More Leif Ericson – The Answers

A few days ago I set a TV western challenge to name the actors from their birth names:

Here are the answers:

Marion Mitchell Morrison – the one and only John Wayne

James Scott Bumgarner – James Garner (Bret Maverick)

Jack Carlton Moore – Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger)

His companion Tonto was played by actor Jay Silverheels who was a genuine First Nations Mohawk but whose real name was a disappointing Harold J. Smith!

Buddy Lee – Robert Fuller (Wagon Train)

Norman Eugene Walker – Clint Walker (Cheyenne Body)

Leonard Franklin Slye – Roy Rodgers

Roy’s horse was called Trigger but its real name was Golden Cloud.

Lyon Himan Green – Lorne Green (Ben Cartwright, Bonanza)

Eugene Maurice Orowitz – Michael Landon (Little Jo, Bonanza)

Orison Whipple Hungerford – Ty Hardin (Bronco Lane)

Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg – Jane Seymour (Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman)

How did you do?

7-10    Blazing Saddles

4-7      How the West was Won

0-3      Custer’s Last Stand

Coach Trip – USA National Parks, Lake Powell and Kanab

After breakfast and check out we returned to the South Rim Visitor Centre to spend some more time at the Canyon to see it in the daylight.  It was a bit of a disappointment therefore that the weather was slightly overcast and without the stimulating sunlight to create shadows and contrasts this seemed to leech the colours and the life from the rocks.

Read the full story…

Coach Trip – USA National Parks, Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon

It was another early start today and so early that it was still dark when we checked out and boarded the coach because there was a lot of travelling ahead as we headed west to Arizona and the Grand Canyon.  Our first stop today was at the Four Corners monument where four States meet at one intersection and it is possible to be in all of them at the same time by standing in two and reaching down and touching the others.  To get there we drove across a featureless landscape where distant mountains stood like islands in an ocean of desert and through a landscape scoured by erosion, a skeletal land stripped of all but the most minimal vegetation.

Read the full story…