Tag: walkabout
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The Dithering Pot Boy and I
Waking up early in the morning and sporadically being bumped or swayed around in bed, as if on boat in a storm, is currently a normal experience. KP is always awake first between 4 and 5am, dressed and dithering, sorry – pottering around the camper like you would imagine a restless (although slightly slower and…
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The Alaska Highway – Dawson Creek
No punns or associative crying please – although, half expected, the start of the Alaska Highway is not what you’d call a metropolis, nor is it a picturesque country town. Dawson Creek (nothing to do with the TV show) is an oil workers farming town. It’s a hard, industrial boondock, strewn with combine harvesters, tractors,…
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Couple of videos through British Columbia
Leaving Jasper and heading through British Columbia. Wildlife update from inside the camper.
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Rainbows, Bears & Beaver, and all before the Alaska Highway!
The city of Jasper seemed another, slightly middle of the road version of Banff. Looking a little cheaper and more relaxed, and without everywhere being covered in an expensive, branded label. Although maybe it’s not quite summer yet. We left Jasper and his beloved Banff behind us and headed north, via a westerly bend. Our…
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I could have just written “wow”, but…
South of the city of Jasper, the Ent-paced sights conjure lucid scenes in my mind, of how the wild was constructed. My wandering from “wow” surprises even me sometimes… A dense pallet of green lushness currently blankets the valleys, as if Monet, with his admirable catterax affliction, had reached down from the skies and with…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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,…
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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…
Not a Travel Blog 