Irish Bridges… and an Occasional Bridge Troll

We took a nice long hike the other day in the Tollymore Forest Park, near Newcastle (as opposed to all the Oldcastles), in the Mourne Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. All this in the Northwest part of Ireland, just a quick one-hour drive from Belfast.. After a couple hours of hiking in the mountains, we […]

Two very Irish Cities… Dublin and Belfast

We spent two and a half weeks in Dublin, and we liked it. But… Dublin seems like a big city that was designed by someone without a ton of creativity. There are some beautiful spots there, really nice architecture and engineering, but it seems like they just gave up designing and started repeating the best […]

A Drive To The Wicklow Mountains For A Walk In The Woods And A Walk Around Glendalough.

Every now and then you just find the perfect piece of road, with the perfect road trip partner, in the perfect car. Well, I hit two out of three, anyway. I would have traded out our little VW Polo rental for something a little more sporty, but a least it’s a manual transmission, so still […]

Coastlines, Castles, Ruins Fatigue, The Blarney Stone, And The Real Distance To Tipperary… The (beautiful) South of Ireland.

This is going to be a long one… Sorry! We left Munich scorching in it’s eighty-seven degree heatwave (the Germans don’t do well with that type of heat and get very stern and very grumpy), and flew to Ireland for a comfortable eighty degrees and sunshine. The Irish folks assured us of two things: 1.) […]

Whoah, what a change… Europe!

Well, we made it to Europe. Specifically, we made it to Germany. All I can really say is that it is a significant change from the Pacific Islands and Latin America. First off, There is no ocean here in Bavaria, and there are green fields and mountains instead. Flying in, I was reminded (the same […]

Hasta La Vista Ecuador!

Sitting in another airport, waiting on another flight. This time we ended up with a seven hour wait between flights between the Galápagos Islands and an overnight back into the US. We will be back in Bend tomorrow afternoon. From Ecuador. Ecuador. I guess what I can say is… Wow. I cannot believe the sheer […]

Galapa-going Crazy About All The Animals

We have been in the Galapagos for almost a month now, and we have two days left. We were both a bit thrashed and sunburned, so we took a day off to get some projects done. So here is one of my projects: I just wanted to share some photos of the animals around here. […]

Some Small Wave Silliness In The Galapagos.

I have been out for a number of surf sessions since we have been here in the Galapagos. The South swell surf on San Cristobal Island tends to be pretty heavy, with some pretty serious consequences involving some very sharp rocks. The problem is, the surf breaks too close to the rocks when the waves […]

Reflections

A bit ago, I did a post about going to the Amazon. It wasn’t all my favorite thing, but there were some beautiful visuals. In that post I mentioned (briefly) how I really appreciated the reflections off the black water… Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Maybe watch this one with the […]

Sea Lions, turtles, and Iguanas, Oh My.

We made it to the Galapagos! We were originally planning on skipping the islands, because it is really expensive to travel here, but we managed to find a house on San Cristobal that was mostly in our budget and we are planning on eating a lot of Top Ramen and tuna fish. We already agree […]