Yosemite is a U.S. national park in Northern California established on Oct. 1, 1890 (135 years ago), receiving 3,897,070 visitors (2023) [4] and 4,000,000+ in 2024.
It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The park is managed by the National Park Service and covers 1,187 square miles (3,070 kms) in four counties – centered in…
The word "Yosemite" (derived from the Miwok natives' Yohhe'meti, "They are killers") historically referred to the name that the Miwok American Indians gave to the Ahwahneechee, the resident indigenous… More
It used to be that as a world traveler, no matter how cheap the flight, how inexpensive the lodging, how tasty and trivial the fee for nutritious far was, they'd get you at the airport. The redeye into Los Angeles was a giveaway, but the taxi fare from LAX to the part of town where anyone other than travelers were was more expensive. The same for New York, Boston, and the major hubs. Even toting a copy of the trusty Lonely Planet, it was hard to get a straight answer on how to get out from under the planes for cheap. It could be found. It did exist. But nobody knew about it, and no one was telling anyone, and no one knew where to ask or get answers. Pressing, there was always a way, even from LAX. But the limousine bus, hotels, and taxi companies all conspired to keep it secret. It used to be that to get out of LAX, one had to find a free bus out of the octopus of busy streets and to a station. From there, one could cheaply (for pennies) get to downtown and from there anywhere else. It was never necessary to get a ride to the airport to fly out or to get picked up when coming in. It was a nice luxury, however imposing it was on the relationship (revealing who was a dependable friend or family member). But now it's easy. Starting today it is clear to anyone, and Uber and Lyft must be nonplussed. How did the Yellow Cab Company keep the scheme going for so long? Now there's a new station and a clear and easy way to get out of and back to LAX, Los Angeles International. Let this be a message to all shoestring travelers with big backpacks on their way to Asia or Europe: there is always a way out of the airport and into town without getting rolled by a taxi or tuktuk driver/company. See Lonely Planet | Travel Guides & Travel Information or wait at the airport until morning and ask the concierge. It's as if someone has told them not to tell anyone, but they will if pressed. There's always a way out, even if it means walking out of the airport to another battalion on independent taxis who do not want to pay and pass on airport fees.
Travel, who needs it?
“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”
—Maya Angelou
“Experience, travel – these are as education in themselves.
—Euripides
“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
—Jawaharlal Nehru
“It is probably a pity that every citizen of each state cannot visit all the others, to see the differences, to learn what we have in common, and come back with a richer, fuller understanding of America – in all its beauty, in all its dignity, in all its strength, in support of moral principles.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
“A great way to learn about your country is to leave it.”
“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”
—William Least Heat Moon
“We travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us.”
—Anonymous
“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”
(LastWeekTonight) Aug. 15, 2024: #3 on Trending. John Oliver discusses how Hawaii has long been run [by imperial forces] for the benefit of everyone but indigenous Hawaiians, how certain groups keep creating messes for locals, and what Mark "Facebook" Zuckerberg wishes for when he sees a star.
Connect with Last Week Tonight online...on its YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens, on Facebook like your mom would, on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news, or visit the official site for all that other stuff at once: hbo.com/lastweektonight.
After a directed-energy weapon was used in an arson attack with government complicity, Maui just hasn't been the same. But a law was passed before the attack that says the US government can confiscate land after an "accident" to remediate it, protect the public, or "help" people who lost out during a "natural" disaster. Now that a $4 billion settlement has been reached, what will happen to historical La Haina? Will the island ever be the same? Will the US military seize and wall off even more land? Will the queen be reinstalled? Will billionaire real estate investors turn the isles into an outdoor mall? Will anyone ever figure out that most of Hawaii is on another 1,000 island and atolls no one has even heard of because the US military keeps all of that for itself? Or what about that big Scottish island? That's something. Hawaii has all the requisites to be cool, but it is not. It is a tourist emporium, overpriced and churning with US and Japanese civilians enriching the hotels. There's little culture left, at least very little that can be seen (da kine) by tourists, a facade of Aloha Spirit to sell tourist packages. Visit and hop on over to the islands, getting to the top of the tallest mountain in the world, a volcano in the clouds on Hilo, the Big Island, rather than administrative center Oahu. Dakine? Just work it into conversation; it means whatever you need it to mean.
When he was 30, American Brent Underwood left Austin, Texas, and moved to an abandoned mining town.
While restoring the ghost town he has realized that people approach finding a purpose in life the wrong way.
Underwood spoke to Business Insider from 900 feet beneath ground level, while sheltering from a snowstorm.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brent Underwood about his experience moving to a Californian ghost town. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Visit at night when they're active
In 2018, my friend sent me a listing for Cerro Gordo, an abandoned mining town in California. "This might be your next project," he joked.
The idea of a remote town in the American West was very alluring to me. It reminded me of the old TV westerns my grandfather watched every day [Gunsmoke, Kung Fu, High Noon].
I was running a pretty popular bed and breakfast in Austin, but it felt like I was just searching for something to shake me up from the routine monotony of American life.
(Good Morning America) A rogue wave crashed over a Ventura seawall on Thursday, flooding the area and sending at least eight people to the hospital. #ventura#california #gma
Hundreds of spectators flock to Southern California beach for huge waves
(CBS 8 San Diego)
Dec. 30, 2023: A high-surf and a coastal flood advisory will be in effect through Monday at San Diego County beaches, with large breaking waves up to 12 feet and some expected minor flooding, forecasters said.
ADVISORIES: Both advisories will be in effect until 2:00 am Monday (Jan. 1, 2024) and include warnings of dangerous swimming and surfing conditions, beach erosion, and minor tidal overflow during morning high tides at low-lying coastal areas such as beach parking lots and walkways.
Mischievous Cupid, beautiful Venus, and angry Mars (Joachim Wtewael, ca. 1610, cropped)
Nice hat, Venus. - Shut up, Cupid. It's fashionable. - I'm just stealing your sticky honey.
"You're cursed!" Cupid/Mara never gives it a rest, not even at the beach among bikinis.
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Mara may be evil, but he's cute.
The South Coast Botanic Garden, the “Jewel of the Peninsula,” is located on the beautiful Palos Verdes Peninsula on the coastal tip of Los Angeles.
It's a trap for Angelenos and tourists to explore -- 87-acres, featuring more than 2,500 species of plants, countless fragrant flowers, five miles of trails, and ten meadows next to the ocean. Bring some walking shoes and a picnic to make the most out of the day.
On the Hunt for Love (Feb. 1-28)
Aerial view of the garden on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Los Angeles (Bryanwake/Wiki)
Yer not goin' out in that!
Additional garden activities: Love is in the air, and it’s in the garden. Come find representations of love throughout these 87 acres, whether it’s a red rose, pink tulip, or popular LOVE letters on display.
Take this hunt by yourself, with a partner, or with friends seeking partners to renew your love for each other and the garden.
On February 11 and 12th:
Greek Cupid is the troublemaker of the bunch.
The South Coast Botanic Garden will have a Make Out and Take Out so garden visitors can create something beautiful for their Valentine's Day sweethearts. It's included with general garden admission.
If feeling suicidal from being alone, please report to the front desk and ask for help. Why? Because Cupido es stupido y loco, which is to say, "Love is dimwitted and kooky."
(WQ) Los Angeles, California has two famous beaches, Santa Monica and Venice. The sprawling megalopolis and its main interstate freeway terminate there. Drive west and you'll hit the water soon enough, a sparkling bay full of millions swamping around the Hyperion Water Treatment Plant, where our sewage goes before being dumped into the same bay. Upscale Santa Monica has a pier and many trendy shops and restaurants.
Come for the water, stay for the bikinis. Cali attracts beauty and money
Venice is the seedier side of the tracks with lots of street performers and pot shops, lots of homeless urchins and beach bum hippie addicts. And there are usually tons of tourists most of the year, particularly in the summer. But not this summer. Is it too hot, too scummy, are there too many homeless now, too much lawlessness, too much police abuse? Who knows. Here's a report from the asphalt boardwalk that is Venice, named such for its mostly dry and polluted canals with no gondolas. Most of the world will one day see it, because it seems everyone comes to LA to see Disneyland (which is actually in Orange County) and our fine beaches, which improve going north to Zuma and up PCH (the world-famous Pacific Coast Highway) and going south to Hermosa and Laguna in The OC.
Sex in the City (2010): As Ukraine experiences war and economic turbulence, the sex industry is thriving.
But is this the kind of tourism the country is after? With over 60,000 prostitutes, 2,500 street children, and a third of the population in poverty, has Ukraine emerged from the former Soviet Union to become the illicit sex tourism capital of Europe?
During the global financial crisis Ukraine suffered badly. In fact, last year it was among the world's worst economic performers. As if that were not enough, it is now taken on the dubious mantle of the "sex capital" of Europe.
It is becoming a hub for child pornography: "They bring in not just women, but 13 or 14-year-old girls. That happens all the time," says hotel security man Sergey.
Hey, Sucker, I mean sir. Want a date?
Despite the best efforts of anti-sex-tourism groups such as FEMEN, the illicit industry seems to have become unstoppable and is consuming its poorest citizens day by day.
"If prostitutes and their pimps were punished harshly, half of them would think twice," says local man Denis.
Journeyman Pictures is an independent source for the world's most powerful films, exploring today's burning issues. It presents stories from the world's top producers, with brand new content coming in all the time. This is outstanding and controversial journalism covering global subjects of interest.
Future Buddha in the Himalayas northern India's Ladakh near Nepal (Tamvir Singh Multani).
Trekking the Annapurna route near Jomsom. Trekkers are critical to Nepal's tourism industry, but travel warningscan boost cost of optional travel insurance (Alina Simone/PRI).
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In April, Nepal was struck by a massive earthquake followed by a devastating series of aftershocks. We all saw the news coverage: millions of people displaced, ancient [Buddhist and Hindu] temples reduced to rubble, avalanches, Himalayan landslides.
Aid poured into Nepal, more than U.S. $4 billion of it. But that news coverage proved to be a double-edged sword. All those images of destruction left the impression the entire country had been leveled, and led to a different kind of aftershock: the collapse of the tourist industry, which accounts for and estimated 4% of Nepal’s GDP.UPDATE: Dream of developing Nepal hit by border blockade
KATHMANDU: Nepalese PM K.P. Sharma Oli today said his "great dream" of developing the landlocked nation [of Nepal] has been obstructed by the blockade at the border trade points with India and the devastating April 29 temblor. "Though I had a great dream of developing the nation, [the] massive earthquake and border blockade have laid obstructions to the same," the 63-year-old premier said while receiving an annual progress report from academicians at his official residence in Baluwatar.More
Three months ago, [Alina Simone] was invited on a trip to Nepal, sponsored by the Nepalese government, a private tourism industry group, and Samarth, an NGO funded by the British government.
The goal was to show tourists that despite the earthquake and political protests, which erupted after the passage of a new constitution, Nepal was “open for business.”
[She] had never paid much attention to government travel advisories, but [she] decided to check what the U.S. State Department had to say. In October, it issued a “warning” for Nepal. Also on the warning list -- Iraq and Somalia.
“We want you to know the risks of traveling to these places and to strongly consider not going to them at all,” the State Department site said. Yikes. I began to wonder whether this trip was really such a great idea.
At the airport in Abu Dhabi, [she] wasn’t exactly reassured to learn [she] had been bumped from [her] flight because the plane was carrying extra fuel to Kathmandu [starved of fuel deliveries by neighboring India]. The protests at Nepal’s border with India, related to the new constitution [which Nepal says is none of India's business, but India has long meddled in and dominated the country's internal affairs], had led to a severe shortage.
But once [she] finally got to Kathmandu, life seemed remarkably normal. The earthquake damage was largely cleared away and fenced off. There were, of course, lots of empty spaces where centuries-old temples once stood.
And in historic Patan Durban Square, the sound of reconstruction was everywhere.
Earthquake-damaged buildings in historic city of Bhaktapur, Nepal (Alina Simone/PRI.org)
But [she] was also surprised to find plenty of temples left standing. Like everyone else, [she] had seen the footage of post-earthquake Kathmandu and assumed most of Nepal’s heritage sites were gone.
That’s exactly the impression tourism officials in Nepal were trying to change.
“It is not Nepal that has been affected; it is only 14 districts that have been hit hard,” said Sunil Sharma, of the Nepal Tourism Board. Nepal's 61 other districts suffered minimal or no damage.
Samarth, the NGO that helped sponsor my trip, also commissioned an independent assessment of two of Nepal’s most popular trekking routes, Everest and Annapurna. They were pronounced safe, with some important caveats.
The thing is, trekkers are key to reviving Nepal’s tourism industry, but travel warnings boost the cost of travel insurance. And backpackers need that insurance if they’re trekking in remote areas, like our next stop, the town of Jomsom on the Annapurna circuit.
The landscape is spectacular at the foot of the Himalayas -- our trekking route threaded over wild mountain streams to Dhumba, a sacred Buddhist lake.
It’s far from the epicenter of the earthquake and the political struggles at the Indian border, but still, you won’t see many tourists here. Tripple Gurung, who owns a hotel called “Om’s Home,” told [her] bookings are down 50 percent. He’s not the only one here who depends on tourism.
“I’m running a hotel, but there are people who grow vegetables. They come here in the morning, so we buy the vegetables for our guests.”
The story was the same in Nepal’s second largest city, Pokhara: minimal earthquake damage, major tourism declines. And long lines of cars and mopeds were queuing up for rationed gas.
It’s easy for a tourists to insulate themselves from the day-to-day realities of life here... More + AUDIO
Giving Latinas a bad name worldwide: She led us all to ruin then betrayed us to the police to save herself: Prof. Esparza (left) has already pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against her helpers/accomplices/co-defendants to get a reduced sentence for herself (The Mirror).
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Psych prof admits killing her alleged rapist almost 20 years ago
These scans show I was hotheaded at 20
(The Mirror) Prof. Norma Esparza [then 20-years-old] pleaded guilty to manslaughter and is expected to testify against a number of others involved accused of killing of [alleged rapist] Gonzalo Ramirez [then 24].
A psychology professor has admitted killing her alleged rapist, almost 20 years after the man was [kidnapped, presumably tormented, then] stabbed [correction hacked] to death.
Norma Esparza, [now] 40, is one of four people accused of the 1995 killing of Gonzalo Ramirez, 24, whose body was found hacked to death with a meat cleaver on the side of a road in Orange County, California.
A fifth suspect shot himself during a standoff with police in 2012.
Prof. Esparza, [who teaches] at Webster University in Geneva, Switzerland, was arrested in the cold case murder two years ago after she re-entered the US for an academic conference.
She was originally charged with murder, but [she] has now pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and agreed to testify against others thought to have been involved in the killing.
Her former boyfriend Gianni Van, 45, and his alleged accomplice Shannon Ray Gries, 43, remain charged with murder, with Esparza set to testify against them in a trial next year.
Evolution is one step forward, two steps back: It's a long, hard road out of the "hells"
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In 1995, Esparza told Van that Ramirez had raped her and pointed him out in a California bar. Her lawyer says Van and others then kidnapped Ramirez and killed him.
Authorities say a third man, Kody Tran, also took part in the kidnapping and killing and owned a car repair shop where Ramirez is believed to have been tied up and killed, but he has since died. His wife, Diane Tran, has admitted voluntary manslaughter.
If you rape anybody, I'll kill you. - OK, doctor.
Esparza, who was a 20-year-old student at the time of the killing, claims she was discouraged from reporting the alleged rape to police. She remains in jail following her plea, and is expected to be given a six-year prison sentence. More
If Prof. Esparza was glad she killed, or glad she led others to karmic ruin with her by killing for the sake of exacting revenge (a form of hatred), she will not be glad when the karma finally ripens and she experiences the results (phala).
The world has many horrible injustices but, "Hatred is never appeased by hatred," the Buddha taught (Dhp 5). Rather than feeling relief, it is likely she hates him more now than before. But why more? More hate so as to justify to herself her act of murder, to rationalize it, and to deal with the cognitive dissonance). Torture and killing seem like great ideas when we're angry and seething with hate, but when these states subside? And all states will subside.
I'll kill the pigs then I'll be a pig. Wait.
How do we deal with what we've done? We can't, so we keep being mad. And being mad we have to try to get ever more angry and hateful. We tell others how great hate is and how anger is a good thing, thereby digging our karmic hole deeper. Never healing, never forgiving, never realizing the truth about reality in a way that would liberate us. We're in deeper but never realize we are headed in the wrong direction.
Buddhist psychology is deep; karma is deeper
"'He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.' Those who harbor such thoughts never still their hatred" (Dhp 3). It's like Americans in the U.S. (as opposed to all the other Americans in America, who come from Mexico, Canada, Greenland, and all of Central and South America) being swayed by hate by spokesmen for the military-industrial complex (Bushes, Obama, Cheney, Biden...): We are led to believe/think that REVENGE, hate, and fear are good reasons to go kill people in ISIS (IS, ISIL), Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and any other place this military-industrial complex of ours wishes to drone, bomb, poison, or invade.
But I have the right to take revenge!
It may be a very controversial thing to point out, but being sent to prison is not the karmic result of killing, a weighty (garuka) lapse in virtue (sila). "Forbearance is the highest virtue" (Mhv. X.2.3-20) Prison is society's collective revenge. The results (phala and vipaka) of the karma of killing or raping or encouraging others to kill -- the millions upon millions of thought moments (cittas) with the power to yield a result in the future -- have yet to begin coming to fruition.
That is the terrible thing about karma, and the wonderful thing, too, when it comes to the positive and beneficial fruits. What seems like one act, one karma, is actually many discrete impulses (javanas) with the power to ripen opportunistically in the future. So the Buddha, like all other buddhas taught that all bad things should be abandoned and all good things developed and cultivated.
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