Kurts Travel Pictures

Kurt Theis's Travel Pictures

Sometimes I get the urge to visit lands far away. Below, you can see some of the places I've been to.

I've always enjoyed seeing new places. Thanks to my parents. They took short weekend trips to different places while I was growing up, and I liked visiting other areas around me.

You can click on the images to see the full size. Please forgive my poor attempts at photography.

Here is a lonely bird sitting on the beach. The beach is on the western shore of Kawaii. The sun is about 2 hours from setting in late fall. The unhindered waves travelled about 5000 miles from Japans coast to stop here at my feet.
Here is a small village on a river in the interior of Oahu in Hawaii. Only about 30 people live in this secluded valley. I imagine life hasn't changed much for these people in a thousand years.
Here is a view of Kawaii's eastern coast. Pine trees grow at the edge of the water. The picture here doesn't do justice to the incredible blue of the sea. From this point, there is nothing east until the west coast of the United States mainland.
Here is another view from just a few feet away. The water is warm, the sand smooth, and the tourists are few and far between. The people in Kawaii are among the friendlist I've met anywhere. They invite you into their home, they come up and just start chatting, and offer you anything they have.
Here is what the majority of people worldwide expect of a Hawaiian village. Small grass huts, swaying palm trees, canoes along a small, ocean going stream, lush mountains in the background. This isn't real. This is at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu, near Honolulu. The real Hawaii (at least for the most part) is high rise hotels and traffic.
Here is what the natives do for entertainment. Just not their entertainment, but for the tourists. Again from the Polynesian Cultural Center. After they get the coconuts, we all take a drink of the sweet milk.
Hawaii is still active volcanically. Here is a lava field in Maui.

Here are a few scenes from Southern California, United States.

Here are some sail boats. I love sailing. I learned during college and have spend a couple of months on one of these boats during a long vacation sailing around California/Mexico.
You've heard of the road to nowhere? This is it. From the high desert in Southern California, this road eventually goes to Arizona, and on down to New Mexico. In places, it's barely visible. Here, it's well traveled.
After you take to road to nowhere, this is where you end up. That's right, Nowhere.

In 1995, I went to Greece.

Here is a touristy thing near Athens. It's old, but people love this sort of thing. The country is full of ruins. Our culture of the present is based on their culture of the past. Notice how many of our civic buildings look a lot like this? Large columns, lots of marble, big imposing structures? Greece is full of these things.
The Greek people are very religious. Greek Orthadox is the predominant religion. Here is a red church.
And here is a blue church. The styles of the buildings are alike, just the colors change.
Here is a small street in one of the cities outside Athens. While Athens is a big city of millions of people, life slows down just a few miles away. You don't see cars on the streets here.
Here is another street scene. I took this for the artistic view.
Santorini is a city on top of a volcano that used to be called Thera. This island is in the middle of the Agean sea. If there was a city called Atlantis, this is most likely where it was 3000 years ago.
Alas, there are no remnents of Atlantis here now. Santorini is a multi-national touristy place now. I love it here. I would retire here if I could.
Here is another view of Santorini. Notice how almost all of the buildings are white?
There are three ways to get to the city of Santorini: Tram, donkey and walk. I chose the donkey. Getting back down it's best to take the tram. Sometimes the donkeys slip and you end up with donkey dung on you.

I like castles. Here are a couple from Europe.

Here is a castle along the Rhine river in Germany near Heidelberg.
And here is an old castle in Rome, Italy. It is now a war museam with lots of neat stuff inside.

Turkey is an interesting place. Most small towns love Americans, especially tourists. It is a good place to buy trinkets and other junk. Here's me in between shopping just looking around behind some houses. This is in fall of 1995.

In summer of 2005 I went with a friend and his family to the Oregon coast. We all had four-wheel drive vehicles and played on some sand dunes. Here is the first day on the dunes. I slept in the blue tent; they had shelters on their vehicles.
Here is my Jeep and I on top of a sand dune. It took a little bit of work to get here. The whole area is a combination of dunes and vegetation with a few vehicles thrown in here and there.
Here is my ride on the beach. Notice the person in the distance? Part of our party. The beach was empty. This is about the middle of the beach. Ten miles up and down the beach with maybe 15 other people in off-road vehicles.
Here's the fleet on the beach. Makes me want to be there now.

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