Flowers and flutterbys and fish, what could be finer? Jerry and I were in Sioux Falls, South Dakota recently. (House hunting – we’re considering moving to the Mount Rushmore State. Getting tired of paying Minnesota state income taxes, and I am starting to crave an area where I can photograph …
Spillville, Iowa. It’s a cute little town, with old world architecture, a water mill, and the feel of the Czech farmers who settled the area still present. Driving into town from the north along County W14, you’re greeted with what looks like a traffic circle around a gazebo with creamy-colored, …
You might already have read the article about the Reno gang and their infamous end – and if you’ve checked out “Travel Tidbit” you might have also seen the entry on Jerry’s un-updated Garmin. Here’s the story of how Jerry and I got there. I freely admit it – when …
History is littered with firsts, naturally enough. The first one to do a thing, the first time a particular event happens, is memorable. Some… are more pleasant than others. That doesn’t mean any of them should ever be forgotten. After the Civil War, much of the South was in ruins, …
You remember it – I know you do. Can’t bring to mind what year it came out, or what insurance firm it was advertising, but the commercial features a dripping-wet man with his car mostly submerged in the lake behind him as he was saying of his GPS device, “The …
We drove into Caldwell, OH, just before sunset. I was hunting down the Thorla-McKee oil well (the First Oil Well in North America), when I saw a sign that read, “Big Muskie’s Bucket.” It was eleven miles away, in the opposite direction of the well. I wondered how on earth …
Mining 101. When harvesting from the earth solid fuel like coal, surface mining is preferred to subsurface, for both cost and safety reasons. Surface mining falls into two types; open pit, and strip mining. Open pit is used when the target fuel, mineral, or ore spreads over a wide area …
Well, it’s Monday evening, the end of Jerry’s first day of retirement, and I’m happy to say we’ve both survived. I admit to concern; I still remember how his parents interacted when his Dad retired. It’s a strange thing. You focus on something, plan for it, take the necessary steps …
So on Monday November the third, deep-sea fishing, when we got back to the marina, the Captain and crew docked the boat and Beba asked who among us wanted to have a meal of our own fish. Having never eaten yellowfin or whatever the blue stripy fish was that Jerry …
Wow. Wow. Wow. Today we’re going deep-sea fishing! It is another first in a week of firsts! I’ve done coastal fishing, and lake fishing, but never ocean or deep-sea. It’s different from coastal fishing. The waves are bigger, for one thing. And between the breeze and the tide, these swells …
