While Bonnie was walking about New York City taking interesting photographs, Don was following close behind with a GoPro, capturing things that moved, and there was a lot of movement. Here is a quick video of our Impressions of New York City.
If you caught our previous post, you’ll know that we were staying at a hotel with a view of Times Square, so it will be no surprise that the video clips are centered around Times Square, the surrounding neighborhoods, and Central Park, all in Manhattan.
So please, take a look at our video and get a feel of what we experienced in our two days in Manhattan.
It’s not going to be possible to see this city in two days. Probably wouldn’t be possible to see it in a lifetime. Two days won’t even provide a good overview, but it’ll have to do this time. That’s all we have. So far, from what we’ve seen, we’ve been impressed enough that we plan to come back. We’re staying in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, in a room that overlooks Times Square, so there’s quite a bit of vibrance and color right outside the door. We didn’t come here for peace and quiet, and we’re not getting it. After all, it’s New York City. The Big Apple, the city that never sleeps.
Our first day was spent walking around Times Square, through the Theater District, and a few blocks either direction.
Traffic
Traffic in New York City is about what you would expect from any major city in the world. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Traffic—in terms of motor vehicles moving about the street—is what we thought it would be. We’re not driving in it, so it’s hard to care too much. It wasn’t any worse or any better than, say, London, or downtown San Francisco. It’s hard to imagine living here and using a car as our primary transportation. Driving would be pretty slow, but parking would be nearly impossible. If we lived here, the best strategy would probably be to sell the car, or park it somewhere in storage outside the city. Maybe New Jersey. And use it only when we have to go outside the city. In town, we would be best served to use public transportation; the Subway or a taxi comes to mind. Indeed, to get here from La Guardia, we used a town car service, and have the same service booked to get us to the ship on Saturday morning. Driving in from La Guardia was about eight miles, and took a little over an hour. Getting to the ship is again about eight miles over to Brooklyn, and should take about an hour to get there. Like we said, driving is easy. Just let a professionals do it.
There’s a real estate show on TV featuring some of New York City’s high end real estate brokers. We found it interesting that they all have drivers to take them around town. We now see why.
Walking About
View of Times Square on a Thursday afternoon. Photo by Bonnie FInk.
Walking around Manhattan—in Times Square and the immediate area—was about what we expected, except that the vendors trying to sell things we didn’t want were as bad as anywhere we’ve ever been. Worse even than Caribbean towns on days when a cruise ship is in. The worst of the bunch were the guys and girls selling tickets to Hop On Hop Off buses. Truthfully, only a couple of the vendors were truly bad, and years of dealing with it on our part made it relatively easy to dismiss.
We made a venture outside on a Friday evening, when things in Times Square were just starting to get busy, and busy they were. The crowds were quite large and for the most part, moved about in an orderly fashion. Once in a while there would be a tourist that stops in the middle of the pedestrian flow to take a picture, and muck up the works, and some folks would just stop for no particular reason, and fowl up the flow then too. But for the most part things moved along reasonably well.
Pedestrians and traffic signals work a little differently here too. It seems that most folks would watch the yellow light opposite their flow of traffic and start across the street when the yellow illuminated. This worked much of time. And of course, sometimes it didn’t work very well at all. We know that most people have grown up ignoring traffic signals, but doing so here can have consequences. If you come to New York, pay attention to what the locals are doing, and learn quickly.
Shopping
Lots of “I love NY” coffee cups. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
There is (of course) lots of shopping in the area, from clothing stores to New York souvenir shops. Again, this is what we expected for an area inhabited mostly by tourists. Our shopping consisted of a quick walk down to Best Buy to pick up a cable we forgot to bring on the trip, a stop in at Walgreens for some things that didn’t fit in the luggage aboard the airplane, a stop at Starbucks, and lunch at Bubba Gump’s.
Central Park
Thursday we walked south to Central Park. We made it through North Woods and as far south as The Lake before heading back. Again, there’s too much to see in the little time we have, so we’ll make it an overview of some of the very limited things we have time to visit.
Looking toward the Bow Bridge on The Lake. An algae bloom was occurring so the lake was a little green. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
If you do anything at all in New York City, go to Central Park. This place is such a contrast to the city surrounding it that it’s almost hard to believe. If we lived here, in the city, we would certainly spend time in Central Park as often as we could. It’s a place where city dwellers can go that gives them a sense of the outdoors, a place to roam, a haven with room.
Construction for Central Park began during the American Civil War. It was originally 778 acres of city owned land, but ended up at its present size of 843 acres. It is generally considered to be the most visited urban park in the world, with 40 million visitors in 2013.
Central Park is free to enter and use, by the way. It’s paid for mostly with privately donated funds managed by a private organization called the Central Park Conservancy. They contribute about 75% of the park’s 63 million dollar annual budget. The rest, presumably comes from the City, with no doubt a state or federal grant thrown in here and there.
There was a time in the 1970s’ when Central park was considered a dustbowl by day and a crime scene by night. City budget cuts to the Parks Department left them with virtually no way to effectively manage and maintain the park system in New York City. That’s when the Central Park Conservancy came into being and, through the influx of private money and private sector management, the park system, including Central Park, has made a dramatic restoration. We never saw it in its declining years, but we had heard of its reputation of being less than a stellar place to visit; the reputation is no doubt left over from the declining years of the 60s’ and 70s’.
You can take a Gondola ride on The Lake in Central Park. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
Central Park is clean, well maintained, safe, representative of the outdoors, and seems to have an activity to match just about any mood. We saw walking trails, horse drawn carriages, pedicabs, meadows for sun bathing, café and restaurant choices, and more. There were row boats to rent, volleyball courts, baseball diamonds, you name it. We saw people enjoying the sun, several dozen people rowing boats around the lakes, plein air painting, and a few just curled up under a tree, reading or taking a quick nap. In our short half day hike around the park, we encountered several different kinds of small wildlife, from squirrels, to a racoon. Several species of birds were about, including a flock of Canada Geese. After all, what park doesn’t have a flock of Canada Geese these days, usually with attitudes?
This horse was all decked out with a feather. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
What we did not see was a large homeless population, or a large population of people in our faces trying to sell things. There were venders in one area, but the atmosphere was more like a farmer’s market, where we were welcome to approach and engage the vendors, but they weren’t chasing us down the street. Our experiences with other urban parks in the last few years had really prepared us for the inevitable homeless population camped out in the underbrush and panhandling from everyone who walked by. No such thing here in Central Park. And we covered a large part of the park, walking a loop from 7th Avenue down around The Lake and back up to 7th Avenue. What we saw in terms of people was New Yorkers, using their park in the way it was intended. We’ll no doubt return to New York in the future, and a trip to Central Park will certainly be on the list.
We came to New York primarily because it’s where we need to be to catch a Cunard Lines ship across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. We threw in a couple of days in the city just to get an overview, and see if we wanted to bother to come back as tourists. What we learned was that we should have scheduled a week at the very minimum to see this incredible city. No doubt we’ll return at some point in the not-too-distant future with more time and a better, more thoroughly researched agenda. There is so much to see and do that two days was only enough to make us want more.
Here are more pictures of our two days in New York City:
Not long ago we made a short Caribbean cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas. Our trip took us along the western Caribbean and into some interesting ports along Central America. One stop that we found fascinating was Colon, Panama. This is the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal, and we had a chance to view the locks in operation. Continue reading →
One of our favorite parks for photographing animals has to be Custer State Park in the southwest corner of South Dakota. We’ve been traveling there for years and any time we even come close, we usually manage to find a way to stop by.
The terrain is mostly rolling hills, green with vegetation and a smattering of trees here and there. There’s also some high country with mostly trees, and we’ve spent time there day hiking. But our primary interest has always been down in the lazy hills, where the animals are.
At Custer, you’ll find several different species, usually grazing herd types. Bison, deer, and pronghorn are common. In fact, the animals that sparked the most interest for us was the pronghorn, or antelope. Usually you can’t approach a pronghorn close enough to get a good image. They’re too wary of people, and in fact they base their defenses on having lots of open space, and keeping a big distance from predators. In Custer State Park, all that seems to be irrelevant. We wouldn’t say they’re “approachable,” because we don’t approach animals, but they’re easily spotted, and very often they’re spotted near the roads where pictures are quite easy. Since most animals at this park are used to humans, and know that they don’t represent a threat, they’re not bothered by our close proximity.
Other animals we enjoy seeing at Custer include wild burros, prairie dogs, and an occasional coyote.
How to get to Custer State Park and Where to stay
We’re usually driving up Interstate 25 out of Denver when we visit Custer State Park. From there we go up 25 to Cheyenne, then head out on State Highway 85 to Lusk, north from there on 18 to Newcastle, then right (east) on State Highway 16 into Custer State Park.
There are five lodges you can stay at if you want to stay in the park. If you like to camp there are also several very nice campgrounds available. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
There are five lodges you can stay at if you want to stay in the park. If you like to camp there are also several very nice campgrounds available. Photo by Bonnie Fink.
We’ve camped at some of the campgrounds within the park using our tent, and we’ve stayed in hotels in Keystone and Custer. We’ve also stayed in some of the many RV parks in our 5th wheel trailer. South Dakota in general and the Black Hills-where Custer is located-in particular is a seriously popular summer travel destination, so there are a lot of choices in terms of accommodations.
When tent camping, we’ve stayed twice at the Blue Bell Campground. It’s a quiet state operated facility near the town of Custer. Also nearby is an active horse stable with trail riding, and a rustic lodge, also called Blue Bell. We’ve not stayed at the lodge, but the Buffalo Burger for dinner was good. There’s a general Custer State Park web site that’s a good place to start your research if you plan to go. To learn about the many lodges and cabins within the park, here’s another site to check out.
When traveling with our 5th wheel trailer, we’ve usually stayed in Custer at the Beaver Lake Campground. We can’t say it was the best because we haven’t stayed at them all, but it was good, and to us, worth the money. We’ve actually stayed there a couple of times over the years, so it was good enough to go back.
When staying in a hotel room, we usually have stayed in the Holiday Inn Express located in Keystone. We like the consistent good quality of Holiday Inn Express, and since we’re usually pretty loyal, we get points that translate into free nights with the chain. It offsets the price and actually makes staying with Holiday Inn Express a reasonable deal financially.
We recommend reservations well in advance when visiting Custer State Park. This location is easily as popular as some of the major National Parks, and demand on lodging and camping is high. See the next section if you might want to visit during the last part of July or first park of August.
Motorcycles
A drive on Iron Mountain road will give you a view of Mt. Rushmore. If you visit during the week of Sturgis you will also see more than one Motorcycle. Photo by Donald Fink.
A drive on Iron Mountain road will give you a view of Mt. Rushmore. If you visit during the week of Sturgis you will also see more than one Motorcycle. Photo by Donald Fink.
Have you heard of Sturgis? It’s the absolute American Mecca of Motorcycle rallies, bringing in as many as 750,000 motorcycle enthusiasts every year. We’ve been twice, and from the perspective of a motorcycle rider, it’s a unique and phenomenal experience. It’s called Sturgis because that’s the town where the activity is centered, but it’s grown so large that the entire region is engulfed in the rally. Every little town for miles around is swarming with bikes, bikers, and vendors for the period of the rally.
This is not the time to show up with your 40 foot motorhome or 5th wheel. We’ve been there once with our 5th wheel, but we showed up slightly before it started, and parked the trailer and truck the entire time, making our way around on the Harley during the rally. No problem for us, but when we’ve seen folks with their trailers and motorhomes stuck in traffic in a town where the bikers are parking in the middle of the street, they weren’t usually looking happy.
As we mentioned, we’ve been there during Sturgis twice, and loved every minute of the experience, but we were there with our bike for transportation. So, as we saw quoted in one publication, “If you like motorcycles, Sturgis is the first full week of August, and the weekends on either side. If you don’t like motorcycles, Sturgis is the first full week of August, and the weekends on either side.” This year (2017) that’s August 4th through August 13th.
If you do plan to go to Custer State Park during Sturgis week, get your reservations for your lodging or campgrounds well in advance. We recommend a year out. Yes, we said, a year out. This event is seriously popular. You can learn more about the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally at their web site here. Dates for future rallies are listed here.
The Animals
Profile of an Antelope buck near sunset at Custer State Park, South Dakota. Photo by Donald Fink.
Profile of an Antelope buck near sunset at Custer State Park, South Dakota. Photo by Donald Fink.
This post is supposed to be about the animals, so let’s get to it. As we mentioned earlier, our reason for originally traveling to Custer State Park those many years ago was to find good opportunities to photograph antelope. We had heard that these animals were not as wary of humans as they normally are, and it turned out to be true. What we didn’t expect was the large number of herds of American Bison that roam the park. Yellowstone is usually known for their large herds, but Custer has got to be a close second. Actually, Yellowstone is usually home to between 2,300 and 5,500 bison. Custer State Park has around 1,300 animals. Of course, Yellowstone is 3,471 square miles in size (over 22 million acres), and Custer State Park is around 71,000 acres.
One event we’ve never attended at Custer State Park is the Buffalo Roundup. Each year, on the last Friday in September, park crews, cowboys and cowgirls saddle up and herd the park’s buffalo into corrals. It’s part of the park’s management plan to keep the population at a sustainable level. About 200 animals are sold off (usually), and the calves are vaccinated before being released back into the park. The large bulls are not rounded up because they’re, “just too darn hard to control.”
The roundup is open to the public for viewing. If you’re a cowboy or cowgirl and want to participate, we have no idea how that happens, but a good place to start looking is at the Travel South Dakota web site.
Other animals we routinely encounter at Custer, other than buffalo and antelope, are the herd of wild burros. These guys seem to hang out near the corrals along the Wildlife Loop Road. We call them wild burros, but they’re actually feral burros, meaning that they are domesticated animals that were released and have reverted back to a wild state, sort of.
Keep in mind that these burros are potentially more dangerous than many wild animals. The reason is because they will approach you, not only begging for food, but in many cases expecting it. They’re fun to view, but exercise extreme caution when you’re around them. They have no fear of humans, and have learned to expect to be fed when humans are around. They sometimes get a bit on the aggressive side. Our advice? Be very careful around them, and never, ever feed them. If you do, you might not like the reaction when the feeding stops.
Now please, take a moment and have a look at our images below. We’ve put together some of our favorites from Custer State Park. If you have an experience related to visiting Custer State Park, or just a question, we would appreciate hearing from you in the comments below.
Not long ago, we visited the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar for a day. As many of you will know, Gibraltar is located at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic, along the north shore. To its immediate north is Spain, and across the channel to the south is Morocco, and Africa. Continue reading →
On our first trip to Germany, we paid a visit to Lichtenstein Castle in southern Germany. This privately held Schloss is perched high on a white rock cliff overlooking the Echaz River and the town of Honau in the German state of Baden-Württenberg. We were so impressed with this castle that we came back a second day to get a better look of the buildings with a better sky.
Early History
The site where Lichtenstein Castle now sits has a history that goes back as far as the 4th or 5th century, but the most notable period starts around AD 1100 when another castle was located on the site. It was occupied by a group of “Ministerials” of the counts of Achalm, and later the counts of Württemberg.
Ministerials was a term referring to, in this case, knights. They were an interesting class of people in that they were not free people, but were considered to be nobility of sorts. In this case, the knights lived in the castle and were charged with defending the interests of the counts.
Since the counts were not particularly friendly with the folks over in Reutlingen, they were under frequent attack. The castle was destroyed twice, once during the imperial civil war of 1311 and once again at some point between 1377 and 1381. These ruins most likely are still there since they were locate about 500 meters away from the current buildings.
In 1390 the castle was built again, but on the site of the present day castle. This time it was regarded as the best fortified castle of the Middle Ages, and was in use until around 1567 when the then owners abandoned it. In 1802, King Frederick I of Württemberg acquired the property and dismantled the castle to the foundation and built a hunting lodge.
The present day castle was constructed around 1840 by Duke Frederick of Wurttemburg, who was inspired by the book, Lichtenstein, written in 1826 by Wilhelm Hauff, a German Poet.
According to Wikipedia, Lichtenstein in German means “Shining Stone,” but a literal translation according to Google means, “thin stone.” Whatever its true meaning, we thought the castle was worth the time it took to visit.
Touring the Castle
On the first day we were here, no tours were offered in English, so we took the German language tour. It was of course accompanied with an English written guide, and it was fun to challenge our German skills.
No photography is allowed on the inside of the castle. In many cases,gallery here this is because the property is privately owned, but in this particular case, the most likely reason is because nearly all the walls are covered with original art. And it’s not art hanging on the walls, but the actual walls are painted with artful scenes. After a few million flashes, the paint would no doubt begin to fade prematurely. Whatever the reason, we weren’t able to capture images on our tour of the castle, but you can see their .
We came back a second day just to get some images of the outside grounds because the weather was more cooperative and we had some blue skies for our backdrop.
To Get There
We were staying in Baden-Baden when we visited Lichtenstein Castle. We mentioned Baden-Baden in an earlier post, along with some pictures here.The drive was about two hours to get from one place to another, but that was part of the reason we were in Germany, to see a bit of the country. Fortunately, there are two ways to get there, so we were able to make a trip there on one road and return on another, making a full day’s loop out of the trip.
One of the things we did before our trip was to go online to Google Maps and make note of all the latitude/longitude coordinates of all the castles and other important places we planned to visit. We’re not sure if the GPS receivers and maps are less reliable in Europe than they are in the states, or if we simply didn’t understand the addressing system. Whatever the reason, it has been handy a few times to have the coordinates along to tell the GPS where we’re trying to go. And of course, we do know how to read maps, but somehow reading a map in German wasn’t nearly as easy as simply punching in a couple of coordinates to the GPS.
We’re not planning to return to Lichtenstein Castle on our upcoming trip to Germany this summer, but it’s only because we plan to be in a different part of the country, and our traveling won’t necessarily take us that far south again in the near future. Still, if we were in the area, it would certainly be on our list of places to see once more.
Visiting Disney and staying on property during a holiday of some kind has become almost a tradition for us. It started with New Years, wanting to be on property so as to not have to deal with New Years Eve drivers. Then it moved to Christmas, and now it seems like pretty much any excuse we have, we’re staying on property having a mini-vacation. This last one was the Fourth of July holiday, and we stayed at one of our favorite moderate hotels, Disney’s Coronado Springs.
Coronado Springs is modeled in the 17th century Spanish style buildings found all over the southwest. If you’re a Californian, you might think it represents Southern California because that’s what much of the southern half of the state looks like.
This hotel, as we understand it, is designed as a place that Disney used for convention business. In fact, it houses a 90,000 square foot convention hall that’s set aside just for that purpose. What this means to most folks is that, unless there’s an actual convention in progress when you’re there, it’s usually pretty quiet. We’ve actually been there when a convention was in town and it was still reasonably quiet compared to some of the other hotels. There’s a new fifteen story addition currently under construction here, projected to be complete some time in 2019, and we think the hotel will still be a quiet, out-of-the-way, lazy little place to relax.
We’ve heard people mention on social media that Coronado Springs is too far away from everything, but we’re not sure what that means. We use Disney transportation when we’re staying on property, and to us, everything is no farther away than the nearest bus stop. In fact, Coronado Springs sits between Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom, so it’s actually in between two of the four parks, and still just a bus ride away from the remaining two parks and Disney Springs.
Although not intended as a full review of this hotel, we thought we should at least mention one of our favorite restaurants, Las Ventanas. Another tradition of ours is to seek out the best breakfast on Disney property. There is some good company here in terms of quality, places like The Garden Grill at Epcot and Whispering Canyon Cafe at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.
Currently, our all-time favorite breakfast is the Whole Wheat Pancakes, although a close second is the Sourdough French Toast or the Huevos Divorciados.
It’s not fair to try to rank the hotels at Disney. For us, we happen to like them all, and our favorite is usually the one we’re staying in at the time. Of course we prefer the Deluxe hotels over the Moderates, and the Moderate hotels are preferred over the Value resorts. But since we’ve stayed in all three “classes” of hotels, we’ve never had a bad time or even a valid complaint. So, we can truthfully say that since we were just there over the Fourth of July, Coronado Springs is our favorite Moderate hotel on Disney Property. Until our next stay.
Below are a few images we made during this recent visit. We did a more complete Photo Tour for MousePlanet.com in 2016, and you can see the images and article here.
One of our favorite pass times when traveling in the American southwest is visiting the various cliff dwelling houses. Places like Mesa Verde come immediately to mind, but the area is scattered with many more out of the way places that can really make an adventure to the southwest something special. Continue reading →
