Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Eons ago (another decade, in fact) on another continent, several people who heard we were going to Vietnam responded with the same exclamation: "Ninh Binh!" So when our Hanoi tour guide asked if there was anything else we wanted to do with the remainder of our time in Vietnam, the answer was obvious.  Our advisors were right, this is a spectacular place. Our guide, having just led us to Halong Bay, told us to expect "Halong Bay of the Land" and he was also vindicated. A two-hour bus ride brought us to our first stop, a temple dedicated to an early (the first?) emperor of Vietnam. A mural at the entrance depicted his ascent, mainly as a very young leader of an army/militia that united the region's factions/kingdoms. Ninh Binh was his home and he made it the capital, which remained for about fifty years (968-1009) until one of his successors moved it to Hanoi. The pinnacles/buttes that dot the landscape, much as they did in Halong Bay, provide...

This picture has to go first. It shows the ramp, the lights and the walkways at the Redwoods Elevated Trail Once upon a time, a long time ago (2019) in a place far, far away (USA), we had to make hard choices about how to allocate our time in New Zealand. Based on limited information, we gave ourselves four nights in Rotorua. We thought it would be a good base for exploring mighty Lake Taupo to the south, the famous glow worm caves to the west and various cultural and natural attractions in the immediate vicinity. In hindsight, it's clear that we'd need about a month to do the things in this part of the North Island that we thought we might pack into a few days. In fact, we did none of them. Our arrival was very simple. Rotorua airport is tiny and between us we rented 2 of approximately 10 vehicles held by Hertz at this location. It was a five minute drive from the airport to our rental house and we spent all of it relishing the fact that we were driving civilian vehicl...

On the same day in 2002 that Elise read Dan Brown's Davinci Code (in one day, of course), I learned about the Brule River. It's the kind of river you can miss easily as you drive east from Duluth on US-2 toward Washburn, Ashland and Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Just a little green roadside sign near a crossroads town. I remember that Elise mentioned something about a former president loving the Brule and it being a favorite for paddling and fishing. (This is a nontrivial aside. Calvin Coolidge had a summer White House on the Brule and, as we learned , converted a local high school into a base of political operations.). But as soon as we booked this cabin, just east in the town of Iron River, it became apparent that a canoeing adventure on the Brule was in my future. With help from the good folks at Brule River Canoe Rental , we were delivered to the Stone Bridge Canoe Ramp at about 1:45pm. One adult, one twin and one big in each canoe. We had a nice breeze at our bac...