Traveling the US in the spring is an interesting exercise in weather behavior.  Within two days we went from 22 degrees at Luna Lake (over 8,000’ elevation) in Arizona to 108 degrees at Big Bend National Park in Texas. 

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We were chased by severe thunderstorms as we drove across Texas to Boyd’s sister’s in Houston.  The scanner weather alert went off three times, including a notification that the campground we had stayed at in the beautiful hill country of Texas (never thought I’d use the words “beautiful” and “Texas” in the same sentence), was under a severe thunderstorm alert with quarter sized hail, heavy rain, and flash floods.  We were glad not to be crossing all those low water channels with the warning signs and flood gauges we had seen!  Now we find ourselves in the south (New Orleans) where our skin gets instantly "dewey" as it contacts the saturated air.  Meanwhile we hear that it’s snowing in Colorado and Wyoming.

It’s more exciting when you don’t know what to expect each day, but certainly air-conditioning makes life easier than it was for the natives and early settlers that we keep reading about at historic stops.

 “…whether the weather is hot, we have to put up with the weather, whether we like it or not. “  As long as we can avoid the tornadoes!

“Ever heard of a National Monument called Walnut Canyon?” Kathy asked as we drove out of Flagstaff.

“No” Boyd replied. “What’s there?”

Kathy rustles the map on her lap, pokes at the GPS screen while she says: “I have no idea but the exit is just up the road and it’s time for lunch.”

So we stopped. Turns out, there is a nice collection of cliff dwellings in a small canyon only a few miles off I-40 east of Flagstaff. The bad news is the trail is under construction. The good news is it just makes us walk a little farther and we still get to see most of the main ruins. There is a nice visitor center and the walk is down 240 or so steps (and then back up the same steps). The ruins are not as spectacular as some of the other cliff sites but still pretty impressive. We find all of the cliff dwellings impressive when you start thinking about having to walk down to the creek for each drink of water (except when it rained or snowed), or walk up the hill for firewood or food. Those people must have had legs that could push a pro NFL lineman backwards. Now its 240 or so steps up to an air-conditioned visitor center or out to the car and the bottle of cold beverage. Kind of puts all those days of sitting at the computer taking a mandatory training class in perspective. 

We are on the road again – driving cross-country to attend Boyd’s nephew’s graduation from West Point end of May.  Normally I do not like driving our trailer through towns or into gas stations, preferring Boyd to do the driving that requires more finesse and maneuverability, but sometimes there are not choices.  Such was the case pulling into a gas station in Flagstaff, Arizona, where a truck was blocking the diesel pump that was on the correct side of our truck.  Meaning I had to slalom through the cars at the mini-mart and do a 180 degree turn around the pumps to face the truck and trailer the opposite direction. 

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Having completed the maneuver surprisingly effortlessly, Boyd got out to pump diesel while I shut down our pickup.  I heard Boyd talking to the truck driver, but thought little about it until I got out and this stranger congratulated me on my excellent driving through the congested area.  I thanked him for his kind words and headed to the restroom.

When I came back out, the truck driver was gone, but he told Boyd that he was so impressed with my driving the “huge rig” (we have one of the smallest models of 5th wheels available), he gave Boyd a dollar to give to the “little lady”.  Makes us laugh every time we think of it. 

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It's been six months since we started this website. We are not viewed by millions and people aren't flooding our e-mail, but then we didn't expect that. Our intent was to share our experiences with you, our friends. We had hoped to do more from the road but that hasn't worked so well with our style while actually on the road (see the post "Intentions" below). We are happy with the ability to share photos we made in a higher quality than would be possible over the usual Facebook post.

While the website and stories have slipped down the priority list for Christmas preparation, family visits, and just having a good time, we hope to get more posted in the near future. We will keep the gallery pages (Favorites, Recent, Landscapes et al) to highlight our "best" photos. But sometimes there are photos which are best shared with a story instead of just letting the photos tell a story by themselves. And connecting a story with a photo is what we hope to do here.

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With all that said, in November we visited the San Diego Zoo. We made some photos we liked but we then went to Death Valley and made some photos (OK we made a lot of photos) that we loved. But we still want to share some of the zoo photos.

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One of the things about zoo critters is that some have become rock stars for reasons that may be similar to why some people are on the entertainment programs every single day. Pandas are in this category. However, we think we captured the true character of this animal.

Other animals get attention because they deserve attention. Gorillas are inherently interesting. Let's face facts. We have all known someone, maybe several someones, who seemed maybe slightly less with it then these largest primates. As we watched this particular gorilla we were impressed with the range of facial gestures and his attention to what was going on around him. Yes, they are large, but their obvious intelligence demands respect. OK, if there wasn't a sheet of inch-thick plexiglass between him and me, his size might be intimidating too. But really, these creatures are rock stars.

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And then there are animals that don't get much attention because they just aren't cute or cuddly or weird looking or something odd. But the truth is they are all amazing. As former biologists, we have more than our share of bias when it comes to wildlife. Yet the more we learned, and the more we continue to learn the more amazing it all becomes. And yes, it IS all happening at the zoo.

All these pictures are like children to us. We spend time trying to get them to be good and behave. Selecting a few for best of the year is hard. Especially when we have had a good year of making photographs. Some photos have a lot of personal meaning because of the experience of being in a certain place. Some photos one of us finds interesting because of line, texture, or light. Some photos just have a certain emotion to them. So which is our most favorite? We aren't telling, but it is one of those 25 photos in the 2013 Favorites gallery. The other part of this ranking process is to set the bar for 2014. Can we do better next year? We think so. Come back often and see if we are meeting that goal. And don't forget to leave a comment.
 Boyd and Kathy

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A late summer evening in Glacier National Park.

So we heard about this event where photographers all over the world get together in groups in their local area and walk around and take pictures for a couple of hours. Turns out there was a group in Redding. So what the heck, beats working in the yard let's go try it out. So Kathy and I got up early last Saturday, drove down to "beautiful" downtown Redding. Now you got to understand, street photography really isn't our thing. And there is a reason beautiful is in quotation marks above. But we had a good time and it was a good experience. So here are a few of my favorites from the walk. Kathy hasn't finished her editing yet so we hope to put a few of her favorites (or not) up later.

So what do you think? Feel free to leave comments. We'd love to hear them, even if it is just: "Were you sleep deprived because these _ _ _ _!" 

Boyd

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Cross road

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Amtrak station detail

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Courthouse Plaza detail

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Tunnel to somewhere

 Although I dislike heights, I agreed to walk a portion of this trail Boyd thought looked really cool in Glacier National Park.  This first photo shows the trail, high above the road on the left cliff wall.  Can you find me on the trail???

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Where's Kathy? She is on this trail above the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park.  Hint - clicking on the photo should make it bigger.

Now (below) you can see the circle around my little, frightened body! Note that Boyd is taking this photo from quite a ways down the trail ahead of me and around a small bend (although it looks like he took it from thin air).

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She was there all along. 

And here is a blow up of me.  Notice I have one hand very tightly holding the cable along the trail wall. The trail was mostly fairly wide (between 18" - several feet) and most people did not even use the cable - but I did not let go and only went a few hundred yards on the trail, but I went! Good times!

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Maybe she didn't enjoy it quite as much as Boyd. 

We first noticed the yellowing of the aspen and poplar trees on higher elevation passes on August 27th.  The days, while still warm, are becoming shorter with cooler nights.  Making it hard for some of us to arise before sunrise in the morning (we won’t mention any names but her name starts with a “K”).  “I’ll bet sunrise will be boring this morning anyway, we can try tomorrow”, she says hopefully as she pulls the covers higher. 

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Leafin' the beach

The weather has really tried to keep us from getting any good sunrise/sunset photos – many days of rain or just gray skies, and rarely much color or light billowy clouds to set off the sky.  But we (mostly) had a good time trying to capture a tiny bit of what we could see anyway.  Although we realized with some frustration, that these majestic mountains are really too grand to put on film.  Which is really a good thing – it will mean we have to come back to look at them again in person.

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Maybe the word should be spelled "bearies" as these critters sure do vacume them up.

That statement by Lloyd Bridges on the old “Sea Hunt” TV series as he was being stalked by any number of aquatic bad guys seemed applicable when we finally started seeing bears.  Still only black bears, and not grizzlies, but that’s ok with us.  Both Waterton National Park in Canada and now Glacier NP in Montana have provided sightings. 

Things have changed from the old time Yellowstone sightings when human-habituated bears begged for food along the highway as people, lined up in traffic jams, obliged the creatures to get that “close up” face shot, just before the bad-mannered bears mauled someone whose offering was too meager.  Now the Parks take feeding the creatures as a very serious violation (as they should), and when any potentially dangerous creatures frequent a human area too often, they close it down and let the animals have it to themselves.  Thus, we have found trails, campgrounds, even road systems closed down to our entry.  I guess it works – the bears we have seen are all quite a distance away up on the hillsides or along the river, with the people appropriately stationed along the roads. 

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Bearly visible

This shot of a sow and her two cubs was taken from nearly ¼ mile away, where she was careful to maintain adequate distance from the human circus along the road.  We (and about 30 other vehicles) watched them, then two other lone bears on that same hillside for nearly an hour, stripping buffalo berries from the bushes, gaining weight for winter.  It was much more satisfying to see real bear behavior a long ways away, than a close-up of performing bears along a roadside line of cars.  Who says humans can’t be trained?

p.s. Kathy V correctly guessed that the partial head/eye of the animal on a recent posting was a big-horn sheep.  We will upload other animal photos when we get home.

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Night falls over Waterton Lake

Our original intention was to write/post a web story with photos nearly every day during our “Great Canadian/Montana Glacier” trip, or the “mountains and waterfalls” trip, as we’ve come to call it.  But we inadequately considered logistics.  Without electricity at most of our campgrounds we have no ability to download our camera CF cards, except during campground “generator hours”.  And our slow and antiquated card reader only downloads 1 card in the 2-hour electricity window.  With two cameras, we just can’t keep up.  Turns out we push the shutter button a lot!  Wifi/internet connections to upload to the web are even less common, usually dependent upon local community outlets, typically for a fee.

Because the whole point is to be out in the forests and mountains hiking, birding, or capturing photos rather than in camp downloading photos during the day-time generator hours we have settled for occasional web-story updates, with new intentions of loading our best photos to the “recent” category when we return home.  We apologize to those we told we would post more often! 

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Another cascade