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Marina del Rey, in Los Angeles County, California, contains the largest artificial pleasure boat harbor in North America. Construction began in the 1950s and today the basin has a capacity for 5,000 vessels, supports five different yacht clubs and is lined with restaurants, shops, condos, and hotels. The first hotel built was the historic Marina…
We traveled a lot this winter, both near and far. The first, and most major, trip was an unforgettable journey over New Year’s to Antarctica, where we flew on a DC-3 to stand at the geographic South Pole at altitude 9,301 ft (2,835m). As part of this adventure, we also made stops in dynamic Doha,…
Completed in September, 2023 at a cost of $2.3 billion, the Sphere in Las Vegas is 366 feet (111 m) tall and 516 feet (157 m) wide. The exterior is covered with 1.2 million hockey puck-sized LED lights that are programmed with an ever-changing array of spectacular images. The interior features a 16K 160,000-square-foot (15,000…
We’ve been toying with the idea of a high-speed weekend boat to more easily take advantage of the water-based attractions in the area, so made that our focus at this year’s Seattle Boat Show. Brands that we toured include Arksen, Axopar, Coastal Craft, and Saxdor. Wellcraft also is of interest, but they weren’t represented at…
Despite all our travels, Jennifer had never been to Mexico and James had only briefly visited once, years ago for a conference in Cancun. Jennifer finally reached America’s neighbor to the south early this year on a fabulous weekend trip to Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. James started…
Gig Harbor is a wonderfully sheltered and tranquil harbor on the opposite side of the Puget Sound from Tacoma. We’ve spent many nights anchored there on Dirona, enjoying the lights reflecting into the still waters from the homes and businesses that ring the shore. And we always made a point to take the tender ashore…
We enjoyed our first weekend at Point Ruston so much that we returned for another earlier this year. We love the rooms at the Point Ruston Waterfront hotel, with sweeping views to Commencement Bay, where we can get a little work done by the window and see what’s happening outside, both on land and the…
As part of our trip to the South Pole, we returned to Cape Town for the first time since 2015. Back then, we’d arrived in South Africa from Reunion after crossing the Indian Ocean in Dirona, and spent two months in country before sailing on to Barbados via St. Helena. As our plane banked over…
For the first half of the 20th century, the only people who had stood at the South Pole were the 1911/1912 expedition teams of Norwegian Roald Amundsen and Briton Robert F. Scott. It wasn’t until 1956 that humans again set foot at the pole, this time to establish the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station research center…
We bought a Loutytuo travel kettle back in 2021 as part of the kit for our month-long road trip across the country from Charleston, SC to Seattle. We’re usually up before 5am and enjoy a hot beverage right away. The kettle allowed us to make coffee or tea at will in the various hotel rooms…
We first visited Antarctica aboard the National Geographic Endurance in late 2022 and loved the raw beauty of the snow-covered wilderness, with fantastically-shaped icebergs and rugged mountains soaring upwards from land and sea. The wildlife was exceptional as well, but it was the scenery that really drew us in. We knew we’d be back, but…
World-famous Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves on the African continent, encompassing nearly 4.9 million acres (2 million ha). The park also is home to among the widest diversity of large mammals in the world, including the lion, leopard, cheetah, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, antelope, and wildebeest. We very…
Doha, the capitol of oil-rich Qatar, is a fast-growing and dynamic city with a spectacular, constantly-evolving skyline. The Qatari government, in an effort to diversify the economy away from oil and gas sector and encourage tourism and business investments, is investing heavily in world-class infrastructure and modernization. The country has burst onto the world stage…
Launched in 2020, the Aqua Nera is the newest by a decade of the roughly half-dozen commercial river boats that cruise the Peruvian Amazon River. The ship is operated by Aqua Expeditions, who have branched out from their beginnings on the Amazon River to operate small-boat cruises in the Galapagos, Indonesia, and the Mekong River….
While on a recent safari at Lion Sands Ivory Lodge in Sabi Sands Game Reserve, South Africa, we watched an African rock python swallow an impala. The opportunity to watch a python swallow its prey is rare and ours was even more so, in that the typical prey for the python is much smaller animals…
This morning Spitfire the Wonder Cat died on route to the vet. He’s been working through kidney problems for five years and heart problems for eight months but neither slowed him down much. He lived for 20 years, 5 months, 28 days and his personality never faltered. He always had lots to say, loved following…
In addition to more adventuring in the Pacific Northwest, this year we continued the “filling in the gaps” tour and visited several places that we either didn’t get to, or couldn’t reach, on our around-the world trip on Dirona. And we’re happy to report that Spitfire the wonder cat reached his 20th birthday this year,…
November brought winter weather to Seattle, with heavy rainfall and temperatures that brushed around freezing. We escaped the cold weather, but not the rain, on an Amazon River cruise later in the month. Temperatures there were in the high 90s F (32 C), with the sporadic downpours typical of the tropics. Preparing for the trip…
Marina del Rey, in Los Angeles County, California, contains the largest artificial pleasure boat harbor in North America. Construction began in the 1950s and today the basin has a capacity for 5,000 vessels, supports five different yacht clubs and is lined with restaurants, shops, condos, and hotels. The first hotel built was the historic Marina…
We traveled a lot this winter, both near and far. The first, and most major, trip was an unforgettable journey over New Year’s to Antarctica, where we flew on a DC-3 to stand at the geographic South Pole at altitude 9,301 ft (2,835m). As part of this adventure, we also made stops in dynamic Doha,…
Completed in September, 2023 at a cost of $2.3 billion, the Sphere in Las Vegas is 366 feet (111 m) tall and 516 feet (157 m) wide. The exterior is covered with 1.2 million hockey puck-sized LED lights that are programmed with an ever-changing array of spectacular images. The interior features a 16K 160,000-square-foot (15,000…
We’ve been toying with the idea of a high-speed weekend boat to more easily take advantage of the water-based attractions in the area, so made that our focus at this year’s Seattle Boat Show. Brands that we toured include Arksen, Axopar, Coastal Craft, and Saxdor. Wellcraft also is of interest, but they weren’t represented at…
Despite all our travels, Jennifer had never been to Mexico and James had only briefly visited once, years ago for a conference in Cancun. Jennifer finally reached America’s neighbor to the south early this year on a fabulous weekend trip to Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. James started…
Gig Harbor is a wonderfully sheltered and tranquil harbor on the opposite side of the Puget Sound from Tacoma. We’ve spent many nights anchored there on Dirona, enjoying the lights reflecting into the still waters from the homes and businesses that ring the shore. And we always made a point to take the tender ashore…
We enjoyed our first weekend at Point Ruston so much that we returned for another earlier this year. We love the rooms at the Point Ruston Waterfront hotel, with sweeping views to Commencement Bay, where we can get a little work done by the window and see what’s happening outside, both on land and the…
As part of our trip to the South Pole, we returned to Cape Town for the first time since 2015. Back then, we’d arrived in South Africa from Reunion after crossing the Indian Ocean in Dirona, and spent two months in country before sailing on to Barbados via St. Helena. As our plane banked over…
For the first half of the 20th century, the only people who had stood at the South Pole were the 1911/1912 expedition teams of Norwegian Roald Amundsen and Briton Robert F. Scott. It wasn’t until 1956 that humans again set foot at the pole, this time to establish the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station research center…
We bought a Loutytuo travel kettle back in 2021 as part of the kit for our month-long road trip across the country from Charleston, SC to Seattle. We’re usually up before 5am and enjoy a hot beverage right away. The kettle allowed us to make coffee or tea at will in the various hotel rooms…
We first visited Antarctica aboard the National Geographic Endurance in late 2022 and loved the raw beauty of the snow-covered wilderness, with fantastically-shaped icebergs and rugged mountains soaring upwards from land and sea. The wildlife was exceptional as well, but it was the scenery that really drew us in. We knew we’d be back, but…
World-famous Kruger National Park is one of the largest game reserves on the African continent, encompassing nearly 4.9 million acres (2 million ha). The park also is home to among the widest diversity of large mammals in the world, including the lion, leopard, cheetah, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, antelope, and wildebeest. We very…
Doha, the capitol of oil-rich Qatar, is a fast-growing and dynamic city with a spectacular, constantly-evolving skyline. The Qatari government, in an effort to diversify the economy away from oil and gas sector and encourage tourism and business investments, is investing heavily in world-class infrastructure and modernization. The country has burst onto the world stage…
Launched in 2020, the Aqua Nera is the newest by a decade of the roughly half-dozen commercial river boats that cruise the Peruvian Amazon River. The ship is operated by Aqua Expeditions, who have branched out from their beginnings on the Amazon River to operate small-boat cruises in the Galapagos, Indonesia, and the Mekong River….
While on a recent safari at Lion Sands Ivory Lodge in Sabi Sands Game Reserve, South Africa, we watched an African rock python swallow an impala. The opportunity to watch a python swallow its prey is rare and ours was even more so, in that the typical prey for the python is much smaller animals…
This morning Spitfire the Wonder Cat died on route to the vet. He’s been working through kidney problems for five years and heart problems for eight months but neither slowed him down much. He lived for 20 years, 5 months, 28 days and his personality never faltered. He always had lots to say, loved following…
In addition to more adventuring in the Pacific Northwest, this year we continued the “filling in the gaps” tour and visited several places that we either didn’t get to, or couldn’t reach, on our around-the world trip on Dirona. And we’re happy to report that Spitfire the wonder cat reached his 20th birthday this year,…
November brought winter weather to Seattle, with heavy rainfall and temperatures that brushed around freezing. We escaped the cold weather, but not the rain, on an Amazon River cruise later in the month. Temperatures there were in the high 90s F (32 C), with the sporadic downpours typical of the tropics. Preparing for the trip…