Monument Valley
Views of the iconic Monument Valley, photographed by Claire H. Brown.
All posts filed under: Heritage Travel
Posts about travels to places around the globe that reflect our shared heritage
Random Ridge
I just heard from my good friend Susan in California. Her note reminded me of a wonderful time that my daughter Claire and I had a couple of years ago at Susan and her husband Bill’s vineyard and winery on the Sonoma/Napa border. Susan was writing to say she enjoyed the blog and that she loved baseball, acoustic music, historic places, and teenagers. Hey, she’s my target audience! This is a post to connections and friends. Susan is a preservation lawyer. Bill is a surfer, poet, and winemaker. Their wonderful wine is Random Ridge and Claire and I enjoyed a delightful lunch and afternoon at their winery a year or two ago with the staff and families of the Western Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The day was rainy (hence the appropriateness of Susan’s photo of the double rainbow at Glen Ellen) but the friendship was warm. Claire and the other children enjoyed playing with Susan’s dog and marveling at Bill’s ceilings made of surfboards. The adults enjoyed the wine, food from …
In Praise of Independent Coffee Houses
Dolores emailed me this morning to say that our neighborhood coffee house here in Silver Spring – Kefa Cafe – was having a customer appreciation day with free food. Candice and I had been looking for a time to have a coffee together, so we braved the remnants of Hanna that are making their presence felt in Washington today and enjoyed our coffee, pastries, and good company. There’s a nice post on Kefa on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s This Place Matters site where Dolores tells why this is her Third Place in Silver Spring. Run by two sisters since 1996, it is a great place to hang out, enjoy good food, and meet interesting people. Candice and I shared our table today with two middle age guys who just returned from their weekly basketball game at a local gym…a tradition they’ve continued for 20 years. Support that special independent coffee house in your town. Like all unique and special places, they are going too fast. More to come… DJB
Rafting the Rio Grande…the Pictures
Our pictures from the rafting trip in New Mexico showed up the other day…so here’s one that shows who’s doing the real work in the front seat (Claire and Andrew) and who’s sitting in the “safe” middle seats (Candice and David). Enjoy! More to come… DJB
Wrapping up the western tour
After the first day back at work, I have pulled together a few final observations from the road and even more photographs from our trip out west. Thanks to all for the nice comments (both public and private) on the travelogues. You helped by allowing us to share the joy of travel. More to come… DJB Image: Detail from Acoma by Claire Brown
Practicing
Four restful days on the Patuxent River in Southern Maryland brought our summer holiday to a close. We used this time for unwinding from our western travels, reading, talking as a family – but mostly for being. The sunset on the river was illustrative of the four wonderful days of weather we experienced…nary a day when the AC was required…but it also struck us as appropriate for an end-of-summer-holiday post. We’ve been fortunate enough to have access to this retreat for nine years, and there are some traditional activities we’ve taken on during that time. While our visit was shortened this year, we were still able to visit Cone Island at Solomon’s to buy the traditional “Monster” ice cream cones that Andrew and Claire showcase below. It just wouldn’t be a summer without a Monster! Candice and I were also able to finish some reading over the weekend. Candice completed an out-of-print book she bought on Amazon entitled Nourishing the Soul: Discovering the Sacred in Everyday Life and said it was transformative in its insights. …
Stadium Memories
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
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
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
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, …
MORE TO COME... 