Here you see La Posada, constructed in 1929 in Winslow Arizona — the last of the Fred Harvey Hotels still in operation. The Fred Harvey Company’s restaurants and hotels shaped the architectural landscape and culture of the American Southwest — packaging the American Indian, Spanish Mission Revival, and US cowboy culture for middle-class tourism. And […]
In 1980 nearly 200 square miles of subarctic meadow, forest, peat bogs, and mountains were set aside to form the Carpathian National Nature Park. Home for many plants and animals in its Alpine climate, the Carpathian National Nature Park is located in Western Ukraine. The park’s great beauty includes glacial lakes and waterfalls, trees like
Carpathian National Nature Park Read More »
Today I got a chance to hike Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah National Park, and everything about it was phenomenal: yellow butterflies so heavy they wobbled in their paths, mountain laurel and tulip poplar in bloom, full streams feeding the spring life. The Old Rag Trail is most famous for the rock scrambles up
Yesterday, I was fortunate to experience the full solar eclipse from the Pymatuning State Park Reservoir in western Pennsylvania. The light turned silvery as the sun neared total obfuscation, and green colors emerged and reds dimmed, the effect of our eyes’ cones coming offline and employing the rods more. Shadows close to the ground sharpened
Pine Grove Furnace is at the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains near my home in south-central Pennsylvania, and is a beautiful wooded area that feels remote — as of this spring in 2024, it doesn’t even get cell phone reception — yet, it’s only a 20-minute drive from my suburban dwelling. In fact, there
Pine Grove Furnace Read More »
The limestone rocks that form the bedrock of the Bois Païolive come from the Jurassic Period, 180 million years ago. Aeons of erosion created unusual rock outcroppings, which the French government back in 1934 declared to be an ecologically protected area. There is incredible biodiversity in the Païolive, but the most notable trees are the
The Parc Montsouris was one of four urban green park spaces planned for each cardinal direction under the French Emperor Napoleon III. After the Revolution and the many urban uprisings that followed, Napoleon III undertook a massive revitalization of the capital. The Parc Montsouris, located in the south of Paris, was officially inaugurated in 1875.
An ancient bristlecone pine over 5,000 years old is the oldest living thing on earth (at least, as far as scientists could document in 2016). That means it was contemporary with the first urban civilization in Sumer! The tree grows in the White Mountains in California in the Inyo National Forest. The location of the
The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Tree Read More »
Ringing Rocks County Park contains a 7-acre boulder field with an unusual feature: about a third of these rocks clang with a metallic ring when struck. The boulder field reached its current position about 12,000 years ago when the last Ice Age melted the great Wisconsin Glacier away from this part of Bucks County Pennsylvania.
Valle de la Luna – the Valley of the Moon – is also called the Ischigualasto Provincial Park of Argentina, and there you can find fossils of the world’s oldest dinosaurs. They arose during the Late Triassic, as the planet healed from a mass extinction due to volcanic eruptions so severe that 90% of life
Valle de La Luna – Valley of the Moon Read More »
