NOTE: This article was origionally published in the April 2015 issue of Vrai Magazine as a two-part series. ~ ~ ~ On a breezy late-June morning, Tom Kennedy, the Director of the Zuni Tourism Program at the remote western New…
NOTE: This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of Vrai Magazine ~ ~ ~ “I leave the good stuff at home,” the man said to me. “It doesn’t sell.” “What do you mean it doesn’t sell?” I…
There is a little island out in the middle of the Gulf of Bothnia that feels like it is a thousand miles from anywhere. The mainland to the east is just out of view behind the curve of the Earth…
I've certainly allowed my website to slide the past month. But I have a good excuse. Not only have I been publishing articles elsewhere but I've been developing the first guide to the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. Most…
I have no idea who this woman is. Just another Finnish photographer. I REALLY hope she doesn't mind that I took this picture. After a meal of fried muikku I went down to the the Söderfjärden Meteor Crater to find…
It is a humid mid-morning and the pond is glassy. Dragonflies pass over the muddy flats marking the edge of the water. A Red Admiral butterfly rests on a golden point of grass. A fat and roly-poly yellow bee lumbers…
That is the Tuomiokirkko, the Helsinki Catherdral. While it is one of the most photographed buildings in all of Scandanavia, I've never been terribly impressed with it. I'm not sure why, I guess it is just that I'm not into…
We left Taos in a pretty violent lightning storm and it rained hard all the way to the Colorado border at Antonito. Our Colorado road trip was supposed to extend for over a week but given a very busy summer,…
My first crowdfunding campaign is under way! This is my very first attempt at crowdfunding one of the numerous projects I have in mind. It probably will not be the last. Please help me set this project in motion. Click…
To get into the cloud forest you first scramble past the hydrangea and on up through blackberry fields and plum and peach orchards on forty-five degree slopes. The craggy moss covered fruit trees seem older than you’d expect and are…
It is hard to deny that ecotourism has benefited the nation of Costa Rica in a great number of ways. The ecotourism boom began in the mid-1980s and really took off in the 1990s with 800,000 foreigners visiting the Central…
At 6am in the morning on November 30th, I’m flying out to Costa Rica. Astonishingly, this will be my first trip to Costa Rica but my second opportunity this year to get to Central America – a part of the…
