When I moved to Ohio many years ago to enter a doctoral program, I camped out for a few days until I found a place to rent. When I mentioned that to a fellow student […]
(UPDATED FROM 8/22/2023) This BMW reminded me of how rarely automobiles in the United States display customized paint schemes (or vinyl wraps). Note that I am talking about mass-market vehicles rather than custom jobs for […]
Our pictured truck may be unusually beefy, but jacked-up big pickups are quite common in rural parts of Washington state. As I was taking pictures of this recent-model Ram, I wondered: How would someone from […]
If you wanted to see Stonehenge but haven’t managed to fly to England, there is an alternative in the United States. Around a century ago philanthropist Sam Hill built a replica in a rural corner […]
(UPDATED FROM 10/9/2020) Cars plastered with bumper stickers are a relatively rare occurrence in western Washington state, but they are most likely to be found where college students frequent. When I started taking pictures of well-decorated cars, […]
Olympia, Washington was incorporated way back in 1859, and you can still see a few vestiges of its carless past in the victorian decor of some downtown buildings (Wikipedia, 2025). However, like many West Coast […]
During the depths of the Covid pandemic I explored random back roads. For example, one Sunday close to sunset I came across a large building whose front yard was filled with rusting old cars. A […]
America’s automobile culture tends to encourage doing everything fast. However, if you insist on taking your car to the San Juan Islands, you have no choice but to slow way down. That’s because you can […]
Prior to the automobile, Lake Quinault was a remote area mainly populated by the Quinault tribe and a few Anglo-Americans who carved homesteads out of a dense rainforest. But once Highway 101 was extended to […]
Perhaps the best view of Mount Saint Helens is from the Johnston Ridge Observatory. The facility, which is located on Highway 504 east of Castle Rock in Washington state, is named after David A. Johnston. […]
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