Follow the Sun ..............................Return to Homepage

Please join me for a trip as we follow the sun as it appears to circle our planet. We're going to start in Mid-America where I live and circle our planet, stopping along the way in places we've lived or visited and enjoyed a great deal. Our first stop is the atomic city of Los Alamos, New Mexico. It's a beautiful place to live and work, perched on pinon covered mesas at 7200 feet or so with a backdrop of the Jemez Mountains at the very edge of town. Prior to WWII the area was home to a very secluded boy's ranch. Today it's a thriving community and home to those that work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The several years we spent in Los Alamos were among the best of my entire career and provided both my wife and I with wonderful memories, not the least of which is the fact that our eldest son was born there. The following photos give you some feel for the beauty of the community and the area.

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...................... The Lodge .......... .................................Looking West from Los Alamos ......................Golden Aspen in the High Country

The Lodge served that purpose for the former boy's ranch. For a number of years it was served as hotel and restaurant for Los Alamos. It is still in use but for a different purpose, but is still a beautiful building and a reminder of the past. The view from Los Alamos to the west is of the beautiful Jamez Mountains which provide hiking, skiing, camping and abundant wildlife for the enjoyment of people in Los Alamos. The area is beautiful year round, but especially so in the fall when the foliage on the aspens turn to gold. We loved Los Alamos, but we moved on to Southern California which will be our next stop going west.

We lived for a few years in Orange County. It's a prosperous, vibrant, high-energy area and we enjoyed being a part of it. There's a lot to see and do in Orange County but we were partial to places outside the county. We particularly enjoyed the mountains and, to a lesser degree, the coastal areas and frequently took weekend trips to enjoy those places and they were beautiful as the following photos show.

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.................Baldwin Lake ........................Giant Redwoods ...............Badwater in Death Valley ........ ...........Coastal Scene along HW 1

We enjoyed camping and went on camping trips to the San Bernardino Mountains several times. The area around Big Bear Lake and Lake Arrowhead was beautiful as was the area around Baldwin Lake. We went with a group from our church when this photo was taken. We camped in Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks as well as Death Valley National Monument and other places. The giant redwoods were truly giants as is evident by comparing them to the people along the path. Death Valley is a barren, but interesting, place. Badwater is the lowest place in North America. Ocassionally we visited the coast. The coastal scene photo was taken on a return trip after visiting San Francisco.

We're going to make one more stop before heading across the Pacific: the Great Northwest. We've never lived in the Northwest, however we came close as I chose a job in Orange County over one at Richland, Washington. I passed through Seattle in going to and returning from the Orient while in service but didn't see as much of it as I would have liked. A couple trips to the Northwest in recent years have shown it to possess some spectacular scenery. Actually, we're going to Seattle and beyond to retrace our steps of a trip to Japan in 1964 when we flew from Los Angeles to Seattle to Anchorage and to Tokyo. From Seattle we're going into beautiful British Columbia, Canada before continuing on to Alaska.

The skyline of Seattle is not too different than the Seattle skyline my wife saw on her arrival in the United States from Japan after we were married there in 1958. It was beautiful then and is beautiful today. From Seattle we sail through Pudget Sound to Victoria, one of Canada's most beautiful cities and from Victoria we go north to Butchart Gardens which is surely one of the world's most beautiful gardens. And before heading to Alaska, a last stop in Vancouver to visit Queen Elizabeth Park, a beautiful place in it's own right.

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................................Seattle Harbor and Skyline........................................................................Beautiful Victoria

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.................. Spectacular Butchart Gardens ............................................................. Vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Park

After flying out of Seattle we arrived in Anchorage well after dark. It was not late but the sun sets very early in Alaska in late September. This was late Septermber, 1964, only a few months after Anchorage and the surrounding area was ravaged by a 9.2 magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded. Damage and destruction could be seen at every turn. We rented a car with the intent of driving to the Portage Glacier, however a third of the way there the road simply disappeared. I took a few photos but they're very old and somewhat faded but show something of the area around Anchorage at that time.

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..................Mountains near Anchorage in the Early Fall Sun .......................My Wife Standing by an Alaska State Park Sign

The scenery is not that which one typically associates with Alaska but it's typical scenery just to the southeast of Anchorage. After a very long night and a very short day we continued on to Japan. This was our first trip back to Japan since we married six years earlier. We spent time visiting my wife's family in Kyoto, sightseeing, and attending the Tokyo Olympics. Included in our sightseeing was a trip to the city of Otsu just east of Kyoto. Otsu holds many wonderful memories for my wife and I as it was here that we met almost half a century ago. At that time Otsu seemed like a small, quite town. Today it's a modern, attractive community with a population well in excess of a hundred thousand. It was hard for us to find many places that looked familiar except for some of the old temples such as the one below.

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.......................... .... .............Medera Temple .........................................................View of Otsu and Lake Biwa from Medera Temple

We also attended a number of events at the Tokyo Olympics including the opening and closing ceremonies, several swimming and diving events, freestyle wrestling and track and field. We were in the stadium the day of the 10,000 meter run which was won by American Billy Mills in one of the great upsets in Olympic history. The movie Running Brave is about the life of Billy Mills as a runner. We were also in the stands when Japanese wrestler Yojiro Uetake won a gold metal. Yojiro was a student at Oklahoma State University at the time but wrestled for his home country of Japan. We have visited in Yojiro's home and still keep in touch with him. While traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto we used the brand new Shinkansen rail system, ofter called the bullet train. I still have my ticket stub from my first ride when the system was ten days old in a scrapbook. It was, and still is a marvelous rail system.

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.....................................The Tokyo Olympics.........................................................................Olympic Swimming Event

From Japan we continue west to Xian, China. Xian, or Chang'an as it was formally called, has a long and rich history. It was one of six ancient capitals of China and the seat of 12 imperial capitals covering more than 1100 years. The Silk Road, one of the oldest and, historically most important trade routes some 18 centuries ago, stretched between China and the Roman Empire. About 200 A.D. this transcontinental road stretched between Xian and Rome. Nearly three decades ago an astounding archaeological discovery occurred near Xian when an army of terracotta warriors and horses was unearthed. Xian has much to offer visitors.

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.............................. The Walled City of Xian, China ................................................... Terracotta Warriors and Horses near Xian

From Xian we continue to follow the sun as we travel southwest to Pakistan. In this country which is in the news often these days we will visit the ruins at Taxlia, an hour or so west of Islamabad by car. In the 5th and 6th centuries B.C. Taxila was a province of the powerful Achaemenian Empire. In the 3rd century B.C. it was conquered by Alexander the Great of Macedonia and later was ruled by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka from East India who introduced the region to Buddhism. Around 200 B.C. the area came under Greek influence. From about 50 B.C. until about 150 A.D. Taxila was a center of learning and culture. In the 5th Century it was overun by the Hun dynasty and never recovered. Today only ruins of its past remain. The area of Taxila is made up of several towns, each offering their own window to the past. There are hundreds of stupas. These are stone or clay temples, ranging from very small to quite large in size. These represent symbolically the essence and spirit of Buddha. Because of the influence of the Achaemenians, Macedonians, Greeks, Indians and others, Taxila became sort of a melting pot of cultures. Perhaps only at Taxila will one see a statue of Buddha wearing Greek clothing!

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.................. ...................Stupa in the Museum at Taxila..........................................Several Stupas Among Ruins at Taxila

I went to Pakistan in 1987 to meet with people in the Ministry of Education and to accompany 53 teachers from Pakistan's Polytechnic Institutes back to Stillwater, Oklahoma. It was during that trip that I visited Taxila. After flying out of Pakistan on that trip our first stop was Germany which will be the next stop as we follow the sun. In Germany we're going to visit Rotenburg in southeast Germany a little north of Munich. It's the best preserved Medieval town in Germany and one of the best in all of Europe. The whole walled town is a museum starting with the five gates interspersed along the wall. They range from around 500 to 800 years old. Along the narrow cobblestone streets are numerous old houses, churches, taverns, mills and others buildings that are fabulous. The town is often called Rotenburg on the Tauber because it sets along the Tauber River. Actually, my family and I visited Rotenburg on a driving tour through Europe after we left Algeria in 1979 and remember it as a beautiful town.

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. .Bridge Over the Tauber and Rothenburg in the Background ...... ..................The Medieval Town of Rothenburg

As we continue in a westerly direction, our next two stops are a partial retrace of my trip to Pakistan in the reverse direction. Our next stop is Copenhagen, Denmark from where I flew to go to Pakistan. Copenhagen, Denmark's capital and Scandinavia's largest and liveliest city was founded in 1167 and is the seat of the oldest kingdom in the world. It's a port city on the Baltic Sea and is a very short distance from the southwest coast of Sweden. Easily the most famous place in Copenhagen is Tivoli, the world's oldest theme park and the place that put Copenhagen on the map. The world famous Danish fairytale writer and poet, Hans Christian Andersen, spent most of his life in Copenhagen and one is reminded of his former presence here at almost every turn in the form of houses where he lived, buildings where he spent time, riding grounds where he rode and so on. It's a city that lends itself to walking tours and there's much to see at almost every turn including churches, palaces, bridges, parks and much more. There's a song from a movie in the early 1950s titled "Wonderful Copenhagen". From what I saw of the city in the brief time I spent there, that seems to be a pretty accurate description. It's a nice city!

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Near Amalienborg Palace Entrance .........................................Tivloi !! ...............................................................The Marble Church

Our next stop is Amsterdam, Holland. When I think of Holland I think of wooden shoes, tulips and windmills, however those are outside Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a city of canals, theaters, restaurants, museums, churches and shopping. Items from all over the world are for sale it its shops. When my family and I went to Algeria we bought a car through a company in Amsterdam and picked it up in Paris. It was an amazingly easy process. Most of the Dutch-made items I saw were for the home - blue and white, handpainted Delft ceramics and pewter being among the most often seen. But in the past two decades Amsterdam has gained a reputation as Europe's hot spot for sex and drugs. I shopped for pewter and took a very nice city tour via the extensive canal system and continued on my way!

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................Amsterdam from its Harbor ........................A Scene from a Canal . ...... ....................One of Many Tour Boats

As we continue west across the Atlantic our last stop is Chicago. Situated along the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago appeared to be a very nice city. We took a trolley tour through the downtown and near-downtown areas and found it to be clean and attractive with considerable to offer visitors. We visited the Sears Tower, the Navy Pier, the area around the Wrigley Building and the Chicago Tribune, the Old Tower and other places and had a very nice time.

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............................ Along Michigan Avenue ........................................Partial Chicago Skyline from Near Lake Michigan

As we leave Chicago for home, thank you for traveling with us as we followed the sun to visit several places that we enjoyed a great deal and from which we have great memories.

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