New Zealand Travelog #13
Te Anau, NZ - Thu, 11 Apr 2024, 7pm

It's a well known fact for Americans (well, some Americans) that when we travel pretty much anywhere else in the world we have to convert distance measurements to/from kilometers. New Zealand is no exception to that ( Read more... )

New Zealand Travelog #11
Te'Anau, NZ - Wed, 10 Apr 2024, 9:30pm

We've just gotten settled into our hotel room in Te'Anau after a roadtrip through the Catlins in southeastern New Zealand. After 524 km of driving and several miles of hiking it's been a long day ( Read more... )

Australia Travelog #40
Leura, NSW - Sat, 30 Dec 2023, 1pm

One of the first things we did when we landed in Australia at the start of the week was get some cash. We knew from reading ahead that it's easy to get around in Australia without cash; credit/debit cards are widely used. For example, transit buses have nicely integrated tap-to-pay systems. ( Read more... )

Australia Travelog #34
Leura, NSW - Fri, 29 Dec 2023, 9pmAfter dinner this evening we stopped by the grocery store in town again. Our main purpose this time was to buy painkillers. Yeah, my ankle is still killing me after I strained it from hiking down and back up too many canyons on Thursday, then did it no favors as I overdid it again today with ( Read more... )

Australia Travelog #33
Leura, NSW - Fri, 29 Dec 2023, 6pmAfter all that hiking today on an already-sprained ankle I felt what I needed was a good soak in the hotel's hot tub. Plus, it's no yet dinner hour- so many restaurants in the area are closed, including the one we want to eat at tonight. Unlike in the US ordinary restaurants aren't open ( Read more... )

Australia Travelog #24
Leura, NSW - Thu, 28 Dec 2023, 8pm

Hawk and I are back at the hotel now after a long day of hiking. First we hiked the Three Sisters then a big loop down into the canyon and back up at Wentworth Falls. We worked up a pretty good appetite from all that. We drove next door to Katoomba for supper, as that's the town with the ( Read more... )

Australia Travelog #19
Leura, NSW - Wed, 27 Dec 2023, 10pm

Today was a full day of driving in Australia. We put 404 km on our rented car. That's 251 miles in US units... not really a lot of distance by US standards, at least not western US standards, but this was in an unfamiliar road-scape. Driving in Australia is on the left side of the road, ( Read more... )

Australia Travelog #18
Casula, NSW - Wed, 27 Dec 2023, 6:30pm

You're in a foreign country. You're 7,500 miles from home. You've got a car and a free hour in your schedule. What do you do? ...You go to Costco! 🤣


( Read more... )

Australia Travelog #4
Sydney CBD - Sun, 24 Dec 2023, 2pmAs we've toured around through downtown Sydney today you could barely tell it's Christmas Eve- by US standards, anyway- and that's a good thing. Here's the Christmas displays, trees, and various other festoonery are minimal. We saw just two decorated trees today- and one was at a church. ( Read more... )

Vegas Travelog #5
Hilton Resorts World, Las Vegas - Wed, 29 Nov 2023. 3pm.

I wrote yesterday about my room on the 54th floor at the Resorts World casino. There's something that's been bothering my engineer/architect-fu all week, though. It's not actually the 54th floor. Sure, the room numbers all start with "54" and the button in the elevator says ( Read more... )