Beautiful Places

Chihuly at Biltmore - Chihuly Nights

Chihuly at Biltmore - Chihuly Nights

I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color

in a way they have never experienced. - Dale Chihuly

The Long Road Home

The Long Road Home

“What every one of us looks for, but damn few of us gets to see...is just what's over the far horizon.

 The trick is ... to know it when you see it, and an even bigger trick ... is to know what to do about it when you find it.” – From “Last of the Dogmen”

Oklahoma City – Revisited – Part 1

Oklahoma City – Revisited – Part 1

Resilience is woven deeply into the fabric of Oklahoma.  

Throw us an obstacle, and we grow stronger. - Brad Henry

Mount Rushmore National Monument - South Dakota

Mount Rushmore National Monument - South Dakota

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count.

It’s the life in your years. ― Abraham Lincoln

Grand Tetons National Park Wyoming

Grand Tetons National Park Wyoming

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people.  I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” Sylvia Path

Yellowstone National Park - Day 2

Yellowstone National Park - Day 2

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.” – John Muir

Glacier National Park & Livingston, Montana

Glacier National Park & Livingston, Montana

“Before Alaska came along and ruined everything, one of every twenty-five square miles in America was Montanan.  This much space has nurtured a healthy Cult of Place in which people find perfection, even divinity in the landscape.” (Ellen Meloy)

Driving South through Canada's Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta

Driving South through Canada's Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta

The view that lay before us in the evening light was one that does not often fall to the lot of modern mountaineers.  A new world was spread at our feet: to the westward stretched a vast ice-field probably never before seen by the human eye, and surrounded by entirely unknown, unnamed and unclimbed peaks. - July 1898, British explorer J. Norman Collie

Top of the World Highway

Top of the World Highway

“When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end.  

So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.”

Loony Island, Charlie Hamilton’s Place

Loony Island, Charlie Hamilton’s Place

“A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.”

Denali National Park

Denali National Park

"Rivers run through our history and folklore, and link us as a people.  They nourish and refresh us and provide a home for dazzling varieties of fish and wildlife and trees and plants of every sort.  We are a nation rich in rivers." - Charles Kuralt

Key West, Florida to the Arctic Circle, Alaska

Key West, Florida to the Arctic Circle, Alaska

“It is not the destination where you end up but the mishaps and memories you create along the way.”

Canada/Alaska Drive North

Canada/Alaska Drive North

“It's a big world out there; it would be a shame not to experience it.”

Campbell River, British Columbia

Campbell River, British Columbia

“A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.”

Chihuly Garden and Glass

Chihuly Garden and Glass

“I want people to be overwhelmed with light and color

in a way they have never experienced.” – Dale Chihuly

Mount St. Helens, Washington

Mount St. Helens, Washington

“Clouds of hot ash made up of pulverized rock were belched twelve miles into the sky. Giant mud slides, composed of melted snow mixed with ash and propelled by waves of super heated gas erupting out of the crater, rumbled down the slopes and crashed through valleys, leaving millions of trees knocked down in rows, as though a giant had been playing pick-up sticks.” – Time Magazine

Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

“There is no better place to find yourself than sitting by a waterfall

and listening to its music.”

Crater Lake, Oregon

Crater Lake, Oregon

"I thought I had gazed upon everything beautiful in nature as I have spent my years traveling thousands of miles to visit the beauty spots of the earth, but I have reached the climax. Never again can I gaze upon the beauty spots of the earth and enjoy them as being the finest thing I have ever seen. Crater Lake is above them all." - Author Jack London, 1911

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park

“The far-famed valley came suddenly into view throughout almost its whole extent: the noble walls, sculptured into endless variety of domes and gables, spires and battlements and plain mural precipices, all a-tremble with the thunder tones of the falling water.  The level bottom seemed to be dressed like a garden, sunny meadows here and there and groves of pine and oak, the river of Mercy sweeping in majesty through the midst of them and flashing back the sunbeams.” -- John Muir

Pebble Beach, 17 mile drive, Bixby Bridge, and McWay Falls Big Sur, California

Pebble Beach, 17 mile drive, Bixby Bridge, and McWay Falls Big Sur, California

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~Andre Gide