In April, 2025 Grace and I went for a three-week trip to Belgium and Netherlands. We rented Airbnbs in three cities (Bruges, Utrecht and Haarlem) for about a week each. For the last week in Haarlem we rented a car, which enabled us to…
In December, 2024 Grace and I visited Australia to attend the 80th birthday bash for my good friend Dexter Irvine. While this may seem like a long way to go for a birthday party we made the excuse that we could celebrate my 80th as well.…
In July, 2007 we made an extended trip Down Under. The impetus for making the trip was to attend the Festschrift of my good friend and colleague Dexter Irvine who was a long-time professor at Monash University in Melbourne. So we first…
In August 2024 Grace and I joined a 9-day National Geographic G Adventures tour of Alaska. The bus tour began in Anchorage, went to Homer for two days, to Seward and the Kenai Fjords National Park for 3 days, then to Denali National Park…
In July, 2024 we joined Grace’s son Larry and family on a cruise on the Danube River from Budapest to Vilshofen, Germany. Before the cruise began we went to Budapest, rented a car and explored three small towns (Gödöllő, Holloko and Eger)…
In May of 2024 Grace and I went on a trip to Croatia and the surrounding Balkan countries with Gate1 travel tour company. We went with 8 other friends from the Villages in San Jose, several of whom had previous experience with Gate1. The…
From Oct. 31 to Nov. 19, 2023 we joined an Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) group tour of Indonesia. We began in Jakarta, went to Yogykarta, Bali and ended the tour with the post-tour extension to Labuan Bajo where we went to see Komodo…
In early May 2022 I joined Eric, Jodi and Michael on a one-week trip to Hawaii, ostensibly to celebrate Michael’s 10th birthday. We flew to the Big Island and then flew to Kauai about half-way through the week. In retrospect we should have…
In November, 2023 I went to Borneo for a short but spirited trip to see orangutans in the wild. The trip was the first part of a longer one to Indonesia which I will write up separately, as the orangutans deserve their own blog. For me…
In July 2023 I went to Rwanda and Tanzania. The impetus for this first trip to Africa was to go gorilla trekking in Rwanda. Last summer I discovered that one of my friends in Madison is the sister of a noted primatologist, Amy Vedder. She…
From Nov. 14-19, 2022 I joined a photography workshop organized by Chuck Haney to explore the cypress swamps in the bayous of Louisiana. I had thought that the primary aim of the workshop was the shore birds, but it turned out the main…
After returning to Kathmandhu following our trek to Annapurna, I joined a short 2 day extension to visit Chitwan National Park, which is about a 5 hour drive from KTM. It lies on the border with India and most of the tourists seemed to be…
On both ends of my trek in Nepal, I spent a couple days visiting Kathmandu and it’s environs. This turned out to be an especially pleasant and surprising aspect of the trip as I had not prepared myself for the rich cultural attractions of…
From October 10 to 25, 2022 I joined a World Expeditions trek in the Annapurna region of Nepal. We first met in Kathmandu at the Radisson Hotel in Lazimpat for a briefing. We then flew together to Pokhara (black line) the next morning,…
A favorite genre of wildlife photographers is BIF, birds in flight. I wanted to attempt a different BIF, namely, butterflies in flight. During the fall migration of the monarch butterflies in August, 2020, it was the peak of the Covid…
For a number of years now my grandson Josh has been an avid rower with the St. Louis Rowing Club. When the family would come up for Christmas vacation, he would bring his ERG machine with him so he didn’t miss a day of workout. This summer…
In early August, 2022 I found myself with Eric, Jodi and Michael in northern Italy where my grandson Josh was representing the USA in the World Rowing regatta in Varese (see other blog). After the end of the regatta, the family went home…
These two years have not been kind to us, over and above what our world has experienced due to Covid-19. Early in the pandemic in April 2020, we lost my mother, Hua-nien Chien Yin. She was 101 so it was certainly not unexpected but her…
This blog is dedicated to our beloved golden retriever Maple, who passed away from cancer on July 4, 2021 at a few months over 8 years old. Though her life was shorter than normal it was nonetheless full of adventures and many different…
In March of 2020 I had a photo exhibit at the PhotoMidwest, the local photo club in Madison. A couple of weeks after the exhibit was up, the Covid-19 lockdown occurred and the exhibit area was closed. So the exhibit had to go on-line.…
In July, 2019 we flew out to Seattle for a 10 day trip with four very different objectives. Initially we went to visit an old friend and his wife who live on Bainbridge Island. Then we drove to Mt. Rainier National Park for 3 nights of…
In June of 2019 we took a two-week road trip with Maple to drive the back roads to Rapid City, SD and back. The primary targets were the Badlands, Black Hills, Custer State Park, and Devil's Tower. On the way out we made stops in Iowa City…
In November, 2018 we made a 20 day trip to Patagonia, primarily to do some hiking in the famous mountains of southern Chile and Argentina. We flew to Santiago, Chile which is about in the middle of the country and then to Punta Arenas, the…
We had promised our grandchildren that when they turned 13, we would take them anywhere in the world of their choice with just the three of us, though we and their parents had veto power (so, no North Korea). Josh chose Scandinavia and we…
From April 16-25, 2018 we took a road trip heading southwest from Madison. We didn’t really follow the Santa Fe Trail but that seemed the best way to title this trip since we were more or less following much of the trail, especially on the…
In late January, 2017, Lil and I went to Shanghai for 6 months shortly after I retired following 39 years of teaching and research in neuroscience at UW-Madison. I had been offered a short-term, one-semester\ teaching appointment in…
Where would you go if you only had 1 week for all of China? Or how about 2 weeks? Those were the questions we tried to answer when our kids came to visit us in Shanghai. Our son Eric brought our two older grandsons, Josh and William, for…
On May, 2017 we went to visit Huangshan (yellow mountain), one of the five sacred mountains of China and one of the most popular to visit. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. If you have seen the many Chinese paintings of jagged mountains…
During the one week spring break (March 30-April 8, 2017) we decided to go battle the crowds and travel to visit the national park of Zhangjiajie, the small rivertown Fenghuang and the famous karsts of Guilin. ZJJ and Guilin are two of the…
We arrived in Shanghai in late January, 2017 and I spent most of 4 months teaching at NYU-Shanghai and doing some traveling on weekends and vacations. After the semester was over, we had about 3 weeks before returning to the USA so we…