In Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) at last count, there were 47 million “motos” and 3 million cars. Incredible. We saw everything being transported, and even families of four balanced on one small motorcycle. And they rule the road, so you’d better get out of the way.
This is a blurry photo, taken as we zipped by in a bus, but I just had to include it as an example of the livestock we saw being routinely transported by motorbike.
In India, we saw more cars, but still so many families on motorbikes. It was hard to even watch the way the babies and small children were being transported (and to think of the contrast with how we restrain them in cars here in the US). I always wondered how the Indian women kept their beautiful saris from getting caught up in the motorcycle mechanism.
Mountains are my sanctuary, specifically, the enveloping cool, green, coziness of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee. Each visit I feel my blood pressure lowering as a calmness washes over me.
I love the cool crisp air, sounds of a running stream, clouds that lay low in between the valleys and peaks (thus the name, Smoky Mountains), the bright blue skies of fall against the vivid colors of the changing leaves, and the shifting palette of greens bursting forth on the trees each spring.
I got to really know these mountains during my freshman year at Western Carolina University, the only school I could find back then offering both a journalism degree and a mountain setting. We would head off to study by isolated mountain lakes, slip our sodas into the running streams to chill, and take Sunday afternoon drives just to see where the roads would lead (one notable time, right to an old-timer with a rifle).
A really special memory was heading off with my friends Meta and Leslie, driving across a mountain stream to get to Meta’s family cabin, killing time target shooting, and just sitting on the porch talking and enjoying the scenery. Then in a total comedy of errors, we had to figure out how to build a fire or freeze during the cold spring night.
For the years of memories and those still to come, the mountains will always be my sanctuary.
A typical mountain cabin, Bales Homestead, Roaring Fork.
Scenes from the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Who says I need a dentist?
One of my all-time favorite shots from a long-ago trip to Egypt. This camel definitely gave us some attitude.
The Boone Greenway is a great, flat trail on a day you can’t take another incline. It’s well-maintained and scenic, running along the south fork of the New River. Bikers share the trail, but the weekend we visited were very friendly. You can learn a little history when you get to the site of the original dam and power house that brought electricity to the area in 1915. There are picnic tables in the area and lots of benches along the way to sit and contemplate life. You’ll even find a book exchange box. For more details about the Boone Greenway click this link.
