Category Archives: travel

Ursula and I love day trips.  We especially love them when we can jump in the roadster and go with friends who also have sports cars.  So, Saturday was Roadster-Up-To-Old-Mesilla Day.  What makes the trip to Old Mesilla such fun is the back roads between El Paso and Las Cruces in New Mexico.  Although we live in the midst of the Chihuahuan Desert there’s still plenty of agriculture around, especially along the Rio Grande and the irrigated fields to either side of it as the river meanders through New Mexico and into Texas.

Along the way, convertible top down, wind blowing through our hair, we pass by fields of chili, onion, and cotton.  Vineyards and rows of maze drift by as we maintain a leisurely motoring pace.  We pass into the cooling shade of majestic pecan trees, their branches providing a leafy roof over the roadway, as we motor through the orchards of Stahman Farms.

The adobe and stone architecture of old Territorial New Mexico is abundantly in evidence as we pass through the towns of La Union, La Mesa, and San Miguel with it’s stone church, providing the photographer with some really great opportunities.  But once you reach Old Mesilla’s town square and it’s large central bandstand, you’re in another world . . . the world of the Old West, Pat Garrett, and Billy the Kid.  Here is where photographic opportunities come with nearly every step, including the Basilica of San Albino at the north end of the town square, the rustic 1800s wooden bar inside the Double Eagle Restaurant, the quaint dining courtyard of the adjoining Peppers Cafe, and the ever-popular and historic La Posta Mexican Restaurant just off the square.

Enjoy the views, then plan a road trip near your home.

Today we continue the road trip theme started with Monday’s blog.

My first digital camera was a nifty five-megapixel affair with a 5x lens.  That lens was sorely lacking on the wide-angle side, coming in at a pretty pathetic equivalent of a 38 mm lens, but extending out to a not-to-shabby (at the time) 190 mm at the telephoto end.  The lens was also pretty darned  fast, ranging from f2.0 to f2.4.  Pretty state-of-the-art at the time, but certainly not something that would make me want to give up my 35 mm camera and lenses.  Nevertheless, I decided to give this camera a workout by relying on it solely during a 2005 road trip we made though the Pacific Northwest.

We flew into Seattle and rented a car.  From there we first headed south, to Tacoma, for the Museum of Glass.  The Museum of Glass is not one of those venues at which you want to practice your Black & White photography.  Trust me on this.  The vibrant colors are the main attraction here.

From Tacoma we reversed course and proceeded to our farthest planned destination of Whistler, Canada, site of the 2010 Winter Olympics.  Whistler is first and foremost a ski town, and the accommodations and ski lifts emphasize that point.  Don’t let that fool you, though.  Whistler has much to offer year round, including extreme downhill inline skating (but not for this kid), hiking (watch out for the black bears), some great gourmet dining (now we’re talking), and a fantastically stocked wine shop in nearby Whistler Blackcomb.  Take the lift up to the top of the 7,156-foot-tall Whistler Mountain for some great vistas, including the village of Whistler and Blackcomb nestled far below.

Turning back to the south we ferried the car over to Vancouver Island and drove over to the famed Butchart Gardens.  Butchart Gardens  takes advantage of Vancouver’s moderate climate (by far the mildest of anywhere in Canada) to produce some truly spectacular flowers ranging throughout the color spectrum.   Victoria, at the southernmost tip of Vancouver, is the capital of British Columbia (who says politicians don’t know where to meet?), and the town itself is a charming mix of seaport and sophisticated cosmopolitan architecture.  The ivy-covered walls of the Fairmont Empress Hotel, just a short distance from Parliament, is a photographic gem.  Unfortunately, I didn’t capture the wondrous Parliament building on this trip, but in a later blog I will share pictures of it that were taken on a subsequent visit.

Another ferry ride brought us and our rental car to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands archipelago.  We stayed at the Rosario Resort, built on the site of the Robert Moran Mansion.  The mansion still exists as a rather interesting museum and is well worth the visit.

After our stay at Rosario, it was another ferry back to the mainland and a drive to catch our flight out of SeaTac.

Enjoy the sights, but remember that they were taken with some pretty inferior equipment:

Rosario on Dwellable

Looking for a unique and visually stunning road trip that will have you reminiscing and talking about for years to come?  For me, that road trip was the Canadian Rockies in late May back in 2006.  Ursula and I flew into Calgary, Alberta, and rented a car.  From there we drove west and then north, into some of the most beautiful mountain areas I have ever visited outside of the Swiss Alps.

Our first stop was Canmore, where we stayed in a beautiful Edwardian-style hotel and pub called the Georgetown Inn.  So enamored were we with our stay here that we made a second night of it on the return trip back through Canmore six days later.

The next day we started our way into the really high country toward Banff.  Along the way we stopped at Johnson Lake, where I was able to compose some really nice shots of mountains reflected in the cool, still waters.  Beyond Banff were Lake Louise and the even more stunning Moraine Lake.  Moraine Lake was particularly picturesque in that much of the lake was still blanketed in ice, however the ice had melted along one side of the lake revealing greenish glacial waters that reflected the Ten Peaks Range standing sentinel over the valley floor.  The pictures have the effect of an optical illusion in which water appears to cascade away from the ice sheet.  In actuality the water was perfectly still and reflected perfectly the mountains beyond.

Continuing further north took us into the vistas afforded by Natural Bridge in YoHo National Park, Athabasca Falls (captured a really neat rainbow refraction in the mist rising off the falls), and finally the quaint town of Jasper in which we stayed in a rustic and very romantic wood cabin.

In between we encountered the Athabasca Glacier, a truly awe-inspiring field of ice onto which we ventured via a remarkable vehicle called a Terra Bus.

What follows are just some of the many, many photographs I took on this adventure.  I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them.