Wednesday, August 26, 2020

A Couple Favorite Places of Mine

    Other than my house, I have a few places I actually enjoy spending time at. The most enjoyable of those places is the gun range. I love taking my firearms to the range and practicing different styles and positions for shooting. I love the impulse of the recoil, the smell of the gunpowder, the bang of the rounds going off, the clinking of the brass hitting the ground, and the fact that I can see where my shots are landing on target. The variety of firearms and distances available just warms my heart. I can practice long range precision shots with a .308 rifle or just mag dump at the target with my conceal carry. I much prefer outdoor gun ranges over indoor ones as it seems more free and easier to breathe. They also typically have longer distances available.

Personal photo from Canadian Ranges from May 2017.

    Another place that I've been too that is definitely among my favorites is Alaska. I was fortunate enough to go on a cruise when I was about six or seven because my mom worked for the company at the time and a steeply discounted cruise trip happened to be a benefit. The trip started in Seattle, which was a nice city, stopped twice in Canada, and then made a few more stops in Alaska. Unfortunately, I don't remember much about Canada. Alaska, however, left a very good impression on me. We had seen a native temple in Alaska that I thought was amazing because it seemed so small on the outside but so roomy on the inside. It also reminded me of a cabin, and I am fond of cabins. We also saw a lumberjack show, where they essentially carved out some chairs, animals, and other various props while dancing around. Alaska also had a salmon farm that we visited, and they had what was probably some of the best salmon I ever had along with a warm piece of some sort of special bread and cream cheese. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. Unfortunately, we eventually had to go back to sunny California. I say unfortunately because I much prefer cold and snowy weather over sunshine and heat. We also never saw a sight as beautiful as the one below, but there were still many beautiful landscapes that we got to experience.


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Beaver Creek Wild and Scenic River, Alaska photographer Bob Wick (March 2013). Source: Flickr

    There are a few other places I quite enjoy but maybe I'll share those another time. There are also many places I wish to experience, such as Maine and Poland, but they will have to wait for now.

4 comments:

  1. I have to go tell my husband about your post, Manny: he used to shoot skeet, but there's no place to do that where we live, so he does target shooting at the range. I go along just to enjoy being outdoors... I look for the quietest corner of the range and then listen to some music on my headphones while I sit outside and read (quiet is a relative thing at the range, but still: I can usually find a good place for reading!). The hunter and the bookworm: that way we both enjoy the range. And that picture of the northern lights is amazing! No northern lights to be seen in India, but as you will see, hunters and hunting play an important part in the epics, so keep an eye out for the hunting adventures (and misadventures) when you start reading the epics; you'll see what I mean! :-)

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    1. I will keep an eye out for those hunting epic adventures! Also, I only had the pleasure of skeet shooting once, but I really enjoyed it and hope to do it more in the future. It's nice to hear how the two of you enjoy the range in your own way. I don't know if stories of battles are really your type of thing, but maybe it could be a sort of immersive experience to read of a battle while at the range.

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    2. And there's an idea: trying to imagine the "soundscape" of ancient epic battles, which would obviously be different from the sounds of modern weapons...... you'll see that the hero of the Ramayana, Rama, has the bow as his weapon of choice. :-)

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  2. Hello Manny,
    I would love to go to Alaska someday because I've always admired the scenery there. I feel like it'd be so tranquil and seeing the aurora borealis in person is one of the things on my bucket list. I say this, but I also hate the cold so I don't know how well I'd do there haha. I'd be willing to tough through it for a once in a lifetime experience though.

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