Peregrinate

It's been a year since I posted anything here, though I've been more active on Instagram @mikekretzler. So, I thought I'd try t...

Aberdeen harbor sampan We were in Hong Kong Oct 21-24 and again, just overnight, on Oct 30-31 for the flight home. While there, we toure...

This post covers Oct 17-21, when we flew to Chongqing, sailed on the Long River, bused to Wuhan, and flew from there to Hong Kong. Along the...

I was happy to have been able to visit Lhasa Oct. 14-17, as part of our trip to China. It's not always possible, but our timing was exce...

Our Oct 12-14 visit to Chengdu gave us a visit to People's Park, a metro ride, an opera demonstration/performance, a visit to the Chen...

Taiji master and students Our October 8-12 visit to Xi'an included a bullet train ride (300 kph/190 mph) from Beijing, a Taiji demon...

Our first stop in China was Beijing, October 4 through 8. While there, we toured the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, ...

While Angkor Wat is the marquee destination in Cambodia, Phnom Penh is a worthwhile place to visit. We had a fine time visiting in October,...

My wife and I traveled to China in October on a tour with Overseas Adventure Travel , with a private extension to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The ...

Our local paper, The Olympian, has been a colony of the Tacoma paper for some years. As the staff have been reduced and their focus has shif...

Tom Engelhardt sums up the impact of the war in Afghanistan on the legacy of Vietnam, including this: Increasingly poorly remembered, Vie...

I drove to Tacoma last night to attend a Tacoma Mountaineers-sponsored talk featuring the legendary climber Fred Beckey . The talk was simi...

The first draft of photo selections from my Patagonia trip are now being posted at Picasa. Though some of them need a little work and I will...

March 12. This post was to have been titled something else, maybe just “Puerto Natales,” but the logistics continued their slide from last ...

March 11. Today was our last hike, the one reserved for poorer weather, since clouds won't obscure the views as easily. We were headed ...

March 10. This morning dawned perfectly clear, offering views of the top of Paine Grande for the first time. We got to sleep in a bit, beca...

March 9 . Today's hike was up the Rio Ascencion, on the east of the Paine range. It forms the right-hand side of the “W,” which is the b...

March 8. This morning, we arose early again (better weather, less grumbling), ate breakfast, our new driver, Javier, and hit the road by 7:...

March 7. Today's hike was up a ridge named for the “ recumbent fold” in the rock along its length. To the summit, at 1500+m (4950+')...

March 6. The morning dawned like it ended, with clear skies overhead and clouds covering Cerro Torre. For those who awoke before dawn and w...

March 5. The high clouds that rolled in yesterday over the ice field were engulfing the tops of Fitz Roy this morning. That left us with a w...

March 4. We were so enthused by the sunset last night, that we all resolved to see the sun rise on Fitz Roy, the gorgeous and dramatic peak ...

March 3. Today we loaded up the trailer and boarded our bus for the trip out around Lago Argentino then north to the north shore of Lago Vie...

March 2. Hosteria Hainen has a nice breakfast, with very robust coffee. We left at 8:00 in a bus, with a local tour guide, for the Perito M...

March 1. This morning we awoke early (was it still dark?) and boarded a bus for the airport to fly south to El Calafate, in Patagonia. The a...

February 28. Our day in Buenos Aires started with a good breakfast in hotel, following which we boarded a medium-sized tour bus for a four h...

February 27. So far, everything has gone swimmingly. The group assembled without incident. The flights went off on time and landed safely. T...

It's been months to get to this point, but in a couple of days, I'm boarding a plane to fly over the equator for the first time. I...

In preparation for my trip to Patagonia in a few weeks, I've been making preparations, including buying a cute little netbook to write m...

My wife and I spent the weekend in the northwest corner of the state. It was a fine way to spend a rainy weekend. The goal was Neah Bay and ...

I thought this was interesting. I've been through or in (at least a highway-blast-through or an airport-touch-down) more states than I t...

My wife and I have been travelling down to southern Oregon to visit the Oregon Shakespeare Festival every year since 1996, before we were e...

I intend to log more items here than I have over the last several months. I’ll start with this summary of my backpacking season. It started ...

Fafblog! back to save the universe. : "So for the last five years all the liberals and the hippies and the nattering nabobs of normalcy...

This is as good a way to break the silence of the last couple of months as any. I was in Washington, DC last weekend for the Winter Meetings...

Clive Thompson on How the Next Victim of Climate Change Will Be Our Minds : Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millenni...