- Doug McConnell

Over the meandering course of my life, I’ve followed my passion for travel far and wide. I hope to be going even further and wider in the years ahead. I enjoy seeing new territory and learning about other cultures and ways of life, but I also like to revisit some of my favorite places whenever I can.

Here in the United States, though I grew up and have spent most of my life living throughout the West, I’ve also lived and traveled extensively throughout the rest of the country. One of my favorite regions in the East is upstate New York. I went to graduate school at Rutgers in New Jersey, and lived in the Boston area for a few years and took every opportunity I could to get up or over to the Adirondacks, the Finger Lakes and north and west towards Canada. I’ve returned whenever possible, sometimes as a tourist and other times as a television storyteller and reporter.

I have fond memories of the Adirondacks in October when the forest was on fire with autumn colors. I spent time in the area with my parents in the mid-1970’s. The three of us loved baseball and went to many games together, so of course we made a pilgrimage to Cooperstown. Twenty years later I returned with Carl Bidleman and Jack Uhalde, my great television buddies, and we did a story on Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame. One of these days, we’ll post that story for the fun of it. Besides, even though upstate New York is not exactly in the American West, it is big enough and imposing enough to be almost western in its scale and nature. I often think of that region as the West of the East.

I bring all of this up because California native, Judy McAdoo, has lived there for six years. She’s a wonderful travel writer and photographer, and I encouraged her to post her thoughts and pictures about her adopted New York home turf. She’s done a terrific job and I urge you to check it out: California Girl Goes East.

We’re glad to know that Judy will be moving back soon to this side of the country. We hope that she’ll continue filing stories here on OpenRoad.TV from wherever she is, and we hope you do the same.

- Doug McConnell

We’re beginning to get more and more terrific suggestions and stories from our growing OpenRoad.TV travel community. The whole idea behind this website is to create a rich resource and active online community for anyone interested in exploring the West. We invite you to join us in the process.

My crew and I will give you our best stuff on video and in other ways. We have about 130 of our stories up now as well as blogs and “Life Outside the Box” segments. We’ll add new stuff everyday. We have far more than 1,000 other video stories in our library just waiting to be posted. We’d put them all online today if we had the money to do it. We’ll hustle as fast as we can and continue shooting new pieces to build the library even larger.

But we want you to add your experiences to ours. Together, we can have a good time and share our tips and tales with millions of people seeking to imagine and plan their western travel. We’ll put the spotlight on you whenever we can.

We just had a couple of community posts I want to share with you. One is about an ice climbing competition in Ouray, Colorado.  I’ve been through Ouray many times. It is spectacular any time of the year. The San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado are among my favorite in North America. They’re big, dramatic and wild, and they’ve got some handsome and historic towns in and around them.  In addition to Ouray, Silverton, Durango and Telluride are among my favorite base camps for exploring the region. Many years ago, I almost settled in Durango. I wish I had a few more lifetimes to play with. I would spend one of them there.

Bill Buchanan  filed some good additional thoughts to our story about Tahoe Backcountry Adventures.  I’ve been to all the places Bill mentions, and agree with him completely. My favorite lodge and resort in the area is Sorensen’s in Alpine County’s Hope Valley.  Go now. The snow for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing must be incredible. And enjoy Alpine County, the least populated by far in California.

Finally, Dutches urged our motorcycle wizard, Carla King, to take me in a side car on one of her trips. My bag’s packed. Carla…..what do you think?

Keep sending us your stuff. We really appreciate it.

- Doug McConnell

Our great friend and forum moderator, Pete Crooks, has just sent us this terrific recommendation for a week of fabulous movies at a film noir festival at San Francisco’s Castro Theater. (It began last Friday but continues throughout this week.) As Pete points out, the festival is occurring this year as filming begins on a movie about the life and times and assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978. I haven’t had a chance to stop by this past week, but I understand that the theater and other buildings in the neighborhood are being altered to look the way they did in the 1970s. I love visiting the Castro, and you can too, right here on OpenRoad.TV. Donna Sachet, a former Empress of San Francisco, shows us around. Meanwhile, enjoy Pete here and then read more of his work by going to Pete’s Popcorn Picks. Have fun.

- Pete Crooks

Yeah, baby, Noir City is back with a vengeance. The annual Film Noir Festival is my very favorite cinematic event of the year (I’ve scheduled overseas vacations around it, to make sure I didn’t miss any of its black-and-white glory.)

Back to the festival. Every January, Alameda resident Eddie Muller hooks up a film geek’s buffet of the rarest of rare movies from the 1940s and ’50s. Often, these films have never been released on DVD or VHS, and never show up on TCM—so the only chance film buffs have to see them is on the giant silver screen of the glorious Castro Theater in San Francisco. Muller is the go-to guy for noir—his books, Dark City and Dark City Dames, among others, lovingly extol the virtues of the bleakest of film genres.

The festival celebrates femme fatales, double-crossers, hit men, fall guys, chumps and myriad other downward-spiraling saps of the genre. Muller also created the Film Noir Foundation, which restores archival prints of these rare cinematic treasures, for future generations to enjoy.

But that’s not all—Noir City runs all the way through February 3 (who wants to watch the Super Bowl, anyway?), with a killer double feature each night.

Mon, Jan 28
WOMAN IN HIDING and JEOPARDY. I’m really looking forward to this one. Woman In Hiding features the great Ida Lupino, who starred and directed in many great film noirs. She’s a legend of the genre. And Jeopardy features two of film noir’s Hall of Fame stars, Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity) and Ralph Meeker (Kiss Me Deadly), and clocks in a tidy 69 minutes (That’s about how much time Tom Hanks spent talking to a volleyball in Cast Away, btw.)

If you’re planning on going, its best to buy your tickets in advance through the website,
www.noircity.com. The festival grows in popularity each year, and it’s great fun to watch these films with an audience. And keep your eyes open for some filmmakers in the audience, or in the neighborhood, as director Gus Van Sant and stars Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, and Emile Hirsch are in town shooting Milk, the true-life (and very noir) biopic of Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who, along with Mayor George Moscone, was murdered by Dan White in November,
1978.

The Castro Theatre is located at 429 Castro St., San Francisco (415) 621-6120.

If you’re looking for the perfect retro spot to grab a bite to eat, try the It’s Tops Diner at 1801
Market St. It’s a fairly close drive to the Castro Theatre, the food is great, and the atmosphere is very 1940’s Bogart film (without trying too hard to be retro.) See you there!

THIS JUST IN
January 27—Just got back from this double feature, which was fantastic! Moonrise was a very bizarre, beautifully photographed 1948 melodrama noir about a guy in a backwater Southern town who grew up being teased and bullied because his father had been hung to death while he was a baby in the crib. Needless to say, he has anger issues as a young man. Notable for early performances by the great Lloyd Bridges and Henry Morgan (Col.Potter on MASH). Very
interesting selection for the festival.

The second feature, Night Has 1,000 Eyes, was a fantastic psychic noir, also from 1948. The great
Edward G. Robinson (netflix Scarlet Street or The woman in the Window for two of Robinson’s best noirs) plays a vaudeville psychic who actually does see into the future from time to time. Fortunes and fates spin out of control over twenty-plus years as Robinson makes life decisions, abandons relationships, and tries to save a young woman (Gail Russell) based on his visions. William Demerest (Uncle Charlie from TV’s My Three Sons) shows up as a hard-boiled cop who
thinks Robinson is a con man. Great stuff! The Castro crowd responded enthusiastically with a long, loving applause at the end credits of this largely forgotten gem. I’m thinking Rod Serling saw this as a said-twenty-something.

We’re delighted to feature the following guest blog from master aerial photographer and our pal Bob Campbell. Bob was too unassuming to include a link to his stunningly beautiful work on his site, so we’ll do it for him. Thanks, Bob.

I just watched the Ansel Adams video. I studied with Ansel in Yosemite in 1968 and we became friends. Ansel introduced me to William Garnet, the noted aerial photographer, and my path in life was set.

Here are a couple of aerialsof Yosemite which I shot last fall. The flight restrictions over the park require that aircraft stay 2,000 feet above the highest the highest point within 2,000 feet horizontally. It kind of spoils the granduer of the place. Shooting a mountain from above makes itseem rather insignificant. But the photos are interesting as an overview of the valley in relation to the surrounding peaks.

– Bob Campbell

Photo by marmion

– Doug McConnell

My father was raised on a homestead in northwestern Montana. His family moved to a piece of land near Flathead Lake in 1910. My dad long remembered the family’s journey to the homestead from Fairbury, Nebraska. They traveled by train and covered wagon, dodged a diphtheria outbreak in Billings and celebrated his fourth birthday around a campfire. His cake was a baked potato with a candle. The world was different then.

By the time I was born, my family was ensconced in California but we made frequent trips back to Montana. We often drove out of our way to visit the Tetons and Yellowstone and my love affair with mountains and the mysteries of wild places was sealed forever. When I can’t be in Montana, Wyoming and the Yellowstone region personally, I can go there virtually by watching our videos here on OpenRoad.TV: Grand Teton National Park.

Our national park system started with Yellowstone in 1872. The concept of protecting important, natural and historic places is one of this country’s finest creations and global exports. We have a fair number of parks and preserves in the West for you to check out by clicking on the category link to right of this blog. Happy travels.

– Doug McConnell

I’ve been out for a drive today soaking up the winter light and the big and lovely vistas of northern California and letting my imagination wander to other places in the West that I love. It didn’t take too long for my day-dreaming to take me to New Mexico where light and color and grand landscapes put on a fabulous show every day in every season. I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years exploring New Mexico, and I especially enjoy the diversity of the state’s northern half. The high desert, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the gorges of the Rio Grande, the cliffs where ancient people dwelled, the volcanic terrain above Los Alamos and all the rich and complex human history of the territory are absolutely fascinating. Writing this, I realize how much I want to get back there soon. But until I’m able, I can at least look at some video and imagine and plan my next visit. You can too right here: High Road to Taos and Superlative Santa Fe. And please send us your thoughts and images of New Mexico also. They’ll brighten our day.

Doug McConnell

We’re looking forward to hitting the open road with John and Jill Lakastigala, the winners of our “One-Day Road Trip” prize, which they won at the Bay Area Travel Show. We’ve been exchanging messages and are targeting a weekend day in February either in the East Bay or up in Marin or Sonoma counties. I gave them some suggestions that include the summit of Mt. Diablo, John Muir’s family home, Jack London’s old ranch, a gaggle of wineries and much more. John and Jill get to decide where we go. We’ll give you all a full report right here when the trip is done. In the meantime, it’s good to see their Golden Retriever. All of us in the OpenRoad.TV office go home to Goldens ourselves. Carl has Jack, M’Gee has Daisy and I’ve got Pumpkin. By the way, Pumpkin and Daisy are smitten with each other. Both are unable to do anything serious about it but they do enjoy long walks in the woods together.

Photo by Ogen Perry

– Doug McConnell

Geographically, San Francisco is a small city. It’s less than 49 square miles in size, just a bit over 46, I think. But within its tight boundaries, on its hills and in its valleys and along its bay and ocean edges, San Francisco manages to pack in all kinds of cultural, culinary and artistic diversity. Our good friend, Janice Nieder, knows the city well and keeps her sharp eye on new happenings about town. This time, she writes about a new development in the Filmore neighborhood where jazz and rock and roll music and African-American and Japanese-American cultures have intersected over many decades. Read on and go check it out for yourself: Yo Yoshi’s-U Go, Girl: San Francisco. By the way, right nearby is San Francisco’s Japantown. You can get a glimpse of it right here by watching part one of our OpenRoad.TV story on the 49 Mile Drive.

Doug McConnell

We’ve just received a delightful story posted by Crazy Sally. I can tell you, she’s not…..crazy. She knows a wonderful place when she sees it and describes it wonderfully well. Sally’s written about the “Magic of Antelope Canyon” and added some spectacular photographs. Check it out.

Antelope Canyon is in the high and dramatic desert of northern Arizona, a few miles from Lake Powell and on the outskirts of Page. I’ve had the opportunity to explore that territory quite a bit over the years. I lived not far away on the Navajo Reservation years ago and I get back as often as possible. But until last year, I had never been in Antelope Canyon. In June, my crew and I taped a story there with the extraordinary photographer, Gary Ladd. We’ll put that story here on OpenRoad.TV in the near future. If you want to see Gary at work in the meantime, check out our journey with him in Zion National Park. I had heard about Antelope Canyon for a long time. Everyone, Gary included, said I’d be blown away. Was I ever! My team and I couldn’t believe our eyes. I’m sure our video, as good as it hopefully is, and as hard as we try to convey our experiences, won’t do the place justice. I urge you to read Sally’s nicely chosen words and enjoy her photographs. Then, get moving towards Antelope Canyon and share your experience.

– Carl Bidleman

We have a winner in the first OpenRoad.TV “Win a One-Day Roadtrip with Doug McConnell” contest held this past weekend at the Bay Area Travel Show at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Nearly 700 people entered the contest and this afternoon we asked the lovely and charming Shirley Stewart, our downstairs neighbor, to pick the winning entry out of Doug’s “Honorary State Park Ranger of the Year” hat. We are happy to announce that John and Jill Lakstigala have won the contest (unless you think being captive in a car for full day with Doug telling nonstop stories while wandering the back roads is no prize, in which case the Lakstigala’s would be contest losers.) Doug will be calling them to plan the adventure and we’ll keep you posted on where they plan to explore and we’ll post video of the trip once it happens. Thanks again to all of you who stopped by the booth and entered the contest. We hope to see you all again on the Open Road.