LANDSCAPES: On the Road Again!

“Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.”  Kurt Vonnegut

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”  Susan Sontag

Entering Sequoia National Park, CA

I love to travel.  I enjoy visiting relatives, touring museums, shopping for souvenirs, and even trying local foods.  But the best travel plans for me mean getting in the car and driving any roads that help me explore Nature in all its wonder.

I am not really able to hike the trails anymore at the various national and state parks I visit.  Thus, I have become a roadside naturalist, often staying in the car as I cruise the scenic highways.  Whether traveling on paved roads or bumpy country lanes, I love the wide open spaces of Nature.  The colors that are mostly gentle and subtle until vibrant splashes of spring dot the landscape.  The trees and rocks, hills and mountains, rivers and trees that make each view unique.  The clouds that take over the horizon and stretch out forever.  When out in Nature, I leave any problems and nuisances behind and realize how small I really am in the scheme of things.

Monument Valley, AZ

As I drive, I stop fairly often to sit, reflect and observe Nature, often coaxing some wildlife out into the open.  Sometimes I park at official overlooks while at other times I just pull off the road and take a break.  I treasure the clouds and sunsets and open vistas.  I take pictures every chance I get to try to capture the calm and wonder of the day.

Over the last several years, most of my travels have been in California or throughout the Southwest.  The photos I am sharing show the roads that take me out into the landscapes that make every trip special.  These photos are my response to the Daily Post Photo Challenge: Landscape.

I sure am anxious to get out on the road again, soon!

California Highway 178

Leaving Mono Lake, CA

Traveling the Big Sur Coastline, CA

Heading into Death Valley, CA

Valles Caldera, NM

Canyonland, Needles Section, UT

Near Canyon de Chelly, AZ

Near Gallup, NM

California Highway 178

Shiprock, Navajoland, AZ

Petrified Forest, AZ

Sunset Crater, AZ

Monument Valley, AZ

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SOME QUOTES ABOUT TRAVELING

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”  Mark Twain

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”  St. Augustine

“There are no foreign lands.  It is the traveler only who is foreign.”  Robert Louis Stevenson

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go.  But no matter, the road is life.”  Jack Kerouac

“A journey is like marriage.  The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”  John Steinbeck

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”  Lin Yutang

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go.  I travel for travel’s sake.  The great affair is to move.”  Robert Louis Stevenson

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”  Henry Miller

“A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.”  Moslih Eddin Saadi

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore. Dream. Discover.”  Mark Twain

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.”  Miriam Beard

“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure.  There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”  Jawaharial Nehru

“Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by.”  Robert Frost

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”  Lao Tzu

“There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.”  Charles Dudley Warner

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”  Lao Tzu

“The journey not the arrival matters.”  T. S. Eliot

“Not all those who wander are lost.”  J. R. R. Tolkien

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”  Maya Angelou

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.”  Anatole France

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”  Seneca

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”  Anita Desai

“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”  Ernest Hemingway

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”  Anais Nin

 “The traveler sees what he sees.  The tourist sees what he has come to see.”  G. K. Chesterton

“Travel makes one modest.  You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”  Gustave Flaubert

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads.  Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”  Rosalia de Castro

“To travel is to take a journey into yourself.”  Danny Kaye

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”  Henry David Thoreau

“Through travel I first became aware of the outside world; it was through travel that I found my own introspective way into becoming a part of it.”  Eudora Welty

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”  Andre Gide

The Drama of Halves

Image from the Internet

Whenever I hear a reference to “half & half,” my first thought tends to the old adage about whether the glass is half full or half empty.  Sometimes I am pragmatic and agree with George Carlin:  “Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that’s twice as big as it needs to be.” Most often, I figure there is just room for more wine!

Of course, “half” is most often seen as being incomplete because something is missing.  But are halves always incomplete?  It seems that in some situations, a half is more than enough.  For example, for one person, a half of pizza or half a bag of chips is more than enough.  Of course, the half of some things, such as half a kernel of corn is next to nothing at all.  And exactly what is half of a pair of scissors?  A letter opener with a funny handle? And what about half-truths?  Getting lost in such contemplation, can make anyone half-crazy!

Trees through the Natural Bridge, Bryce Canyon

Instead of worrying about what is missing when a half is by itself, I realize it is more important to appreciate what is created when two halves are juxtaposed, especially when the two halves are not connected like a seashell.  That new creation from two halves can offer drama, intensity, awareness, or appreciation.

A specific action can be better appreciated when poised between past and future, between looking back and looking forward, between two halves of a trip:

In the moment and on the spot in Capitol Reef National Park: above and below

And visitors can be more commanding when they surprise us by intruding halfway into our space:

Perhaps in landscapes, the drama of contrasts–when two halves are paired–can best be seen.

Zion National Park

Capitol Reef National Park

Grand Canyon

Canyon de Chelly

Mammoth Lakes, CA

Death Valley

A FEW QUOTES ABOUT HALVES

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“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”  Charles Spurgeon

“Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. . . . When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.”  Edmond de Goncourt

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep saying it.”  Robert Frost

“Winning is only half of it.  Having fun is the other half.”  Bum Phillips

“It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.”  Napoleon Hill

“A smart man only believes half of what he hears, a wise man knows which half.”  Jeff Cooper

“Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them.  You will find that they haven’t half the strength you think they have.”  Norman Vincent Peale

“To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.”  Will Durant

“To be prepared is half the victory.”  Miguel de Cervantes

“It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.”  Carl T. Rowan

“One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it.  If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.  Never run away from anything.  Never!”  Winston Churchill

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”  Benjamin Franklin

“Humans are amphibians—half spirit and half animal.  As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.”  C. S. Lewis

“Women hold up half the sky.”  Mao Zedong

“Half an hour’s meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed.”  Saint Francis de Sales

“Searching is half the fun:  life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.”  Jimmy Buffett

“How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.”  Lou Holtz

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare.  They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”  Erma Bombeck

NOTE:  This is my entry to the Weekly Photo Challenge:  Half and Half.  Visit the site to see all the other responses!

Is this partly cloudy? Partly sunny? Half & Half?