Here’s another piece of the $10 Trips series. It’s about Devil’s Backbone, a marvellous lime stone ridge in the Cedar Creek district of the Mark Twain National Forest, about 20 miles south of Columbia. At first sight it doesn’t seem very spectacular, but the beauty of the place lies within the several, well-hidden rock outcroppings that offer breathtaking vistas over the Cedar Creek below. It’s a paradise for bird watchers, and I spent six straight hours on one of the rock outcroppings without moving an inch. It’s just incredible there, and this place definitely is one of my top favourites. Enjoy the show!
Yesterday I spent the whole day in the Finger Lakes State Park and the Rocky Fork Lakes Conservation Area. A former strip mining area, the place has been reseeded and the coal pits filled with water so that they form a vast maze of finger-shaped lakes. The parks offer something for everyone. Whether you like swimming, scuba diving, motocross racing, mountainbiking, bird watching or just plain, old hiking – you’ll get it here. Enjoy the show!
This is a part of the grad component for my staff photojournalism course. The idea behind it is to show a number of places that do not cost more than $10 (both ways) to reach and where people can spend a nice day or weekend trip. The first one featured here is the Shooting Star Trailhead at Gans Creek Wild Area, a part of the Rock Bridge Memorial State Park. Enjoy!
Joseph Snow, 78, is suffering from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), an incurable, progressive lung disease that causes severe breathing difficulties. After several trips to the emergency room and a severe pneumonia that he only barely survived, Joe’s doctor told him that it was time to go on hospice, a recommendation that is usually given to patients with a life expectancy of less than six months. That was in June, 2008. Since then, thanks mainly to the competent and compassionate care he received from his hospice nurses, Joe’s condition has improved dramatically. Today, despite his still terminal condition, Joe is enjoying every minute of his life together with his wife Pat and their family. Besides their love, the great force that keeps him going is his unswerving faith. As one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Joe believes that after his death he is going to be resurrected into a cleansed earth. “I have no desire to go to heaven. I don’t know what I would do if I went to heaven,” he says. “This is where I belong – on the earth. I don’t belong in heaven.”