Favorite Travel Photos

I enjoy photography and since I don't have a lot of new experiences to share here,  I thought I would share some of my favorite travel photos instead.  If some of these photos look like paintings that was my intention. Most of these photos are from The Nomad Years.

Nicaragua. Taken from a moving car. As so many of my photos are. 

A timeless photo on the Big Island, Hawaii

Young girls in Guadalajara, Mexico.  

Flamingos in the Florida Keys

 Was this something I dreamed?  It doesn't seem real to me. 

We were in Utah driving down a quiet country road. I saw this scene, turned the car around to confirm what I thought I saw. 

A young girl milking a cow. Utah

Vang Vieng, Laos. A rather strange but scenic place in the middle of nowhere where Westerners go to hike and get high. 

This was a detail from a photo of a streetcar in Lisbon. I thought it looked like a painting

This is the original photo of a streetcar in Lisbon, Portugal from which I took the detail above.

A plaza in Cascais, Portugal where Franklin and I considered living when we first became nomads. 

A street in Sitges, Spain

The colorful and fanciful Pena Castle in Sintra, Portugal.  Madonna has a castle in the same town. 

Franklin walking down a street in Cascais, Portugal. Maybe you can see why I wanted to live there. 

A quiet corner of Barcelona, Spain

A terrace in Malta. If I could paint I think I would try to make a painting of this. 

A hidden door in Barcelona I think. So many questions. Why? Where? Who? When? 

A Gaudi building in Barcelona, Spain

Late afternoon in lovely Lucca, Italy. 

A dramatic storm in Cascais, Portugal. 

Taken in the golden light of the late afternoon on a river near Dijon, France

An outdoor cafe in Paris, of course. Where else would someone wear a hat like that? 

An abundance of trucks in rural Idaho en route from Portland to New Mexico

Franklin walking in Arches National Park in Utah

This looks so much like a painting that I had to check the camera data to make sure it was actually a photo. Taken from a moving car in rural New Mexico north of Albuquerque. 

If you enjoyed these please let me know and maybe I'll post some more over the summer. 

Various Countries Response to the Pandemic that You May Have Missed

Back in March, no one had any idea that COVID was going to create a longterm lifestyle change. But things are going in that direction and all over the world there are people hunkered down for more than 120 days that never expected this to happen.

We are hunkered down in a rural location on the Oregon Coast. The theme for this season is nature and isolation. There are no other houses nearby. Other than grocery runs once a week we don't need to see anyone at all. In September we are moving to the top of a mountain near Ashland, Oregon.

I know we are all weary of COVID news. However, here is an update from some places you might not be following.

Bangkok's sex district (Patpong) has reopened now that Thailand has gone more than a month without any local transmission of the virus. Performers and massage parlor workers will wear facemasks and bikinis. Customers will have their temperatures taken and must give their contact info. cockfighting and fistfighting remain closed.

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Cambodia welcomes tourists to visit but they must leave a $3000 deposit to cover testing, one night of quarantine while tests are completed, any medical costs and funeral expenses. If anyone on the plane tests positive, then the entire plane must go into quarantine. Actually, I like this plan.

Buenos Aires, Argentina is back to stage one lockdown. Santiago, Chile as well. Peru locked down earlier than most places but now has the sixth-largest number of cases in the world and one of the highest death rates. The government of Peru is providing financial aid, however fewer than half of Peruvians have bank accounts so digital payment is impossible. so there are long lines outside of banks.

In Mexico half of all COVID cases are coming back positive. Yet a friend in Cancun says her employer insists she works in the office rather than home. She will decide this week whether to quit and go home to Canada or not. But Mexico only tests the sickest patients so those numbers can't be compared to other countries. Brazil- who knows- the government does not release any figures.

This morning in the United States the president tweetedthat coronavirus is a hoax designed to influence his reelection. The exact words were, "everyone is lying about the coronavirus as part of a plot to sabotage the economy and hurt Trump's reelection campaign." 

Iceland has no COVID and everyone is welcome to visit.

Turkmenistan in Central Asia continues to deny there are any Covid-19 cases, silences health workers, and does not promote social distancing and other preventative measures.

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