theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Travel

  • Travel: It’s a mad, mad, mad world …

    [Photo]
    IMG_7976, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    AUSTRALIA (DAY TWO) — I woke up this morning, and the world was on its head. I’m 12,000 miles from home. People drive on the wrong side of the road. The land is impossibly beautiful. People are nice. Water flows around the drain the other way. Internet access costs $26 for 2 hours. Tottenham Hotspur actually won something. The sky is down, and the ground is up. the lady sparkler doesn’t mind if I wear the same clothes day after day. 

    About that: I should have mentioned that while we made landfall yesterday, our luggage didn’t. the lady sparkler being a smart girl has two changes of clothes and four pair of underwear in her carry-on. I have 10 pounds of camera equipment. The most beguiling thing about this parallel universe we find ourselves in is that neither of us seem to care about the state of our baggage.

     

    About that: Tasmania is just devastatingly beautiful. Since Australia is the original continent — and there hasn’t been much in the way of earthquakes, volcanoes or glaciers to stir up the ground — much of what you see has been that way for the last billion or so years (give or take).

     

    The place we stayed last night was at the entrance to Cradle Mountain National Park, and so we began the morning hiking through the temperate rainforest at the mountain’s base. The youngest trees looked 500-years old, and there was a *thick* carpet of moss on anything that wasn’t moving.

     

    After our morning in Eden, we bustled ourselves off to Strahan (the ‘ha’ is silent) on the western coast of Tasmania. The last quarter of the pictures are from the city’s “park,” which seems a mild understatement as it is big enough to house a 40-minute walk through rainforest to a trio of stunning waterfalls.

     

    It’s a mad, mad world.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Travel: Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania

  • Travel: Trowunna Wildlife Park, Tasmania

    [Photo]
    IMG_7813, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    AUSTRALIA (DAY ONE) — We arrived this morning in Australia this morning, after somewhere about a 31-hour journey. We would consider being jet-lagged, but we are so confused about the time shift that we are thoroughly unable to figure out if we should be tired or not.

    The moment the lady sparkler bought tickets to Australia, she started a list of animals that she wanted to see: kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, tassie devils, platypus-es (platypi?) and wombats. Fortunately, in the run up to our trip we saw something on the Travel Channel about the Trowunna Wildlife Park outside of Launceston (the ‘ce’ is silent) which rehabilitates wounded animals.

    Now, if you haven’t been lucky enough to be on the lady sparkler’s Blackberry distribution list to announce her animal sightings, then (a) let me know and I will try and pull some strings for you, and (b) she saw ALL of the above in one afternoon sans the platypus. She even got to hold a baby wombat.

    I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure her life is complete now.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Travel: Trowunna Wildlife Park, Tasmania, Australia

  • Travel: Landfall on Australia

    [Photo]
    IMG_7750, originally uploaded by [ecpark].

  • preview: australia

    [Photo]
    Map courtesy Google Maps.
    Travelling breeds more travelling, so even before we got back from Belize, we immediately started imagining where we were going to go next. I wanted to go to Chile/Argentina (the Valdivian Coastal Reserve, the southern tip, Patagonia) and the lady sparkler was hot on South Africa or Southeast Asia.

    Turns out, the Conservancy is sending me to Australia because it is the location of our next Adopt an Acre project. We actually do most of our work on the continent through partners, so we occasionally have to fly in marketing/membership specialists to collect stories, collateral and other materials we need to launch the program.

    So, I’ll already be there for about 9 days, and the lady sparkler and I will tack on a little time beforehand. Here is how the itinerary is shaping up:

    • Tasmania — We fly straight into Tasmania from the U.S. and then drive around the island, through Cradle Mountain – Lake St. Clair National Park and Mt. Field National Park on the way to Hobart, the territory’s capital.
    • Adelaide / Great Ocean Road — We’ll spend a day or two in Adelaide, before renting a car to travel along the south coast on a road much like our Pacific Coast Highway. We’ll stop in three different seaside towns, and pass through a number of parks including Coorong, Port Cambell and Cape Otway National Parks.
    • Melbourne — As soon as we arrive into the big city, I start having meetings for the Conservancy, but the lady sparkler will have a couple of days to explore the city. I’ll have one fully free day to explore before she and I go our separate ways.
    • Gondwana Link — I’ll hop a flight to Perth, which is near our project area, and travel between Perth, Albany, Margaret River and the project itself.

      The story behind the southwest of Australia is much like the Dust Bowl-era high plains of the U.S. — government endorses cultivation, indigenous people are displaced in the onslaught, farming destroys the ecosystem and then collapses due to the land being poorly suited to cultivation.

      The Conservancy is working with local partners and the indigenous Noongar to rebuild segments of the ecosystem, and by preserving the open spaces that remain to link these fragments into a sustainable environment.

    • Sydney — the lady sparkler will come here straight from Melbourne, and I will follow long after she has gone. We will both have a day and two nights, which will be just about enough to get a picture of the Opera House.

    Needless to say, we are feel incredibly luck to have this kind of dropped in our lap. More on the work part of the trip next time around.

  • photos: wedding of the century

    [Photo]
    IMG_1136, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    words. sometimes, they seem so inadequate. i have heard that eskimos have 34 words for snow. i now believe that texans probably have 35 words for wedding. and, what i just saw probably made a case for a 36th.

    when two of our d.c. friends got engaged and invited us to their wedding in waco, texas … i could never have imagined the amazing event it would turn out to be.

    there were 600 peope in attendance, and yet i saw the bride and groom more than i think i saw my own guests at my own wedding.

    there must have been 20,000 square feet of reception space, and yet there wasn’t a single detail that was overlooked (the trash can’s in the bathrooms were wrapped in fabric that matched the rest of the wedding).

    the bridesmaid’s dresses had their own trains. the band was great. the food was fantastic. the place settings were immaculate. the red wine was allowed to breathe before serving. i talked about the english premier league with a groomsman at the afterparty (in TEXAS).

    wow. brilliantly done. and the bride and groom look fabulous. my meager mind will never be able to comprehend how such an amazing wedding is even possible. Jenna Bush (getting married this spring in Waco) should be so lucky.

    i know it’s hard to soak it all in, so flip through the pictures. i *promise* you, it’s worth the peek.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Photos: Skye & Cole’s Wedding, Waco, Texas

  • travel: waco, texas

    [Photo]
    IMG_1082, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    Explore the Photo Set:
    Travel: Waco, Texas (including Baylor University and the Dr. Pepper Museum)

  • travel: nola

    [Photo]
    IMG_7646, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    It would have been hard, in the aftermath of Katrina, for us to not feel some kind of draw towards visiting New Orleans. We have been talking about going to New Orleans for quite sometime. I have never been, and while the lady sparkler was born there, she hadn’t been in the last decade or so. It’s sad to say, but the post-hurricane discussion crystallized a feeling inside us that, if we wanted to go, it should be sooner rather than later.

    So, we had sometime this year between Christmas (in Houston) and New Years (in Waco, more on that later) and decided to make a couple days of it. While both sides of the lady sparkler’s family have a history in the city — and her father spent the first 20 years of his life there — thankfully everyone had moved away in the years before Katrina.

    The City

    First of all, we had a fantastic time. The city is very much open for business, and while we hit all the touristy areas (French Quarter, Esplanade, Garden District) we never felt unsafe, even for a moment. There was live music everywhere, descent crowds in the streets, and outrageously good food. It was just an amazing experience.

    Even so, something seemed just a bit melancholy. While the streets were full, it wasn’t as busy as it “should” have been two days before New Years (and the Sugar Bowl, even if it was Georgia vs. Hawaii). And, while we were admittedly in the wrong part of town, the locals seemed to have returned in even less force than the tourists.

    I may have been projecting, but there was a real sense that a clock was ticking on New Orleans. There was quite literally water everywhere. We must have driven on 30+ miles of causeways over all sorts of rivers, lakes, swamps and bayous to get into the city. Not to mention, the area protected by the levees blew my mind (we drove what seemed like 20 minutes from the French Quarter before we passed the last sea wall).

    It’s hard to explain how exposed 12 feet above sea-level seems unless you’ve been there (and that was the “high” ground).

    Things to Do

    So, back to the great time we had … The only “must” on my list of recommendations is Frenchman Street. Located just off the eastern edge of the French Quarter, it is much less “college frat party” than Bourbon Street. There are at least four great, authentic music venues — we saw great performances at d.b.a. and Snug Harbor, and listened in to another at Blue Nile.

    We had nothing but spectacular dining experiences, including breakfasts at La Boucherie and the ever-famous Café du Monde, lunches at Napoleon House (built in 1797) and Central Grocery (the home of the Muffalatta), and dinners at Bacco and Acme Oyster House. It seems like such a stereotype, but you really do eat and drink here non-stop, and all of it was not only reasonably well priced, but well worth their reputation / our effort. (Photos of all these places are in the Flickr photoset if you are interested.)

    Finally, if you are looking for cemeteries, St. Louis no. 3 (up near City Park) was perfectly safe, and our trip out to the Garden District (to stare at the mansions) was worth the effort. I will say that we rented a car and were glad we did; they weren’t running that many street cars, and taxis were hard to find outside of the hotels.

    Grand Finale

    I have no idea what will happen in the next 100 years, and I am even more conflicted then ever about exactly how much hubris we should muster to try and beat back what nature seems to have planned for the city. The one thing I am not conflicted about is this: Go. Honestly. Such a great experience, and there is enough left to give you a flavor of what everyone else has been talking about.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Travel: New Orleans, Louisiana

  • donald harrison jr. @ snug harbor

    [Donald Harrison Jr. @ Snug Harbor, Frenchman Street, New Orleans, Louisiana]
    the show turned out to be a reunion of some kind, with a dozen or more kids who studied under harrison at a local magnet school for music. by the end of the night, it seems like everybody in the city had made their way to the front of the stage for a solo.
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    Donald Harrison Jr. @ Snug Harbor, Frenchman Street, New Orleans, Louisiana

  • ingrid lucia @ d.b.a.

    [Ingrid Lucia @ d.b.a., Frenchman Street, New Orleans, Louisiana ]
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    Ingrid Lucia @ d.b.a., Frenchman Street, New Orleans, Louisiana

  • waylon thibodeaux @ tropical isle

    [Waylon Thibodeaux and the Bourbon Street Cajuns, Tropical Isle, New Orleans, Louisiana]
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    Waylon Thibodeaux and the Bourbon Street Cajuns, Tropical Isle, New Orleans, Louisiana