Coyote pouncing on lunch
My winter visit to Yellowstone National Park was organized and led by Barbara Eddy and John Gurlach. In the wintertime, one cannot simply drive into the park. The Gerlach team led us on wonderful excursions for five days, rising before sunrise and shooting until it was too dark.
Yellowstone Winter Firehole
This past winter I spent five full days exploring Yellowstone National Park by snow coach. Passenger cars are not allowed at that time. The only modes of transportation inside the park are snowmobiles or snow coaches. I signed up with Gerlach Nature Photography Workshops led by Barbara Eddy and John Gerlach. It was a wonderful time with two very knowledgeable leaders. We were exploring the park daily from shortly after sunrise to past sunset.
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Statue of Liberty
The 9-11 memorials I’ve visited seem to be very appropriate tributes to that terrible day. I have visited the NYC memorial twice. Below are links to my previous posts regarding 9-11. The YouTube video was created in 2001, posted in 2006 and has almost 50,000 views.
My BLOG post of my 9-11 Memorial visit.
My BLOG post of Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, PA
“A common field one day. A field of honor forever.”
Four domestic airplanes were hijacked on September 11, 2001. Three struck their intended targets, one, Flight 93 did not.
The weather was appropriately gloomy when we visited this memorial. The black and white images seemed to fit the solemn mood. With the thought of so many senseless deaths, the inexplicable hatred of the terrorists and the heroics of seemingly everyday Americans, I photographed the scene with ghostly images.
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John Lennon “Imagine” Tribute
Taking a ride through Central Park in NYC, the John Lennon tribute, known as Strawberry Fields, was pointed out. It is across the street from the prestigious Dakota Apartments where he and Yoko lived and where John was shot by a crazed fan, Mark Chapman. Continue reading
9-11 Memorial Rose
All Americans felt the pain of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The official death toll is 2,996; 176 from Aon Corporation, the company where I worked.
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9-11 School Children’s Poster
It is a sad situation, but it seems that in the US we do memorials very well. From the Oklahoma bombing to the Vietnam Memorial our memorials seem to be very fitting tributes to the heroes who lost their lives. The 9-11 Memorial in New York is no exception.
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For an indication of size & scale, notice the huge diesel truck on the pointing arm.
Our trip through Yellowstone National Park, Theodore Roosevelt NP, Devils Tower Memorial, Mount Rushmore National Memorial and Wind Cave NP was exciting for me as I was seeing so many iconic places for the first time. In addition to these, a very pleasant surprise was our visit to the Crazy Horse Memorial. This is a stop not to be missed when in this neck of the woods, or Black Hills.
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Mount Rushmore is about the last remaining iconic USA attraction I had not yet visited. The monument is a very simple layout. Not much question what this place is about.
It seems to me, anybody who saw the 1977 Steven Spielberg film “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” and who had never visited the filming location, would certainly wish to do so. Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming finally got checked off my list this summer. Unfortunately, most of the area was covered in a smoky haze from the many raging forest fires in California and Oregon. As a side note, it seems as if Smoky the Bear may have had it wrong. We are now paying the price, an unintended consequence, for the many years when the US Forest Service tried to put out every fire.
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