Dear Readers,

We have switched to a blog format. This facilitates delivery of our pictures, since you don't have to download them, and puts all of our postings together in the same place. We will email you when something new has been posted.

So here are more pictures from our trip across the country, starting with this picture of bison in Yellowstone Park.

Yellowstone is, of course, a sanctuary for bison, and they wander all over, including on the roads, as you can see in the next picture. When they are visible from the road, they tend to cause traffic jams because lots of people stop to look at them. Bears are of even greater interest to tourists, drawing park rangers to direct traffic around the site and to shoot the bear with what looks like a stun gun if it gets out of control. We stopped for bison but not for bears. This one on the road is less than ten feet from our car. He started on the other side of the road but kept getting closer, so we decided that our car was no match for him and stepped on the gas. These animals weigh up to 2000 pounds and can run in bursts of 30 miles an hour. We were watching another one graze peacefully when he suddenly reared up, shook his nose violently, and ran toward the hot springs nearby looking like he had been attacked by a bee. They are very dangerous. So are bees, apparently.

Yellowstone is also full of geysers and bubbling pots and hot springs, witness the following:

Here is another hot spring, although it looks cold. These places look dangerous, and they are, if you step off the trail, but not if you don't. Unless, of course, you choose a moment to be there when everything goes kablooey. The entire Yellowstone valley is a vast caldera left behind by a monumental volcanic explosion thousands of years ago. It was thousands of times more powerful than Mt. St. Helens back in 1990. if it goes kablooey again, which it could do, you won't have to be in Yellowstone to feel its effects.

Just south of yellowstone is Grand Teton National Park, which is basically a range of impressive snow-capped mountains rising straight out of a flat plain. It is dramatic and beautiful. Our impression was that the mountains must have risen above the plain when two tectonic plates shoved against each other, but the park rangers (they are always there with an explanation) said that four fifths of the difference between the two was due to the plain sinking. Who knew? Anyway, here are two pictures of these imposing mountains.

This is Devil's Tower in eastern Wyoming, nearer to Rapid City, SD, than it is to Yellowstone. We weren't looking for it, but we found it. You all remember the Speilberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Richard Dreyfuss and Terri Garr in 1977, right?

Moving further West, we come to Portland. This photo shows the city with Mt. Hood in the background. This photo was taken on a bluff overlooking the city. That night, we had dinner in a very chic establishment near there and dined on Hawaiian Ahi cooked rare as we gazed at Portland with both Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens in the distance. You wondered why we retired?

Finally, a couple of scenes from the Pacific coast. We don't remember exactly where, or whether in Oregon or California. In any case, that entire coastline is rugged and beautiful. The water is too cold for swimming, although surfers will go out in body suits.

We are now enjoying our second week with our daughter in Richmond, California, across the bay from San Francisco. We have been to the city, to Napa Valley, to Oakland, and with our granddaughter to places called Pixieland and Fairyland. Such is the life of retired grandparents.

Our best to all,

Viriyane and Jim

July 1, 2006

Hello Readers,

Our travel across the US is over. We are in San Francisco visiting out older daughter and her husband and their two children, who are, of course, our grandchildren. We arrived here June 28 after a great trip down the Pacific coast in Oregon and northern California. The coast is beautiful all along that stretch. We will have a couple of pictures for you.

But first, some pictures from earlier in the trip. [The pictures mentioned here, and others newly posted, are placed below with the text that refers to them.] They include the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia and a couple of pictures from Churchill Downs in Kentucky, where they were running races that day. The bridge is seen from above, but the beauty is below, where they created the arch supporting the longest single-span bridge in the world at that time, or at least that is what I remember. Another picture is of an abandoned mill in an old mill town in West Virginia.

I won't send more than three or four pictures at a time because some of you may not have a broadband connection to the Internet. These picture files are fairly large and may take considerable time to download with such a connection.

I wouldn't include the New River Gorge Bridge among the Thousand Places To Die For, nor for that matter would I include Churchill Downs except on Kentucky Derby day, but good luck getting a ticket for that event. Of course, a three-minute race doesn't seem like it would be worth the high price of a ticket to the Derby, but I am not a racing fan. Others would jump at the chance.

Our best to all. We will be here in San Francisco for about three weeks before visiting our other daughter in Los Angeles. We hope our Washington readers are drying out.

Viriyane and Jim

June 26, 2006:

Well, it's been a long week. The Donner Pass was especially difficult--deep snow, cold, lack of food--but we found a way to get a bite to eat and were finally on our way. Wouldn't want to do it again, though! Coupla folks didn't make it, but c'est la vie, know what I mean?

We also had technical difficulties with email, which denied access to our email account for about eight days, and Yellowstone Park does not provide internet access to its guests. They want to preserve a pristine natural environment, and they are pretty good at it, but some of us would like just a little bit of time on-line each day.

Some of you have raised objections to our "getting younger" theme, citing points about the "International Date Line" and what would happen if we continued to go around the world and came back to the East Coast. Well, your "scientific" objections don't carry water, I'm afraid. Take the so-called "International Date Line," for example. It doesn't exist! Let's take a luxurious cruise around the world and see if you can show me the "International Date Line" running through the ocean anywhere on that cruise. Loser pays the bill. If you want real "scientific" proof, here it is: We already feel younger!

The Badlands

We have been to lots of interesting places since we last reported: the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument, Wind Cave, Yellowstone, the Tetons, western Montana, Idaho, Washington State, the Columbia River Valley, Portland, and now the Oregon coast. We have crossed the country. Reached the Pacific. We are now going down the Oregon coast and making our way south to San Francisco. Of all the spots, Yellowstone was truly wonderful and amazing in every respect. Imagine a park that combines mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, large and dangerous wild animals (including bison practically on demand), an enormous volcanic crater, geysers and mud pots and hot pools that indicate ongoing geothermal activity. It is breathtaking.

But let me (Jim) say a word or two about Mount Rushmore. (I'll say this in parentheses because Viriyane doesn't like me to complain. I remember from many years ago that to get to Mount Rushmore you go down a long, steep hill to a small valley or "hollow," as they might say in West Virginia, and then up a long steep hill to the viewing point.

Down in that hollow, I remember a number of shops selling tacky souvenirs of the type formerly made in Japan and now made in Indonesia or Guatemala. Today, those shops have grown to what looks like a single enormous living pink building that has attached itself to the steep walls of the hollow and awaits the unsuspecting arrival of good American tourists with money to disgorge for the purest of schlock.

And arrive they do, by the thousands. They hurry from one place to another to buy their dreams, not realizing that the living pink building manufactures enough of everything on the spot in anticipation of every dream. It is not clear where all of these people have parked because their vehicles are nowhere in sight. It may be that the living pink building has simply devoured their cars and SUVs and minivans and pickup trucks because once they spend all their money, and max out on their credit cards, it will devour them too just to make room for the next horde of tourists.

The alert and savvy tourist must wear blinders driving down that hill, and must blindfold all his (or her, to be fair) passengers, and must press the accelerator to the floor despite the steep descent and the presence of milling tourists at the bottom so that there is no possibility of being sucked into the enormous living pink building to die an impoverished death. But that's not all! After climbing the second long and steep hill to Mount Rushmore, and after giving eight dollars to a high school kid to park in the Mount Rushmore viewing area parking lot, and after climbing the steps to get to the aforesaid Mount Rushmore viewing area, the weary and shaken tourist, thinking he will at last gaze upon the famous rock carving of four notable American icons, instead will see an enormous grey concrete structure half a football field wide, held up by four massive concrete towers, announcing that he has arrived at the Mount Rushmore viewing area.

First concrete barrier, with second concrete barrier and then state flags in the background. You can also see the rubble that fell during carving of the granite. But you can't see the carvings.

The tourist blinks with disbelief. This concrete monstrosity is a sign telling him (or her, and from now on the "her" should be understood) what he already knows full well. But it blocks his view! He can't see Mount Rushmore for the huge concrete sign! So he walks under the sign and sees another concrete barrier ahead blocking his view. So he walks up to and under that and he sees, not Mount Rushmore, but all the state flags flapping briskly in the wind and still blocking his view. The guy (certainly not a gal) who thought of posting the state flags (all of them!) most assuredly got an incentive award for this patriotic idea, and no one thought much about whether blocking the tourists' view of Mount Rushmore yet one more time would strike anyone as wretched excess.) End of parentheses. Viriyane can rejoin us.

When you see Mount Rushmore, however, you recognize magnificence. It is astonishing that those four faces, which are very true likenesses, have been carved from the granite of that mountain, and will last probably longer than mankind does on earth. That may be our legacy to wandering space aliens once some virus sweeps all of us away.

Mt. Rushmore

A different view of Washington. Cut down that tree!

We have been noticing as we cross the country that there are three main kinds of radio in America. The loudest and most annoying is, of course, Right Wing Radio. It blankets the country. You cannot escape it, not in the deepest hollow or on the highest peak. It yells at you wherever you are, most incessantly to warn you that liberals are threatening us everywhere, even though you can't find a single one, especially on the radio. Then there is Bad Music Radio, which screams at you with shrieking guitar accompaniment. Unlike Right Wing Radio, it appears to have no discernable message, just an apparent desire to break your eardrums and assault your sense of artistic merit. Third, there is Deeply Religious Radio, with earnest, heart-felt discussions of the power of love and the loving power of God. Fortunately, there is also one other kind of radio, not as prevalent as the first three, and that is National Public Radio. National Public Radio never raises its voice. National Public Radio never assaults your senses or sensibilities. National Public Radio never imposes a single point of view or purposely misrepresents anyone's position or utters a harsh word. But you know that.

We hope to write again soon. If you think any of your friends or colleagues would appreciate these occasional scrabbling, please let us know their names and email addresses. We will add them to the list. Remember: once we get to Cambodia, in addition to telling stories about our life there, we will be trolling for dollars for the benefit of Cambodian children seeking medical care at the Angkor Hospital for Children. So be prepared!

All the best,

Viriyane and Jim

June 11, 2006:

Dear Reader,

We have arrived in St. Louis, Missouri after further travels across West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. We aren't going to see much of St. Louis, or for that matter Missouri; it's just a place to stop for the night before heading further west.

Our three nights and two days in Elizabethtown, KY gave us the opportunity to see Abraham Lincoln's birthplace, a Lincoln museum, Churchill Downs, and the home that Stephen Foster made famous in his song, My Old Kentucky Home. Lincoln's birthplace wasn't much. They have built a marble hall around a log cabin similar to the one where Lincoln was born. It's just an empty cabin with one window, a door, and a fireplace and chimney inside an otherwise empty hall of much larger size. One can walk around the cabin and look inside, but there are no signs or explanations posted. There is a resident park ranger, however, who was more than happy to tell us what he could about log cabins of that era. Lincoln's cabin, of course, has disappeared.

We sat on folding chairs in a very large room to see a movie about Lincoln on a very small screen; it was about as engaging as your normal Power Point presentation. The Lincoln museum in town was better. It presented his life in about a dozen vignettes, each illustrated by life-size wax museum scenes: Lincoln as a boy, Lincoln splitting rails, Lincoln debating Douglas. I wished my granddaughter had been there because I think a child would remember the stories because she would remember the scenes and Lincoln would become more real.

Churchill Downs is mentioned in One Thousand Places to See Before You Die a Miserable Death, but only as the place where you can see the Kentucky Derby. Good luck seeing the Kentucky Derby, though. You need reservations long in advance and you pay through the nose, unless you occupy the infield, where you will stand all day and never catch sight of a horse. We saw a couple of races and it was fun. One ended with a horse coming up lame just before the finish line, reminding us of Barbaro.

Churchill Downs

A race.

In addition to the house that Foster made famous, we saw an open-air performance that night of a musical about Foster with much of his music. It was quite good.

We got off the interstate highways again today. The first time was in West Virginia when we went to New River Gorge Bridge and saw close up some of the hollows of West Virginia where people live in considerable isolation from the rest of America. Even now, their little one-floor box homes seem unadorned by any modern appliances or luxuries.

New River Gorge Bridge. You can't see the unique construction from above, but at the time it was the world's longest single-arch steel span and the second highest bridge in the US.















An old abandoned mill in West Virginia.


Today we took a rural road through southern Indiana along the Ohio River. Mile after mile of driving under a canopy of trees, punctuated by views of the river, and the rain didn't dampen our spirits. Southern Indiana, much like West Virginia and Kentucky, is lush, wet, and green. Great expanses of forest. Charming towns too small, fortunately, for a fast-food restaurant. We had lunch at Rocky Point Restaurant at a bend in the road next to the river. It ws not a fancy place, and the food was unremarkable, but there was nothing else.

We are now in a different time zone, one hour behind those of you on the East Coast. Can you imagine? You drive and drive away from work and Washington and time slows down. Life happens to you East Coasters now before it happens to us. You eat dinner before us. You go to bed before us. You get older before us. It's a scientific law, I think: The further west we go, the younger we will be compared to you. Now you know why we are going all the way to Cambodia.

Be well,

Viriyane and Jim

June 7, 2006:

Dear Readers,

Viriyane and I left Washington today, taking the first leg of our journey to Cambodia. We are going west to get to the East, and we have come first upon West Virginia. We will fill you in periodically on our travel. If you would like not to be filled in, please let us know by return email. We don't want to burden anyone. We all get enough spam as it is.

We are taking a long time to get to Cambodia. We will be three weeks enroute to California and six weeks in California visiting our children and grandchildren before leaving the country for Bangkok and Siem Reap. Today we visited an old family friend at the Sunnyside Retirement Home in Harrisonburg. The name reminds me of the Sunrise retirement home, of which there are several locations in Northern Virginia, because it was often called Sunset by people who were blissfully unburdened by knowledge of their mistake. Sunny seems to be a good name for retirement homes, suggesting optimism, hope, a cheerful outlook on life. Our family friend embodies that outlook. She enjoys remembering the past and recognizes but doesn't dwell much on the future. We had a good visit. It may be our last, for we don't know when we will return to the East Coast.

We would recommend entering West Virginia the way we did, on I64 going west from Lexington, Virginia. The highway enters the Allegheny Mountains immediately, and we were struck by the heavy green carpet of trees that seemed to weigh down the mountains, reducing their height and softening their countours. It seemed so dense that one could hardlycontemplate adding even a seedling. The highway cut through the forest, dipped into the hollows, and just as swiftly rose with the next swell of the mountains. Our little Corolla station wagon, thirteen years old and overburdened with five suitcases and a variety of smaller bags and boxes, chugged up those hills with a wheeze. The first sign inside West Virginia announced a speed limit of 70, which pretty much set the floor for local drivers in their SUVs and pickup trucks. For us it was a challenge.

We decided to stop at Greenbriar, since neither of us had ever been there. It is listed in the book One Thousand Places to See Before You Die in Sunny Brook Meadows Farm Retirement Home for Clueless Optimists. We went too far, however, and stopped at the Relax Motel to ask for directions. I walked past a bearded biker through the swinging screen door, where the Indian clerk at the desk, a small, cheerful, dark woman, directed me back to White Sulfer Springs. We drove past a Dollar General Store and a union hall and a weedy lot littered with truck carcasses before we came to Greenbriar, an impressive place, to be sure, but not Angkor Wat or the Pyramids, which are also listed in the book and are probably worth seeing before you die. Still, we have now been to Greenbriar. Cross another one off the list.

We have also been to Beckley, West Virginia, where we are spending the night. How many of you have been to Beckley, West Virginia? Tomorrow's destination: Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where another friend lives. After that, no more friends before California. We are still in the Eastern time zone, so we wish you all a good night. More later.

Viriyane and Jim