On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
From valued commenter Ten Bears:
Basic intro: I’ve attended portions of the Rock Creek Powwow on Standing Rock every year since 2008 (the second weekend in August). I just like being there but it’s also a very striking event in that for 72 years they have been remembering and commemorating V-J Day and the end of WW II.
It’s a traditional Lakota powwow but clearly focused on honoring veterans – a significant portion of the local population. This year I got together with a vet friend of mine, his daughter and my son, to do a free baseball clinic in the four days leading up to the powwow.
Probably because our kids were there, and certainly because adult members of the community participated and helped out, it was a really good week. Then my friend was sort of adopted into the vets’ community for the powwow, participating in the Grand Entry (carrying a flag) and other events over the weekend.
This is in Bullhead, SD, near the site where Sitting Bull was born and where he was killed on the Grand River. I think all pics pretty much self-explanatory except the river valley one. That is the Grand River Valley overlooking the spot where Sitting Bull was killed on December 15, 1890. I was down there hiking to it with my son and a couple friends from the village.
Looks like a great time and place! I expect my friend Glenn has attended that powwow in times past, but a temporarily-fatal motorcycle accident this summer has him pretty much home-bound now – no more powwows, I expect. A reminder that a life of freedom can, in a moment, become one of confinement.
Thank you so much Ten Bears, do send us more when you can.
Have a great weekend, all. There’s lots of great stuff coming next week, so stay tuned!
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
raven
I was honored to be allowed in a circle at a local Pow Wow because of my veteran status.
eclare
Great pictures! Interesting sign for the VJ Day celebration.
rikyrah
The pictures look great ?
raven
@eclare: How the Navajo code talkers helped win World War II
They created an unbreakable code with their greatest asset — their own language.
And then there was Ira Hayes.
Schlemazel
Nice pictures of the plains, I feel like I can get a sense of what the place looked like to the people who lived their beforw the EUropeans arrived.. Thanks for sharing.
I submitted some photos of The Shakopee Mdewakanton pow-wow that might show up here. It was very impressive.
eclare
@raven: Thank you, need to learn more.
Schlemazel
@raven:
It has always amazed me, given the way their were treated, that Native American’s willingly joined the military. You could calk it up to a warrior spirit in their communities that honors bravery but in my mind it is hard to balance that against the military’s roll in eradicating their way of life and most of their ancestors.
At the wacipi here they have enterance march that is always led by vets and they do call any veteran to join them in the center. I was happy to see the last couple of years that they now have women veterans (just behind the men in entrance but, small steps). There is a photo of them, they have matching, more traditional, regalia with their rank chevrons on their sleeves and service emblem on their back.
Mustang Bobby
Great pictures; thank you.
Greetings from Olathe, Kansas, where I’m at the Midwest Dramatists Conference. I got here at midnight and haven’t yet seen the sun, but I’m sure it’s a nice place.
marv
uh, sorry Alain – guess I thought you could tell it was me sending in these pics
Alain the site fixer
@marv: d’oh. I mis-attributed these pics? So sorry Marv and a Ten Bears!
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: It’s nice and flat anyway.
Love the plains pics.
marv
@Alain the site fixer: no worries as far as I am concerned
Mel
@Mustang Bobby: Travel safely, and enjoy the conference!
Mel
@marv: Thank you for sharing these beautiful photos. And thank you for doing the baseball clinic.
marv
@Mel: Thank you, Mel. It’s beautiful country – I would even say sacred country – and people (like every place else, really, I suppose). The way it worked out, with friends and my son and all the rest, I just felt lucky being there.
marv
@raven: The role of Lakota code talkers not very well known to this day. As was pointed out by emcee at this year’s Rock Creek Powwow – they still have not received their medals. http://www.nativesunnews.today/news/2015-09-23/More_News/Lakota_code_talkers_to_be_honored.html
J R in WV
Beautiful pictures and great people.
Some time back we were driving in NE Arizona and NW New Mexico mostly in and around Navajo Nation country, and dialed up the Navajo Nation radio station. They play a great mix of things on air, and mostly everything is in Navajo, except when the are talking about things that have no cross-cultural concepts, or when they run ads in English made by others.
This was just after a Code Talker and Medal of Honor recipient had died, which is something the Navajo do not speak of – death – so the announcers were dealing with a very sensitive issue. The Anglo culture sort of demanded a memorial while the Navajo culture does not speak about death or those who have gone on, not ever. But Anglo people from allover wanted to remember their service before they are all gone.
It was a very interesting look at a really wide cultural divide.
We also were able to hear more specific Navajo cultural things, like live broadcast of a Navajo healing circle with drumming and chanting, which continues for days, depending upon the specific ritual being conducted. Driving across the starlit desert with that background music was pretty moving. At night Navajo Nation radio AM gets a huge range across the SW deserts and mountains.
Very interesting and very glad to know there were code talkers from Lakota and many other Native Nations – I’m proud of their service, hope they get recognition they earned and deserve!!
Thanks so much to Raven for posting that Native Sun News article, which was really well written and jammed with information, and to Marv for the great photos of his countryside and people!
marv
@J R in WV: I used to live in NM and drove across Navajo Reservation several times. Will only add to your interesting discussion, just for fun, what I still think of as just about the funniest bumper sticker I ever saw, on the back of a pickup truck somewhere in Navajo country: “I’m just glad Columbus wasn’t looking for Turkey.”