We got to Bardstown a day earlier than we anticipated. So what do you do with a bonus day in Bourbon country? You taste wine, of course!
Kentucky does have some pretty decent wine, it seems that Chambourcin and Cabernet Franc grow especially well here. So of course we picked up a few bottles. 🙂
We did stop by the Jim Beam Distillery, although they were not open. It’s still very scenic place and one we have enjoyed visiting in the past.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is a beautiful location, where the Yellowstone River has carved a magnificent canyon with several waterfalls. We were fortunate to time a visit to Artist Point to photograph a rainbow that occurs at the Lower Falls at certain times of the year.
Artist Point was originally named in 1883 by Frank Jay Haynes who improperly believed that the point was the place at which painter Thomas Moran sketched his 1872 depictions of the falls. Later work determined that the sketches were made from the north rim, but the name Artist Point stuck.
Midway Geyser Basin is home of the famous Grand Prismatic Spring as well as a number of other equally impressive features. We did see Grand Prismatic, but on the day of our visit the temperatures were in the low 30s, making for a lot of steam. Despite being in the “off season” the place got so busy later in the day when the temperatures did warm up, that we elected to go in the morning before all the selfie-shooting tourists showed up and crowded the boardwalk.
Kathy & I have decided that there is such a thing as “Geyser Fatigue.” 🙂 But geysers are one of the highlights of visiting Yellowstone. The most famous one of all is Old Faithful, so it deserved a spot on this postcard. We had a room facing the geyser basin and specifically Old Faithful, so we watched it erupt numerous times over the four days we stayed at the Old Faithful Inn.
Kathy & I are wrapping up our visit to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. It’s been a great couple of weeks, with beautiful scenery, abundant wildlife and some interesting weather. We had very limited connectivity in the parks (a good thing!) and also limited time to look at photos (also a good thing). This is a sample of the images from our first stop in Yellowstone, at Mammoth Hot Springs.
The first stop on our current cruise was the exotic Caribbean (not!) port of New Orleans. It was our first time there, and we did a bus tour, saw a concert at Preservation Hall and did LOTS of walking. It was interesting to visit, although as the day went on and the crowds got drunker, we had had enough. New Orleans…Check!
This past weekend, Kathy & I spent some time in Fredericksburg, Texas, which is the heart of Texas wine country. Didn’t know Texas made wine? Well, sure ’nuff they do!
We stayed at a lovely motel located at the Gillespie County airport called the Hangar Hotel. It is styled after a WWII hangar from the 1940s, complete with an Officer’s Club bar and an airport diner. It was a great place to hang out for a few days, watching the planes come and go, including an impressive number of business prop and jet aircraft.
We’re in Florida now, getting ready for another cruise that starts Friday. More photos in the works!
Kathy & I are enroute to Texas for the first leg of our winter travels. We made a long overdue stop in Vicksburg to visit the National Military Park there. It is a solemn reminder of the price many have paid over our nation’s history.
We visited on a cloudy and overcast day, but thankfully with no rain. The whole time I photographed there I was envisioning the photos in black & white, in an inadequate homage to the photographs that were made in the heat of the moment. The battlefields as they exist today are a distant reminder of the horrors of battle, but the tribute paid in the form of monuments and memorials is moving.
We spent an afternoon doing a walking tour and generally exploring this wonderful town. Our group stopped for drinks at a little cafe and enjoyed some of the local tasty treats!
This will be the last of my postcards from our river cruise on the Danube. Anyone interested in more photos can check out my Adobe Portfolio site, where I have posted a bunch of photos in several galleries.
We passed this quaint village along the Danube in Slovakia. We didn’t stop but it still made for an interesting scene.