Latest News

Forrest Allen walks out of one of his storage sheds, a former barrack. (Click on photos to enlarge) The people sharing their stories with us become more interesting every day, at least to me. Before I arrived, Sharon met and interviewed some of the…

Sunrise. (Click on photos to enlarge) The weather forecast for the next week here in Cody calls for on and off showers, thunderstorms with occasional sun, not optimum conditions for photographing the barracks. I woke at 6:00 am this morning and saw the sky…

Ruth and Jane in front of a house made from a barrack that their family lived in. We immersed ourselves in homesteading today, stopping first at the Homestead Museum in Powell, then getting a tour of barracks turned into homes from the Blackburn sisters,…

Verne Solberg poses in his house. We approached information overload today after seeing a T-Bird collection, a post office, an outhouse, heard about chocolate made from honey, ate New Mexican green chile and wondered if homesteading really meant homesteading. The day started out at…

The Heart Mountain Honor Roll, facing its namesake mountain. Constructed in 1944, the list names over 750 men and women who served in the U.S. armed forces even as their families continued to be incarcerated behind barbed wire. The monument was renovated by the…

Special champagne at the eclipse night dinner (Click on photos to enlarge) Our two plane-loads of travelers flew back to Oslo from Longyearbyen today, leaving the polar community behind. As we walked out to the plane in late morning, the sun struggled to shine…

March 20 aurora over Longyearbyen (Click on the photos to enlarge. Highly recommended.) It’s hard to say anything could be better than a total eclipse, but last night came close. Finally saw some aurora borealis late last night on the 3rd night of trying…

Totality (Click on photos to enlarge) Today we had a spring equinox total eclipse in the polar region. Just an amazing sight, hard to describe it. For an hour the moon slowly moved over the sun during the partial phase. You could tell when…

On the dog sled (Click on photos to enlarge) Today I went dog sledding, one of the optional activities that Travel Quest set up for the tour group. About 30 of us went by bus to Green Dog, a sledding company outside of Longyearbyen.…

Wednesday:  Arrived at Longyearbyen, Svalbard, the permanent settlement that is farthest north on the earth. 78 degrees, 15 minutes north latitude. It’s a nice town, very orderly with colorful houses. Flying over northern Norway we saw this white landscape of snow and ice that made amazing abstract images.…