Daily Detour: Odd spots, strange trips, great moments in travel

Kayaks and canoes mingle on one of the many lakes in Minneapolis. Photo taken in summer 2008.

This is King Kamehameha -- a statue at the northern end of the Big Island of Hawaii. The statue dominates the tiny town of Kapaau, next to the popular tourist hamlet of Hawai. Kamehameha was born nearby in the 18th century. Photo taken in 2009.

In the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden “Standing Frame” by David Nash, left, and “Spoon bridge and Cherry” by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen add a bit of wit to the Twin Cities’ skyline. Photo taken in 2008.

The Convento de San Bernardino de Siena in the Yucatan city of Valladolid was built in 1552. Photo taken in 2012.

Three bathers in this whirlpool at Puerto Penasco have plenty of blue hues and open space to contemplate. Photo taken in 2008.

OK, it’s not the end of the world, but this entrepreneur was in the black lava outback of Hawaii’s Big Island, not far from Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Photo taken 2009. (And yes, purchases were made.)

I was in Cahors, in France’s southern Lot Valley, when I came upon this circus sign. That was in 2001. I never made the show, and never stopped wondering what I missed. All these years later, the Amar troupe is still a fixture on French stages.

Saint Cirq-Lapopie is a tiny, handsome town on a rugged hillside above the Lot River in the Lot Valley, about 370 miles south of Paris. The population is somewhere south of 250, yet whenever there’s a list of the country’s most beautiful towns, Saint Cirq-Lapopie seems to be on it. Photo taken in 2001.

Read more: The best of the Lot

One afternoon in 2008, we showed up at the famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley and took a downstairs table near the kitchen. The view was good, but the food was better.

Carpinteria, which calls itself “the world’s safest beach,” is a magnet for families. The small city is just south of Santa Barbara and Summerland. Restaurants and shops line Linden Avenue, which ends at the beach. Carpinteria State Beach features campsites near the water. Photo taken in 2008.

San Francisco’s Ferry Building, which sits along the Embarcadero at the foot of Market Street, sees a few boat commuters every day. But its main business now is the care and feeding of foodies. Browsers get big views of the Bay Bridge across the water. Photo taken in 2009.

This was a lunchtime performance by a group of acrobats in downtown Portland. Photo taken 2013.

Hundreds of visitors gather at the rim of Maui’s Haleakala Volcano every day to see the sun come up, about 10,000 feet above sea level. Sometimes clouds ruin everything. Other days, it looks like this. Photo taken in 2010.

These men have marshaled their knights and bishops in a downtown Tijuana park. Photo taken in 2007.

Not this little pier -- that’s just a fluke of the camera angle. But this spot, near the Warming Hut and Crissy Field, is a favorite spot of local dog-walkers. Photo taken in 2009.

These cattle skulls were strung up at the edge of Pozos, a tiny town in central Mexico near San Miguel de Allende. Photo taken in 2008.

In the first days after the San Diego Central Library opened in 2013, somebody chalked this advice in the Teen area. I would add: “...and read Salinger.”

Do not adjust your screen. This is a very red suite in Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel, a downtown landmark that dates to 1892. I took this photo in 2008 (during the run-up to the Democratic National Convention, as it happens).

In downtown Portland, just up the block from the lair of Voodoo Doughnuts, these dramatic masks endure on a weatherbeaten vintage sign. Or at least they did as of mid-2013.

The day I visited Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery in early 2013, this teacher and her class were making the rounds among the oil paintings.

This was a windy day on the North Shore of Kauai — windy enough to set off an old sitcom theme song in this baby boomer’s head: “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale ...” This photo was taken in 2014. (For the record, “Gilligan’s Island” aired from 1964 through 1967.)

Samoa Cookhouse, a historic haunt of lumberjacks that goes back about 100 years, stands outside Eureka, Calif. All-you-can-eat offerings are very popular. This photo was taken in 2014.

The Kalalau Trail, on the North Shore of Kauai, is a steep, long, muddy slog with a remote beach as its reward. Before I gave up and turned back, I found these two nuzzling on the trail. This photo was taken in 2014.

Lombard Street, the famously curvy street in San Francisco, makes a much better adventure on foot than driving. (A cable car can drop you at the top of the hill, and you can stroll to North Beach or Fisherman’s Wharf from the bottom.) This photo was shot in 2013.

Even on a stormy, gray day, Kauai’s North Shore very nearly glows green. This shot looks across Hanalei Bay to Hanalei Pier, where taro and other crops were shipped in the days when the island’s agriculture business was bigger and tourism was smaller. This photo was taken in 2014.

The Arbat is a busy pedestrian thoroughfare in Moscow. This cow was placed along the Arbat on a brisk January day in 2013. It really ties the street together, does it not?

Singer-songwriter Butch Hancock joins a raft trip on the Rio Grande as it cuts through Big Bend National Park along the Mexican border. Photo taken in 2007.

This solitary cyclist is headed up the Avenue of the Giants, near Humboldt Redwoods State Park at Myers Flat. Photo taken in 2014.

This is the Mission San Buenaventura. Unlike many of the state’s 21 missions, it sits in the heart of town -- in this case, on Main Street. The mission was founded in 1782. Photo taken in 2012.

Along the northernmost coast of California, near the mouth of the Klamath River, an overlook at the end of Requa Road yields this wide view of remote, boulder-strewn beaches and slopes. Photo taken 2014.

A big pot simmers as cooks and vendors prepare for the lunchtime rush in the market square of Tepoztlan, about 31 miles south of Mexico City. Photo taken in 2007.

At Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, students admire a portrait of poet Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin, often considered the dominant figure in all Russian literature, died in 1837, age 37, in a duel. Photo taken in 2013.

River guide Patrick Harris steers a raft along the Rio Grande near Terlingua in Big Bend National Park. Photo taken in 2007.

Let’s just take one more look back at summer, shall we? Part of mine was spent on Lake George in upstate New York. One afternoon I spotted this stand-up paddle-boarder headed up the coast with a cargo of Saranac pale ale -- and a life vest, of course. Photo taken July 2015.

This is Wizard Island, the only major island in Oregon’s Crater Lake. But to me, looking down from the viewpoint known as Watchman Overlook, it looked like the tail of a vast whale, improbably imprisoned in a freshwater lake, 7,000 feet above sea level. Photo taken in 2015.

San Francisco’s Mission District is adorned with murals and beset by graffiti. And if you can always tell where one ends and the other begins, your eye is better than mine. I took this photo in May 2015.

The Inn at the Presidio opened in 2012, surrounded by military history. Somebody had the wise idea of collecting these 18 bugles, framing them and hanging them near the door. It’s like seeing reveille instead of hearing it. Photo taken in May 2015.

Since the 1930s, yellow sedans have carried tourists around Yellowstone National Park. This one was parked in front of Old Faithful Inn on a bright July day.

All these years after the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, oil still leaks from the wreckage of the battleship Arizona. Though I took this photo back in 2006, the National Park Service estimates the ship is still leaking two to nine quarts a day.

This slogan adorns the Trinity Brewhouse in Providence. Shot in July 2015.

This kind and patient doorman was working the entrance of Moscow’s Metropol Hotel on a chilly February day in 2013.

This missed picnic opportunity took place in Humboldt Redwoods State Park in April 2014.

This unauthorized use of a portable Scrabble board took place at Ruby Montana’s Coral Sands Inn, Palm Springs, on March 30, 2014.

Surely there’s a better place for a morning walk than the Hanalei Pier, on Kauai’s North Shore. But it’s not coming to mind right now. Photo taken in 2014.

This stairwell is part of Boston’s Old State House, a 1713 landmark on the Freedom Trail. During most of the Revolutionary War, the British occupied the building. But on July 18, 1776, a Yankee stood on the balcony and gave the Declaration of Independence its first public reading in Massachusetts. Photo taken in 2015.

Death Valley Badwater -- the lowest spot in the continental U.S. -- is the dry lakebed that launched a thousand photo shoots. Sometimes, as on this day in December 2014, these shoots involve tripods and hand-held cameras all at once.

This couple came together for a kiss on a stormy winter night in Moscow’s Red Square, just outside the lavishly appointed building of the GUM shopping center. Photo taken in 2013.

Even if it weren’t a magnet for big critters, this old schoolhouse near the town of Orick would be enough to make a photographer slam on the brakes. And as it happens, the meadows around the building -- part of the 200-acre Elk Country R.V. Resort & Campground -- have become a common gathering place for herd of Roosevelt elk. Photo taken in 2014.

These tourists have achieved full documentation of their pass through the Chandelier Tree in Leggett, Calif. Of the three drive-through trees remaining in California, all are in the northern quarter of the state, but Leggett’s is the most commanding and sturdy. (It also has the biggest neighboring gift shop.) Photo taken in 2014.

The foreground here is the Klamath River, as it passed the tiny community of Requa in northernmost California, on a calm day. That line in the middle of the picture is the beach that separates the river from the Pacific. Photo taken in 2014.

... this room at Ruby Montana’s Coral Sands Inn is ready. Photo taken in 2014.

A young visitor to the Legoland Hotel considers the consequences of stepping on the whoopee cushions under the carpet near the elevator. Photo taken shortly after the hotel’s opening in 2013.

This is Surfboard House, a B&B in Hanalei, Kauai. Photo taken in 2014.

A temple in Bangkok? A shrine in Singapore? No. This is just a display at a garden shop along Solana Beach’s designer nirvana, Cedros Avenue. Photo taken in 2012.

From the Klamath River Overlook in the tiny Northern California community of Requa, you see not only the Klamath but also the rugged seaside edge of Del Norte County. Taken in 2014.

Behind the front counter of the Legoland Hotel in Carlsbad, a cyclist rolls back and forth in front of an array of little Lego people, as if on a high wire. Notice the magnifying glass where spokes would usually be. Photo taken 2013.

Most people go to Humboldt County for the redwoods. But the Eel River Cafe’s vintage sign, in downtown Garberville, might just steal your attention with the pancakes-in-flight motion feature. Photo taken in April 2014.

Wave watchers gather at Hanalei Pier, on Kauai’s north shore. Early 2014.

Soon summer will end, the desert will cool, and this sort of scene will again start popping up all over Palm Springs: Poolside Scrabble and ale at Ruby Montana’s Coral Sands Inn. Photo from early 2014.

It was early spring 2014 and J.D. Allmon, operater of a drive-through tree in Myers Flat in Humboldt County, called me over to a corner of the property. Then he unveiled the custom redwood coffin he’d been making for an ailing friend.

This cafe in Moscow’s bohemian Bersenevskaya Embankment neighborhood didn’t include a lot of glee, but the menu did feature a sampling of artisan beers. Photo taken in early 2013.

This skier at Lake Louise ski resort in Banff National Park was working on a largely empty mountain in the first days of the 2014-15 winter season.

Calle Revolucion, Tijuana’s main tourist drag, has changed a lot since I took this shot in 2007. It’s more genuinely Mexican now, with fewer features like this old zebra-striped photo-op horse. (The man in the hat is showing off his animal’s good health.)

Rosie the Riveter turns up amid Russian images (reverent and otherwise) in the gift shop at the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Photo taken 2013.

EVery winter is also a summer place these days. I shot these mountain-bikers on Bald Mountain at Sun Valley back in 2000, when it was still new for ski resorts to invite bikes in the warmer months.

This stretch of sub-sea-level highway was near Furnace Creek, Death Valley. Photo taken in 2014.

The pool at Ruby Montana’s Coral Sands Inn, Palm Springs, comes with accessories. Photo taken in 2014.

It was November when I showed up at Lake Louise, in Banff National Park, and the surface wasn’t quite frozen for the winter yet. Photo taken 2014.

This stripped husk of a truck was in Rhyolite ghost town, Nev., near Death Valley. Photo taken in 2014.

Locals. North shore, Kauai. Taken in 2014.

San Clemente’s Beachcomber Motel features 12 rooms, big views of the beach and pier and a grassy knoll out back that might be ideal for laying down your board. Photo taken in 2011.

At Ruby Montana’s Coral Sands Inn, Palm Springs, management doesn’t take itself too seriously. Photo taken 2014.

I spotted this guy alongside a trail in Hanalei, Kauai. Photo taken 2014.

I visited Sochi in the run-up to the Winter Olympics there and found feverish construction in the mountain resort area of Krasnaya Polyana. In fact, these decorations outside the Peak Hotel seemed to be among the few tasks that were completed early. Photo taken in 2013.

A hotel pool reflects the mountains and mist in Hanalei, on the north shore of Kauai. Photo taken in 2014.

Along Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, the soaring redwoods aren’t the only trees clamoring for your attention. These mossy branches were clustered alongside the road. Photo taken in 2014.

A Legoland Hotel front-desk worker concentrates while surrounded by guests, kids and Lego pieces. Photo taken in 2013.

The Metropol, one of the oldest, costliest hotels in central Moscow, hires a harpist to play while its guests eat breakfast. Photo shot in February 2013.

A young tourist on the waterfront of Gloucester checks out a statue honoring 19th century maritime painter Fitz Hugh Lane (a.k.a. Fitz Henry Lane). From childhood, the artist relied on crutches to get around -- and the sculptor included them. Photo taken in 2012.

The Tretyakov Gallery, one of the top two or three museums in Moscow, is a visual world unto itself. And on a stormy day in January -- such as this one was during my visit in 2013 -- it’s a fine place to keep warm, too. See more on the collection.

Point Loma Seafoods, whose marina-adjacent patio looks out toward the downtown San Diego skyline, gets overlooked by many visitors. But locals have counted on the place for years. I shot this photo in 2012; check out what they’re serving now.

These men and their sons were exploring the north shore of Lake Tahoe -- and some long-ago high-water marks -- on a bright May day in 2009.

This is the Las Vegas Strip, shot from a room in the just-opened Encore Hotel in December 2008.

Pozos, Mexico, was once a mining town near San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato. Then it was a ghost town. Now it’s an artist’s village, with plenty of rustic 19th century buildings awaiting loving restoration. One day during my visit in 2008, there were 18 hotel rooms in town -- and 17 were empty. Find out more about Pozos online.

As a July night fell in 2012, these cooks were at work in El Capitan Canyon’s Ocean Mesa camping area. The campground, which features a swimming pool, is west of Goleta and east of the Gaviota Pass in Santa Barbara County.

The Casa de la Marquesa, a boutique hotel in Queretaro, Mexico, that began like as an 18th century mansion, has a lobby you won’t soon forget. The walls are covered with tiles and patterned stencil work, and management placed a highly reflective black grand piano in the middle of it all. I stayed there, and shot this, in 2008.

Leggett is where the famously coastal California Highway 1 veers inland to meet U.S. 101 in Mendocino County. If you keep heading north on 101 you’ll reach the redwood-rich Avenue of the Giants and Redwood National Park. But Leggett has plenty of timber in its own right. I came across this view after a storm in 2014.

One afternoon in 2008, some friends took me to a wine-tasting at the Carlton Winemaker’s Studio, in the town of Carlton, Ore., part of the grape-crazy Willamette Valley. I looked up and suddenly saw red, red, red.

Stone Arch Bridge was built in the 1880s to bring the railroad across the Mississippi River in style. The trains don’t run this way any more. But Twin Cities people like to walk the bridge. And on July 4, bid crowds gather to picnic and watch fireworks over the river. Photo taken in 2008.

This elegant candelabrum stood at the Posada de las Minas, a boutique hotel in the artsy ghost town of Pozos, Mexico, not far from San Miguel de Allende. Photo taken in 2008.

This is Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, on the city’s Place d’Armes. The swordsman is part of a sculpture honoring pioneers in the city’s history. Photo taken in July 2014.

At Badwater in Death Valley, you walk across a crunch salt-encrusted lakebed, craning your neck to see the sign that marks sea level, which is more than 250 feet above from where you stand. This is the lowest point in the continental United States. Photo taken December 2014.

This was a bright blue morning at the ski school of Lake Louise ski resort in Banff National Park. Photo taken in November 2014.

This is the Berkeley Farmers Market on a September day in 2008. If I were a tomatophile, I’d have been pleased by this sight. But I’m not. In fact, I’d almost rather chew those green plastic containers. But the red-orange orbs and the containers do make a pleasant pattern.

At the Kremlin on a brisk day in January 2013, I caught one set of soldiers marching left while another set, on the wall, marched right.

There are three drive-through trees in California -- all in redwood country at the north end of the state. My favorite is this one, the Chandelier Tree in Leggett, near the Avenue of the Giants. Photo taken in early 2014.

This is one of the splendidly ungeneric rooms at Ruby Montana’s Coral Sands Inn in Palm Springs. Yes, the lamp is genius. But don’t let it distract you from the room’s other signature feature: sparkling pink walls. Photo taken in early 2014.

Look up as you enter the Legoland Hotel in Carlsbad, Calif., and a dragon will great you with eager ears, a healthy green pallor and a forked tongue. Photo taken in April 2013, soon after the hotel’s opening.

Even on a gloomy day, Hanalei, Kauai, looks pretty good. And this guy was making the best of it. It’s not obvious from this angle, but he was using the column of the pier to steady his camera. Taken in early 2014.