The Palouse

Teresa and I went to Eastern Washington and spent the 4th of July weekend touring The Palouse. Beautiful country, but seemingly not a lot to do unless you are a farmer of a photographer. We started out on Saturday around noon heading for Palouse Falls State Park around the middle of the state. The falls come out the side of a cliff due to the eroded canyon the Palouse River runs through at that point and are quite spectacular. Unfortunately, due to our early start we arrived mid afternoon and the light wasn't great. I would really like to go back there for sunrise or sunset. I have seen pictures of the area that are breathtaking.

On to Colfax, WA after that and our base for the weekend. We explored the surrounding area from there. Up at 3:30AM to get to Steptoe Butte both Sunday and Monday for sunrise and driving all over the back roads to find interesting fields and scenes. The Palouse is a region of southeastern Washington and north central Idaho and is a major agricultural area, primarily producing wheat and legumes. The peculiar and picturesque silt dunes which characterize the Palouse Prairie were formed during the ice ages. Silt was blown in from the glacial out-wash plains to the west and south. The Palouse hills consist of more or less random humps and hollows. These hills with their wheat make for some very nice photographs.

Around the world again...

February, 2011

One more time I made my way around the world stopping in Singapore, Beirut, Dubai (first time there) and London. I did not get out much in Singapore, but in Beirut we visited the Jeita Grotto again. An interesting couple of separate but interconnected karstic limestone caves that go back for miles. Unfortunately, they don't allow photos inside.

Off to Dubai where they try and out big everyone. Tallest building, biggest mall, etc. Did you know that over 75% of the residents of Dubai are foreigners?

On the way home I had a 9 hour layover in London so I hopped the Heathrow Express train to Paddington Station, then took the Underground to Trafalger Square and wandered around London a bit. It was early morning and the weather was beautiful. I saw a lot of the preparations for the big wedding, but was there a week too early and missed the actual event.

Teotihuacán City and the Pyramids

In February and March of this year I spent a lot of time in Mexico City helping to stabilize one of my companies accounts there. It was a lot of long hour days and when people asked me what Mexico looked like I tended to respond it looked like a warehouse since that was what I saw most of the time. We did manage to get out to the Aztec Pyramids in Teotihuacán City one Sunday and it was pretty cool.

There are two big pyramids in this area, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon.

The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest Pyramid in the world,after the Great Pyramid of Cholula, Mexico and the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt.

China

October 15-29, 2010
In October of 2010 I made a very quick pass through 7 cities in China. I started in Hong Kong and then moved on to Qingdao, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou (the last two were day trips from Shanghai.) Five of the cities I visited I had been to before and yet I was able to see new places in each one.

In Hong Kong I took a walk to the Yuen Po Bird Market and was fascinated by the birds that were being brought to this beautiful "alley" to display. I was expecting a lot of little shops and maybe some people selling birds based on the description I had read, but it was really a social gathering. There were probably 75 men and a few women hanging out, checking out each others birds and generally enjoying each others company. I was a bit intimidated taking pictures of them and did not get any great shots, but I will probably go back next time now that I am familiar with the place. One of the things I noticed this trip was the number of bird lovers and birds as pets. I understand this has only recently been the case since the bird flu epidemic some years back.

The next stop was Qingdao (24 hours) and it was a bit of a weird arrival. As the plane descended we were engulfed in a fog that made the area look eerie. It did not have the same smell or feel that fog at home does so I did not think it was fog. The next morning the sun was out and I realized we were near the sea. The terrain reminded me of southern California; brown rolling hills, rocky outcroppings all over.

The next 24 hours was in Tianjin. Tianjin was interesting for the beauty of the city. It was clean and modern with wide streets and big shopping malls. The funny story I heard was prior to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 Tianjin was not so nice looking. I was told that a city so near to Beijing could not "show up" the capital city by looking nicer, but the Olympics and the influx of tourists changed the rule and they spruced it up. The best item was an unfinished building near our offices whose financing had apparently fallen through years ago. The government put scaffolding up around it to give the appearance of being worked on. The scaffolding is gone and the building is still uncompleted.

We drove to Beijing, but the fog was so thick I didn't really see a lot of the countryside. The weekend in Beijing was pretty cool. Friday night we went to a little tourist alley that had a myriad of food stalls serving everything from tarantulas to lizards to bugs to BBQ'd scorpions on a stick. The scorpions were crunchy and salty. We stayed away from the other stuff.

On Saturday we went to the Summer Palace and spent most of the morning wandering around. It is a huge place. Once again, it was very foggy and the scenery pictures aren't as good as I would like, but there were still some interesting things. There was a woman there in the open area playing with a hacky-sack like toy who must have been 70. She was having a blast.

3 more cities to go... I'll try to finish tomorrow.

So... it's not tomorrow. It's a couple of months later and here I am. I am not the most active bloggers.

After Beijing I headed for Shanghai. This was probably the 5th time I have been to Shanghai and I am pretty familiar with it by now. On Sunday morning one of my co-workers took me to an area called Tian Zi Fang. Very cool old area of Shanghai that has been turned into little boutique restaurants and shops, but still retains a lot of the old look.

One of the more interesting things I saw in Shanghai was right across the street from the hotel. There's a park I was wandering in taking pictures and there must have been 20 wedding parties there getting their pictures taken. Popular place. There was also a guy walking his birds. They took a bath in the fountain and then he wandered off with them on his shoulders.

Where have I been?

Busy, I guess. Since my last post I went to China and did a whirlwind tour of 7 cities in 12 days, spent a long weekend in San Diego sorting through my mom's stuff after she passed away in October and then did a quick trip to St Louis where I got to have some good pizza with Aaron and Cody and Gage. Lizzie came out for Christmas and I have been taking some pictures. I'll try to get a couple of updates in here in the next few days. In the meantime... above is a nice sunrise picture I took on New Years Day as Teresa and I were headed to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.