Claire’s fresh from the oven multi-grain (no knead recipe) bread, Gorgonzola, avocado, tomato, a salad with raspberry vinaigrette and pecans. Read the rest of this article…
A couple of days before our 17 anniversary, we were in Oswego, NY. Claire, ever on the lookout for free entertainment, found a concert in a town park. It proved to be shady with a breeze off the lake and a perfect way to spend an evening. Best of all it was Big Band era music with a 17 piece Big Band. Well, of course those who know us, know we can’t resist dancing to that music, even if it is on the grass in front of a couple of hundred strangers. Read the rest of this article…
Badlands National Park got its name from the early French trappers and American settlers because of the eroded spires and hoodoos of rock that made travel difficult. I couldn’t find out what the Lakota (Sioux) called the beautiful (to me) land, Read the rest of this article…
Last night in Spearfish, S.D. Claire could see Turtle sucked up the tossed onto the Yellow Brick Road.
Wal*Mart is on the far eastern edge of Spearfish. the tornado touched down three miles east of Spearfish, perhaps a mile or two from us. Yikes. Glad we didn’t know until morning. Read the rest of this article…
However, the surroundings, pines, grass and wildflowers were a welcome change, and we enjoyed two days in the campground. There was a prairie dog colony between the campground and the tower, and they were somewhat habituated to humans; nobody shoots them here, and it’is possible to get a good look. When they are hunted, as they are on most all private property in Wyoming, they won’t let humans within a couple of hundred yards of them.
Our campsite was in the middle of a grove of cottonwoods, and the rustle of the leaves sounds like a gentle rain falling, even with the sun shining. Our sunroof gave us views of the small, heart shaped, leaves against a starry sky each night. Last night thunderstorms to the east added depth and interest to the stars and broken clouds. We got a sprinkle. Or was that just the cottonwoods? Read the rest of this article…
June 10, Vedauwoo, Wyoming. We decided to check out a SE Wyoming bouldering spot; the photos we saw at the Wyoming Welcome Center reminded us of a place in Australia called Devil’s Marbles. It is on BLM land, so the camping was cheap, and half price for me, so we decided to make a day of it and stay the night. The hike around Turtle Rock, from the campground, was four or five miles, just right, and we had lots of daylight. We got distracted by a little bouldering of our own: Claire surprised me by asking to try a little climbing and she did very well. If I remember the old system, we might have done some 5.2, hard core! It was really fun, but the top was truly vertical and we had no gear, so we passed and made our way back down to the trail and finished the hike. Read the rest of this article…
We parked at an overlook near the top of Douglas pass, and after a run-in with a curious cow butting Turtle on the grill, had a peaceful, cool night in aspen country. The next day we spent the morning of June 4, hiking and photographing Freemont rock art of Canyon Pintado for a future story. Then we drove to Dinosaur National Monument Canyon Area visitor center and decided to explore the Harpers Corner road and hike the trail to the Green/Yampa River overlook, a truly spectacular vista of colorful rocks and deep gorges. It was nice to change the sagebrush juniper scents for the pitchy scent of pinon pine and crisp air of 7,000 feet. There were new wildflowers, or perhaps stunted versions of familiar ones; the globe mallow that grows to four feet in Tucson and was maybe four inches here. I would consider this canyon section of Dinosaur NP to be a real hidden gem of the park system. Most people go to the Vernal, Utah entrance where the dino bones are kept, and though nice, it is not as spectacular or remote in feeling as the Canyon District. Having BLM nearby for bush camping is a plus. Read the rest of this article…
what we thought would be a moderately strenuous mountain bike ride of about 30 miles. The first seven miles were easy, showing us lots of different wildflowers and only a few corrugations. Then the —- hit the fan. First it got steep, then the steep turned to sand. We thought we might have a couple of miles of pushing our bikes, but it turned out to be an epic of seven plus miles of deep sand and hills.
A bicycle is an awful burden to push through sand, and we couldn’t even pedal the downhills the sand was so deep. Good thing the flowers were blooming.
We ran out of water and food near the end and felt the big bonk:
To bonk is to run out of glycogen in one’s muscles from exertion and not have food to replace it. It is very unpleasant, particularly when you do not have any choice except push on. Each step is a struggle to force your muscle to do work it is really incapable of doing, and every muscle in your body makes you pay in pain for making it move when it only wants rest and food.
We finally made it out of the sand and to a motorhome parked in an unusual place. The very pleasant young man from California, was the “mo ho” (California speak for motorhome) manager for a company that supports film and still photo shoots. The photographer, assistants and model were off doing their shoot. He gave us water and that made a big difference; we only had to push our muscles without food for another nine miles. Read the rest of this article…