Going Solo

Of course I agree with the author of this piece that women should go out and travel alone. I have taken two major trips by myself in my lifetime, and that was to Kentucky in 1989 and to Las Vegas in 2006. I regularly drove my car from Reno to southern Oregon and back by myself. I also took a couple of trips to Portland and back alone. So far I haven't traveled overseas alone, but that isn't out of the question although if and when I do it, I will likely join a touring group rather than just plan out an itinerary.

I have always done things by myself. I never felt I had to have a man to go out and do things. I work out alone, most of the time I eat out alone and go to the movies alone. It doesn't bother me, and it never has, and it never will. I never felt unsafe doing it any more than living by myself.

A woman-hating society sends all kinds of messages about women being by themselves, like they have to live their lives in fear.

It always pisses me off.

Money, or the lack of it, is the big obstacle now, but I plan to take a WomanTours vacation next year to Niagara Falls, provided I can swing it financially. I will rent a bike for the tour and get single occupancy if I can do it.

Coast Trip 2012

Raw footage, shaky camera because I am moving around. Crescent City, California, and north of Brookings, Oregon, June 17, 2012:

Southern Oregon Coast Trip, 5/31/09

Part 1:



Part 2:

Here is Some Video

I took of Lower Lola Montez Lake:

Miscellaneous.

I never saw this on my southwestern trip this summer.

In fact, we drove through Page, Utah, going right past that formation, which is only a half-hour away from the town.

I'll have to take this in someday.
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Somebody screwed up BIG TIME with the caption under a picture of a Subaru totaled in a fatal car crash.
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One of These Days

touring Alaska will be on my to-do list.

Here are a few of my pictures from Italy earlier this month. St. Peter's Basilica at Vatican City.

This is a statue from inside the basilica sculpted by somebody I have never heard of in my life:







My nephew and his wife decided to stick their hands in the Mouth of Truth.

It

will soon be time to hit the road again. I just woke up a little bit ago, and we are going to soon be taking the train to Florence. We won't be back until sometime tomorrow night.

I

just returned by train from Naples. It is 9:30 p.m. here, so I am about ready to hit the sack.

We saw Mount Vesuvius and toured Pompeii yesterday, which is really something to see. We spent the night at a four-star hotel, and we just messed around Naples dodging the traffic and enduring the rotten driving of the taxi drivers.

There was garbage in the streets, but it didn't stink as much as expected.

I will probably post more about the trip in the coming days, if I am still alive.

While

whatever news is going on in the U.S., it's about time for me to go to bed here. I will say that the Vatican is something to see. Literally thousands of people were there today taking in St. Peter's Basilca and the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum complex.

We didn't see Pope Benedict, though; he must be hiding out after the latest controversy.

We spent several hours there, literally all day, and we still did not get to see everything there was to see. We did see the Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, which has all of those frescoes Michelangelo did in something like four years, but people cannot take pictures of. Let me tell you, the pictures do not do the places justice.

Tomorrow we are going to see the Coloseum in Rome before heading off to Florence on Thursday.

Personal stuff.

I may have lied a bit. I am able to blog a little bit from Italy. I will see how much time I have between now and the 18th.

I got in about 12 hours of sleep after a long, long, long, long plane ride. I do not think there was much if anything of night. We started out in the daytime in Portland, Oregon, and we ended up in Rome during the daylight. It was weird.

I slept 12 hours straight. Today we are supposed to go to the Vatican.

Why, Oh, Why

didn't I see this website before heading off with the landlord last September to Yosemite National Park?

Snip:

Be aware that Highway 49 from Mariposa to Coulterville is very twisty, with hairpin turns, steep drop-offs, and narrow lanes. It is beautiful, deserted, and is best taken when you have plenty of time to enjoy it. Expect an average speed of 20 mph.

So far in my limited existence, that is the worst goddamned road I have ever been on in my life (way worse than that goddamned piece of shit Nevada 431, the Mount Rose Highway, near the area where murderer Peter Bergna offed his wife by staging an auto crash), and it was worse when I had an 82-year-old driver who couldn't drive worth a shit (and never could) in a truck that didn't run worth a shit (it blew an engine over on Donner Summit during the last leg of the trip). This road goes on for about 40 to 50 miles with hairpin turns, which the landlord just LOVED to step on the gas before entering them, and dropoffs of hundreds if not thousands of feet.

I was lucky to have survived that trip, let me tell you.

I believe this was taken in the "badlands" section of Petrified Forest National Park. Note the petrified wood. June 12, 2007.

I

was so wiped out from riding in a van for over 2,000 miles in seven days, I decided not to make the trip back east. I hope I will be able to get a refund.

I'll eventually make it back there, but jamming three major vacations in a month is just a wee bit much.

I do plan to go to Italy next month, however. I should be rested up by then only to be wiped out from traveling through a total of 24 time zones to and from Rome.

The vacation should be great, though.

However, I am unable to so far post pictures of my travels to the blog. Everything comes out upside down or sideways.

Before I head out to Oregon in about two weeks, I plan to do a lot of hiking as well as running and cycling. Yesterday I was up at Spooner Lake trying to forget my troubles. The wildflowers were out, and they were just beautiful.