Hi, and welcome to my blog. It occured to me that when you view the images in my galleries, that you would like have some idea as to the how, when and where. Therefore, through this blog, I will attempt to provide some background and detail about the photo trip that resulted in the images posted on my site.
First Road Trip Of 2022
A year ago, on January first of 2021, Jane and I were ringing in the New Year with bubbly mimosas while watching the Tournament of Roses Parade on television. Then and there we vowed to attend the next parade in person and spend some warm days away from the cold winter temperatures of Albuquerque. A few days later Jane got us tickets to the parade and reservations at the Pasadena Sheraton. As the new year approached, however, we became more and more anxious that the new Covid-19 Omicron variant would cause the parade to be cancelled.
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 29th . 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.
Year's End
This travel year has come to an end. For the last few remaining months of 2021 Jane and I have been staying close to home. In early October we ventured out to enjoy the annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. This year we did not get tickets for the event, but watched the mass ascension from the “side lines” east of the venue that provided a different perspective. There were some special shape balloons this year that we had not seen before. It was a different, more distant, view but we didn’t have to deal with traffic and crowds getting to the balloon park.
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.
Armendaris Ranch
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Glacier National Park In 2021
The American Automobile Association (AAA) predicted a robust return of vacation travel this summer with nearly fifty million travelers forecast to take to the roadways and skies. Jane and I were willing participants in this enormous bubble of holiday travelers. Our destination, along with throngs of other vacationers, was Glacier National Park. In anticipation of record high visitations, the National Park Service limited visitors to the park by instituting a new ticket requirement for access to the Going-To-The-Sun Highway, the primary entry into the park. We did not learn of this restrictive entrance requirement until it was too late for us to obtain a special ticket. The only way for us to gain entry into the park by way of the Going-To-The-Sun Highway was to pass the park entrance station before six AM. That meant getting up at 4:45 AM and hustling out of the cabin.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Crested Butte
After our nearly two-week, high desert adventure in May, Jane and I set our sights on a shorter, cooler trip to the Colorado Rockies. At the high elevations of the Rocky Mountains, spring wildflowers arrive in late June so we planned this new adventure to coincide with the wildflower bloom in the Rockies. We chose Crested Butte, “the wildflower capital of Colorado”, as our destination and rented a condominium apartment for five nights to serve as our home-base for exploring the high alpine meadows of the Elk Mountains.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
Déjà Vu
One of Yogi Berra's famous quotes is, “It’s déjà vu all over again”. In 2008, Jane and I had traveled to Page, Arizona, and now thirteen years later we were back, " all over again". This was our third road trip of 2021 and I had developed an adventurous itinerary for this return to Page, including tent camping, hiking and a scenic flight.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Exploring Southern New Mexico
An excursion to the southern part of our new home state was a pre-covid idea that finally became a reality. On April 15th, Jane and I embarked on a long delayed nine-day road trip to southern New Mexico. We journeyed from Albuquerque to Silver City, in the southwest corner of New Mexico to Carlsbad in the southeast corner. Along our route we observed how severely New Mexico’s drought has impacted the landscape. Vast areas of open range had only sparse stands of drought tolerant creosote bushes with little other vegetation growing in the bare desert ground.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Finally A Road Trip
Yes, finally Jane and I broke with the Covid-19 travel restrictions and ventured out for our first road trip of 2021. We hadn’t prepared for a road trip in such a long time that packing for this trip took a bit longer than usual and required the use of an old packing list so we wouldn't forget anything. We headed south from Albuquerque to southern Arizona early on a Sunday morning in late March and it felt good to be on the road again for more than a few hours. Our destination was The Pond At Elephant Head, a bird photography retreat owned and run by Daniel Grayson. The Pond is situated about 30 minutes south of Green Valley, Arizona, where we met up with our San Diego friends Dali and Neil Solomon.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
THE YEAR THAT WASN'T
The shortest day of the year is quickly approaching end temperatures along the Rio Grande rift valley have turned chilly. The holidays will shortly be upon us. Yes, 2020, the year that wasn’t, will soon be over. Jane and I have come to grips with the travel constraints imposed on us by the pandemic. Optimistically, we have re-booked our cancelled 2020 trips and have fingers crossed that we can travel to our chosen locations in 2021. In the meantime, we have also started to prepare for the holidays. We have assembled our artificial Balsam Hill Christmas tree and decorated it with many of the ornaments we have collected from our travels. Jane has also decorated the house with all kinds of joyful yuletide displays. Santa’s mail order gifts have started to arrive and are being colorfully displayed under the branches of the Christmas tree.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Visiting Familiar Places
Long before this year, dominated by the coronavirus, began, Jane and I had planned and organized an incredible travel schedule for 2020. Of course, none of those journeys materialized as we sheltered at home, wore masks and practiced safe distancing. When we realized that our most anticipated trip to Europe was off the table, we anxiously explored other potential options. We eventually settled on and patched together a long road trip to our timeshare cabin in West Glacier, Montana.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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