We’re all familiar with the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead four days after his entombment in John 11:1-44. But what happened to Lazarus afterwards – what did he do with the rest of his (second) life?

He left Judea to live on the island of Cyprus. There he met Paul the Apostle and his evangelizing partner Barnabas who was a Cypriot. They appointed him the first Bishop of Kition (present day Lanarca), where he lived for another 30 years, then upon his second death was buried for the last time.

A church was built over his marble sarcophagus which has undergone many resurrections itself over the last two millennia. But here it stands today after all those ravages of time, Agios Lazaros, the Church of St. Lazarus, over his still-preserved sarcophagus. On every Lazarus Saturday (eight says before Easter), an icon of St. Lazarus is taken in procession through the streets of Lanarca. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #165 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

When gold was discovered in the Klondike of Canada’s Yukon in 1896, the fastest way to get there was a tiny hamlet at the end of a long inlet of Alaska’s Inland Passage coast called Skagway.  By 1898, Skagway was a lawless Wild West boomtown flooded with prospectors who needed entertainment and release from the arduous travails of gold searching – and ladies who would provide it for a price.

The Brass Pic (as in a miner’s pic & shovel) was one of many Houses of Negotiable Affection in Skagway that flourished until the gold panned out in 1900.  It’s preserved as a museum today in fond memory of those days of commercially consensual delight.  Skagway is a terrific place to experience, drawing over a million visitors a year.  Come here to see what draws them.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #198 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Many consider this the most surrealistic place on earth. The clarity of the air turns the sky deep cobalt blue, the dunes are so old they’ve rusted red, combining with the white clay floor to give the skeletal trees a scene out of a Dali painting or a science fiction movie. But it’s real.

A thousand years ago the river watering these trees dried up, leaving a white clay pan amidst red sand dunes almost as tall as the Empire State Building. It’s so dry here these acacia trees can’t decompose, their skeletons standing scorched in the sun for ten centuries.

Dead Vlei is in a region of enormous dunes called Sossusvlei. It’s a mind-boggling experience to float over Sossusvlei in a hot air balloon. Namibia, in fact, is full of such experiences – the largest fur seal colony anywhere at Cape Cross, the marvelous abundance of African wildlife at the Etosha Pan, the dramatic shipwrecks dotting the Skeleton Coast, traditional people living untouched by the modern world like the Himbas.

Plus it’s one of the safest and best-run countries in all Africa – certainly worth consideration for your bucket list. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #47 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is Durnstein Castle, perched on a precipice high above the Danube River in Austria some 60 miles upriver from Vienna. Built in the early 1100s, here is where King of England Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned, having been captured by his enemy Leopold V of Austria on his return from the Third Crusade in the Holy Land.

The story is well known of how Richard’s brother John had usurped the throne and impeded paying Richard’s ransom – and the legend of Robin Hood raising the money pilfering it from thieving nobles.  The ransom was finally paid in 1194, with Richard returning to be crowned King of England once again.  The castle fell into disrepair, uninhabitable since the late 1600s.  It is an eerie journey back into history to explore it today. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #197 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

When he was 10 years old, I took my son Brandon to Indian Tibet for one of the great whitewater experiences on the planet, running the Zanskar River through the crest of the Himalayas. That was 27 years ago and he’s never forgotten it to this day.

Taking your kids on a great adventure not only bonds you with them in a deep and unique way, it opens the world to them as a place of magic, excitement, and wonder that stays with them for the rest of their lives. And for the rest of your life too.

This coming August, we’ll explore Indian Tibet again – the remote Himalayan regions of Lahaul, Spiti, Ladakh, and Zanskar – where traditional Tibetan culture still flourishes as it no longer does across the border in Chinese Tibet. I am proud to say that Brandon will be leading the expedition. I’ll just be along for the ride. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #64 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral in Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands, consecrated in 1892. In front is its famous Whale Bone Arch, made from the jaw bones of two blue whales (the largest creature to have ever lived, bigger than any dinosaur, and still swimming in our oceans today).

The Falklands are in far southern Atlantic some 300 miles east of the tip of South America. Claimed by Britain in 1782, an ongoing dispute first with Spain then Argentine resulted in Britain declaring it a Crown Colony and establishing a settlement, Stanley, in 1840. In 1982, after constantly claiming the islands were theirs, Argentina militarily invaded. The Falklands War was won by Margaret Thatcher ordering the British Navy, Army, and Royal Marines to take the islands back at gunpoint.

Today, Falklanders are the most patriotic people of all British possessions. They are wonderfully cheerful and friendly. There’s no more British place on earth. Don’t ever pass a chance to come here. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #167 photo ©Jack Wheeler)