I like to explore and tell descriptive stories about places. I also make jewelry, music and mixed-media art.
July 2026, North Georgia/NC This summer, I don’t go to Franklin for the gem shows. Since 2018, it’s been a major seasonal event for me, only skipping over one year because of the pandemic. However, I passed through the town on the 4th of July and had another kind of insightful experience. DRAINED SWAMP The […]
Read More Interdepence Day, A JourneyFirst, happy 10 years to this blog! It was born in a café in Iquitos, Perú August 10, 2015, and it’s still going, though my travels are more local now. This August, my parents join me for a long weekend in a familiar place, beautiful Fancy Gap, to camp and attend the 89th Old Fiddlers’ […]
Read More Foggy Mountain Breakdown/Ten Years GoneSpruce Pine Mining District, North Carolina, July 2025 At the access to the mica mine stands a sign, “area closed to storm damage/not safe to enter.” Fallen trees and rocks rolled by nature can be seen. This is my first trip to western NC after Hurricane Helene. IT’S A SHAME ABOUT RAY I came for the […]
Read More GEMS OF THE BLUE RIDGE, GOING THROUGH CHANGESSomewhere in the middle of the Piedmont, a rocky river becomes silty and muddy and changes direction. Called the Deep River, it gives its name to the southeast’s largest Triassic rift Basin. The name “Deep River” is a translation of an indigenous name, sapponah (sappony), which, beyond this, has vague (conflicting?) sources but most likely […]
Read More The Deep River and its Triassic Basin: Cumnock to CarbontonPANGAEA is splitting slowly but not neatly. Forces pull apart land masses, and the water flows into the open space of the rift. The largest spaces eventually become part of the Atlantic. Smaller spaces become long, shallow lakes, swamps, and other wetlands, giving a habitat to large and small reptiles, insects, palm trees, and other […]
Read More Deep River Triassic Basin: A Grandmother of IndustriesCold Moon, December 2024 As the final full moon rises before winter solstice on a cloudy night in the North american eastern woodlands, I look back through the past solar year and then to the path that lies ahead. Earlier this year, I decided to update the name of this blog to “Arianna’s Creative Travels” […]
Read More Creative Travels: observations of a cyclePART 1, Crabtree & Mine Creek Greenways, Raleigh, NC, August & September 2024 and such Raleigh, North Carolina is the city where I was born and where I lived through college. As a child, I would play by the creek near our house and then walk along the wooded, sometimes rocky trail that followed it. […]
Read More Gneiss Weather for Piedmont GeologyThis upcoming week, I’ll be in Franklin, NC for the summer gem and mineral shows. The show dates are July 24-28, and you can find me and my jewelry at El Paso Rock Shop’s tent in the G&LW Watauga festival ground on US Hwy 23/441 (6295 Sylva Rd, Franklin, NC 28734, north of town). Franklin’s […]
Read More Franklin, NC gem show is comingMay, 2023, Afton and Waynesboro, VA INTERSECTIONS and PORTALS I’m standing at Rockfish Gap of the Blue Ridge, looking east as Interstate 64 descends toward the Virginia piedmont and Charlottesville. To the west, the highway drops in to the Shenandoah valley. Here the Blue Ridge Parkway meets Skyline Drive, to the south and north respectively, […]
Read More Rockfish Gap and Waynesboro, part 1: CROSSING and ARRIVALApril 2, 2023, Red Wing Park, Virginia Beach, Virginia Welcome, Spring. After reviving this blog a year ago and documenting visits to some of my favorite areas across the state of Virginia, I had to pause again and take care of home life matters during the colder season. It didn’t snow in our area, and […]
Read More Cherry blossom (sakura) festival, Virginia Beach
arianna's creative travels 