These photos were taken in East Anglia around 1990 when I accompanied my husband Gil on a business trip. I took him to where he had to be for the day and then took off in the rental car to drive on the left with a stick shift car. That wasn’t the only problem, it turns out most of the roads I chose were one lane, lined with tall hedges, and the road had lots of curves and hills. I expected to die on every curve and hill… But I found some fun things…

In March of 1991 I took a business trip to the KEK High Energy Research Laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan, close to Tokyo. We, the participants, were taken on an excursion to the Asakusa district in Tokyo to enjoy the temples there, which is where these photos were taken. Click on any photo for a larger view.

We took this trip probably some time in 1986 in our LeSharo motorhome (see below). At the time we lived near Chicago, Illinois and this trip traveled to Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming), Devil’s Tower National Monument (Wyoming), Badlands National Park (South Dakota), Mount Rushmore National Memorial (South Dakota), Custer State Park (South Dakota), and Pipestone National Monument (Minnesota).

Gil and I took a boat tour on the Atchafalaya Swamp in May 2017 on a trip to New Orleans. Here are some of the photos I took with my infrared camera. I liked them quite a bit better than the color photographs because they had more contrast because living leaves in sunlight show up white in an infrared photograph. I photographed the alligator in color…

Time out from Ukraine for some photos taken in Boston in July 2013. We were in Massachusetts and Maine to visit family and took a quick trip into Boston. Some of these were taken from a car – e.g., the bridge photos and skylines. The rest were in the Haymarket area (between the North End and Government Center).

We cruised from Sevastopol to Yalta. Yalta, like all of Crimea, although internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, has been under Russian control since 2014. The two special things we saw were Lividia Palace and Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.

Kahn’s Palace (or Bakhchysarai Palace) was built in the 16th century and was home to a series of Crimean Khans. Bakhchysarai means Palace of Gardens and is an example of Tatar-Muslim architecture. We visited the palace by bus from Sevastopol.

Khan’s Palace is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is considered the gem of Moorish architecture comparable to the palaces of the Alhambra in Spain and the Topkapi in Turkey.

San Miguel Chapel is a Spanish colonial mission church in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is said to be the oldest church in the United States, originally built around 1610. It has been rebuilt twice and it is not clear how much of the earlier churches remain. The wooden reredos, which includes a wooden statue of Saint Michael dating back to at least 1709, was added in 1798. The church is part of the Barrio De Analco Historic District, which is a U.S. National Historic Landmark. This district also includes the De Vargas Street House, which is called the “oldest house”.

Loretto Chapel is famous for its spiral staircase. The building, a chapel for a girls’ school, was built by the same French architects who designed the St. Francis Cathedral. Like the cathedral, the stained glass windows came from France. The building was commissioned in 1873. I will quote from Wikipedia on the staircase – it is well worth reading why this staircase is notable, but first note, it has no central pole.
“It is known for its unusual helix-shaped spiral staircase (the “Miraculous Stair”). The Sisters of Loretto credited St. Joseph with its construction. It has been the subject of legend, and the circumstances surrounding its construction and its builder were considered miraculous by the Sisters of Loretto.”

And now for something completely different, to use a famous phrase… Leaving Ukraine for a while, I decided to find my best reflections I had taken over the years and put them in one place.