Recently, on a long distance walk I was involved with, the Grand Randonée – GR – 51 figured prominently with our last day’s trek. From the hilltop village of Sainte-Agnés, initial plans called for an ascent of the Cime du Basson and then a traverse of the eastern slopes of Mont Agel. From there, we planned on dropping down into Roquebrune and Cap Martin on the Mediterranean coast past Mont Gros.
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A recent trip took me to the Caldera de Taburiente on the island of La Palma on the western edge of the Canary Islands. The Canaries – not named for the birds but for dogs the pre-Spanish people kept and ate – are hugely popular destinations for sunseekers from northern Europe. The interesting geology of the islands is not what brings in the plane loads of tourists, though what they seek for a large part, results from geological processes. Beaches, sun and alcohol, not necessarily in that order. Fuerteventura, Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote all promise kilometers of beaches for the sun-deprived northerners to escape the long winters with.
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1000 Places to See Before You Die includes only one entry for the Autonomous Territory of Greenland – Disko Bay. Nowhere is East Greenland mentioned. Author Patricia Schultz only gives the Faeroe Islands one entry as well while Iceland merits two. The mother country, Denmark, gets ten. But as she said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune when she was out promoting her 2019 update of her book; 1000 places, can you really find that many spots? Her reply, “How can I narrow it down to just 1,000?”
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Larch Mountain stands as one of the three big shield volcanoes of the extended Boring Lava Fields. Rising to 4055 feet high, the mountain presents an array of contrasts. Once the site of intense logging industry, the mountain shows an amazing natural renewal a century after most of the timber production came to a halt. Pockets of old growth, wonderful views from the top and remnants of past industry all make Larch Mountain and its crater, a fascinating walk in the woods.
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We saw earlier how to climb to the top of the Larch Mountain crater from the Columbia River on the 1915 historic Larch Mountain Trail. But you don’t have to gain 4,400 feet over the 6.6-mile trek up to Sherrard Point. You can actually cheat and start at the top. Simply drive up Larch Mountain Road to its end. Fourteen miles up from the Columbia River Highway just west from Crown Point. Park in the large lot near the summit.
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Lookout Mountain is an amazing place to discover nature, history and enjoy vistas reaching out to a claimed seven states. The Mountain is best explored on foot along its myriad of trails traversing the dense forest slopes of this quintessential Appalachian prominence. Surrounded to the north, east and on top by urbanity, it is easy to forget you are never far from civilization if not for the subtle roar of traffic on Interstate 24 far below.
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In 2018, as part of centenary observances of World War 1, a monument unveiled at Fiume Road Graveyard in Budapest. This became the first national memorial erected commemorating the efforts Hungarians undertook during the Great War. Government officials noted the memorial was in line with a fundamental theme of the nation: to restore historical continuity broken during the Nazi and Communist occupations.
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Ravelnik and Čelo are two open-air museums allowing visitors a chance to visit spaces where soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army defended the Bovec basin from invading Italian troops from the end of May 1915 until the end of October 1917. The two sites restored by locals and the Slovene government are different in what they offer as well as their original purpose with regard to their roles in holding off the Italians.
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Standing in the renewed Italian positions of the open-air museum of the Kolovrat, you are rewarded with an all-world view over the Isonzo River valley with the Krn-MonteNero massif rising dramatically on the other side. Of the Bovec-Kobarid open-air museums, the view from here is only matched by what you gain at the former Austrian artillery base on Čelo above Bovec.
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Long-distance paths have acquired quite a following in the past few decades. In the US you have ways like the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail standing as the Big Three. There are plenty of other long-distance paths to spend days upon days on, as well, such as the Arizona Trail, the Green Mountain Trail, and on and on. Of course, the American examples pale in number when compared to the Old World.
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