Destination: USA

Hawaiian Island Sampler

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 | By kiwiaoraki | Views [233]

Aloha! As a child I always wished for my mother to take me to where she was born. Strung like a forming bracelet of islands deep in the Pacific blue, Hawaii sits over a volcanic hotspot in the Earth's surface. Flying to New Zealand with Hawaiian Airlines ... Read more >

Photos: Honolulu

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 | By kiwiaoraki | Photo Gallery

Photos: Maui

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 | By kiwiaoraki | Photo Gallery

Desert Nostalgia

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 | By kiwiaoraki | Views [271]

Phoenix is a huge city! Driving from Glendale to Chandler (northwest to southeast) takes the better part of two hours, so I can only imagine how long it would take to walk or ride my bike all over town, especially in triple-digit heat. Arizona called ... Read more >

Photos: Phoenix

Tue, 26 Jul 2022 | By kiwiaoraki | Photo Gallery

Right Back Where We Started From

Thu, 7 Jul 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [273]

HERE WE ARE, BACK IN COLORADO, We arrived jet-lagged, dehydrated and not accustomed to the altitude, then found out we both had Covid. Don’t know whether we picked it up on the flight home from Iceland—we were masked all the way for 10-hours—... Read more >

Photos: Colorado and Arizona

Sat, 2 Jul 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Photo Gallery

If At First You Don't Succeed . . .

Sat, 9 Apr 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [243]

SOME WOULD CALL IT INSANITY, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But sometimes perseverance pays off. You may question the sanity of us birders—even we ourselves admit to a certain amount of quirkiness. After all, ... Read more >

Sabine Woods

Fri, 8 Apr 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [318]

SABINE WOODS IS AN IMPORTANT REST STOP on the Texas/Louisiana border for birds migrating to and from Central America, 27 acres of live oaks gnalred by hurricanes. Sabine is privately owned and managed by the Texas Ornithological Society but the trails ... Read more >

Brownsville: Birders and Borders

Sat, 2 Apr 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [282]

THE MORRIS-BROWN HOUSE IN BROWNSVILLE was built in 1909 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Morris-Brown Cottage—where we stayed—is not. Our host Steve, who owns both plus another six apartments in a separate building ... Read more >

Lost in Space

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [294]

GREG AND LAURA THOUGHT WE MIGHT like to see The Infinite , a virtual reality experience that puts you on the International Space Station. Well, they both worked with NASA on the space program in Houston before they retired so it didn’... Read more >

The Kindness of Strangers

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [258]

THE ONLY THINGS THAT HONOLULU AND HOUSTON have in common are “h” and “o”—they don't even wear masks in Texas! Yet here we are after ten hours of flying through five time zones with a six-hour layover spent trying to sleep ... Read more >

Photos: Texas

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Photo Gallery

More Than Waikiki Beach

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [256]

PITTY THE FOLKS WHO VISIT WAIKIKI and say they have “done” Hawaii. Even discounting Maui and Kauai—IMHO the two most scenic islands— there is so much more to see just on Oahu. We have been heading out each morning to the ... Read more >

Pearl Harbor Revisited

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 | By graynomadsusa | Views [204]

SINCE OUR FLIGHT TO HOUSTON WOULD pass through Honolulu anyway, we decided to spend a few days on Oahu along the way. We have plenty of time and there are a few birds we missed on our last trip. It took nearly as long to check-in and clear TSA as it ... Read more >