Travels with Tricia

Category: Outdoors

  • Pumpkins, Proceratosaurus, and a Palace: Perusing the World’s Largest Pumpkin Festival

    The Ludwigsburg Pumpkin Festival (Kürbisausstellung Ludwigsburg) feels like a quirky fairy tale. The setting is an 18th-century Baroque palace, and each year, the festival has a different theme. Over the years, organizers have paid homage to undersea critters, dinosaurs, and even Switzerland (where I imagine there might have been timepieces fashioned out of pumpkins). The…

  • Appreciating the Flora of Fall

    Even in the buff-colored, high desert of Nevada, neighborhood trees and shrubs are sporting their autumn finery.

  • A speedboat cuts through Lake Tahoe, with mountains in the distance, and evergreen trees and rocks in the foreground.

    Azure Skies, Emerald Firs and Sparkling Lake Tahoe: A Second Anniversary Celebration

    In 2010, I was twice married — to the same groom. As if describing two seasonal palaces, my husband and I like to playfully refer to our two marriages as the ‘summer wedding’ and the ‘winter wedding’.  Whereas some spouses have a difficult time remembering one wedding anniversary, we aspire to remember the date we…

  • Photo du Jour: The Emerald “Umbrellas” of a California Redwood Forest

    “For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.” Martin Luther

  • The “Laughing” Wild Horse in Nevada

    I grew up in a part of the United States that’s very different from the high desert of Nevada. As a result, it’s been a joy to get to know the flora and the fauna unique to the rugged American West. From geckos, coyotes, and snakes, to sagebrush, tumbleweed and saffron-colored rabbit brush, I’ve emitted many…

  • Trees frame the south rim of the Grand Canyon. The sky is blue, and there are white, fluffy clouds overhead.

    The Glorious Grand Canyon

    What special hours we spent walking around the south rim of the Grand Canyon earlier this week! I shall always remember the sight of the birds regally soaring a mile above the canyon’s floor and the thrill on visitors’ faces as they glimpsed the canyon for the first time. It’s hard to believe that there…