Still Gravity

The beauty of Standing Stone State Park in the autumn -  License our images here . Standing Stone State Park is close to Dale Hollow Lake , a gigantic reservoir created in 1943 through the damming of the Obey River. This is hilly terrain covered by some of the largest sections of contiguous forests in the east of the United States.  The park's name comes from a rock, a big stone that marked the boundaries of the territory of two Indian tribes. Don't look for it because Standing Stone is no more. Someone moved it to a nearby town and was destroyed.  The campground was nice. It was almost for us alone - only two other campers. Squirrels and deer made us company.  The empty campground of Standing Stone State Park.  Downhill the campground, the Mill Creek dam creates a small lake. The dam wall serves as bridge to access th

One of our photos of the badlands of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park -  License our images here . The White Heart of Mojave covers the trip of Edna Brush Perkins and her friend Charlotte Hannahs Jordan through the Mojave Desert in 1920. The book was written by Edna and published two years later.  An article  on the website of Death Valley National Park says of this trip:  Their adventure into Death Valley looked much less like a modern trip into the park today, bearing much more in common with the treacherous journey of the ‘49ers.   49ers refer to the difficult travel through the desert of a group of pioneers going to California for gold in the late 1840s - details in Wikipedia . Traveling through the desert in 1920. Photo from the book The White Heart of Mojave by Edna Brush Perkins - Public Domain. We visited Death Valley in 2010 but, being summer, couldn't explore too much.

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park -  License our images here . Crazy to go in June to Death Valley. Bloody noses and melted cookies - the first thing painful, the second, delicious. Coming in summer was a trip to an oven. What a contrast with the nearby Sierra Nevada.  Rainbow canyon and Father Crowley Vista Point gave us a lunar perspective. Rocks and dryness. The place was named after The Desert Padre , a catholic priest working in Inyo County that often stopped here for the views of the Mojave Desert and the Panamint Valley.  This is the place of the famous Rainbow Canyon or "Star Wars Canyon" - it looks like Tatooine . This canyon is loved by USAF pilots for their low altitude training. On the beauty side: amazing horizontal bands on the cliffs from different geologic ages. Volcanic art.     We reached "altitude" zero at S

Echo Canyon in Utah - License our images  here . The landscape of Echo Canyon is interesting. Located at the border between Utah and Wyoming, this place has a dose of history. The Pony Express and the Mormon Trail traveled through this canyon in the same way that does the I-80 today - seen in the last photo.  The name of the canyon comes for the echoes created by the red cliffs. Happened that the emigrants to the West of the 19th century used to shoot their guns to enjoy the sound reflections - we couldn’t try.   The irregular formations in the tall walls are good creators of echoes.  Abner Blackburn, a member of the Mormon Battalion - the only religion-based unit in US military history - and one of the first men to discover gold in Nevada, wrote in 1847 about the echoes in his

Our portable water tanks in the truck camper - License our images  here . We left behind fixed water tanks and complex plumbing lines in the truck camper. Portable tanks mean more flexibility and accessibility. We can carry the containers to the source of water without moving the vehicle. Combined with the  Water Bandit , a short hose, and a cartridge filter, we are set to get potable water in most places.  How easy is to clean these containers compared to a fixed tank and not having to winterize the plumbing system are other advantages. Also, it's easy to move the small tanks to any place in the campsite where water is needed.  We use 5  Reliance Aqua packs  for a total of 12.5 gallons of water - roughly 47 liters of water. These compact tanks are stackable, and we add a  spigot assembly  to the one in use - previous links are affiliates.  Sometimes, depending on destinations, we also carry a five gallo

Inclined campsite at Table Rock State Park, South Carolina -  License our images here . Can you sleep in an inclined camper? We can't. We prefer to rest in a vehicle as horizontal as possible. That's the reason we bought an inclinometer - actually two.  Inclinometers measure the pitch and roll of a vehicle in degrees. Pitch means the inclination from front-to-rear - the transverse axis. Roll goes for the side-to-side inclination. We need one inclinometer for each measurement. The one for pitch is attached to the interior of the passenger front door and the one for the roll on the dashboard facing the front passenger seat. Driving into a campsite, we check the gauges to choose the flattest spot - as close to 0° as possible. We add something under the tires to compensate if needed - like in the previous photo.  We bought two bubble inclinometers. The model is  201-F Lev-o-gage  made by Sun Company from Colorado

I read a good blog from Seth Godin this week. It's about conspicuous consumption, a term invented by  Thorstein Veblen  to define buying expensive stuff to impress others and gain social status.     Seth Godin explains:   It’s sort of a selfish potlatch, in which each person seeks to demonstrate status, at whatever the personal or societal cost, by out-consuming the others.   Social networks have amplified this desire, at the same time they simplified the execution. Now you can waste time and dignity instead of money. Who can you tear down? How much time can you waste? What’s it worth to you to have more followers than the others?   It’s a lousy game, because if you lose, you lose, and if you win, you also lose. The only way to do well is to refuse to play." Do you refuse to play?  (Read Seth’s post  here ).

The paved path is very straight, like all rail trails -  License our images here . A 16-mile of paved trail - round trip - on the route of an old railway near Port Charlotte, Florida. The plan was to ride to Gasparilla Island, but the heavy traffic on the causeway scared us away. We ended the trip at Placida Park.  In 1909, there was a town by the eastern trailhead of Cape Haze Pioneer Trail called McCall. It became a ghost town in 1928. There is a marker and an old building there.   We found two black racer snakes basking on the hot pavement. Like always, they crawled away.  There are a few spots with beautiful views from the trail.  

How do we perceive George Orwell's books  1984  and  Animal Farm?  When I ask the right, they see them as anticommunists. If I ask the left, the books are antifascist and anti-imperialist. Interesting. Two lectures of the same text - I guess because communism and fascism are at the extremes of the social circus and they've things in common.  No doubt that Orwell's books go against totalitarian regimes. But curious that his ideas were a mix of socialism, laborism, and anarchism. He was labeled as democratic socialist but was an enemy of Stalinism.  Recently, I read  Homage to Catalonia . It's a different book. It's the tale of his fight in Spain. Orwell fought against Franco  in a military division of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification where his comrades were all unionists and anarchists. He was shot in the throat and fled Spain blacklisted by other factions of the left.  His description of what was vital in the Spanish frontline is short and accurate.  In