There was a déjà vu moment as we prepared for our Costa Rica journey.  Last year our flight from Albuquerque to Dallas-Fort Worth had been cancelled due to weather and, as a result, we arrived in Costa Rica a day late.  This time, American Airlines sent us an early warning that a storm was expected to move into the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport area on our departure date, so we had time to book a flight a day earlier.  We spent the extra day at the Bougainvillea Hotel near San José.  The hotel is known for its exceptional garden where we spent time looking for and photographing birds.

Costa Rica has many remote, isolated areas including Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula.  Located along the Pacific Ocean in the southwest corner of Costa Rica, the peninsula is mostly undeveloped rainforest with only a few villages and lodges.  We stayed at the Casa Corcovado Wilderness Lodge near the San Pedrillo Ranger Station entrance to the National Park. 

The Pacific side of the Osa Peninsula has little in the way of transportation infrastructure.  We enjoyed a short domestic flight on Sansa Airlines in a 11 passenger Cessna 208-B aircraft from San José to Drake Bay where there is a small landing strip.  From there it was a slow, bumpy twenty minutes, or so, ride in an old van on a dirt track to the beach along the Drake Bay.  Staff from the Casa Corcovado Wilderness Lodge were waiting on the beach to transport us via a small boat with a large, powerful outboard motor to the Lodge. We changed into water shoes for the wet transfer from the beach to the boat.  After half an hour on the choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean, Jane and I awkwardly alighted from the skiff with the much appreciated help of the crew.

We were off the boat and on the rocky beach but not at the Lodge.  A short time after our arrival a tractor arrived pulling a small open trailer with snug seating for about eight.  We boarded the trailer and our luggage was placed in a rack in front of the tractor.  It was a steep haul from the beach to the main lodge facilities.  The Casa Corcovado Wilderness Lodge is small, only 14 bungalows on a 170 acre site, intimate resort with good food and very friendly staff.  We stayed five nights and participated in a number of activities, including a snorkeling trip to Cano Island, a boat tour into the mangroves of the Terrabe Sierpe National Wetlands, a hike into Corcovado National Park, and various hikes on the rainforest trails of the lodge.

From the Casa Corcovado Wilderness Lodge, we flew back to San José where Carlos rented a car for our journey to Sarapique and the Ara Ambigua Lodge.  On the way we stopped at Don Alvara’s farm where it was possible to photograph macaws from a close distance.  The large, noisy birds are wild but have become habituated to life on the farm where they are occasionally fed peanuts.

We were three nights at the Ara Ambigua Lodge including my birthday.  Carlos surprised us with special dinner arrangements that night including a bottle of fine wine.  Turned out that Carlos actually lives near Sarapique and invited his wife, Maribel, to join us for dinner the last night of our stay at Ara Ambigua.

Several sojourns were made around Sarapique.  The best birding occurred along some of rural agricultural tracks as well as the surrounding rainforest.  With the aid of local guide José (Cope) Perez, we were able to spot, and photograph, crested owls, Honduran white bats, a laughing falcon, and an adolescent sloth.  Cope also put some sugar water into a banana flower to attract hummingbirds that I was able to capture without flash.

Our last night in Costa Rica was spent at the Hotel Villa San Ignacio not far from the San José airport.  The vast hotel grounds were well secluded from the hustle and bustle of urban noise and activity.  We enjoyed some quiet relaxing time there before being transferred to the San José airport and our American Airlines flight home.

Some photos from this trip can be found in the Costa Rica 2023 Gallery on the Home Page.

The morning Qantas flight from Brisbane got us to Hobart, Tasmania, early enough to check in at the historic Lenna Hotel and do some exploring along Hobart’s waterfront.  We had actually arrived in Hobart the day before our three-day, private, Tasmania tour with Luke O’Brian Photography and packed as much exploring as we could during our day-and-half in this provincial capital of Tasmania.  That afternoon we walked the fashionable Salamanca Place, a redevelopment area with restored warehouses that now contain shops, galleries and upscale restaurants.  Around four o’clock that afternoon we happened upon the Pearl & Co., a waterfront oyster bar and restaurant, during their happy hour and stopped in for a glass of wine then stayed for dinner.

After breakfast at the small, bustling, but cozy Harbor Lights Café, we joined a walking tour, which Jane had arranged ahead of time, around Hobart’s historic downtown.  Like much of mainland Australia, Tasmania was first colonized and developed by British convicts.  After years of being downplayed, this unique history is now being touted with statues and informative plaques on buildings.

Later that afternoon, we learned that public tours were offered at the Tasmania Parliament House and, on impulse, decided to take the tour.  As it turned out we were the only ones on the tour that day and enjoyed the personal attention given us by our guide, a legislative analyst.  We visited the House of Lords chambers and those of the House of Commons, both simply decorated in an ornate, governmental sort of way.  We learned a lot about Tasmania’s system of government and voting process, most of which I have already forgotten.  Evening cocktails were enjoyed in the hotel lounge that reminded me of an old gentlemen’s club, often seen in British movies.  Dinner that night was seafood pasta at an Italian restaurant on Salamanca Place.

Tuesday morning, November 8^th, day 43 of our Australian Odyssey, was when Luke O’Brian picked us up at the hotel to begin our Tasmania photo adventure.  I was very much looking forward to some landscape photography after beating the bushes for birds in New South Wales, Northern Territory, and Queensland.  Cradle Mountain was our destination.  We made a refreshment stop at Ross, a small village in Tasmania’s Midlands, along the Macquarie River.  Ross exemplifies Tasmania’s convict heritage with the historic Ross Bridge over the Macquarie River having been built by convicts and the historic Ross Female Factory, a workhouse where thousands of female convicts worked in the mid 1,800’s, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  Luke also made a short detour on our way to Cradle Mountain to drive through Sheffield, known as the Town of Murals.

Cradle Mountain Hotel was our home for the next three nights. After checking in and a short respite, Luke and I headed to Dove Lake for some night sky photography.  Jane opted to take a break from activities and stayed at the hotel.  Luke and I arrived at Dove Lake in plenty of time to get in some sunset photography of Cradle Mountain reflected in the still water of Dove Lake.  As dusk and darkness approached we changed our vantage point to increase our chances of getting a shot at the Milky Way, although this time of year at Cradle Mountain the Galactic Center would be below the horizon.  As darkness crept in so did a full moon start to light the sky.  Conditions were perfect for night sky photography with a clear, cloudless sky and windless conditions for a glassy lake surface.  Only the bright full moon was problematic with its light obscuring the intensity of distant stars.  Just as we resigned ourselves to a wasted effort, the night started to get darker as the moon entered into full eclipse.  What an unexpected surprise that was.

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We spent the next two days hiking and photographing rain forest scenes, wildlife and waterfalls around Cradle Mountain.  A couple of return trips to Dove Lake were made to photograph at sunset with marginal success as a colorful cloudy sky never appeared.  We visited the Devils @ Cradle, a Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary and got some photos of the infamous Devils, although in captivity.  During our time at Cradle Mountain, Luke escorted us to an area that Wombats frequent.  Jane and I both developed an affection for these small, cuddly marsupials with their squatty frames nibbling away at the tussock grasses.  Like all grazing animals, they rarely looked up from their constant foraging, and it was difficult to get a facial portrait. 

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Evolution creates unique solutions to ensure survival of a species and the wombat is a great example.  Wombats live in long, deep burrows that they dig with dirt being kicked out behind them. If wombats had belly pouches like wallabies and kangaroos, all that dirt whipping by the pouch would have been lethal to developing joeys.  Evolution solved that problem for wombats by creating a backward facing pouch that protects joey wombats from flying dirt.  On one of our hikes among wombats, we observed a developing joey stick its head out of the rear facing pouch.

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Our Cradle Mountain adventure ended all too soon.  Luke drove us back to Hobart via Queenstown, with substantial buildings constructed by convicts, Nelson Falls and Lake St. Clair.  He dropped us off at the airport Travel Lodge where we spent the night before flying back to Sydney the next day.  In Sydney, we spent the night at the airport Rydges Hotel to repack and organize for our next day’s flight back to San Francisco and eventually Albuquerque.  We arrived home on Monday, November 14^th after 50 days of travel.

Trogon’s Photo Tour started in Cairns, Queensland.  We met our tour leaders, Kylie and Frank Pankas as well as our fellow photographer Rich Frank on Sunday evening, October 23^rd.  Jane and I had arrived in Cairns two days earlier and had already taken the scenic train ride to the quaint artisan village of Kuranda.  There we had our picture taken holding a soft, cuddly koala.  We had also taken a helicopter flight over the Great Barrier Reef and the rain forest around Kuranda.

Michaelmas Cay, a small, low, sandy island located some 20 miles east of Cairns, along the Great Barrier Reef, was our first photo destination.  This tiny little spec of sand hosts thousands of breading seabirds.  We were ferried to the islet from our excursion boat and spent an hour or so photographing Brown Boobies, Lesser Frigatebirds, Crested Terns, and the Brown Noddy.  Snorkeling was included as part of our morning’s sail to the Barrier Reef.

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Next morning the five of us were out early looking for birds to photograph around Cairns.  Trogon’s Photo Tour was very much a birding tour as we searched for birds at the Centenary Lakes, Cairns Botanical Garden, and Flecker Botanical Garden without much success.  By mid-morning, we were on our way, through the farming district of Dimbulah on the Atherton Tableland of Queensland, to Ironbark House.  This very comfortable holiday house was totally “off the grid”, with its own solar power and harvested rainwater.  The accommodation was new, well appointed, with a modern flair.  A small water feature off the back patio provided some good photo opportunities.

Kevin and Rachael, proprietors of this 1,345 acre remote “outback” property, were outstanding hosts.  Each morning Kevin would drive us around the property looking for birds and rock wallabies to photograph.  Each evening Rachael and Kevin would provide us with a delectable dinner, family style, served on the patio.  Afternoons were spent at the Black Swan Farm, a nearby accommodation where Kylie and Frank stayed.  Black Swan Farm was “on the grid” and Jane and I enjoyed air conditioned naps there.  At Black Swan Farm, I was attracted to some very noisy, distant bird calls.  I searched for the origin of this noise and found a small group of  Sarus Cranes, in a nearby pasture, squabbling among themselves.

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Ironbark House was a very comfortable stay for three nights after which we were off again for two nights at the Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodge.  This turned out to be a typical accommodation set in the thick of the rain forest where a boisterous catbird kept our interest.  There not being much to photograph on the grounds of the lodge, we ventured out to find more productive photo areas.  The small village of Yungaburra provided some good photo opportunities including a platypus sighting along Peterson Creek.  Some new bird species were found in the Hasties Swamp area.  Curtain Fig National Park turned out to be very interesting.  The Park has a fig tree with extensive aerial roots that drop nearly fifty feet to the forest floor creating a dense “curtain”.  We finished our stay at Chambers with some night photography of a sugar glider, a small nocturnal marsupial, that feeds on tree sap.

Kingfisher Park Birdwatchers Lodge in Julatten was our next destination.  We were on the road by 7:00 AM stopping at Mount Hypipamee National Park to search for a Cassowary, a large flightless bird, but without success.  Lunch was at Mount Molloy Café a Mexican establishment where Frank ordered a hamburger with “the lot” that included everything that could be stacked on a burger.  We reached the Kingfisher in time to do some afternoon bird photography before heading for dinner at the National Hotel & Pub in Mount Molloy. 

The Buff Breasted Paradise Kingfisher is the iconic bird that nests on the Lodge grounds.  The bird migrates from Papua New Guinea and had arrived at the Lodge in time for us to photograph this colorful Kingfisher.  Carol Iles, our owner of the lodge, told us that somewhere during the migration from Papua New Guinea the Buff Breasted Paradise Kingfisher had lost its long signature tail feathers.  So, my picture of the bird is sans tail feathers.  Carol was very helpful and told us about a couple of other birding hot spots, Brooklyn Village caravan park where we found a Tawny Frogmouth on its nest with a chick, and a ranch area where we found a male Australian Bustard exhibiting its mating display.

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After two nights at the Kingfisher Park Birdwatchers Lodge we were on the road again back to Cairns for a flight to Brisbane and drive to O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat.  O’Reilly’s was a busy place with lots of guests and a myriad of activities.  Although we hiked many of the trails looking for birds, most birds hung out right by the entrance to reception where you could buy wild bird seed and feed the birds.  Parrots, Bowerbirds, and Cockatoos were all over you once you had seed in your hand.  Our last day at O’Reilly’s was charmed when we found a Paradise Riflebird, female Australian Logrunner and Albert’s Lyrebird all on the same trail.

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The last two nights of the Trogon Photo Tour were spent at the unimpressive Shangri-La Gardens in Wynnum, a suburb of Brisbane.  Kylie and Frank did their best to find us some birds to photograph, but it was slim pickings.  We lunched at the Pelican’s Nest Café where Frank assured me again that I would get to photograph flying foxes (large fruit bats).  Sure enough, a short drive from the Pelican’s Nest Café, Frank drove us through some neighborhoods to a Black Flying Fox roost with dozens of the large bats hanging from tree branches. 

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We celebrated the end of our Trogon Photo Tour with a delicious seafood dinner at the lively Manly Boathouse Restaurant with its great view of Moreton Bay.  Early next morning, Sunday, November 6^th, forty-one days after leaving home, Frank shuttled us to Brisbane Airport for our flight to Hobart, Tasmania. 

NOTE:  Bird photographs can be found on the Home Page – Bird Gallery – Birds of Australia

Other trip photographs can be found on the Home Page – Austalia Gallery

Our Australian journey started in Albuquerque on Sunday, September 25th with a neighbor giving us a ride to the airport.  We arrived in Sydney early on Tuesday morning September 27th, having lost a day crossing the International Date Line.  Sydney was our home for a week.  We had arrived two days early for the Victor Emanuel Nature Tour (Chapter 1) and had five days in Sydney before the start of the Trogon Photo Tour (Chapter 3).

Upon arrival to this dynamic, cosmopolitan city, we stayed at the Pullman Hotel on College Street across from Hyde Park.  Located in Sydney’s central core, the Pullman, with great views from the rooftop, was a great home base for our exploration of the City.  We were in walking distance of the city’s major attraction, the Sydney Opera House.  And, walk we did!

Our flight from Los Angeles had arrived too early in the morning for us to check in at the Pullman.  So, that very first morning in Sydney, we parked our luggage at the hotel and, with street map in hand, started our explorations.  Quickly, we got our bearings, learned to stay left and with Jane’s excellent navigating skill stayed on course.  We found a convenience store adjacent the hotel where we could stock up on bottled water and a wine shop around the corner so we could enjoy a glass of chardonnay to relax in the evenings.

The initial couple of days in Sydney were spent getting familiar with the area.  We found that College Street provided convenient access to the Australian Museum, St. Mary’s Cathedral, Hyde Park Barracks, the old Mint, New South Wales Parliament House, and the State Library.  The hustle and bustle of the Central Business District was only a short walk further as were the opera house and Royal Botanic Garden.  Hyde Park, across the street from the Pullman proved a convenient short cut when returning from our forays.

When we returned to the City after completing the Victor Emanuel Nature Tour, we stayed at the five-star Sir Stamford Hotel at Circular Quay.  We splurged a bit staying at the Sir Stamford but the location was perfect, right on Macquarie Street across from the Royal Botanic Garden and only a ten minute walk from the opera house.  The Sydney Opera House is a spectacular architectural venue and we spend quite a bit of time visiting the area.  We viewed the opera house from Circular Quay, from the Royal Botanic Garden, and from ferries crossing Sydney Harbor.

Scheduled opera performances did not fit into our schedule.  Instead, we booked a tour to see the interior of this iconic facility and got tickets for L’Hôtel, a cabaret performance, in one of the ancillary theaters at the opera house.  Lots of Édith Piaf style singing, a magician, acrobats and the “coup de grâce” was the manly hunk behind the “hotel” check-in counter who ended up pole dancing in his briefs.  Lots of fun was had with hoots and hollers from the enthusiastic audience.

With the Royal Botanic Garden just across the street from the Sir Stamford, Jane and I visited the garden several times.  Walking the various paths in the garden was relaxing as we viewed the many species of flowers, shrubs, and particularly the amazing variety of trees.  Appropriate for a “royal” garden, the grounds were meticulously maintained.  We particularly enjoyed the Calyx exhibit with its plant covered walls.  A couple of the paths in the garden provided excellent views of the Sydney Opera House.

Before leaving home, I had envisioned an image of the Sydney skyline at dusk with light emanating from high rise buildings that I wanted to capture in a photograph.  To capture that image meant crossing over to the north side of Sydney Harbor.  To make that crossing meant we had to learn about the elaborate ferry system leaving from Circular Quay.  The anxiety of using the ferries quickly dissipated when we found using the ferries to be much simpler than expected.  Good signage led us to the appropriate pier and platform for the ferry we needed and then it was simply tapping a credit card to access the ferry and again when leaving.  I photographed the evening skyline from Cremorne Point, straight across from the opera house.

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Just can’t say enough about how much we enjoyed Sydney.  One morning we joined a walking tour of the old harbor area known as the Rocks.  We learned a lot about how in 1788 the first crew of convicts arrived in Australia.  Mostly, however, we created our own walking tours finding interesting places to discover, like the State Library and cozy little bistros.  During one of our forays into the sky scraper lined business core, we discovered a subterranean food court under Martin Place.  With scores of vendors, food from all over the world was available along with an amazing array of pastries.  As we left the food court, after lunching on sushi, we happened upon the Theatre Royal where Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” was playing.  Of course, we had to get tickets for that famous murder mystery.

On October 21st, half way through our Australian Odyssey, we somewhat reluctantly left Sydney on our flight to Cairns and the Pacific Hotel for the rest of our journey.  Chapter 3 will cover the Trogon Photo Tours portion of our trip.

As the crow flies, it is just over eight thousand miles from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Sydney, New South Wales, in Australia.  Jane and I did not fly as the crow, we instead traveled first from Albuquerque to Denver, and then from Denver to Los Angeles, before boarding our fourteen hour, United Airlines flight to Sydney.  And that is how the seven week long journey to our seventh continent began.

This was a momentous journey with more adventures to relay than one Blog can contain.  So, I will detail this journey in several separate chapters.  But first, here is a short introductory recap of our Australian odyssey.  To begin, the trip had been planned for a 2020 departure but was postponed until 2022 due to that persistent coronavirus.  After this long delay, the journey finally started on Sunday, September 25th and ended fifty days later on Monday, November 14th.  Crossing the International Dateline going over and coming back caused some confusion with dates as did the sixteen hours of time zone change.  In summary, this long trip included twelve separate flights on three different airlines, including two fourteen hour Pacific Ocean crossings.   We scurried through eleven airport terminals and slept at seventeen different accommodations.

This was truly a monumental journey and can be separated into four distinct sections.  Each of these four sections will be a separate chapter of this Blog and will be published sequentially. Upon arrival in Australia, our first undertaking was a two week excursion with Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT).  This tour was focused on birding and started in Sydney, New South Wales, and ended at Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territory. Jane and I were two of ten participants on this tour and I was the only serious photographer.  Chapter 1 will describe our adventures on this portion of our trip.

At the end of the VENT tour, we flew from Uluru back to Sydney for a five night stay on our own.  Our days in cosmopolitan Sydney are detailed in Chapter 2.

From Sydney we traveled north to Cairns, Queensland, for a two week excursion with Trogon Photo Tours.  Jane and I were two of only three guests on this tour that started in Cairns and finished in Brisbane, Queensland.  The Trogon tour was to be a photo tour but turned out to be very much a birding tour as well.  Details for this portion of our trip are in Chapter 3.

Hobart in Tasmania was our next and final destination.  I had arranged a private tour with Luke O’Brian, a local Tasmania photographer, for three days of photography at Cradle Mountain – Lake St. Clair National Park.  Chapter 4 details our visit to Tasmania and encounter with the Tasmania Devil.

Chapter 1

We met our eight fellow travelers for the Victor Emanuel Nature Tour for lunch on Friday, September 30th, at the Pullman Hotel in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.  Our tour was led by Dion Hobcroft, an exceptional birder with over twenty years of experience leading birding groups for VENT.  Dion wasted no time.  After brief introductions and lunch we were off in the minibus, with Janene Luff behind the wheel, to our first afternoon of birding at Sydney’s Centennial Park.

Next day, we were up at 4:15 AM to be out by 5:00 for an early start of birding at the Royal National Park about an hour’s drive south of Sydney.  That morning we hiked along the Lady Carrington Drive trail.  The birders, equipped with their binoculars and scopes, and me with my camera, followed Dion eagerly as he spotted and identified Australia’s birds.  The morning weather was gloomy with off and on light rain, making for low light photography.  After a picnic lunch, we traveled to Burraneer Park where Dion was able to locate a pair of Australia’s largest owls, the Powerful Owl.  This pair, perched high in the upper canopy of a large tree, was raising chicks.

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That same afternoon, while the rest of us were back birding with Dion at the Royal Park, one of Dion’s associates (Steve) was scouting the Engadine section of the park looking for koalas.  Finding a koala in the wild is not easy but Steve had lots of experience and was familiar with the habitat koalas frequented.  It did not take long for Steve to return with the news that he spotted a koala.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that the eucalyptus tree with the koala was located near the bottom of a very steep ravine.  Everyone in the group, however, was game for bushwhacking ourselves down the sheer, forested terrain.  The reward was seeing a koala in the wild and for me photographing the cuddly little marsupial.  To top the event off, while engrossed with the koala, a Rock Warbler, the only endemic bird species of New South Wales, flew into the area.

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After three days of birding the Sydney area, on Monday, October 3rd, our small group of adventurers journeyed west to the Blue Mountains for an overnight stay at the Blackheath Motor Inn.  From Blackheath, getting started before sunrise, we scouted the Blue Mountain region for birds.  Enthusiastically, Dion guided us through Glen Alice, Glen Davis and around Lake Wallis.  Even along the busy motorway back from Blackheath to a hotel at Sydney Airport, Dion called out bird sightings that only those in the front seats could see.

Next day we were off on a Qantas flight to Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory.  Situated at Australia’s “top end”, Darwin’s climate is similar to that of other tropical countries near the equator, hot, humid and sweaty.  Even a short foray into the field for birding resulted in clothing sticking to wet skin.  We were an intrepid bunch, however, and followed Dion eagerly to find that new bird.  The Adina Hotel was our home for a couple of nights as we sojourned the Darwin area looking for more new bird species.  Howard Creek, Knuckey Lagoon, Buffalo Creek, and Lee’s Point were all visited as Dion continued his tireless search.

Cooinda Lodge in Kakadu National Park was our next destination.  The nearly four hour drive to Kakadu started after some early morning birding around Darwin.  It was a long haul getting to Kakadu National Park with lots of “road train” trucks on the two-lane highway.  A much needed break was lunch at the Orroboree Park Tavern with its huge crocodile statue in front.  There was much birding to be done in Kakadu National Park but I was attracted to the pristine aboriginal rock art found in the park.  While the rest of the group was searching for illusive feathered creatures, I concentrated on finding and photographing this very unique x-ray style of rock art.

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From the Cooinda Lodge at Kakadu we ventured to Knotts Crossing Resort in Katherine, Northwest Territory, birding along the way, of course.  The indigenous purple backed fairy wren was on everyone’s want list and Dion knew where to find it.  So, next day we were on the road at 4:45 AM for the two hour drive to the Victoria River crossing at Gregory.  Finding this diminutive bird was not easy.   For well over an hour, we trudged back and forth through dense flood plain vegetation.  Only Dion’s persistence kept us going and resulted in finally locating this illusive little bird.  I was not fortunate enough to photograph the bird, however.  The next day was another long one on the road as we traversed back to Darwin to catch an afternoon Qantas flight to the remote town of Alice Springs.

Alice Springs is a small community in the "red desert" of the Northern Territory.  The Mercure Hotel was our home for the night.  Temperatures continued hot in the desert but humidity became more tolerable.  The terrain changed noticeable to a desert environment with vegetation more open and geologic features more prominent. The ubiquitous large termite mounds continued to be a dominant feature of the landscape as we birded the Alice Springs area.  We searched for birds in the Simpson Gap, Ormiston Gorge and Glen Ellen Gorge areas.  Then it was off again in the minibus for the 270 mile drive to Uluru, the massive sandstone monolith formerly known as Ayer’s Rock.  On the way, lunch was consumed eagerly at the Erldunda Roadhouse, at Stuarts Well, an establishment typical of those along the Stuart Highway.

The first Europeans explorers arrived at Uluru in the late 1800’s but tourism to this amazing geologic feature did not get started until the 1950’s when less than 3,000 intrepid travelers braved the 12 hour primitive travel from Alice Springs.  An entire tourist village was planned and constructed in the 1980’s and today, with completion of massive upgrades to the village, more than 350,000 visitors arrive to experience this sacred UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

By mid-afternoon, we arrived at the Desert Gardens Hotel where we all enjoyed an afternoon break after a long, bumpy ride through the “Red Center” of the Northern Territory.  That evening, Dion treated us to a champagne sundowner at the Uluru sunset viewpoint.  It was a perfect setting for our last night together.  But, next morning, Dion had us up early again for sunrise at Kata Tjuta, “many heads” in the aboriginal language, a group of large domed sedimentary rock formations about 16 miles to the west of Uluru.  The Victor Emanuel Nature Tour ended at Uluru and after lunch the resolute birders headed to the airport for their flight back to Sydney.

Jane and I, on the other hand, stayed behind as we had booked two extra nights at the Desert Gardens Hotel.  Although we had thoroughly enjoyed the company of our birding friends, it felt really good to be on our own again after fourteen days of communal touring.  After bidding adieu to our fellow travelers, we prepared for a sunset helicopter flight over Kata Tjuta and Uluru.  We followed that up with a Uluru sunrise tour to complete our trifecta of sunrise, sunset and from the air views of the Uluru monolith.  I had also booked a night sky tour to photograph the Milky Way over Uluru, but unfortunately, the desert experienced one of its rare cloudy nights and that outing was cancelled.

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On Sunday, October 16th, twenty days after leaving home, we enjoyed a much needed sleep-in and leisurely breakfast, after which we shuttled to the Uluru Airport for our flight back to Sydney.  Our days in Sydney are described in the following Chapter 2 of the Blog.

NOTE: Bird photographs can be found on the Home Page - Bird Gallery - Birds of Australia Sub-Gallery

          Other trip photographs can be found on the Home Page - Australia Gallery

Bruce and I started this journey literally in my backyard with a short walk to the community gate into Petroglyph National Monument.  Two species of wren forage among the lava boulders scattered along the mesa escarpment, the rock wren and the canyon wren.  In the past, I had had success with calling the birds using an app on my phone.  It worked this time as well and we were able to obtain images of both birds.  After photography, it was a short hike back home for lunch.

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Shortly after lunch we headed west on Interstate 40 to El Malpais National Monument.  Not quite in my backyard but only about an hour and half up the road.  I had planned two photo objectives at El Malpais.  First, to photograph Mexican Short-Eared Bats as they emerged en masse from their lava tube cave, and second, some night sky photography with the Milky Way rising over the ruins of the historic Garrett Homestead.  Both these objectives were achieved.

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After a sleep-in the next morning, the plan was to drive to the small town of Truth or Consequences (referred to as T or C locally) and stay at the Sierra Grande Lodge for guided tours onto Ted Turner’s Armendaris Ranch.  Frequent blog readers may recall my September 2, 2021 blog where I had attempted to photograph Swainson’s Hawks preying on bats as they foraged for bugs on the Armendaris Ranch.  That was the plan also for this trip with Bruce.  Unfortunately, the plan did not work out.  Resent monsoon rains had made the dirt tracks on the ranch impassable.  Consequently, I had to improvise an alternative objective.  So, instead of touring the Armendaris Ranch, we scouted the area around T or C for a night sky photography opportunity.  Fortunately we discovered an old steel windmill within easy access of the paved road that made a great foreground for the rising Milky Way.  So, all was not lost at Truth or Consequences.

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Out next photographic target was the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site.  Bruce and I had been there thirteen years ago, about the time we first started photographing together.  At that time we spent all our time on the lower portion of the petroglyph site.  This time, however, we concentrated our efforts on the “upper trail” where we had not photographed before.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of petroglyphs pecked into the boulders at the Three Rivers site and we found and photographed many new and fascinating panels.

After our morning shoot at Three Rivers, we turned north towards the small village of Mountainair where we planned to have a late lunch.  As it turned out, much to our chagrin, there was no restaurant in Mountainair for lunch.  We did find a deli counter hidden in the back of the grocery store where cold cut sandwiches were available.  The visitor center for the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument is situated in Mountainair and that is where we photographed next.

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There is little light pollution at the remote location of this national monument.  As a result, I included this location on our itinerary with the intent of getting images of the Milky Way with the Abó Pueblo Mission ruin in the foreground.  Night access for photography required that I obtain a Special Use Permit from the Park Service.  During the process of obtaining the necessary permit, the park ranger suggested that if I volunteered to be a guest night photography instructor they would waive the permit fee requirement.  That was all arranged, Bruce and I would volunteer to assist with photography and the Park Service would arrange a night sky astronomy event at Abó for the evening we arrived.  I estimated that about 25 people participated in the night sky event.  Not all were photographers, but Bruce and I assisted those that were.  The evening turned out to be highly successful.  The Park Service was happy, Bruce and I were happy, and event participants were happy.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA We spent the night in Mountainair at a funky roadside motel with few amenities and the constant rumbling of freight trains going by.  Needless to say, that was not a happy night.  We headed back to Albuquerque after that for a more restful night.  The next morning we were off again, this time north to the Santa Fe and Taos areas.  We photographed at a couple of other petroglyph sites.  The first was the La Cieneguilla site near Santa Fe, and the second was the Mesa Prieta site near Taos.

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The Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project (aka The Wells Petroglyph Reserve) is on private land and only accessible with a tour.  The site has an extensive collection of unique, undamaged petroglyph panels and I had wanted to photograph them for some time.  Fortunately, private tours were being offered again after a two year Covid hiatus.  Tours consisted of two hour hikes over boulder strewn hillsides.  I had arranged for two private tours, one in the afternoon and one the following morning.  Our docent guide was Cathy and her knowledge of local pueblo history and insight of the petroglyph panels made the tours very special.

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We concluded our week of New Mexico photography by visiting the Highway 64 steel bridge over the Rio Grande Gorge for some panoramic compositions.  Also open again after two years of Covid shutdown was the Taos Pueblo were we spent an hour or so as our last photography location.  After learning about the pueblo and its people, we packed up the photo gear and set the GPS for 9104 Lake Isabella Way Northwest.  Early the next morning, Bruce slid into his German made luxury sedan, set the cruise control for highway speed, and enjoyed his ride back to San Diego.  In retrospect, it was totally sweet for me to be back “on the road again”.

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Steer wrestling, calf roping, bronc and bull riding, barrel racing, what could be more exciting?  These were the rodeo events at the Gallup, New Mexico, Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial.  The last rodeo I attended was in my teen years at the Salt Lake County Fairgrounds in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I had read about the Ceremonial in New Mexico Magazine. Founded in 1922, the Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial is one of the oldest continuous celebrations of Native American culture and heritage.  This year was the event’s centennial celebration and I thought it would provide an interesting photo opportunity.

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The Ceremonial was a ten day event but I attended just Friday and Saturday of the last weekend.  Gallup’s Red Rock Park, with its outdoor arenas and amphitheater, was the venue for the celebration.  Besides the rodeo, there was a parade showcasing the various tribes and pueblos participating in the event.  For me, highlights were the traditional tribal dances that are normally performed only at special tribal or pueblo holidays and ceremonies.

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The entire experience was engrossing and most enjoyable.  I certainly gained a greater appreciation of Native American traditions.  Similar to the Gathering-Of-Nations Pow Wow I attended in the spring, the Ceremonial was a celebration for and by Native American families.

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You can see more images from this trip in the New Mexico Gallery, under Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, on the home page of the website.

It all started on Memorial Day, May 30^th, when our neighbor gave us a ride to the Albuquerque airport.  With our TSA PreCheck boarding passes, security was a breeze and we were soon on our way, via DFW, to Amsterdam, very much enjoying the comfort of our Business Class cubicles.  A visit with my older brother Dick is always an included stop when traveling to Europe.  This trip was originally planned for 2020 the year Dick turned 95, so this year he had turned 97 and we were certainly looking forward to seeing him.

Our nephew Wim picked us up at Schiphol and being a very tall person, he was easy to spot in the crowded arrivals area.  Wim lives with his girlfriend, Marina, in Middelburg, a small picturesque town about two hours south of Amsterdam.  On the way to Middelburg we stopped in Spykenisse where Dick lives, still in his own home.  At 97, Dick still looked good, a bit frail and using a walker, but mentally sharp and a good sense of humor.  After our visit with Dick we continued on to Middelburg where we stayed three nights at the Fletcher Hotel near the city center.  Wim and Marina entertained us with walks along the North Sea dunes and a sail on De Arne waterway in a rented motorboat.

On June 4^th, we had a morning flight from Schiphol to Zürich.  In order to avoid any potential traffic problems driving from Middelburg, we spent the night before the flight at the airport Citizen M Hotel.  By this time we had become aware of the extreme labor shortages at Schiphol, including baggage handlers.  So that night, at the Citizen M Hotel, we repacked our bags making sure we had all essential items in our carry-ons.  We also took time to walk from the hotel to the departing passenger check-in counters so we would know exactly where to go in the morning.  We also decided to leave plenty early in the morning to battle the long check-in and security lines.  During our reconnoitering, we had observed insanely long lines of people queued up to check-in.

We left the hotel at 5:30 AM with our bags in tow.  When we approached the long queue, we were directed by a friendly KLM staffer to follow the signed priority path that bypassed the long line of disgruntled travelers.  It turned out that Jane had had the foresight to purchase the priority boarding option that came with the economy ticket.  That saved us hours of waiting in line.  Instead, we got to wait several hours at the departure gate, but we were able to relax a bit in the crowded gate area and read our books.  The wait at the gate turned out to be a bit longer than expected, however, because the KLM flight to Zürich was delayed an hour.  That created some anxiety because we had only a short window of time to catch our train from the Zürich airport to Zermatt.  But it all worked out fine.  Our single checked bag was the very first bag to arrive on the baggage carousel.  After quickly retrieving the bag, we hustled from the baggage claim area down an escalator to the train platform and were comfortably seated in a designated first class quiet car with time to spare for our journey to Zermatt.

In 1865, the British mountaineer Edward Whymper became the first person to scale the Matterhorn.  This feat turned Zermatt from a small agricultural village into a Mecca for climbers, skiers, and hikers.  For me, the objective was to photograph the iconic, pyramidal peak of the Matterhorn.  Geologists call this unique shape a glacial horn.  Originally, when collision of the African and European tectonic plates created the Alps, the Matterhorn was a dome shaped mountain.  Subsequent ice ages covered the dome shaped mountain with glaciers.  These glaciers eroded cirques on three sides of the mountain creating the unique shape of today’s Matterhorn.

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At 14,690 feet, the Matterhorn creates its own weather and is often shrouded in clouds.  We were fortunate during our five-night stay in Zermatt with the photogenic mountain being visible about half the time, mostly in the mornings before obscuring clouds would form.  From Zermatt, there are several ways to traverse higher up the mountain to obtain different views of this glacier formed horn.  Not all the lifts were operating yet during our stay, so some of the photo locations I wanted to visit were not available.   However, the Gornergrat cogwheel railway was available to take us up to 10,000 feet in elevation.  We used this unique train several times to take us to different trailheads along the route.

Jane had gotten us a fantastic accommodation in Zermatt, a two room suite, with balcony, at the Perren Hotel, very close to the train station.  Some of our best views of the Matterhorn were from the balcony.  Lifts going up the mountain did not start running until about 8:00 AM well after sunrise at 5:30 preventing alpenglow photography.  Early on several mornings, however, we watched sunlight descend on the rocky face of the mountain from the comfort of our room.  Of course, I was out on the balcony with my camera.

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From Zermatt, we trained back to Zürich for a five-night stay at the Marktgasse Hotel in the city’s historic old town district of  Niederdorf.  We explored much of old Zürich on foot.  The hotel was near the Zürichsee, a large lake in Zürich, where throngs of people gathered to stroll along the waterfront and frequented sidewalk cafés. The opera house was also located near the lake and provided free performances on an outdoor screen where people gathered with folding chairs and spread blankets to watch an opera.  We actually had tickets for an indoors performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Ballet at the opera house.  It was a non-traditional, avant-garde, production with colorful costuming, great choreography, and superb dancing.  During our stay in Zürich we also enjoyed a day-trip by train to Bern, the capital of Switzerland.

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Our time in the Swiss Alps ended when we packed our bags, boarded a tram to the bahnhof (train station), trained to the Zürich airport, and flew via Swiss Air to Venice to start the next phase of our European excursion.  At the Venice airport we rented a Fiat 500, stick shift, compact car with just enough trunk space to hold all our bags.  With the help of Google maps Jane navigated us through the maze of airport roads to get us to the autobahn and on our way to Cortina d’Ampezzo, our first destination in the Italian Alps.  Jane had rented us an apartment in Cortina d’Ampezzo for five nights and we day-tripped from there.

The Dolomites are part of the Southern Alps and are uniquely different from the rest of the Alps due to the lighter color of the dolomite base rock.  When the Alps were formed, millions of years ago, this area of uplift had been coral reefs in a tropical see.  Like the Matterhorn, ice age glaciers eroded the uplifted mountain range into the spectacular peaks, pinnacles and escarpments visible today.  Elevation wise, the highest peaks in the Dolomites only range just over 10,000 feet or so.  At approximately 5,500 square miles, the Dolomite area is about one and a half times the size of Yellowstone National Park.

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I had done my research and developed a detailed itinerary of places to photograph in the Dolomites.  We drove to some of location, including some picturesque lakes, but mostly we used cable cars and chair lifts to reach the higher alpine valleys where the bare Dolomite peaks and massive cliffs were impressively close.  Although the trails are well marked, the trail markers are not always easy to spot.  We found ourselves turned around and going somewhat it circles at times, but we were never really lost.  The trails were well groomed and easy to navigate but I found that, no matter where you started or what your destination was, there was always an uphill grade to conquer.

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After our stay in Cortina d’Ampezzo, we moved to Ortisei for a five night stay at the grand Hotel Stetteneck.  We found the Stetteneck more conveniently situated than the apartment in Cortina for walking into the village.  Ortisei is a very popular destination and we observed many groups of hikers, young and not so young, walk through the pedestrians-only village to the chair lifts.  The age range of hikers we passed on the trails was amazing, from young families with toddlers and baby-carrier backpacks, and a dog, to men and woman obviously at least my age, or older.  The Dolomites are riddled with cable cars and chair lifts.  Every high alpine meadow we visited had numerous lifts going in all directions on the mountain.  I told Jane that if we were to ski here, we would need a GPS to find our way off the mountain.  We enjoyed Ortisei a lot and had some wonderful day-trips from there with amazing mountain views.

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From Ortisei we traveled to Corvara for our last four nights in the Dolomites.  We stayed in the Hotel Italia where we also had a two room suite but the décor was very stark and we did not “warm up” to the suite.  One of the longest and steepest cable cars we rode was in Corvara and the views at the top were spectacular.  I spent a lot of time working on panoramic compositions there.  Also, there was a regional “Bike Day” while we in Corvara where cyclists were given free reign and roads were closed to vehicular traffic.  That day we embarked on long hike and ended up in the village of Colfosco where we took a cable car to an alpine rifugio for a much needed lunch break.

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Like the Swiss Alps, the recreational infrastructure in the Dolomites is exceptional.  There are cable cars and lifts everywhere.  Trails are well maintained and signed.  Signage in the Dolomites, however, can be confusing.  A trail or roadway sign may appear to indicate direction to three different locations when it fact it is only one location in three languages, German, Ladin, and Italian. At the top of every lift there is a café or rifugio offering food, drink, and often rooms.  Roads throughout the Dolomites are steep, narrow and winding.  They are a magnet for speeding sport cars and daredevil motorcycles.  We encountered those continuously as we traveled to our photo destinations, not to mention cyclists slowly peddling up the steep grades or coasting extremely fast downhill.

On our fifteenth day in the Dolomites we left Corvara, turned south, and headed back towards Venice.  That night we stayed at the Marriott Hotel at the Venice Airport.  We repacked our bags again for the journey home.  On the morning June 28^th we boarded our American Airlines flight back to Albuquerque, again enjoying our business class cubicles, and arriving in Albuquerque near midnight after a twenty hour travel day.  It is always good to be home again.

To see some additional photos of the Matterhorn and Dolomites, return to the homepage and go the Europe Gallery to Switzerland and Italy.

The objective of our trip south was to photograph spring wildflowers at various locations.  Unfortunately the continuing drought in the southwest spoiled that. We did stumble upon some early blooming trees that were host to swarming pipevine swallowtail butterflies feeding on the blossom’s nectar.  During our random motoring along country roads we were also able to photograph some unidentified flowers growing along the shoulders of the road along with some birds and a field of cultivated bright yellow flowers that we assumed to be rapeseed.  So, all was not in vain for this short trip south.

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Continuing our Spring 2022 travels, in early-April, Jane and I ventured to Fairbanks, Alaska, to observe and photograph the Aurora Borealis. We knew it would be cold and it was very cold.  Fairbanks had endured more snowfall this winter than it had for several decades and massive drifts of snow had been plowed along sides of the roads.  I had signed us up for three consecutive nights of aurora watching. As it turned out I did not need the “insurance policy” of three tours as we watched in awe at the spectacular display of the aurora each night.

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For three consecutive nights, the routine went like this.  Dinner around six (fortunately there were several restaurants to select from around our hotel, including a Japanese restaurant where we had dinner several nights), then back to the hotel where we would receive an email around seven each night letting us know at what time we would be picked up by the tour guide.  The pickup time was usually sometime just before ten o’clock.  We would grab a short snooze between seven and nine each night before bundling up in our cold weather gear.  And bundle up we did with multiple layers of warm clothing topped with heavy parkas and chemical warmers in our gloves and boots.

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Each night there were ten clients in the van heading out for the aurora.  Before starting, our guide would check the weather cams located around Fairbanks to find where there were clear skies.  Then we would set out driving about sixty miles or so out of town where there was no light pollution from Fairbanks.  The aurora is most vivid when the night is darkest and that was normally around one to two in the morning.  At that time, with clear skies, temperatures ranged from 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit making us very happy with our extreme attire.  We would get back to the hotel close to 4 AM each morning where we would unbundle ourselves and crawl into bed.

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Jane and I rated this trip a most definite success.  Images from the trip have been added to the Aurora Borealis gallery.

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In preparation for our trip, we had arranged a customized itinerary with a local tour company Costa Rica Focus, which also included a private naturalist guide/driver.  The itinerary consisted of extended stays at three different locations, Manual Antonio National Park on the southern Pacific Coast, Arenal Volcano National Park in the highland rainforest, and the Sarapiqui region of the Caribbean lowlands.  At each of these locations, Costa Rica Focus had arranged for private wildlife viewing and photography at various ecological reserves and private biological conservation sanctuaries.  This was a twelve day, all-inclusive tour for just the two of us with Minor Hidalgo, our guide/driver, taking care of everything.

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After all the turmoil dealing with airline issues it was a relief to settle in at the Hotel Playa Espadilla adjacent to Manual Antonio National Park.  We were more than ready to enjoy the warm humid air, appreciate the remote jungle setting, and marvel at the diversity of wildlife.  Most of Costa Rica’s wildlife consists of birds with 850 species.  During our travels, Minor Hidalgo helped us locate and identify 155 species and I was able to photograph more than a hundred of those, with about half being species I had not photographed before.

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Arrangements for this Costa Rica adventure were made well in advance of the actual trip.  So it came as a bit of a surprise to us that the trip coincided with my 83^rd birthday.  We celebrated with dinner at El Avión, a very unique eatery at Manual Antonio where a C-123 Fairchild cargo plane had been converted into a pub and restaurant.  Now the pressure is on me to contrive a similar birthday experience for Jane.

At Manual Antonio, Costa Rica Focus’ itinerary included a private mangrove boat tour.  This excursion was tide dependent and required a pre-dawn departure from the hotel.   Jane and I had kayaked through a mangrove before in Baja California but that was nothing like the Costa Rica mangrove.  Here the various mangrove tree species were huge with a dense jumble of tangled roots reaching up from the water.  The narrow water ways gave the impression of boating through a jungle.  We encountered several new bird species including the diminutive American pygmy kingfisher and the very large bare-throated tiger heron.

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Our next destination was Arenal Volcano National Park where we stayed four nights at the Arenal Observatory Lodge.  Outings from here included Ecocentro Danaus, a private ecological reserve, Mistico Hanging Bridges, with its 16 bridges suspended through the rainforest canopy, and Arenal Natura, where we were able to photograph tropical frogs and reptiles.  All these were private visits for just the two of us and our own guides.  We also spent a lot of time searching for and photographing birds around the Arenal Observatory Lodge.  Playing birds songs recorded on the Merlin app on his smart phone, Minor was able to entice small songbirds to approach close enough to be photographed.

Ara Ambigua Lodge, a friendly family run hotel, was our last accommodation.  In addition to photographing birds feeding on melons and bananas provided by the lodge staff, Minor also led us on explorations of area pastures to locate other Costa Rica birds including macaws, parakeets, tanagers, woodpeckers, and flycatchers.  One morning was spent at the La Selva Biological Station, a world renowned research facility.  La Selva was the first private ecological conservation area in Costa Rica.  The trails at La Selva meander through origin old growth rainforest where we encountered a variety of exotic, colorful birds, including trogons, motmots, and woodpeckers.

Our final stop on this truly amazing Costa Rica adventure was Cope’s Garden not far from the Ara Ambigua Lodge.  Cope’s Garden was created by wildlife artist José Albert Pérez as a retreat for birders and photographers.  From the garden, we followed José into the surrounding forest where he cleared a trail for us with his machete.  The purpose of this foray was to locate spectacled owls and white bats, both of which José successfully found for us.  Photographing the white bats proved to be a challenge.  These bats are very small, white fluffy mammals about the size of a ping pong ball.  They are nocturnal and roost during the day under large plant leaves that are folded into a “tent” shape.  I had to lay supine on my back while Minor illuminated the bats with a flashlight in order to photograph them.  I would dare say that was the highlight of the trip.

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The ending of an outstanding adventure is bitter sweet.  To mitigate this nostalgia is to have reason to return.  I have a reason to return.  My primary goal for undertaking this Costa Rica trip was to photograph a mother sloth with her baby.  That did not happen.  Sloths were seen and photographed, even sloths with a baby were seen, but they were not photographable. So, happily I have a reason to return to Costa Rica and try again to attain my goal of photographing a sloth with baby.

To see more of the pictures from this trip to to the "Costa Rica 2022" Gallery on the home page of the web site.

The parade was not cancelled and we enjoyed our first road trip of 2022 to Pasadena, California.  It’s a comfortable two day drive from Albuquerque to Pasadena with an overnight in the Phoenix area.  For the holiday week, freeways were busy but not overly congested with lots and lots of eighteen-wheeler, big rig trucks.  You wouldn’t think there was a driver shortage with all the semi-trailer trucks on the freeways.

We arrived in Pasadena on a rainy December 29^th .  The plan had been to spend time in the LA area sightseeing.  But the weather prevented that and we ended up spending the stormy weather channel surfing the TV in the hotel room.  After the storm system moved on, the rest of our stay was southern California sunny, but on the cool side.  The Omicron variant hadn’t stopped commerce in Pasadena.  On New Year’s Eve restaurants were busy and crowded.  Fortunately, Jane had the foresight to make dinner reservations well ahead of the holiday.

On the first day of the new year we were up at the crack of dawn for the half hour walk from the hotel to our grandstand seats along the parade route.  Masked up with our N-95’s, we walked past sleeping parade enthusiasts who had spent the night camped out along Colorado Boulevard.  Even in the early morning, vendors were already set up selling souvenirs and greasy, beacon wrapped hot dogs.

The parade was marvelous, everything we had expected.  The floats with their vast array of colorful flowers were beautiful and ingeniously engineered and constructed.  Among the many creative floats, the Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom float was my favorite.  Marching bands from around the country, with their skimpily dressed, baton twirling, majorettes performed John Phillips Sousa favorites.  

After the parade we maneuvered back through the throngs of people to the hotel to pack up, check out and head for San Diego where we had arranged to meet up with old friends.  In San Diego, in addition to reuniting with our friends, we spent several delightful days visiting familiar sights including a stroll along the Embarcadero and Sea Port Village, a ferry ride across the bay to Coronado, and lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, The Prado, in Balboa Park.

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In mid-October we were getting “cabin fever” and opted for a short road trip to Ruidoso, a small town located in the Sierra Blanca Mountains, in central New Mexico.  With peaks at nearly 12,000 feet, the mountains around Ruidoso provided a pleasant respite from the low lying Rio Grande valley back home.  Before starting on this outing, Jane had found that there was a very nice and modern theater, the Spenser Theater for the Performing Arts, located near Ruidoso.  This $25 million gem was just fifteen minutes from our hotel and we enjoyed a performance by the Brothers Four, singing old favorites from the distance past.  The Spenser Theater also hosts a collection of colorful Chihuly glass sculptures.

We were three nights in Ruidoso and spent some time exploring the surrounding area with a brief stop at historic Fort Stanton.  The fort was established in 1855 to control the then warring Mescalero Apache Indians.  Eventually the Mescalero Apache were relocated to a reservation just south of Ruidoso where we enjoyed a lunch and beer at their Inn Of The Mountain Gods Casino.  During our forays around town we discovered that Ruidoso is home to herds of elk that roam the back roads and like to forage on grasses at the golf course and school play fields.

Upon returning home from our short trip to Ruidoso, we found that the cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande had started their fall display of brilliant yellow foliage.  Jane and I took the opportunity to make several trips to the open space corridor along the river to hike among the colorful trees.  Overhead we heard the gravelly calls of the sandhill cranes as they migrated back to their winter stomping grounds along the Rio Grande.

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In the early 1800’s New Mexico, and most of America’s southwest, was still part of New Spain with the governor of the Northern Provinces of New Spain located in Santa Fe.  It was the custom at that time for the governor to award land grants as a favor for political or military service.  In 1918, Pedro Armendariz applied for a land grant, citing his military service and loyalty to the King of Spain and in late 1919 was awarded the Armendariz Land Grant consisting of 397,235 acres.  During the ensuing decades, first Mexico in 1821 and later the United States in 1848 controlled the New Mexico territory.  Throughout these governmental and subsequent ownership changes, the Armendariz Land Grant remained pretty much intact.  In 1990, the last owner of the land filed for bankruptcy and in 1994 Ted Turner purchased the property and established the 362,885 acre Armendaris Ranch. 

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The huge ranch, with a landmass greater than the city of Phoenix,  is located along the Rio Grande River in south central New Mexico near the quaint town of Truth Or Consequences (T or C).  The landscape is semi-desert grassland of the northern Chihuahua Desert. Since 1994 Turner has allowed the previously overgrazed land to regenerate and has established a number of environmental initiatives to restore native species.  One of those initiatives was protecting the Mexican free-tailed bat population at the Jornada Bat Caves located on the Armendaris Ranch.  I convinced Jane that we needed to photograph these bats and that is how we ended up at the Sierra Grande Lodge in T or C for a two night stay.

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About 761,000 years ago a shield volcano erupted and spewed out a large basaltic lava flow.  As streams of hot lave flowed, the top crust cooled creating lava tunnels.  Centuries of erosion later, some of the crust lava, the roof of the lava tube, gave way and collapsed into the tube creating caves.  Some of these lava caves are on the Armedaris Ranch and from June to September, several hundred thousand female Mexican free-tailed bats migrate from Mexico to utilize the lava tube caves as their nursery. 

When tens of thousands of bats emerge from the cave each evening around dusk, Swainson’s hawks gather in the sky to prey on the bats.  This was a wildlife event I wanted to try and photograph.  I scheduled two tours to the bat cave to maximize the opportunity to capture some keeper images.  The bat tour departs from the Sierra Grande Lodge, a Ted Turner Preserve property, at 3:30 PM and requires a two and half hour drive across the ranch on dirt tracks to the bat cave.  We left home around noon in order to check into the lodge well before the 3:30 PM departure.  Our guide for the tours was Ken, a retired biologist and accomplished photographer.

Unlike last year, this summer New Mexico is experiencing a more normal monsoon season with clear skies in the morning transitioning to huge cumulus clouds with extensive lightning and dark ominous cumulonimbus clouds by late afternoon with cloudbursts following in a random pattern.  That was the scenario when we arrived in T or C that afternoon.  By the time Ken picked us up for the drive to the bat cave, threatening clouds were all around.  Ken checked his weather app that showed the storms were concentrated to the west and east of our trajectory and we pressed on.

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The contrast between the lush grassland vegetation on the Armendaris Ranch and the overgrazed conditions we had seen in southwestern New Mexico during our trip to Silver City was astounding.  By not grazing cattle or sheep on the ranch and allowing nature to restore the land, a healthy diversity of thriving plants and grasses abounded.  As we traversed the extensive ranch property there was a sense of isolation and returning to nature.  Along the way, we encountered a number of desert species I had never seen, let alone, photographed.  The western desert tarantula was one that Jane discovered as we were waiting for the bats to emerge.  The white lined sphinx, a type of hummingbird moth, we found pollinating and feeding on evening primrose flowers.  Ken nearly ran over a prairie rattlesnake that was sunning itself in the middle of the dirt track.  I also give Jane credit for spotting a tarantula hawk, although Ken had to tell us what it was, a spider wasp that preys on tarantulas.

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Photographing the bats, however, proved problematic. The bats normally emerge from their roosting cave around dusk, a half hour before sunset.  We arrived at the cave at 6:30 PM and storm clouds to the west were obscuring the sun creating early dusk conditions.  The bats must have sensed that conditions that night were different and decided not the leave their shelter until nearly sunset.  We did see a string of bats fly out to forage for insects on the prairie but by that time it was too dark to attempt photography. That is why, as a form of insurance, I had scheduled two tours to the bat cave. 

The second night we arrived a bit earlier, but the weather was also a bit more threatening.  Ken had brought folding chairs so we would be more comfortable while waiting for the fly out.  We had barely set out the chairs and gotten cameras ready when it started to rain.  By the time we reached the shelter of Ken’s truck, a hundred yards off, we were pretty much soaked. This time the rain cells were right over us and Ken had to drive two hours on the water logged dirt track back to the paved road with torrential rain pelting down.  We made it back without incident but it was a scary ride.

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So, photographing Swainson’s hawks preying on bats was a bust but we experienced other photo ops during our two tours into the pristine grassland prairie of the Armendaris Ranch and the stay at Sierra Grande Lodge with its friendly staff was most enjoyable. Jane and I made a pact to return again to The Armendaris Ranch in the future to do more sightseeing in the area.  Of particular interest is a tour of the New Mexico Spaceport located not far from T or C and, of course, another chance to photograph Swainson’s hawks going after Mexican free-tailed bats.

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We were a week at our time-share cabin at Glacier Wilderness Resort and only made the super early run into the park twice.  Each time the objective was to reach Logan Pass in time to obtain a parking spot before rangers closed the parking lot.  The Hidden Lake Overlook trail that starts at Logan Pass has always been a good location for spotting the park’s varied wildlife.  This time was no exception as we enjoyed watching and photographing bighorn sheep, mountain goats, hoary marmots, Columbia ground squirrels and the ubiquitous golden mantled ground squirrel.  Being on the Hidden Lake Overlook trail in July provided us the chance to observe some animal family interactions.  I was photographing a large, adult hoary marmot when I noticed one, then two and eventually three pups cavorting around the area.

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There are two areas on the east side of Glacier National Park that can be visited without the special ticket required for the Going-To-The-Sun Highway. So, after checking out of our time-share, we moved for a couple of days to the Glacier Park Lodge, built in 1913 by the Great Northern Railway, on the east side.  Two Medicine and Many Glaciers on the east side were inundated with visitors, who like us, did not have a special ticket.  We were turned back by park rangers during out first attempt to enter the park at Two Medicine because there were no parking spaces left.  It was suggested we arrive at this entrance early in the morning and that is what we did the second time.

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One of the scenic locations at Two Medicine is the Running Eagle Falls, a short walk from the parking pullout.  We made that our first stop and because we had arrived early, there were only a couple of cars there.  While photographing the falls, I noticed an American dipper flying along the water flowing from the waterfall.  Dippers are somewhat difficult to find because of their high elevation, clear stream habitat.  Obviously, I had to spend some time locating and photographing this bird.  It was “eagle eye” Jane, however, who spotted them first and had to point me in the right direction.  Eventually I was able to get some good images of the dipper, including a recently fledged immature bird being fed by an adult.  By the time we left Running Eagle Falls the parking area was full and numerous cars were parked along the shoulder of the road.

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From the Glacier Park Lodge to Many Glaciers is normally a little over an hour’s drive.  This year, however, the entrance road from Babb to the park entrance station, an eleven mile stretch, was under construction, making this section of the route dusty, bumpy and slow.  When coming to Glacier National Park, we usually include a visit to Many Glaciers because we have had fairly good luck in finding large mammal wildlife there. 

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Fishcap Lake, a short hike from the Swiftcurrent Lodge parking area, is where moose are frequently seen and that was our objective.  We checked out Fishcap Lake for moose twice.  The first time, we got there mid-morning and it started to rain shortly after we arrived.  We were not prepared for rain and settled ourselves under the protective canopy of trees along the shore of the lake and waited, and waited.  We were far from being the only moose watchers along the edge of the lake.  Other likeminded visitors were practicing patience waiting for one of the big animals to appear.  Finally after more than an hour of waiting, the call “moose” went out from somewhere among the spotters along the lake. A female moose and calf had come out of the forest at the far side of the lake.  She and her newborn scurried along the edge of the lake for a few seconds and disappeared from view among the willow bushes.  Only if you happened to have your camera pointed in the right direction could a shot be obtained while the moose was in the open.  Fortunately, my camera and I were looking where the moose appeared and was able to get an image of the adult and calf trotting along the edge of the lake.

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We arrived in the early morning for our second visit to Fishcap Lake.  It was a gorgeous sunny morning with brilliant reflections in the lake water, just the kind of morning you would love to have a moose walk into the lake.  Well that did not happen.  I waited and waited for more than three hours before my patience ran out.  Jane had the good sense to leave long before I did to relax at the Lodge.  The only distraction that occurred while waiting for a moose to appear was that a large spotted frog had jumped into the lake right in front of us.  It had been startled by a hiker passing by and offered some photographic relief during an otherwise boring morning.

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Glacier National Park is a special place and we enjoy every visit.  This July visit was unique.  Most of our visits to the park have been in late September.  Turned out that one of our neighbors also has a time-share at Glacier Wilderness Resort and we traded our time in September for their time in July.  This visit provided us a different view of the park with colorful wildflowers, instead of the golden aspen trees of fall, and young baby animals, instead of the larger grown up animals intent on bulking up for the winter hibernation.  I would be remiss, however, if not mentioning that this visit in July was hampered by extremely smoky conditions from the many wildfires in the west.  We felt sorry for first time park visitors who were not being able to clearly see the grandeur of the peaks and valleys of the great Rocky Mountains.

Other images from this trip have been added to the Glacier National Park sub-gallery in the National Parks and Monuments main gallery.

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Crested Butte, established in 1878, was historically a coal mining town.  With the decline in the need for coal, mining operations closed down in the early 1950’s and in the 1960’s Crested Butte re-emerged as a ski destination.  During the summer, Crested Butte is a haven for dirt bike enthusiast with dozens of bike trails through the Gunnison National Forest.  Of course, we were there for the wildflowers and were not disappointed.

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Colorado Highway 135 dead ends at Crested Butte and from Crested Butte there are only dirt roads leading west and north.  I had consulted a guide book to Colorado’s best wildflower photography locations around Crested Butte by Andy Cook, a well known Colorado photographer.   So, Jane and I traversed all these roads in our quest to locate wildflowers locations mentioned in the guide book.  Each day we selected a different track to explore and we discovered the vast aspen forests and scenic backcountry of the Rocky Mountains around Crested Butte.  Jane’s favorite was the Ohio Creek Road with its stunning vistas and majestic mountains.  My favorite was Gothic Road that yielded vast alpine fields of wildflowers.

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In addition to the colorful displays of wildflowers, we also encountered a variety of wildlife, including mule deer, yellow bellied marmots, the ubiquitous golden mantled ground squirrel, a lone sandhill crane, and a fox.  Since my selection of camera equipment was based on flower photography, some of the wildlife, particularly birds, was too far away for my shorter focal distance lenses.  Nevertheless, some good images were acquired.  I will place the photos from this trip in a new gallery titled “Crested Butte, Colorado”.

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Jane and I so enjoyed the beauty of these high alpine mountain settings that we are committed to returning to Crested Butte for a future fall foliage photography expedition.

The adventure began with our drive to Page through the Navajo Nation.  At more than 27,400 square miles, it is the largest reservation in the U.S. and bigger than ten states. We stopped at Window Rock, the capitol city of the Navajo Nation, and made a short visit to the Window Rock Tribal Park and Veteran’s Memorial.  We then followed Highway 264, the Navajo Code Talkers Highway, past the Hubbell Trading Post where Jane and I had stopped in 2008.  It is now a National Historic Site and, unfortunately, we found it closed due to covid restrictions.  Highway 264 changed to the Hopi Code Talkers Highway as we entered the Hopi reservation.  The Hopi reservation is totally surrounded by the Navajo reservation and only about a tenth its size.  In 2008 we had toured Second Mesa, the center of Hopi culture, with a Hopi guide.  This time we merely reminisced as we drove through the reservation.

Our destination for this first travel day was the Cliff Dwellers Lodge near Marble Canyon in Arizona.  The Cliff Dwellers Lodge was the launching place for a three day photo tour of White Pocket in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.  This was no run-of-the-mill photo tour.  To reach White Pocket, there was a two hour ride from the Cliff Dwellers Lodge with at least half of that on unimproved House Rock Valley Road and other 4-wheel drive dirt tracks with deep sand sandstone slick rock.  When Jane and I were at White Pocket in 2008 it was only for a few hours.  This time it was two whole days and that meant camping out on the remote Paria Plateau.

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The photo tour was sponsored by Arizona Highways PhotoScapes and the camp outfitter was Kanab, Utah, based Dreamland Safari Tours.  They set up our camp, provided tents, sleeping bags, mats and meals.  It had been literally decades since either of us had slept on the ground in a tent.  In anticipation of this adventure, camping out under the stars far from civilization was expected to be an incredibly exciting experience.  In real time, however, we found it to be a struggle squirming into sleeping bags in the confinement of a small tent.  Mother Nature also dealt us a nasty blow by offering night time temperatures well below normal.  We were pretty uncomfortable that first night.  The second night was much better because Dreamland had communicated with their office in Kanab to dispatch extra blankets to the camp.  All in all, however, camp life was enjoyable and we had seven other good-natured photographers to share the ambiance of camp life.

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White Pocket is an intriguing photographic destination of multicolored Navajo sandstone formations.  A grayish white sandstone layer covers red sandstone creating cross-bedded, twisted, swirling, multicolored formations creating a fantasy landscape. The whole colorful outcropping is only a couple of miles long and the sandstone provides a gritty surface for boots to cling to making traction easy on the undulating terrain.  Camping out provided the opportunity to photograph the fascinating White Pocket formation at sunrise and sunset.  As a bonus, I was also able to practice some night sky photography, with mixed results however.

Images of White Pocket are located in the National Parks and Monuments Gallery under Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.

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The photo tour ended at the Cliff Dwellers Lodge where it has started.  After gathering our gear and bidding adieu to our fellow photographers, Jane and I headed to Page for a good long shower and a much needed nap.  I had scheduled three nights in Page and Jane had made reservations for a king room at the Hyatt Place hotel, a smart, modern, new facility.  We thoroughly enjoyed the space of a king room after two nights in a small tent.  The next morning was a sleep-in and the day was set aside for some shopping in Page.  The pandemic, however, had caused many shops to close or go out of business.  We did manage to do some browsing and found the same Mexican restaurant, Fiesta Mexicana, where we had dined thirteen years ago.

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That evening, around sunset, I had scheduled a scenic flight over Lake Powell with American Aviation Air Tours in Page.  A scenic flight was something we had not done on our previous trip to Page and something new to look forward to.  It was an old, well worn, Cessna that transported us upward and around Lake Powell.  Covid protocol imposed by American Aviation prevented Jane from occupying the co-pilot seat and required both of us to sit in the narrow back seats.  That meant that I could not move back and forth between windows in order to have the sun at my back for proper photographic lighting.  For this flight, however, photography was a secondary consideration and enjoying a scenic flight over an extremely scenic lake was the prime objective.

Images from the scenic flight can be found in the National Parks and Monuments Gallery under Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

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My diverse itinerary had us up early the next morning for a hike into Buckskin Gulch, reportedly the longest and deepest slot canyon on the Colorado Plateau.  I had arranged for a guide with Seeking Treasure Adventures, out of Kanab, to lead us to the slot canyon.  There are two primary trails to Buckskin Gulch, the Middle Route and the Wire Pass trail that was described as the moderate approach.  We met our guide, Hunter Bell, at Big Water, Utah, and he drove us to the trail head.  I had assured Jane that the Wire Pass trail would be easy and that we could always turn back when we had reached our hiking limit.  What I failed to understand was that the two trail heads do not start at the same location and that Hunter, not realizing that we had opted for the easy route, had taken us to the Middle Route trail head.

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After some discussion about the difficulty of the Middle Route, Hunter assured us that we were in good enough condition to take on this more challenging approach.  Of course how Hunter could tell we were in good enough shape, I don’t know.  In the end, we trusted his instinct as a guide and proceeded toward Buckskin Gulch.  In actuality there is no defined “trail” and Hunter guided us across open desert terrain.  The Utah tourist office web site describes the middle route as “a short, no-nonsense approach to the lower reaches of Buckskin Gulch – a cross-country and wash route - good route finding ability required - very strenuous - Class 3 and Class 4 down-climbing to enter Buckskin Gulch”.

After about an hour and half of hiking cross country we reached Buckskin Gulch.  The slot canyon appeared right in front of us one hundred feet below.  This is where all of Hunter’s encouragement, enthusiasm and guiding skill was needed to get the two of us down that last, extremely steep, one hundred feet.  He helped us find hand and foot holds carved into the sandstone centuries before by indigenous people that had used this exit from the slot canyon as an ancient trade route.  I don’t know how we managed, but with adrenaline flowing Jane and I both made it to the bottom and into Buckskin Gulch.  After spending some time exploring and photographing the slot canyon we returned to the dreaded one hundred foot cliff to start our ascent back up.  Our hearts were still beating by the time we returned to Hyatt Place.  We were full of excitement about what we had accomplished and surprised that we had the stamina and courage to do it.  Hunter had been correct that we were in good enough shape.

Images from this adventure can be found in the Buckskin Gulch Gallery.

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Fortunately my itinerary called for a late start the next day and we savored relaxing as we packed our bags.  Early that afternoon, the plan was to meet guides from Action Photo Tours at Big Water for an overnight trip to Alstrom Point on the north shore of Lake Powell.  In 2008 Jane and I had driven the 4Runner to Alstrom Point but only stayed a few hours.  We did not want to traverse the four-wheel drive track to return to Page in the dark.  This photo tour would allow us to be at this popular scenic location overlooking Lake Powell at both sunset and sunrise.  The downside was another night in a small tent.  We were rewarded, however, with the classic panoramic view of Gunsight Butte and Navajo Mountain at sunset.  I also got some good tips from the guides about night sky photography.  All I have to do now is learn Photoshop, not an easy task.

Images from Alstrom Point can be found in the National Parks and Monuments Gallery under Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

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The Alstrom Point photo tour returned us to Big Water mid-morning the next day. From Big Water we drove back to Hyatt Place to retrieved our stored bags, had lunch at our now favorite Mexican restaurant, and started our way back home.  On the way home, just before reaching Farmington, New Mexico, we achieved yet one more significant travel milestone.  To be correct it was the always faithful and dependable Toyota 4Runner that achieved this milestone as it clocked 225,000 miles on the odometer.  Since 2004 the 4Runner has been our companion on many memorable adventures.

The primary destination for this exploration was Silver City in Grant County.  During my research I had learned about several rock art sites in the Silver City area that I wanted to photograph.  However, I was unable to find any specific directions on the internet to locate these sites.  The general information I did find would have me searching a vast area of desert terrain without any assurance of success.  Eventually I stumbled upon the web site for the Grant County Archaeological Society and contacted them to see if one of their members would be willing to guide me to the rock art sites.

In a favorable response, Kyle Meredith, the Society’s president, indicated that he would be willing to guide me.  After several email communications, Kyle and I had decided on an itinerary and time frame to visit several rock art sites.  Best of all, it turned out that Kyle had a guest house where we could stay during our Silver City tour.  We arranged to lodge in Kyle's guest house for five nights giving us four whole days for exploration.

On our way to Silver City, Jane and I first stopped at The Very Large Array, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, located on the Plains of San Agustin, about 50 miles west of Socorro in central New Mexico.  This astronomical observatory consists of 27 radio antennas, each 82 feet in diameter.  The science about this facility is way, way over my head, but suffice it to say that the radio antennas can look into deep space and have enabled scientists to make many profound discoveries about the universe and our own Milky Way galaxy.  Due to covid the visitor center was closed but we could drive up to the gate and observe the antennas from the entrance road.

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From The Very Large Array, we traversed along U.S. Highway 60 to New Mexico Highway 12 and on to U.S. Highway 180, the long way to Silver City.  We made a slight detour to check out an alleged ghost town.  In the late 1800’s rich gold and silver veins were discovered in the area leading to the establishment Mogollon (pronounced mo-gie-yon), a wild-west mining town.  In its heyday, Mogollon hosted a population of several thousand.  Today only a handful of people reside in Mogollon and most of its wooden and adobe buildings stand abandoned.  We did not linger long and continued to our next objective, the Catwalk National Recreational Trail.

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The Catwalk was something we just had to see since our route to Silver City went right by it.  In the 1890’s an ore processing mill was constructed at the head of Whitewater Canyon.  To generate power and operate the mill a water pipeline was constructed down Whitewater Canyon and a wooden-plank boardwalk, was constructed over the pipeline.  That was the original catwalk.  As the mines ran out and the mill fell into ruin, the catwalk also disintegrated.  In the 1930’s the Civilian Conservation Corps was assigned the task of rebuilding the catwalk as a recreational attraction for the Gila National Forest.  The CCC catwalk was destroyed by a major flood down Whitewater Canyon in 2012.  Today’s catwalk is a modern, structurally sound, steel reconstruction that is cantilevered out from the steep canyon cliffs over Whitewater Creek.

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As we hiked back down Whitewater Canyon we noticed some lady birders with field glasses searching the distant trees for birds.  I could not help but ask what they had in their sights.  At the moment they were observing a yellow warbler but had recently seen an American dipper just downstream.  After getting directions to where the dipper had been seen Jane and I searched for it without success.  As we headed back to the parking lot, one of the birders called after us to say that the dipper was back.  We followed her back but I could not see the bird until she let me look through her binoculars.   Then I saw it but could not believe than an American dipper would be in this desert environment.  But there it was and I took several pictures.  Later, I checked the distribution of this bird and found that it is a year round resident in a few higher mountain locations in southern New Mexico.

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We arrived in Silver City around 5:00 PM where we met Kyle and were introduced to the guest house, Casa Otra, and to Kyle’s partner Josh.  Casa Otra was a comfortable, extensively modified, mobile home jam packed with a vast variety of knickknacks accumulated by Kyle and Josh over many years.  To welcome us, Kyle had prepared a chicken curry dish that the four of us enjoyed while getting to know each other. What a great way to start a four day exploration of the Silver City area. 

Our first outing was a day long trip to rock art locations in Frying Pan Canyon and Pony Hills in the remote China Draw area north of Deming.  Kyle and Josh had been out in these areas a number of times and they scouted ahead locating the best petroglyph panels for me to photograph.  It was at Pony Hills that Josh got the surprise of his life.  Leaning over one of several deep mortar holes ground into the bedrock by ancient people, he came face to face with a hissing rattle snake.  With an instant startled reaction, Josh bounded backward, high into the air, landing on a boulder several feet away.  Lucky for Josh he kept his balance but he was physically shaken by sight of the rattler.

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The next day was very windy so we decided to head north forty miles on Highway 15 to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.  These cliff dwellings were built in naturally eroded alcoves around 700 years ago by the Tularosa Mogollon people.  Due to covid social distancing restrictions, we could not enter the dwellings and could only photograph them from the trail below.  That was a bit disappointing but gives us reason to return post-covid.  I did not add any images from the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument to my galleries.

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The following day was still windy and we decided to spend the morning roaming the galleries of Silver City’s Historic District.  Most galleries were open, with capacity restrictions, and we enjoyed the variety of arts and crafts displayed.  Of course, you can’t view all this creative work without some temptation to purchase and, needless to say, we gave in to that temptation.  Later in the afternoon we headed south on Highway 180 to New Mexico’s City of Rocks State Park.  The “city” is a geologic formation made up of large, eroded volcanic rock columns separated by trails mimicking city streets. Millions of years in the making, the City of Rocks was a fascinating place to visit and photograph.  Images from this “city” can be found in the State Parks gallery.

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Our last day in Silver City was again devoted to rock art photography.  This time Kyle and Josh guided us to Apache Flats and Apache Tank north of Interstate 10 along Doña Ana County Road 001.  Although there are some historic Apache petroglyphs, most are attributed to the Mogollon culture, one of the major prehistoric cultures, who occupied this region of New Mexico for over twelve hundred years.  Jane and I concluded that without Kyle and Josh’s knowledge about where to find the petroglyph panels we would not have found them by ourselves.  We treated our hosts to a farewell dinner at the Little Toad Creek Brewery & Distillery where we savored some locally crafted brews.  The rock art images from this trip can be found in the Rock Art gallery.

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Carlsbad Cavern National Park was our next objective.  From Silver City, the drive to Carlsbad is a reasonable six hours.  We chose to break up the drive with lunch in Cloudcroft, a small pioneer village nestled in the pine trees of the Sacramento Mountains at an elevation of 8,700 feet.  Dave’s Café was the only choice in Cloudcroft, so we munched on a tasty lunch there and then browsed some of the gift stores where Jane was able to replenish her supply of bulk teas.

Historically, the city of Carlsbad had an agricultural economy with the Pecos River providing needed irrigation water.  Today, the city’s economy is boosted by oil and natural gas production from the Permian Basin that underlies southeastern New Mexico.  The famous Carlsbad Caverns are located about thirty minutes south of town and provide a substantial tourist trade.  Much of what you see driving the main drag into Carlsbad has an older, industrial look.  So, Jane and I decided to take a spin off the main highway and discovered some affluent neighborhoods with very large, beautiful homes along the Pecos River frontage.

The caverns are spectacular and worthy of national park status. Current restrictions required that time specific entrance tickets be obtained on a first come first served basis.  I got our timed tickets in advance, on line, before leaving home.  To ensure sufficient time for photography in the cave, I had purchased tickets for two separate days.  Jane joined me for the first day but opted out to relax instead in our Candlewood Suites hotel room the second day.  I had plenty of time to photograph because once in the cave you could stay as long as you wanted, up to closing time.  Getting good images in the dark cavern with only scattered accent lighting was difficult.  Fortunately, tripods were permitted in the cave and that allowed me to take long exposure as well as HDR (High Dynamic Range) shots.  Still, the results were not great.  You can see images from Carlsbad Caverns in the National Parks & Monuments gallery.

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Before leaving Carlsbad, we made the one hour drive to Sitting Bull Falls.  The waterfalls and pools in this, U.S. Forest Service managed, recreation area are fed by springs and are a very popular attraction during the heat of summer.  In contrast, we were the only visitors in late April and I was able to photograph the falls without having to dodge kids playing in the pools.  The Sitting Bull Recreation Area is located in the Guadalupe Mountains area of the Lincoln National Forest. 

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The approximate five hour drive home from Carlsbad took us through Roswell where we stopped for breakfast at the local Denny’s.  Roswell has actively created interest in the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in 1947 and is home of the International UFO Museum.  We didn’t take time to visit the museum and we did not see any unidentified flying objects.  We did pass the Roswell International Air Center, however, where we observed hundreds of aircraft tail sections poised above the horizon.  I learned that the Roswell International Air Center was developed after the closure of Walker Air Force Base. In 1967 this base was the largest air base of the Strategic Air Command, covering 4,600 acres. Today, the Air Center is used to store, refurbish and dismantle airliners. Airline companies from around the world now store, repair and obtain parts from other aircraft at the Roswell International Air Center.

After breakfast it was Jane’s turn at the wheel and she had to buck strong head winds most of the way home.  We reached the house around 1:00 PM and by 1:30 Jane was soaking in a hot bubble bath.  Sorry, no pictures.

Early Monday morning the four of us met Daniel (who prefers Dano) and were shown around The Pond.  The pond is actually a small, shallow depression dug into the earth filled with water that attracts birds in the arid southern Arizona desert. In addition, around the circumference of the pond, Dano has placed numerous feeding stations and perches, mimicking the natural habitat of the Sonoran desert.    So this small desert watering hole, with its food and shelter, has been transformed into an oasis for birds.  Photography is accomplished from comfortable, although well used, blinds. 

One memorable photographic highlight was an encounter with a Cooper’s hawk.  This raptor preys on birds and was well aware that birds congregated at the pond.  According to Dano, this Cooper’s hawk makes routine visits to the pond.  We noticed that whenever this predator made an appearance, all the birds immediately disappeared into the undergrowth and a silent hush settled over the pond.  This happened several times while we were in the blind but we never actually saw the hawk.   One time, when all the birds vanished from view, in my periphery I observed some movement.  It was the Cooper’s hawk sitting on a stout branch in the brush next to the blind.  Apparently the hawk was so intent on looking for prey that it was unaware of me moving my camera around to grab a few shots of it.

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During my research about The Pond I had seen some really amazing roadrunner images that were taken there.  I asked Dano about the roadrunner and he very positively assured us that he could entice the bird with some wormy morsels to come within camera range.  I did not know, but roadrunners are monogamous, so when Dano called the roadrunner in, there were actually two of them, a mated pair.  We got some very nice frame-filling shots of the quick birds as they ran in for their worms.  Dano even got one of them to fly, and that it very unusual for a roadrunner.  By placing a worm high on a perch, the bird had to fly up to fetch it.

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The four of us departed The Pond late afternoon to caravan two and a half hours east to our next destination, the Battiste Bed, Breakfast and Birds, a B&B in Hereford, Arizona.  The B&B is hosted by Tony and Julie Battiste and is located in the lower Miller Canyon area of the Huachuca Mountains, famous for its spring and fall bird migrations.  Tony is an avid birder and an accomplished photographer and, like The Pond, has created a bird friendly environment in his garden with a water feature, plenty of feeders and perches.  For photographers, he built a blind from where migrating birds could be easily photographed.

At Tony’s, I tried capturing birds in flight with a special setting on my Olympus camera.  When my efforts proved futile I mentioned it to Neil.  After checking the camera manual and going through the camera’s special menus, we concluded that I did not have the camera’s latest firmware.  I aborted using the camera’s special setting, reverted back to using a fast motor drive, shooting in anticipation of the bird taking off or landing, and hoping for some reasonable results.  Upon returning home, downloading updated firmware became a high priority.

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After four nights at Tony’s B&B, we four intrepid travelers backtracked to the Santa Rita Lodge in Madera Canyon just southeast of Green Valley.  There we spent two more days photographing birds.  In theory, at the lodge, being situated at a higher altitude in Madera Canyon, there should have been a different variety of migrating birds.  We noticed, however, that the birds were pretty much the same and that, in general, the spring migration was not as plentiful as normal.  The variety of species and numbers of birds were far less than we have experienced at other times photographing in southeastern Arizona.  To make up for the lack of bird species, a coati came foraging through the cabin area where we were staying and moved just slowly enough for me to get a snapshot.

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Rather than staying in Madera Canyon photographing the same birds, Jane and I decided to drive to Tucson, about an hour north, to do some exploring there.  Neil had told us about Reid Park in Tucson where vermillion flycatchers were frequently seen and photographed.  We were told to look for flycatchers by the parking areas near the dog walk.  Of course we had no idea where that was.  The park is very large and includes the Tucson zoo.  We asked for directions to the dog walk at the zoo entrance and eventually found the dog walk area.  We sat in the car looking out the windshield a bit befuddled not knowing where exactly to start looking.  Then, there it was right in front of us, a bright red vermillion flycatcher foraging in the grass.  In addition to the flycatcher, I also happened upon a very small, pretty verdin darting around in an acacia tree.  The trip to Tucson turned out to be more rewarding than staying in Madera Canyon.

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On the way home we made one more stop.  I had read that late March was the time for wildflowers in the Organ Mountains and Las Cruces was the logical place to stay. We spent a day looking for wildflowers.  Unfortunately, there had been no late winter rain to germinate the seeds.  We did see a few scattered Mexican poppies along the shoulder of Aguirre Springs Road but not the blanket of color in the foothills that could be expected in a normal water year.  After a couple of nights in Las Cruces we turned north on I-25 for home and so ended our first road trip of 2021 with lots of bird pictures but not wildflowers.

During New Mexico’s avoid-crowds-advisory, we have been day-tripping by ourselves to explore more of New Mexico’s diverse scenery.  We felt safe from potential Covid-19 infection with just the two of us confined in our own car.  Our destinations were to remote areas where we encountered only a couple of other people and were able to stay yards, not merely feet, away. With the help of several guide books, we scouted out several potential photo locations.  Early winter, with brown and dormant desert vegetation, is not the most scenic time for landscape photography, however.  My plan was to accumulate a list of places to return to in spring when new growth should make the desert appear green again.

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One location Jane and I scouted was the Ojito Wilderness area about an hour and half from home.  There are two established trails in this wilderness set-aside and we explored both.  Both trails were about two miles round trip with modest elevation gains.  The first trail led to some ancient petroglyphs situated on the edge of a mesa with a magnificent view of the surrounding terrain, eroded with deep washes and arroyos.  The other trail terminated at an area of colorful sandstone hoodoos.  The scenery and photo opportunities were compelling, so we went back for some photography a few weeks later.  Images from these trails can be found in the Ojito Wilderness Area gallery.

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The next area we explored was San Lorenzo Canyon, also about an hour and half from home but to the south.  The San Lorenzo Canyon hike was mostly in a wide, sandy wash with high, sloping escarpments on either side.  The guide book advised that this trail was about 4 miles round trip, but we encountered a substantial rock fall about half way that we did not attempt to scramble over.  There were some interesting rock formations along the section of the trail that we did hike and San Lorenzo Canyon is on my list to return to in the spring.

Cabezon Peak is a large, steep sided neck of volcanic rock, rising nearly 8,000 feet above sea level, and a well know landmark in northwest New Mexico.  This giant volcanic plug is visible for miles in all directions as it towers over the low lying Rio Puerco valley.  This was an obvious landscape feature for me to investigate and explore.  During my internet research, I discovered that there were also ancient pueblo ruins and petroglyphs in this area.  So, travel to Cabezon Peak became another day-trip away from urban crowds.  This trip was a bit longer, about two hours northwest of home, with an extensive stretch of dirt track.  Cabezon Peak was impressive but a cloudless sky and scarce winter foliage did not make for good picture taking.  This landscape was also added to my spring location list.

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Jane and I next ventured a bit further on this dirt track to the Guadalupe Ruins.  These ruins, constructed about eleven hundred years ago, are the easternmost outlier of the Chacoan culture that flourished in the southwest at that time.  The Guadalupe Ruins are situated on the edge of an isolated mesa about 200 feet above the valley floor.  The only access is along a short, but very steep, trail that we traversed with some difficulty.  The top of the mesa offered an amazing view of the Rio Puerco valley with its myriad gullies, ravines and volcanic plugs penetrating the horizon.   Since there were no clouds to add drama to the scene, I will have to return to this site and again climb to the top of the mesa in order to capture more compelling images.

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After taking a refreshment break and resting our legs from the steep descent, we attempted to locate the petroglyphs in Tapia Canyon a short stint further down the dirt road.  I had found longitude and latitude coordinates for the trail head during my research into this remote area of New Mexico.  The trail to the petroglyphs, although not strenuous, was a long two miles in.  After about a mile in, however, our legs started to complain and realizing how far we still had to go, and return, we aborted our attempt to reach the petroglyphs.  So, Tapia Canyon is definitely a location to return to next spring.

Bosque del Apache is a world famous New Mexico wildlife refuge that Jane and I had visited a number of times while living in San Diego.  Now this popular refuge, with its innumerable sandhill cranes, snow geese and other water fowl, is only a two hour drive south from home.  To continue our avoidance of crowds, in early December we decided on a day trip to re-visit Bosque.  Based on our previous excursions, we had high expectation about the wildlife photography opportunities.  Unfortunately, our optimistic outlook was not realized.  Whether a result of drought or refuge management, many familiar roosting ponds along the access road were dry.  Consequently the dramatic mass of snow geese ascending from these ponds that photographers yearn for did not occur.  The only mass ascension I was able to capture was one of red winged black birds, not snow geese.  Photo opportunities along the loop road were significantly less than on our previous visits to Bosque.  We toured Bosque for several hours and did manage to get a “keeper” or two before returning home.  These new shots can be found in the Bosque del Apache sub-gallery in the Wildlife Refuges main gallery.

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Although all our foreign travel was aborted in this coronavirus dominated year, Jane and I have managed to safely get out of the house.  Our recent local explorations have resulted in a list of photo sites to visit next spring.  We are optimistic about travel in 2021 and in the meantime we will be celebrating this year’s holidays with chilled bubbly from California.

The cabin is a long 1,275 miles from home and we broke the twenty hour drive into shorter segments with stops in Moab and Brigham City, Utah.  The layover in Brigham City was planned to allow a visit with my 93 year old sister, Neli.  Traditionally, Jane and I have stopped to visit with Neli and her husband, Fred, on our way to or from the cabin.  Since we had not been to the cabin for many years it was a welcomed pleasure to visit with them again. We were both amazed on how sharp and witty both Neli and Fred were at their advanced age.

We arrived at the cabin only to find Glacier National Park and surroundings shrouded in smoke from the inferno of fires in Washington and Oregon.  We found ourselves for several days again “sheltering at home”.  The cabin is situated in the "satellite shadow" of some high mountains with very spotty internet access, so during those smoky days our time was spent reading and relaxing.  I had brought some bird feed that I spread along the wooden railing of the front porch and entertained myself with photographing small critters and birds that came in for the easy pickings.

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Jane came up the excellent idea to see if I could line up something with Triple D.  Triple D Game Farm, located in Kalispell, Montana, about 45 minutes from the cabin, provides “wildlife models” that keepers bring to natural settings for photography.  I was able to schedule a photo shoot and selected some small mammals to photograph, including a young wolf, bobcat, fox, badger and a couple of playful bobcat kittens.  The shoot at Triple D made up for the lack of picture taking in the park due to the smoky conditions.  

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Thankfully, after several days, rains came and cleared the air.  So during the last week of our two week stay we were able to venture out and enjoy the national park.  We had not been to Glacier National Park for about four years and were amazed at the number of people in the park.  In the nearly twenty years that we had been coming to Glacier, we had never seen so many visitors.  Perhaps it was a Covid-19 phenomenon with more people wanting to get out of the house and driving to national parks.  In Glacier, the result was that by about ten o’clock in the morning all the roadside pull outs, trail head parking areas and the large parking lot at Logan Pass were full.  Typically, Jane and I had to hustle out of bed at six in order to ensure parking at the trails we planned to hike.  Barring smoke and crowds, this alternative to our European trip was a welcomed two week respite from sheltering at home in Albuquerque.

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From the cabin we extended our road trip with a sojourn to the Slippery Ann Wildlife Refuge near Lewistown, Montana.  During the rut, the Slippery Ann Refuge is a popular elk viewing area along the Missouri River.  Jane and I had stopped here four years ago on a previous road trip. As in Glacier, there were many more “elk viewers” than we anticipated, but arrived early enough to obtain a parking area on the dirt track adjacent to the primary viewing area.  The elk wander out from the dense groves of cottonwood trees that line the Missouri River to graze in the meadows where they can be viewed.  In mid to late afternoon, the cows emerge first followed by the bulls who have gathered the cows into small harem herds for eventual mating.  The bull elk’s primary objective is to protect his cows from being pirated by other bulls.  As a result, skirmishes and clashes among the dominant males occur and those are what I hoped to photograph.  I was only able to capture one such joust.  It was a long distance from the car but I was able to create a descent image.

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Our next road trip stop was a three night stay in Jackson, Wyoming, a place dear in our hearts.  On August 31st in 1997 Jane and I were married at Schwabacher Landing in Grand Teton National Park.  We had not been back to the park since 2007 when we returned for our tenth anniversary.  We celebrated this return by staying at the Wyoming Inn, an upscale lodge in town with an outstanding and convenient in-house restaurant.  I had some specific photo locations in mind for this stop in Grand Teton National Park, including Schwabacher Landing.  One clear night I ventured out for some night sky photography while Jane stayed warm and cozy in our very comfortable hotel room.  Although the sky was clear there was also a full moon making it the least desirable night for star photography.  The long exposure required to capture dim star light made the moon illuminated foreground look like a day time shot.

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Moab, Utah, with easy access to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks was our last three night road trip stop before heading back home.  At Arches, I practiced some more night photography with similar results as those in Jackson.  Crowds were excessive in the national parks and weather did not cooperate for sunrise or sunset photography.  To escape the multitudes, Jane suggested we drive to Goblin Valley, a Utah state park about ninety minutes from Moab.  I had wanted to photograph at Goblin Valley and enthusiastically endorsed Jane’s suggestion and we added this location filled with sandstone hoodoos to our road trip.

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Grumpy Old ManGrumpy Old Man Hoodoo, Goblin Valley State Park, Utah Grumpy Old ManGrumpy Old Man Hoodoo, Goblin Valley State Park, Utah

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Discussions on the drive home were highlighted with the possibility of returning to Moab to enjoy the parks when less crowded.  About a six and half hour from Albuquerque, returning to Moab would not be a huge undertaking.  We will see.

          Images from this road trip are located in the following galleries:

          Animal Models > Mammals

          National Parks > Grand Teton

         State Parks > Goblin Valley

         Wildlife Refuges > Slippery Ann

We packed our overnight bags, hustled up some picnic snacks for along the way, and headed out.  I had put together a route and itinerary that included several potential photography stops during our three days of exploration.  From Albuquerque we traveled north and east on I-25 to the Pecos National Historic Park; then further along I-25 to the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge; from there to Fort Union National Monument; and then on to the Maxwell National Wildlife Refuge. I had wanted to check out these wildlife refuges to see if photography at these would be as rewarding as at Bosque del Apache where Jane and I had been several time before.  I concluded that Bosque was a much better location for photography and much easier logistically. 

Pecos Mission ChurchOld Ruins of Pecos Mission Church at Pecos National Historic Park, New Mexico Pecos RuinsOld Ruins of Pecos Mission Church at Pecos National Historic Park, New Mexico

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Old Wagons In Front Of Remnants Of Adobe Wall at Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico

From Maxwell, a very small community with no visitor amenities, we continued back west over the Cimarron Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains through the twisty and curvy Cimarron Canyon to Eagle Nest Lake and U.S. Highway 64.  We followed Highway 64 through more mountainous terrain and canyons to the Old Taos Guesthouse.  As our neighbors had described, the Old Taos Guesthouse was a quaint, picturesque converted hacienda in a very rural setting with eleven guest rooms.  Our room was spacious with the décor and charm of historic Taos.  We enjoyed our three nights there very much and savored breakfasts each morning.

The grounds of the guesthouse were filled with a variety of trees and plants.  Among the plants were sunflowers with an abundance of interesting looking insects foraging among the yellow flowers.  I decided to practice taking close-up pictures of these bugs with my macro lens.  I don't get many opportunities to shoot with the macro lens, so this was a great time to use it.  I had no idea what bugs I was photographing and had to Google search to identify them.  These two are an Ambush Bug and a Soft Winged  Flower Beetle.

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The next two days we made day-trips from the Old Taos Guesthouse to scenic locations around the Taos area.  One day we ventured up to the Taos Ski Valley high on the north side of Wheeler Mountain, New Mexico’s highest at 13,159 feet, and also toured the mountainous Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway that circumnavigates around the Wheeler Peak wilderness areas.  The Rio Grande River flows just east of Taos and we spent time photographing the deep gorge resulting from the Rio Grande Rift that the river follows.  To the north we toured the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument and to the south the Orilla Verde National Recreation Area where we encountered some bighorn sheep on the road.

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Now that we have had our taste of traveling again, we look forward to visiting our “place in Montana” this fall.  Since we have cancelled our Europe travel plans we have decided to drive up to Glacier National Park to spend two weeks at our time-share cabin there in September.  There will be a blog about that trip, for sure.

Warmer spring temperatures have led to the revival of the plants in our new garden.  We thought many of our plants were pretty much goners, but no, new growth is all around our yard.  As spring slowly manifests its self, our brand new back yard has metamorphosed from a drab and bleak setting to an inviting ambiance.  Our current daily routine now includes checking rose bushes for aphids (very exciting).  For me, a special treat has been to watch our small hedgehog cactus plants sprout buds and develop bright red claret cup flowers.

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With a garden that could now be enjoyed we would love to spend time on our patio.  Unfortunately, we ordered new patio furniture just as stay-at-home and social distancing rules went into effect.  Although ordered in early March, we don’t expect delivery until late May or early June.  Oh well!!  On the brighter side, Jane and I were able to day-trip to some local national monuments before sheltering at home became the norm.  At Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument we hiked the two-mile round trip Canyon Trail through a slot canyon and then scrambled up rock falls to reach the top of a plateau for some spectacular views.

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Another short day-trip brought us to Bandelier National Monument west of Santa Fe.  Thinking that I could get a better perspective for some pictures, we ended up hiking one of the monuments steeper trails.  It was a good workout and also provided for some interesting shots.  Bandelier National Monument is a fascinating ancestral Pueblo village.  Here the ancient ones built their pueblo style community adjacent to cliffs of tuff, a relatively soft volcanic rock, in which the ancestral Pueblo people hollowed out caves for additional living quarters and storage areas.

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Images from these day-trips are located in the National Parks and Monuments gallery under Tent Rocks and Bandelier.  Hope you enjoy them.  Now, of course, we are patiently waiting for travel restrictions to be lifted so we resume our journeys near and far.

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Our first week was spent at The Cliffs Resort in Princeville at the north shore of Kauai.  We had a second floor, corner unit with lots of windows for great views.  We slept with windows open to enjoy the warm island trade winds and were entertained by the early morning crowing of chickens that seemed to dominate the island.  Quickly we acclimated to the relaxed tempo of the Garden Island and felt the cares and woes of Albuquerque fade away.  With top down we toured Kauai in our rented red Mustang convertible visiting the Kilauea Lighthouse and Hanalei Bay.

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The concierge at the resort assisted us in finding other entertaining ways to spend our days.  Arrangements were made to sail to the Na Pali coast on a large catamaran that also offered snorkeling, although we declined that option.  We also joined a small tour group that explored some of the island’s ancient, but severely deteriorated archaeological sites.  The record breaking rainfall in 2018 damaged much of the public access to Ke’e Beach and Limahuli Botanical Garden and we had to avail ourselves with a public shuttle service to those remote areas.

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A week later we found ourselves on the Big Island with another rented Mustang convertible, this time white.  The Big Island is big, almost twice as large as all the other Hawaiian Islands combined.  Because of this great size, we spent a lot of time in the white convertible touring the island.  From our base at the Wyndham Mauna Loa Village, on the Kona side of the island, we pretty much circumnavigated the Big Island.  We crisscrossed among the three great volcanoes that created the island and visited Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.  Tops of the volcanoes are well over 13,000 feet in elevation and it got a bit chilly driving at high altitudes with the top down.

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After two weeks of sun worshiping, sightseeing, and many “happy hours” in Hawaii we made our way to San Diego.  Although much warmer than Albuquerque, San Diego was not as warm as Hawaii and we did not rent a convertible.  It had been just over a year since we moved from San Diego to Albuquerque and we enjoyed visiting with friends and going back to some of our old stomping grounds.  It seems that progress does not slow down.  Even after just a year we could see additions to the downtown skyline, not to mention cars on the freeways.  Oh, and by the way, I celebrated my birthday with dinner at Benihana's.  It was my 81st, for those of you who were curious.

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All in all this first vacation of 2020 turned out to be a great trip.  We had enough time to decompress, forget about the unfinished work on the new house, and enjoy just being tourists.  I will have to confess that pictures were taken and some of our time was focused on photography including an outing to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.  I did not create a gallery of images from this trip on the web site but most of the significant pictures are included as part of the blog.

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The Festival is a five day celebration with more than a 130 events, including tours, seminars, hikes, workshops and entertainment choices.  We picked 18 events and spent the next five days thoroughly absorbed with activities on and around the refuge.  Our memories of Bosque from prior visits included fiery sunrises and sunsets with tens of thousands of birds.  During the Festival, however, we were a bit disappointed with the weather and the number of birds.  We had overcast skies that prevented a night photography workshop I had signed up for.  Then we had a hard, cold rain to cope with.  And one morning we were greeted with a dense fog that prevented any meaningful photography.

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All was not gloom and doom, however.  We had a great time and enjoyed ourselves tremendously at the Festival.  Highlights included:  lectures on birding and bird photography; a night time owling expedition; several photography workshops; watching a falconer fly his raptors; and some night sky photography workshops.  The great thing about having this world renowned resource so close to home is that we can visit again and again whenever we want.

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Images from the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache are located in the Wildlife Refuges gallery.

I had developed a multi-stop itinerary for our photo trip that included some of northwestern New Mexico’s photogenic locations.  Our first objective was Valles Caldera National Preserve in the pine covered Jemez Mountains.  We arrived shortly after the Preserve’s 8:00 AM opening with the intent of photographing the colony of Gunnison's prairie dogs that reside there.  Checking in with the ranger we discovered that temperatures at the higher elevations of the Jemez Mountains had been unseasonably cold and that the little critters had started their hibernation early.  As a consolation, we did manage to photograph some distant coyotes and I managed to step into a camouflaged prairie dog burrow and ended up on my face in the prairie grass.

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After swallowing my pride for having stumbled so badly, we ventured forth to the Chaco Culture Historical Park where we photographed the ancient ruins of Pueblo Bonito and its iconic series of doorways.  From there we traveled to the Ah-shi-sle-pah Wilderness Study Area.  This is a remote area of New Mexico badlands that invokes a fairyland feel with its numerous eroded hoodoos and mudstone spires.  We arrived at Ah-shi-sle-pah by late afternoon and photographed there till near sunset.

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Farmington, New Mexico, became our home base for various day trips over next few days.  However, the late October weather that had turned bitter cold was not kind to us.  The itinerary called for a very early departure the following morning to photograph the eroded volcanic remnant of Shiprock at sunrise.  When we peered out the window at 4:00 AM it was snowing and that cancelled our plan for a sunrise photo shoot.  It did, however, allow us snuggle back into bed for some more shuteye.  Eventually the day warmed up a bit and the sun broke through the clouds and we ventured out to photograph the Chaco outlier ruins at Aztec National Monument with its restored kiva. 

Then, after lunch at the appropriately named Aztec Restaurant, we decided to locate some Navajo rock art that dated from the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  I had found out about the petroglyph during my on-line research for this trip.  We were a bit concerned about driving the dirt roads after the snowfall.  However, by afternoon when we turned off the pavement the snow had all but disappeared and the dirt track was just moist enough to keep the dust down.  The Navajo petroglyph panels were particularly well executed and distinct.  As with most rock art Bruce and I have photographed, there was evidence of damaging graffiti scratched into the sandstone around the Navajo art work.

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For the next day I had arranged for a guided tour of natural arches around the area with Larry Beck, the current vice president and former president of The Natural Arch and Bridge Society.  Larry is far and away the local expert on arches and their locations.  He guided us to many of his favorite arches in the Aztec area and we finished our journey with him at sunset photographing Arch Rock.  Bruce and I agreed that without Larry guiding us we would never have found many of the beautiful arches we photographed.

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My alarm was set for an early start the next day.  Our target was the De-Na-Zin wilderness section of the Bisti badlands.  This was another remote and desolate area an hour’s drive south of Farmington.  The objective was to take advantage of early morning light on the eroded formations.  From my research we selected two areas of badlands to photograph, the “egg nursery” and “hoodoo city” for which we had GPS coordinates.  Needless to say, when traversing heavily eroded arroyos and steep sided washes, following a GPS direction can lead to much backtracking.  We explored the De-Na-Zin wilderness for nearly five hours and, according to GPS, hiked around the weird and bizarre formations for about six miles.  We started this trek bundled with multiple layers and a temperature of 20 º F and we returned to the 4Runner five hours later, just as bundled, when the temperature had reached all of 30 º F.

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Our next objective was the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park where we had arranged for several Navajo guided tours into the private areas of the park.  On the way to Monument Valley, however, we stopped first at Canyon de Chelley National Monument.  We arranged for a Navajo guide to take us into the canyon.  Because Navajo people still live in the canyon, access can only be obtained with a local guide.  One of the popular photo locations is Spider Rock, an enormous eight hundred foot tall sandstone spire, at the very head of the canyon and that was where we headed.  In addition to being an iconic geologic feature Spider Rock is also a cultural attribute.  Mythical Spider Woman lives on spider rock and she has a long history in Navajo folklore and oral traditions.  Our guide told us of stories his grandfather used to tell that Spider Woman would catch him in her web if he misbehaved.  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

At Monument Valley Bruce and I faced a dilemma.  We wanted a dynamic cloudy sky to accent the landscape during the day and clear skies at night for star photography.  Of course we could not have both.  Mother Nature decided.  We had clear skies both day and night.  Our Navajo guided tours included two nights of star photography as well as a sunrise and sunset tour.  Since there was no drama in the sky, we opted to skip the sunrise tour.  Photography can be a fickle hobby. During the first night of star photography there was a crescent moon that illuminated the foreground but obscured the Milky Way.  The second night we departed a bit later so there would be no moon light and the Milky Way was observable but the foreground was much too dark.  Oh well!

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To sum up, this seven day, eight stop whirlwind tour started at Valles Caldera and ended up at Monument Valley via Chaco Canyon, the Ah-shi-sle-pah wilderness, Aztec ruins, Navajo rock art, natural arches, the De-Na-Zin wilderness, and Canyon de Chelly.

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We have not let completing the house keep us from having some fun, however.  Last week Jane and I enjoyed a marvelous trip to the colorful San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado.  We stayed in the small community of Ridgway and day-tripped from there to explore the fall foliage that had reached its peak in color while we were there.  As a reminder, our move to Albuquerque was partially motivated to avoid southern California traffic when we traveled by car.  Well, to reach this breathtakingly beautiful area took all of six hours on uncongested roads.

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We started this little get-a-way by enjoying a morning ride on the historic Durango to Silverton narrow gauge railroad.  This was an excursion we had often talked about making and now, merely four hours from Albuquerque, it was a cinch.  This National Historic Landmark was originally constructed in 1881-1882 to support the lucrative gold and silver mining interests in the San Juan Mountains.  We opted to ride in the last car of the train that offered individual reserved seating areas from which we could admire the passing scenery.

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Another recent wildlife event we have witnessed was the emergence of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats from one of the lava tub caves in El Malpais National Monument.  This national monument is a mere hour and a half from our front door.  During summer months, at dusk, these bats leave the cave in swarms of thousands to forage for insects in the surrounding hills.  During the winter these bats migrate south into Mexico.

Bats Leaving CaveEmergence of Free-Tailed Bats From a Lava Tube Cave in El Malpais National Monument, Cibola County, New Mexico

During the summer months we have also participated on a number of outings with the Enchanted Lens Camera Club.  These jaunts have been helpful in learning our way around the Albuquerque area and getting to know other photographers.  Perhaps the most photographically interesting location was the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness Study Area in the high desert of northwestern New Mexico.  This is an area of badlands that is riddled with fascinating hoodoos. 

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We have some more adventures planned to end the year, including: a hot air balloon flight during the famous Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta and participation in the Bosque del Apache Festival Of The Cranes. 

To view images from the fall colors in Colorado open the Autumn Colors in the San Juan Mountains gallery, for images of the badlands open the Ah-She-Sle-Pah Wilderness gallery, and for a couple of bat images open the El Malpais National Monument sub-gallery in the National Parks and Monuments main gallery.

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After returning to Albuquerque from this short jaunt, we prepared for a more extensive trip to southeastern Oregon to photograph greater sage grouse.  Photographing this iconic threatened bird of the western prairies had been on my to-do-list for a long time.  Planning the trip was more difficult than I had first imagined.   Greater sage grouse males congregate on leks and perform courtship displays to attract females and it is critical to select an active lek for photography.  I got a lead from Ken Archer, the photo guide that Jane and I had met on our trip to Nome, Alaska.  Ken put me touch with Andrew Shields, a biologist in charge of studying active leks on the Roaring Springs Ranch in Oregon.  This operating cattle ranch is huge, about one million acres of sage covered hilly terrain, and contains several remote greater sage grouse leks.

Like so many areas in the west, the Roaring Springs Ranch had received a lot of snow this past winter and early spring.  So, the lek Andrew had originally planned to take us, when we first made our arrangements, was still covered with two to four feet of snow when we arrived in April.  Fortunately, there was another active lek that Andrew had been monitoring as part of his research.  Getting to this lek, however, was problematic.  We had to be shuttled on all-terrain-vehicles (ATV’s) on a very boggy track.  In order not to disturb the birds, we had to hike the last quarter mile or so over soggy and rocky sage brush covered ground.  All this was happening in total darkness around four o’clock in the morning.  It was a total adventure!

The lek was very active with around twenty male birds performing their mating rituals and half a dozen females looking them over.  We also performed our ritual that consisted of rising at three-fifteen in the mornings, driving twenty minutes to meet Andrew, driving another forty-five minutes to where the ATV’s were parked, then fifteen minutes on the ATV and then a twenty minute hike to the blind.  The goal was to reach the blind around 5 AM, well before sun rise.  Each morning, the birds were already strutting and vocalizing on the lek when we arrived.  However, we had to wait anxiously for sufficient morning light to develop before we could commence with our photography.

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The Enchanted Lens Camera Club is a large club of photo-enthusiasts.  I joined the club shortly after arriving in Albuquerque.  During this very active month of April, Jane and I participated on a couple of the club’s field trips as part of our effort to explore New Mexico.  One field trip was a long weekend to the northwest of the state to photograph Chaco Canyon National Historic Park, the Bisti Badlands and Shiprock on the Navajo reservation.  These were all locations that had been on our minds to visit and it was great to be with others who knew the way.  

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If that were not enough, Albuquerque was host to the Gathering-Of-Nations Pow Wow at the end of April.  This is the largest pow wow in North America with nearly 800 tribes participating and it was an event Jane and I could not miss.  What an experience!  Lots of competitive drum music, singing in native languages, and dancing in elaborate feathered costumes.  Also, it was very much a family affair for the tribal participants with a tiny tot’s category of competition.

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At the end of the month, Bruce Hollingsworth and I attended a night scape photography conference in Moab, Utah.  We had both been looking forward to this conference because some of our photographic attention had started to focus on landscapes under starry skies and the milky way.  The conference was a sell out, so obviously we were not the only ones interested in milky way photography.  During the conference, however, it became very obvious that the two of us were novices at night sky photography.  We absorbed a lot of useful technical information and processes needed to pursue this part of our hobby.  But when it came time to practice our night sky photography, late at night in the national parks surrounding Moab, my skill lever was severely lacking.  I'll have to adhere to the adage, practice, practice, practice!  We were able to obtain some reasonable day-time images at Dead Horse Point state park under cloudy skies.

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I’d say that was enough activity for April.  May, however, will also be a busy month, but this time most of our activities will be planning, selecting and coordinating custom touches for our new home.  Selections for window coverings, closet and office designs all need to be finalized in May so that the work can commence immediately after we take possession of the house.

You will find images from the Oregon greater sage grouse trip as a sub-folder under the Birds gallery.  Images from the Gathering-Of-Nations Pow Wow has its own gallery and images from the Arizona bird photography trip are in the Birds Of Arizona sub-folder under the Birds gallery.

January 6, 2019

This morning we hitched a pre-loaded U-Haul trailer to the 4Runner and, with Jane in the Green Machine (our apple green Toyota Camry), the two of us started out for a grand, new adventure by moving lock, stock and barrel to a new domicile in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Our departure for Albuquerque had been preceded by a chain of events that culminated in this exodus.

Although Jane and I had on previous occasions mulled over the idea of leaving San Diego, it was not until we visited the Del Webb 55+ retirement community at Mirehaven, in Albuquerque, that a conclusive decision was made.  We made an exploratory trip to the Del Webb development in November.  We totally liked what we saw and entered into a purchase agreement that was contingent on selling our Mesa Madera house.

Making this extraordinary decision to purchase a home in a retirement community solidified our resolve to seek new adventures and signing the purchase agreement initiated an intense chain of events.  We had to (1) wire an earnest money deposit, (2) interview and select a realtor, (3) interview and select an interstate moving company, (4) return to Albuquerque to select design options for our new home, and (5) arrange to rent a furnished house to live in during construction of our new home.  Oh, and by the way, we still managed to spend a relaxing, long Thanksgiving weekend in Idylwild.

We selected Jennifer Blake, with Sotheby International, to be our real estate agent.  That turned out to be a wise choice.  Jenn guided us professionally through the stressful process of selling our house without a glitch.  She knew the Scripps Ranch real estate market and what selling strategy would garner the best sales result.  She recommended that we list the house shortly after the yearend holidays when there would be fewer competitive houses on the market and that the house be “staged” to attract the most buyers.

Those decision set off another chain of events.  Staging the house required that we would have to move all our belonging out in order for the staging to occur.  In order to be ready to list the house in early January all decision making had to go into high gear.  Allied Van Lines, our selected moving company, was notified and packing and moving was scheduled for January 3^rd and 4^th.  In the meantime, Sean Blake, Jenn’s husband and “operations manager” arranged for and supervised needed small repairs and painting.  Jane and I took care of last minute details, cancelling cable service and packing what we needed for the rental house in Albuquerque into the Green Machine and U-Haul trailer.  That brings the chain of events to January 6^th when we departed Mesa Madera Drive for our new, exciting life in Albuquerque.

January 18, 2019

All minor repairs, painting, cleaning, staging, and marketing photography at the Mesa Madera house were completed and the property was listed and ready for its open house reception.  Multiple listings information had been submitted the previous Monday and by mid-week, several days before the scheduled open house we had received a bona fide offer.  Our counter offer was accepted and by January 18^th, the theoretical sales kickoff, we had already opened escrow.  And, by January 18^th Jane and I had also officially become New Mexicans with new driver’s licenses, car and voter registrations.

February 15, 2019

Today escrow closed and sales proceeds were wired into our bank account.  Now there is no turning back.  We now live in Albuquerque.  We have been living in our furnished rental for over two months and have become familiar with our new neighborhood.  Construction of our new home has been started.  Underground utilities are in and concrete foundations poured.  We make periodic trips to Mirehaven to check progress and are thrilled to see the slow emergence of our new house.

March 26, 2019

Construction of the house continues.  Framing has been completed and it is starting to look like a house.  Interior plumbing, electrical and HVAC have been installed the structure has been “wrapped” and windows installed.  Today we conducted an official inspection with Chris, the Del Webb construction coordinator.  The inspection was to ensure that pluming, gas lines, electrical outlets, cable outlets and other specifics were in conformance with our selected design options.  This was a milestone inspection, for now insulation can be placed and dry wall installed.  It now appears that construction may be a bit ahead of schedule.  Chris was not willing to give an estimate, but Jane and I speculate that we may be able to move in around end of July or August, about a month earlier than we had previously thought. 

There is much more yet to be accomplished and many details for us to take care of.  Those details are sort of fun to work out, like selecting window coverings, ceiling fans, home office details, new furnishings, and in general just getting very excited about the prospect of moving into a brand new house.

That completes the news update for now.  There will be more blogs as we explore our new home state and visit its natural and historic attractions.

Jane and I have often wondered exactly how many trips of a lifetime someone can have.  We most definitely have had several and the most recent was our photo safari to Madagascar.  For two weeks (sixteen days actually) we were totally immersed in a uniquely different, foreign culture and environment.  Jane and I were two of the six travelers guided by Mike Byrne of Joseph Van Os, a worldwide expedition company from Vashon Island , Washington.  From San Diego, we flew to Atlanta, then on to Paris to finally land in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital, where we started our adventure.

During our safari, we visited nine of Madagascar’s national parks and private reserves to photograph iconic lemurs and reptiles.  In Madagascar, one of the world’s least developed countries, roads are poorly maintained and on many occasions we flew on charter flights between locations.  Although shaped more circular, Madagascar is about the same size as Texas, and our tour concentrated on parks and preserves on the southern portion of the island.

Before heading off to our first preserve, we spent some time exploring around Antananarivo where about twenty percent of Madagascar’s twenty six and a half million people live.  Antananarivo is a high density, congested city with narrow streets packed with street vendors.  Mike guided us to a brick factory, an artisan metal shop and flower market.  At the brick factory we watched male workers pack clay into metal molds by hand to form bricks that were then stacked and air dried.  When these raw bricks were dry, young women and girls would carry them, stacked ten to fourteen at a time on their heads, to the kiln for hardening.  Various metal curios for sale in tourist gift shops and to decorate business lobbies were being created by artisans at the metal shop.  Small metal parts were cut and twisted by women, often assisted by their young children, to be welded and polished by men into artistic objects.

Our first charter flight was from Antananarivo to Morondava on the island’s west coast where the photo safari began.  Not far from Morondava we photographed the iconic baobab trees and survived our first harrowing drive on Madagascar’s unpaved, unmaintained, potholed, deteriorated road to the Kirindy Reserve.  The bumpy jolting ride to Kirindy was rewarded with our first encounter with lemurs, a chameleon, mongoose and Madagascar’s only predator the fossa.  Excitement ran rampant through our small group as we jostled for positions to photograph these endangered and endemic species.

After traveling to several other preserves to photograph lemurs, we happened upon an open street market in Fort Dauphin along Madagascar’s south coast.  We wandered the crowded streets marveling at the diversity of fruits and produce displayed in the stalls by the numerous merchants.  Many villages are without electric power requiring that rural dwellers make almost daily trips to the market to obtain perishable foods, making the market a busy and congested place.  For a photographer not inhibited to take people pictures, the market provided a potpourri of opportunities.  I, on the other hand, am not so inclined and was challenged to get keeper people pictures.

More national parks and reserves were visited after leaving Fort Dauphin, the last of which was Akanin’ny Nofy on the island’s east coast.  Here we were treated with very close encounters with a variety of lemurs.  Lemurs are a species of primate all of which are endemic to Madagascar.  We photographed about eight or ten of the many species that roam Madagascar’s forests.  By far the most difficult to photograph are the nocturnal lemurs, in particular the aye-aye.  The aye-aye is a bazaar creature, reminiscent of a star wars character.  The aye-aye has evolved to feed at night on larvae and grub found under tree bark.  In order to photograph this unique lemur guides have to lure this naturally shy animal to spots were photography is possible.  Guides do this by placing coconuts among low tree branches to temp the aye-aye and then shine flash lights on them so there is sufficient light for photography.

Akanin’ny Nofy nature preserve was our last stop before heading back home.  The journey back to San Diego was an arduous thirty hour ordeal.  Although pretty exhausted, we made it home without any major issues on route.  Our photo safari to Madagascar was fantastic and definitely another trip of a lifetime for us.

Images from the Madagascar trip are located in the Madagascar gallery.

                                                                                              200,000 MILES

The itinerary for this road trip included visits to some of the major volcanic peaks of the Cascades.  We started at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon where Jane was able to reserve, nearly ten months in advance, the last available room in the park lodge.  From there we traveled to Mount Hood where we stayed at the Timberline Lodge, a National Historic Landmark.  We continued our tour north to the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in Washington.  There are no accommodations in the Monument but Jane was able to secure a simple, but delightful little cabin at the Silver Cove RV Resort with all the comforts of home.  From Mount St. Helens we continued north to Mount Rainier National Park.  Unfortunately the Park lodge was being renovated and the only rooms available were with shared bathrooms.  We opted, instead, to stay at the Nisqually Inn in Ashford about a twenty minute drive from the Park entrance.

As most of you know, all the western states have been plagued with wild fires this summer.  Oregon and Washington were no exceptions.  We encountered smoke most everywhere we traveled.  At Crater Lake the smoke was so severe that the lake water was frequently not visible from the rim trail.  Photographically, the smoke and haze was problematic only when composing distant landscapes of the volcanic mountain peaks.  For close subjects, like the many waterfalls we hiked to, the air was sufficiently clear for nice images.  I must admit, however, that I was disappointed with the adverse conditions and that I was not able to get nice clear images of Crater Lake or Mount Rainier.

To avoid the long, tedious drive south on Interstate 5 through Portland, Sacramento, the central valley and Los Angeles, I had planned a route that took us more easterly through Boise, Idaho, and then south on Highway 93 to Las Vegas and home on Interstate 15.  Along this obscure route home, on U.S. Highway 93 through Nevada, in the little hamlet of Alamo, we discovered a most auspicious and pretentious B & B, the Cowboy’s Dream.  Built by an extremely wealthy widow, this lodge and its décor are truly awesome.  Our room, the Duke Room, named and decorated in honor of John Wayne, was larger than our own living room.  We spent two delightful nights at the Cowboy’s Dream decompressing from our tour through the Cascades before heading home.  It was still a long, hot and hectic drive through Vegas, Victorville and the L.A. basin to reach San Diego. 

Images from this momentous road trip can be found in the National Parks Gallery under Crater Lake, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier.  Mount Hood and many of the waterfall images are located in the Oregon Coast and Waterfalls gallery. 

The best way to start this blog is to be upfront and just say that the weather was challenging.  Our trip Above the Arctic Circle was a long one and as is usually the case, the adventure started out very innocently.  A fellow member of the Photo-Naturalists Camera Club had shown me images of a very unique and unusual bird, known as a ruff, he had photographed in Norway.  I was very impressed with the photographs and thought that I would also like to get images of these very picturesque birds.  So I asked Neil if he would ever consider going back to Norway for another chance to photograph these birds.  Neil didn’t hesitate one second in providing an affirmative response.  And that is how it all started, very innocently.

Working out the logistics for this excursion above the Arctic Circle took time and careful consideration.  As options for flying to Norway were evaluated, it was decided to use Iceland Air because this airline offered a seven day stay-over in Iceland on any ticket from the U.S. to Europe.  We liked the idea of spending time photographing Iceland’s famous waterfalls and landscape on our way to Norway.  So we enthusiastically added a week to the duration of the trip. 

Jane and I were aware of a ferry system that serviced the inaccessible villages along Norway’s northern coast.  In the past, this ferry service was the only lifeline to these remote fishing villages that dot the Norwegian coast.  Today, there are roads, bridges, tunnels and minor airports to support these small communities.  The ferry system still exists, but it has become primarily a tourist attraction and has turned into a lucrative cruise business.  Jane, during her trip research, found that the northern terminus of this ferry/cruise voyage was Kirkenes, the very town where we were going to be photographing.  It didn’t take us long to decide to add the voyage from Kirkenes to Bergen onto our itinerary, adding yet another week to our trip.  So this trip that started out so innocently to photograph the ruff in northern Norway had become a month long excursion.

Now that you know the innocent genesis of this photographic sojourn, let me get to the challenging weather.  Our primary objective was photography and photography, in general, requires reasonably good weather conditions.  Instead, throughout the trip in Iceland, Norway and on the cruise, we encountered very challenging conditions, including heavy overcast skies, high winds, rain, hail, freezing temperatures and snow.  But let me not cast a negative aura over this adventure, which was, in fact, most exciting with lots of new experiences.  Just to see and photograph the ruff was sufficient reward for all the weather challenges we encountered.

The ruff is a smallish shorebird related to sandpipers.  It winters throughout much of Africa and comes to northern Eurasia, including the northern most areas of Norway, to breed in spring.  The male’s breeding plumage is extraordinary.  This extravagant plumage includes feathered head tufts, orange facial skin, and an elaborate array of feathers that create an ornamental ruff around its shoulders similar to those worn by nobility in the seventeenth century.  It is truly a bazaar and wondrous sight to behold.  We photographed the ruff from a blind at a lek where the males meet to show off their colorful costumes and compete for the opportunity to mate.

Regardless of the challenges of weather, we had some great and marvelous experiences photographing.  In Iceland we happened upon a large arctic tern breeding colony.  Although Jane and I have seen these amazing migratory birds before, we had never seen so many, so close and totally involved in the breeding process.  Also in Iceland, we photographed at a wetland preserve where we found a variety of birds including the very beautiful red-throated loon.  And, of course, we did find and photograph waterfalls during breaks in the weather.

Above the Arctic Circle, in northern most Norway, the bird photography was awesome.  Neil had done his research well and we visited several sea cliffs hosting colonies of gannets, puffins, kittywakes, cormorants, razorbills, and a variety of guillemots.  Song birds were also sought out and one of the most difficult to locate and photograph was the bluethroat, a small, colorful bird in the flycatcher family.  Driving to and fro our bird photography locations, I was able to get in some memory shots of the Norwegian country side.

Our cruise from Kirkenes to Bergen was a singular adventure of its own.  The ship was very nice and the cabin compared favorably to those of cruises we had taken to the Arctic and Antarctic.  I tried very hard to obtain “keeper” shots of the various fjords we traversed but mostly the weather did not cooperate.  In fact, the captain presented us with a certificate authenticating that we had survived a summer arctic storm of hurricane proportion with 30 foot waves and wind gusts approaching 100 miles per hour.  Do I need to say more about the weather?

I'm still working on titles for the pictures, but in the meantime images of this month long adventure Above the Arctic Circle can be found in the Europe Gallery under Iceland and Norway.

My first trip of April took me to Wisconsin and Minnesota to photography two different species of prairie grouse.  This trip was suggested by Neil Solomon, a Photonaturalist Camera Club friend, who had arranged for us to photograph from blinds set up at leks, specific locations where the male grouse come to display and compete to mate with females.  In order not to disturb the birds during their mating ritual, we had to be inside the blinds well before the birds arrived.  That meant getting up well before dawn in order to be in place as the birds gathered in the predawn twilight.

We first photographed sharp-tailed grouse in the Namekagon Barrens of Wisconsin.  The sharp-tailed grouse is a threatened species and their numbers have declined significantly as native prairie habitat has transitioned to agricultural fields.  The Namekagon Barrens has been set aside as a wildlife area by the Wisconsin Department Of Natural Resources and the blinds have been placed at the lek by the Friends Of The Namekagon Barrens specifically to facilitate viewing of the sharp-tailed grouse mating behavior.

Sharp-tailed grouse were photographed on two successive mornings.  Only about twelve males appeared to compete and we only observed one or two females.   In general, there was not a lot of activity among the males on the lek.  Most of the interaction was limited to bluffing and intimidation with little combative behavior typical among competing males. The lake of females may have accounted for the low turnout of males.  Or, perhaps we simply missed the peak time of mating behavior for this specie.

The second photo stop was at the Bluestem Prairie Scientific and Natural Area, in Minnesota, a preserve established by the Nature Conservancy.  There, again we photographed on two successive mornings.  Here we photographed the greater prairie chicken, another species of prairie grouse.  Activity was much greater with an estimated 50 or more birds, including numerous females, on the lek.  Competition was much more intense among the males as the females strutted through the lek making their decisions as to whom to mate with.  Among the younger males there were continual challenges to obtain access to the more central portion of the lek where the females congregated to select mates, resulting intense sparring and jousting with combatants flying into the air.  Consequently, the viewing and photography at the Bluestem Prairie Reserve was much more intense and challenging.

After returning home from this short bird photography sojourn, and taking Jane to the airport, I departed early the next morning for another short trip to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.  This trip was made with another photo friend, Bruce Hollingsworth.  The Petrified Forest National Park had been on my mind for some time as a photography destination.  I had never photographed there and it is reasonable close to home, about a day’s drive, and April is a good time, temperature wise, to be in the desert.

Through the Petrified Forest Field Institute I had made arrangements with a local guide, David Behar, to show us the more photogenic location in the Park.  Bruce and I spent our first day with David becoming familiar with the Park’s attractions.  The next few days we explored the Park by ourselves re-visiting areas David had shown us as well as other locations we discovered on our own.  The weather turned rather nasty on us with cold temperatures, rain and extremely strong winds that was not conducive to photography.  After the cold front passed we did enjoy a final day of photography with balmy conditions and puffy clouds in the sky.  On this last day we also discovered a little visited section of the Park, with lots of petrified wood, right below the Jasper Forest view point.

To see images from the these two short April trips, go to the Prairie Grouse gallery sub-folder in the Birds gallery folder on the home page and go to the Petrified Forest National Park gallery sub-folder under the National Parks and Monuments gallery folder on the home page.

ENJOY !!!

From the Oasis Inn, we day-tripped to various locations in the Park.  Typically, we left before sunrise, returned during mid-day, and ventured out again to capture sunsets.  Photographers are an odd lot.  For sunrise and sunset we want high, wispy cirrus clouds to capture the sun’s color, but at night we want clear skies to capture dim star light.  The rest of the day we want dramatic cumulus clouds to intensity arid desert scenes.  Well, of course, we could not have it all go our way.  Star photography was spoiled by dark layers of low, stratus clouds and some days the desert sky was devoid of any clouds.  There was sufficient variety in cloud cover, however, to make the exploration worthwhile.

In preparation for this trip, I had made a list of the areas in the Park I wanted to photograph.  We were able to find all the sites in the north portion of the Park but will have to revisit the Borrego Badlands to photograph sites in the southern portion.  A mix up with our reservations at the Butterfield Ranch RV Resort caused us to miss that part of the explorations.

All the sites we visited to photograph were in remote areas of the Park, accessed by way of unimproved, dirt trails.  We had good maps and for many locations also had coordinates.  That is where Bruce’s experience with navigating with global coordinates was essential.  With his GPS device he was able to not only point us in the right direction, but could also keep track of our route so we could find our way back.  Irrespective of this technology, at times we struggled big time to find our way.  This was especially the case when we decided to take a short cut to the Pumpkin Patch from Split Mountain Road through the Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area.  This is a vast area of the desert where ATVs, quads and dune buggies can drive wherever they want and as fast as they want.  The entire area has been traversed by recreation vehicles and established trails only exist on paper, like our map.  Since we could not discern an actual dirt road, we just followed the most likely tracks and that got us a bit lost.  Thanks in part to some helpful campers, we eventually found our way but could not really vouch that we found a short cut.

So not only was this an exploration of the Borrego Badlands it was also an adventure in navigating the dirt tracks and always being grateful that we found our way.  Some of the off-the-beaten-track locations we photographed were The Slot, Rainbow Wash, Hills Of The Moon Wash, Pumpkin Patch, Split Mountain, the Elephant Tree, Seventeen Palms Oasis, and the dry lake bed of Lake Clark.

Images from this trip can be found in the State Parks gallery under Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

SunburstRays Of Sunlight Streaming Across Rippled Sand Dunes With Small Animal Tracks, Anza Borrego Desert State Park, California

Armed with maps, written directions and GPS coordinates, we started out from Mesquite full of enthusiasm and great expectation.  At the outset, the road was paved but so full of potholes it was rougher than the subsequent dirt tracks we followed.  Have you ever noticed how, in an unfamiliar setting, the way out always seems longer than the way back?  Well that is what we experienced.  It just felt that we had gone for miles and miles without reaching a recognizable waypoint on the map.  Little Finland is situated in a recently created national monument, so when we came upon the large Bureau Of Land Management sign indicating we had entered the Gold Butte National Monument, we knew we were on the right road.  It was a long, bumpy two hours, however, before we reached our final destination.