#a highway marks the borders on the west while a river marks the borders on the south

[ericvilas]

#i can imagine having opinions about my city but my province is 'it exists i guess'

Lucky for those of us on this side of the highway, I can have opinions about both simultaneously!

this is something i’ve always been curious about because of how every state in the usa seems to be hated so viciously.

[roamanddiscover]

Mississippi

If you're looking for a place to visit or call home, Mississippi may be just the state for you. With so much to offer visitors and residents alike, Mississippi is a comprehensive guide full of unique history, diverse landscapes, and cultural traditions all its own. No matter your interests, there's sure to be something that will captivate you in this southern state. Mississippi is located in the southeastern United States and borders the Mississippi River to the west and the Gulf of Mexico to the south. Its name comes from the Ojibwe word "misi-ziibi," which means "Great River." The state has a rich and complex history that includes Native American tribes, European colonization, and the Civil War. Today, Mississippi is a vibrant place with a unique mix of traditions and modern conveniences. Geologically, Mississippi is home to many interesting features, including rolling hills and flat delta plains. The Mississippi River is one of the longest rivers in North America and runs through the western part of the state. The Gulf of Mexico is also a prominent feature, with its beautiful beaches and thriving marine ecosystems. Mississippi's diverse geography allows for a range of outdoor activities, from hiking to fishing to watersports. Mississippi's natural beauty extends into its ecosystems and rich biodiversity. There are several ecosystems throughout the state, including wetlands, forests, and coastal habitats. Mississippi is also home to a variety of rare and endemic species, including the Mississippi sandhill crane and the Gulf Coast gopher frog. The state has a subtropical climate with hot summers, mild winters, and a tendency towards severe weather events like storms and hurricanes. Environmental issues facing Mississippi include climate change, pollution, and wildlife preservation. Politically, Mississippi has a complex history marked by segregation and civil rights protests. Today, the state is known for its conservative voting tendencies and political debates around issues like healthcare and education. The economy is powered by industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and healthcare. Mississippi has a strong infrastructure, including major airports and highways, as well as reliable telecommunications and utilities. The state has contributed to scientific research and technological innovation, particularly in the areas of aerospace and biotechnology. Mississippi has a rich cultural identity that's often expressed through literature, music, and cuisine. The state is home to many talented writers, musicians, and artists, including William Faulkner, Elvis Presley, and B.B. King. Southern hospitality is a foundational part of Mississippi's cultural identity, and visitors will feel welcomed wherever they go. There's no shortage of things to do in Mississippi, whether you're interested in history, art, or outdoor activities. From exploring historic sites like Vicksburg National Military Park to hiking the Natchez Trace Parkway, there's something for everyone. Cities like Jackson, Biloxi, and Tupelo are known for their unique cultural offerings, while smaller towns like Natchez and Oxford have a charming Southern feel. Mississippi truly has something for all tastes and preferences, from beautiful natural landscapes to rich cultural heritage. Whether you're planning a visit or considering making it your home, this southern state is sure to offer something that will capture your heart.

Etymology

The name Mississippi comes from the Ojibwe word 'misi-ziibi', which means 'great river'. This refers to the Mississippi River, which runs through the state and is the second-longest river in North America. The river has been an important waterway for transportation and trade for centuries, and played a significant role in the development of Mississippi as a state. The state of Mississippi was originally inhabited by various Native American tribes, including the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez peoples. The region was first explored by European settlers in the 16th century, with the French establishing a colony in the area in the 1690s. The state was later ceded to the British in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and became part of the United States following the American Revolution. Mississippi was named as a United States territory in 1798, and achieved statehood in 1817. The name 'Mississippi' was officially adopted as the state's name in 1817. The state has a rich history, including its role in the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Today, Mississippi is known for its unique culture, diverse natural landscape, and innovative industries.

History

Mississippi has a fascinating and complex history. The state's earliest inhabitants were Native American tribes such as the Natchez and the Choctaw. European colonization began in the 16th century, with the arrival of Spanish explorers. The French later established settlements, with the most notable being Old Biloxi, which was later moved to present-day Ocean Springs. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the British and Spanish fought for control of Mississippi. In the early 19th century, Mississippi became the 20th state to join the United States. The state also played a pivotal role in the Civil War, with significant battles fought on its soil. During the Civil War, Mississippi was a vital location for the Confederacy, with numerous battles fought within its borders. The state was one of the first to secede from the Union, and it took on an important role as a manufacturer of military equipment and supplies. However, Mississippi also saw its fair share of destruction during the war. The city of Vicksburg was besieged and ultimately fell to Union forces, resulting in a significant blow to the Confederacy. After the Civil War, Mississippi struggled to rebuild its economy and infrastructure. The state's African American population faced significant challenges during Reconstruction, including violence and discrimination. Mississippi ultimately became known for its segregationist policies, and it was a center of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. In recent years, Mississippi has made efforts to acknowledge and confront its troubled history. The state has taken steps to remove Confederate symbols and monuments, and there have been discussions about reparations for descendants of enslaved individuals. While Mississippi's history is complex and often painful, it is an important part of the state's identity and serves as a reminder of the need for progress and justice.

Geology

Mississippi's geology is a testament to the state's rich history and diverse landscape. One of its most notable geological features is the mighty Mississippi River, which spans over 2,300 miles and serves as a significant transportation route for goods and people. Along its banks, visitors can see impressive sandbars, cliffs, and terraces formed by centuries of erosion and deposition. the Gulf Coast of Mississippi is an essential feature to the state's geology. The coastline is characterized by sandy beaches, marshes, and barrier islands. The Gulf Coast is also home to several unique natural formations, such as the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, where visitors can experience the intricate complexities of a brackish ecosystem. Mississippi's geology also boasts of several limestone bluffs, caves, and rock formations formed by ancient oceans and earthquakes. One notable cave is the Tishomingo County Rock Creek Cave, which is home to several species of bats and cave crickets. Moreover, Mississippi's geology is also significant because it is one of the most geologically active regions in the eastern United States. This region is prone to earthquakes, the most notable being the New Madrid earthquake in 1811. This event, which had a magnitude greater than 7, caused widespread damage and was felt as far away as New York City. Mississippi's geology is an essential aspect of the state's identity and heritage. From the powerful Mississippi River to the stunning Gulf Coast and unique rock formations, the state's geology is a fascinating and impressive sight to behold.

Geography

Mississippi boasts a diverse and picturesque geography, with both rolling hills and flat delta plains. The state sits in the southeastern region of the United States and is bordered by Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The northern region of Mississippi features the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, with the highest point in the state reaching a modest elevation of 806 feet. The central region of the state is characterized by gently rolling hills and fertile farmland. The Mississippi Delta region, located in the northwest part of the state, is a vast plain that stretches over 200 miles along the Mississippi River. This area was once a thriving cotton plantation region and is now known for its blues music and rich cultural history. The Mississippi River is also a vital part of the state's geography, serving as a crucial transportation route for goods and supplies. The state's coastline sits along the Gulf of Mexico and is known for its picturesque beaches and bayous. Hurricanes and tropical storms can be a threat to the area, but the state has invested in advanced warning systems and infrastructure to mitigate the impact of these weather events. Mississippi's diverse geography offers a rich array of landscapes and outdoor activities for visitors and residents alike. From the beautiful rolling hills to the rich delta plains and stunning coastline, Mississippi truly has something for everyone.

Ecology

Mississippi boasts a diverse range of ecosystems, from its coastal wetlands and forests to its rolling hills and prairies. These ecosystems provide habitat for an array of plant and animal life, including many rare and endemic species. However, conservation efforts are increasingly important due to the impact of human activities on Mississippi's fragile ecosystems. The state has experienced significant loss of wetlands and forest due to development and agriculture, and pollution from industry and farming has led to degradation of aquatic habitats. To combat these challenges, Mississippi has taken steps to protect its natural resources through laws and regulations aimed at reducing pollution and conserving habitats. The state also offers programs and incentives for landowners to engage in conservation practices. In addition to protecting habitats and species, conservation efforts in Mississippi also play a critical role in supporting the state's economy. Outdoor recreation, such as hunting and fishing, generates billions of dollars for the state each year, making conservation a crucial component of economic development. the conservation of Mississippi's diverse ecosystems is vital for both wildlife and human populations, and efforts to protect them should be a top priority for the state and its residents. By promoting conservation and sustainable use of natural resources, Mississippi can support a thriving ecosystem and a healthy economy for generations to come.

Biodiversity

Mississippi is home to an extraordinary variety of plant and animal life, making it one of the most biologically diverse states in the US. The state's many unique ecosystems provide habitats for a wide range of flora and fauna. The Mississippi River is one of the most prominent features of the state's environment, and it supports a diverse array of aquatic species such as catfish, alligator gar, and freshwater mussels. Mississippi's Gulf Coast provides a home to a variety of marine creatures such as dolphins, sea turtles, and shrimp. Mississippi's forests and wetlands are home to many animal species, including white-tailed deer, black bears, coyotes, and bobcats. The state is also a crucial stop on the migratory routes of many bird species, making it an essential location for birdwatchers. The state's rich plant life is also worth noting, with over 2,000 species of plants native to Mississippi. Some of the most notable include magnolia trees, tupelo trees, and native wildflowers such as coreopsis and black-eyed susans. Mississippi is also home to many rare and endemic species, meaning they are found nowhere else in the world. Examples include the Mississippi gopher frog, the Delta hot tamale pepper, and the Choctawhatchee beach mouse. It is essential to protect Mississippi's biodiversity and its delicate ecosystems. The state has implemented several conservation initiatives, including restoring wetlands and protecting endangered species. The Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge in coastal Mississippi has been established to protect the endangered Mississippi sandhill crane, and the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge provides a habitat for migratory bird species. Mississippi is a treasure trove of biological diversity and is a significant location for environmental conservation. Its abundant plant and animal life, including rare and endemic species, make it a place worth exploring and protecting for future generations.

black-eyed susans

Climate

Mississippi has a humid subtropical climate, with long, hot summers and mild winters. Average temperatures in the summer months range from the mid-80s to low-90s, with highs occasionally reaching well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Winters are mild, with average temperatures in the 50s and 60s. One of the biggest weather-related concerns in Mississippi is the state's vulnerability to severe storms and hurricanes. Mississippi is situated in a region that is frequently hit by hurricanes and tropical storms, which can cause significant damage and loss of life. In fact, Mississippi has experienced some of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While the state is susceptible to these natural disasters, it is also home to a variety of weather-related tourism opportunities. Visitors to the Gulf Coast can enjoy warm temperatures and sunny skies almost year-round, while those interested in storms and tornadoes may find the state's "Tornado Alley" region to be an exciting destination. Climate change is increasingly becoming a concern in Mississippi, as rising temperatures and unpredictable weather patterns pose threats to both the environment and human health. In recent years, the state has seen an increase in severe weather events such as floods, droughts, and wildfires. Despite these challenges, Mississippi has a diverse range of outdoor activities and attractions for visitors to enjoy. From exploring the state's vast wilderness areas to taking in the vibrant culture of its cities and towns, there is always something new to discover in this unique and richly historic state.

Environmental Issues

Mississippi faces a number of environmental challenges, some of which are common across many regions, while others are particular to the state. Climate change is a major environmental concern affecting not just Mississippi but the entire planet. The state experiences a range of weather patterns from heavy rain showers to tropical storms, with the Gulf Coast being particularly susceptible to hurricanes. As global temperatures continue to rise, Mississippi may experience more frequent and intense storms that can cause serious damage to infrastructure, property, and natural habitats. Another significant environmental challenge facing Mississippi is pollution. Industrial facilities, agricultural activities, and transportation all contribute to pollution that can harm air, soil, and water quality. In addition, waste disposal, oil and gas drilling, and chemical spills are also sources of pollution that can create immediate and long-term health risks for residents. The state government, along with various organizations, have implemented strict regulations to minimize pollution and protect public health. Preserving the state's unique wildlife is also a priority in Mississippi. The state is home to a diverse range of plant and animal species, from cottonmouth snakes to migratory birds. The Mississippi River and Gulf Coast provide habitat for hundreds of species, and preserving these ecosystems is vital for maintaining a healthy environment and protecting these animals from extinction. One particular environmental issue facing Mississippi is shoreline erosion. The state's coastline often bears the brunt of natural disasters such as hurricanes, resulting in the loss of valuable wetlands and barrier islands. Scientists and policymakers are working to develop strategies to mitigate the impact of these storms on the coastline and protect the state's natural resources. Mississippi has adopted conservation programs to restore and maintain the state's unique ecosystems. environmental issues are a complex and pressing concern for Mississippi. From pollution to wildlife preservation, the state faces a range of challenges that require ongoing attention and action. By developing innovative solutions and implementing effective policies, Mississippi can protect its natural resources and ensure a sustainable future for generations to come.

Politics

Mississippi is a state with a dynamic political landscape. Historically, the state has been dominated by conservative politicians, both Democrats and Republicans. This trend has continued in recent years, as the state's largely rural population tends to vote for candidates with more traditional values. In the last several decades, the Republican party has gained increasing influence in Mississippi. This has coincided with the national trend of Southern states shifting to the right, and has resulted in a Republican stronghold in Mississippi's state legislature and congressional delegation. Despite this trend, Mississippi remains one of the poorest and least educated states in the country. This has resulted in a large population of voters who are less politically active than in other states. This lack of engagement often results in lower voter turnout, particularly among minority and younger demographics. Current issues of political importance in Mississippi include education, healthcare, and infrastructure. The state's public education system has consistently ranked low nationally, with significant disparities between urban and rural areas. Healthcare is also a major concern, as Mississippi has one of the highest rates of uninsured residents in the country. In terms of infrastructure, the state has struggled to modernize its transportation and telecommunication systems, particularly in rural areas. Another significant issue in Mississippi is race relations. The state has a long history of segregation and racial violence, and this legacy continues to have an impact on the state's political landscape. Recent debates over the Confederate flag and symbols of the Confederacy have highlighted the ongoing struggle for racial equity and representation in the state. Mississippi's political landscape is complex and ever-evolving. Read the full article

[qvid-pro-qvo]

to navigate when you’re lost.

a long car rides with you piece. derek morgan, emily prentiss, spencer reid, & bau!gender neutral reader. 

word count: 1590

rating: e for everyone, because every team has some growing pains along the way (no trigger warnings). 

-

It’s Morgan who realizes it first, and you’re ashamed to say it’s… partially your fault. Not entirely, because they handed you the map to begin with, and fully expected you to have a geography or cartography specialty hidden in your file.

But the rest of it? The getting lost? Yeah. That’s all you, you’re pretty sure.

You’d just started to really get in a groove with the rest of the team, too. More and more, black-and-white words on paper about each of the men and women you got to see on a day-to-day turned into full-color portraits, with each member lighting up like neon signs as you started to really, truly get to know them.

They’d started joking with you, too, at the very least. Which was definitely a step in the right direction. It’d been the evidence of the adjustment period, and you had thought you were making strides towards full integration. 

But now, in this damn car, you’re lost, and you’re the reason the four of you are lost, and Morgan realizes it first. Which definitely throws a wrench in the whole “smooth transition” thing. He heaves out a sigh with both his hands on the wheel, glances over at you with your brow furrowed and your finger on a point somewhere west of a river you were supposed to following, and lifts a hand to rub it over his face. His sunglasses end up on top of his head, so you feel every piece of his stare. It’s not a glare. Not quite yet.

You have a feeling it’ll get there eventually, though.

“We’re lost,” he says, and you can’t help but feel your hackles rise a bit. Because you know that yes, you don’t exactly know where the three of you are, but you also know that you’re still on an actual road, so. It’s gotta be on the map somewhere.

“We’re just taking a detour,” you try to say, but Derek’s eyes hit you again and you shrink a little into the seat, just a little. Not enough to look anything more than a readjustment, you’re sure.

“One wrong turn and we’re on gravel,” he points out, and you let out a sigh.

“Like you could do any better?” It’s sharper than you wanted it to be, but Derek doesn’t shy away from it, just looks back out ahead at the landscape. It’s desert, wide and open, and you feel yourself suffocate a little at the cloud of dirt you can see in the rearview. “Sorry, but… okay, look, it’s fine. We’ll be fine, but I don’t know what made me the map expert in this car when we have someone who makes geographical profiles for fun in the backseat.”

“You’re shotgun,” Prentiss says from the backseat, piping in because she can, the smirk on her face definitely showing how much fun she’s having with this. “Shotgun navigates.”

Your jaw clenches, and once more you fan out the map with remarkable ability, considering no paper cuts have been acquired yet. Your eyes scan the damn thing, the grids blurring just a little, to find which highway is the one you’re cruising down at breakneck pace. “Well, if I had known that, I wouldn’t have sat shotgun.”

“I’m just saying that I swear I’ve seen that damn cactus three times now,” Morgan points out, as the SUV zips one with a particularly odd shape. “I think we’re going in circles.”

“We’re going in a straight line,” Reid returns, “so really that cactus just looks like a cactus.” That earns him the real glare from Morgan, and you’re suddenly sure that if Spencer was in the front seat he’d also get a thump on the head.

“Shut it, boy genius, and do us all a favor. Take the map.”

“I’m not gonna take the map,” Reid says, and you turn in your seat to give him a pleading look.

“Reid, come on, please. Let me resign as navigator and step away with dignity.” He seems to almost consider it, which means that your puppy-dog eyes have advanced a level or two, but it doesn’t finish the job.

“I’m not gonna take the map.” All of a sudden, he has three pairs of eyes on him, even Morgan’s which earns him a smack on the shoulder from you. He just looks among the three of you with indignation. “Look, I always navigate, and I don’t want to navigate this time, I was having a perfectly fine time in the backseat –”

“So just because you don’t want to navigate you’re gonna leave us stranded in the middle of the desert?” It’s Prentiss again, and her voice is so deadpan that Reid looks at her with a furrowed brow. She lets out a soft sigh, shaking her head. There’s the smallest quirk of her lips when you glance over, showing how much she’s teasing. “I don’t know, Reid, seems pretty selfish.”

The look he gives her is an open-mouthed one. “Just because the rest of you don’t know how to read a map –”

Morgan’s voice interrupts easily. “I know how to read a map, but I’m driving the damn car, Reid.”

“When you know you’re the best navigator and the destination is in the middle of a desert –” Emily tries.

“I was re-reading the case files!”

On and on they begin to go, with Morgan continuing conversations by looking in the rearview mirror, Prentiss’s eyes getting wider and wider and more and more amazed, and Reid’s voice hitting that particular pitch it does when he’s flustered. It begins a vicious cycle, and each time it goes around again your eyes just gaze at the map, trying to find new meanings in lines you’ve scanned a million times.

Your eyes scan the border, almost defaulting to that position. You wish, more than anything, that exactly where your car is would appear on the thing, but that luxury is not available to you. So the tuning out of the rest of the team happens as your eyes scan the damn map.

At first, it’s a normal recognition of numbers and letters marking out grid points. It’s the cycle you’ve fallen into over the whole trip, and you hope to find new meaning in what you see. There’s nothing new, of course, and you start gazing out the window to catch an exit sign when you glance down again. And that’s when you see it, and it hits you like a truck, makes you start laughing hysterically, loud enough to interrupt Prentiss’s cry of “excuse me.”

You sound hysterical. Bonkers, mad, senile. All of those words describe the sound that comes out of your mouth, a half-cackle, half-wheeze, half-gasp for air as you fall back against the seatback.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me.”

There’s a silence that falls over the cabin, three pairs of eyes turning to gaze at you. Well, relative silence. Your laugh is sustaining, pitch heightening, tears falling just a little.

“Were – oh, fuck me.”

There’s silence. All you can hear is tires on worn highway. The scratch of dirt and pebbles as they catch underneath the vehicle.

“What,” Prentiss states.

Your voice finally comes together for a coherent statement, after a few more seconds of struggle. “Were any of you going to tell me this map isn’t even for this damn state?”

When you start cackling again you feel the map get snatched out of your hands. There are the furious sounds of folding and re-folding as you struggle to pull yourself together, and Reid’s hands soon join Prentiss’s in finding the first part of the fold-out so their eyes can scan the words with horror. Morgan’s driving comes to a near-sudden halt, and he pulls off onto the shoulder to pause.

Your laughter is finally dying down, only so you can breathe a little bit – it’s the simultaneous realization that it is not all your fault and that it is all of your faults that had broken you so completely. When the situation is confirmed by Morgan, who just holds the map with disgust, you’re calmed down enough that you can start functioning again.

“I’ll – I’ll call Hotch,” you offer, and you reach for your phone. “Let him know that we’re, uh, running behind.”

“No,” Morgan and Prentiss say simultaneously, and their heads are shaking.

“I do not need that disapproval right now,” Morgan explains.

You can’t help your little huff, an unintentional mirror of his tone earlier. “Well. Do you have another plan?” you retort.

There’s silence while plans brew. The shoulder of the highway sits on your right, three brains on overdrive on your left. You just lean against the window, looking amongst the three of them as best as you can with your seatbelt still on.

“I’ll… call Garcia?” Reid offers next, and there’s a noise of assent from Emily as he pulls out his phone.

“Four profilers and we can’t even read the words on the first fucking page,” Morgan scoffs, and there’s chuckles from the rest of the crew. The tension is gone, leaking from the space like there’s a cracked window, leaving nothing but exhaustion and tired eyes, a half-full tank of gas and a sudden U-turn as Garcia begins navigating the four of you to the right spot.

And when the four of you arrive one more hour later at the right spot, neutrality the weapon of choice as you approach the waiting officers, you can’t help the curl of your lips as you fall into step next to them.

Derek did call you a profiler, after all.

-

tag list:  @genevievedarcygranger // @quillvine // @falcon-arrows // @afuckingshituniverse // @sercyan // @sparklingkeylimepie // @alexxcorona113 // @mandyandy22 // @thedeaddrop // @angelsbabey // @lolychu // @icyprincess // @gabbygabbie // @cevanswhre // @roses-and-grasses // @baadmaxx // @ssaic-jareau // @mooneylupinblack // @rachelxwayne // @dilaudidwinchester // @stylesboy // @grandpascurtains // @softbibxtch // @winterscaptain // @hurricanejjareau // @averyhotchner // @crazyshannonigans // @chelseyjoyce

[a-michel73]

Best places to visit in rainy season in Mumbai & Pune

Here are the best places to visit

1. Amboli

The mist-laden ghats of Amboli brim with nature and is the topmost “Eco Hotspots” in Sahyadri. Amboli is an off-the-beaten hill station at 2,260 feet above sea level in the Sindhudurg district of Southern Maharashtra after which the coastal uplands of Goa start to unfurl. Places such as the Amboli waterfalls, Madhavgad fort, Shirigaonkar and sunset points etc. Amboli village has been recorded to receive the highest rainfalls during monsoon in the entire state of Maharashtra which gives you thumbs up to include in your list of Maharashtra places to visit in monsoon.

2. Khandala

The picturesque station that lies a few kilometres before you hit the customary Lonavala city roads is quite underrated. Khandala is another famous hill station that leads to many trek trails such as Visapur, Rajmachi and Lohagad etc. in monsoon and is quite easily accessible from metro cities like Mumbai and Pune. Bedsa cave, Duke’s nose, Tiger’s cave Bushi Dam, Tungarli Dam, and Karla and Bhaja caves are a few attractions that can be toured while in Khandala.

3. Mahabaleshwar

The strawberry town needs no introduction, Mahabaleshwar is a hill station in Satara district of Maharashtra. It is quite near to Panchgani in distance and both are often coupled together in a single trip. In bygone times, during the British Raj, Mahabaleshwar served as a summer capital. It is famed for producing almost 85 percent of the entire strawberry production that gets distributed across the country. Bound by meadows and greenery from all sides, Mahabaleshwar is a large plateau town that attracts hordes of tourists throughout the year. During the monsoon season, the entire valley comes to life with cascading waterfalls and rivers.

4. Alibaug

Alibagh is the town by the sea that can easily be accessed by a ferry ride from Gateway of India in just an hour log boat ride. The coastal town is one of the most popular places in Maharashtra which experiences tourists footfall throughout the year. Fondly dubbed as “mini-Goa”, it is nestled in the Konkan region of Maharashtra, precisely south of Mumbai. Alibag is loved for the colonial history and clean beaches such as Varsoli, Kihim Beach, Alibag beach, and Nagaon Beach. The presence of Murud-Janjira fort in the middle of the sea amplifies the surge of tourism in Alibag even more.

5. Matheran

The romantic and environmentally responsible Matheran is a weekender’s delight. Not more than 100 kilometres west of Mumbai, lies this tiny hill station which is famous for banning motorable vehicles to preserve its colonial edifices. You can still find Matheran in the most untouched way even after the rapid rise of hotels and guest houses because, besides the commercial tactics, the place is covered and surrounded by thick jungles. Monsoon is literally the best time to visit Matheran.

6. Panchgani

Panchgani: The neighbouring hill station to the strawberry town of Mahabaleshwar, Panchgani is one of the most-cherished places to visit in monsoon in Maharashtra. Nestled at an elevation of 4370 feet above sea level in Satara district of Maharashtra, Panchgani is named after the five hills of Sahyadri that surround this place. The Sahyadri make for a great view from the various sunset and sunrise points in Panchgani. It is mostly frequented by families as it has well-defined routes and points with a fair choice of stay options and a lucrative market.

7. Igatpuri

Dotted with waterfalls, rivers and towering hills of Sahyadri, Igatpuri is one of the places to visit in monsoon in Maharashtra which is hard to resist. Igatpuri falls on the  Mumbai-Agra highway, just 45 kilometres before Nashik.It is a major railhead that also connects the nearby cities. Igatpuri is truly a paradise in terms of natural beauty, valleys such as Bhatsa River Valley, Camel Valley, Konkan Kada valley etc are some of the well-kept treasures in this petite hilly town.

8. Bhimashankar

Bhimashankar is one of the revered Jyotirlingas in India and is one of the mandates to people surfing Maharashtra places to visit in monsoon. Perched atop an elevation of 3250 feet above sea level in Bhorgiri village- Bhimashankar is surrounded by other Sahyadri jewels like Matheran, Nasik, Trimbakeshwar etc. Bhimashankar is a mix of new and old architecture in Nagara style where sculptors and pieces are seen from the 13th to the 18th century.

9. Malshej Ghat

A ghat in the Sahyadri is mostly a monsoon pass, Malshej is popular ghat on the Mumbai-Thane road. The ghat is similar to the other ghats of Sahyadri range but it oodles with a number of trek trails. It is one of the must-see places in monsoon if you love getting drenched in the heavy showers.Situated on the borders of Thane and Ahmednagar districts and is home to home chirpers like cuckoos, flamingoes, quails and rails.

10. Kalsubai

As the highest peak of Sahyadri range, Kalsubai is a dream trek. Dwells at an elevation of 5400 feet above sea level, Kalsubai is a scenic hill and is peppered with innumerable waterfalls and rivulets. The peak is located within the green fringes of  Kalsubai Harishchandragad Wildlife Sanctuary where the trail is well-marked for the trek and nature enthusiasts to follow. Bari is the base village to begin the uphill walk towards the peak.

[intothesea-withme-blog]

Moving To Mexico Beach Florida

Humans inhabited Florida at least 12,000 years prior to European contact. Remains and artifacts dating to the Pleistocene era confirm this presence. The environment was substantially different during this time; the sea level was approximately 100 feet lower, and the climate was much cooler and drier. Animal species present during this time included mammoths, mastodons, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, camels, and a wide variety of Pleistocene megafauna (giant species of modern animals such as condors, tortoises, beavers, and sloths).

Many groups of indigenous peoples inhabited Florida, all of which succumbed to extinction by the year 1800. Most died from exposure to European diseases such as measles and smallpox, while others were captured and sold into slavery.

The western coastline boasts lighthouses and untouched marine habitat at the Big Bend Seagrasses Aquatic Preserve, along with some spectacular oceanfront Florida vacation rentals, and the some of the world's best roller coasters and wildlife shows at Busch Gardens & Sea World in Tampa.

At the time of European “discovery,” the Apalachee Indians occupied the area that is present-day Mexico Beach. The Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez led an expedition into the area in the summer of 1528 and was attacked by a superior force of Apalachee warriors. As the Spanish retreated along the Wakulla and St. Marks rivers, the Apalachee waged a guerilla campaign against them, eventually forcing the conquistadors to the Gulf of Mexico. There, starving and having eaten their horses, they hastily constructed a fleet of rafts and set sail for New Spain (Mexico).

The Spanish would return in 1539 with an expedition of 550 soldiers led by Hernando de Soto. The expedition neared Mexico Beach at present-day Tallahassee. Tallahassee would become the capital of Spanish Florida and remain so until being traded to England in exchange for control of Havana, Cuba. The Apalachee, their population reduced by conflict with the Spanish and exposure to diseases for which they had no natural immunity, were eventually wiped out.

As a result of the Seven Years’ War with France and Spain, Great Britain found itself in possession of all French territory east of the Mississippi River, as well as territory ceded by France’s ally Spain. Finding Florida too difficult to govern as a single entity, Britain divided it into two separate territories: East and West Florida.

Mexico Beach fell within the territory of West Florida, which composed the area commonly referred to as the “Panhandle.” The territory would once again be contested during the American Revolutionary War and, with American victory over the British, possession returned to Spain as secured by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

The Spanish continued the British practice of governing the territory as East and West Florida, but soon become embroiled in a border dispute with the United States. Tensions between Spanish and American settlers, as well as warfare between both nations and the Seminole Indians, eventually led to Florida being traded to the United States in exchange for the recognition of Spanish claims in Texas.

East and West Florida were merged and Florida became a U.S. territory in 1822, with Tallahassee as its capital. In 1845, Florida became the 27th state.

The area encompassing Mexico Beach would see very little development over the next 60 years. The U.S. Navy blockaded the Gulf Coast during the Civil War, while the North raided an important salt works located nearby in what is now Panama City, and several small skirmishes were fought in the area. Blockade-runners smuggled cotton out of, and vital war materials and money into, the area under the cover of night.

Two events encouraged the “discovery” and development of Mexico Beach, as it exists today: The completion of Highway 98 during the 1930s and the construction of Tyndall Field in 1941. Thousands of Army Air Corps personnel were introduced to the beautiful white-sand beaches as they passed through the training base on their way to war. In 1946, a group of local businessmen including Gordon Parker, W.T. McGowan, and J.W. Wainright bought 1,850 acres of beachfront property and began development.

Mexico Beach grew slowly but steadily through the 1950s and 60s. In 1955, the Mexico Beach Canal was completed, providing boaters with quick, easy, and safe access to the Gulf. In 1967, the town was officially incorporated as the City of Mexico Beach.

Mexico Beach quickly became known for its abundant sportfishing. Fishing has been, and remains, one of the city’s greatest draws. The Mexico Beach Artificial Reef Association, working closely with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the United States Army Corps of Engineers, has established more than 1,000 patch reefs within easy reach of shore. The program has been wildly successful, attracting countless species and numbers of fish and other sea life to Mexico Beach and making the area a preferred destination of sport fisherman.

In stark contrast to neighboring communities along the Gulf Coast, Mexico Beach looks much today as it did decades ago. Commercial development has been restrained and contained. More than a mile of beachfront has been protected against development, offering unobstructed views of the beautiful white-sand beach and emerald Gulf waters. Businesses are almost exclusively locally owned “mom and pop” establishments. Mexico Beach is a success story of preservation.

While the City of Mexico Beach today boasts a population of just 1,000 residents, generations of visitors from all over the world have discovered this quiet, authentic, and family-friendly little beach town. The majority of vacationers return year after year on their pilgrimage to Gulf Coast’s white sands.

We’re confident that the founding fathers and pioneering families who made Mexico Beach the place it is today would be proud of the continued results of their efforts and the many happy memories that have been created here.

If you are considering moving to Mexico Beach Florida you should consider getting a few quotes from Boca Raton Moving Companies so you get the best possible price. 

[therecklessseeking-blog]

June 25, 2018  Funnel Chasing in Iowa

I woke up super early one Monday morning. By super early I mean 8 am, because I’m normally sleeping until noon or later easily. For some reason, the night before I was able to pass out in time for me to be well-rested.

The trip that day was a split-moment decision. I remember lying in bed cycling through the morning ritualized web pages- weather.org, the SPC, weather.us and then over to my favorite radar app to see what was currently underway.

What I saw was that nice yellow bubble at the top of Missouri into Iowa with a 5% chance of tornadoes, but for some reason I wasn’t actually in the mood to drive out that far. I have a desperation to teleport sometimes. I like road trips. I like being far away. I like the freedom that comes with tourism, and the lack of true obligation. God, are the usual routes boring though. You can only travel on 70 so many times before you’re numbed to the usual array of fields and impatient drivers.

I knew that I was leaving for somewhere though, and I get out of the house by 845 am. It wasn’t a bad turn around to get up, dressed and packed within 45 minutes. My hallmark is indecision, and that can waste a lot of my time.

What was eating at me though was exactly where to go. Sure, there was that nice spot to the north, but the soaring index on weather.us also hinted at the vast amount of severe storms that would move northeast across the Ozarks straight to my county. And the timing suggested that I could explore cave-ridden and creek-laden areas for a few hours before they really started to develop.

As I traveled further and further west down 70, I knew that I would have to make a decision- and to be honest, for some reason I was really fixated on what all the data was saying about the southern routes I had in mind. Places like Sedalia and back roads to the southwest. Plus, since the storms would develop within Kansas and move east, it would be a longer chase. A chase that followed me.

There was a lot of anxiety surrounding that decision though. At the last minute, I kept asking the universe to synchronize some sign into my life. And oddly enough, it appeared in the clouds itself. They hung low, and moved north. I saw the curls I like to see, and one cloud curled itself right into an arrow. North it is.

But f*** driving all that way into Kansas City. I hate city driving, and Kansas City is one of the worst I’ve ever been to yet. I feared more wasted time just based off the inevitable urban traffic.

I’d been looking at the radar every 20 to 30 minutes and I noticed that the low pressure system sitting over Nebraska had already spawned some storms moving up interstates 29 and 35 around St. Joseph, which was another hour and a half away from me. I’ll admit I wasted quite a bit of time getting food, getting lost on the way to food, and then-having a bit of that anxiety earlier -taking a bit too long staring at the radar at one or two exits to decide what I was doing. Oh well.

I figured that I’d make it to MO-13 and go north from there. It’s an older highway, and it goes through some towns you can tell have been raised and broken down in history. This included Lexington, stage of a huge battle during the civil war. The long, rolling fields were stunning. And time consuming. I still had the paranoia that I was driving farther and farther from home on a weak whim. At least everyone was speeding.

I knew that taking MO-13 far enough would lead me to Interstate 35, but apparently that road has been closed for a while just beyond Hamilton, so I decided to sit behind a Dollar General for a second and check out a map. US-36 west would solve that issue immediately, and save me a lot of time. Meanwhile, I get a notification on my phone that the storm chaser/patreon I follow, Pecos Hank, was also aiming for that slight risk zone. Based on the clouds I’d seen coming up 13 off to my west, and the winds in my favorite app, I felt an increasing confidence in my decision of North vs South, and I race on. I reach Interstate 35 by 1:20 pm.

Now, I don’t normally recommend speeding at all. I’m a 5-over-the-limit type of person any other time. But as I’m looking at both the radar and the sky more and more on the approach, I realize that the show is setting up. There’s a bit of convection to the east and west of me. They all just looked like heavy rain so far, but my anxiety was increasing. There was an active range of over 70-90 miles easily, with some storms steadily popping up and moving quickly in the east right over Princeton Mo, and then of course the storms that had already been active near the Kansas/Nebraska border much closer to the low pressure system.

Just before 3 pm, I’ve reached Eagleville MO and jump off the highway to look at the radar. There's a new wave of convection to the south of me, filling in the rainless middle ground and heading north towards me. What I also notice is an organized line of storms approaching the Missouri river heading northeast. I’m near the convergence zone of these storms, and that’s exactly what I’m looking for.

Quickly, I choose a few roads to work their magic. North on US-69, west on MO-46, and not a car in sight I ride the hills to view the horizons bringing me the results. On a bend of 46, I manage to find a nice little hill to take a picture or two and check out any sheer in the clouds.

I still had just under an hour left though. The line to the west was moving much faster than the individual cells to the south and I could just barely make them out on the horizon, so my goal is to move more slowly to the converging point and stake out various places to watch the clouds set themselves up.

Hatfield showed some promise. Just a few houses, some of them abandoned:

There’s a natural area an eighth of a mile south of Hatfield called Pawnee Prairie that did the trick. The parking area was a nice clear overlook on top of a treeless hill, with a few farmers fields surrounding the area. Google says I sat there for close to 30 minutes as I watched the cells approach me. My camera failed to record like I asked it to, but what I noticed was the signs of low pressure. Low hanging clouds rush in west ahead of the storms, as if they gravitated to something else. With all precipitation on the radar heading either north or northeast, there was definitely something hidden happening in the sky. I abandon Pawnee Prairie and continue west down 46, stopping to find a field or two to take more pictures

15 miles away, my actual target was around Grant City MO. The line I’d spotted earlier was only growing stronger and closing in, and it was a race to find a suitable space for viewing. Suitable here means “tall, clear hill with a drive-able road and space to pull off to the side.” None of which is ever guaranteed nor marked with a sign, and as I close in on Grant City, I realize just how close that storm in getting and just how massive that storm became.

I still had no real intention on running into Iowa just yet though. The storms were only yet to arrive and something screamed “STAY!” Turning north onto US-169 I spotted the one road that would be suitable for my needs. North Lyon St (CR 286) is a dirt road springing off the top of Grant City, and right on top of the very hill that originally blocked the westward view from 169. It overlooked a large amount of the western fields, and although quite a bit of the southern sky was blocked by trees, I managed to get nearly 20 minutes of video of the wall cloud and heavily developing rain on the front end of the storm.

The thing was, while I spent so much time looking off to the west, I never moved myself to see what was to the south edge of the system. I had my prize view and signs of very minor rotation, and when I get that much, moving is paranoia. As the rain began falling over me my video quality was dropping, with auto-focus fixated on the droplets on my window. That’s when I checked radar.

Oddly enough, just south of me, a little hook echo had been forming, and I’m off speeding again. Trying to avoid the holes of this little dirt road in the rain was a challenge enough, but keeping my head clear as I race back south down 169 into Grant City was another challenge. I backed into someone’s driveway across from the second Dollar General of the day and began recording what eventually would form into the funnel I had been waiting for.

Now this video is a compilation of the whole event- from suitable hill to the chase it lead me on straight into Iowa up US-169. If you want the most interesting parts only, I guess my advice is to skip ahead 5 minutes

I’ll admit that parts of the audio are cut out to make it family friendly. When the funnel was forming straight ahead of me, there was still this vague aura of control over the situation. I had a southern escape route right across the street, and for a while, I felt not fear but exhilaration and joy. To think I could have missed the opportunity by going to Sedalia, right?

Any way, what I figured out was I’m completely silent until I repetitively cuss myself out for about 5 minutes in totality. No offense to myself, but what I realized after it passed over me and headed towards the hill was that it might really drop- in which case, I know better. That thing could have thrown any part of those trees at me. I had the legitimate warning of every storm chaser and meteorologist spinning around me faster than the funnel. While it’s great to have video of a tornado, it’s just stupid to film yourself getting hit by one.

I stalk it up 169, cross the Iowa border, and she’s still rotating nicely. I’m trying to find some sort of country road that would let me see over all the bad hill-and-tree combos. I started to understand why chasing in Iowa was such a tease. It’s beautiful, and the twisters are willing to twist but they play “The Floor is Lava” better. It was probably all the hills causing that.

While there are definitely less trees than my part of Missouri and the Ozarks south, man are all the views sporadic. I found myself leaving 169 for a few minutes when I’d found a hill, realizing that the storm was progressing too far ahead of me, and then racing back to catch the ground I lost.

It was also these hills that let me realize this rotation was dying.

Everything’s just started though, and I’m getting a bit scrambled trying to trace where the rotation is trying to head off to while not getting caught in some downpour. There’s just something about the middle of nowhere that makes phones slower and vague and while I’d bought a road map book of everywhere I could possibly end up that day, unless I had some sort of radar on the top of my car strictly to run my own data, I’m running the majority of this chase on finding hills for views and then routes to get over there.

That’s pretty much were I detoured the wrong way- watching the sky too much and missing a turn that would have landed me in the dense rain that popped up to my east. Instead, my stubborn self caught the most vivid rainbow I’ve ever witnessed- on a route that led me on a scenic view of a town that had no good road to the main roads I was aiming for. I’m left with a phone camera that couldn’t necessary capture how grand it was, but I’ll always remember it.

Looking back, it was sort of a mixed blessing to view the storms at such a distance. I was never really caught in any rain, but the hesitancy I had to really approach from the main paved roads caused me to lose track of it. The problem was that the main highways ran straight into any cells path moving north, and these elongated monsters moved fast and heavy. Any parallel path I found though was slippery (dirt and water don’t let you move any faster than 40 miles per hour either) and always carried the greater risk of concealing the horizon behind trees.

I did manage to find a few hills that made me realize just how much rotation a slight risk area can involve. Looking across the valleys around me, I spotted at least three wall clouds either rotating or forming around me. Two belonged to the same elongated cell maybe a good 5 miles to the east that had dumped so much rain in front of me earlier on.

There it was again- that overwhelming need to teleport. The anxiety only increased with an overwhelming need to be everywhere at once too. Complete storm omniscience is all I was really asking for. It's so toxic that it's hard to make decisions, and made me increasingly impatient with myself to get going. I appreciate the view, but I always realize that I fall behind. Soon I'll lose the storms to the same hills and back roads I vouch for.

It's easier to just post a map outlining the route rather than explaining it, because I elected a ton of back roads filled with charming old buildings that only served to keep me out of the action, but still in view of something happening.

As I got closer to Des Moines, I realized two things:

A) Nighttime was approaching within the hour, and I didn't have the best camera for all the amazing lightning happening, nor would I be able to see any rain or tornadoes approaching me on my drive home B) My cell phone only has so much memory, AND I've literally filled it all with clouds and cat pictures. Not to mention several 10-13 minute long videos of rotation from this and previous chases. This phone brand doesn't even contain bloatware either, so I've definitely outdone myself.

Yet I still record

I find an exit off of interstate 35 just a few miles south of Des Moines to sit and stare over the clearest horizon I've found yet. I'm refusing to give up the fight. I start to delete selfies, apps, games- anything for just a bit of memory. I start spamming my snapchat story with videos knowing that I'd have 24 hours to download anything I uploaded. All for one of the greatest sunsets I've seen yet, and a lot of SLCs (too bad my snapchat segregated the videos into fragments).

What I was most upset about was the phone thing. Nighttime storms are my favorite, and because night is the exact time that most severe storms roll through my area I was accustomed to chasing them more. This time I'd be left with nothing to show, nothing to save. The clouds glowed with rapid fire. I could tell with the intensity of each strike, these storms still had quite a while before they decided to retire, and I begrudgingly begin to drag myself down the highway home. It'll take me 5 hours- if I don't stop.

For a while I have to. Just a few miles out of Des Moines, I thought these tornadoes were coming for me anyway. There were still warnings active of course. There had been for a few hours. But I realized with the downpour, the radar, the split second views of scud to the north, and the fierce power of the wind under my car that I might very well have been in the draft suctioning into the storm. The rain fell sideways. In fact, it wasn't even falling. I stopped at a Casey's and even being under the shelter at the furthest point the rain could enter from, I was still absolutely soaked getting a literal seven dollars worth of gas. I gave up.

As I carry on, maybe an hour out, the sky is clearing, and I see the cloud tops of numbed cumulonimbus under a full moon and the active ones still firing off to the north. Dreamy, I think. Absolutely dreamy. I'd pull off to gawk, but something tells me the highway patrol won't like it too much with a “DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS” sign posted nearby.

Thanks for reading.

[vantovan-blog1]

A beginning

Well, here we go, better late than never? This is a blog to get some of the experiences Tash and I have had and will have this year as we travel Australia and the world to find family, friends and fun, ending up in Vancouver where we plan to stay for a while before we head back to Melbourne, our home city, when it feels right. 

Our instagram account (@van.to.van for those playing along at home) has captured a lot of the best moments, but it's time to get some words down too. It's been just over three months since we set off from Melbourne. 

Leaving was harder than we anticipated. We found it tough to say farewell to our house, having only been in it for a year, to friendships that were really solidifying, and to family and familiar faces and places. It was an emotionally, mentally and physically tiring couple of months leading up to departure - there is a lot to organise when you upturn a settled existence - but we got there in the end and drove away from Melbourne excited, nervous and a little uncertain about what was ahead of us.

Australian road trip

Life in the van was amazing. It's a cliche, but it's remarkable how simple life becomes (temporarily at least) once you've pared down your possessions to the essentials. Fewer things in front of your face means less to think and worry about, and we quickly fell in love with the lifestyle, where the principal concerns are what you will eat for the day and where you will park the van for the night.

Our road trip took us almost all the way up the east coast to Port Douglas, a small tourist town north of Cairns, then cross country to meet the Stuart highway, down through Alice Springs to Adelaide, then back home via a few wineries in the Mclaren Vale, Barossa and Clare Valley regions.

It's difficult to pinpoint highlights as there really were so many; this trip gave us both a newfound appreciation for the beauty and variety of Australia, and as is often the case when you travel, the journey itself was as good and sometimes better than a lot of the destinations. I will, however, pick out a few.

We rushed through it more than we should have, and really want to go back again, but the section of coast between Sydney and Brisbane was spectacular. Some of the best beaches we have come across anywhere in the world are in that region. We stayed with friends in both Sydney and Brisbane who generously hosted us and put up with our larger than normal car.

There were some pretty amazing beaches above Brisbane as well, a highlight for us being the Agnes Water/1770 region, where we stayed in a bush camp right above a surf beach. Magic. Another highlight was Magnetic Island, just off the Townsville coast, where we spent a few days with some family friends Ric and Candy in their oasis of a home. A beautiful house at the end of a cul de sac right below a cliff, complete with decor from PNG and a dip pool, all accented with colourful lead light lamps and wall art made by Candy. They were very lovely hosts as well, which made it a very special few days. 

Above Townsville we ran into bad weather and didn’t get to see the best that the Cairns and Whitsundays regions had to offer, but still got a good day on Whitehaven beach (Whitsunday Islands) and out on the Great Barrier Reef. It was nice to see it while it is still there; who knows how much longer it will be alive. I tried diving for the first time and had a ball. 

We got rained out in Port Douglas and spent a solid two days in the van in a caravan park as landslips had closed the roads in and out of the place. That was testing, and we got very bored at times. Thanks to our good friend Pat Fountain who we stayed with in Brisbane, we had a fan to keep the insane humidity at bay. At times, it was intolerably hot and muggy. Combined with the inability to move from the car, we went a bit crazy in Port Douglas.

Once the rain cleared we schlepped across Queensland and half of the Northern Territory to the Stuart Highway, taking the long route as flooding had closed the main highway. Long stretches of road were at times very fun and at times intensely boring. We listened to a lot of true crime podcasts and audiobooks. There was also a fair share of silly dancing to loud music, something I hope we will never stop doing. The heat up north is something else in March and we were very grateful for the quality air conditioning in our van, Sheila. 

We stayed with a friend in Alice Springs who took us on a tour of the West Macdonnell ranges just outside town, exploring water holes and canyons. We also spent a good chunk of our time in Alice Springs watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race; an American reality show about drag queens I hadn’t watched previously but now love. A lasting memory of Alice Springs this time will be the flies, they were awful. Not awful enough to ruin the experience, but enough to leave an impression!

After Alice, we took a few days to get down to Adelaide (via Uluru), covering big distances across the NT and SA deserts, which are vast. They are beautiful in their own way and we came to love the landscape. In Adelaide we stayed with friends of a friend and had a couple of lovely days and nights out in a city we fell in love with. It has to be the most underrated city in the country and we want to go back for the fringe festival sometime. We used the opportunity to taste some excellent wines in the regions around Adelaide and had a couple of nights on the coast south of the city. A fantastic section of Australia. 

We stopped for a night in Ararat with a friend to break up the drive home, having a quick look at the new build he is project managing and were back in Melbourne just before the end of April. 

Another massive highlight of these two months was the three weddings we attended, two of which we flew back from Townsville then Alice Springs for. They were all wonderful and we felt very lucky to have such great friends around us and to be invited to such beautiful events. The first was for Simon and Bec (Simon is Tash’s old boss at Isobar). Theirs was at Emu Bottom Estate just outside Sunbury in Melbourne. The next was Tom and Hannah, good friends and neighbours of ours, who got married at Wye River where Hannah’s mum owns a house. The last was Andrew and David (I work with Andrew) who got married at Mt Ophir Estate near Rutherglen in the Indigo Valley, Victoria. 

South East Asia

This leg kicked off with a bit of minimoon crashing, as we joined forces with Tom and Hannah of above wedding fame for a beach/poolside holiday in Bali, split between Canggu and Uluwatu. This mostly consisted of chilling at the private villa we had in Canggu (outrageous I know), eating great food, drinking too much and reading lots. It was particularly nice to explore Uluwatu a bit, where Tash lived for a few months in 2014. Spending time in the beach clubs (the Lawn Club and Ulu Cliffhouse) also deserves a mention; it’s amazing what you get for your money in Bali. Only lowlight of this trip was Hannah coming off a scooter and badly hurting her leg, though this turned into a highlight when they got to the airport as she got ushered through check in and security in a wheelchair. Win. 

Next stop was Vietnam for a couple of weeks. We flew into Ho Chi Minh City to hang out with old friends and colleagues of mine from when I lived there back in 2006 and to explore old haunts. It was great to see the school I taught at again and spend lots of time with my good friend Mr Huy. We had dinner at his family’s house one night which was fantastic. Tash was unwell for much of our time in Ho Chi Minh which was disappointing, but otherwise it was a good time. It was also fun to get back into speaking Vietnamese, which I can speak conversationally, and which came in handy when getting around outside the tourist districts. 

We then spent a few days in Hoi An, where we surprised one of our neighbours from Flemington, Mara, for her 40th birthday. This was great fun, particularly the day we all dressed in matching fruit salad print threads and went out for lunch. Mara and her husband Petro have three adorable boys aged 7, 9 and 11 who were great to have around, and the whole thing was made possible by the two socialites of our street, Mark and Adrian, who are a bunch of fun to be with. Being with our neighbours made us miss home a bit and solidified both Tash and my love of our neighbourhood. 

Next was Hanoi for a night then up into the mountain town of Ha Giang on a sleeper bus to do a five day motorbike tour of the hills near the Chinese border, something I did with a uni friend back in 2011. The scenery in the mountains is spectacular, and seeing it from a motorbike is definitely the best way to do it. We ate fantastic local food, feasting every night in homestays. The only downside of this part of the trip was doing it with a guide, which seemed unnecessary. When I did it seven years ago, we didn’t see any tourists on bikes and didn’t even consider the possibility of doing it solo, but this time there were a lot, most doing it without assistance, which made us feel a bit silly for spending money on the guide when we could have done it ourselves. It was nice not to have to deal with the bike breaking down though, which it did, three times. 

We had one more night in Hanoi after the tour then spent five days in Bangkok with my uncle, who owns an apartment near Sukhumvit where he spends a few months of the year escaping winter and learning Thai. It was lovely to spend some time wiith him, poking around the local streets and riding the Klong (river canal) boats. A highlight was a night out at Blue Elephant restaurant, a Michelin guide restaurant, for a fancy many course meal with matched Thai wines.

Serbia volume I and Bosnia

We arrived in Serbia on 2 June where we will be spending about a month, collectively, in Novi Sad, the city where Tash’s dad’s family live. We are staying with her aunt and uncle in their house with a huge vegetable garden that spits out flavourful tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce and all kinds of fruits and berries. These are fantastic complements to what is otherwise a very carb and meat heavy (and endlessly delicious) diet. Tash’s aunt is the best cook in Serbia in my humble opinion.

We have spent a lot of time hanging out with family, drinking coffees, rakija (brandy) and beers in the back yard, and doing a bit of gardening when the time is right. We have done a few trips into the city to explore and shop, and been for long training walks (for the West Highland Way walk we are doing in Scotland in August) and bike rides. We have also had a couple of days at the Strand, a beach on the Danube river where there are lounges, bars and loud music playing all day. Fantastic people watching and a great way to spend a sunny day.

We recently had five days with Tash’s mum’s side of the family in Banja Luka, the second largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in one of the Serbian controlled regions. I have been brushing up on my history a little, learning about how complex the politics and consequent wars were in its region of the world in the 1990s. There is just nothing good that seems to come from war. It is striking how recent it was and to notice some of the cultural, physical and emotional scars that still remain.

This week, there is an international wine festival on in Novi Sad, which we will imbibe in, then we have a family friend’s apartment booked in the city centre for the weekend. Next week we are taking Tash’s aunt white water rafting, then the week after that we are off to Greece for a couple of weeks. Tough life...

[newstfionline]

Border Patrol’s Last Line of Defense? It Isn’t at the Border

By Nicholas Kulish, NY Times, July 9, 2018

Human smugglers now charge vastly more for clandestine journeys into the United States than just a few years ago. Checkpoints like this one in Falfurrias, Tex., on the highway north from the border toward San Antonio, help explain why.

Migrants coming from Central America regularly pay more than $10,000, and Mexicans often fork over $6,000 just to cross into the United States and continue on to their intended destination. As the costs of human smuggling soar, the smuggling networks have greater resources to evade detection.

The Border Patrol is charged with stopping migrants from illegally crossing over the southwestern frontier and, even more important, from getting into the interior of the country. Getting through the heavily patrolled 100-mile zone beyond the border can be just as difficult as getting into the country.

So while people often think of the border as akin to a goal line that migrants are trying to cross, in many ways it’s more like the 50-yard line.

Border Patrol takes what it calls a “layered approach.” Here in the Rio Grande Valley, that starts with patrol boats on the muddy river. Next are 18-foot steel fences set back from the river, where agents patrol in trucks. In more remote areas, they use all-terrain vehicles or horses.

Border Patrol officers smooth the dirt by the fence--almost like a Zamboni at an ice rink--with giant tires pulled behind a truck, so that later they can see fresh tracks left by migrants.

Smugglers sometimes wrap migrants’ shoes in scraps of fabric to try to obscure their footprints. And guides increasingly take the trouble to dress their charges in camouflage for the border crossing.

At gaps in the steel fence, there are hidden cameras and sensors to alert patrols. I drove up to an opening in the fence between Brownsville and McAllen a couple of weeks ago and was discovered almost immediately by an agent. He ran my license plate and learned that it was a rental car, so he pulled me over. Smugglers often use rental cars, he said, in hopes of avoiding suspicion.

Smuggling networks rent houses or mobile homes, cover the windows and begin cycling migrants through dwellings that often are filthy and packed. American investigators call these flophouses on both sides of the border “stash houses,” the same term they use for places where drugs are kept. Houston police raided a stash house in 2014 that had 115 people inside, including children as young as 5, with no hot water and just one toilet.

Before moving a group of migrants, smugglers check their route for signs of law enforcement, said Paul A. Beeson, director of the Homeland Security Department’s joint task force overseeing the southwest border. “They are running countersurveillance on us,” he said.

But many smuggled migrants are caught at highway checkpoints like the one in Falfurrias, nearly 70 miles north of the border and one of the Border Patrol’s last lines of defense. On a busy day, more than 30,000 vehicles pass through Falfurrias, and more undocumented migrants are apprehended there than at any other checkpoint in the country, said Rene Quintanilla, a supervisory agent in the Rio Grande Valley sector headquarters.

There, agents have to rely on their instincts, Mr. Quintanilla said. In just seconds, they decide whether to send a vehicle, and its passengers and cargo, for a more thorough inspection.

Agents are trained to observe incongruities when questioning a nervous driver, like a single key in the ignition--sometimes a sign of a vehicle being used for smuggling, since most people’s car keys jangle on chains with house keys, work keys or knickknacks--or when cars ride low in the back where migrants may be hiding.

When Border Patrol agents started looking for cars sagging in the back, Mr. Quintanilla said, smugglers started installing heavy-duty suspensions. “Some of these vehicles are modified to hide known or used smuggling techniques,” he said.

In the 1980s, guides trying to connect drivers with migrants coming out of the brush would often leave an X or other mark along the side of the highway. Now cellphones and mapping apps allow for carefully choreographed pickups and drop-offs without leaving such obvious traces for agents to follow.

“I’ve seen loads that used a combination of cellphones, sat phones and two-way radios, all three, to pull these off,” said Benjamine Huffman, chief of strategic planning and analysis for the Border Patrol.

It was so hot the day a photographer and I visited that one of the agents’ dogs kept making a beeline for water when he was supposed to be sniffing out concealed humans and trafficked drugs. The agents have to endure exhaust fumes for entire shifts, day after day, that made me lightheaded in just an hour.

Smugglers hide migrants in the trunks of cars, stacked in the beds of pickup trucks and covered with tarps or even locked inside toolboxes in the beds of pickup trucks. Agents have found migrants in the backs of dump trucks and buried in sawdust. Migrants have crammed themselves into all manner of compartments built to avoid detection.

Transporting unauthorized migrants is a federal crime, and drivers expect to be well compensated for their risk. The payments vary, from a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000 per migrant. Criminal complaints reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with law enforcement officials show that not all drivers are members of smuggling networks. Some are recruited on Craigslist or Facebook; some drive a group to settle a debt.

One woman, who was stopped last May on a ranch road in West Texas with three undocumented immigrants in her silver Mercedes, told officers she was expecting $6,000 to drive them two hours from Kinney County to San Antonio. She was sentenced to eight months in prison and three years of probation.

Increasingly, smugglers are relying on 18-wheelers, locking migrants in the trailers, often hidden behind the loads of cargo.

In trailers that are refrigerated to keep produce fresh, lightly clothed migrants--some sweaty from the trek or wet from the Rio Grande--can freeze. More often, the unrefrigerated metal containers turn dangerously hot in the South Texas sun. In the last two months, Border Patrol agents have disrupted 42 smuggling attempts along the southwest border involving tractor-trailers, discovering 406 people. Last July, 10 migrants died after traveling in the back of a truck in San Antonio’s scorching heat. The driver was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Migrant advocates are often harshly critical of Border Patrol tactics, but agents say they are protecting the migrants from dangerous smuggling rings. “That’s what they see them as: a dollar sign,” said Frank Garza, a supervisor at the Falfurrias checkpoint. “Not as a person, just an amount.”

Efforts to evade detection at the border and at checkpoints are nothing new. Illegal immigration peaked in 2000, when more than 1.6 million people were caught trying to sneak across the border. Spectacular examples have included people hiding in an engine block, behind a dashboard and even inside a passenger seat.

Under President Trump, there is intensified emphasis on catching people entering illegally. Here in Falfurrias, Border Patrol is building an even bigger checkpoint just up the road, redoubling its efforts to uncover hidden migrants.

[historyreaders-blog]

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about ancient Egypt

The Great Pyramid was not built by slaves The land of the pharaohs is famous for its huge pyramids, its bandaged mummies and its golden treasures. But how much do you really know about ancient Egypt? Here, Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley shares 10 lesser-known facts

1.They did not ride camels

The camel was not used regularly in Egypt until the very end of the dynastic age. Instead, the Egyptians used donkeys as beasts of burden, and boats as a highly convenient means of transport.The River Nile flowed through the centre of their fertile land, creating a natural highway (and sewer!). The current helped those who needed to row from south to north, while the wind made life easy for those who wished to sail in the opposite direction. The river was linked to settlements, quarries and building sites by canals. Huge wooden barges were used to transport grain and heavy stone blocks; light papyrus boats ferried people about their daily business. And every day, high above the river, the sun god Ra was believed to sail across the sky in his solar boat.

2.Not everyone was mummified

The mummy – an eviscerated, dried and bandaged corpse – has become a defining Egyptian artefact. Yet mummification was an expensive and time-consuming process, reserved for the more wealthy members of society. The vast majority of Egypt’s dead were buried in simple pits in the desert.So why did the elite feel the need to mummify their dead? They believed that it was possible to live again after death, but only if the body retained a recognisable human form. Ironically, this could have been achieved quite easily by burying the dead in direct contact with the hot and sterile desert sand; a natural desiccation would then have occurred. But the elite wanted to be buried in coffins within tombs, and this meant that their corpses, no longer in direct contact with the sand, started to rot. The twin requirements of elaborate burial equipment plus a recognisable body led to the science of artificial mummification.

3.The living shared food with the dead

The tomb was designed as an eternal home for the mummified body and the ka spirit that lived beside it. An accessible tomb-chapel allowed families, well-wishers and priests to visit the deceased and leave the regular offerings that the ka required, while a hidden burial chamber protected the mummy from harm.Within the tomb-chapel, food and drink were offered on a regular basis. Having been spiritually consumed by the ka, they were then physically consumed by the living. During the ‘feast of the valley’, an annual festival of death and renewal, many families spent the night in the tomb-chapels of their ancestors. The hours of darkness were spent drinking and feasting by torchlight as the living celebrated their reunion with the dead. 

4.Egyptian women had equal rights with men

In Egypt, men and women of equivalent social status were treated as equals in the eyes of the law. This meant that women could own, earn, buy, sell and inherit property. They could live unprotected by male guardians and, if widowed or divorced, could raise their own children. They could bring cases before, and be punished by, the law courts. And they were expected to deputise for an absent husband in matters of business.

Everyone in ancient Egypt was expected to marry, with husbands and wives being allocated complementary but opposite roles within the marriage. The wife, the ‘mistress of the house’, was responsible for all internal, domestic matters. She raised the children and ran the household while her husband, the dominant partner in the marriage, played the external, wage-earning role.

5.Scribes rarely wrote in hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphic writing – a script consisting of many hundreds of intricate images – was beautiful to look at, but time-consuming to create. It was therefore reserved for the most important texts; the writings decorating tomb and temple walls, and texts recording royal achievements.As they went about their daily business, Egypt’s scribes routinely used hieratic – a simplified or shorthand form of hieroglyphic writing. Towards the end of the dynastic period they used demotic, an even more simplified version of hieratic. All three scripts were used to write the same ancient Egyptian language.Few of the ancients would have been able to read either hieroglyphs or hieratic: it is estimated that no more than 10 per cent (and perhaps considerably less) of the population was literate.

6.The king of Egypt could be a woman

Ideally the king of Egypt would be the son of the previous king. But this was not always possible, and the coronation ceremony had the power to convert the most unlikely candidate into an unassailable king.On at least three occasions women took the throne, ruling in their own right as female kings and using the full king’s titulary. The most successful of these female rulers, Hatshepsut, ruled Egypt for more than 20 prosperous years.In the English language, where ‘king’ is gender-specific, we might classify Sobeknefru, Hatshepsut and Tausret as queens regnant. In Egyptian, however, the phrase that we conventionally translate as ‘queen’ literally means ‘king’s wife’, and is entirely inappropriate for these women.

7.Few Egyptian men married their sisters

Some of Egypt’s kings married their sisters or half-sisters. These incestuous marriages ensured that the queen was trained in her duties from birth, and that she remained entirely loyal to her husband and their children. They provided appropriate husbands for princesses who might otherwise remain unwed, while restricting the number of potential claimants for the throne. They even provided a link with the gods, several of whom (like Isis and Osiris) enjoyed incestuous unions. However, brother-sister marriages were never compulsory, and some of Egypt’s most prominent queens – including Nefertiti – were of non-royal birth.Incestuous marriages were not common outside the royal family until the very end of the dynastic age. The restricted Egyptian kingship terminology (‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ being the only terms used), and the tendency to apply these words loosely so that ‘sister’ could with equal validity describe an actual sister, a wife or a lover, has led to a lot of confusion over this issue.

8.Not all pharaohs built pyramids

Almost all the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (c2686–2125 BC) and Middle Kingdom (c2055–1650 BC) built pyramid-tombs in Egypt’s northern deserts. These highly conspicuous monuments linked the kings with the sun god Ra while replicating the mound of creation that emerged from the waters of chaos at the beginning of time.But by the start of the New Kingdom (c1550 BC) pyramid building was out of fashion. Kings would now build two entirely separate funerary monuments. Their mummies would be buried in hidden rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at the southern city of Thebes, while a highly visible memorial temple, situated on the border between the cultivated land (home of the living), and the sterile desert (home of the dead), would serve as the focus of the royal mortuary cult.Following the collapse of the New Kingdom, subsequent kings were buried in tombs in northern Egypt: some of their burials have never been discovered.

9. The Great Pyramid was not built by slaves

The classical historian Herodotus believed that the Great Pyramid had been built by 100,000 slaves. His image of men, women and children desperately toiling in the harshest of conditions has proved remarkably popular with modern film producers. It is, however, wrong.Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was in fact built by a workforce of 5,000 permanent, salaried employees and up to 20,000 temporary workers. These workers were free men, summoned under the corvée system of national service to put in a three- or four-month shift on the building site before returning home. They were housed in a temporary camp near the pyramid, where they received payment in the form of food, drink, medical attention and, for those who died on duty, burial in the nearby cemetery.

10.Cleopatra may not have been beautiful

Cleopatra VII, last queen of ancient Egypt, won the hearts of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of Rome’s most important men. Surely, then, she must have been an outstanding beauty?Her coins suggest that this was probably not the case. All show her in profile with a prominent nose, pronounced chin and deep-set eyes. Of course, Cleopatra’s coins reflect the skills of their makers, and it is entirely possible that the queen did not want to appear too feminine on the tokens that represented her sovereignty within and outside Egypt.Unfortunately we have no eyewitness description of the queen. However the classical historian Plutarch – who never actually met Cleopatra – tells us that her charm lay in her demeanour, and in her beautiful voice

This article was first published on History Extra in January 2016.

[itsyokythings-blog]

My Five Acres. Travel. Adventure. Yoga. My Five Acres. Travel. Adventure. Yoga. - Travel. Adventure. Yoga.

Want to visit the spectacular Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy? In this post, we share the best things to do and how to get the most from your visit. Read on to start planning your to Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso!

What’s in our guide to visiting Gran Paradiso National Park?

1. 3. 5.

When you’re in Turin, the Alps call to you. The mountains arc around the city, far away enough to be mysterious, close enough to be incredibly tantalizing. While wandering Torino, for all that I love the city, part of me just keeps thinking “Why aren’t we in the Alps right now?”

The great news is that it’s easy to visit Gran Paradiso National Park (or Parco Nazionale del Gran Paradiso, if you want to practice your Italian) from Turin.

The park is nestled in the Alps on the border with France, not far from the city. Driving takes a little more than an hour, or you can hire a guide to take you, or even go by public transport.

Hiking in Gran Paradiso, you will get to see spectacular views. Photo by Davide Glarey via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

Whether you want to take a gentle stroll through an Alpine meadow or challenge yourself on an almost vertical hike up above 2,000 m (6,500 ft), you’ll find the opportunity in Gran Paradiso.

The bad news is that there are so many places to hike and so little information available, especially in English, that it can be tough to decide where to go for your day trip!

Start with the Gran Paradiso tourist map — which we didn’t discover until after our visit — which will be big help in planning your trip.

The Gran Pardiso tourist map is very useful to help planning your trip.

We opted for a challenging day hike, taking us to the peak of Punta Quinseina, just above 2200 m high. Luckily we drove up to about 1500 m first, otherwise we never would have made it to the top!

Though the hike was marked as “medium” on all our apps, it was more than enough challenge for us for that day, leaving our legs sore and our knees aching by the end. It was also incredibly rewarding.

So, if you’re interested in exploring the mountains and finding some time to reconnect with yourself through nature, read on to discover…

How to do a Spectacular Day Trip to Gran Paradiso National Park

Before you start reading the details, watch our short video of our day hike in Gran Paradiso to get inspired!

Also don’t miss these posts:

Your complete Torino guide → The best day in Sacra di San Michele → Your guide to visiting Mole Antonelliana →

Don’t forget to stop and breathe deeply and enjoy the views while you’re in the park.

The park’s origin story is a little sad — it all began because people love to kill wildlife. The area had been a hunting ground for the royal family and was also frequented by poachers. It was originally protected by Vittorio Emmanuel as a Royal Hunting Reserve, so that the Alpine ibex would be protected from poachers (and reserved for Royal hunters).

In 1922, the land was donated by the royals to Italy and it became Italy’s first national park. Though the ibex were supposed to be protected, the law was not enforced at first and the population dwindled to dangerously low numbers.

Now, they are properly protected and the ibex population is healthy and thriving! They are also daredevils.

You won’t lack for any amazing views when you visit Gran Pardiso National Park.

OK, you probably climb every mountain in the park, but there are lots of opportunities for rock climbing and ice climbing in Gran Paradiso.

For climbers, basing yourself in Turin or somewhere on the Piedmont side of the park is perfect, as this is where you’ll find the best climbing routes in the park. Check out the Orco Valley and the Soana Valley for incredible climbing opportunities.

Sleep in a Refuge

If you’ve hiked to a refuge hut anywhere in North America, you might be picturing a small wooden hut, with some sleeping bunks, a fireplace, and not much else.

But in Gran Paradiso, many of the huts (refugio) are European-style. That is to say, they are almost full-service hotels, with restaurants and comfortable beds. Your chance to in style.

Different huts offer different services, so make sure you know what to expect and what you need to bring before you go.

Spot the Wildlife

We didn’t get to see a marmot on our trip to the park. Next time! Photo by Dario de Siena via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

On our hike up Punta Quinseina, we kept our eyes and ears open for marmots. Alas, it was a little early in the season and we didn’t get to se any. The only wildlife we saw, apart from lots of soaring birds, was the not-so-rare Italian hang-glider. They did make for an impressive site, soaring through the air at 1500 m!

Marmots do populate the park though. These plump rodents evolved to deal with the harsh mountain climates, and can hibernate for up to 9 months of the year. You’ll often hear marmots before you see them. They make a high-pitched chirp that sounds a lot like a bird, and, if you get to close, their chirping will increase in frequency.

Deeper in the park, you might see the Alpine ibex (also know as the Steinbock) which is the symbol of the park. As we said in the intro, it’s because of these long-horned wild goats that the park was established in the first place.

You might also spot a chamois, another species of goat that looks like the steinbock but with shorter horns. However, female steinbocks also have shorter horns, so it’s easy to get them confused.

Keep your eyes to the skies to spot golden eagles, impressive birds of prey that feed on marmots and other small mammals — but are sometimes big enough to make off with a small goat. Yikes!

Finally, a wolf pack has recently taken residence in the Aosta Valley. You probably won’t see wolves (which is a good thing) but you may hear them howling at the moon.

Get on Your Bike

If you’d rather roll than walk, there are plenty of bike trails in the park, from fully paved gentle routes to all-out technical mountain bike trails. Many routes pass through some of the historic Alpine villages that skirt the lower edges of the park.

Explore a Winter Wonderland

If you do a multi-day trip, you’ll be in the mountains for sunset. Photo by Martino Nicolino via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

If you happen to visit Italy in winter, strap on your snow shoes and hit the park trails. You can also cross-country ski, downhill ski, and go ice climbing in Gran Paradiso.

Visit the Botanical Garden

If you want a little less energetic outing, the Paradisia Alpine Botanic Garden is a great destination. Located on the Aosta Valley, this 10,000 square metre garden gives you a chance to see Alpine flora up close.

The best time to go is mid-June to mid-July, when you can take a guided tour or visit independently using the garden brochure to navigate.

Driving in Italy is truly mind-boggling / terrifying!

Once you’re off the busy city streets and fast-moving highways, you’ll also have to contend with winding, narrow roads, often single-lane, that switchback their way up the mountains.

If you don’t have a lot of driving experience and/or nerves of steel, I’d suggest you find another way to get there.

But, if you want drive to Gran Pardiso, here’s how:

From Turin to Valle Orco, point your GPS towards Rivarolo Canavese. From there, take road 460, which follows the route of the Orco River. Turn right at Pont Canavese, onto the SP 47 to reach the Soana Valley.

Getting to Gran Paradiso By Bus or Train

From Turin, you can take the bus to Rivarolo (line 131 Torino to Rivarolo) or the train from Torino Porta Susa to Rivarolo and Pont stations. From there, public bus lines serve Valle Orco (line 137 Rivarolo or Pont to Locana or Noasca) and Val Soana (line 140 Pont to Valprato Soana).

To get to the Aosta Valley from Torino, follow the instructions here →

The day hike we did was up all the way, but you can do flat hikes in the park, too.

If you’re looking for a rewarding day hike within easy reach of Turin, you can try the same hike we did — up Punta Quinseina di Santa Elisabetta. Technically this hike is not inside Gran Paradiso but it’s close enough to get the idea!

The hike starts at the tree line and goes up from there, so you get to experience panoramic views of the foothills and the mountains the entire way. No dull forested trail where you can’t see anything!

If you don’t like climbing, this one is not for you.

It starts with a steep uphill, which takes you to a gorgeous alpine meadow. Spend a little time taking in the views of the Alps and watching the hang-gliders soar above your head. There’s also a small stone hut which is interesting — but resist the temptation to go inside. The structure looks fundamentally unsound.

Past the meadow, the path turns upwards again, and continues on a steep incline until you reach the summit. The trail is rocky and somewhat technical. You’ll need shoes with good grip and support to be comfortable.

As you climb, you’ll be rewarded by the continually incredible views. The most magnificent one is at the summit, where you experience 360 degrees of Alpine perfection.

There’s a guest book at the summit, hidden inside the small cabinet connected to the steel cross. Look for our entry and make sure to leave your own!

If you haven’t had enough after you summit, you can continue along the ridge trail and off into the wilderness. As we took about 3 hours to climb up, we’d had plenty of walking and did not extend our hike!

How to Get to Punta Quinseina

Once you get into the mountains, you may have to contend with narrow steep roads, like this one used in the Giro d’Italia.

The drive from Turin to the Punta Quinseina trailhead is an experience in its own right. The first part is simple highway driving from Turin to Castellamonte (though that didn’t prevent us from getting lost and having to backtrack).

From Castellamonte to Colleretto Castelnuovo, it’s quiet, well maintained country roads. There are lots of speed cameras, especially around the villages, so stick to the speed limit. The fines are around €70, so not worth it!

After Colleretto Castelnuovo, which is a charming sub-alpine town that’s worth a stop, things start to get interesting.

A paved but extremely narrow road leads out of town. Soon you’ll find yourself on a series of (seemingly never-ending) tight switchbacks up the side of the mountain. It is steep and narrow — only wide enough for one car in many places. If you aren’t a confident driver with nerves of steel, you might think twice before attempting it.

We didn’t meet a single car coming down as we were going up, which was a blessing, because I was not prepared to back down that winding ribbon of road.

If you start the drive and feel like it will never end, just think about the cyclists in the Giro d’Italia — this road was part of their route in 2019. It must be absolute murder trying to cycle up here!

Even iPhone photographers will love the photos you can take in the park.

Hike stats. 8 km, 787 m elevation gain, 2,231 m highest elevation, out & back, 4–6 hours for return trip.

Hike summary. There is very little flat terrain on this hike. It’s mostly up, up, up. The trail markers are painted onto rocks along the way, with only a few real signposts.

Go when the weather is clear, as it would be easy to lose the trail in fog. In fact, we managed to lose the trail a couple of times on a perfect, sunny day.

Parking & facilities. There is a small parking lot at the foot of the hike with picnic tables and a public restroom.

Trailhead. The trailhead is a bit hard to find and I think we didn’t manage to start the hike in the right spot. To find the trail from the car park, walk up the paved road until the paving ends.

A road on your left leads to a popular hang-gliding launch spot. Continue past this road on the dirt road that leads toward a small farm. Turn left into what looks like the farm driveway, and you’ll find the trailhead on the left, just before reaching the farmhouse.

There’s an alternative trailhead that starts just behind the hang-gliding launch spot. It’s a little harder to find and starts the hike off with a very steep climb. But it’s do-able, as it’s the one we took!

Use the AllTrails map here to find the directions →

What to bring. As usual, bring all the typical necessities you would bring on any wilderness hike. This includes first aid kit, plenty of water, extra snacks, and warm layers.

We went in early June, and there was still a little snow at the peak, though typically you might find more snow at this time of year. At the bottom, we were in t-shirts and by the time we reached the top, we needed winter hats, gloves, sweaters, and jackets, so be prepared to layer up!

The weather can change extremely quickly up here, so be prepared for any conditions.

Hiking poles would be an asset, for balance and to save your knees on the steep descent. We did the hike without, but I would have loved to have a pair with me.

Also bring a GPS-enabled device and an offline mapping app, so you have assistance in finding your way if you lose the trail (like we did a couple of times). You don’t necessarily need a paper map if you stick to the trail and don’t wander off, but it can be an extra safety asset if your phone dies.

The Alpine Ibex is the originator and symbol of the park. Photo by Dario de Siena via Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.

If you’re not comfortable Gran Paradiso on your own, or you just want to increase the quotient, you can hire a guide to organize everything and take you to the park.

Mountain Guides Society of Gran Paradiso

Variety of trip lengths and difficulty

The official park mountain guides organization operates every day all year long. They are based in the Aosta Valley but can organize an activity for you closer to Torino if you don’t want to drive that far.

They can guide you on a huge range of activities, from trekking, canyoning, and rock climbing, to snowshoeing, off-piste skiing, and ice climbing.

Explore Gran Paradiso National Park with Trekking Alps

3 days, €449 per person

Rated as 4/5 on the difficulty level, this exciting tour will immerse you in the wonders of Gran Paradiso and give you a chance to completely disconnect from everyday life (to forge a deeper connection to yourself, naturally).

Accommodation is in mountain huts — which are more like rustic hotels, where you get a soft bed and a hot meal — in the wilderness. You can do this as a private hike, or join a scheduled group tour. You can also arrange a self-guided trek through Trekking Alps.

Whether you just want a few hours outside, or you want to challenge yourself on a multi-day hike or back country skiing trip, Gran Paradiso is ideal. Much less crowded than the French Alps, this spectacular corner of Italy offers a true getaway — a place where you can immerse yourself in nature and truly disconnect from everyday stress.

Whatever you’re looking for, big or small, you’ll find it in Gran Paradiso National Park.

We hope this short guide to Gran Paradiso helps you plan your trip. Leave at least one day in your Turin itinerary to visit this magnificent park in the northwest corner of Italy. But if you have time, we recommend spending at least three days to get the most out of the park.

♥  Happy mindful s, Jane & Stephen

We’re not going to lie, it takes a LOT of work to create guides like this. But it’s easy to help us out! If you book or buy something using one of our personal links in this post, we’ll earn a small fee at no extra cost to you. Of course, we would never recommend anything we didn’t 100% believe in! Huge thanks in advance! –S&J

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The post How to Plan a Spectacular Day Trip to Gran Paradiso National Park appeared first on My Five Acres. Travel. Adventure. Yoga..

[quarttoe9-blog]

Radial Avenues Part IV: Gratiot

Like Woodward, West Jefferson, and Michigan Avenues, Gratiot Avenue was established in the early 19th century as a military road. But unlike previous radial avenues, it wasn't an extension of a radial avenue on the Woodward Plan, and it did not coincide with an Indian trail.

There was a road near Detroit leading northeast constructed by Lenape (Delaware) Indians in the late 18th century. They were Christian converts of the Moravian Church and founders of New Gnaddenhütten, a small village on the Clinton River in what is now Clinton Township. Led by Chippewa guides, they cleared a path from their settlement to Conner's Creek in the winter of 1785-1786. Parts of Moravian Road supposedly preserve its original path. But when this road is compared to the location of Gratiot Avenue, there doesn't appear to be any correspondence.

The residents of New Gnaddenhütten fled to Ontario in 1786. Although the Moravian Road was kept in use for some time afterward, it had nothing to do with the location of Gratiot Avenue.

Fort Gratiot

In May of 1814, the US government established a fort at the head of the St. Clair River in what is now Port Huron. The fort was named after the US Army engineer who oversaw its construction, Captain Charles C. Gratiot.

An 1839 plan of Fort Gratiot. Image courtesy of Seeking Michigan. (Source.) Although Fort Gratiot was vacated in 1821, it was considered to be essential in the event of another war with Britain. An 1826 report of the Congressional Committee on Military Affairs on the subject of military roads stated in part:

[T]o give that quarter of the country [Michigan] the security that its importance to the Union requires, the aid of the government is loudly called for, in the laying out, opening, and constructing roads in this section of the territory. ... With this view of the subject, your committee recommend that provision be made for surveying a road from Detroit to Fort Gratiot, at the outlet of Lake Huron.

The report included a memorial from Governor Lewis Cass, who wrote:

From Detroit to Fort Gratiot, at the entrance into Lake Huron, is about fifty-six miles. This is an important military position, and will unquestionably be occupied in every future war. But it has been already shown, that this point cannot be reached by water while an enemy is in force on the opposite shore. In such a contingency, it must be abandoned, or in the intercourse must be preserved by land. This intercourse is also essential to our command of Lake Huron, and to a communication with the posts upon it, and upon the straits of St. Mary [Sault Ste. Marie].

The Surveyors

On March 2, 1827, Congress passed An Act to authorize the laying out and opening of certain roads in the territory of Michigan. The law empowered the President of the United States to "cause to be laid out a road from Detroit to fort Gratiot, at the outlet of Lake Huron." He was also authorized to appoint three commissioners--at least one of whom was required to be a surveyor--to "explore, survey, and mark" the road "in the most eligible course." The commissioners were to submit a plat and field notes to the President for approval. The law stipulated that they were to be paid $3.00 per day for their work, and their assistants $1.50 per day.

The commissioners appointed by President John Quincy Adams were Hervey Parke of Pontiac, Amos Mead of Milford, and Conrad Ten Eyck of Dearborn.

Hervey C. Parke, surveyor of the Fort Gratiot Road. (Source.) Hervey Parke was the surveyor of the group, having arrived in Michigan to engage in surveying in 1821. (You can read his interesting account of traveling through Detroit and Oakland County when he first came to Michigan here.) Amos Mead was born in Vermont and came to Oakland County in 1825, having received a land grant in what is now Milford for his service in the War of 1812. From 1827-1833, Milford was part of Farmington Township, and Mead was elected Farmington Township's first supervisor. Conrad Ten Eyck, a New York immigrant, had been a successful businessman in Detroit before building his famous tavern on the Chicago Road in 1826.

A Peculiar Placement

According to Augustus Woodward's Plan of Detroit, a 120-foot-wide avenue was supposed to extend from the city's Point of Origin at Campus Martius at a bearing of N 30° E. Only a small part of this avenue was ever built--Monroe Avenue between Campus Martius and Randolph Street. Just as the surveyors of the Chicago Road incorporated Michigan Avenue into their survey, making their road an extension of an existing radial avenue, the most logical design of the Fort Gratiot Road should have extended from Monroe Avenue. However, the surveyors chose instead to incorporate a narrow side street one block north of Monroe Avenue. Had the Woodward Plan have expanded eastward, this new road would have conflicted with it.

Gratiot & Monroe Aves. in Philu E. Judd's 1824 rendition of the Woodward Plan. Why wasn't the road to Fort Gratiot made as an extension of Monroe Avenue? According to historian George B. Catlin, it had to do with the farm immediately east of the city, the border of which is now Randolph Street. In the Spring 1929 issue of Michigan History Magazine, Catlin wrote that the farm, owned by Edmund A. Brush, included "a fine orchard which would have been spoiled had that connection been made." This claim is repeated in Edith Forster's book Yesterday's Highways: Traveling Around Early Detroit (1951), as well as Robert Goodman and Gordon Draper's documentary Detroit's Pattern of Growth (1965). However, I haven't found any corroborating evidence of the Brush orchard story predating Catlin's 1929 article.

A more likely explanation lies east of the Brush property, on the former Antoine Beaubien farm. When Detroit's old cemeteries had become practically full, the City Council directed in 1826 that a new burial ground be established outside of the city limits. In March of 1827, the city reached an agreement with Antoine Beaubien to purchase two acres of his farm for $500, and the sale was officially executed the following June 1. Unfortunately, the new cemetery lay directly in the path of where an extension of Monroe Avenue would have run.

It is certainly an odd coincidence that this sale was being negotiated at the same time the commissioners of the Fort Gratiot Road were being appointed, but this appears to be the reason why Gratiot Avenue was not simply made an extension of Monroe Avenue. By beginning the military highway on the side street to the north, it was able to bypass the new burial grounds completely. The use of this property as a cemetery has long since been discontinued. Bodies were disinterred beginning in 1869 and the grounds were converted into a park, which was ultimately sold.

The Survey

Detail from an 1871 copy of Parke's Fort Gratiot Road survey. Image courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library, Mount Pleasant, Mich. In June of 1827, using a theodolite and a Gunter's chain, Hervey Parke and his crew surveyed a line that was to be the center of the road, carefully measuring its direction and distance, and driving wooden posts into the ground every mile or turning point. The survey's point of beginning was recorded in Parke's field notes as

Commencing at a post standing on the NEly [northeasterly] side of the City of Detroit in the centre of a street between Lots No. 4 & 5 in Section No. 9.

The city's eastern border at the time coincided with the beginning of the Brush Farm, approximately where Randolph Street lies today. Section Nine of the Woodward Plan was the triangle bounded by Madison, Miami (later renamed Broadway), and Monroe Avenues. And lots four and five of this section were at the northwest and northeast corners of the intersection of Miami Avenue and a sixty-foot-wide side street.

The Point of Beginning for Parke's survey, according to his field notes. Background image: Abijah Hull's 1807 rendition of the Woodward Plan.

Gratiot Avenue's Point of Beginning today. Detroit's 1827 border is highlighted in yellow. This point was considered the beginning of "Gratiot Street" until July 9, 1867. Before then, the segment of the road between Woodward Avenue and Randolph Street was known as East State Street. On May 6, 1874, Gratiot Street became Gratiot Avenue.

From the Point of Beginning, Parke's line followed a bearing of N 30° E, the Woodward Plan's prescribed direction for Monroe Avenue. After 1.25 miles, near the present-day intersection of Dubois Street, the angle of the road changed to N 26° E, and stayed on that course for 15.28 miles, until reaching a point close to today's Quinn Road.

On the third day of the survey, Parke's crew planted mile post number twenty in Mount Clemens. Parke seamlessly joined new road with the village plat of Mount Clemens, which was set down in 1818. Parke appropriated a segment of Court Street and made it part of the Fort Gratiot Road. But to continue it, he found it necessary to cut through multiple lots of the village plat. Because a segment of the road cutting through these lots was especially narrow, an apocryphal story developed that the land was an orchard owned by Christian Clemens, and the road was forced to pass between two rows of fruit trees. Of course, it's doubtful that Clemens would divide a valuable orchard into town lots that he had no intention of selling or developing.

The path of Gratiot Avenue as it cut through Mt. Clemens. Background image: The original 1818 plat of the village.

Downtown Mount Clemens today. A History of St. Clair County, published in 1883, included the recollection of an individual who, at the age of eighteen, worked as a chainman on the Fort Gratiot Road survey team. The man, whose name was not included in the text, relays the difficulties encountered as the crew worked northward:

From Mount Clemens we took as straight a line as we could for Fort Gratiot. About four miles south of Belle River, we struck a heavy windfall of timber, where we camped for the night. The next morning we started on, creeping as we could through the dense mass of fallen timber, and halted at noon on the bank of Belle River for our cook and packer to come up with provisions. Here we waited until next day, enduring a fast of thirty hours. The windfall proved to be of much greater extent than we had supposed, and, in seeking to get around it, our cook and packer had to travel many miles eastward, and then work their way back to strike our lines. Though deprived of our tent and provisions, and feeling the keen demands of appetite, we had rather a social time, as Deacon Erastus Ingersol, of Farmington, the axman of the party, told several stories of a funny character. The deacon was a large, fleshy man, and, it being warm weather, he had divested himself of coat and vest, retaining only his pants and a thin cotton shirt to protect him from the hordes of mosquitoes that sought to refresh themselves from the deacon's store of blood. With the aid of punk, flint and steel, carried by one of the party, we succeeded in getting up a fire; but despite the smoke, in which the deacon sought to hide from his tormentors, he had a hard time of it.

Erastus Ingersoll, axman on the Fort Gratiot Road survey crew, and first white settler in Novi, which in 1827 was part of Farmington Township. Image courtesy of the Novi Public Library. (Source.)

The last eighteen miles of the line intersected multiple swamps, marshes and streams in densely forested land. The survey crew finally arrived at Fort Gratiot just twenty-seven feet short of fifty-seven miles from the Point of Beginning.

Detail from an 1871 copy of Parke's Fort Gratiot Road survey. Image courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library, Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Roadwork Begins

Although the survey was promptly approved and recorded, no action was taken toward the road's construction for more than one year. On December 5, 1828, the House of Representatives passed a resolution introduced by the Michigan Territory's delegate Austin E. Wing, which called upon the Secretary of War to report to Congress estimates for building the Saginaw and Fort Gratiot Roads, and to give his opinion on their relevance regarding national defense. Secretary of War Peter Buell Porter delivered the report before the end of the month. Regarding the roads' military importance, he referred to Governor Cass's memoir in the Committee on Military Affairs' 1826 report on the subject, quoted earlier. As to cost estimates, Porter included a report from Charles Gratiot, who had since been promoted to Colonel. Col. Gratiot wrote, "The country traversed by the road to Fort Gratiot being represented, likewise, as heavily timbered, will render necessary an expense equal per mile to that of the Chicago road; and the length of this road being about sixty miles, there will be required for its construction $30,000." But "with a view of obtaining an appropriation at the present session" of Congress, Col. Gratiot suggested an initial installment of $15,000.

Charles Chouteau Gratiot (1788-1855) Following Gratiot's advice, Congress passed a $15,000 appropriation for the road on March 2, 1829. Major Henry Whiting of the US Army was made superintendent of the project. In Col. Gratiot's 1829 Report of the Chief Engineer, he stated, "seventeen miles (of the Fort Gratiot Road) have been put under contract, a considerable portion of it completed, and the remainder is in a state of forwardness."

Congress appropriated an additional $7,000 on May 31, 1830. Col. Gratiot reported that November that seventeen and a half miles have been completed "with the exception of some repairs," and additional contracts having been made "to the end of the thirty-second mile from Detroit." In March 1831, Congress earmarked $8,000 more for the project.

Re-Routing

The swamps and fallen timber along the final miles of the route weren't just a problem for the surveyors in 1827. They also caused Major Whiting to doubt whether this was the best location for the road itself. In 1831, he suggested to Col. Gratiot that a better path be found. Later that year, surveyor John Mullett was hired to do just that. Beginning at Parke's thirty-seventh mile post, Mullett's new line immediately turned toward the St. Clair River. The line then follows the riverbank up to Fort Gratiot.

Col. Gratiot's annual report for 1831 noted that, although work on the road had been contracted for up to the thirty-ninth mile,

at this point it was thought advisable to suspend the operations for a short time, in order to have a survey made of a route which the superintendent thought would prove more eligible than the adopted one--an anticipation which is confirmed by the result of the survey; and it is therefore recommended that authority of law to make the proposed change of location be requested. The construction of the road on the new route will be attended with less expense, and will open access to a finer country than that bordering on the adopted route.

Lewis Cass, who by then had been appointed as Secretary of War, endorsed the plan and asked Austin Wing for congressional approval. When the next appropriation bill for the road was passed on July 3, 1832, it included a clause granting Cass the authority to make the change. Another $15,000 was also granted to continue its construction.

Col. Gratiot's report for 1832 stated that the available funds should be sufficient to finish the road, and no appropriation was made in 1833. The Fort Gratiot Road was completed by the end of 1834.

Gratiot Avenue Over the Years

The foot of Gratiot Avenue in downtown Detroit, circa 1915. Image courtesy Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. (Source.) Gratiot Avenue did not give rise to as many taverns, stagecoach stops, and settlements as did the Chicago Road, but there were few. One such tavern, built around 1840, was the Four Mile House, formerly located at 8806 Gratiot Avenue. It was converted into a private residence in the 1860s and demolished in 1938.

The Four Mile House, undergoing demolition. Image courtesy Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. (Source.) Travelers of the early 19th century could also have found accommodations at the Half Way House, so called because it was at the midpoint between Detroit and Mount Clemens. Located at what is now the southwest corner of Gratiot Avenue and Nine Mile Road, the settlement that grew up around it became known as "Halfway," even retaining that name when incorporating as a village in 1924. But when this village became a city in 1929, it adopted the name East Detroit.

The "Halfway House" Tavern, in what is now Eastpointe. Image courtesy Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. (Source) As late as the early 20th century, Gratiot Avenue was just a rural country road beyond Harper Avenue. Several unincorporated communities sprung up along its path, including Leesville, Trombley, Grenier, and Conner's Creek. Every one of these rural hamlets have since been incorporated into the City of Detroit.

Gratiot Ave., between Harper Ave. and 8 Mile Rd., 1905. Maps courtesy USGS Historical Topographic Map Explorer. (Source.)

The Trufant Farm in Clinton Township, 1875. This depicts the west side of Gratiot, one half mile north of 16 Mile Rd. (Source.)

Gratiot Ave. in Mt. Clemens, circa 1910. Image courtesy Suburban Library Cooperative. (Source.) In 1915, Chicago architect Edward H. Bennett was hired to advise the Detroit City Plan commission on improving the city. Among his recommendations was extending Monroe Avenue at an angle to connect to Gratiot Avenue. Traffic congestion finally forced the city to decide whether or not to follow this recommendation in 1936, but the city council chose to widen Gratiot Avenue and Randolph Street, maintaining the zig-zag path drivers must take when heading northeast from the center of the city.

Detail from Edward Bennett's recommendations for the Detroit City Plan. (Source.)

Gratiot Ave. at Dequindre St. in Detroit, circa 1920. Image courtesy Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. (Source.)

Gratiot Ave. in Roseville, 1924. Interurban streetcar tracks once paralleled the entire length of Gratiot Ave., from Detroit to Port Huron, from 1899 to 1930. Service continued to Mount Clemens until 1932. Image courtesy Suburban Library Cooperative. (Source.) In 1924, the Detroit Rapid Transit Commission proposed a system of superhighways for the metropolitan region, with the intention of carrying not just automobile traffic, but passenger rail lines as well. The commission recommended widening arterial roads to 120 feet wide in urban areas and 204 feet in the suburbs. Over the next twelve years, Gratiot Avenue within the City of Detroit was expanded to widths ranging from 120 to 129 feet. North of Eight Mile Road, the right-of-way was widened to 204 feet. The first widening of Gratiot Avenue in Mount Clemens occurred in 1933.

Source: Detroit Free Press, April 13, 1924.

Source: Detroit Free Press, July 8, 1928. Once the road widenings were complete, Gratiot Avenue more or less became what it is today. I'd like to close this post with a few photos of Gratiot Avenue icons that you might recognize if you grew up on the east side.

Gratiot Ave. in Roseville, circa 1930s. The two-story building is still standing, and now houses Paul's Bike Depot, 28057 Gratiot. Image courtesy Suburban Library Cooperative. (Source.)

The Gratiot Drive-In, built in Roseville in 1948, featured a three-story waterfall on the reverse side of its projection screen. The waterfall was shut off in the 1960s, and the structure ultimately demolished in 1984. Image courtesy SeekingMichigan.org. (Source.)

Better Made Potato Chips, in business since the 1920s, moved to 10148 Gratiot by 1949. (Source.)

Top: The Kolb-Gotfredson Company's horse market on the west side of Gratiot, north of Leland Street, as it appeared in 1905. (Source.) Bottom: Kolb-Gotfredson's truck factory, circa 1920s, built in stages on the site of the former horse market. In 1935 the building was purchased by the Feigenson Brothers Company, bottlers of Faygo. Faygo has been made here ever since. (Source.)

Susie-Q Restaurant, 27027 Gratiot, opened in 1964. Its iconic rotating metal tower was later associated with Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips, Dmitri's, and National Coney Island. Image courtesy Roseville History Archive.

John and Patricia Pioszak opened the Plum Pit, a retail store specializing in hippie clothing and paraphernalia, in 1967. (Source.)

Originally opened as the Eastwood Theatre in the 1940s, this building at 21145 Gratiot housed the Wired Frog Cafe from 1997-2004. (Source.)

Macomb Mall was built in 1964 on the former Mulso farm in Roseville. Since this photo was taken in 2006, this iconic neon sign has been replaced with back-lit plastic panels. Photo from wayitwas.us by user phil101. (Source.) * * * * *

Source: http://detroiturbanism.blogspot.com/2016/10/radial-avenues-part-iv-gratiot.html

[roswellroamer]

Sperrgebeit Lodge (Springbok) SA to Keetmanshoop, Namibia. 4/21/19

We woke in our thatched roof bungalows after 7 to a crystal blue sky with no clouds. Greeted by the expansive horizon dotted with scrub and rocks with mountains close by. Even the pile of "Zamalik" cans from the previous nights social hour (OK, maybe 3) had been cleaned up. Continued "Western" vibe, aside from some of the vegetation you could easily mistake the scenery for parts of Arizona, for example. Barren and dramatic. Little did I know but it would be one even more barren with vegetation moving to the extremely sparse level during this day. Breakfast was prepared by the couple who run the lodge. Eggs cooked for you, bacon, sausage, the usual stuff but very good. Had to top the meal off with a "cook sister". A piece of some sort of honey or sweetened dough cooked and as I understand it is usually twisted. But these looked like small 2" human shaped dolls. Tonight there is barely Wi-Fi so I am unable to add pictures that would show this. But when I can upload pictures I will so as to give an image of this tasty treat.

We headed north toward the border and got there by 9 as it was about 118km up the road. Passed by a bunker from the Boer war with it's cannon still pointed towards the highway! There are still a lot of German (ancestry) residents and visitors here in this area. Schnitzel is a regular item on the menus. We had a relatively easy time on the SA side. The usual as per the border details from the Patagonia blog 👇👇👇. Three stops minimum, get your slip of paper stamped by police, customs, immigration and then pass. The Namibia border used to be an open border as from 1915 until 1990 Namibia (formerly South West Africa) was the de facto fifth province of SA. The Namibian dollar is tied 1:1 to the SA rand and in fact most all the change received in 🇳🇦 has been South African bills, not Namibian. This is a great area to visit for so many reasons. And on top of the natural beauty is an added bonus for Americans. The dollar is strong. It is over 14 rand to 1$. Lodging and food have seemed very reasonable. Tonight's steak (T-bone) with salad, and alcoholic drinks (multiple rounds for some) ended up costing us 200ZAR including tip. About $14. 🤗 But I'm getting ahead of myself... After we left the SA border which neglected to collect my paper slip with the diligently obtained stamps, we crossed the Oranje river into Namibia. All non-Namibian vehicles must pay a fee to enter. Since it was Easter Sunday there weren't many folks there and we couldn't have navigated the border much faster. Still it was slow taking about an hour to get everyone through. We got gas at an EnGen station just over the border with a Wimpy's inside and we planned our ride. Four of us were interested to take a 60 mile or so detour so as to visit the well known (at least in Namibia!) Fish River Canyon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_River_Canyon

I was naturally in that group, so just under half our group turned left at a T junction on the unpaved road while the rest of the group rode ahead to the Canyon Roadhouse. We blasted through very well maintained gravel/dirt roads. Frankly even faster than we were running on the "tar". About 150Km/hr. At times even 190km/hr which is just nuts but for stretches these roads are in perfect shape. Of course everything you have is covered in dust from bikes ahead of you and cars/trucks passing you going the other direction. Often you are wishing for a slight wind shift to move the large dust clouds kicked up by our knobby tires ahead of you to clear the dust storm to one side or the other. When the crosswind disappears visibility can be cut to damn near zero. Caution must be exercised to avoid a surprise impact and even to stay in the tire tracks which are a bit more compressed and easier to navigate than the sandier piles in between the tracks and also in between the two lanes of travel. There was one persistent challenge today. In areas where rain would run over the road ( not terribly common in this part of the desert) there were buildups of deeper sand on the road. These would cause a squiggling maneuver between the two tires. When you're running 135km/hr and your bike starts to wiggle 6-10" side to side somewhat violently those of us not growing up on dirt get pretty nervous. I got less nervous as the day progressed mostly because I became keen to spot the telltale marks on the road and where they tended to be found in depressions. The Africa Twin seems to be a very versatile and comfortable bike, doing all I need on road and clearly extremely capable off road which is due to my observation of the guys on this ride, not from me! We made it to the pay station and bought our tickets then ran the final 10km to the rim. So worth it! Grand Canyon is deeper but this is almost as long and still very dramatic.

We have an early AM and big day tomorrow so I am gonna cut this a bit short. Rest of the day highlights included the following. Kitschy Canyon Roadhouse lunch including a loud Pandora's Box, milkshake, lots of old cars and trucks and gas pumps under thatch roofs. Coming to a river that caused one of our riders to go for a swim. That pic I was able to post 👆. The bottom of that river crossing was like glass covered in algae or moss. But no injuries and the bike was unscathed. Lovely stop complete with an assortment of long horned beasts in a zoo like enclosure and a scenic pool at the Maritz Lodge. Dinner under the thatched roof restaurant and sat outside for a while telling stories. After midnight, so good night! I got some crap from the SA guys watching me peck for two hours last night, but I still this it is worth it.

[shirlleycoyle]

The Real Robotic Revolution

Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution is a new form of book, a cross between fiction and nonfiction. It is a techno-thriller, following a hunt for a terrorist through the streets of a future Washington, D.C. At the same time, it is a work of research with over three hundred factual explanations and predictions baked into the story, replete with the nonfiction reference endnotes to show their source from the real world. The idea is for the reader to enjoy a vivid story and characters, but also learn about everything from how AI works and its planned applications, to its likely impact on the future of politics, economics, society, and security. As a result, Burn-In has drawn early praise from a diverse mix that ranges from the current or former heads of the CIA, U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, NATO, and LinkedIn to the writer of Lost, Watchmen, and the new Star Trek movies.

The following scene takes place about halfway through the story. A series of cyberattacks on dams, water treatment plant, and sewer systems (all incredibly vulnerable critical infrastructure in the real world) have caused a massive flood to sweep across the low-lying areas of Washington DC. In a sense, it is an intentional version of the 1936 flood that remade the city. In the tsunami's aftermath, FBI Special Agent Lara Keegan and the test system that she's been assigned to vet are part of the emergency rescue effort. TAMS (short for Tactical Autonomous Mobility System) is where the software of Siri and Alexa and the hardware of robots will be in approximately 10-15 years. Keegan is uncertain whether she should help train up TAMS or sink the experiment, to help protect her own job down the line… — P.W. Singer

FARRAGUT SQUARE

Washington, DC

Keegan kept her hands on the SUV’s wheel, ready to snatch control as she travelled with TAMS against a steady stream of autonomous ve- hicles fleeing the flooding along the Potomac. Above its historic high water mark, the river spread over the entire basin and had even over- whelmed the barrier walls at Reagan National Airport.

“Send our location to Noritz and the TOC,” said Keegan. TAMS pushed a thumbs-up emoji to Keegan’s vizglasses.

Their destination was the old FBI Washington Field Office building at 4th and G. A notice had gone out that a temporary command post had been set up there after the Hoover Building’s basement flooded and the entire block lost power.

On the SUV’s screen, Keegan projected live satellite imagery of the city overlaid onto a street map. It showed how the flood wave had paid no mind to the orderly gridlike arrangement of Washington’s streets. The initial wave had surged well up to M Street, but then the waters had quickly receded, leaving muddy red sidewalks and sucking cars right out of their parking spaces.

Most of all the view showed how just a few feet in elevation made all the difference between devastation and normalcy. Most parts of the city were untouched, but now a massive moat cut through Washington, DC,’s federal district, turning the southern chunk of the city into an island. The Potomac River’s newest tributary entered the city at the Tidal Basin on the edge of the National Mall before its waters returned back into the main river near the lower elevation of the District Wharf shopping complex. Or rather what had been the District Wharf shopping complex.

The borders of the flood zone reflected the subtle topographic con- tours of a city constructed out of swampland, unnoticed by most residents, but which had originally set its design over three centuries back.3 The flood’s edge ran along Pennsylvania Avenue, roughly miroring the now-paved-over Tiber Creek that had once reached right up to the President’s Palace, before it was renamed the White House.4 It then ran from 15th Street beside the Treasury Department building, down over to the I-395 highway tunnels that opened at the base of Capitol Hill.5 Its southern side ran along Madison Avenue, the lower edge of the National Mall, which had previously been the open canal where Washington’s residents had dumped their trash in the early days of the republic’s capital city. The slight incline of the National Mall protected its green spaces, but the Museum of Natural History and the Justice Department, as well as the other buildings between Madison and Pennsylvania Avenues, now appeared as squares of cement rising out of the brown-red water, like tiny islands.

Keegan zoomed in, seeing tiny dots swarming each of the island-buildings. Some were brightly colored city and federal emergency response drones, but there were also parcel drones dropping packages on the rooftops, an automated rush of requested deliveries and flash-funding charity drops. Panning over to the veterans’ encampment, Keegan saw that the rest of Capitol Hill remained dry.

“Route the vehicle around any areas less than 20 meters in elevation,” Keegan said, realizing the vehicle’s navigation probably didn’t have a scenario for city streets literally disappearing underwater.

They got as close as Farragut Square before the crowds got too thick. Keegan sent the SUV off to autopark up on high ground near H street and they set out on foot. Overhead, a bright yellow FEMA drone loitered in a lazy circle, while a micro-cam drone from one of the newsfeeds landed on the statue of Admiral Farragut to get a better shot. Thousands of people were out in the streets, some with a specific destination in mind, some aimless, and many just to film and comment.

As they wove through the crowd, they passed the Farragut West Metro entrance. Keegan hated that spot more than anywhere in DC. She’d first been there nine years ago, while on leave from the Saudi stability op. It had been in early December, so on her way home, she’d killed time during a seven-hour layover at Dulles Airport to come in and check out the White House Christmas tree and all that stuff that you were supposed to be fighting for. Riding the subway escalator up, though, she had recoiled at the stench, not because it was that bad, but because it was all too familiar. The station had been turned into an encampment for desperate people, crushed together to escape the cold. She was a stone’s throw from the White House, witnessing the abject abandonment of fellow humans that she’d only before experienced in refugee camps. And she knew that her commander in chief would never walk the two city blocks to confront that dark fact.

Today, a stream of men and women, some with children, emerged out of the station, wet and sobbing.

“TAMS, gimme a status check on the Metro,” Keegan said as she headed down to see if anyone below needed aid. The rule beaten into her since boot camp was Marines headed toward the sounds of chaos.6 “The lower-elevation sections of the Orange Line and Blue Line are flooded,” said TAMS. The bot pushed a Metro map with the affected segments to Keegan’s vizglasses. It also marked malfunctions that had apparently locked the valves for the Metro system’s air vents and the DC stormwater overflow pipes that connected to the Potomac River.7 To save money, the designs had piggybacked off each other, but now their malfunction prevented the system from clearing itself.

Peering down the escalator, Keegan could see the effect. Muddy water lapped halfway down the steps, meaning the entire ticketing mezzanine was flooded. Worse, the next lower level where the trains boarded also had to be completely underwater.

“Is everyone out?”

“No. My acoustic sensors indicate there is a female adult trapped below.”

Keegan couldn’t hear anything over the rush of the water and the voices of the crowd above. Her stomach knotted. “Where exactly?”

“I cannot ascertain.”

There was an agent’s booth in the middle of the second level. That might be high enough for somebody to climb up on and get above the flood. She eyed the swirl of muddy water. It was too deep to stand in, and the current would send her down into the Metro tunnels if she tried swimming it.

“Can you reach her?” Keegan said.

“Yes. I am rated to ISO standards for underwater operations for a duration of thirty minutes at 10 meters depth.”

The water reeked of ozone and sewage. If TAMS went in and never came out, that would certainly solve the problem that the deputy director had put in her lap. But it would present another: she would have to find a way to finish the rescue herself.

“Then do it. I need you to reach whoever is down there and lead them out.”

“OK,” it said.

TAMS stepped carefully toward the water’s edge, narrowly avoiding stepping on a tiny frog that hopped up the steps. All sorts of shit down there is going to be forced up, thought Keegan.

“Hey! You need to get out of there! What the hell are you doing?” a man shouted down.

“Good question,” Keegan called back, then she thought better of it.

It wasn’t the time for snark.

“We’re FBI. There’s someone trapped down there!”

A barrel-chested African American soldier in Army fatigues smeared with mud came running down the escalator. He pulled up in shock at the sight of TAMS descending into the water, one hand gripping the railing. “That thing yours?”

“Yeah,” Keegan replied. “It detected someone inside. I think they’re stuck in that booth by the turnstiles, you know, where you ask for di- rections.”

“And you’re going to send the Terminator in after them?” “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m listening.”

“Nah. Just don’t ask me to sign for that when you lose it.”

With the water now up to its neckline, TAMS had stopped to listen to their conversation. Perhaps the soldier’s uniform had triggered some old program.

“TAMS, you’re still cleared to proceed,” Keegan stated. “OK.”

It wasn’t a remarkable set of last words, Keegan thought, as the bot disappeared into the murk in a shimmering blue halo generated by its onboard navigation lights. Her AR glasses pushed a notice: Network connection lost.

“This going to work?” the soldier asked. “Hell if I know.”

“Sergeant Terrence King, Maryland National Guard,” he said. “Your phone app functional? I need to let my wife know I’m OK.”

“Agent Lara Keegan. No, not without the bot boosting the signal.” The man sighed.

Then light washed over them and Keegan looked back up the escalator and saw a line of people gathered to watch, several turning on their lens cameras to record them, even a few holding out old smart- phones to get a better angle.

“FBI! Turn your cameras off!” she shouted back. “Like that’s ever worked,” said King.

Keegan glared at him, then turned back to the water, waiting for any sign of the robot. Neither spoke as they waited, watching another frog hop past their feet and clamber up the escalator. Then they heard a voice.

“We’re coming up! We’re coming up!” a breathless woman shouted from the far end of the tunnel. Then she appeared, a woman in her fifties. She thrashed at the water with one hand, her other arm being pulled by some force under the water. Just ahead of her a faint blue light got brighter and brighter as it approached beneath the surface.

“We’re up here! Watch the steps at the bottom of the escalator,” said Keegan, wading into the water as TAMS came into view, its head barely clearing the surface. She and King pulled the woman out of the water, the polyester of her blue WMATA uniform dripping sheets of water.

King took off his jacket to wrap the woman up and led her up the stairs.

TAMS, meanwhile, waited down at the bottom of the escalator, the water lapping at its waist, its arm locked on the railing. Keegan thought about what exactly the deputy director would order at this moment.

“Come on, TAMS,” she said. “Get out of the water, hero.” “OK.”

As the machine exited the murk, water spurted from its joints and sensor ports. On Keegan’s viz screen, it showed that the connection to the bot’s operating system was still not working.

“Confirm diagnostics, TAMS,” Keegan said.

The robot stood still for thirty seconds, until a message read on Keegan’s vizglasses: System reboot complete. Restore network connection.

That meant taking TAMS up to the street level to get a signal. “Fol- low me to the street and reestablish satellite bandwidth connection.”

“OK.”

At the top of the stairs, she stopped so abruptly that TAMS liter- ally stepped on her heels. Even through the pant leg, the metal edge scraped a piece of skin off the back. “Shit,” she said to herself, but not at the pain.

Waiting there was King, standing at attention. He threw a salute and then started clapping, a steady authoritative rhythm. The crowd of hundreds behind him joined in, wet palms slapping together in applause, humans looking for something good to cling to on a day of awfulness, even if it was a machine.

The Real Robotic Revolution syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[bountyofbeads]

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE NEWS IS GONE? In Jones County, North Carolina, and many other places around the country, local journalism has just about dried up.

By Charles Bethea | Published January 27, 2020 | The New Yorker | Posted February 16, 2020 |

For a long time, the commissioners of Pollocksville, a town of three hundred or so people in the far eastern part of North Carolina, held their monthly public meetings in a century-old former train depot on Main Street, near the Trent River. In September, 2018, Hurricane Florence flooded the Trent; the water rose as high as ten feet downtown, severely damaging dozens of structures in Pollocksville. The train depot was nearly destroyed, along with town records that dated back to the nineteen-twenties.

The commissioners’ meetings are now held in a former pharmacy across the street from the Dollar General store. On a Tuesday evening in November, Pollocksville’s five town commissioners gathered there, sitting on a raised platform beneath fluorescent lights and an American flag, to which they and the seven residents who had come to the meeting—a typical number of attendees—pledged allegiance. Among the first orders of business was a proposed flood-damage ordinance, one of many responses to Florence that the board has considered in the past year. Jay Bender, who’s been the mayor of Pollocksville for nearly four decades, has a solid helmet of gray hair and a careful drawl. He asked if anyone in the audience would like to comment on it.

Alice Strayhorn, a hairdresser in her late sixties who has lived in Pollocksville most of her adult life, raised her hand. “This flood-damage-prevention order,” she said. “How are we supposed to know about that? You can’t make a comment on something you don’t know about.” Strayhorn’s low-lying home is often the first in town to flood during heavy storms; she had heard that there had been grants coming through to deal with flooding. (“That’s why I keep going to the meetings,” she told me later. “Seeing if there’s anything that comes up.”)

“That’s probably true,” Bender said. “But it was posted. It was advertised.”

“Posted where?” Strayhorn asked.

“In the newspaper,” Bender said, “and outside the office.”

Pollocksville is situated in Jones County, and most people would tell you that Jones County doesn’t have a newspaper. It used to have the Jones Post, a weekly founded in 1976. But that outlet has faded over a period of years, first becoming a regional insert delivered with other newspapers, and gradually ceasing to print much in the way of substantive local journalism. At this point, not even its publisher is quite willing to call it a paper. According to one estimate, the U.S. has lost one in four of its newspapers in the last fifteen years. The vast majority of those that have folded are weekly papers and other non-dailies. Around fifteen hundred American counties have just one paper, usually a weekly; another two hundred counties are without a newspaper altogether. These latter areas are what researchers call news deserts, and Jones County, one researcher told me, is a classic example. Bender had posted a notice about the ordinance. He had put it in the New Bern Sun Journal, which is based in a neighboring county. Few people in Pollocksville read it.

Alice Strayhorn stayed at the meeting for another ninety minutes, before leaving early. She spoke up just once more, to let the mayor know that his chair was at risk of toppling over. The ordinance passed a few minutes after she left, and the board moved on to other subjects: a sewer leak by the graveyard, the town’s Christmas lights, its “Welcome to Pollocksville” sign, a dead fox, and the fate of a long-abandoned 1999 Crown Victoria.

I caught up with Strayhorn outside. I wanted to know which newspaper she thought Bender had been referring to in his reply to her.

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging, as rain began to fall. “I haven’t received any paper.” She told me that she’d already lost two cars to flooding and was worried that she’d lose her house.

I asked whether having a newspaper in town would make any difference to her.

“If I put the story in a paper, maybe the board would pay more attention to me,” she said. “I can’t even remember the last time we got a paper here. The news information is very scarce now. It’s not like it used to be. I don’t know what happened.”

Pollocksville is the oldest of three small towns in Jones County, which sits on five hundred square miles of flat land suited to growing cotton, tobacco, and soybeans. The county is shaped like a mounted boar’s head, facing west; Pollocksville sits in the middle of the neck. About ten thousand people live in the county, the same number that lived there a hundred years ago. Roughly sixty per cent of its residents are white, and roughly sixty per cent of its residents voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

In addition to the Sun Journal, a couple of other newspapers from neighboring counties trickle into Jones: the Kinston Free Press, from Lenoir County, and the Jacksonville Daily News, from Onslow County. But none of those papers has more than a couple hundred readers inside Jones County’s borders. All three are owned by the Gannett Company, which controls more than two hundred publications nationwide. Under Gannett’s watch, many have become “ghost papers,” emaciated versions of their former selves, hobbled by cost-cutting, barely able to cover their established beats.

Penny Abernathy, a professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina, told me that, twenty years ago, a state’s largest newspaper could be counted on to cover its rural areas. At its peak, in the nineteen-nineties, the Raleigh News & Observer had some two hundred and fifty newsroom employees, and it won a Pulitzer, in 1996, for its coverage of the hog industry in rural North Carolina. Now it’s down to around sixty staffers. “That means there are no longer the people that were roaming around in the past, doing stories that bound that region together,” Abernathy said. News ecosystems have become especially arid in poorer places with older residents who have less formal education than the average American. “The South tends to have lost more papers, and have more counties without newspapers, than any other place,” she said.

Pollocksville’s temporary town hall is at the southern end of Highway 17, the town’s main drag. The morning after the commissioners’ meeting, I went back there to talk to Mayor Bender. The Benders have lived in the area since the eighteenth century, when European settlers first came to the region and “built an agricultural economy centered around the ‘Southern Plantation,’ ” as the county’s Web site puts it. Bender attended Jones Central High School in the mid-sixties, a period of what he called “semi-integration.” He was in college by the time full integration arrived, in the fall of 1969, but his younger brother told him about the confrontations that ensued. “A private school opened here so white kids would have somewhere else to go,” he said. “And there was the start of what became a pretty good exodus by white kids into neighboring counties.” (A few years ago, a writer for the Kinston Free Press noted that, during this period—“the last high-water mark of the Klan in the area”—his paper “didn’t cover Klan events in Lenoir and Jones counties.”) At the time, Democrats controlled the state; Bender has been a registered Democrat since he was legally allowed to register for a party. I asked him if there were national issues that he felt strongly about. “I’d prefer to be seen above the fray,” he said. “I have strong leanings on certain things that each side says, but I don’t really want to talk about that.” I asked if he thought climate change had anything to do with the severity of Hurricane Florence. “You can talk about climate change all you want, but we had an unprecedented twenty-foot flood. I don’t know that there’s anybody out there that says that climate change caused or contributed to that.” He added, “I’m not going to say it.”

On the wall behind Bender at the temporary town hall was an aerial photograph of the damage done to the town by Florence, and we chatted for a while about storms and the news. Bender watches cable news and reads the New Bern Sun Journal on occasion, though with diminishing expectations. In Bender’s view, physical newspapers and books are doomed. “Other than a John Grisham,” he told me, “I haven’t bought a hardcover book in ages.” I brought up the moment the night before when he told Alice Strayhorn that a notice had run in the paper—one that few residents receive. “I’ve been doing this for thirty-eight years,” he said. “I don’t care what you do, there’s always going to be someone that shows up saying, ‘I didn’t know about this.’ Because people want to be spoon-fed. And I’ve also learned over the years that no matter how much you publicize, how much you print, how much you provide, most people—not all, but most—don’t read it.” One of his expressions, he told me, is “Most people don’t want to be confused with the facts.”

Bender liked the idea of having a local newspaper in Jones County again somehow. He was less keen on the prospect of investigative journalism. “I don’t know that I necessarily agree that it’s a newspaper’s job to be an investigative agency,” he said. “Now, if the reporter gets an anonymous tip, or someone calls in, ‘You all need to check out Jay Bender, who’s not doing this, that, and the other,’ then, O.K. But my feeling is, if someone is not doing anything right, why do you ask a newspaper to do it?” He went on, “You’re not going to throw somebody out. You have to wait for an election, unless you’re going to take them to court.”

“Most people don’t want to be confused with the facts.”

Jay Bender, Mayor of Pollocksville, North Carolina

He added, “I’m an open book, and my records are an open book. But I find it very frustrating—and, quite frankly, somewhat insulting—to spend my time or my staff’s time providing information to citizens or people or whatever, and, when push comes to shove and decisions have to be made or questions have to be raised, nobody knows what you’re talking about. Now, could a newspaper or a news entity help that? Perhaps, perhaps. I don’t know.”

The week before my first visit to Pollocksville, there had been an election. Three spots were open on the town board, and three people ran. One of them was Maria Robles, who moved to town a few years ago, when she took a job at Lenoir Community College, in Trenton, after two decades in the Air Force. “There’s nothing out there that says, ‘Hey, go out there and vote,’ ” Robles told me, describing her experience running for office. Once upon a time, that might have been the paper; eventually, it might be the Internet. But, while the county high school and a few local businesses have broadband, most Jones County residents have slow dial-up access or none at all. Not many people check the town’s Web site, which is updated infrequently anyway. But word of Robles’s candidacy got to Darrell Bell, who runs Bell’s Corner, an auto-repair shop on Main Street that he inherited from his father.

“I went to Bell’s Corner to have my car worked on, and Darrell was, like, ‘Hey, I heard that you’re running.’ And I’m, like, ‘I haven’t even told my husband or my parents—and my parents live right down the road.’ And he goes, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll talk to people.’ ” Twenty-five people voted; all but one voted for Robles. Now, she said, “If I want information out, I send it to Bell’s Corner. I also send it to the Filling Station”—a food pantry and a center for gossip—“and my contact at the post office, Dwayne. But that’s only for Pollocksville. If I needed to get information to Maysville”—a larger town elsewhere in Jones County—“I don’t know how yet.”

“She’s gonna learn a lot,” Nancy Barbee told me, when I relayed the story. Barbee is also on the town board. Her maiden name is Bender, and she’s probably a distant relation of the mayor, she said. She grew up in Pollocksville, and taught in Jones County public schools for three decades. When we met, she wore red reading glasses tucked into short dirty-blonde hair, and jewelry from India, a country she first visited on behalf of the Rotary Club, which she has worked with for years. Barbee had agreed to drive me around Jones County, to visit, as she put it, “some local hangouts where we get our news.” Bell’s Corner was the first spot on our itinerary.

Pollocksville was “a booming little place” in the fifties and sixties, when Barbee was growing up, she said. “Times change,” she added, driving through the barely beating heart of town. It’s still an agricultural area, but farming there is not as lucrative as it used to be. I asked Barbee to name the county’s biggest business. She thought for a minute. “Well, it used to be the school-supply company, but it closed down. There is a marine—what was it called? Like, a metal place that was sort of stuck back in the middle of nowhere.” Even Mayor Bender’s family business, a grocery store, had moved to a neighboring county.

When Florence hit, Barbee said, members of the media came from elsewhere to cover the storm. “We had CBS, NBC, BBC, all those major channels.” This helped with the initial recovery. “It certainly let people know all over the country and all over the world, ‘My God, look what happened here in this small little town,’ ” Barbee said, adding, “It’s harder for public officials to ignore things when they’re in the news.” Now, she went on, “we don’t have news reporting on a regular basis here to tell the ongoing story of the recovery, or to hold elected officials in check, or anything else.” Barbee praised the mayor for procuring grants to rebuild after Florence, but she had concerns about his use of some of these funds. “He took sixty-seven thousand dollars to clean that building out,” she said, referring to the old town hall, “without any board approval.” The mayor’s office was also in the former train depot. “That really perturbed us. A thousand dollars is one thing. But sixty-seven thousand is another. We may have used it for something different.” She added, “I’m not saying he’s doing anything illegal. But he tells you part of the story—the part he wants us to know.”

At Bell’s Corner, Darrell Bell, a man in his sixties with a mustache and a mischievous smile, sat behind a cluttered desk, feeding a piece of bread to an area dog. I took a seat under a mounted deer and a sign that read “it is what it is.” Bell told me that he’d begun working there in 1973, fixing cars, selling junk food, and providing information. “We have quite a few folks gathered around here,” he told me. “They’ll be ganging up here shortly. You can’t get in here sometimes. Customers, acquaintances, yadda yadda. Some of the board hangs out in here. The mayor. Town employees. They meet here. Everything is unofficial. Just local folks.”

Bell started telling stories about the old days. His father used to sell “liquor by the drink in the back room, illegally,” he said. “The sheriff would come by—he’d give him a drink. Then the sheriff would continue on to Trenton,” the county seat. “That’s just the way it was. Everybody was O.K. with it. You can’t do that now.” During Hurricane Florence, Bell said, he gave away all his snacks, drinks, and useful supplies. “Even to a neighbor lady who don’t like me for some reason,” he said.

One of Barbee’s fellow town commissioners, Mike Duffy, walked in, and was followed shortly by another, Ellis Banks. Three-fifths of the town board was now present.

“I can get the mayor here if you want him,” Bell said. “He come here the last couple of days, scolded Mike a little bit.”

Duffy and Barbee chatted about the previous night’s meeting, then Duffy got up to leave. (“Darrell, I’ll bring you a dollar later,” he said, for the diet soda he’d had.) I brought up the subject of newspapers with Bell and a local man, named Jimmy, who’d stopped in.

“Obituaries,” Bell said. “That’s the first thing I look at.”

Jimmy nodded. “Keeping up with who’s died.”

Bell wasn’t sure there was much more to say on the subject. “Do you believe everything you read?” he asked. “What’s the truth? Who wrote it? Where’d they get their information from? It’d be better if I knew the person.”

Bell and Jimmy mused about the few run-ins they’d had with major media. “I was on Fox News during the hurricane,” Bell said. He added, “If you’re in Miami, Florida, and you see someone from Pollocksville, North Carolina—they don’t really know us or really what’s going on. But it’s good to know that’s happening, I reckon.”

Jimmy, like Bender and Bell and Barbee and both of the other board members, is white. Later, I asked Alice Strayhorn, who’s African-American, whether she got any news from chatting with people at Bell’s Corner. She told me it was a mostly white crowd there. “I just get my car done and be on my way,” she said.

Barbee and I got in her car and drove a quarter-mile down the road to the Filling Station, which occupies the old Jenkins Gas building. It’s a charitable operation started by members of Pollocksville Presbyterian. The chair of its executive board is a peppy woman named Mary Ann Bender LeRay, who, when we stopped by, had gathered with a half-dozen staff and volunteers in a back room filled with food items being readied for distribution. “This has been a watering hole in the past couple years,” LeRay told me, “especially after the hurricane—since we didn’t get flooded. So, of course, you’ll be talking and sharing here.”

Ronnie Huffman, the site manager, who is in his seventies, told me, “The story of the rebuilding of this town—which may never be rebuilt back like it was—that’s a lot of what we talk about here.” The group nodded in unison.

As we left, Barbee said, “That’s about the best news source we got.”

It hasn’t always been this way in the United States, or in eastern North Carolina. In the nineteen-forties, Jones County had a newspaper of its own, the Jones Journal, which came out on Thursdays, and was later replaced by the Jones County Journal. Its slogan, “A Better County Through Improved Farm Practices,” gives a sense of its concerns. A typical front-page headline, from 1954: “Fertilizer Supply Adequate; Farmers Urged to Buy Early.” It wasn’t all farming news: there were feel-good pieces (“Spaniel Saves Family of Six,” 1954) and the odd crime story (“Double Murder Claims Jones Native and British Born Wife,” 1956). It was, as even a quick sift through the archives reveals, written for a white audience (“Happersville Negress Kills Mate on Sunday,” 1956).

Back then, Barbee told me, she saw one reporter often. “He came to my mother’s house every Saturday,” she said, “and my mother and grandmother would give him the local news.” They discussed “who had passed away, who was getting married, what was going on with the Daughters of the American Revolution or at church.” Barbee “loved him dearly,” she said, “because he always brought me peanuts or candy.” She called this system “country news.”

The Jones County Journal folded in the early seventies. In 1976, a man named Reuben Moore, who’d created the Pender Post in neighboring Pender County, founded the Jones Post, with the slogan “Bringing Country Journalism Back to the Country.” By “country,” he meant the rural places, Lois Simpson, an early staffer at the paper, told me. I met Simpson, now seventy-one, at her home, where she subsists as a farmer and a writer with her husband, who, in the other room, watched a national broadcast from ABC News as we talked. Pushing aside stacks of old newspapers, V.H.S. tapes, and a lazing dog, Simpson sat down on a fraying couch. “I don’t live like other people,” she said, laughing.

The Jones Post ranged from eight to sixteen pages and ran every Thursday. The front page offered county news; the second page was for obituaries; the third showed local news; the fourth and fifth had church news, Bible verses, and a Biblical cartoon; the sixth offered recipes; the seventh printed classified ads; and the remaining pages had editorials, TV listings, and more local news. It was produced by a skeleton staff in an old high-school building in Trenton, Simpson told me. For a time, she was the editor. “I got paid two dollars an hour for forty hours when I worked about a hundred twenty, and my husband had to do all the photography in the darkroom-bathroom, and sometimes my in-laws had to drive the paper to places and my kids frequently worked for nothing,” she said. “But that’s what it takes to get a paper going.”

Simpson would report from county-commissioner and county-administrator meetings. “They were doing a lot of stuff they shouldn’t be doing,” she told me. Her reporting was responsible for one commissioner and one school superintendent leaving their posts, she said, “and about three or four boards of education being moved on and three or four commissioners being moved on.” She smiled. “If they got up there and said something completely dumb and you put that in the article, then, next election time, they went out the door.” She added, “I did a lot of tail-burning, which I’m probably sorry for, because I’ve paid all these years for those stories.”

“We got officials here think they can get away with things.”

Sondra Ipock Riggs, former reporter for the Jones Post

A few miles outside Pollocksville, at a ranch-style brick home that sat behind more Christmas decorations than I’d ever seen in a single yard, I met another of the paper’s early staffers, Sondra Ipock Riggs, now seventy-six. As we spoke, a radio played Christmas songs and a crime show was on the TV. “I’m a go-getter,” Riggs said, recalling her reporting days. “I fuss, cuss, and if they don’t do right I’ll raise hell.” She added, “I don’t kiss tails—I kick asses.” A pistol lay on the table beside her easy chair; she’s kept it close since her husband died, a few years ago. “If you’re a news reporter and you’re printing the news, you’re a troublemaker around here,” she said. “They called me the blonde-headed vigilante bitch because I turned in the barge.” In 1987, a garbage barge that had originated in New York was poised to dump three thousand tons of trash in Jones County, until Riggs and others began reporting on it. “That was the biggest news to ever come out of Jones County,” she said. Dan Rather called it “the most-watched load of garbage in the memory of man.” Riggs said, “When I got on the barge, it was cans with toxic material, maggots running off it. You just don’t know. I raised mortal hell.”

In the late eighties, Simpson and Riggs collaborated on a story that led to their firing, they told me. “The final straw came when we did a story on a county commissioner who had done all kinds of underhanded stuff,” Simpson said. Neither could recall exactly what this stuff was; the commissioner in question died in 2013. Simpson told me that he was one of the paper’s important advertisers, and that when Moore saw the story he “threw a fit.” (Moore died in 1988.)

After leaving the Jones Post, Riggs became a county commissioner—she’s served on the board for the last twenty-five years. Simpson ran for local office, too, though she didn’t win. She has worked as a dispatcher for the sheriff’s office, a farmer, a housecleaner, a fruit-stand operator, a G.E.D. and E.S.L. teacher, and has tried to write novels. Locals still occasionally bring her stories that they hope she’ll tell, she said. “Some years ago, they brought a landfill half a mile outside of Maysville and put it on top of unmarked slave graves,” she told me. “It’s awful. I blame me for not getting it done. I would have burnt some ass. But I stay preoccupied a lot of times chasing money to pay the light bill.”

She rummaged through a nearby stack of papers and handed me a copy of the Jones Post from the summer of 2018, one of the last editions she’d seen. The first page said it cost fifty cents. A front-page story about the school dress code ran under the byline “Jones County Schools.” Simpson shook her head. “Most stories have nothing to do with Jones County,” she said.

Simpson told me that she was skeptical of a lot of what she sees now. “Not everything that’s printed is true,” she said, and TV wasn’t much use, either. “You’ve got people who sit down and suck the whole mess up and never dig into what is true. They just swallow it.” Riggs told me, “I watch the weather, mainly. I take the Sun Journal, but it doesn’t tell you much about Jones County. I’m thinking about quitting it. What you gonna do when they don’t print about your county? We have five hundred square miles. We got officials here think they can get away with things. Not advertising jobs, picking who they want.” She went on, “It’s very important for me, honey, to know the news of the county, the state, and the country you live in. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have a country, baby.”

he Jones Post still exists, technically. Its publisher is a Gannett executive named Mike Distelhorst. “It’s more of a courtesy, in terms of providing some content to that group of people,” he said, referring to the residents of Jones County, “not what I’d consider a traditional newspaper.” Distelhorst is based in Wilmington, about seventy miles away. When I reached him, on the phone, he couldn’t tell me the weekly page count of the Jones Post, or provide distribution data, or give me the names of any of the paper’s past employees. He did know that it currently has no dedicated staff. He told me to talk to Chris Segal, who edits the three Gannett papers in neighboring counties.

The Jones Post, Segal told me, is run out of the Kinston Free Press  newsroom. In Segal’s view, the towns in Jones County don’t have local concerns as much as proxy concerns—people in Pollocksville, for instance, “really are New Bern people at the end of the day,” he said. The Jones Post occasionally has “unique content,” he noted, such as jury-duty lists. “The nonprofits will contribute some things, too,” he said, referring to press releases reframed as stories. I asked Segal if the paper could serve as a civic watchdog, covering crime and corruption. “Our reporters are keeping an eye on those things,” he said. He added, “We called the Sheriff last week. He still hasn’t scheduled an interview with us, because he’s so busy.”

Segal’s predecessor was a man named Bryan Hanks, who worked at the Gaston Gazette and the Shelby Star  before becoming editor of the Free Press, in 2002. (“He’s No. 1,” Riggs told me, of Hanks, calling him “the most honest news reporter, and fair, that I’ve ever seen in my life.”) When I arrived at Hanks’s comfortable brick home, in Kinston, he was setting up a mike in his living room, to record a weekly sports-radio podcast—“a loving ripoff of Bill Simmons,” he said. Hanks grew up in the northwestern part of the state. He’s large and loud, and very fond of the word “dude.” When he began editing papers in eastern North Carolina, he said, “I went as far as to research how many stoplights there were. Well, I got in my damn head that there was only one stoplight in Jones County. And I wrote this whole column about that. You would not believe all the angry calls. ‘You’re calling us a one-stoplight county, and there’s actually two!’ People still call me the one-stoplight guy.” During his run as editor of the Jones Post, the paper won two North Carolina Press Association awards, in the column and spot-news categories. It often ran twelve pages, including at least “one fresh story” on a local sports team, school event, or political function, plus the stories from neighboring papers. “It was kind of a feel-good paper, dude,” he said. But the newspaper business was in free fall. The staff of the Free Press shrunk from twenty-three to six, and then two. (There are also a few part-timers now, Segal told me.) They struggled to cover Kinston, let alone Jones County. Hanks quit in 2016.

After leaving the Free Press, Hanks collaborated with B. J. Murphy, a thirtysomething social-media entrepreneur, on an Internet-based experiment in local news. The Neuse News—the name comes from a river that joins the Trent at New Bern—is online-only and ad-supported, and covers three counties, including Jones. Its slogan is “Hyper-Local News with No Pop-Ups, No AP News and No Online Subscription Fees. No Kidding!” It has around four thousand daily e-mail subscribers in the tri-county area, Murphy said. He has two full-time employees—who also work for Magic Mile Media, Murphy’s social-media consultancy—and a handful of contracted writers, videographers, and photographers. In October, 2018, after Hurricane Florence, the Neuse News helped to organize a forum for candidates running for the Jones County board of education and the county’s board of commissioners. (A post with videos from that event is the most recent piece on the site related to Jones County.) Murphy is a former Republican politician—when he was twenty-nine, he became Kinston’s youngest-ever mayor—and the site has a detectable conservative slant, as he does. Still, when an opinion piece criticizing Donald Trump sparked angry comments from readers, he published a blog post on his own site defending the need to listen to different perspectives, more or less. “I just think more people need Jesus and need to stop worrying about the national political scene,” he wrote. “There are more important issues.”

Citing disagreements with Murphy, lack of pay, and concerns about the operation’s long-term viability, Hanks left the Neuse News last year. “If they don’t go to a subscription base, which would defeat the purpose, it’s going under,” he told me. Murphy said, “We’re not in profit mode by any stretch of the imagination,” and he emphasized that the site couldn’t match the scale of a newspaper: “We don’t have enough resources to do all the storytelling in Lenoir County, let alone Jones and Greene.” He applied for a grant through the Facebook Journalism Project “to get a camera and lighting to do more video programming,” he said; Facebook established the grants after building a feature that aggregated local news (because Facebook’s users “wanted to see more local news and community information on Facebook”) and discovering that one in three of its users in the U.S. lived in places that didn’t have enough local journalism to sustain the feature. Last year, Magic Mile Media helped launch Jones County Chat, a weekly Webcast that was created with support from county commissioners and Lenoir County Community College—in order to counter “a lot of rumors,” the county manager told me. But few people I met in Pollocksville had watched it. “I reckon you’ve gotta have the Internet access and the computers,” a clerk of courts in Trenton told me.

A few years ago, when Nancy Barbee first became a town commissioner, she wanted to create “a newsletter that tells people about local news, events, and what’s happening on the board,” how it was funding projects like the rebuilding of the flooded town hall. When she realized that she didn’t have the resources, she started a Facebook page, posting “news blasts” about church homecomings, volunteering opportunities, and Christmas preparations on Main Street. It didn’t last. “I was made to take that Facebook page down,” she told me. “The mayor had this misconception that the town-board minutes would go out on Facebook and everyone would see them. I said, ‘Well, it’s all public record. What’s the big deal?’ They were afraid of public comments about how terrible the board was.” Bender had a different story. “The town attorney told me it wasn’t a good idea,” he said. I asked why. “Who is going to monitor or moderate a Facebook page? I don’t have time. My clerk doesn’t have time.”

“Straight talk, dude,” Bryan Hanks said, sitting in his living room. “It’s scary. Because government officials, they know. You like to think they’re good people, especially in a community as small as Jones County, where everybody knows everybody. But if you don’t have media that’s going to hold them accountable for their actions—or, heck, even just report what they’re doing—how are the citizens going to know? They don’t know.”

About a month after Alice Strayhorn raised her hand at the town-board meeting, I went to see her at her home, a few blocks from where we’d first met. We sat in her tidy living room, on a leather couch, where light from a stained-glass lamp shone on her hands. She held a small switch, pulled from a nearby sapling, which she uses to keep her grandchildren in line. I wanted to know more about what Strayhorn thought of Pollocksville and politics and the press. “I’m a Democrat,” she told me. “I like democracy. I don’t have friends who like Trump. But people don’t really discuss politics or religion.”

I asked her about race relations in the town, which is a little whiter than the county as a whole. She said that when Barack Obama ran for President, some Obama signs, mostly in the yards of black residents, were torn down. “Stole out of our yards,” she said. “You’d put it up and it’d be gone the next morning. It was the Republicans,” she added. “One or two got caught.” Strayhorn said she was attending town meetings then, too, but she never mentioned the issue. “I’m by myself there,” she said. (“It may have happened,” Bender said, of the sign incident. “I just don’t remember it.” As for race relations in Pollocksville, he said, “I would say it’s fine. It’s certainly not perfect anywhere.”)

Strayhorn said that she wished she got more news about jobs, flooding mitigation, and new playgrounds. “Also,” she said, “getting Trump out of office.” She watches CNN, but “it isn’t much help,” she said. (Her husband tries to watch Fox News, she added, “to see what they say.”) During Hurricane Florence, the most reliable way for her to learn about what had happened to Pollocksville, and her neighborhood, was the Facebook page of “some local guy,” a black resident of Pollocksville, “who stayed and walked the streets, through the waters, and posted pictures of everything.”

We stepped out of her house, and Strayhorn took me to her beauty parlor, at the far end of Main Street, in a former gas station. “It’s just a shaggy old shop, but it makes me my living,” she said. “I have only one white customer. I used to have a few, but they came at night, so the neighbors wouldn’t see them here.” It was one of a few public places in Pollocksville, she said, where black folks in town could comfortably share the news.

A lot of that news is not good, and none of it is widely told. A black man in his late twenties told me, “People have gone. Houses are being torn down, left to crumble. If you’re my age, you really can’t make it around here. You have to move to Charlotte or out of state.” Pointing to a volunteer firefighter station, across a field from a historically black neighborhood called Garnett Heights, on the edge of town, he told me, “Cops sit over there.” He went on, “I’m gonna keep it real with you, we call that the Klan meeting, because you never know. It still lurks.” A U.N.C. report on the legacy of segregation in Jones County noted that Pollocksville never formally annexed Garnett Heights, and so residents of the neighborhood cannot vote in municipal elections.

The man in his twenties, whose family lives in Garnett Heights, asked that I not share his name, so that he could speak freely. He works at a factory in a neighboring county. Summing up life in the area, he said, “Once you cross into eastern North Carolina, it’s just more prejudice and lower wages. Who’s telling that story?”

Sitting with Bryan Hanks, in Kinston, I asked him what it would cost, annually, to produce a real, twelve-page weekly paper in Jones County. After some back-of-the-envelope calculating, he settled on three hundred thousand dollars. “But that doesn’t cover a building,” he said. Who’d pay for that? “I can’t think of anybody on top of my head,” he said. Penny Abernathy, the U.N.C. professor, told me that when it comes to journalism in poorer areas, like Jones County, “I do not see a for-profit model, at least for now.” One hope is that nonprofits will step in. But, so far, Abernathy said, foundations have provided only a fraction of the money that news organizations used to have—and most of that money has gone to “the big national-level organizations,” not “into really what we call local news.” It’s possible that the solution will depend on public funding, she said.  New Jersey recently committed a portion of an unexpected windfall to a nonprofit that aims to strengthen local news. State representatives in Massachusetts proposed a commission to study the matter and then to recommend legislation.

In addition to covering “the routine government meetings like the town council,” Abernathy said, local newspapers “have also kind of bound the community together in a variety of ways. So, if you have a business there, they got customers through the door. And, at the same time, they kind of took the national headlines and showed you how it was very much related to the community where you live.” Dan Ryan, a town commissioner in Maysville, told me that the region didn’t understand itself as well as it should in the absence of local reporting. “The census is coming up,” he pointed out. “How many people have we lost since Florence that aren’t ever coming back? Will we still have ten thousand in the county? Are we down to nine thousand? Reporting along those lines hasn’t happened, along with the ongoing recovery effort—who’s doing what, grants that had been received, money that’s been distributed, who’s been helped. It just gets left to be told through the rumor mill.”

A few weeks after leaving Pollocksville, I called Mayor Bender to tell him that I’d received a tip. Did he really spend sixty-seven thousand dollars of town money, I asked, without the approval of the town board, on rebuilding the town hall where he’d kept an office for decades? He said that he had. “We signed architectural contracts to move the town hall to another lot. We’ll close in the next week or two on the purchase.” This money had to be put toward that specific project, he told me. Anyone who was confused by that “lacks education on the use of public funds,” he said.

I asked if he could provide proof that the aid was tied to the renovation of the town hall. “Charles,” he said, “this has kind of gone way off the edge from what you said you wanted to talk to me about.” When I had first contacted Bender, in November, I had told him I was writing a piece about news deserts, and what happens when an area goes without substantive reporting. “I kind of feel like I’m being a majorly interviewed person here,” he said. I reminded him that he’d told me previously that if a journalist got a tip about Jay Bender it would be reasonable for that journalist to look into it.

“I think the minutes and all my reports would reflect that I’ve made no secret of wanting to preserve the town hall,” he said. “No secret at all.” He added, “I have been confronted by a couple of board members who said that I was not being objective. And I have firmly admitted, publicly and privately, that I wanted to see that project succeed.” Bender, returning to an argument he’d made in our first conversation, told me, “Individuals have a personal responsibility to get the facts.” I asked how a poor Pollocksville resident driving to another county to work a twelve-hour day in a factory, then returning home to young children, could realistically be expected to get facts about the financing of a project like the town hall. “Let’s don’t pick on the town hall,” he said.

As we got toward the end of our conversation, Bender acknowledged that a newspaper could be useful to explain how and why public funds are used for certain projects. And I acknowledged that it was unusual for a reporter from a national magazine to call up the mayor of a town of three hundred people and ask about the paperwork for sixty-seven thousand dollars in public money. Later, Bender sent minutes from town meetings when the subject of the town hall’s preservation was addressed. The notes were mostly brief. Another town commissioner, Sherry Henderson, said, “The proper channels should have been followed,” but pointed out that, at the time these decisions were being made, “We were concerned with survival.” It wasn’t clear whether the town was even going to come back from Hurricane Florence; in some ways, it’s still not clear. The mayor, she suggested, was just trying to get things done.

It didn’t seem like a dire scandal, but it did seem like the kind of thing that a local reporter might ask about, and might write about, if there were an outlet for such a story. Maybe some tail-burning would have been involved. But no one in Pollocksville had a professional responsibility to ask annoying questions about the things that matter only to the citizens of that town, and to no one else, and to print the answers. I was writing a story that was mostly for other people, who didn’t live here. And a lot of people in Pollocksville wouldn’t necessarily trust what I published—they were only inclined to believe stories from people who’d spent more than a few days in their county, and more than a few months trying to understand it. They had told me so.

On the phone with the mayor, I sensed the awkwardness of our situation. Somebody else was supposed to be asking these questions.

“I do feel like you’re picking on me a little bit,” Bender said. “I’m not used to this.”

*********

[natasjakjpriscilliamo78insu-blog]

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A Rhine romance: following the mighty river | Travel

Hiking over the rocks near Tujetsch, I was surprised to find a lighthouse. My surprise wasn’t due to its appearance: the lighthouse was modest in size and rusty red, with the squat proportions of a wine cork, and barely visible through a jacket of mist. What made it extraordinary was its location: perched atop a mountain in Switzerland, more than 200 miles from the nearest coastline and 2,000 metres above sea level.

Rhine map

The design looked familiar and, as I walked closer, I realised why. The lighthouse was (a sign explained) a near-replica of one I had seen a few months previously hundreds of miles away, on the Dutch coast at the Hook of Holland. The twin lighthouses were, in a sense, opposing poles: one near the source of the River Rhine in the Alps, the other where the same river ends at the North Sea. As such, this spot marked a natural end to my journey along the Rhine, all the way from river mouth to source, from one lighthouse to the other.

Before setting out along the Rhine I’d always thought of it as a thoroughly German river, in much the same way that the Thames is indisputably British and the Seine quintessentially French. In truth, the Rhine is multinational. Following the river, I’d traversed not only Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany, but also France, Austria and Liechtenstein, and through cities including Basel, Strasbourg, Bonn, Düsseldorf and Rotterdam. Along the way, the river itself had changed from a wide channel flanked by meadows and cathedrals to a tumbling mountain stream. Charging almost 800 miles across Europe, the Rhine changed its appearance as often as a pantomime dame.

Pont Couverts in Strasbourg. Photograph: Givaga/Getty Images

Cycling, walking, swimming and boating my way along the river, I’d found it littered with odd and interesting sights, from underground nuclear bunkers to thunderous waterfalls, nudist spas and glittering modern skyscrapers.

I also learned how the Rhine has long been one of Europe’s most important highways, moats and natural resources, and has played a pivotal role in the history of the places it passes.

Two thousand years ago, the northern section of the river served as the outer boundary of the Roman Empire, a liquid frontier which kept out would-be migrants more effectively than any wall. Later, the river also served as an important highway for trade, generating enormous wealth for everyone from Frisians and Vikings to the merchants of the Hanseatic League and Golden Age Amsterdam.

The Düsseldorf waterfront, with Frank Gehry’s white MedienHafen building. Photograph: Lukas Bischoff/Getty Images

Later still, terrible wars were triggered partly by rivalry over the coal and steel of the Rhineland. The West German capital of Bonn found itself on the frontlines of the cold war, while the Franco-German border city of Strasbourg emerged as one of the headquarters of the European Union.

More happily, the river has also played a central role in shaping Europe’s culture. Perhaps the most famous example of this can be found along the “Romantic Rhine” in western Germany, which I’d travelled along before arriving at the alpine lighthouse. This area is known for its beauty, and it didn’t disappoint. Heading south from Koblenz on an open-topped boat, I passed through a seemingly endless series of pretty riverside towns, vineyards and forested peaks. Rocky islands were decorated with whitewashed chapels, and almost every hilltop had a crumbling castle. It looked like the kind of place where Shrek might live happily ever after.

Oberalp pass with Lighthouse replica, Switzerland. Photograph: Loetscher Chlaus/Alamy

I wasn’t the first visitor to appreciate the Rhine’s beauty, of course. In the 19th century, as German patriots searched for symbols around which their nascent country could unite, the middle Rhine emerged as a potent source of pride. Just as the British national identity was (and is) defined partly by the country’s island geography, the emerging German national identity was, for many patriots, epitomised by Germany’s wild spaces. In that context, the Rhine was a cleansing force in an era of industrialisation; a unifying belt which tied states together, and a symbol of an idealised past where heroism prevailed. “Memories of what the Germans once were and could be in the future are evoked nowhere so clearly as on the Rhine,” Friedrich Schlegel wrote in 1803.

Koblenz. Photograph: bbsferrari/Getty Images

Monuments, statues and castles were erected along the river, and plays and operas penned about it. Wagner, Goethe, Beethoven, Turner and Byron were all inspired by trips along it. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after a visit to a Rhine town where a local man was rumoured to be experimenting on dead bodies, and both the car and the bicycle were invented on the river’s banks.

Brits on Grand Tours of the continent were also enthralled by the sight of attractions like the famous Lorelei rock. “Oh! This, to me, were earthly bliss,” an ecstatic James Blake wrote after his visit in 1840. “My nature sure was made for this!”

Today, such enthusiasm for a river can be hard to imagine. In Europe, most of us now work in office buildings rather than in mills or factories powered by waterwheels, and we travel by plane, car or train rather than riverboat. Rivers themselves have been tamed, with islands removed and banks overlaid with stone. In that context, even mighty waterways like the Rhine, Thames or Elbe are seen as nice places to walk a dog or have a drink after work, but not as exciting, important things.

Duisburg inner harbour. Photograph: Nikada/Getty Images

This is a shame, because in many ways rivers are still crucial. North of the Romantic Rhine, I spent a few weeks exploring the area around the German cities of Duisburg and Düsseldorf, where the rivers Rhine and Ruhr merge. The Ruhrgebiet conurbation isn’t always attractive – in many places factory chimneys outnumber trees, and the air tastes like burnt metal. The region has long been one of the engines of the German economy, thanks to the vast coal mines and steelworks clustered there. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, cities like Duisburg developed so fast that when soldiers came home on leave, they had trouble finding their homes. Today, the closure of mines and factories has destroyed thousands of jobs, and some former industrial sites are now tourist attractions, with skating rinks and climbing walls installed in place of furnaces and shipyards. However, the Rhine remains part of the lifeblood of the region’s economy.

Rotterdam, at the mouth of the river, is by far the biggest port in Europe, handling more than twice as much trade as the ports at Southampton and Felixstowe combined.

Finally, I was also surprised to learn the extent to which the Rhine still shapes the identity of the people who live near it. This was perhaps most obvious at the start of my trip, travelling through the Dutch polders and to cities like Dordrecht and Utrecht. Here in the Rhine delta, traces of water’s influence are everywhere; from the windmills which were built to pump out water from boggy fields, to the cheese and tulips produced on the fertile land left behind.

The omnipresent water even shaped the Netherlands’ political system: with one town’s safety dependent on others maintaining their flood defences, it’s only natural that politics should be more like a business negotiation than a bloodsport.

Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe. Photograph: Henryk Sadura/Getty Images

Elsewhere, the Rhine also remains a powerful symbol. The river still forms part of the borders of five countries, and helps tie neighbouring countries together, giving them a shared interest in keeping trade free and the water clean.

The modern Rhineland isn’t without its challenges – last summer, rising temperatures meant the water levels in the river were so low that shipping ground to a halt, denting Germany’s economy and causing fuel shortages in the Netherlands. Overall, though, the outlook remains good. Business is still booming and tourism thrives. After an international clean-up project, the Rhine’s waters are the cleanest in decades. And after centuries of conflict across the river, war between France and Germany is almost certain never to happen.

To a Brit in the age of Brexit, the places through which the Rhine flows often appear to represent modern Europe at its best: internationalist, industrious and interconnected; blending cultures and influences as seamlessly as the waters from its tributaries. Standing by one of the lighthouses and gazing up or downstream, it’s hard not to feel awed by all the ways in which one river has shaped history. “The Rhine,” Victor Hugo wrote, “is unique; it combines the qualities of every river … Mysterious, like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and, like a river of Asia, abounding with phantoms and fables.”

A man I met on a boat near Arnhem was even more succinct. “The Rhine,” he said, “connects us all.”

Ben Coates is author of The Rhine: Following Europe’s Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps, available for £8.79 from the Guardian Bookshop

Excursions and activities on the Rhine

Cycle the Green Heart

Photograph: Anton Havelaar/Alamy

The “Groene Hart” (Green Heart) of the Netherlands is as Dutch as a landscape could be: flat green fields, ancient windmills, dairy cows and dozens of rivers which form part of the Rhine delta. To get a taste of it, rent a bicycle in Gouda or Dordrecht and cycle east, stopping in an ancient village like Oudewater for lunch, cheese tasting or a glass or three of Heineken. • holland-cycling.com

Carnival in Cologne

The Kinderdreigestirn during the annual Rose Monday Carnival parade. Photograph: Gina Wetzler/Getty Images

The Rhine isn’t all pretty forests and castles – the cities of the German Rhineland are known for their raucous carnivals. Visit Cologne during Carnival (20-28 Feb 2020) or the Christopher Street Day parade (6-8 July 2019) for a wild day out – but don’t expect much sleep. • cologne.de

Cruise

It’s not exactly off the beaten track, but a “Romantic Rhine” boat cruise is still one of the best ways to explore the river at its most beautiful. Countless options are available, from weeks-long luxury cruises to one-hour ferry rides. The prettiest section is between Koblenz and Bingen, where there’s an ancient castle on almost every hilltop. • kdrhine.com

Swim the Rhine in Basel

Basel is one of Europe’s most picturesque cities, with the river carving right through its centre. The best way to see the old town is by swimming past it in the crystal clear river, either during the annual Basel Rhine Swim or at your own pace. • basel.com

Lake Constance

One of the largest lakes in Europe, Lake Constance (or Bodensee) bulges from the Rhine like a giant bead on a string. To explore it, go island-hopping by ferry from the Swiss town of Konstanz east towards Austria, with a view of the Alps on the way. Or, if your budget allows, ride an airship high over the German part of the lake. • zeppelin-nt.de

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