Tag Archives: America We had started planning the year before … My husband and I had been driving, in our usual hurry, from a friend’s house in North Carolina to an airplane in Nashville, Tennessee. Not far from Asheville, NC, we pulled a short way off the highway to visit the Blue Ridge Parkway Visitor Center. A working wifi, […]  Steering the car off the turnpikes and onto the Blue Ridge Parkway is like stepping back in time. One has to slow down instantly: the posted speed limit is never higher than 45 mph (72 kph), and the winding mountain curves ensure slower speeds in many sections. For the 469 miles (755 km) that snake through the valleys and passes […]  You could spend weeks – or even years – exploring the scenic views, the mountain trails, the towns and villages, and the flora, fauna, music, culture and craft along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Meandering along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains in America’s Appalachians, the National Parkway starts at Rockfish Gap, Virginia, where it continues south from the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park (see: In the Virginia Woods), and […]  One of my Australian friends is heading to the States next month: “Las Vegas!” she told me, with some excitement. I guess it is an exciting city: there are bars and clubs, live entertainment of every description, and of course the gambling. But, after a day or so, I’m ready to escape. The best part of Vegas, in my […]  The Wild West is a place of legends and stories… Few are more moving than that of Sacagawea (Bird Woman), the Lemhi Shoshone woman, kidnapped in 1800 by a raiding party of Hidatsa when she was about 12, and a year later, given or sold, along with another young captive Shoshone girl, to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper. Thirty-four year old Charbonneau was […] |
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