It's beautiful - and transcendent!

Use to make bongs in high school out of it and sell them.

After we made a bong - that was it.

Between Dr Coss, NL, Mexico, and. Miér, Tam. A small waterfall I know, two hours drive from Reynosa, then two hours more by dirt road, and a final hour by motor boat, up river.

A place surrounded by ahuehuetes, the majestic trees called the old men of the river. There is a small waterfall. Pristine clear waters, among the rocks, and a small cave underneath the waterfall where the water is crystalline, and small fish can be scooped up with your bare hands.

I was there once, almost forty years ago, with a woman I have loved dearly. I was happy then.

I want to visit that place one more time, before I die.

Arenal. In Costa Rica. There's a motel near the mountain with one glass wall in each room. You can lie on your bed in the dark and watch the lava spilling. Unforgettable.

I grew up just a few miles from this natural phenomenon and saw it often while I was growing up. It has been studied many times, but is still a mystery. Some of the old folks that lived in the community then recalled their parents and grandparents talking about the legends that grew up around it.

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Bobbing and bouncing along a dirt road in northeast Oklahoma is the Hornet Spook Light, a paranormal enigma for more than a century. Described most often as an orange ball of light, the orb travels from east to west along a four-mile gravel road, long called the Devil's Promenade by area locals.

The Spook Light, often referred to as the Joplin Spook Light or the Tri-State Spook Light, is actually in Oklahoma near the small town of Quapaw. However, it is most often seen from the east, which is why it has been "attached” to the tiny hamlet of Hornet, Missouri, and the larger, better-known town of Joplin.

According to the legend, the spook light was first seen by Indians along the infamous Trail of Tears in 1836; however, the first "official” report occurred in 1881 in a publication called the Ozark Spook Light.

The ball of fire, described as varying from the size of a baseball to a basketball, dances and spins down the center of the road at high speeds, rising and hovering above the treetops, before it retreats and disappears. Others have said it sways from side to side, like a lantern being carried by some invisible force. In any event, the orange fire-like ball has reportedly been appearing nightly for well over 100 years. According to locals, the best time to view the spook light is between the hours of 10:00 pm and midnight and tends to shy away from large groups and loud sounds.

http://www.joplinmo.org/575/The-Spook-Light

You snagged my curiosity.

I'm thinking it's a refraction of light from some geographical cavern or natural landmark.

There's crystal in that thar mountain!

There have been several scientific groups that have studied the light over the years, including the Army Corps of Engineers, but no answer as yet.

took a weekend and drove down there to see that. They were in school in KCMO so it was not far. They were totally creeped out by it.

in Piazza San Marco in Venice where the locals go to have a normal priced espresso. To pull this off you'd probably have to be able to speak pretty fluent Italian, preferably with a Venetian cadence.

for 10 days near the north eastern border, Monteaugo(?) i think it was.

The wine shop in the town was a place where they sipped one glass for hours. I never did figure out how they did that trick? LOL.

On the AL/GA border. Water runoff eroded the colored sand and created some stunning multicolored canyons.

Well worth a look if you are in the area.

Lots of it where I grew up.

We took that hike around, down and back up - the old cars in the woods! - just too cool!

Amazing color. I have never been to Georgia or Alabama but will remember this is there in case I ever do.

I've been in much smaller versions in TN. We called them chalk gullies.

I'll have to go there someday.

A friend of mine and I were exploring Wurzburg one weekend when I was stationed in Germany. We were walking through the gardens there, and no one else was around. One of us spotted a large mouse-hole shaped tunnel leading into the side of the main building. We decided to take a look. It was unlit, and we didn't have flashlights or anything, so it grew dark pretty quickly.

It ended up being a couple of hundred yards long and ended at a stone load-bearing wall. It was fun for a little bit. We were both Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts, so we were able to pretend briefly that we were on an adventure.

Anyway, I don't think many tourists ever spotted that tunnel.

to the grotto. There is a moss and fern covered grove of ancient redwood trees, some are 40 feet in diameter. Some have been hollowed out by fire and look for all the world like fairy homes. The light is dappled through the branches of the redwoods and the silence is holy.

This is one of the most sacred places on earth to me.

i can say the gulf of alaska, but the exact locations involved are classified.

i was on a destroyer as part of a darpa/navy sea test of some sonar-related software i had a hand in developing.

hunt for red october stuff.

ended up taking our very first trip to Guanaja, Honduras. There were 3 of us. We were there in January and so very lucky to be there during the full moon. Because we were OK divers and experienced we were able to dive a very special place with the President of the Explorers Club. There was a site found out past the barrier reef, quite a ways out, he was there to document it. It was rough getting out there on a dive boat and rougher to dive. During the full moon it had been discovered that that area was a grouper spawning area. 90 feet down, bottom time was around 3 minutes because of how long it took to get down and a slow (well as much as possible) ascent. Nobody knew about this place. 90 feet straight down hanging on to the anchor rope so as not to get caught in the current. Sharks everywhere, BIG bull sharks mostly, but they were full so not a problem. On the bottom it was murky, you had to hang on to the coral (a real no no now) our legs looked like flags flying behind us. When you looked around all you could see were grouper, all kinds and all sizes and sharks. You had to push the grouper out of the way to move forward. When we came up we had mirrors and big red inflatable sausages so they could find us, lol. We were scattered by the current and it took a long time to find all of us. I got to do this 3 years in a row with the President of the Explorers Club and my little group. I do not remember his name but he was so kind to teach us about all of this, I do have pictures somewhere. After 3 years the fishermen found out and it was never there again.

Back then the only people who had underwater cameras were pros and a dive like this would have made it impossible with the current as big as those cameras were. I do have a picture of us on the boat with the dive masters and the man from The Explorers Club from the last year we went, the last year the grouper were there. I have been lucky to have had some great adventures in my life, many of them underwater.

That's all I can say.

They should not be missed...the hell with the beach....too much sand.

And if you dive, they are spectacular. The water is 72 degs. year round.

Cave diving scares me to no end. Beautiful, but traumatized by the story of the two guys that went down into one of the springs. They go separated and one of them thought the other had already left, so he took the life line out with him. To no one's surprise, the other guy died. Scratched a message to his family on his tank, and died with minutes of oxygen still in the tank.

I don't cave dive. Claustrophobic.

A couple that stand out are Wakulla Springs. It's one of the largest springs in the world. 185 feet deep and the water is so clear you can see the bottom. Take a glass bottom boat tour. Very cool.

This was my playground growing up.

http://www.floridasprings.org/visit/map/wakulla/

and Ichetucknee Springs State Park. This is a full day trip. You rent rafts or tubes from vendors on the way to the spring. You won't miss them.

Then you float 6 miles downriver from the spring head. You have to get there real early in the summer. They limit the number of people per day to 2500. That may have changed, so a call ahead is not a bad idea. The river is crystal clear....and cold. 72 degs.

http://www.floridasprings.org/visit/map/ichetucknee%20springs/

Wakulla Springs



Ichetucknee

and two memorable times on the Econlockhatchee river. Where the Wekiva was a paradise everywhere you looked, the latter experience was very native. We canoed once in dry season, and another time when its banks were flooded. Different experiences.

Oh, and I think we went to Blue Springs and saw manatees swimming along the bank.

There is one last experience that was cave involved. We followed a path up a creek to a hole. Literally, a hole in the wall. The Park rangers had tried to cordon it off with iron bar, but someone had found a way to break in. Young adult men were earning their badge of courage by squeezing through those bars. Never in a million years.

I discovered it when I lived there for a while, about ten years ago.
There are two residential blocks which were built as small private homes around the perimeters and lovely garden-parks in the center, just before the stock market crash of 1929. They are called Forest Close and Arbor Close. I peeked in and what I saw what looked pretty unusual. A resident let me in, and I got to see quite a bit.
Each brick home has its own tiny garden-yard. There's a row of garages, individual spaces for one car each. And in the center, a fenced-in, gated park, with beautiful foliage and trees. A covenant exists, which strictly limits what modernizations are permitted to the typical Forest Hills Tudor style
It would be an ideal (and expensive) place to live if you have a family...close to the LIRR station, a ten-minute subway ride to Manhattan, and a great downtown area with shops and restaurants.

With a live missile. Hidden somewhere, someplace.

Circa 1965.

Very serious people there.

on the outskirts of Reading, near the airport, overlooking the Schuylkill River.

It's a skull shaped rock about 65 ft above the river with a petrified tree sticking out it's side.

pm me if you want a more detailed map.

We used to sit on the top of it and throw rocks at the people on the other side of the river.

We were dumber than those rocks.

you see the city of Calgary. The other direction and there is the wall of mountains known as the Rockies going in both directions into the horizon. First time I over saw the Rockies. I had only ever seen the Smokie mountains up to that point in my life. I then worked the the Rockies for a summer. Gorgeous.

There are just a couple of places, so well hidden, so disputed. Always and forever more will be a "mystery".

in Adams Tennessee.

It's on the farm that the Witch haunted the Bell Family supposedly killing John Bell and forcing Betsy to break her engagement to her fiancé because he was a cheat. The Witch also liked John's wife and brought her strawberries one winter when she was sick. (In the early 1800's strawberries in the winter was like the Cleveland Browns winning the Super Bowl this year.)

I was there years ago before the tours started and way before it became as popular as it seems to be now. The cave itself is a pretty standard cave, but the legend, and perhaps the presence, of the Witch makes it special and haunting. Also, nearby at that time was an antique store--don't have a clue if it's still there--which had a rocking chair allegedly owned by the Bell family and favored by the Witch. The story was if you sat in the chair, something good or, on rare occasions--something not so good would happen to you. You just had to take your chances.

I had lost some pictures--which were inside a plastic roll--I had taken of the cave and of the beautiful lady I was dating at the time. After I sat in the chair, I went out to the car, opened the door, and that roll of pictures--which I had thoroughly searched the car for a few hours earlier--dropped out and landed at my feet.

The last story--of so many--is that while a lot of people don't believe in the Bell Witch, Andrew Jackson was said to have been on his way back to the Hermitage--his residence outside of Nashville--when the Witch stopped his carriage, scared away his entourage, and had a 20 minute conversation with the future President. There are some who say she told him about his future and what his legacy would be. I somehow doubt that as the Witch was rumored to have been a Native American woman that one of the Bells--John, I believe--had jilted. I tend to believe that the Witch was warning Jackson what would happen if he kept going after Native Americans. (But he obviously didn't listen and considering what happened to Rachel Jackson maybe that had something to do with the Witch getting back at Jackson.)

The Witch, whose name is Kate, haunts members of the Bell family, untrue lovers, and maybe people who are awful to Native Americans. Of course, this all just legend, probably, maybe, perhaps, but it when you visit the cave and hear and read the accounts of her hauntings, it's kind of difficult to completely dismiss Kate as not being the real thing.

Not sure if anyone wants me to share

In the early 1960s we were taking some cousins there to eat authentic Cuban/Spanish food. While waiting for the group to assemble, I walked around the block. At the back they had a butcher shop where they sold exotic meats. I got talking to the man in the shop and he asked if the family would like to see something interesting.

WE went back to the front, met up with my parents and the other relatives and the man led us behind one of the bars and down a flight of stairs. Hidden down below the restaurant were two dining rooms - one for ladies and the other for gentlemen.

The Columbia started in the late 1910s and I am pretty sure those dining rooms were for serving booze at dinner parties. I think a couple of the pictures in their gallery might be of those dining rooms - the last one, and the one directly above it. http://www.columbiarestaurant.com/The-Columbia-Experience/Photo-Video-Gallery/Ybor-City

We were at a Museum in SC before the H.L. Hunley submarine was "officially" discovered. My son was very young and when we came to the display of the Hunley I told him, "See there, your generation still has things to discover."

Well, the museum guide/guard standing by the display was besides himself. You could see himself fidgeting. It looked like he was trying to decide whether he should say something. But, he obviously decided to keep he info tot himself.

Months later, there was a public announcement that the Hunley was discovered.