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Previous comments... You are currently on page 2.
It also gave me an unplanned bus trip from Phuket to Bangkok. More fun than flying, for certain!
Then the park ranger came with a flashlight. We followed him out of the crater, back up the trail, and he drove us back to our car. It was kind of like the ride of shame. We sat in his backseat, dirty, sweaty, and disheveled. He told us that while other people had to be "rescued" before, we at least didn't try to climb up the way-too-steep volcano walls without using the trail like others had. Before he let us go, he took our names and information. I wouldn't be surprised if our info is on their "Wall of Idiots" right now.
Still, it was worth it. In the city, I've never been be able to see a view of the night sky the way I had since then. Even when we go out into the "country"--it just doesn't compare. After the ranger dropped us off, we just got back in our car and drove to the lookout point to see Kīlauea continue venting. It was like a live watercolor in the sky. Getting stuck in a volcano pit at night wasn't what we had intended to do, but it was perfect.
This New England gal fell in love with the prairie and the desert during that vacation. There was so much sky I felt as if I was going to fly off the face of the earth! Land and sky, sky and land. You could even see bad weather forming miles away. It was so alien. I loved it. The beauty of the Painted Desert was just stunning. Mesas were awesome.
This was (obviously if all I needed was $300) before cell phones and GPS. Summer of '75. Somehow I survived using the good old Road Atlas and prayer. No car insurance, no health insurance, no job. I didn't doubt for a moment that once I landed in CA, and my vacation ended, I would be able to find a job with which I could support myself. That's exactly what happened. I wasn't even worried about a job if I ended up getting stuck in some other state - I knew that even if I couldn't work as a nurse (licensing reciprocity issues) I could get something that would provide me with enough to live on AND save.
Had a month long vacation exploring the United States...mostly by myself! It was an incredible experience. Definitely an adventure with some hair-raising moments :) I will never forget it.
- a spur-of-the-moment trip to Paris I took in early 1998 with a guy I worked with at the time - mostly because he'd stumbled onto RT airfares from Portland, OR and CDG for (get this): $350. I said "What the hell" and went along, basically backpacker-fashion. We emerged from the subway right next to the Louvre, picked the first hole-in-the-wall dirt-cheap hotel we saw, walked around all of the core sites for five days, then left. Sometimes you have the most fun when you plan little or nothing;
- the trips to Thailand I took in '08 and '10 with my girlfriend, who was born there. The '08 trip had an enjoyable political coup right in the middle of it, which required racing the army to the bus station to catch an overnight to Chiang Mai, which was the only functioning airport out of the country at the time (one of two warring mobs had "occupied" both of the Bangkok airports.) Serious political unrest works really well for dispelling the end-of-vacation blues, incidentally, 'cause it makes going home a really enjoyable thing. 8^]
Though I'm deeply regretting not having stumbled onto the practice in 1998 and earlier, by 2008 I'd become a fan of doing travel journals. So for that trip and the one in '10 I took notes at the end of every day, then fleshed them out and put them up at http://Travelpod.com. (Well, the first one's up, at any rate - the second one has been on a back burner for a long, long time but will eventually be ready for the table...)
http://www.travelpod.com/members/bahtman...
It's maybe fit subject for a separate thread, but I encourage any and all with a writing bug to do travel journals whenever you go on vacation. Not only can you allow friends and family to tag along vicariously, you too can read them years later and re-live details you would otherwise have forgotten. They're also useful for passing tips on lodgings, eateries, points of interest, customs to be aware of and hazards to avoid - to random readers.
Anyone else done travel-writing?
(P.S. - Duncan Scott's recent T-pod journal, and the one by a guy I've never met calling himself "Battlemonkey" - both are linked at the right side of my T-pod page - are must-reads.)
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If I didn't build my business, why do all of the bills (not to mention the quarterly taxes) keep coming in my name?
That is a GREAT photo!
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/29...
I just received an email that I recently got 8 replies on this post and I see no new replies..they're all 2 1/2 months old and doesn't show 21 comments like the post says it has... sheesh. Duped again.
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