Category Archives: recreation

Let’s Celebrate Earth Day 2026

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Our Environmental Challenge

Earth Day is celebrated globally on April 22 each year.

I’m a witness to the first Earth Day in 1970 when I was a young college student. This was 56 years ago. For many years since, I’ve written essays about this topic. You can read one of my previous Earth Day articles here.

Subsequent Earth Days have been filled with forceful calls to conserve and protect our natural resources. The difficult and controversial task was to improve the way the worldwide economy functions so as to reduce and/or prevent harm to our environment with a goal to keep our planet viable into the future.

It’s widely agreed that we have a long way to go to change the trajectory of our collective and personal behavior to reach that goal. I’m not here to judge or criticize. Rather I’ve tried to minimize my carbon footprint and encourage those that I can influence to do the same.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time roaming the outdoors USA visiting many wonderful places that Mother Nature has generously provided for all of us to enjoy.

Following is a gallery of photos from our visits to some of our nation’s National Parks.

I hope that you have chosen a way to both celebrate and remember Earth Day.

Written by:

Arnie Lee

Spring Ski

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Warm Enough For the Patio

Out west there’s still lots of snow in March for an excursion to the slopes. The Lake Tahoe area is surrounded by lots of ski resorts. We took the hour drive from Reno, NV to Truckee, CA at the north end of the lake to visit Northstar.

I gave up skiing a few years ago, but my son and two of our grandkids are still active.

Here they are ready to hit the slopes
March is the tail end of the skiing season but all of the slopes were open.
You can see that with fewer skiers they had the slopes to themselves. They reported that the snow was a little wet but it didn’t stop them at all from enjoying their outing.
When they finally took their skis off, we went looking for a place to eat outdoors.
We found a nice dining area to enjoy the balmy weather
And the grandkids seemed to take to the pleasant temperatures.

Since our son lives in Reno, we’ve often had the chance to visit the areas around Lake Tahoe. The Northstar ski resort is one of them and I have a feeling that we’ll be back again.

Written by:

Arnie Lee

Streets of San Francisco

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Quick Sightseeing Trip

It’s been several years since we last visited, but our granddaughter was on a spring break from college and wanted to visit San Francisco. We made a short list of must do’s and headed to town for a couple of days.

The first place we stopped at was “the crookedest street in the USA” – Lombard Street. This famous site is a very narrow one-way one block long roadway that winds back and forth traversing a steep hill. Houses, driveways and decorative plants are on both sides of the road.
From Lombard Street we drive down another hilly part of town towards the north end of San Francisco peninsula. Notice the tracks imbedded in the roadway.
At the shoreline we reached Fisherman’s Wharf – a large tourist spot with many restaurants and gift shops. The restaurants are noted for the fresh seafood which is delivered by fishing boats docked there.
As it was lunchtime, we found a place at the wharf to enjoy one of the traditional San Francisco dishes. This is a sour bread bowl filled with clam chowder.
Here we are enjoying the bread bowl
My choice was fried calamari
This huge ferris wheel sits at Fisherman’s Wharf for those who want to have a bird’s eye view of the harbor.
This is the (in)famous Alcatraz prison sits in the harbor a few miles from Fisherman’s Wharf.
Site seeing boats are popular in this area.
From Fisherman’s Wharf, we walked a few blocks to Ghiarardelli Square. This marks the original chocolate factory of Ghiaardelli brand candy.
Since then it’s been converted into a mini shopping mall with craft shops, food emporiums, souvenir outlets and restaurants.
There’s plenty of chocolates at one of their shops.
Even more candy for those with “sweet tooths”
From Fisherman’s Wharf, we walk another few blocks to the Hyde Street station. This is the location of the start of one of San Francisco’s famous cable car lines. The very steep hills of the city was the impetus for developing this means of transportation where underground cables “pulled” the trollys up the inclines. The city has two cable car lines. We rode one of them.

To right right is the gripman who “connects” the trolly to the cable and very importantly applies the brakes when going downhill.
This is the gripman who is taking us to San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Stepping off the cable car it’s a short walk to Chinatown. San Francisco’s Chinatown is one of the largest in the USA.
Chinatown has dozens of groceries selling fresh produce and supplied.
Of course we had to have a quick meal of wonton soup from one of the local restaurants.
A visit to San Francisco isn’t complete unless you include the famous Golden Gate Bridge.

While two days isn’t a lot of time to spend in San Francisco, our granddaughter throughly enjoyed seeing a few of the city’s sites.