Kings Mountain National Park

A 2009 Anniversary visit to Kings Mountain and Sequoia National Parks produced the following images.

Sedona

A Veterans Day weekend took Margie & me out to chase the 844 from Wilcox to Sibley & Mescal before setting out to Sedona for the weekend, it being our 39th anniversary on Veterans Day. I'd never seen the 844 before in person, on video of course, but not live. What a good looking engine! She was visiting Arizona for the the Arizona statehood centennial next year. The weather in Sedona could have been a whole lot better, Friday was weak (very weak) sun through a white overcast. Saturday was better, with sunny periods. We drove the Shnebley Hill Road, which was pretty rough in places, but didn't trouble the Trailblazer. I shot a good deal of video, with some time lapse, and we had a stunning sunset! Sunday was wet with very low clouds, so instead of taking the scenic route home, we just came home on Interstate 17. The wet highway took some of the mud off the car!

Java

In August, 2007, I joined a FarRail (Bernd Seilor, Berlin, Germany) tour of Java, Indonesia to see surviving steam in the sugar cane fields. The group met at Jakarta airport, from where we took an internal flight, then a bus, spent our first night in an hotel in a small town, then more bus to near Mount Bromo, an active volcano. We got up at some obscene hour (4am) to take a jeep ride to a nearby mountain to see the sun rise over the volcano. From here we carried on to visit a variety of Sugar Mills, with a wide variety of exotic, elderly little locomotives. Some of the mills were still powered by their original steam engines, and we were permitted to wander around and take pictures. Altogether an entertaining trip!