Snoqualmie, Washington is a small town with much to offer. Best known for its proximity to Snoqualmie Falls, the 19th-century lumber town in 2010 started a major revitalization project. Today appealing downtown Snoqualmie is lined with restaurants and shops and also is home to the Northwest Railway Museum, which operates heritage railway rides. We’d several…
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Westport
Westport is a small Washington coastal town whose observation tower, perched at the Pacific Ocean’s edge, is one of the best storm-watching locations in the state. The maritime town also has the largest marina on the Pacific Northwest outer coast, with room for 500 boats. We’d long been considering a visit there, and finally did…
Orlando
The annual MARS conference, hosted by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is a cross-domain event aimed at sharing ideas across the rapidly growing fields of Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics, and Space. Hands-on learning and emerging technology demonstrations form the majority of the invitation-only event, with opportunities for attendees to meet and learn from each other. MARS…
Washington, DC
We’d both been to Washington D.C. before, but had never spent much time the National Mall area. So when a business trip brought James to Rockville, Maryland we opted to spend the previous weekend in the capital. In a busy couple of days, we attended a Capitals NHL game, visited the National Air and Space…
Lotusland
Santa Barbara’s spectacular botanical garden Ganna Walska Lotusland was the former estate of Polish opera singer Ganna Walska and is considered one of the top ten botanical gardens in the world. The 37-acre (15 ha) garden contains over 3,500 different plants from around the world, many quite rare. Similar species are grouped together to form…
Israel
Tel Aviv’s historic Old Jaffa neighborhood was founded more than 4,000 years ago, and is one of the oldest port cities in the world. Over the centuries a virtual Who’s Who of civilizations and leaders have conquered and ruled the city, ideally perched on the Mediterranean Sea, including the Egyptians, Alexander the Great, the Greeks,…
Granville Island
We’ve spent many nights at Granville Island in Vancouver over the years, all of them in our first boat on the public dock managed by the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires. The little-known gem was right below Bridges restaurant, where we enjoyed many meals, and steps from the excellent public market. Moored at Granville Island in…
The Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica Part III
After three busy days in South Georgia, the Silver Endeavour sailed for Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands, off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Elephant Island is where Ernest Shackleton’s crew was stranded on a bleak and inhospitable small beach while their captain and five others made a treacherous 17-day, 800-mile journey across…
The Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica Part II
Departing the Falklands, we traveled 900nm over three nights to reach our first stop in South Georgia at Elsehul. Here we toured the area by tender, sighting a large rockhopper penguin rookery perched on the cliffs, and hundreds of baby and adult seals. Among them was a relatively rare blonde Leucistic fur seal. Not quite…
The Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica
The island of South Georgia lies about 870 miles off the Antarctic Peninsula and supports the largest King Penguin population in the world, exceeding a million during the breeding season. It also contains the grave of British explorer Ernest Shackleton, who in 1916 famously saved his entire crew after their ship, the Endurance, was trapped in…
