Joe in Hong Kong

On a recent trip to China I spent an afternoon exploring sections of Hong Kong that I had not visited before.




















I headed out from the hotel toward Man Mo Temple, a Buddhist temple tucked away in a busy part of the city. I think it was built in the 1850s.




















Inside, the temple was filled with large hanging coils of incense.
































Near the front of the temple.




















After having a drink in the SoHo neighborhood I took the subway to the Wan Chai area of Hong Kong Island and ate dinner at Two Hundred Restaurant, serving excellent Thai and Vietnamese food. I had Tom Yum soup and Tofu Noodles Kee Mao and a Singha beer.

Arkansas

Every year March brings two wonderful things to my life, the Jayhawks playing in the NCAA tournament, and early Spring backpacking. This past weekend brought both. On Saturday we drove six hours south to the Ozark National Forest in Arkansas, where we have been hiking sections of the Ozark Highlands Trail over the past five years. To date we have logged about sixty miles on this trail with four Spring weekend trips. This year we repeated a favorite section of ours, through the Hurricane Creek Wildreness Area. We headed out on the trail late in the day, and found a trailside campground perched at the edge of a cliff about a mile hike into the forest.


















Packs loaded and ready to go!
















Evening on the trail.




















Once we set up camp, we enjoyed a dinner of Black Bean Tamale Pie. While I'm sure the dehydrated goodness of a Backpackers Pantry meal would not be as good at home, after hauling ourselves and about 30 pounds of stuff up a steep hill, it was super tasty.

















Enjoying a backcountry fire with Montana.
















The view out across the Ozarks from our first camp.

















Sunday morning at our site.

















On the second day we hiked about five and a half miles to Hurricane Creek. A few trees were flowering in the forest, this photo makes the trail look deceptively flat...





















We camped Sunday night along the creek, from which we were able to pump water, and wash off our tired feet in the cold, clear water. Hiking only five miles gave us lots of time to relax and enjoy exploring the creek and the surrounding area.
















On Sunday afternoon we crossed the creek and hiked about a mile to a natural bridge atop a tall rock wall.





















Me in my water/camp shoes getting ready to cross the creek again. Our tent is visible on the far side of the creek.




















Looking out at the creek from inside the tent. Room with a view!





















Monday morning was drizzly and gray, so we packed up camp pretty quickly. After breakfast and coffee we headed back out of the woods, passing a few little flowers trailside, and many small creeks before hitting the parking lot and the drive home.

Oklahoma

This past weekend Joe and I took a short trip down to Tulsa and Bartlesville, Oklahoma. On Saturday we drove the four hours to Tulsa to visit the Philbrook Museum of Art. Built in the 1920s for the Phillips family, of oil wealth, the mansion now houses what was their art collection, with additional works. The Japanese paintings were particularly nice (Jakuchu! Kiitsu! Okyo!), as were the grounds surrounding the museum. They are also currently showing a very powerful show on contemporary Native American art.


















































In addition to oil money, Tulsa is also known for Art Deco architecture. We saw a few buildings in our short time there, including the Boston Street Church, which was quite stunning, and really looked more like a government building to me.





















The true goal of our weekend was to visit the Price Tower in Bartlesville. Also built with oil money, the tower is Frank Lloyd Wright's only realized skyscraper. Built in the 1950s, the tower is now home to an arts center, restaurant, and hotel, where we spent the night in one of the recently rennovated rooms. The interior design was beautifully matched to the tower, which Wright visualized as "the tree that escaped the forest," our room was complete with heated bathroom floors, copper finishings (to match the exterior designs), and a viewing copy of the Ken Burns PBS documentary on the architect. We stayed on the tenth floor, and had a delicious dinner and breakfast at the pleasant 16th floor restaurant, Copper. The first and second floors house the arts center, which was showing the design of Raymond Loewy. The following photos show the building's exterior, our room, the wall mosaic in the lobby, the furnishings that Wright designed for the building's original function as an office, and the evening view of Bartlesville.

Kansas Day

January 29 is Kansas Day! This is the day that Kansas became a state, back in 1861. While not a native Kansan, in the few years I have lived here I have gained an appreciation for the wide-open spaces of the state. Kansas is not only home to many cheesy attractions like the world's largest ball of twine, and the world's largest hand-dug well, but also has lots of neat Oregon Trail sites, the northern most pueblo, one of the only remaining native prairies, some pretty amazing sunflower fields come August, Jayhawk basketball, and the geographic center of the U.S. So, perhaps it's not going to be the number one tourist destination of 2007, but it's interesting if you allow it to be. You can sing the state song "Home on the Range" while checking out these photos from past road trips around the state.




































Supposedly this canyon used to be used as a hideout for wild-west types like Wild Bill Hickok
















The Garden of Eden in Lucas, an homage to populist politics of the early 20th century, and grass-roots art.




















Monument Rocks, which rise out of the flat land, formed by the ancient sea that used to cover the midwest.


Mushroom Rocks

Ski trip 1

In early January we headed up to the North Shore of Lake Superior to go skiing and snowshoeing (see the second post for more on the lack of snowshoeing). We stayed at Lutsen, which is great because of the ski-in/ski-out rooms. The first photo is the view from our balcony, ski trail in the foreground, Lake Superior in the distance. The rest of the photos are a sampling of our three days of skiing, we took a good deal of photos, many of which show one of us as a little blur against the snow, so I opted out of posting those here.

Ski trip 2

After three days of skiing, we had planned on going snowshoeing, but as the temperatures were really warm and there was not much snow (thanks global warming) we took a hike instead. We drove up the Gunflint Trail to Gunflint Lake, which was not even frozen enough to go out on, a first in memory for the locals we talked to! We were fortunate to see a group of deer while we hiked, and a wolf from the car. In the photo of the two of us the lake is visible in the background, and Canada is on the other side.

On our way back from the hike we stopped at Cascade State Park and walked up the trails to see a very nice partially frozen waterfall along the Cascade River.

In recent years it has become a tradition for us to stop at Betty's Pies in Two Harbors on our way home from the Notrh Shore. Not only is the veggieburger amazing, but the pie is delicious too.