I’ve wanted to see the La Brea tar pits on Wiltshire Boulevard in the heart of Los Angeles, since I was a schoolboy. I can’t remember where I first read about them, but I was fascinated by the concept – asphalt that oozes from the ground trapping mastodons, and saber-tooth tigers, and dire-wolves and thousands…
I’m not sure how this building is still standing – after all, I’m sure I’ve seen it destroyed a number of times! Ah Hollywood, how deeply ingrained into our collective psyche you have become 🙂 The Capitol Records building is one of the most recognizable icons in LA .. which says something, given the number of…
In most places in America, this picture would evoke fear – or at least it would evoke memories of September 11. But in San Diego, it’s virtually unnoticed – happening, as it does, around 500 times every day. San Diego is the busiest single runway airport in America, and it’s flight path is intriguing – coming in,…
As part of our road trip through the western states of the US, Shirley and I found ourselves at the US / Mexico border this week, at the Tijuana / San Ysidro crossing – and a single image struck me as being somewhat emblematic of the relationship. We were just near the larger of two…
For most computer users around the world, Adobe is a software company that makes PDFs, and Photoshop, and Illustrator, and Lightroom, and Premiere, and for radio geeks like me Audition. But there’s another, much older Adobe. As you travel through the American south-west, you see a variety of architectural styles and building materials –…
Three men, Three days. 380,000km each way. All in a tin can this small. The Apollo moon shots of the late 60s and early 70s were an amazing time – and an amazing technological feat. But now they are gone, leaving little for nerds like me except memories. And the occasional museum exhibition, like the…
It’s a funny thing – I grew up just a kilometer away from Maroubra Beach in Sydney – and when I was a kid, the suburb was nowhere near as filled-in as it is today. There were sand dunes everywhere when I was a pre-teen, and it seemed to me that they were endless. Of…
Take me out to the ball game! Today’s #travelpics feature will be short – we are supposed to be on the road again in 15 minutes and I have yet to finish packing up for the next leg of our trip – but I give you “The American Game”. Maybe. Baseball has long been considered…
When I was a young teen, I remember hearing about a loony American millionaire who had bought the London Bridge, and had it shipped to Arizona, brick by brick. We just put it down to eccentricity – one of those “Only in America” stories. Then, this week, Shirley and I drove across that bridge,…
It’s been called The Mother Road, the Road to Opportunity, America’s Main Street .. its been celebrated in movies, and songs .. and it exists, in its traditional form, in a mere handful of places. It’s Route 66, the legendary highway from Los Angeles to Chicago. One of America’s first national highways, the road connected…
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