On the road again

Look for Sifnos, Milo and Folegandros It has been awhile since I blogged. Somewhere during our trip around the USA I just gave up fighting the photo editing and I also was not pleased with my editorial writings anymore. I may one day pick up the story of that trip with anecdotes on Denver and Santa Fe as well as Route 66 adventures. But please note I said : "I may". Since then we haven't done much that would be of particular interest to you, such as birthday trips for both of us, (Below:mail ordered Sears Fountain in Savannah $35; Sandee's Birthday bash) , the purchase of partial ownership in a vacation home in Duck, North Carolina. (Below: our new vacation home in Duck, NC) and of course the subsequent stays there (Below sunset from our deck in Duck) a gay family wedding (Below: the newly wedded and lower our gay twenty party outfits) and naturally more weeks of Amsterdam. (Below our new deck in Amsterdam and tulip time in Holland) Also...

Sandee and I have never sent Christmas cards, which is on one side not strange at all and on the other side actually amazing. And I mean that literally. I have just enough social skills to get by in this world. Ask my family and they will gladly attest to the fact that I never send them any signs of life to confirm my continued existence on this planet, no birthday wishes or congratulary contributions from my desk when anything great or wonderful happens in my growing immediate family. A van Strien family tree, where the older branches are breaking off, such as the passing of our parents, and where the family tree limbs just below the top have more and more issues, most often medical, but a tree with new lower limbs growing in a teeming way, as new offspring grace this world or new guys are joining the list (the van Strien family generates mostly female buds on the venerated family tree in need of fertilization). But does this, the now oldest, curmudgeon of them all send any of them m...

This was not on the program initially. But to do a private sunset tour, on the largest Indian reservation in the U.S., with a Navajo guide was irresistible. Thus onto Kayenta, Arizona the nearest city to the Monument Valley tribal park, after an unsuccessful try to book the hotel on the park grounds. A local B&B near the grounds where one would sleep in an original Navajo Hogan amended with a real door and a queen bed instead of sleeping on the floor, was rejected by my spouse, who needs air conditioning (in 100+ degree temps) and ensuite facilities. Monument Valley is so so Red Winter picture of the Hogan B&B The classic entrance picture to the park So we booked the most, although not fact checked yet, expensive Hampton Inn in the country. Seems that way, or the fee and taxes to the Navajo Nation causes this, or that Hampton Inn lacks competition and behaves in a capitalistic free trade fashion. The fact that the gas prices here were much lower than outside the reserv...

I knew of Moab only as a Semitic tribe from which people with questionable morals, such as Lot and his daughters sprung. The people that named this town, founded on a canyon floor, had obviously the same type of thoughts, because the city historians reference heated discussions about the name, that actually stems from the Indian name "Moapa" or mosquito. We find ourselves here for three nights to visit two National Parks: the Arches and the Canyon Lands. May I say this, and I can hardly believe that I am going to write this down, but I think I have seen these parks before somewhere in my recent past. All alone: A last one Standing? This seemingly blasé attitude came to the fore in "staying in" behavior till mid afternoon before climbing in the car for a quick tour around one of them. Newspaper Rock The wheel was invented Actually not completely true. On our way into town we sojourned into a lesser visited southern entrance to Canyon Lands ...