I like to explore and tell descriptive stories about places. I also make jewelry, music and mixed-media art.
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, April 2025 Spanish moss, hanging from old oaks, dances in the breeze. Bright, warm afternoon sunlight streams across stone statues as I enter the garden of memories. Azaleas bloom as tourists walk along rows of beautiful and historic graves. I’m amazed; like at Père Lachaise, I could spend here all day. Morning started […]
Read More Gardens of Good, Ages of EvilSomewhere 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 CarbontonCamping near Pungo, Virginia Beach, with my parents, loblolly pines stand over us, offering little shade in the bright, humid air. A small canal encircles the campground, connecting water to Muddy Creek and the shallow Back Bay. A mile or so from here, Grace White Sherwood lived, farmed, and probably swam, 300+ years ago. Grace’s story is famous in Hampton Roads, an herbalist and farmer in colonial Princess Anne County known as the “witch of Pungo” and the only* person convicted of witchcraft in Virginia, surviving her “ducking” trial by swimming to the shore.
Curvy 2-lane roads take us through floodplain and forest, with watery ditches on both sides. Occasionally there is a church, horse training center, or boat landing. Our campground, North Bayshore, is at the end of such a road, adjacent to the Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. We rent a canoe from camp and float down the canal to Muddy Creek, in the Refuge. It would be very easy to slip out into the network of waterways and spend a day out there exploring…
“Down in the Virginia mountains, On U.S. fifty-two, There is a long old mountain That truckers blood does stain. Four miles from top to bottom, That trailer brakes will burn, Many curves ahead, They call it Fancy Gap.” From “Ballad of Fancy Gap” by Jim Marshall of Hillsville,VA Some of my first memories are riding […]
Read More Ballads of Fancy GapDates of travel – April 18-24, 2017 The train whips through rolling fields of red flowers on the 2 hour ride south to Barcelona, gradually filling with passengers as we approach the metro area. I sit in euphoria from the experiences of the past few days, scanning the hills for more dolmen we may pass. […]
Read More Barcelona for 7 daysFrom the red isilines bus on the Via Domitia, a first view of the snow capped Pyrenees brings chills. But those peaks are not where i am going. The transit terminal of Perpignan, down on the warm plain, is the transfer point for travel to Spain and everything else, and also the main city of […]
Read More The most southern wine region in France / Entering CataloniaAfter a fun final night in Marseille with my host and fellow traveler but on three hours of sleep, I depart this beloved Mediterranean city toward Spain with no fixed plans until Figueres on Saturday. My preferred next stop is Avignon, and a ride offer comes by my fellow couchsurfer and her fiancé. They have […]
Read More Crossing the south of France – Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier, and the Via DomitiaWhen i wake, the first light of the sun passes through a gap in the range of rolling hills. Green fields with creeks and oak groves become slowly visible. The isilines bus stops near Montelimar, at an oak-lined rest area, and the air feels cool yet dry. I had slept deeply. Around 11 am, the […]
Read More Marseille – Mediterranean gritty euphoriaHi, I’ve taken a year break from writing on this, and there are big travels ahead, so what better time than today to resume the travel blog and cover some places I’ve been in the last 2 years and skipped. A reason often that I skip a place is that I pass through for a […]
Read More Skipped Over…Southern Texas. Trucking US 59, 83, 90March, 2015 I have a work gig in San Diego, which would be my first visit to California’s most southern coastal city. The weather is fabulous – sunny and 70’s-80’s temperatures – and the people here are calm and happy (and probably spoiled). Balboa Park, home of the famous San Diego zoo, also has […]
Read More San Diego, CA
arianna's creative travels 