Those who guessed last week that we were at Mara River on the Kenyan border to watch the Wildebeest Migration got it right. Here is a moment from our approach as we traveled to see this National Geographic moment.

And, another as the Wildebeest slowly make their way to the river crossing. We did not see any crocodiles challenging the crossing midstream but did witness this lioness take down one unfortunate wildebeest.

Below, she has moved her kill to higher grass to catch her breath and announce her kill with a roar.

This was the only casualty while we were there. Most, as you can see below, made the transit without a challenge.

No new Where In the World today. I  am taking a break from Facebook. If you don't want to miss the next posting, click on the  link and subscribe for email updates.

Best wishes.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

So, where in the world? It is September and the temperatures are in the low 80s.

And, where were we last week? At the National Museum of the American Indian located in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House near Battery Park in New York City. Just steps from a great spot to view the Statue of Liberty and not far from Ellis Island.

Here are a few more images.

Even Lady Liberty needs to answer her phone once and awhile.

A different kind of lady liberty.

On the right is an Indian Peace Medal, issued by Thomas Jefferson's administration for the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

This is not an Indian artifact in the strictest sense. It was issued by the General Court of Massachussets in 1676 and  awarded to Christian Indian scouts in a forced internment camp on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The English recruited these scouts to assist themselves during King Phillips War, a war precipitated by the Wampanaog natives in an effort to drive out the encroaching settlers.

This is a box-and-border robe from the Lakota tribe, probably from South Dakota around 1865. Made of buffalo calf hide and glass beads, it was typical  of robes worn by Lakota women in their puberty ceremonies and by married women.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

We are in Battery Park, across the water from the Statue of Liberty, getting ready to enter the building guarded by these protectors. Can you guess where we are?

And, where were we last week? Dragonfest in downtown Atlanta is the answer, watching the parade with  grandchildren long before social distancing.

Green Lantern and a tommy gunner.

Spiderman working the crowd.

Who you gonna call?

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Remember crowds? This image is from a few years ago, along a parade route. We are in downtown Atlanta but can you guess the occasion?

And did you guess? A lot of you knew our last image was from Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah outside of Moab. Here's another image of the bend in the Colorado River from a different vantage point.

And here is a night view. I call the image below Teenage Mutant Ninja Aliens because the meteorite trails looks like look like how a flight pattern might look these were alien space ships piloted by teenagers.

But what is it that makes these meteorite trails so unusual looking. Likely, it is just wind moving the camera ever so slightly during the 30 second exposure needed to capture this image. No one really knows, though. The image title just might be on point.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

The sun begins to set 2,000 feet above the Colorado River, as seen from a famous overlook with an unusual name. Can you guess it? In the 1800s, cowboys corralled wild mustangs here.

And, what were the four corpulent visitors waiting to see from their chairs in our last post? If you guessed a civil war reenactment, you got it right. You may have noticed a confederate flag in the background.

Years of living in Atlanta and along with a friend who participates in reenactments, not to mention a  fondness for the  movie Sweet Home Alabama with it's reenactment scene, led me to finally grab my camera and travel to a field outside Aiken, South Carolina to take check out a battle reenactment.

And, this is some of what I saw. A friendly, if not diverse crowd, walked through the exhibits and shops, checked out the northern and southern army encampments, and then gathered to watch a reenactment of this battle that pitted southern troops against an army sent north from Savannah by General William Tecumseh Sherman.

The event's organizers will be happy to tell you that the Battle of Aiken was one of the  few engagements during Sherman's campaign that the southern army warded off their northern counterpart. The  participants are all volunteers and elaborately attired.

Cavalry skirmishes and cannons were part of the battle.The crowd sat behind a rail fence while the two armies squared off and then did battle. Some of the crowd were more actively engaged than others.

As you can see above, one young man, complete with pink ear mufflers and a wooden rifle, is standing against the fence prepared to defend his family for the battling cavalry in front of him. It is a favorite image from the  day, as is the one below for its humorous quality. It looks like someone gained some weight between reenactments.

If you would like to see more images from the day, check out the Civil War gallery at TrekPic.com. Enjoy.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Ready for summer? Aching to shelter outside? Admittedly, this could be most anywhere but can you guess nonetheless. You can easily drive there from Atlanta.

And did you guess our last location with the full-horizon view of the Milky Way? Third rock from the sun is correct but not the answer we were looking for. We are out West in Canyonlands National Park in the  middle of the night just after the clouds cleared.

The image is a compilation of seven images stitched together, each about 20 seconds with a nearly wide open, wide angle lens. Post processing software combines the seven images into this one and then Adobe software enables you to highlight the image to make it into what you see above.

The image below was taken from roughly the same spot but a bit earlier in the night while a class for night photographers was stationed next to the canyon rim to take their own images. The red light is from their headlamps - red light is easier on the eyes at night. The white light from the back of their cameras. I call this image Night Stalkers. If you look closely in front of the photographers, you can see the path they took to get there.

It is wonderfully quiet while you are out there, unless there is a class like this one going on. Usually, it is just you and a couple of other people. This night, after the class adjourned, a young man traveling between marathons kept me company. He had finished one that day and could not sleep so he wandered out to look at the sky.

Sometimes, though, there is no company or only the occasional kangaroo rat or other small critter who is attracted by the light you use to set up. It is inspiring to witness the sky without the now over-prevalent light pollution that covers most of the developed world. It is humbling to bear witness to the immensity of our universe.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

What you are seeing is the core of the Milky Way and one of the spiral arms of stars that stretches out from the core. The galaxy's center, or core, is on the right just above the horizon. The bright object near the core is Jupiter.

There are not many places where it is dark enough and flat enough to photograph this much of the Milky Way at one time. It is 5 a.m. in the American West. Can you guess where we are? Or, how this image was captured?

And, how about our last image. Did you  guess where we were last time?

The image above is of the Council House at New Echota State Historical Park in Northwest Georgia. taken one Fall evening just as the sun was setting. This was the governmental center of the Cherokee Nation until the United States absconded with their land and drove them out men, women and children to their new "home" in Oklahoma.

It is from here that General Winfield Scott and his 7,000 soldiers rounded up the Cherokee citizens who had occupied this land for centuries and drove them by foot through winter snows and a hardship that cost many lives on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. The Cherokee were a particularly civilized tribe, even by white man's standards, at the time.

They had their own alphabet and published their own newspaper from New Echota. Profitable estates and business were confiscated and, yes, even slaves owned by upper class  Cherokee farmers and businessmen.

It was a land grab sanctioned by Andrew Jackson and enforced by the U.S. military, plain and  simple. The Cherokee were moved to make way for white settlers.

My first encounter with this particular piece of American history came in the summer of 1973, while I was clerking for a law firm in Rome, Georgia. My first assignment was to run the titles on some properties that were being sold.

As I left the office, the partner advised me not to worry about finding any property records before 1835. There weren't any. That was when the government started dividing up the land in and around Rome that was taken from the Cherokee.

Living history, you might say.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

We are back on the East Coast, this time in Northwest Georgia. It is evening and the State Park that houses this remarkable structure is closed for the evening.

History was made here in the early 1800s, when this building was constructed. It is not an imposing structure. None of the buildings on the site are, but a great nation formed its first legislature here, issued its first newspaper, and signed away its future. Can you guess where we are? 

Did you guess our location from the last posting. There, we shared this image in black and white. Here it is in full color.

And the location? You probably guessed it is the Grand Canyon. More specifically, we took this image after hiking to Shoshone Point to the east of the main park area. Here is a second view from the other side of the monolith on the Point.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Admittedly, this one will not be easy. I have not given you many clues. But you may take some reasonable inference from the Asian photographers attacking what you must figure is an iconic view.

They arrived long after I had finished taking my image (which I will share in the next post) and scrambled to the traditional vantage point to photograph intensely in hopes of capturing the perfect souvenir of what must have been their Western Parks tour. In the process they blocked the view for everyone else.

When I heard and then saw them approaching en mass, I made my way to a higher point to capture this too-typical National Parks moment. One last clue, and we will see if anyone guesses. When I returned to my office after this trip and turned on my computer, the  screen saver showed a professional image of this same location.

At least no one has their back to the view to take a selfie.

If you cannot guess this location, did you guess the one from last week?  Here it is again.

We are inside the  causeway heading into the interior of . . . ? Well, I bet you can guess from the images below.

Yes, it is the Roman Coliseum, started in 72 A.D. by Emperor Vespasian and completed eight years later by his son Emperor Titus. The wealth used to pay for the construction came largely from the spoils of Rome's subjugation of the  Judean Revolt which was begun by Vespasian and completed by Titus.

Rome destroyed the Jewish Temple, confiscated Jerusalem's wealth and built this massive structure. It was a sign of the times and a precursor to future abominations.

The view from inside the Coliseum below is from the second story. What you see uncovered is the  slave and gladiator holding and staging area beneath the now removed  stadium floor. A portion of the floor is shown near the top.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

We are farther afield this day back a few years ago. From the photo, you can see that we are inside a colossal structure. The soft light of an early morning is streaming through ancient columns.

Broken parts of columns lie all about. Holes in the columns suggest that we are looking at the structure beneath what was once much a more ornate building.

The young family in the  lower right has stopped to take in their surroundings. The father is looking inside the structure. What does he see? Can you guess where we are? 

And, did you guess were we were in the sunset image below?

You are looking at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from the Eastern Shore, Maryland side. We  happened upon this pier and this moment after dinner. The location is outside the seafood restaurant (Hemingway's Restaurant) we stopped at while traveling to Chestertown, Maryland for a family event. Our lodgings for the night are shown below.

The White Swan Tavern, an inn preserved since colonial times, is still configured as it was in the late 1700s. It is located in Chestertown where my father-in-law grew up and where the first college was chartered in the  newly sovereign United States. Washington College was founded in 1782 and still serves the region.

And, yes, George Washington did visit Chestertown on more than one occasion and stayed in the White Swan Inn.

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All photos and text are copyright Clinton Richardson. If you like these posts, please tell your friends about the Venture Moola blog at Readjanus.com. And, feel free to share this blog. The more readers the better.  Click here if you would like to get a weekly email that notifies you when we release new entries. Or, click in the side column to follow us on Facebook or Twitter.