Random Bits, Antarctic November 2023

As I try to finish up with stuff from the Antarctic trip, I have a bunch of little random things that I wanted to share with you. They are in no particular order. Some of them are marked for specific people as when I travel some of my shadow travelers (people not able to travel but accompany me in spirit) have requested I look for specific things from them.

Going to the Antarctic was amazing, but in a world of amazing
this trip was something special.
We had unprecedented good luck, good weather, good seas.
We had a small, sturdy ship and a captain with adventure in his heart and a twinkle in his eye.
This wasn't the itinerary we signed up for.
It was so much more.

Other animals and plants:

Other than the whales, sea lions, and penguins, we saw very little other animals. And almost no plants.

The skua was one of the few birds we saw.

This was the only feather I saw on our hikes.

This tiny mollusk was shown to us by one of our naturalists
It attaches to a whale, up off the coast of South America.
Then it traveled all of the way down here to get
washed up on shore.

These patches of lichen smaller than a dollar bill
are centuries old.
Things grow slowly in the cold.

A rare patch of "grass"

Human contact:

The very few human things we saw were mostly about whaling.

This was on our first shore walk.
Touching is absolutely forbidden,
yet people wanted to go up and sit on it.
Our expedition team was fierce.

Deception Island.
A seal hunting site from 1818
then whaling station till 1931
Those huge tanks were for the rendered blubber.

Over that ridge there was a live steam vent.

To see the bits of whale bone in the gravel
was deeply saddening.

It is hard to express in photos
how very big everything is.

There is water, and ice, and some exposed rock.

Comments

's-Hertogenbosch June 2024

I came to Den Bosch for the Bosch Parade. I don't think one can understand the parade without understanding the town, and vice versa. The experience deserves a post all of its own, so I will do this in two linked posts. This is not some of my best photography, but the experience was one that I wanted to share. As usual, I fight to make Blogger behave. Perhaps in the next few years we might make a meet up trip for Den Bosch and the parade. Contact me if you might be interested. First off, the name. 's-Hertogenbosch or Den Bosch. Just accept that how ever you say it you are gonna be wrong. The Dutch language, along with the Dutch mind set, is totally inexplicable and unexplainable, and totally charming. Like wise "Holland" or "Netherlands" is going to trip you up. Both words describe the same place, but have subtle differences that really don't matter much, except to those people that it does but don't worry yourself about it The town goes by ...

A Day in Stockholm

I spent a marvelous day in Stockholm in June 2024. I stayed two nights while on my way to Finland to go on the epic Svalbard expedition, but more on that in a future post. To me, getting there is half the fun, and these side trips are a major part of the fun. I have been taking a brief respite from posting. Illness and overwhelm, you know the story. But with a new summer of travel ahead, I must get back on the horse. This post is mostly a photo dump of my brief stay in Stockholm. I rate my visits in relation of would I go back or not. I do hope to go back and experience more of what this city has to offer. As usual, the computer has interesting ideas on how to change up my layout. Click any photo to see a larger version and have a slide show and skip what little verbiage I have added. I stayed in a Scandia Hotel. Think Marriott's or the Hilton in Swedish. A pretty standard high rise commercial hotel. And some times that is just what one needs. The breakfast...

Aberdyfi, Aberdovey, UK

So much is written about all of the big stuff around the UK, and yeah it is grand. But I think the one of the finest things one can do is to spend a couple of quiet days at a seaside town. This is a short piece about a day I spent at Aberdyfi. Aberdyfi is a very Welsh town tucked in at the mouth of the River Dyfi. There is not a lot of flash and fancy there, but everything there is such a perfect example of a great traditional village. One gets there by train on one of the loveliest route. Catch the train in Shrewsbury. Make sure to ask a conductor if you are in the right car as the train splits one part going north, the other south to Aberystwyth. (Note: you risk permanent damage to your tongue if you try to pronounce some of the towns on the way.) Or if you insist, drive in thru Machynlleth or down the coast. The main draw is the beach. The estuary is huge, and full of the estuary kind of the stuff one would hope to find. Boats, osprey, fish, water, mud. ...

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