Nashville, TN
Nashville is the capital, and some would say the heart of Tennessee. The population of around 700,000 swells with tourists who come for the music, the food and the party attitude.
Johnny Cash in Nashville
Johnny Cash (1932-2003) is Mike's favorite singer, so we definitely had to spend a few hours in the Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville. Raised by cotton farmers during the Great Depression, he learned how to [...]
Broadway Shows in NYC
Seattle Theatre Group (STG) pulls together a group of donors annually to experience theater outside Seattle. Live theater has a visceral bond between the performers and the audience. The way the audience gasps, laughs, claps [...]
CIA in Hyde Park, NY
The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) was founded after WWII as a vocational training school for returning vets to learn renumerative skills. Now with three American satellite campuses as well as one in Singapore, it's [...]
West Point, NY
West Point is the oldest continuously occupied military post in the United States. Located on the Hudson River in New York, West Point was identified by General George Washington as the most important strategic position [...]
Sleepy Hollow in New York
About thirty miles north of Manhattan lies the village of Sleepy Hollow, in Westchester County, NY. American writer Washington Irving penned the Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820, part of a book of short stories [...]
FDR Presidential Library, NY
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, NY in a home that he later extensively remodeled and expanded. He called it "Springwood", just because it was fashionable to name one's mansion back in the [...]
Storm King, NY
Storm King Art Center, named after its proximity to Storm King Mountain, is a 500-acre outdoor museum located in New York’s Hudson Valley, where visitors can hike amid large-scale sculpture and site-specific commissions under open [...]
Castles, Castles and Castles
Aside from Edinburgh and Stirling Castle, we also saw Dunnotar, Doune, Drum, Dunrobin, Cragievar, Eilaen Donan, Crathes, Dunfermline Abbey and Holyrood Palace. To be honest, they did start to blur a bit after a while. [...]
Mike’s Olympic National Park Hike
With Sue in Scotland, Mike took a 55 mile hike from the south to the north end of Olympic National Park with Wildland Trekking. On an eight day trip - only three days of rain! [...]
Stirling, Scotland
Brutally quick Scottish history: William Wallace (aka Braveheart) was a 13th century Scottish warrior who led the Scots against King Edward I of England in 1296, the First War of Scottish Independence. He was knighted [...]
Edinburgh, Scotland
We walked for hours through the city, every corner of which seemed steeped in history.