Friday, March 30, 2012

The sloth says...

Have a great weekend!

Not my photo - I can't claim credit...but oh how I love this photo!!!

Special Men Deserve A Special Beer...

I enjoy taking photos of signs from my byway adventures. Nice driving scene on the road from Entebbe to Kampala. The trip was for work and not site seeing, so my only opportunities to capture the scene was to snap away from the passenger seat of the moving car. Not always the most effective for getting great shots, but it can give you a fleeting sense of a place. Something for some memories.

I hadn't been to Uganda really since the mid 90s and boy has it changed a lot! An explosion of new construction, traffic, people. Did you know that tiny little Uganda is on track to have the highest population growth in the world? They are second right now. Some projections claim that the current 27.7 M population will explode to 130 M by 2050! Have you been there? It is not a large country. I wonder how the country will be able to handle such a fast growth rate and 130 M people. Wow. Thinking about it freaks me out. Kampala is going to keep a lot of urban planners busy (and frustrated) for quite some time.



I can't believe March is almost over and I only got 3 blog entries in for the month! This recent work trip to Kenya and Uganda really sucked the energy out of me. I am only back a week as of tonight and still exhausted and jet lagged. Work and life are quite busy and crazy right now. Lots of things going on. Over the past few weeks I've had many things to blog about and photos to post, but no creative juices or energy to do so. Hopefully I can make up for it in April, which by the way is also national poetry month. You know what that means don't you? Stay tuned....

Enjoy the weekend and happy byway travels xo

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Nairobi Animal Orphanage

If your Scenic Byway takes you to Nairobi, Kenya, consider visiting the Nairobi National Park and the Nairobi Education Center/Animal Orphanage

The National Park and the Animal Orphanage are located right outside the city. You can drive through the National Park and see wild game, so it is a great option if you won't have the time or resources to go out to one of the big game parks on safari. 

If you don't have time to drive around the park you can spend an hour or a few walking around the animal orphanage and see lions, cheetah, leopards, warthogs, hyenas, water buffalo, a giraffe, a zedonk (zebra and donkey cross breed), baboons, other monkeys, and several types of birds. You can get very close to the animals and the baboons run wild all around the place. Its a good place to watch the animals behavior. 

I got to visit the orphanage yesterday and the lion cubs were playing and eating, the hyenas were chasing each other, other big cats were grooming, the monkeys were trying to steal food from other animals' cages. Some of the cages are small, but the animals look well cared for. Remember this is not a zoo, this is a refuge, so all of these animals were brought here because they were abandoned or injured and likely would have died in the wild. 

Off Lang'ata Road at the Kenya Wildlife Service headquarters.





A Zedunk - a zebra, donkey mix.




Saturday, March 3, 2012

Friday, March 2, 2012

High Desert Paradise

A beautiful day exploring our amazing land. I can't wait to move out here and explore every single inch of these wild 40 acres - to identify every plant, know the birds and the animals, and climb every rock. And give them all names.