with such a small population, Bluff had some good restaurants, probably the best quality trading post we’ve seen so far, and a historic preservation organization which had prepared walking tours and great brochures of the town’s history.  After a scrumptious breakfast served …

A Few Observations From the Road

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Observation #1:  Native Americans didn’t locate near cell towers.  That’s a good thing.  But it means that we’ve had almost zero connectivity from Canyon de Chelly and Mesa Verde.  Expect the next full post on Saturday when we’re in Durango. Observation #2:  Is ANYONE left in Europe?  I can’t believe it because they are ALL touring the American Southwest.  Our experience has been that there are 3/4’s international visitors to 1/4 domestic visitors everywhere we go.  We went on a great tour of Canyon de Chelly with a big group from Italy.  Out of 24 people, only 8 of us were from the US.  It has been great to listen to all the languages but what it says about the exchange rate…and my upcoming trip to Slovakia…isn’t so wonderful. Observation #3:  Once you get the post from Durango, you can learn how I made it through an 18″ tunnel I  climbed yesterday afternoon at Mesa Verde with Andrew and Claire at the Balcony House ruins.  I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about that – …

Sacred Places

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After two wonderful days at the Grand Canyon, we headed out on Tuesday – but not before making a stop at Mary Colter’s beautiful Desert View Watchtower at the eastern entrance to the park.  Colter designed this gift shop and observation tower for the Fred Harvey Company in a way that appears to blend into the landscape.  She also brought in Hopi artist Fred Kabotie to paint the interior of the tower with symbols that depict various elements of Hopi mythology and religious ceremony.  There is a great reverence for the Native American culture here in Colter’s work.  Click on the link above for a description of the construction of the tower.  This structure is also featured on the beautiful cover photograph of my colleague Arnold Berke’s wonderful book on Mary Colter. After leaving the Grand Canyon, we headed to Utah, driving through the magnificent Monument Valley of Arizona and Utah.  Read the Wikipedia write up linked above to begin to understand the geological and tourism aspects of this wonderful place, but it is best understood …

Meteor Shower Over the Grand Canyon

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We were fortunate to be staying at the Grand Canyon on the night of August 11-12, when the Perseids Meteor Shower took place over North America.  Had we been at home, we would have lamented the fact that we’d have to drive a long distance to get away from the city lights to hope to have a chance to see the meteors.  However, when Andrew saw a feature while checking his email yesterday, he stopped by the front desk to see if the park was planning anything special and yes! – we were going to be up at 2 a.m. checking out this celestial fireworks display. The Olympics have come along at a bad time for us, because we stayed up until 11:30 p.m. (local time) to see if the USA men’s gymnastic team would hang on to the silver team medal.  (They didn’t, losing in the last event and dropping to the bronze.)  So we got about 2 hours of sleep before the alarm went off, but everyone pulled themselves out of bed, put on …

A Grand Day

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Monday dawned clear, sunny, and beautiful over Grand Canyon, and we made the best of it.  The crowds thinned considerably from Sunday, so we could hike, eat, and enjoy all there is to see at our own pace. On Sunday, we stopped to talk with a ranger and had looked through his telescope to see one of the California Condors in his nest.  These remarkable birds — now being re-established in the wild after having a brush with extinction — have a 9′ wing span, fly at about 55 miles per hour, and can soar to 20,000 feet and then coast for two hours. So imagine our surprise on our way to breakfast on Monday when a California Condor (#72 as tagged on his wings — he was that close) came swooping over our heads looking for his breakfast.  It was wonderful, and I whipped out the camera and captured this picture as he circled overhead.  The size of this bird was amazing…as Andrew points out, just think that one wing is about the size …