Landscape (and Horse) Phot-o' the Day: Walking Around Lake Bled, Slovenia

Saturday is horsin' around day. But this is a landscape week. What to do for a photo du jour of the day? A horse against a beautiful landscape, of course!

This is from the walking trails around Lake Bled, Slovenia. The walking on these trails is not limited to the two-legged. Four legs good.

From the September 2014 visit.

Landscape Phot-o' the Day: A View from the Bridge Between Two Continents, near Keflavik, Icleand

This is one of my favorite landscape shots. This is the view from Iceland's Bridge Between Two Continents. This is a bridge over a gap in the landscape, formed because this is precisely where two tectonic plates are pulling apart. This is looking north, so the North American Plate is on the left and the Eurasian Plate is on the right. The plates here are pulling apart. The plates are pulling apart in the Atlantic, which means somewhere some plates must be banging into each other. So here the earthquakes are relatively minor. The strong earthquakes are over on the Pacific Ocean side, where the North American Plate either is sliding against the Pacific Plate (California) or banging against it (Alaska and Japan, where the earthquakes are even stronger than California).

The Bridge Between Two Continents is an actual foot bridge that whimsically calls attention to the science of plate tectonics. It is located somewhere in Southwestern Iceland, not all that far from Keflavik, the international airport serving Reykjavik, Iceland.

Landscape Phot-o' the Day: Pag Island, Croatia

Pag Island, Croatia, is beautiful. It looks just like Nevada, if Nevada were an island in the Adriatic. The strong bura winds of winter blow the salt water of the Adriatic over the island, making it difficult to grow much here (except the sage, rosemary, and lavender that the Pag lambs eat to make them so delicious).

This is the ferry landing, where you catch the ferry boat from near the party-town of Novalja, back to the Croatian mainland.

Visited May 2010.

Landscape Phot-o' the Day: Huaca del Sol, Trujillo, Peru

Today's landscape photo is from the desert around Trujillo, Peru. Landscape? Did I say landscape? As in natural with no buildings?

April Fools!

This is not a landscape. It is a pyramid, albeit severely degraded, built by the Moche civilization, with major construction having been completed around 450 A.D. Again, this is the Moche civilization. They built pyramids. They did not build chewy rice cakes with ice cream in the middle. That was the Mochi civilization.

Visited April 2018.

Landscape Phot-o' the Day: the Rape of Czechia, near Kuks, Czechia

Today's landscape photo features rape. It's not in the foreground. It's in the background. See it?

It's the yellow plant that dominates the landscape of the Czech Republic. Rape is prized for the oil in its seed, which once was known as rapeseed oil, but is sold in the United States under the far more marketable name of "canola." The farmland of the Czech Republic has been replanted as far as the eye can see in rape, pursuant to E.U. mandates on biofuels and renewable energy. Crops that had been grown for decades, even centuries, are gone and all that is left is the rape.

This photo was from outside Kuks, Czechia, near Betlém (translation: Bethlehem), a nativity scene that is found walking through a beautiful section of forest.

Visited May 2019.

Landscape Week! Phot-o' the Day: Southern Colombia, near San Agustin

All the cool kids on Facebook are posting landscape photos, I think as a distraction from the social distancing and self-quarantining associated with the coronavirus pandemic. I may not be cool. And I am not a kid. But I am slavishly devoted to following internet trends. And I have a boatload of landscape photos that I can post accumulated over years of travel.

So let's start with this one. This is the southern Andes of Colombia, near the town of San Agustin (and, more importantly, San Agustin Archaeological Park). The smoke in the foreground, right, is from a sugar cane house, squeezing the sugary juice out of the sugar cane stalks.

Landscape scenes are always more beautiful in person than in a two-dimensional photograph. So you don't get the full sense of how beautiful this area is, with the sheer cliffs and amazing greenery. You just have to visit here.

Visited September 2012.