SICILY PHOTO ALBUM: Guest Post by Steve Scheaffer and Karen Neely

SICILY: Palermo, Italy, looking toward Monreale

My brother Steve and his wife Karen toured Sicily in September 2017, traveling to Palermo, Trapani, Agrigento, Syracuse, Taormina and Catania. Their eleven day trip, a Rick Steve's tour, took them to ancient ruins, local culture, delicious food, beautiful scenery and much more. They came home with more than a thousand terrific photos and have graciously agreed to share a few of them at The Intrepid Tourist. Here is a mini photo album of their trip.

Palermo. Piazza Independenza

Palermo. Cheese and Sausage Market

Ancient Patron Genius of Palermo

Greek temple, Segesta

Hill town of Erice

Taormina. Note railroad at base of the mountain

Trapani salt pans

Trapani transport

Agrigento, Valley of Temple

Mount Etna Benanti Winery

After lunch coffee under the olive trees

Steve and Karen, Monreale

For more views of Sicily by other Intrepid Tourist travelers take a look at posts by Tom Scheaffer on 2/1/16 and 1/25/16 and by Gretchen Woelfle on 11/4/13 and 10/28/13.

CANADA’S BAY OF FUNDY: Watch a Tidal Bore Crawl Up a River, Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

Bay of Fundy: Tidal Bore on the Salmon River near Truro, Nova Scotia

My friend and fellow children’s book author Caroline Hatton visited the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada, in October 2014. She took the video in this post.

Water moving upstream in a river bed? Yes! During some earth-reshaping cataclysm, geological eons ago? No. It’s happening as you read this, every day, twice a day at high tide, in a few places on this planet, including at the Bay of Fundy in Canada. It’s called a tidal bore.

The Bay of Fundy is home to the world's highest tides, rising and falling up to a record 53 feet (16 meters) a day. Because of the size and power of the tides, different, extraordinary phenomena occur around the bay. Among them are tidal bores.

A tidal bore happens when the leading edge of the rising tide forms a wave that moves upstream, against the current of a river. This is likely to be seen when tides push a huge volume of sea water into a funnel-shaped bay, such as the Bay of Fundy, and up a river mouth. The sea water has nowhere to go but up the river.

Weeks before traveling to the Bay of Fundy, I had researched which river mouths present good tidal bores, picked the Salmon River near the town of Truro, and googled Truro Tidal Bore Times (the bore times don’t necessarily match the high tide times).  Armed with directions to auspiciously-named Tidal Bore Road, I arrived 20 minutes in advance.

Truro tidal bore location in the Bay of Fundy

Credit: Wikipedia map with red dot added by Caroline Hatton

Before the arrival of the tidal bore, I moved into position among the tourists dutifully lined up along the shore with cameras at the ready. Very little water flowed downstream (from right to left), in only one of two channels separated by a sand bank in the middle of the wide, shallow river bed. Here's a video of what we saw:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nzlor6-ZAI2Pfmk4iWOXYk9Wmzf0UAsL/view

When the tidal bore arrived from the left, I caught the first glimpse of its front edge rounding the river bend and heard the murmur of the wave despite the steady roar of the wind. Then the sea water filled the channel on the far side of the river, leaving the sand bank in the middle dry for now. The frontal wave in the far channel traveled to the right, out of sight. Next, the sea water filled the channel on the near side of the river, as seen in the video. Finally, the sea water covered the sand bank in the middle of the river bed. The whole show had lasted less than ten minutes.

After I left, the sea water should have kept flowing upstream for hours. The fish must have been confused.

Although the magnitude of the incoming wave wasn’t exactly a surfer’s dream, I found the notion of the high tide going up river, mind-blowing. Little did I know that I would witness a similar phenomenon on a massively larger scale later in my trip. But that’s for another blog post.

For more info:

The link in the above text, about rivers with good tidal bores, also provides info about tidal bore rafting. https://www.bayoffundy.com/activities/tidal-bore-rafting/

Read another blog post by Caroline Hatton, about the collapse of The Hole on Long Island in the Bay of Fundy. https://theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com/2017/11/canadas-bay-of-fundy-about-hole-that.html

Read another blog post by Caroline Hatton, about the Bay of Fundy’s Joggins Fossil Cliffs. https://theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com/2015/11/canadas-joggins-fossil-cliffs-guest.html

CANADA’S BAY OF FUNDY: About a Hole that Disappeared, Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. The Hole in Long Island as it appeared in 2014

My friend and fellow children’s book author Caroline Hatton visited the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada, in October 2014. She took the photos in this post. Caroline's latest book, C'est pas marrant, is in her native French, for ages 8 and up. It's about humorous sibling antics and it practically takes readers on a trip to Paris! Here is her account of what she saw on her trip to Canada.

The Bay of Fundy is home to the world's highest tides, rising and falling up to a record 53 feet (16 meters) a day. But even when and where the tide doesn’t reach such extremes, waves erode rocks, islands, and cliffs, constantly reshaping the landscape. The changes range from imperceptible most of the time to colossal proportions once in a while, in which case they make headlines.

Red dot: location of Five Island Provincial Park

Along the shore around the Bay of Fundy are many natural highlights as different as they are extraordinary. In some locations, tides rush in or out violently. Elsewhere, hikers traipse across mud flats at low tide to visit rock towers and arches, and at high tide a few hours later and a few meters higher, kayakers paddle around and through the same spots.

Five Island Provincial Park. Note hole in Long Island

When I visited Nova Scotia in 2014, a point of interest on my itinerary was Five Island Provincial Park, advertised as a lovely spot for family picnics and beach strolls. It is so named because five islands grace the horizon not far from the shore: Moose, Diamond, Long, Egg, and Pinnacle Island. Having looked up the low tide time on an online tide table weeks in advance, I planned to take a walk on the beach.

It was nice and quiet in the late afternoon sun, sharing the dry sand with only a few dog walkers and watching two clam diggers out on the vast, wet expanse. The closest island was Long Island with its charming, beloved, postcard-perfect arch, known as The Hole or The Eye. I wasn’t about to slosh across all that mud to see The Hole up close, so I took a picture (above) with a telephoto. Then, on the display on the back of the camera, I admired the hole’s smooth, regular shape, and its dainty look in contrast to the massively thick rock above it.

I imagined kayaking at high tide, paddling through the hole, out to the bay and back toward the beach, or maybe around the point of the island. But not on this trip. Maybe some other time. The Bay of Fundy was fascinating enough to have made it onto my bucket list, so I didn’t exclude re-visiting it in the distant future.

Which is why I felt like I had missed something special when a year later I came across news that the arch had collapsed overnight on Monday, October 19, 2015. No one got hurt. No one saw it collapse. Some locals reported hearing noises through the night. The last photo before The Hole disappeared, taken the day before, and the first photo afterwards, on the day after, are shown in a local news article.

I am left with the bittersweet excitement of having seen The Hole before it vanished forever. As for kayaking through rock arches, I can go do it elsewhere in the Bay of Fundy. At least as of now.

For more info

Visit http://bayoffundytourism.com/site-map/

Go to http://bayoffundytourism.com/bay_of_fundy_ecozones_map.pdf for a good map of the three ecozones: “Aquarium” (whale watching), “Sea Cliffs and Fossils,” and “World’s Highest Tides.”

Read another blog post by Caroline Hatton, about the Bay of Fundy’s Joggins Fossil Cliffs, at  https://theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com/2015/11/canadas-joggins-fossil-cliffs-guest.html

EUREKA, CALIFORNIA: The Heart of Humboldt County

Bald Eagle at the Sequoia Park Zoo, Eureka, CA. 

Every two years in October, I go to Eureka, California, in Humboldt County, for a children's book author festival. While my focus is work, there is also time to enjoy the beautiful northern California coast, the surrounding hills and forests, and to explore the shops, parks and restaurants of historic Eureka.

Coast near Trinidad, CA, north of Eureka in Humboldt County

Eureka is Humboldt's county seat and has a population of about 27,000. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was a booming port city, transporting lumber from the surrounding forests all over the world. Many of the downtown buildings date from that time. A number of them are covered with colorful murals painted more recently.

Mural on building in historic downtown Eureka

During my visit I stayed at the historic Eureka Inn, originally built in 1922. (The rooms have recently been renovated.) The walls of the spacious lobby are lined with portraits of some of its famous visitors through the years such as Sir Winston Churchill and past president Ronald Reagan making one feel a part of history. The hotel is a short walk from downtown Eureka, which is filled with restaurants, craft shops, a bookstore, an art and historical museum and more. One of my favorite restaurants is the Waterfront Cafe, featuring fresh seafood caught locally, across the street from the boardwalk by the water.

Boardwalk in Eureka

From the boardwalk one can view the boats moored in Woodley Marina, which include both fishing and pleasure boats as well as commercial vessels.

Woodley Marina, Eureka

Not far from the center of town, in a beautiful redwood grove, is The Sequoia Park Zoo. It has a small but interesting and varied collection of animals, including a rescued bald eagle, red pandas, orangutans, musk oxen, ostriches and much more.

Red Panda, Sequoia Park Zoo

Arcata, California, just north of Eureka, is home to Humboldt State University and a variety of businesses including  Fire and Light Handmade Glass, a company that makes colorful glassware from recycled bottles. I came home with one of their beautiful glass redwood trees, now propped in a window to let the light shine through and remind me of my trip.

I always enjoy my visit to Eureka, discovering something new each time!

Tree from Fire and Light Handmade Glass

KYOTO, JAPAN: A Day of Leisure, from the Memoir of Aunt Carolyn

Vegetable stall, Japanese market

My husband's Aunt, Carolyn T. Arnold, traveled to Japan in the 1960's and 70's as the leader of a tour group. Here is her description of a leisure day with her group in Kyoto.
Leisure days in any country call for a good deal of resourcefulness on the part of the tour director to keep everyone satisfied and to plan for something that was not a part of the schedule. Seldom did anyone use those days purely for leisure, so I work harder on those days.

In Kyoto my favorite leisure day activity is a stroll along a pedestrian shopping street. There are hundreds of little shops open to the mall. The fish market man proudly displayed his largest fish. At another stall, vegetables are colorfully and artistically arranged. Most people gasp at the size of the white radishes, two to three feet long. The “home folks” slice and pickle these to make a tasty relish. Once I ventured into a noodle factory where large sheets of pasta were taken out of pots of boiling water and hung up to dry, then on to the girls who measured, cut, and tied them into bundles. The girl at the corner was frying bean paste cookies; I bought a few. They were crisp and tasted a bit like chocolate.

We were amazed at the variety of things for sale. Mechanical toys might be beside mannequins featuring ready-to-wear, mostly Western styles.  One of the many delights of Japan is the food. It’s hard to forget the rice, green tea, sake (rice wine), chop sticks, and even green tea ice cream. Dick, the clown of the group, kept everyone roaring as he attempted to pick up a green pea with his chopstick.

Window display of plastic replicas of dishes on the menu in a Japanese restaurant

We tried various types of dinners. Mongolian barbecue was a favorite. A waitress grilled small pieces of chicken, beef, shrimp, and vegetables over a charcoal grill sunken in the center of the table. Then, she daintily picked up each piece, dipped it into a bowl of soy sauce, and placed it before us. A thimble-size cup of sake completed the meal.

Perhaps the original intrepid tourist was Carolyn Arnold, my husband’s aunt.  A single school teacher in Des Moines, she began traveling abroad when she was in her forties, beginning with a bicycling trip through Ireland in 1950.  She went on from there to spend a year as a Fulbright Exchange Teacher in Wales, to more trips to Europe and beyond, and eventually became a tour leader, taking all her nieces and nephews (including Art) on her travels.  When she retired from teaching, she wrote of her experiences in a memoir called Up and Down and Around the World with Carrie.  Today, as I read of her travels and look at her photos, I marvel at her spirit of adventure at a time when women did not have the independence they do today.

BOWERS MUSEUM, Santa Ana, CA: 100 Years Ago, Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition and Frank Hurley's Amazing Photos

Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Santa Ana, California

One hundred years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition came to an end when he and his crew were rescued after a harrowing two year ordeal trapped in ice and out of touch with the world. Newspapers around the world ran headlines to celebrate, publishing amazing photos by Australian photographer Frank Hurley, who had been hired to document the expedition. Endurance: The Antarctic Legacy of Sir Ernest Shackleton and Frank Hurley is a  fascinating exhibit of Frank Hurley’s photos and other artifacts from the expedition at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, California from September 30, 2017 to January 28, 2018.

Lecture series poster for the exhibit Endurance, the Antarctic Legacy

Two weeks ago we went to see the exhibit and to hear a lecture by Melissa Roth, Pulitzer Prize winning documentary photographer, who is currently working on a book about Frank Hurley. (A number of lectures will be given during the exhibit.) She shared passages from his diary along with critiques of some of his photos, which not only document the journey, but are also stunning works of art. In many, the ship, which was painted black, stands in stark contrast to the surrounding ice and sky. For one of his most famous photos, known as the “ghost ship” or “the long, long night,” he did the opposite. He photographed the ship at night, lighting it with flares to create an eerie contrast with the black sky. Other photos portray the day to day life of the crew, including meals, card games, taking scientific measurements, and even portraits of the dog teams that helped carry equipment on sledges.

Some of the exhibit related items available in the museum gift shop

For the museum exhibit, Hurley’s original glass plates and celluloid negatives, now at the Royal Geographical Society in London, have been scanned at high resolution and printed in large format. The pictures are arranged chronologically. Hurley also had a movie camera and those films are projected on large screens along the wall. One harrowing sequence shows the final collapse of the ship in a storm as it is crushed by the shifting pack ice. Background noises of seals and penguins and the ever present wind enhance the feeling of being there as one follows the sequence of photos around the room. The exhibit prohibits photography. You can see a sample of his photos HERE and read more about Hurley's life of adventure.

One of nine thangka paintings by Shashi Dhoj Tulachan

Before we left, we took a quick look at one of the other current exhibits at the Bowers Museum, Sacred Realms: Temple Murals by Shashi Dhoj Tulachan from the Gayle and Edward P. Roski Collection. These incredibly detailed paintings are huge, unlike typical temple art. They are the work of a 69-year-old Buddhist monk named Shashi Dhoj Tulachan, a second generation thangka artist living in Tuksche, a remote village located in Mustang, Nepal's northernmost district adjacent to Tibet. The practice of thangka painting is centuries old and is an art carried out by highly trained monks to teach about Buddha and the Buddhist religion. The overwhelming amount of detailed imagery in each painting includes deities, mythologies, and the use of repeated and abstracted design. For those seeking enlightenment, thangka paintings exist as objects of meditation.

Video of monks creating a thangka painting

The Bowers Museum also has a number of other exhibits and a variety of permanent collections which we didn't have time to see before the museum closed. We did stop at the gift shop on our way out and purchased a book about the Shackleton expedition and Frank Hurley's incredible photos. The more we look at them, the more we appreciate Hurley's artistic skill and his technical mastery in unbelievably daunting conditions.

ICELAND: Waterfalls, Geysers, and Hot Springs, Guest Post by Tom Scheaffer

Gullfoss Waterfall, Iceland

My brother Tom Scheaffer has just returned from a two week trip to Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Tom’s trip was part of the Sri Chimnoy Oneness-Home Peace Run, a worldwide promotion of peace to “help remind millions of people every day in so many countries that our common goal is peace.” With a group of eleven friends he traveled from Iceland to the Faroe Islands for the Peace Run. While in Iceland they visited a number of tourist destinations. Here is Tom's report.

Western Iceland

Iceland is a land of vast and pristine landscapes. There is much hydroelectric power from the many rushing rivers and waterfalls.Waterfalls are numerous in Iceland and we hiked to Gullfoss Waterfall, located in the canyon of the Olfusa river in southwest Iceland. The name means "Golden Falls" and it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Iceland. (For a sense of scale, look at the tiny people in the photo.)

Great Geysir Geyser

We also visited the Geysir Geyser and watched it erupt. Eruptions at Geysir can hurl boiling water up to 70 meters in the air!

Hot Spring

We saw hot springs and thermal pools. Iceland is a thermal hot spot with many active volcanoes. The abundant hot thermal water is used to heat homes and energy costs are low.

Crater Lake, Western Iceland

We then traveled to Western Iceland and visited a crater lake formed in an ancient volcano. Later we hiked to a smaller waterfall in Western Iceland.

For another view of Iceland and its amazing landscape of fire and ice, take a look at Owen Floody's post about his photo tour of Iceland in May 2013, posted on The Intrepid Tourist on 8/26/13.