I remember the first time I saw the steeps of Columbia when we drove to Yellowstone avoiding the main highway - it was amazing! The coastal mountains familiar to us were replaced by fields, and suddenly out of nowhere steep cliffs with orderly rows of basalt pillars grew around something that, with a stretch, could be called a canyon several kilometers wide. A few minutes - and again there are only fields around. Then I said, “Wow, what was that?! We will definitely need to come back here!” However, around the same time in Wuhan, a Chinese man was going to the market to buy some rice and a couple of bats, and then you know.  

I first became fascinated with New Orleans when I watched James Bond's Live And Let Die (1973) as a child. Then there was the film Angel Heart (1987) and the game Gabriel Knight. I decided that I would definitely find myself here someday. I was attracted by the stormy mishmash of cultures and the atmosphere of an eternal holiday. And I must say that New Orleans did not disappoint me, even though it was half-empty, half-closed, and it was not possible to fully experience the atmosphere of this place.

While obscurantism is going on in some parts of the country - from the burial of criminals in golden coffins to the hammering of invented statistics on coronavirus cases into gullible heads, in other states they decided to quarantine. Among them was Florida, which in mid-May began to lift restrictions on visiting beaches and on the work of businesses in the service sector.

Alaska is a very large state. Not as big, of course, as it is painted on the usual distorted maps, where Greenland is the size of Africa. And as big as on a globe, where Africa is almost twice as large as Russia, Greenland is smaller than Kazakhstan, and the United States and Canada are almost the same size.

The Olympic Peninsula is located on the Pacific coast of Washington and its hometown of Kurt Cobain. They claim that they do not need to be reserved at all for three months. This is still a little bit about the beauty of the Pacific Northwest (although for us it is, after all, the southwest).

Photos from the April Death Valley I will start showing from the end :) This is almost the last frame made that day - sunset. Next was just the return trip to our hotel in Vegas, for the most part already in complete darkness, with only one small stop at the roadside Walgreens to buy new slippers. Why the need for such a purchase arose - I will explain below.

The obvious solution was to go straight to Boston, descend through New York and Washington to Norfolk in Virginia, and only then go back in detail through the missing central states for wintering in Montana (with wintering, by the way, it was also not clear until recently). Thus, after a week and 3,200 kilometers (we drove without haste), we arrived in the autumn lands, which in Hawaii I could only dream of.

I have repeatedly complained on this blog that there are no normal passenger railways in America. But this is not quite so - from the former luxury of the mid-XX century there are still a few amazing pieces left. And recently I was lucky to use just one such person when I drove 850 kilometers of one of the few sleeping trains in the country - the California Zephyr.

I will continue the story about Oregon that started from Portland and is far from complete, especially since now our village is covered in snow and there is nothing better than to plunge into old photos from the sea. We start in a small town - Astoria - on the border of Oregon and Washington and move on the 101st highway to the south.

In response to our enthusiasm, “Hurray, finally winter, snow and frost” some Alaskan old-timers shook their heads: they say you live here for more than three years, and then you will sing in a different way - short days, long nights, you leave to work darkly and returning home in the dark, bad roads, boring snow that needs to be constantly cleared, frost, gas and electricity bills, a disreputable house in which you spend almost all the time ... No, summer is better.

To date, Oregon, perhaps, seems to me the most beautiful and diverse state of America. It seems that here you can find almost all possible landscapes of the United States.

Where in America is the wilderness? The teenager will tell us that where there is no waifa. A tourist - where there are no other tourists, a motorist - where there are no refuellings, a traveler - where it takes a long and hard to get. For me, the wilderness is a place where no one wants to get to, at least at this time of year.

All tourists, arriving in New York, in Manhattan crowd. I - is no exception, no matter where I stop, most of the time I spend there. Where else? Not in the Bronx? And here is the opposite happened, I appeared in Manhattan raids, and the Bronx climbed all, in any case, a decent part of Riverdale. For some reason it is considered important to mention the name, when you tell it to our emigrants. Because he heard the word "Bronx", people in the know are starting to wrinkle his nose, and when specified, what I mean Riverdale, they say that it is another matter.

I've already talked about Forest Hills Gardens, but the place is so beautiful that I was ready to write about it at least every month. In fact, this is one of the few areas of New York, where I wanted to live. The quiet and cozy street parking at each house, beautiful architecture, good location. For those who hear about it the first time, I recommend to go to the link in my first post, where everything is painted in detail. The rest of the invite to enjoy the beauty of spring Forest Hills Gardens.

In the first part I showed the beginning of October. Autumn is the autumn. Nothing that I had not seen before. Then, just for one day, everything changed dramatically around the world and played in such colors that my internal sensor measuring fine hysterically zapikali and died, unable to withstand the load. It turned out that after living 38 years in the world I never knew that such a fall. It turned out that this is not crying the sky underfoot, and loyalty over the Neva, discolored, and absolutely incredible beauty.