Tag: USA
-
It’s beginning to get contemplative
The journey through Banff and Jasper National Park is like travelling through one euphoric postcard of Canadian landscape into another. Except without “Wish You Were Here” slapped across the sky in neon letters, and sometimes, quite frankly, I’m glad you’re not. The beauty I find in the wild is often in the remote and isolated…
-
I need a pet Bat for this adventure…
I need a bat. The flying, insect-eating variety, not the sporting kind. Walking around with a cricket bat on a leash might be assuming a kind of crazy that can wait till I’m in my eighties. Although on reflection, it would give my flying bat something to cling to and sleep on, slung over my…
-
-
Banff & Jasper, and a bit of blue for the dads
The massive, monstrous hotel at Lake Louise (Banff National Park) is a fine example of a failure of aesthetics. After the original wooden hotel/lodge burnt down in the late 19th century, it was rebuilt and extended. It is a construction disaster, in the most inappropriate location – and it upsets me. Most towns we have…
-
-
The slightly ranty post…
I feel like I should judge Canada, while waving my judgy finger, for allowing such a sordid sin of commercialisation within a national park. Yet for some reason, I find Banff to be more of a community and thriving town rather than a specific, tourist-catering gift shop which pampers to the whims of tour buses…
-
Reaching the Rockies
Since crossing the border into Canada, we’ve driven over 2000 miles across the prairies and we haven’t seen a single police car, police officer, or even a speed camera! They must be here, but it couldn’t be more different from the paranoid and profiteering, policed nation to the south, which I have been used too.…
-
Even when it’s dull, it isn’t
Driving across the four principalities of Canada, or the few states across the centre of the USA if we had gone that route must surely be, some of the dullest driving on earth (as well as the M25 in rush hour, but at least you can get out and talk to your fellow, traffic jam…
-
Do you have any guns?
After the elation of seeing Mr Wolf, it was time to cross the border into Canada. It wasn’t the strangest border crossing I’ve ever encountered, but it was in the middle of a working factory. We drove under an over-head pipeline and over multiple rail road tracks, snaking our way through the middle of an…
-
I’m Russell Crowe… only without the lovely sandals
A sleepless start to the night as one of us left a slither of opportunity open for the “skeetos” to come after me as I tried to settle. They can smell me a mile way and just when I think we’ve pulled into a windy, waterless spot, KP is sympathising (although grateful it’s me and…
-
Mackinac, the fudge, and rubbing myself against a cheese grater
The towns on the forehead of the Exogorth outline (well done if you worked out that obscure reference), are quite picturesque in the sunshine. Much of the monster’s brow, with roots steeped in French exploration and the American-Indian wars, built on the industries of mining, logging, and shipping, the towns today express a certain pride…
-
Ocean-fronted home for napping bear
Our first day on the road was a shaky one. It was also the first time KP gave me the reigns to his four wheeled, fancy lady, and that reminds me, I don’t think she has a name! The drive from Clayton started beautifully. KP drove in the morning sunshine; along the sparkling St Lawrence…
-
The world is full of generous, gin-loving ladies
I brushed shoulders with some old friends at the aptly named TILT picnic at Zenda Farms….because after all I’ve drank in the last two weeks, I feel like I’m on an obscure angle to the ground. I exaggerate….maybe it was the uneven farm yard. Christmas came early, as I forgot what I ordered from the…
-
Cherry Pie, Bananagrams, and struggling to sober up
If my navigation in 2014 was a walk in the park, this year I’m jumping the fence. Although travelling mostly by automobile this time, I am aiming to travel across the USA and Canada, and out to the USA’s rape capital (six times higher than the national average, apparently) – Alaska. Everyday, is indeed, a…
-
Butt Bulbs & Bucolic Beauty
After being chaperoned around twenty miles of the industrious and steaming streets of New York City by a marvellously-moustached, mounted park policeman, I journeyed the four hours north east, to Northampton, MA. Back on last year’s familiar trail, I ambled through this area over a year ago, when the ground was frozen, the bears were…
-
Nostalgia, some dreams, and the colour of my crotch.
It’s the city that never sleeps. Although New York might have been better named, the city that can’t keep its mouth shut. It can’t be quiet….at all. I’m normally one for coming prepared, but after a day in the rain and still suffering from a little jet lag, I threw on the wrong trousers. A…
-
Times Square : New York
Sometimes there is no blog. Sometimes I’m taking too much in visually, in the rain, to sit down and write anything. So, here I am enjoying a little walk around New York before hurrying out of town to begin my trip to Alaska. It seems so easy when you say it like that. As if…
-
Panda Porn and Umbrella Rage
Walking twelve blocks in the rain to drop my backpack down, to then spend much of next hour trying to find a food stand which didn’t have a cue of at least twenty people wasn’t the best start to the morning. New York City is a place of food cues, and I’ve also never been…
-
Bam! New York, Baby!
Six months away from ‘Merica, and I’m back for more. After being delayed seven hours and enduring an always slightly turbulent re-entry into the states (and I don’t only mean the weather), I finally arrive on the doorstep of a friend in New York, looking only slightly similar to a damp rat. Some spicy, Thai,…
-
Starting out again…
I’m supposed to be in the sky, but even though leaving England maybe imminent, I’m having to wait just a little longer for my next big adventure. “It’s not the destination, it’s getting there”….said someone once, about the wonders of travel. I think they may have been quoted prior to airport delays; when getting there,…
-
2014 in review
So I wrote 62 posts across the USA and the blog received just short of 10,000 reads. Raising $3227 for @worldlandtrust. I’d say it was a pretty successful year. If you’re stuck for some toilet time reading, these were the most popular updates: Naked and Alone https://winstonwolfrider.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/1579/ Haunting Experiences https://winstonwolfrider.wordpress.com/…/nobody-heard-me-s…/ New Orleans https://winstonwolfrider.wordpress.com/…/a-miss-havisham-p…/ Race and…
-
When a Bear is a bird, and when Beards do battle
Without attempting to be The Riddler, waking up in Yosemite for the last time was like waking up on the first morning of a new job – much less exciting than waking up on the last day of your old job, and even though there is a reason you must start work, quite unsure and…
-
A Hurricane, a flirtatious Miss Havisham, and some drenched, French lingerie
On $6 a day, and with plans to hit my environmental checkpoints on time, I had no intention of reaching Texas, let alone New Orleans. I have seen and met a few people around the globe travelling on tight budgets, across continents on unicycles, paddling a thousand miles in a kayak, kicking a soccer ball…
-
Shapely white arses…it’s what I came here for
I thought elk were nervous, shy and retired creatures…yes, most of them are over 65. However, the majestic Rocky Mountain National Park, just north west of Denver CO proved to be home to some rather carefree, left wing socialites who came to inspect their camper-riddled meadow, making sure we were all provided for. Another bonus…
-
Romancing the Boy
Nine months prior to me landing in Massachusetts, I had confidently prioritised the main, natural check points on my route. I was saddened that, on this trip to the USA I would not be visiting the area on earth which I considered to be the most nostalgic and certainly the most romantic of all places.…
-
Pooh, and being alone in some sublime mountains
Let me directly, with my opinion, shoot passionately from the hip: Glacier National Park is the most impressive, most mawkish, grand and most romantic, mountainous setting I have ever been humbled enough to visit. Of the dozen or so refrigerated regions on the globe which I have taken in, Glacier was the least populated (at…
-
Dirty boy, a few extra owls and pleasing Gran
The festivities are well behind us, or at least it feels that way, as a few work colleagues and I are alcohol free for January for Cancer Research Uk – http://www.justgiving.com/teams/ojsoda . (Wow, I managed to get that plug in early). I’m now on the final leg of preparation for America and with less than…
-
Fruit search, determination and nipples..
Click the link if you’d like to donate: http://www.justgiving.com/WinstonWolfrider I find it pretty difficult to write when I’m angry, but updating software on my iPhone has resulted in the deletion of an entire folder titled “USA Plans”. It has riled me up on my way to work to the point of throwing my phone at the…
-
The USA Challenge
Starting in the Spring of 2014, I will begin navigating over 4000 miles, coast to coast across the United States of America. The challenge is not to walk the whole way – it is that I will (hopefully) complete the trek on just £2000 (approximately $3035 USD) and hit at least the six natural places of…
Not a Travel Blog 