Of those two areas, I think I dug the early years part the most, maybe just because it’s a more-forgotten time. It covered a lot of “expansion era” Marine Corps activities, where the Corps acted as an expeditionary force in securing colonies in, frex, the Philippines.

Like the rest of the museum, these new areas do some cool stuff to help the visitor experience the history they’re viewing. Like in the Philippines occupation area, you walk through this “tent” and through one “wall” of the tent, you can see shadows of marines hanging out by the fire, wearing expedition hats, whittling sticks, and smoking pipes. It’s simple and not very data-rich, but it’s ingenious in its ability to convey how it might have felt to actually be a marine stationed in the Philippines at the turn of the century (minus the heat and humidity). No plaque could have conveyed that.

Photo:

The World War I exhibit was also strong, although it started off with a short, made-for-museum video loop of a kid dressed up like in the old days hawking newspapers on an in-studio streetcorner. Hated that. The kid actor was terrible, like he was trying to channel Meeno Peluce. Children should *never* be allowed to act. I don’t know why I’m the only person who seems to have realized this universal truth. I guess this kind of intro might appeal to blue-hairs, but man it was tacky and over-the-top. To me.

The rest of World War I was good, though. They had a short Belleau Wood reenactment video (yes, made-for-museum) that I liked a lot. They did with it what I always thought every war movie always should have done (but did the opposite instead) in that I think they saturated the colors on the film. Most (recent) war movies (e.g., Private Ryan, Band of Brothers) have de-saturated the color (= made the colors less vibrant) in order to give them an “authentic”, sentimental, old feel. OTOH, every first-hand account of front-line warfare that I’ve read has expressed that, in battle, combatants’ senses have been in overdrive. In that sense, it seems to me like an over-saturated color palette would best convey the image of warfare and I think that’s what they did here. (I can’t prove that they saturated the colors, but they definitely didn’t de-saturate.)

They might have shifted things a little to the blue, too.

And for the sake of playing copy editor (how fun!), they had a sign there that referred to German soldiers calling the marines “teufelhunden” (sic). That’d be capitalized in German and pretty sure it should’ve been on the sign, too.

Also watched the museum movie this time (I guess I didn’t last time — it was totally new to me). It’s a great, engaging, and moving ten-minute branding video that hits everything it should and does it without feeling too sentimental, although it did include senators John Glenn and John Warner saying (in effect) that without the Marine Corps, they wouldn’t have become senators, which to me seems like a case *against* the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps: we make politicians! Yikesnothankyou, etc. IMHO. Perhaps Sens. Warner and Glenn also appropriate(d) funds for museums, which doesn’t lessen the problem.

The Marines are still really good at telling stories and this is still very possibly the most cogent, most nailed-it museum I’ve been to. With the new galleries, it’d be kind of a long day to go all the way through in one shot. I’m not sure who my audience is for this post.

Ending so with,

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I can’t go to an aerospace museum without trying to rank it within the pantheon of aerospace museums and there were some times walking through Udvar-Hazy that I was thinking yeah, this is the best flight museum there is and that was based in large part on how easy they make it to see and photograph the planes. The USAF Museum in Dayton, for instance, is really dark so in order to take photos without a tripod, you have to do flash-fill and be happy with taking a photo of one small part of the plane. And in most flight museums, including Dayton, it seems like they looked at the arrangement of displays as a Tetris variant. Udvar-Hazy gives the planes their due space. Well, except for in the commercial airplanes area, but those planes are kind of big, so I suppose it makes sense.

And if you could combine the National Air and Space Museum component on the mall in DC with the Udvar-Hazy Center, you definitely would have the greatest flight museum in the world. But they’re too far away, so you can’t. It’s like saying if you combined Seattle and Portland, you’d have the second largest city on the west coast. True but moot. Like most of life.

Enterprise, the real fake space shuttle.

The Concorde sees you.

A B-29.

Wouldn’t dream of it.

A galaxy of satellites. Maybe just a cluster.

It couldn’t fly very fast because the propeller was so small.

Hey look, an airplane!

The F-22 is a better value. (This is an X-35.)

A Ju-52.

The well-stocked commercial wing.

Which leaves only bullet points:

• I think the Top Tier of aerospace museums is this one, the one on the mall, the USAF, and probably Pima/AMARG.
• It’s interesting how they don’t tell many stories in this museum — they mostly let the plane speak for itself. There are no big panels explaining the Wright Bros. or anything like that — I think most of that is on the mall.
• Without a doubt the least impressive gift shop of any top-flite aerospace museum.
• Walking through the museum, you start feeling like there are planes that should be there but aren’t, and then you remember that the other half of the collection is an hour away, which is sort of comforting in that you know that they know that this isn’t a complete something.
• They have a bunch of “last one like this that still exists” planes there, including some bizarre-awesome German WWII examples, like the late-war gigantic fighter plane with fore and aft props. Too bad those airplanes are evil.
• For some reason the only planes missing their wings were German WWII planes. There was no explanation.
• They put plexi-glass up around the Enola Gay so no one could throw stuff at it. Apparently that’s happened before.
• Hooray for flight.

So yeah. ICYDK, the Udvar-Hazy Center is located right by Dulles Airport in Virginia. The Smithsonian (or whoever) built it in order to house planes that wouldn’t fit in the regular museum on the mall. They have elevated walkways along parts of the perimeter that afford the top-down views. The museum is free, but parking is $15. The only food inside is McDonalds. There’s very little to buy in the gift shop.

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PS, If you combined Seattle and Portland, it would still only be the third largest city on the west coast.

The car overstates its mileage by a little bit, but still, 51.1 for a 217-mile ride is probably as good as it’s ever going to get. And, uh — yeah, shoot, I got nothing. Here:

• There are about 18 different ways to get to the DC/NoVa area that all take about the same length of time. On the way down, I took scenic Highway 51, eventually routing through Uniontown, Cumberland, and Winchester. Took 4:15, got 51.1 mpg.
• On the way back, I took the Cadillac route: interstates all the way, including the fantastic Pennsylvania Turnpike: 4:15. And 20 extra miles or so and only 46.8 mpg.
• The car overstates mpg by 2-3 points.
• When I got off the dumb toll road, the tollbooth lady told me it’d be $7.25, so I handed her a ten, two ones, and a quarter and she says, “Did you know you gave me $12.25?”. I had no comeback for that.
• If I hadn’t known, would she have denied it ever happened and then not given me the five back? We’ll never know. We’ll never know.
• The hotel I stayed in for $40/night (plus 20-percent tax) was a real-live, genuine three-star Hilton Garden Inn.
• While I was there, I went to the Udvar-Hazy part of the National Air & Space Museum, the National Museum of the Marine Corps (they had some new stuff there), Mt. Vernon, and the National Firearms Museum.
• People who leave Yelp reviews for Bethesda, Md. restaurants are kind of catty. I’m not speaking of myself. Yet.
• I should have taken the Reader’s Digest book of road trips so I could have hit some highlights on the return trip. There appear to be a lot of forts, battlefields, historic transportation sites, and houses built over waterfalls.

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Here’s a photo I took of the temple:

They showed a movie, but it was kind of long and content-free. Our tour guide was Russian for some reason. He apologized for his accent a lot. His accent was fine, but he didn’t know  how to use definite articles. They won’t let you take pictures inside. There was a woman in our tour group who got huffy when no one else had ever heard some story about the window being cracked because the builders ran out of glass that they’d had imported from London. The tour guide kept insisting instead that there’d been a 2.5 earthquake there recently.

It was very white inside and looked like a church, but without carpet on the walls. Cool gold letters on the pulpits, though.

Then Mitzie, my aunt, suggested that we all drive down to Jack Johnson’s farm, which she said was my mom’s favorite place in all of Ohio.

I should have leaned back some.

Turns out it was John Johnson’s farm, which really didn’t make it any less interesting than Jack’s would’ve been. The tour guides were pleasant and bore fiery witness. The upstairs room where all the extra guests would have slept was sweltering. The one thing that my mom had liked about it wasn’t there any more.

Then we went to Dairy Queen for dinner, where my cousin denied having ever told me that City of God was his favorite movie. It wouldn’t be a bad choice. It’s more interesting than claiming Pride and Prejudice (yes, I’m looking at you every Mormon girl I’ve met in the past ten years).

Then I headed back to my jobsite and they to “somewhere four hours west of here”.

With solemn rectitude,

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Anti-climactic, I know. Here’s a photo of Pittsburgh from Carson Street.

Bis später,

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Got out of Dodge (har!) around 7, bought gas in Olathe, Kan., then again in Greenville, Ill. Mileage is off a little bit (15 and 16), but still, I’m averaging 16 for the trip and if you had told me a week ago I’d be getting 16 mpg pulling a fully laden trailer, I’d have been, you know, pleasantly surprised.

Here’s a photo I took since photos make everything better:

Although maybe not this particular photo so much.

Also:

• I think crossing Kansas is probably more interesting than crossing Nebraska. It’s a low-set bar, yes, but in Nebraska everything’s awful until you hit Lincoln. In Kansas, things start getting a little greener and hillier around Hutchinson, which beats Lincoln by over a full degree of longitude, ergo Kansas ftw.
• 742 miles total.
• There seems to be a Pabst Blue Ribbon-drinkers convention going on at the Days Inn in Terre Haute tonight. Possibly also tomorrow, I’m not sure.
• Driving through Southern Illinois is more pleasant than driving through northern. It’s like an extended remix of eastern Kansas and there’s no rat’s nest of under-construction tollways to navigate.
• And it’s looking like I’ll be able to finish the trip without having paid a single toll.
• Missouri’s a pretty state to look at from the freeway..
• Except that I-70 from Kansas City to St. Louis is choked with semi-trucks. They dissipate once you hit St. Lou, but till then, man!

And now there are only 7 1/2 more driving hours till I reach the job site. Hopefully I can get water, power, and gas activated on Friday.

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1. I’ve lost my sunflower seed inner-cheek callous. There will be a few more days of pain as the tissues rebuild.
2. Got on the road before 6 this morning.
3. Covered 697 miles today.
4. If you want to know what a place looks like *right before* it turns into a ghost town, I recommend taking a drive down Main Street in Tucumcari, N.M.
5. When you put a lot of cattle together in one place, it doesn’t smell very good.
6. One day I will write a critique of American drivers. It will be entitled Brave Enough to Tailgate, Too Scared to Pass. There will be at least one chapter dedicated to Arizona.
7. Mileage: 15, 19 (!). The 15 was driving primarily uphill and the 19 primarily downhill. But still. My truck seems to appreciate being given a real truck job to do. It handles the trailer like a champ.
8. Bought gas in Gallup and Santa Rosa.
9. Having now been to Dodge City, I realize I may not have given Deadwood enough credit.
10. I’m surprised by how much of Mexico currently resides in southwestern Kansas.

Behold, the once-wild West!:

Dodge City’s Boot Hill, aka the parking lot next to Applebee’s.

I’m also impressed that New Mexico’s rest area authority is so interested in voice-of-customer data:

We refers to “men”, I imagine.

I didn’t vote. It looked like there were germs on the buttons.

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That’s my truck(’s shadow).

Miles Driven: 521

Gas Mileage: 16 (!) — kind of ridiculous. It’s the same mileage I got on the cross-country road trip, only this time I got the bed of the truck full to the gills and am pulling 2,000 lbs. worth of crap in a U-Haul trailer that’s older than I am. Next time I take a 22,000-mile road trip, I gotta make sure the tires are inflated I guess.

Best Song: Johnny Cash’s “Man In Black” seemed really good when it came on. I think Johnny Cash probably just sounds good on road trips though.

Best Stretch of Road: Hwy 260 from Payson, Ariz. to Heber, Ariz. Awesome roadscape, kind of reminded me of the area around Flagstaff (I guess that kind of makes sense). Mountains, tall trees, reddish rocks, surprising road-side lakes — really pretty drive.  Couple pics (cell phone while driving):

There was construction.

Best Thing Consumed: The Del Taco in Yuma was a little disappointing, but then the Indian reservation convenience store in Mesa had Code Red on tap and, man, I’d forgotten how good fountain Code Red was.

What My Rig Looks Like:

Also sort of what my brother’s driveway looks like.

Next Up!: I dunno. I’m thinking I’ll go ahead and add an hour to the trip (taking it from 38 hours driving to 39) and head up into Kansas instead of running through Amarillo and Oklahoma-OK again. Haven’t driven through much of Kansas (I’m sure it’s fascinating). Maybe Salina tomorrow night? Couldn’t find any blown fuses this morning that would explain why the running lights on the trailer don’t work, so I’m trying not to drive in the dark, which is kind of constraining.

And I might change my mind in the morning and just try to make it to OKC. Mal sehen.

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Hike started at the Paria Townsite, about 30 miles east of Kanab. The townsite was an actual town until 1900 or so and then was later used as the site for some (purpose-built) sets for a few western movies (of which I’ve only seen The Outlaw Josey Wales). Headed up the Paria River and through the canyon until I got tired and set up camp. Camp looked like:

Pretty area. Nothing really in terms of landmark, must-see stuff, but otoh, I didn’t see anyone else in the canyon/on the river at all over the 16-or-so miles I hiked. Kind of a muddy river. Spent maybe 20-percent of the time actually in the river (max: knee-deep). Was probably a good thing I took poles.

Ended up doing this hike because I didn’t really want to do the “big hike” I’d signed up for (Buckskin Gulch and the *Arizona* Paria). Mostly because four days was going to be too long to be sleeping on the ground and too short to have a good time on a 48-mile slot canyon hike through a river. I’ll do it on purpose some time, take my truck so I can park at one of the Utah-side trailheads, and go in at Wire Pass and out at White House. Some day.

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They were pretty fantastic and there were a lot of tourists. Frex, here’s half of the parking lot:

It’s showing fewer than half the cars that were there. Kind of amazing given that you’re driving 28 miles down a washboardy dirt road. OTOH, the Prius made it, so it’s obviously not a big hurdle.

When I got there, there was a huge family group just heading down the trail. It was grandma’s birthday. Probably 40 people ranging from age 0 to maybe 80. The posted maximum group size is 12. They wore a lot of University of Utah gear. Draw your own conclusions. Mine involves West Valley City, one of those 2 1/2-year missions to Russia, and a ward where there is no Sunday school.

Headed down the trail:

You can actually see the entrance to Peek-a-Boo Gulch in that photo, but you’d have to know what you’re looking for. It’s just a fold in the rock, about halfway up and 25% over from the left. Waldo and so forth. Here’s what it (the opening) looks like zoomed in:

It goes toward the left. Anyway.

Catherine at the B&B had given me instructions that involved starting the loop by going up Peek-a-Boo. By the time I got down there, though, I’d caught up to The Family Group and, thinking that a narrow slot canyon might decrease the usual joy I receive at listening to the cries of a hundred ten-year-olds, I kept going toward Spooky Gulch.

Which, after the fact, I think was better anyway. It’s narrower, but a whole lot easier to get into.

Here’s the one place I had to get down on hands and knees and crawl along the dirt like a common lizard:

And then things got narrower.

So I think that was the narrowest spot in the canyon. I had to walk through their sideways and, even doing so, the rock walls were compressing my chest as I slid through. It’d probably be less dramatic if you squatted down a little bit, but I didn’t do that. (I had to take the backpack off in order to fit through sideways.)

This would kind of be a bad hike if you were claustrophobic. Or, like, stout.

After a while, you come to parts of the slot where you have to scramble a little. Here’s one:

Not sure if the photo captures it, but you’re trying to squeeze through some tight spaces while climbing up “steps” that are chest-high and not crack your head open in the process. It’s kind of fun. Here’s another little hole I had to climb through (photo taken after climbing):

While you’re walking through the gulch, there are some spots where the sun gets down to the bottom of the slot, others where you can’t see the sky. It’s interesting. The rock formations are cool and weird, Seussian even.

Oh, and it’s sort of awkward (especially in Spooky Gulch) when you hear someone coming down the canyon when you’re going up. There aren’t a lot of convenient passing locations.

Not too long after the arch, you exit Spooky and you’re up on a flat, red-sand plain. According to the directions I got from the B&B hostess, I needed to turn left at a right angle and keep walking until I found Peek-a-Boo Gulch. Catherine, the hostess, suggested that I err on cutting the angle too acutely rather than too obliquely, since if I missed the end of the slot I’d end up wandering through the desert for a couple weeks before probably dying.

Here’s what the route between the gulches looks like:

I figured that so long as I followed the footsteps, at least I’d see where other people had died of dehydration before doing so myself. Didn’t work out that way, of course. Here’s the top of Peek-a-Boo Gulch (close to the top anyway):

So, yeah, then you basically just go down there. Peek-a-Boo Gulch isn’t quite as narrow as Spooky, but it’s got a few more unusual features. Here’s a hairpin turn I thought was cool:

Yep. Then here’s a cool arch+light situation:

It’s kind of hard to get into good positions to take photos in there sometimes. Here’s a bridge overhead:

And then you’re just about at the bottom of Peek-a-Boo, where it gets kind of interesting. There are a couple of big pot holes that you have to either long-jump or climb down and back up. Fortunately there were some people around there so that when my long jump fell a little short I got a hand-up so I didn’t have to retreat down into the mud. These potholes are positioned between some pretty cool arches:

And then this is how Peek-a-Boo ends. Or how it begins if you start here:

So it’s pretty close to straight up from where I’m standing to where the green jacket guy is, and then it’s pretty much straight down from where I’m standing to the bottom of that wall. And at this point, I was wondering how it is that this is such a *tourist* hike. Seems like a lot of narrow squeezes, pull-ups, having to trust your entire weight to the friction between the soles of your boots and a near-vertical wall, and stuff like that to be such a tourist hike. Oh well. Maybe it’d be way more crowded without those features. Or maybe way less.

Catherine also suggested heading up Dry Fork as sort of a cool-down after Spooky and Peek-a-Boo. It was nice, not nearly as dramatic, but: nice.

It does open up a little better and let a little more light in, though.

Then once you get to the top of Dry Fork, you head cross-country looking for the parking lot.

Really cool experience, something I hadn’t done before, worth doing, etc.

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It’s spring now, but anyway:

Wall Street, Closed

Thor's Hammer, I think.

This is probably too many photos. Whatever. They're all uploaded already.

Top of Queen's Garden trail.

Truly.

A tree.

It was from this spot that I added the new used car to my insurance policy.

Amphitheater.

I don't remember if this road was inside the park or not.

So that’s a lot of photos. You can see them at “full size” by clicking on them, you know, if that’s your thing. Most of them are from a little hike I went on down the Navajo Loop and connecting to the Queens Garden trail. Pretty and short and a little icy and steep at the top of Navajo. For some reason, probably because they’re mean, bitter people, the Parks Service closed the Wall Street trail — which is sort of the whole reason to come to Bryce. I mean, you know, that and the hoodoos, but whatever.

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Red Canyon is in Southern Utah. It’s a little place that’s west of Bryce Canyon, which is a bigger place. Maybe. I haven’t measured. Bryce Canyon doesn’t seem all that big to be honest. While at Red Canyon, I hiked the Cassidy Trail up and then hung a left onto the Rich Trail (thinking this would help with my finances) and then, at the appropriate time, took the Ledge Point Trail.

It was snowing much of this time and about 50-percent of the trail was under snow. When I got done with the Ledge Point, I tried to keep going up Rich, but was thwarted by accumulated snow and an inability to figure out where the trail was supposed to go. It had all been so much easier when I could just follow the creek bed. So then I turned around and walked back down to my econobox.

Some photos, sure:

Ledge Point!

Some red rock, trees, and snow.

Snow, falling.

What the hike lacked in length, it made up for in cold, snowy conditions and gray skies.

And FWIW, here’s what Highway 14 looked like on Monday.

I suppose I could have bought chains before leaving Cedar City.

Excelsior, I guess,

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So, yeah, I have a “car” now.  I’ll post on that one later. Maybe.

• Su: Mt. Helix to Escalante Petrified State Park (or maybe some hotel in St. George)
• Mo: Escalante (Some Hole-in-the-Rock hike)
• Tu: Escalante (Somethin’)
• We: Escalante (Some Hole-in-the-Rock hike)
• Th: Escalante to Kanab to Page
• Fr: Paria Canyon Backpacking (start at Wire Pass)
• Sa: Paria Canyon
• Su: Paria Canyon
• Mo: Paria Canyon (exit Lee’s Ferry), probably sleep in Page or so.
• Tu: Page to Mt. Helix

Now you know.

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The One View. Downtown Pittsburgh and the "golden triangle" taken from the top of the Duquesne Incline on Mt. ("Mt.") Washington.

And with that out of the way, here are some photos of driving on 376 from the airport into the Oakland part of town where Pitt’s campus is. It’s not a great photo essay, but whatever.

There are a lot of railroad overpasses there. I get the impression that if Pittsburgh ever needed to get its steel economy rolling again, the infrastructure would be ready for business again within about a half-hour.

Getting close to the Fort Pitt Tunnel.

Even closer.

The inside looks like a tunnel!

Exit tunnel onto bridge.

It’s hard to capture the drama of exiting the Fort Pitt Tunnel heading into downtown while trying to simultaneously operate a motor vehicle at 60 miles an hour. That said, the sudden view you get when you exit the tunnel is about as dramatic a moment as a person can have while driving. Especially if you do it at night. Highly recommended, especially for a first time entering the city.

Another infrastructure photo.

Therewith,

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Went to Balboa Park (in San Diego) ostensibly to visit the Museum of Photographic Arts there. They had some nice photos inside and, naturally, you’re not allowed to take any photographs yourself while there. Hypocrites.

I don’t think I’d ever been to Balboa Park before, though, aside from going to the zoo. Here are some pictures because I haven’t posted anything in a long time:

The top of some building + sky.

Stupid Balboa, thinks he's better than me just because he has a horse. Hate Balboa.

The Measure of a Museum of a Man -- it looks taller than that from a distance.

View of the park through a colonnade.

I noted names of a couple of photographers I want to look up some day into my Blackberry. Haven’t looked at it again since. Meh.

Then I went home.

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I like ghost towns and ruins. Except that sometimes the places that are called “ghost towns” are kind of disappointing. All those “buildings” in Death Valley, for instance — I mean, there’s no romance there. You can’t see anything of what used to actually go on since it’s all so dilapidated now. But at some point during the big road trip last year it occurred to me that I didn’t need to seek out “ghost towns”, because they were right in front of me. Every boarded up house in the world is a “ghost house” — there were some impressive examples in Natchez, for instance, and I remember a lot of disappearing Americana in rural Southern Oregon as well. And there was some town I drove through in Texas that looked like it had been abandoned within the last ten years. It wasn’t a wild west ghost town, but it was awesome anyway.

It’s also interesting to me that they keep these parts of the terminal open to the public. The international gates, for instance, have a door on them so they could be shut off, but the door is wide open. The moving sidewalks still move, the announcement tells you to please stand to the right and pass on the left and caution, because the moving walkway is nearing its end. But there’s no one there to hear it.

Two thirty-five.

Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower ofpips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches.

Music played.

But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.

Y’know part of me hopes there’s a big nuclear war some time just so I can see if any of the post-apocalyptic prognostications ended up having any validity. What’s the point of guessing at it if you never even get to see it?!

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Government overreach. That was the reason. Not kidding.

And one day I’ll go somewhere with (one of) my real camera(s) again. Just that my point-and-shoot has to go back to the factory (it’s in an envelope, has been there for a week now, on my desk) and the DSLR is freakin’ huge, which matters when it comes to not checking luggage. And having to bring a parka. So: cell phone photos.

Got back from The Pitt on Saturday night, was there for about 44 hours total, during which time it never got over 20 degrees. Everyone there apologized for the weather, but honestly it’s kind of cool to have a good reason to wear said parka for once and anyway, clear skies and 15 degrees breaks up the monotony of overcast and 65 in a welcome manner. Seriously. For me.

I’d rather have clear skies than warm temperatures anyway.

Generally.

Pittsburgh, at night, from the top of Washington Hill.

So, surprisingly, not quite enough light for the ol’ cell phone on that one. OTOH, it was a great view — you can see a few of the city’s bridges down there and the confluence of the rivers (Allegheny and Monongahela). Went to a restaurant very close to this location with the exact same view, which was pretty cool.

View from Room 615 at the Wyndham Hotel.

So you can kind of see some Pittsburgh topography in that one also. And some snow, and Forbes Street, which is a main thoroughfare in Oakland, the part of town where Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon are. The topography in Pittsburgh makes it an interesting place — hills and rivers and tunnels and bridges break up the neighborhoods so it’s not like most cities where it’s just a big old paved place with buildings on top.

Center field wall of the former Forbes Field. The business school is now located where the right field grandstand was.

The Pirates played here until Three Rivers was built. This is where they won the World Series in 1960 with the Bill Mazeroski home run against the Yankees and all that. It’s all now incorporated into Pitt’s campus.

The Cathedral of Learning on Pitt campus.

It’s the second tallest higher-education building in the world! And for some reason it’s in a neo-gothic style. And the inside looks like Hogwarts. Some sort of depression-era make-work project. Kind of seems like they could’ve come up with a better name for it. IMHO.

Installation art at the Mattress Factory museum. The faces talk to you.

That one was a little disconcerting. Installation art is odd stuff, but at least it gives the viewer something to do (e.g., “slowly walk toward the gray rectangle”, “sit in utter darkness for fifteen minutes”).

Tarmac at sunset with baggage cart.

Might’ve been good with a real camera and tripod is all.

It’s an interesting, old town. I mean, you feel how old it is everywhere you go — like the “incline” that takes you to the top of Mt. Washington is the one that steelworkers were using to get down to work on the river back in… eh, some year that was a long time ago. It’s kind of the opposite of New York where every building gets torn down and re-built every fifty years (seemingly). It also feels like an odd combination of cramped and over-built. The streets were all made for horse-drawn buggies, so parking and driving is tight — but there aren’t that many people driving, so you never feel trapped. Might have something to do with the population declines over the last three or four decades, but it’s an odd combination.

Pgh!

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La Jolla Cove with waves and palm tree shadow.

My brother chooses not to look while his wife and kids decide whether or not they want to jump off the cliff.

It's your legal right to use this beach regardless of the presence of seals, no matter what the seal rights people's signs tell you..

There were also birds like this there.

And when they fly, they look like this.

Would’ve been better with my real camera. I was sort of just getting sick that day also, which — well, it’s a nice, all-encompassing fall-back excuse.

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• If you want adventure, Kauai is way better.
• If you want shopping and restaurants in a tropical setting, Waikiki/O’ahu is way better.
• If you want volcanoes, the Big Island is better (I’m assuming).

But if you want B-versions of the above all in one place, well, that’s Maui I think. IMHO of course. At which point I release a big photo dump and hope for the best.

The church in Kahakuloa.

This is the place where they tell you to respect the a'ina, although they don't really explain how you do that exactly.

Some sailboat as seen from the trail that takes you to the blowhole that does not blow (when I'm there).

Olivine Pools -- you swim in 'em!

Rental car's a-comin'!

This is what my parents look like.

Waymarker on a beach near the La Perouse light station.

End of Kings Highway

Waianapanapa Beach, which has black sand.

Venus Pool, which ended up being too shallow to reasonably access from the trail that day.

The beach at the bottom of the "Sacred Pools" (that didn't seem all that sacred without much water in them).

Just FYI, if there hasn't been much rain on Maui, most of the waterfalls kind of suck. This was as good as there was anywhere on the Hana side.

The Hana Highway if you take it past Hana (note: it's not a dirt road).

The dragon's teeth. Which dragon? Difficult to say.

The Lahaina Prison -- they named a road after it (in Lahaina; it's called "Prison Road").

Worthwhile photo captions seem so last-vacation.

Also went on the Pipiwai Trail up to the big ol’ waterfalls, which were barely trickling. I’m guessing that 90-percent of the time, this hike is by far the best one on Maui. It has variation in foliage (including a bamboo forest), is relatively short, has several highlights along the way (waterfalls and pools unless there’s no water) and has a massive waterfall at the end (unless there’s no water). Anyway.

I’m tired and don’t remember much from this vacation. A shame, yes.

bkd

Me in the computer lab and distressingly clean-shaven.

The "Big XII Store" at OKC Will Rogers International Airport.

Two things:

1. From the gear available in the store, you’d think they were advocating getting rid of the other XI — sort of like USC in the Pac 1.
2. I don’t think there are any regularly scheduled international flights going through Will Rogers. They had flights to Houston, though, which may be close enough.

The trip to Oklahoma went real well. It’s a friendly town (Norman, I mean) that seemed like an easy place to be as far as that goes. And the football stadium isn’t at the *exact* center of campus — but pretty close. Surprisingly pretty campus, though, and while there I learned that there’s an architectural style called “Cherokee Gothic”. Not sure how that jives with the Cherokee Wild Potato, but certainly it must.

bkd