Three Island Lake County Park was the destination recently for Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert. The quaint park is located in Beltrami County, 12 miles north of Bemidji, Minn. The scenic Turtle River flows from the mouth of Three Island Lake providing spectacular views, rolling terrain and a diverse plant ecology. The park was deeded to the county in 1967 …
Horsetooth Falls, located near Fort Collins, Colo., was recently the destination for photographer Jeff Olson. Horsetooth Falls is a 2.2-mile heavily trafficked out and back trail that features a waterfall amid national park-class landscape. The trail to the falls starts off with a slight uphill from the Horsetooth Mountain Park parking lot. From there, the trail climbs until a fork is met …
Grand Forks photographer Dave Bruner’s recent road trip took him to Mystical Horizons, a unique and fascinating place in north-central North Dakota on the Scenic Byway of state Highway 43 near the town of Carbury. This “21st century Stonehenge” is an unusual yet fully functional solar calendar made of stone structures. It was built in 2005 from the vision of …
Grand Forks photographer Dave Bruner took to the roads of rural North Dakota and the Turtle Mountains and came across Swedish Zion Lutheran Church in northern Bottineau County. The historic rural church, built in 1903, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in April 2013. The stone (granite) church, which had its origins starting in 1896, when a group …
I usually begin planning my next trip during the waning days of the one I’m on, so this summer is more than a bit unusual. I have no bookmarked spots in Tripadvisor, no routes saved on Google Maps, no flights booked. I am not planning anything, except surgery on my foot, since I’m not going anywhere. My hobby is traveling. …
“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” — Chaucer Late last summer, I spent a month in England, Scotland and Wales (with a day and a half in Ireland on my return). It is a trip I’d been planning in my head for 40 years. Most assuredly there are not enough adjectives to describe all of the …
Photographer Jeff Olson and his wife, Joanne Plager Burke Olson, and their dog, Sammy, recently took their first hike of 2020 at Colorado’s Lory State Park. The state park is located west of Fort Collins and north of Horsetooth Reservoir. The park is a popular destination for mountain biking, hiking, horseback riding and rock climbing and also has its own bike …
Photographer Jeff Olson of Fort Collins, Colo., recently spent some time in Monterey, located on the south side of Monterey Bay along California’s Central Coast. Here are some of the sights he took in while on morning walks.
Is there any doubt I’m a cartographic geek? Is there any doubt I’m an Anglophile? Great Britain counties I visited in August-September 2019 England (of 48 counties, I went to 33) Bedfordshire. Berkshire. Buckinghamshire. Cambridgeshire. Cheshire. City of London. Cornwall. Cumbria. Devon. Durham. Glouchestershire. Greater London. Greater Manchester. Hampshire. Herefordshire. Herfordshire. Kent. Lancashire. Leicestershire. Merseyside. North Yorkshire. Northumberland. Nottinghamshire. Oxfordshire. …
Grand Forks photographer Michael Bogert and his wife, Mary Bauer, recently returned from a trip to that took them through North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Sights taken in included Yellowstone National Park, Lucky Peak Recreation Area, Payette River and the Badlands and Sully’s Hill in North Dakota. These images are just a portion of what caught his eye.
What does the landscape look like in the fall above 8,000 feet? Autumn in Arizona is in full swing, and these i images from photographer Eric Bergeson highlight the colorful flora on and near Marshall Gulch Trail, up the hill from Tucson.
Arizona is much more than the Grand Canyon, as these images from photographer Eric Bergeson show. These picturesque photos taken along the Catalina Highway, Sabino Canyon and the area around Patagonia show off some of Arizona’s other beautiful sights that await travelers to the Southwest.
Photographer Eric Bergeson recently took a drive along the Catalina Highway (officially the General Hitchcock Highway) up to Mount Lemmon in Pima County in southern Arizona. The highway is the only paved roadway providing access to the resort village of Summerhaven as well as various recreational and scientific facilities located near the summit of Mount Lemmon. Ascending from the desert floor …
One of the things to see on photographer Dave Bruner’s bucket list was the Fairview Bridge and Cartwright Tunnel. Located near Cartwright, N.D., and east of Fairview, Mont., the bridge was built by Gerrick & Gerrick of Steele, N.D., for the Great Northern Railroad as part of a plan for its never completed Montana Eastern Railway. Unused since 1986, the bridge’s …
The last time I wrote to all of you I was about to embark on my John Steinbeck Jr. camper truck journey in Colorado. I had no idea what to expect. The rig I rented in Denver was really designed for back country exploring — heavy tires, a very powerful engine, shovels and other equipment latched to the side and …
Colorado photographer Jeff Olson recently traveled to the capital of Utah, Salt Lake City, where he took in the many sites of the downtown area.
Whatever you might have thought about Marrakech, it is. At least in the market at Jama al Fna square. There are actually two markets. One, during the day, is busy, but somewhat laid-back. People wander though the huge square on their way to the covered souks, stopping to buy a smoothie from the many carts lined up end to end, …
Well, here are my preliminary thoughts. My rig is the smallest, most pitiful in the whole KOA complex. I’ve walked around once — several more to come as the night lights up here at Weedpatch Camp! Some of the RVs are so luxurious and massive that the pickup-like vehicle that pulls them is more like the cab of an 18-wheeler …
To all of you who are following my little journey in search of America (or a bit of it), I am having a splendid evening. I arrived at this remote and understated camp, not far from Leadville, Colo., about 2 p.m. I did the minimum to set up camp. Only one other couple is here. They have a pickup on …
UNDER TWIN PEAKS, NEAR ASPEN, Colo. — What would each of my characters think of this trip? Starting with John Steinbeck: He would be amazed at how much more comfortable pickup trucks are now, with tilting steering wheels, heated seats, air conditioning, better shocks, tinted glass, etc. And how much more convenient a truck camper is. The one I stepped into the other day …
The future of Morocco may look a lot like Fatima. This 28-year-old dynamo took on the Fez establishment — the “all-male” Fez establishment — to fulfill her latest goal. She opened her five-room inn inside the medina last July and is already looking to do bigger things. Fatima (she uses only her first name), got a degree in hotel and …
ASPEN, Colo — Last night, I camped about a dozen miles from Aspen, but you would not have known that billions, even hundreds of billions, of dollars were spending themselves nearby. This morning, I drove in to check my email and post this report, but I will leave soon. I wanted a Starbucks because I knew there would be free WiFi. But, …
Sundays always remind me of my father, Charles Everett Jenkinson. He has been dead for a quarter of a century now, but Sundays, I often miss him acutely. But he would never come on such a trip, not for all the money in the world. He thought camping was very silly: Why jettison 10,000 years of improvements in comfort to …
No internet last night, which is mostly good. But it is amazing how wired in we are and “helpless” when we are off that grid. Starbucks in Silverthorne, Colo. I thought of staying two nights at the Blue River campsite, but part of this experiment is trying a variety of experiences. I am even determined to do time in a …
GRANBLY, Colo. — So I survived the first night in the Steinbeck rig. Lots of little rituals are required. You scout your camp site. Almost nobody accepts the first option, so you circle the campground a couple of times. Later, when you have chosen the best available site or what in your panic you think is the best available site, …
Lake Bemidji State Park offers a variety of things to do for people in search of outdoor adventure. Located on the north end of Lake Bemidji in northwestern Minnesota, the park touts a sandy beach; hiking and biking trails; boat, canoe and kayak rental; a children’s playground; volleyball court and year-round naturalist programs as well as wildlife viewing and marvelous …
All the news is D-Day. The late Stephen Ambrose would be elderly now, had he lived, but he would have been part of this last great celebration of that historic day. I did not get to Sand Creek. I ran out of day. Eventually, I got to Denver — Brighton and then Aurora — and stayed in a dismal motel, …
I made a false start, but only by a couple of miles, doubled back to gather a few items, then drove south from Mandan, N.D. No destination in mind, but I reckoned I might get as far as Nebraska, certainly southern South Dakota. The great luxury of this sort of travel is that you don’t have to barrel through. I …
Morocco is the home of Casablanca, the largest city in the country, and the setting for the greatest movie of all time (not one frame of which was actually shot there because the world was having a war at the time). It is a Muslim-majority country with pockets of Christians and an ever-dwindling population of Jews. It is a kingdom …
Cache la Poudre River is Colorado’s only wild and scenic river. The upper stretch was designated under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act because of its outstanding recreation, scenic and hydrologic features, including The Narrows, a narrow cleft where the river has cut through rock walls; Profile Rock and Sleeping Elephant, two picturesque granite rock formations; and Poudre Falls, a deep chasm that roars …
Grand Forks photographer Dave Bruner and his wife, Sheila, recently returned from a trip to the Southwest, specifically Arizona. Among the sites they saw were a sunrise at Watson Lake, near Prescott. “The lake is surrounded by unique rock structures that make interesting compositions for photography.” Also a sunset at Lake Powell, near Page. Antelope Canyon-Page, Arizona One of the trip’s highlights …
My article on the Island Scrub Jay appeared in this Thursday morning’s Bismarck Tribune. Here is it below, with my photographs, including one of the Island Scrub Jay. There are much better photographs of the jay by professional photographs easily found in a simple Google search, so do check that out if you are interested. Having birded for decades, one …
Photographer Dave Vorland recently spent some time in Arizona, where the weather in February is in stark contrast to that of his home in Bloomington, Minn.
It appears not even our country’s warmer climes are immune from snow this winter. A winter storm ravaged the Southwest U.S., dumping snow on parts of Greater Los Angeles and Tucson, Ariz., before moving eastward into the Plains. Northern Arizona was hit particularly hard, with Flagstaff reporting its snowiest single day on record, with more than 35 inches of snow …
Most people associate the Potomac River with Washington, D.C., but perhaps some other most spectacular scenery along that waterway is at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park in the District of Columbia and the states of Maryland and West Virginia. Photographer Jeff Olson recently spent some time in the national park, on the Maryland side of the Potomac. The park was …
Photographer Jeff Olson and his wife, Joanne Burke Barclay Olson, took time on their recent trip to New England to check out the USS Constitution in the Boston Naval Shipyard in Boston Harbor. Also known as Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the U.S. Navy named by President George Washington after the U.S. Constitution. She is the world’s …
The Old North Church & Historic Site, made famous during the American Revolution by Paul Revere’s midnight ride and “One if by land, two if by sea,” is a must see for those visiting Boston. Photographer Jeff Olson and his wife, Joanne Burke Barclay Olson, did just that on a recent trip to New England.
Alexandria, Va., photographer Jeff Olson and his wife, Joanne Burke Barclay Olson, recently traveled to Massachusetts. Among the sites they took in was Walden Pond in Concord, where they also visited the site of writer Henry David Thoreau’s cabin.
Eric Bergeson, the Country Scribe, shares these photos taken near Patagonia, Ariz., a town of 800 in high ranch country near the Mexican border. In his own words, “So many worlds exist within a 100-mile radius of Tucson.”
There is a certain, unequaled thrill sitting in the front seat of a four-wheel drive SUV, its engine roaring like a locomotive as it churns its way up a 15-foot sand dune and slides diagonally down the other side, only to bounce across a valley, take aim again and repeat the scream-inducing ride all over again. This is dune-bashing in …
Grand Forks photographer Dave Bruner and his wife, Sheila, recently took a two-day northeastern North Dakota road trip to view fall colors, which were in full display. On their way to the Turtle Mountains and the Pembina Gorge, with a final stop at Turtle River State, in Cavalier they found colorful painted bales on display throughout the town.
Photographer and writer Eric Bergeson ventured out into the Arizona countryside recently, capturing these images in Ramsey Canyon, southwest of Sierra Vista.
It has been my great fortune to have made two retreats to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park these past few weeks, a place in the Bad Lands that is very dear to my heart. The North Unit is the heart of wildness in North Dakota and is, right now, awash in autumn glory. My first outing was …
Alexandria, Va., recently traveled to New York City with his wife, Joanne Plager Burke Olson. Here are some of the sights they saw.