Category: Water
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Caldeira Velha
São Miguel, The Azores (Açores), Portugal (March 2001) Caldeira Velha clings precariously halfway down the volcanic mountain that forms Lagoa do Fogo in São Miguel’s middle interior (map). One of the amazing features of the caldera is a naturally heated swimming pool built beneath a gentle waterfall. The water’s rich mineral content stained the incline…
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Waterfalls of the Finger Lakes
New York (September 2006) Taughannock Falls The Taughannock Falls Cascade from High Above Taughannock Falls State Park lies on both sides of Route 89, eight miles north of Ithaca (map). The eastern side of the park flanks Cayuga Lake, and includes a boat launch, a playground and a sports field. The lake serves as a…
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Blue Mountains Waterfalls
New South Wales, Australia (1997) We rode the Great Western Highway out from Sydney for about two hours until arriving at Katoomba, high in the Blue Mountains. Along the way we stopped at a roadside attraction known as Scenic World, which has managed to convert an abandoned coal mine into a stop for enjoying the…
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Inner Banks, Day 2
We spent the first day getting down to our base at Elizabeth City, North Carolina. That set us up well for Day Two. Now we could focus squarely on capturing some unvisited counties. I decided to travel counter-clockwise (or anti-clockwise for the international 12MC audience). This map shows the actual coordinates I used to guide…
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Raspberry Island
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore; Bayfield County, Wisconsin (August 2007) Mariners navigated through the Apostle Islands with the Raspberry Island Light as their companion since its 1863 activation. This “Showplace of the Apostles” took its present form in 1906 when the U.S. Lighthouse Service expanded the keeper’s quarters to accommodate additional workers to operate a new…
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Morris Island Lighthouse
Charleston, South Carolina (September 2008) The Morris Island lighthouse (map) has the classic appearance of what a lighthouse “should” look like. I took this long-range photograph taken from several miles away at Fort Sumter. It doesn’t do it much justice, but you can just make out the alternating black and white horizontal bands painted onto…
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Remote Lighthouses of the Dry Tortugas
Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida (April 2009) The end of the Florida Keys is not Key West. Not hardly. Islands of coral, sand and mangrove trail out further into the Gulf of Mexico. First come the Marquesas Keys. Further out still, some 70 miles from the civilized shores of Key West come the Dry Tortugas.…
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Franklin Island Light
Muscongus Bay, Maine (August 2009) The Franklin Island light (map) is the first lighthouse featured in this video I took while traveling Muscongus Bay in southeastern Maine. There has been a lighthouse on this rock since 1807 — one of the earliest places along the Maine coastline to be lighted — although this current structure…
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Fort Point Lighthouse
Stockton Springs, Maine (August 2009) Fort Point seems to be an odd name for a lighthouse but it makes perfect since once you understand the history of the area. There was once an older structure along this point on Cape Jellison at the mouth of the Penobscot River. Literally there was a fort here, Fort…
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Canal Park
Duluth, Minnesota (August 2007) Our journey through the upper Midwest brought us as far north as Duluth. Here a city rises along the westernmost deep-water port with access to the Atlantic Ocean. This is all the more surprising because it’s a good third of the way across the continent. Even so, ships — massively large…