These
are a few pictures of interesting places seen during the travels
of Casey Luskin.
Here is me squinting into the sun on the
R/V Roger Revelle during a Scripps Research Cruise to the
Alarcon Basin. The background is overlooking the hills of
southern Baja California near La Paz, Mexico. This was an
interesting day, travelwise. Through the course of the day, I
traveled on a cruise ship, a whaler, a small plane, a jet, a
trolley, and 2 taxi cabs. And I also found time to share drinks
on the beach in La Paz with my professor.
These next
pictures could have gone on my outdoors page but I include them
here because they were part of a trip to Costa Rica. The first
shot is of an amazing waterfall in the rain forest hills just
above the town of Fortuna. The hills are great for horseback
riding and hiking, if you don't mind the occasional drenching
from passing thunderstorms. The biodiversity is incredible--on
my trip I saw leaf cutter ants, giant cockroaches, humongous
frogs, fireflies, scorpions, snakes, and howler monkeys. My
biggest brushes with danger came with having a scorpion crawl up
my boot and seeing something that looked like coral snake near
the base of the waterfall pictured below. I'm not sure if it
really was a coral snake because there are lots of mimicks. The
best policy is just stay away from them all. Personally,
however, this is the most beautiful and untouched place I have
ever been.
Pictured below is the Arenal Volcano, in northern Costa Rica.
The Arenal goes off on a somewhat regular basis. I was fortunate
enough to catch a beatiful eruption at sunset. I'm sure if I
wasn't using a cheap camera witn no zoom capability, this would
have been a pretty nice picture, but oh well, it's the memories
that count! These volcanic eruptions are fairly tame and mostly
just puff smoke into the sky. They shake the ground, but not
like an earthquake--it was more like a train momentarily driving
past rather than the rolling or jolting of a quake (i.e. lots of
small but intense vibrations but not much overall movement).
This is the
view looking down from the 96th floor of the Hancock Tower in
Chicago. The Hancock tower is the fourth tallest building in the
U.S.--3 of the 4 tallest are in Chicago. The cars from this
height look like dots, and the people like ants. It's a bit
eerie. It's a very touristy place, but the 95th and 96th floors
floors are occupied by the Signature Lounge, which is a fun
place to go have mamosas, lox, bagels, and anything else you
could want for breakfast if you're willing to write it off as a
travel expense.
Below are
some photos I took while backpacking through Europe:
Aaaah....Venice,
in the early morning:
Paragliding in
the Swiss Alps (yes, those are my feet):
An old Swiss mountain hut in Gimmelwald:
The timeless village of Findeln overloking the Matterhorn:
Planting the Swiss flat at the Jungfrau?
Beautiful Bern:
A Swiss milk-cow licking itself:
Yummy Gruyère cheese that comes from Swiss milk cows that lick themselves:
Lucerne:
The fountain at Geneva:
Chateau de Chillon - Montreux (an old castle on the edge of Lake Geneva):
The Eiffel
Tower lit-up at night:
A traditional
Dutch sailing vessel with a huge leeboard rather than a
keel--this is from "The Sail" in Amsterdam:
Though this is obviously not Europe, this shot shows the aftermath
of Katrina in Miami (where it hit first before getting really
big):
