Alain Chamot (1971-2020)

Good morning everyone,

Sunday evening I was doing some chores and found a calendar that requires a daily change of numbers and monthly change of month name. To my surprise, it showed March 5, the last time life was normal, before things went quite so cuckoo.

After viewing a recent post about the sport of geogaching, I learned what this bag hanging on an information sign on St. Augustine Beach was all about. Although not in my pics, the warning flag today was red. Unlike south Florida, our beaches aren’t closed. Yet.

On The Road – Nation’s Oldest City Guy – Geocaching, Florida StylePost + Comments (7)

Good morning everyone,

We have a treat today – wahoo!

 

Have a good and safe weekend, see you Monday.

 

Following up on Alain’s visit to the Udvar-Hazy Center, I thought I’d post some photos from our visit to this museum in Pensacola. We’ve been taking Snowbird Florida trips for six years now, and last year our destination was the Panhandle.

I’m an aviation buff, WWII piston planes especially. Every person we talked to around Pensacola said we had to visit this museum. They were right – there were more planes than I’ve ever seen in one place, from WWI to modern times … including a few I built as models as a kid.

There were WWI planes, Korean war jets, and a bunch of piston engine aircraft I’d never seen before that were designed too late for WWII and obsolete for Korea.

On The Road – frosty – National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, FLPost + Comments (23)

Good morning everyone,

We hurtle towards the next horrific milepost on this fever-dream path.

Thankfully we have your submissions to give a little joy and peace: distraction.  We need so many more submissions, so get cracking!

Again, with this new world,  local content – “your backyard” is our goal.  Less about far-away places we won’t be traveling to for a year or two at best, and more about finding more local joy.  Of course all travel photos and stories are very welcome, but since there will be a dearth of such new content this year, it makes sense to focus on sharing stories and pictures with a local focus.

 

Apologies in advance that the quality of pictures may not rise to the excellent quality so many BJers have submitted, but the subject matter is quite lovely. These are taken from and of our house above the Roseau Valley in Dominica.

On The Road – Betty – Our Place in DominicaPost + Comments (33)

Good morning everyone,

Month 2 begins. Looks like this will be a tough one. Grid yourself.

In previous dispatches On The Road, we’ve visited all the missions in Los Angeles to the Mexican border, now we head north(or actually west for a bit). I grew up in Ventura County and have seen the exterior of Mission San Buenaventura many times as we past it on the freeway or surface streets, I’d never been inside. This visit was made on a return from a meetup of the local photography group’s visit to Mission Santa Barbara and the Santa Barbara Courthouse. Mission San Buenaventura is one of the smallest missions that I’ve visited, it takes up about 3-4 storefronts in downtown Ventura. It was founded in 1782 as the ninth and last mission personally dedicated by Father(now Saint) Serra. It was once much larger but shrunk to the chapel, a small garden and the gift shop.

On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – Mission San BuenaventuraPost + Comments (14)

Good morning everyone,

Sorry for the misfire yesterday, and I think this is out of order. C’est la vie.

Sarajevo was a sharp contrast to the other stops in the trip, since although most of it is a modern city (especially having been rebuilt after shelling during the post-Yugoslavia wars), it had strong Ottoman influence, particularly in the Baščaršija, Sarajevo’s old bazaar and the historical and cultural center of the city that was built in the 15th century.

On The Road – Sister Golden Bear – Sarajevo, Bosnia and HerzegovinaPost + Comments (5)

Good morning everyone,

Be safe, and lift each other up. We’re all under crazy stress.

Leaving Budva for Dubronik, instead of taking the typical route along the coastline, I was interested in doing an inland detour to see Trebinje in the Serbian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, since it’s one of the stops in the Rick Steves tour of Croatia.

As mentioned previously, back in 2012, the online maps of Bosnia and Herzegovina were oddly scant, but I did spot what appeared to be a highway leading up to the Montenegrin border, and it was logical to assume that it went on to Trebinje, since it was the only major town nearby. The good news, yes it did. The bad news, the road turned out to be a tollroad — and I’d gotten rid of the last of my marks a few days earlier. And no, they didn’t take Euros. Finally, with traffic backing up behind me, the toll taker finally allowed me through.

It turns out that I needn’t have bothered. Trebinje, a town of 30,000, turned out to be a fairly depressing place, since its economy tanked after the break-up of Yugoslavia. Although in fairness to Rick Steves, his tour visits the local Serbian Orthodox monastery, which would’ve been an interesting exposure to all three of ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia.

On the other hand, Dubrovnik was as fabulous as its reputation, and I was lucky that no cruise ships were visiting that day — Dubrovnik is actually quite small, and having visitors two or three cruise ships at once can make it unpleasantly crowded

On The Road – Sister Golden Bear – Dubronik, CroatiaPost + Comments (23)