I have only put 1,500 miles on my Jeep Renegade Trailhawk since I got it last month and have not taken it more than an hour outside of Albuquerque, but I have been offroad a lot already. Nothing crazy like Moab-like trails or anything, but I have been using it as the Jeep, especially the Trailhawk version, was intended. I really like knowing I can go anywhere, do anything with this vehicle. However, I would not do everything you see in Jeep and other offroad vehicle commercials like driving down and across streams! Or causing tumult by trying to "crawl" over big rocks. To me this is destroying Nature. I do want the Jeep to help me reach places just not possible on foot, but by staying on established fire roads and unmaintained roads.
Read MoreIn my life a lot of rather big things happen rather suddenly. For example, two weeks before I landed in Seoul, South Korea, I had never been abroad before, I was about to attend Claremont Graduate University's PhD program in California, and it had never crossed my mind to work overseas. Not quite as dramatic as that, but in a similar fashion, getting a SUV to better match my work and personal lifestyle here in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a professional photographer and certified drone pilot, had only fluttered across my mind a few times. I was not even sure if it would be possible as I still had payments left on my 2013 Mazda3 sedan, which I totally loved and had zero problems with in owning it for 42,000 miles.
Read MoreMalibu has long been a mythical place to me. It is mentioned in songs, it evokes memories of old surfer movies from the 1950s, it is where I know many celebrities and sports stars currently live, and I know from studying its geography it is close to LA, but still a good drive, thus offering relative access, but far enough away to be its own world. To get to it one is treated to a stunning drive on the PCH with the Santa Monica Mountains to one side and the vastness of the Pacific Ocean on the other.
Read MoreOne quickly discovers walking around Venice Beach (I did nearly 8 miles of walking in one day!) that it is a city of many murals. Some can take up the entire side of a 3-story building, like in the above, and are very public and visible. That would seem to make the most sense to put a mural where many people can see it.
Read MoreKiki and I suddenly left Florida one Saturday night in early November. I had long been wanting to do it, but with such things sometimes they just happen all of a sudden due to the sudden rising of circumstances. We did have a destination though when setting out -- Iowa. To get there it brought us through a few U.S. landmarks that I had never been to before. One of them was Gateway Arch in St. Louis. This will be the first post in a series called Westward Bound.
Read MoreKiki and I took a weekend trip over to the West Palm Beach area of Florida to check out a dog beach near Juno. The night before we happened to come across a scenic ocean park that lead to a pier. Though this is officially the Lake Worth Pier, it is most know for Benny's on the Beach restaurant. I liked how this pier retains the classic look of old Florida from the 1960s. It suits the beach scene well better than modern looking piers and structure on piers.
Read MoreThese fireworks were not the first flashes of light in the skies over Cape Coral on 4th of July 2016 evening. Those were from the lightning sparking horizontally through the clouds. Still, Red White & Boom 2016 started sharply at 9:30pm with only a very light sprinkle. Toward the end the rain did start coming down a little harder and you can see the water droplets that got on my camera lens in the lower right corners of the two photos below.
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