My neighborhood in Savannah periodically adds a little twist to the day for tourists riding the trolleys around Washington Square/Ward, with events like the Bathrobe Brunch (a weekend morning where a large number of people in bathrobes show up for a pot luck brunch), or sometimes by the size of the crowd at our regular Friday afternoon gatherings, or maybe by a Memorial Circle for someone in the ‘hood who has passed.

Our neighbors just to the south, Greene Square/Ward, have added to the possible surprising sights for a visitor, starting a new tradition a few years ago, an Equinox Party, another pot luck meal, but beginning with a “special cocktail” toast to the Sun and then a Sun Salutation, later followed by a series of games where one could win a Rudolph nose.

Neighborhoods where people look for reasons to celebrate together are the best.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

The book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” told the outside world about the eccentric nature of Savannah, and some of her inhabitants. Saint Patrick’s Day is when many try to demonstrate it publicly.

The parade used to be the only really public event. When my sister and I were small kids, I have a vague memory of Mom taking us to the parade and us sitting on a curb watching it. While the parade still kicks the day off (after several fraternal breakfasts), there’s already been a week of activities from issuing the parade permit, to announcing the Grand Marshal, to greening the fountains. And after the parade those capable (not too old, parenting, or already over-served) will continue with a spring break revelry until the early hours of the morning. Soon after 3 AM bar closings, downtown residents will hear the drunken arguments about who was supposed to remember where the car was parked.

It’s a long parade and it once was, just a couple of years ago, there were long stretches of the route where you could walk up just before, and have a front row seat. This year, I saw someone in one of those areas putting out chairs more than 24 hours early.

A few years ago the City had to close the squares along the parade route the evening before to keep people from camping out there, and stop arguments. Now, when they open them in the morning for people to set up their family compounds, I hear it’s like the Oklahoma land rush, but I haven’t gone to see it.

Sidewalks get plenty of tents as well, with lots of folding chairs interlocking like a Maginot curb-line facing the street, and defended like the Ukrainian front, multiple coolers with food and beverage enough for at least three days, and in at least one case, a pickup parked nearby with one’s own personal porta-potty in the bed.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

Continuing our “Go West Old Man” tour from last week’s post, the boys cross Montana and head south through Wyoming. I’ve been to about 25 of the 60+ US National Parks, and the one I always want to go back to is Yellowstone and the Tetons. (I know that’s two, but they are adjacent.)

Some years ago Barbara and I drove from Yellowstone’s northeast exit at Silvergate through Bear Tooth Pass to Red Lodge just after the route opened in the spring. The road was tunnel-like in the shaved walls of snow taller than our rental car, threaded up and down the steep mountain slopes. It occurred to me the plow driver tasked with the first clearing of the year might have a death wish.

This time, going in the other direction, and without snow on the ground, it was just spectacular.

Yellowstone will always be a special place for me, at least partly for the way it came to be. Photographs made by William Henry Jackson were shared with members of Congress to show what an amazing place it was/is, and they established it as our first national park, the world’s first national park, in 1872.

The Tetons were ghosts for my brief visit this time. There were a number of wildfires in the area and lots of smoke. But you take what comes, and there’s always an interesting photograph to be made.

For a new gallery of Bear Tooth Pass, Yellowstone, and The Tetons, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000UkjctYJ7iaE

The unspoken question: could three cranky old friends (old both chronologically, and in the length of their near 50 year friendship) manage almost three weeks in a car together all day, every day? We’ve worked together, played together, partied together, lived together, dated some of the same women, mourned together, but…. Well, 17 days, 21 states, and 7,310 miles later, we’re still speaking.

The genesis of the drive was a comment Tom made to Paul, that he had never seen the Grand Canyon and would like to do a road trip there. It was repeated to me and I suggested if we were going to drive that far, we should see more than one thing, maybe do a loop to see several national parks.

It took a couple of years to finally commit to a route. We were looking at a fall departure and Paul suggested we start in the north and move south to try to avoid weather issues, which we did. It didn’t wind up mattering for the weather, but hotels and restaurants were starting to close or go to shortened hours for winter, so fewer choices, and would likely have been even fewer if we had gone south to north.

So on October 1, Paul and I left Savannah, drove to North Carolina to pick up Tom and headed west. First stop was briefly in Saint Louis to get a photograph with the arch, and then head north for The Badlands.

Any thoughts I ever had of the Badlands before the first time seeing them (prior to this trip) was based on western movies and TV shows, showing them as stark, arid, severe, forbidding places. There is some of that, but, like most things in life, it’s more complicated. I’ve posted a new gallery of photographs from the day we spent there.

For “Badlands NP, SD, 2024” gallery, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index/G0000ce5ZZKFWxQg