Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Exploration

It's the beginning of the month and although it's a little late, it's time for P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for the month of February. The theme this past month was Exploration. After looking at my photos that I took last month, the explore theme fell right into my lap and the tough part was picking the photos that I wanted to represent each exploration, but I narrowed them down to five and so here we go.  This is my take on the theme Exploration.

First off, I want everyone to know right now that most of this post will be about geocaching, so if you're not interested in geocaching, then feel free to stop at this point in time. All of the photos for this month's theme dealt with geocaching in one form or another, sort of.

1. Exploring Geology

The first weekend in February I took a road trip to southwestern Arizona, most particularly, Yuma, Arizona. The geocaching group down there hosts a large event on the Sunday and there's all sorts of things happening the entire weekend. One of the things I like to do when I'm on a road trip is to get as many different icons (geocaching types) as possible. One of the types that I found that weekend were five earth caches, where you learn about a geologic phenomenon of some kind, then answer some questions regarding what you've seen.

This particular earth cache is located just north of the town square in Yuma. We actually had a little time to kill before heading down to the town square for a flash mob event, so we stopped off here to study the rock and answer the questions put to us on the cache page. Most geologists that I know always carry a coin in their pockets so they can use it as a reference marker for grain size of a particular rock, hence the photo of the quarter on this rock. We ended up finding five different earth caches that weekend, not a large total, but it was enough for us with all of the other things that we explored that weekend.

2. Exploring History

One of the newer types of geocaches are the Adventures. They are kind of a cross between a multi cache and a virtual cache. We did quite a few Adventures on our way down to Yuma, mainly because it was raining all the way down there and the Adventures tend to work better, because you're looking for information, as opposed to an actual container and so you can usually get the answer much more quickly.

However, several of the Adventures that we'd chosen to do that day were quite moving and we ended up getting pretty wet in the process. One Adventure in Cathedral City had a stop at a Cancer Survivor's Park, which, for obvious reasons, was quite emotional for me. I chose not to post a photo for that one, mainly because I didn't feel a got any really good photos and so I opted to post this second photo instead.

This Adventure was in Palm Desert and explored a huge park in the city. One of the stops along the Adventure was the Desert Holocaust Memorial. This particular sculpture was right in the middle of the spot and I felt the sculptor caught the essence of the tragedy of this event. I hope I was able to convey with my photo what I felt the sculptor had already done.

3 & 4. Exploring Food

In our local geocaching community, I have a reputation of liking my food and I also have a reputation that when I say I'm hungry, that's usually the signal that we need to stop very soon and find a place to eat, otherwise "Webfoot" is going to get hangry. And hangry Webfoot is not a pleasant individual to be around. On this trip, I don't think I ever had to worry about being hangry, or even hungry because we ate well.

We were in the Palm Springs area on the first day and my daughter, when she heard that we were going to be going through Palm Springs, recommended Sherman's Deli and Bakery. The menu was extensive and I eventually settled on Sherman's Philly, with brisket, peppers, onions and provolone. Then of course, I almost had buyer's regret when I saw the man at the next table get served his Reuben sandwich. Man, that looked good, but once my sandwich came, I was all in. I guess what this really means is I need to go back there again to try the Reuben. Yeah, I can do that.

We had an asian buffet later that weekend and the last night we were there, we had fantastic Mexican food at this place that used to serve up from a Taco truck, but in the past year or so have found a brick and mortar building to serve great food. After we finished there, I mentioned that we really needed to go get some ice cream and so we ended up driving up to Mooos Creamery.

The wait was a little long, but the ice cream was worth the wait. My friend Kami had already decided when we walked into the place that she was going to sit on the ice cream bench as opposed to a booth, and so that's why we ended up there.The place had so many choices, that this is one of those places where you're going to have to go back more than once to really enjoy yourself. I had two different flavors and I could have probably chosen six or seven different ones; they all looked so good. Once we were totally satiated with that, as always, we checked our geocaching apps and realized there was a geocache right behind the building, so we walked out and around to the back of the building to score one more find before the night was done.

5. Exploring Geography

If you don't already know it, then I should tell you that I majored in Geography in college. I ended up taking a physical geography course while in community college and I was off and running from there. I'd found a subject that really interested me and I took more and more courses there and when I transferred to Humboldt State University, I continued to take courses in Geography pursuant to my degree.

I can honestly say that most of my hobbies revolve around geography in some way or another. I discovered Where's George? the dollar bill tracking web site. You enter your dollar bills, mark them in some way telling people to come to the website and then you spend your money in the hope that it will show up again. This hobby led me to Geocaching and although I still find Where's George? interesting, it's more of a passive type of hobby since you can't really control where your bills go.

Geocaching, on the other hand, you control what you do.  You want to go on a road trip to find geocaches? Go for it. You want to find urban micros? Go for it. I guess the point I'm trying to make is you can decide how your geocaching hobby works for you and that's why I like it so much more so than Where's George? I think that I like geocaching so much more because it involves all sorts of the different types of geography that I studied when I was in college, physical, historical, political, and many others.

Geography in general is a combination of different fields that sort of overlap. For instance in this last photo, we can see the physical geography of an area, what the lay of the land is doing and how those mountains in the background might be influenced by the river that you can't quite see behind me (that's an irrigation canal directly behind me). You can also see the political and human implications if you explore more deeply into this photo. I found this photo interesting from that point of view. Here I am, exploring my hobby of geocaching in Arizona, with California over my left shoulder and Mexico over my right shoulder.

And there you have it, my interpretation of the theme for this month Exploration. Please feel free to stop by P.J.'s blog and see how he and others interpreted the same theme. Please feel to comment here. I promise, I won't bite.





Sunday, March 3, 2024

Dinosaur Stew

This is a continuation of my trip to Colorado and Utah from last October. This particular day was mostly a travel day, getting myself from Grand Junction, Colorado, over to Salt Lake City, Utah where I would spend several days. When I worked out the itinerary of this trip, I realized that I was close enough to Dinosaur National Monument that it wouldn't make sense not to stop and at least whet my appetite on the fossils there, and so this particular spot also made the list of must sees. And as always, I usually bite off more than I can chew when I'm on trips like this, but it just gives me an excuse to come back at a later time.

I think if I were to do this monument up right, I'd spend several days here, probably camping. The monument has lots to offer including whitewater rafting, something that I'm not into, but I do know other people are and so I've mentioned it. For me, I was most interested in seeing the quarry of dinosaur fossils. I did not come away disappointed.

The park straddles the Utah/Colorado border and so is sort of broken up into two different unique areas. Since the quarry where the dinosaur bones can be seen close up is in the Utah side, I chose to head there. As I approached the monument border, I noticed a geocache outside the park boundary, so I decided to stop and find that one. It's very rare to find a physical geocache inside a national park area, because the National Park Service views it as litter. There are a couple of exceptions as there are several hidden in Petrified Forest National Park but they are maintained by a ranger in the park. Most geocaches you'll see in national park area would be either earth caches (geology based) or virtual caches which I've written about previously. In this case, the quarry area of the park had one of each that I was interested in finding.

I spent a good amount of time in the quarry area taking in all there was to see. The earth cache I working on asked me to examine the fossils along the wall of the quarry. It's estimated there are over 1500 fossils still embedded in the wall. I talked with a ranger and he told me that it's really more of a Dinosaur stew than anything else. The herbivores would be killed by the carnivores and the bones would be left after the carnivores had their fill. Eventually, the bones would be carried downstream where they were caught in this area by a large sand bar. Over time the bones were buried and eventually fossilized, hence the jumble of different kinds of dinosaurs all in the same area. 

The two bones you're looking at in the second photo are the femurs of a diplodocus and an apatosaurus (what we would call the brontosaurus back in the day). The photos don't really tell the tale, but both of those bones are about 6 feet in length and 18 inches in diameter.

The third photo gives more of a scale size to it. One of the tourist there was from Germany who was slightly taller than me, probably close to 6 feet tall. I asked him if he would stand near the fossil so I could get a size comparison, which he obviously obliged. This particular dinosaur, a camarasaurus, was the most common fossil found in the quarry area. This was one of the most complete camarasaurus ever found anywhere. The camarasaurus is part of the long necked dinosaurs commonly referred to as sauropods.

After taking in the quarry and finishing up the earthcache, I decided to drive further down the road to a virtual cache. I did a small hike out there to get what I needed to get and then headed back to the car and the exit so I could get to Salt Lake City in a timely fashion. I caught a little bit of rain on the drive there, but that was about all of the inclement weather that I got on this particular trip. All in all, I was very glad I stopped as this was one of those "new" places that I promised myself that I wasn't going to miss if I was in the area. It's not new anymore, but that doesn't mean I won't come back again sometime in the future.

Monday, February 26, 2024

When is Graffiti not Graffiti?

Every now and then I stumble across things that make me go "Hmmmmm." I'm sure most people have a working definition of graffiti, but I thought, why not write about it anyway. I'm sure most people would recognize the artwork on this truck which was parked on a street in San Francisco as graffiti.

According to most sources, "graffiti is a form of visual communication, usually illegal, involving the unauthorized marking of public space by an individual or group." In each of the three examples I'm posting with this, I'm pretty sure that the image makers were not given permission to create what they created, although some will argue, and I think rightfully so, that the middle example probably didn't need permission before creating what they did. But are we sure that the first example of the truck isn't a piece of art that's on display on the streets? I did not research who created the artwork on the truck. I didn't feel like I had to.

What I wanted to do was examine each piece and try and figure out if it's art, graffiti, or something else entirely. I think I would argue that all three pieces are art and graffiti. The phrase, "One person's trash is another person's treasure" comes to mind immediately. I think most people would say that the first piece is graffiti, but some graffiti is wonderful art at the same time. If you don't believe me, then look at the last photo I've attached to this. Those images, on the last four columns, are original graffiti that was placed on the Berlin Wall during the Cold War era.

The second one is the most interesting, I believe. If we look at the definition that I wrote earlier we can makes some judgements about it. Visual Communication?  I would say so. Illegal? Hard to say, but probably not. Unauthorized marking of a public space? Probably, but then again, the Ancients of Utah and Colorado probably didn't have the concept of ownership of land, so it was all public space and who's to say they didn't have permission to create those symbols on that rock outcropping? Today, I know that almost everyone who sees this would view it as artwork, not to be disturbed. I mean, the state of Colorado has viewing points set up alongside the road where you can look at these pieces of art from afar. There are also posted signs stating that the defacement of the art is considered a crime. 

So I guess, time plays an element in all of this. Even the National Park Service has weighed in on this issue. While they don't condone graffiti, they actually preserve graffiti in some of the areas they are set up to protect. I know of at least one instance in Great Basin National Park where writing inside of Lehman Caves inside the park have been preserved as part of the history of the park and cave. The writings (mostly signatures and dates) were done by employees of the National Forest Service over a hundred years ago. Time heals all wounds?

What it boils down to I guess is the public's perception of it or maybe the authority's perception of it. The Berlin Wall, when it was all in Berlin was a striking example of this. The western side contained all of the graffiti. The eastern side was pretty much pristine. Different forms of authority obviously made this a reality. People in West Berlin let their feelings known about the wall in the one way they could at the time and that was by drawing on it. People on the east side didn't not have that kind of freedom since there were barriers in place that prevented people from even getting close enough to it to place graffiti on it.

And while I don't like the gang related graffiti that is so pervasive in some areas, I'm not going to deny that some of it is amazing artwork. What's your take on this? Graffiti? Art? A combination of both? As always, comments are welcome.

Monday, January 29, 2024

Checking on Caches

Today, I went on a hike up in the Claremont Wilderness Park. It was the first 5 mile hike doing one of the loops in several months and it really felt good to get out on the "trail." You'll notice I put the word trail in quotes. Park of the trail, as you can see here is a maintenance road leading up to a microwave tower on the hill overlooking this part of the wilderness park. When I hike, I always come up that way as it's pretty slippery and I'd rather slip going uphill as opposed to downhill. I very rarely take that particular trail downhill for that reason.

Anyway, part of the purpose, besides just getting out and enjoying the 75 degree January weather we're having, was to check on some of my caches along the trail since I hadn't been up this way in awhile. I'm happy to report that the ones that I checked on, all were right where they should be. 

I used to always worry about cache maintenance a lot and didn't have many cache hides, because I felt that if I had a lot of cache hides, then all my time would be taken up in cache maintenance and not cache finding. But over the years, I've gotten a different attitude regarding caches. First, you don't have to check on all of them all of the time. Second, pick an area and just check on the ones in that area. It works for me now and I'm still able to maintain a good balance between the two aspects of geocaching.

After checking on the caches along this part of the trail, I then headed into the interior of the park. Most of the hard part, the uphill slog along that slippery road was done and the rest of the hike was predominantly downhill on good dirt fire roads. I got to enjoy the views and the good weather. 

As I started working my way down the other side of the canyon, I descended into one of my favorite parts of the trail. It follows a stream that is intermittently wet and dry depending upon the season. There's lots of sycamore trees lining the creek bank which means it's usually cool, green and shady in the summertime, but today I could see lots of sky since the sycamores have dropped their leaves. I've also encountered several snakes and other wildlife in this section, but saw none today. Even the lizards which seem to be everywhere were only venturing out in the really sunny areas and this part wasn't sunny because of the lateness of the day.

I noticed some of the first weedy plants were starting to grow in this area too. I was particularly intrigued by the patterns on the leaves of this plant. I'm not sure what kind it is and I'm sure I wouldn't want to bushwhack through it. Look closely and you can see some nasty spikes on the end of each lobe of the leaves of this thing. Whatever it is, it definitely wants to protect itself, although, I seriously doubt it would stand a chance against a deer if they wanted to partake in eating it.

With more rain expected in the area in the next 10 days, the next time I get up on that part of the trail, the growth will be substantially lusher and taller. That's perfect, in my estimation.

Saturday, January 20, 2024

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

 

It's been awhile since I've written in here, but as I look back over the calendar of blog entries, I missed a couple of other months last year too, so now I don't feel so bad. This is a continuation of the series that I started back in October for my road trip I took in the middle of October to Colorado and Utah. 

Back in October, I wrote about my first full day in Colorado and my visit to Colorado National Monument. I had hosted a geocaching coffee event that morning, then toured the monument for most of the day afterwards. The next day, I drove southward out of Grand Junction heading for Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. I'd been to the park previously, before it had been upgraded to national park status, but the time gap between visits of over 50 years made me want to go back and see it again, as all I could recall of the park was that it was very vertical.

On thing that I noticed as I got to the park was that it was surprisingly busy for it being the middle of October. I figured that I'd have the park mostly to myself, with maybe some other senior citizens traveling around the country visiting sites in the "off season" but that was not the case, at least the day I was there. There were plenty of families and many of the viewpoint areas were filled to capacity with cars. 

As a kid, you don't remember things like parking problems, but I couldn't help but wonder what this would be like in the middle of summer during the height of the tourist season. And of course, my mind went back to that summer day over 50 years ago when my dad hopped us all in the station wagon for the trip north from our base camp in what I believe was Durango to visit this seldom visited national monument. Perhaps, the upgrade to national park status has boosted tourism to the place, but I still couldn't help but think that the minuscule parking lots during the summer would not be a positive experience for the average person visiting the park.

Because it was October, the park was beginning to experience multiple signs of fall with many of the park's deciduous trees and bushes showing off their fall colors. I saw photos from a national park group on Facebook that I frequent where someone posted similar photos, but had been there about 10 days later and they were even more spectacular in color than the one I've posted here. Being from Southern California, almost any color is amazing, so I guess you could say I was impressed with what I saw that day.

As I noted above, the park is very vertical. The Gunnison River carved through the volcanic rock and carved it very deep, but not very wide. At points in the park, the canyon is only about there quarters of a mile wide, but almost a half mile deep. Contrast that with the Grand Canyon in Arizona which might be a mile deep but 10 miles wide and you can see where this little canyon can be quite impressive.

As always, part of my reason for being there was to learn some geology and what better way to do that than through some of the earth caches that had been placed in the park. I did many of the tasks that were required by the different earth caches and walked several trails to get closer to the edge of the canyon. As I drove out to Painted Wall, the crowds thinned tremendously. I was actually surprised at this since I felt that the Painted Wall section was the most spectacular in the park, but it also meant that the trails were less populated and so there was time for some solitude, so I wasn't complaining.

It was also in this section where you could really see where the canyon got it name. The walls of the canyon are composed mostly of gneiss, but had bands of intruded light colored pegmatite running through them. This area is also the deepest part of the canyon. Imagine being in Paris. You could stack two Eiffel Towers on top of each other and they still wouldn't reach the top of the canyon from the river below.

I know the nostalgia of wanting to come back and retrace my childhood steps might seem silly to some, but I was glad I came. I can remember being not very impressed with my dad's photos of the park at the time and I know why now. With little to no clouds directly overhead, the sun made for very harsh lighting conditions. Lots of deep shadows so you really couldn't see a lot of detail in some of the photos and my own photos are very similar in appearance.

I enjoyed my time in the park and if I'm ever in the area again, I'll make sure I spend some more time on the opposite rim for a different perspective. There just wasn't enough time to squeeze both rims in on the same day with all the driving that entailed. After spending several hours in the park and enjoying a light lunch there, I headed back to Grand Junction, geocaching all the way back to my motel.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Lizards and Spiders and Snakes! Oh My!

Today I went out on a hike and missed seeing the trifecta in my title by about 50 feet or so. I hiked the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park loop today, a little over 6 miles from my car back to my car. I decided today was a good day for a hike, since it's supposed to rain again later in the evening and on into tomorrow. We got rain on Wednesday, so the trail had dried out enough that footing wasn't an issue, but it was still damp in spots where you could make out deer tracks.

I think I got on the trail right around 9:30 or so. Being as it's sunny, but cool, it seemed like a perfect time for me to go hiking when most of the morning crowd have already left the park. Less people means there's a likelihood of seeing more animals out and about and I was able to spot all sorts of interesting things.

For one thing, there were still quite a few butterflies flitting about. I saw one tiger swallowtail and at least two different cabbage white butterflies. I saw several lizards running away from me along the trail or disappearing into the brush as the side of the trail. Lizards are interesting creatures in that they'll hold still for a very long time and then all of a sudden will make a mad dash. I think in reality if they were to hold still and just stay there, many people would miss them altogether. I, for one, have noticed many lizards only after they started moving away from me. They tend to blend in a little better into the dirt and stuff of the trail than do snakes, so I feel that they're not as easily spotted as are snakes.

The main attraction along the trail today however were the tarantulas. For the most part, this is about the only time of the year when you can really see tarantulas out and about. It's mating season and they're out prowling around for mates. This guy was about halfway across the trail/fire road when I encountered it. I took quite a few shots of it, but several of them came out blurry. I guess I'm still getting used to the camera on my new phone, but I got several good shots, this one being the best of the bunch. After taking this shot, I got back up and let the spider walk between my legs and continue to the other side of the trail.

Later on I encountered another tarantula walking along the side of the trail. I watched it for a little bit, even putting my shoe out in front of it to see if it would climb over my shoe. It touched my shoe with one foot and then decided to detour around it. Oh well, I tried. And I can already hear some of my friends and family thinking, "Geez Paul, why do you do some of the things you do?" Because I'm interested in things like that. Anyway, I left that tarantula alone, continued on my hike, but just around the corner, a maintenance truck was coming down the trail and so I became worried that it might run over the tarantula, so I walked back down and was relieved to see that it missed it by at least a foot or so.

I didn't see any snakes today, however as I noted above, it appears as if I missed seeing a rattlesnake by about fifty feet or so. I was on the downhill stretch of the trail, heading back to the car, but I still had about a mile and a half of walking to do when a guy came jogging up the hill. Instead of the normal wave or quick hi, he said, "There's a rattlesnake on trail." My response back to him was "Cool." He said it was about fifty feet further down the trail, so I walked down, but unfortunately (at least for me), I never spotted the snake, which means it had probably already slithered off into the brush along the side of the trail. No photo of a rattlesnake today, so you'll have to be satisfied with this photo of the gopher snake I spotted a couple of days ago along another part of the trail.

All in all, it was a good hike and workout today. I feel like I'm back to my old self once again and I even thought about hiking the loop a second time, but I knew that probably wouldn't be good for me since I could feel myself getting hungry. Another two hours on the trail without any kind of sustenance would not make a happy me. But the good thing was that my energy level seems to be back the way it was before all this health shenanigans started almost a year ago. The only thing that I have noticed is the my mileage times aren't quite there and I'm not sure they ever will be. I used to be able to do that loop averaging about 18 minute miles. Today, I averaged slightly over 20 minutes per mile, which I find acceptable. I'm getting older and it doesn't make sense to punish my body for the sake of fast miles. The whole purpose is to get some exercise and enjoy the scenery. I did both today.


Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Be Ever Vigilant

 

Every now and then we all make mistakes. Today, while out hiking, I was doing my usual thing, scanning the trail when I heard something off to my right, so I looked over there to see if I could see anything of interest. The problem with what I did is I usually stop and look. This time I didn't, but kept walking up the trail. And that's when everything went kind of sideways.

I turned my head back to the trail, took one more step and out of my peripheral vision, I saw something move right about where I was going to place my foot. This little guy now had my complete attention and apparently I had its complete attention too as it immediately coiled into strike position. And it's amazing how many thoughts went through my head in probably the one second or so it took to push off with my other foot and take an exaggerated jump over this snake.

Thought one, "Oh crap, I'm stepping on a baby rattlesnake."

Thought two, "Why isn't it rattling? Too small to have an active rattle?"

Thought three, "Where's its damn tail, oh there it is. Oh, it's a gopher snake."

As you can see from the photo, I really got way too close to this one. That's the first time I've ever seen a gopher snake go into strike mode. It was prepared to defend itself and it didn't really believe that I was friendly and wouldn't hurt it on purpose. And as you can see it remained in a semi-strike mode even after it took off into the bushes at the side of the trail.

The lesson is, if you hear a sound off trail, stop, look and listen. Then continue on with your hike. Had I done that, this encounter probably wouldn't have been less stressful for both of us. Also, be ever vigilant, even in the cooler months as they still could be active.