Luke 2:1-20

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.

4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

The Truth of Nature

Now that I'm retired, I've made a pact with myself that if I see something that looks interesting that's going to happen somewhere, I'm going to explore and check it out. I don't have specific examples, but when I was working, more than once I was disappointed because there was something that looked interesting to me that I was unable to attend because I was working. I cannot even tell you when I heard about the Denver Art Museum (DAM) "Monet - The Truth of Nature" exhibit, but I knew that it looked interesting enough that I wanted to see it. 

Had I been working, it would have been tough to attend, because the exhibit runs from October of this year until February of next year. With that time frame, the only way I would have been able to attend would have been during Christmas vacation and there's enough other stuff going on at that time. But, because I have extra free time now, I decided to make a road trip out of it and come in the middle of October figuring that the weather would probably be the best of the time frame. Well, that's another story altogether.

As a disclaimer, I wouldn't call myself a Monet devotee.  I enjoy artwork for art's sake. I just found this exhibit interesting because it would be a very large collection of paintings by a particular artist that was supposed to show a well rounded collection of his work. I would have been just as excited about attending this exhibit had it been Picasso, or Van Gogh. I was looking forward to seeing the art, not necessarily the artist.

The artwork was arranged over two floors of the DAM museum annex with scheduled entries every 15 minutes. When it came close to my time, I queued up and waited for them to let us in to the exhibit. As we entered, we were given headset devices that we could listen to at our leisure that gave much more in detail information about different paintings as we walked around the two floors of the gallery. The nice thing about this was it kept people fairly quiet and it was also set up on two levels, one for adults and one for kids. I listened to one of the kids level portions and that was enough for me, but I could see where it would keep younger audience members engaged in the exhibit.

Most of the artwork was arranged chronologically, so I got to see how his art progressed throughout the years. The three paintings that I have posted here I found the most interesting mainly because of the information I had been given by my headset during the time I was looking at the particular paintings.

The first painting was taken on many of his excursions down to the southern coast of France. He loved painting the people and the beach scenes. What I found the most interesting of this particular paintings, was that they were able to discern that most of his work during this particular period, was actually painted right down at the beach and not in his art studio. He did not sketch the scene, then go back and paint the scene from memory, opting rather to paint right there. They know this because of careful analysis of the painting reveals small grains of sand in the paint that had been blown about with the breeze along the beach.

The second photo shows a waterfront scene painted in Amsterdam. Analysis of this basically proves that he painted this while sitting in a boat because it's the only spot where one could get that perspective of the scene. That's some serious dedication to sit there for hours, possibly days in a boat to get the scene the way he wanted it portrayed.

Quite possibly the most interesting painting to me was the third shot here, showing the Seine River in Paris almost frozen over during the winter of 1879. Because Monet was actively painting during this entire period, he captured the weather of the era as well. This is a time of a mini ice age in Europe and meteorologists actually use his paintings to get a sense of what the weather and climate were like in this area during this period because of his attention to details.

All in all, I enjoyed my time at the DAM and was very glad that I was able to view this collection of Monet paintings. I hope you enjoyed some of these samples of his work. If you'd like to see one other painting, there's another example of his work in this blog entry about halfway down.

The Light Show

Besides the Monet exhibit at the Denver Art Museum (DAM), there was also a large collection of British portraits and an entire exhibit dedicated to light and how light plays out in certain genres. Several of the pieces caught my attention, including this sculpture using a series of monitors and an old pay phone. On the wall behind this piece was a set of sentences that read, "You watch to much TV. You read too much TV. You are too much TV."

I'm not sure if that's totally correct. While I fully admit that I used to watch a lot of TV when I was younger, I don't as much now. However, while I'm not watching as much TV, there's a certain amount of screen time with other technologies that aren't TV that have taken up the slack and I'm sure if everyone really looked at their own life, they'd probably see similar things going one with themselves as well. Most of us use a screen in our work and in our leisure, be it a smart phone, or a computer, or a tablet. Video games, YouTube videos and the like are constantly screaming for our attention, so this particular piece did hit a note.

While wandering around this floor of the museum, I actually walked right past an Ansel Adams print they had on the wall. How I missed it the first time around is beyond me since I'm a big fan of Adams and have admired his work from an early age. I even have a poster of this exact print that my wife gave to me for Christmas one year before we were even married. Suffice to say, she knew my tastes pretty well, even back then.

The funny thing about artists is we tend to revere what we like and usually, not always, but usually assume that because they are good in one field of art, they should be good in all fields. That's not the case and it's true with Adams. At one point in my life, there was an Ansel Adams show at one of the Claremont Colleges of his portraitures, which I attended because, as I said before, I was a fan of his. This exhibit was 100 portraits by Ansel Adams.

I'm sure others went away satisfied with this particular exhibit. I did not. I have come to the conclusion that Adams was not a good portrait person. I felt that most of the portraits lacked any kind of depth and they were sorely lacking when compared with his landscapes. But, as I've said in the past, art is subjective and others, I'm sure came away with a new found respect for him.

This particular print of Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is one of his most famous images. He encountered the scene while driving down a highway from another photo shoot and had only minutes to set up his equipment and take an exposure. In fact, he only took this one exposure. Later, when asked, he couldn't remember the date the photo was taken, but an astronomer in Boulder, Colorado was able to use basic knowledge of when Adams was in the area, surveying tools, astronomical information, and moon cycles to later determine that the photo was taken on October 31, 1941 at 4:03 PM. This time has since been correct to November 1, 1941 at 4:49 PM. Apparently, the error was due to a number of things, including incorrect geographic coordinates and the curvature of a computer monitor. You can read the account here in a 1991 Los Angeles Times article. 

Perhaps why I didn't see this particular Adams print on my first go around was I was distracted by the hall of mirrors. Or at least that's what it looked like at first when I approached it. What looked like a fun house type of mirror exhibit turned out to be very interesting once I entered it.

First, I had to don booties to keep smudges off the mirrors. Yep, not only did this hallway have mirrors on the walls, but it also had them on the floors and ceilings, making for a very surrealistic tunnel that seemingly stretched forever in all directions. Because of the vantage point of all of the mirrors, you can actually see the booties I'm wearing in the third photo. Later in the morning, I had to walk through this again, even though it was only a 20 foot hallway. I really liked the illusion of floating on air.

I think I noted in my last blog entry that the DAM is undergoing some major renovation, so there's not as many pieces on exhibit at this time. Couple that with the two floors that were solely dedicated to the Monet paintings and there wasn't a lot to see there. However, what was available, was fascinating, in my opinion and it made me want to come back in a couple of years to take in the full museum once the renovations are totally complete.

My next blog entry will be devoted to the Monet exhibit.

Whimsical Art

The next day was devoted to driving to Denver, Colorado. The plan was to visit the Denver Art Museum (DAM) the following day because there was a large retrospective exhibit of Claude Monet paintings that had just opened up the third Monday of October. I had heard about this exhibit months before I retired and had decided that I wanted to see it and this was the perfect time to go. Other works of art that are temporary exhibits I hadn't been able to attend because of time restrictions mainly because of work. Now, with the time off and this exhibit only going to be at the DAM until February, I made it a priority to attend. I'll be writing about the Monet exhibit in a future blog post.

Those of you who know me well, know I like a variety of art, with photography up near the top of the list. I also enjoy whimsical pieces and temporary pieces of art. Usually, temporary pieces of art tend to be environmental pieces and so they blend in with the landscape. The Field of Lights that I wrote about here or much of what Christo and Jeanne-Claude have created, fall into that category. Because environmental art is usually outside, you get to watch the play of light or weather on the pieces, which creates different moods to the piece.

There were several pieces of art outside the DAM that fit this description. The first one that caught my eye was the Giant Broom and Dustpan outside the entrance of the museum annex. As you can see by the photo, it's a giant broom and dustpan with a couple of pieces of rubble caught up in the bristles of the broom.

The beauty of art is that it's open to interpretation. What some people find fascinating, others will look at it and go "Huh?"  Art is subjective. I like art like this. I also enjoy a good sense of humor, which the museum definitely has, based upon the sign at the base of the Giant Broom and Dustpan.

I get that the museum doesn't want people climbing all over the sculpture and they could have just posted a sign stating quite clearly, "KEEP OFF THE SCULPTURE." But where the fun in that? And so we're left with this sign posted at the base of the Giant Broom and Dustpan, giving appropriate behavior when around such a thing. Clearly, a lot of thought went into this, because it's appropriate to verbally abuse the broom, but it's not OK to skate on the broom. Looking at it, I could see where skaters might be able to grind on some of the bristles, which could damage the sculpture and probably put the museum in a liability bind. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose. And what's the difference between touching, fondling and caressing? Yeah, we could get into a lengthy discussion on that, but I don't think I really want to go there, do you?

I have a couple of regrets regarding this piece of work. First, I should have gotten a photo of the piece with a person near it so you could see the scale. This is actually a pretty large piece of art. Second, I should have gone back to see it after the snow fell that night. I was back in the same general area the next day and could have easily walked over and seen what it looked like with snow covering it, but I got involved in a couple of other things and it completely slipped my mind. And so it goes. 

My next couple of posts will be dedicated to art on the inside of the museum.

Change of plans

The day following my exploration of Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks, I headed towards Albuquerque, New Mexico. Originally, I was going to head west toward White Sands National Monument. But when I checked the White Sands website, I saw this alert; occasionally the road into the monument can close due to missile testing. Look here for the latest information. So I checked and sure enough, the day I'm supposed to be heading to White Sands, there's going to be missile testing. The website when further to say they could give a range as to when the road would be closed, but there was no guarantee that it wouldn't last longer. 

So I now have a slight dilemma on my hands. Do I risk it and take a three hour drive on a mountainous road only to be told that the road into the park is closed? I decided that I really didn't want to rush the extra driving, so I took a different route heading northwest directly to Albuquerque. Because I got to Albuquerque earlier than anticipated, I decided to visit Petroglyph National Monument which was just a couple of miles north of my motel. I'd never heard of this particular monument before, but as long as I was there, I decided I was going to explore parts of it.

My first stop was the visitors center off of Unser Boulevard just north of Interstate 40. As a teenager, I spent many springs and summers in Albuquerque visiting my cousins who lived there, but I wasn't aware of this park at that time. This was mainly because it was established as a state park in the 70s and was authorized as a national monument by an act of Congress in 1990. I got a map and decided that I was going to explore the Boca Negra Canyon area, mainly because it looked like that was a place where the petroglyphs were easily accessible and plentiful.

I got there at a perfect time, since most people who had been there were departing, so I had the area pretty much to myself and was able to enjoy looking at the different petroglyphs as I climbed up on the trail through the volcanic boulders that were piled up on this hillside/escarpment. After exploring that first trail, I then wandered over to the Macaw Trail, so named because of the prominent bird petroglyph right at the start of that trail. I walked that trail and figured I spent about two hours in the park before deciding to head back to my motel room for the night.

As I walked along the trails, I couldn't help but think about what might have been going through the Native American's minds as he or she scraped off the desert varnish on the rocks to create this piece of artwork. Were they trying to convey how beautiful that particular bird was, or were they merely creating an image of their food, much like what many people do today with their Instagram accounts? Also, what was going through the minds of some of the people from the present day who felt it necessary to scrape and scratch out things on the rock? As you can clearly see in the second photo, there are extra scratches that were mostly likely done by a present day visitor. Since Christianity wasn't in the area 700 to 2000 years ago when these petroglyphs were created, I know that the modern day cross I observed on one of the rocks was definitely not supposed to be there. This graffiti is pure and simple, vandalism.

And because the National Park Service is underfunded, it's not surprising that these national treasures get defaced and sometimes even stolen away. When I visited Craters of the Moon National Monument in August, there was clear evidence in several areas where lava flows had been broken off and taken home with people. It's almost like we have to lock up everything behind bullet proof cases in order to protect the treasures out there from idiots who feel that it's for them and who cares about anyone else. I was taught to look, don't touch unless it's OK to touch. I respected that rule growing up and I respect it today. Sometimes I don't get the attitude of some people. And yes, I can hear the grumpy old man in me right now yelling, "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

So I'll get off of my soapbox right now and tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed this extra highlight to my trip, one that I wouldn't have had time to see if my plans hadn't been altered in the first place. Life gave me a different thing to enjoy that day.

Above ground next

After touring Carlsbad Caverns, I had some extra time and I really didn't want to just hole up in my motel room, so I headed south out of New Mexico into Texas towards Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Guadalupe Mountains is an extension of Carlsbad Caverns, except, this is above ground. In other words, the limestone marine fossil reef that's below ground in New Mexico, is above ground in Texas, forming the tallest mountains in the entire state of Texas.

The park is primarily a wilderness area, so there are very few roads in the park, either paved or dirt roads. Consequently, you really need to be prepared when you visit this park. The original plan was to camp here, then head up to Carlsbad Caverns and explore what I could here. As luck would have it, this would have been the only place where I would have camped on this road trip, so I opted to leave the camping gear at home and just motel it on this trip. Although the campsites are first come first served, this park has a lot of visitors in the off season because the climate is fairly mild and it would have been problematic to even find a good campsite. So it ended up being a day trip.

I explored the visitors center, took in the National Park movie they offer, then decided to explore what I could in the time I had left in the day. I actually drove out of the park further south and to the west to get some great views of El Capitan, which is the main piece of rock at the end of the exposed mountain range. I'm not sure if you can actually see Guadalupe Peak, which is the highest point in Texas, from the road. I believe the tall peak to the right of El Capitan in the sign photo is obscuring Guadalupe Peak. There is a trail leading to the top of the peak, but that's a good 8 hour round trip, so I opted for a hike in McKittrick Canyon, which is very near the northern border of Texas and southern border of New Mexico.

I ended up hiking the nature trail at McKittrick Canyon, which was a short loop trail, which was very enjoyable and allowed me to get a feel for the entire park, but if I'd had more time, I would have worked my way back up into the canyon as there was a lot to explore there. As noted above, had I camped there for a couple of extra days, I think I would have also hiked to the top of Guadalupe Peak. Eventually, I can see myself coming back here, possibly in the next five years. I'll be in somewhere in Texas in 2024 for the next solar eclipse of the sun and this might be a good starting point. Hike a day or two, then work my way down to Big Bend National Park, then further east to view the eclipse. More road trips down the road.

Going underground again

Last month, I went on an epic 10 day road trip through four states. The second day was devoted to driving from Tucson, Arizona to Carlsbad, New Mexico where I would spend the next couple of days exploring both Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park to the south in Texas. I'll write about Guadalupe Mountains in another post later on.

The drive over to Carlsbad was rather uneventful, outside of getting into town after dark and having the Jeep basically sucking on fumes. No services on the road and I'm already 100 miles in with 130 to go and the sign says, next services, 100 miles. Ok, I can make that. Yeah, well the distance approximater in the Jeep doesn't take into account hilly terrain where the gas mileage and thus the mileage range of the vehicle will go down. Going up and over the Guadalupe Mountains tested my nerve, but the Jeep made it down the north side of the Mountains and into town where I was able to fill up the tank with about a gallon of gas to spare. I could just see my wife, had she been there, but I'm glad she wasn't.

The next morning, I got to the park fairly early, as I wanted to have a lot of time to explore the cave. I'd been there one other time in, I believe, 1983, but I don't remember much of it as my friend and I went through quickly since we had other things on our mind and places to go. I had no place to go that day since this was one of my destination stops. Still, I arrived and the cave wasn't open yet, but I got in line and got my ticket (which was free because of the National Park annual pass my daughter and son-in-law bought for me as a Christmas/retirement gift). 

I got my phone disinfected to prevent the possibility of carrying in white nose syndrome to the bats and began my journey into the darkness. I chose to use the natural entrance as opposed to the elevator mainly because I wanted to have a more natural experience. Taking the natural entrance also allowed me to see the swallows that nest at the entrance take off in the morning. Here's a video of them I took that day. 

Coming into the caves is like descending an 80 story building, but mostly on a paved pathway. Many of you know that I hurt my knee back in August, so this would be a serious test of my knee, but it passed with almost flying colors. Going down is always more difficult than going up on knees and this was no exception. By the time I was down at the bottom, my knee was barking at me, but it stopped once the path leveled out.

Perhaps it was the time of year, but I remember that there didn't seem to be as much reverence of the majesty of the place the last time I was there. I'll blame that on summer tourists. I remember it being so much more crowded back then and there wasn't as much time to just look around at the immensity of the cave formations. Coming in the off season was definitely the way to go. I was able to wander the trail in a logical fashion so I could see all the main formations as well as take my time in reading the various information kiosks set up along the trail. I'm not sure I can adequately describe the enormity of the place. It's huge. To give you an idea, if you look at the second photo, the drapery seen there is probably 50 feet tall. It's very hard to see the scale of this place, but I do know that once you're down in the Big Room, it's basic layout is much like a giant cross that's larger than the Capital building in Washington, D.C.

Once I had walked the entire trail, I ended up down near the elevators and decided at that time to take advantage of them going to the surface. I think many of the cave explorers that day, did the very same thing - walk down via the natural entrance and then come back to the surface via the elevator. 80 stories in just about 2 minutes. The last photo was taken along the Big Room trail and it's called the Chinese Theater. I really like the way this photo turned out, especially with the darkness of the non-lit areas around the edges of the photo.

Once up at the surface again, I chose to wander around the visitors center for a little bit, before I headed back to the Jeep. From there, I went out to find some lunch. I'd spent the better part of three hours underground and it's really amazing how you lose your sense of time, when you don't have any reference like the sun to tell you the passage of time. After lunch, I drove south into Texas to explore the same general area, but the above ground part in Guadalupe Mountains National Park.

A new voting experience

This morning, I wandered over to my polling place to vote.  The city where I live had one thing on the ballot, whether to raise the sales tax within the city boundaries. Lots of signs all over the city expressed the two side adequately and I choose (as is my prerogative) to not tell you how I voted.

First, I don't like to vote absentee ballot. I like to go to the polling place and "ink" my ballot. From the looks of things, it looks like I won't be inking my ballot in the near future. They had two electronic voting booths and a woman was trying to find people who wanted to try it out. Apparently, the county of Los Angeles is moving toward this for the next election, meaning the primary in the springtime, and they were testing it out. By the looks of it, they need to work out more kinks in the system. Either that, or the voting machine just didn't like me.

I had my sample ballot's barcode scanned which brought up the pertinent information about me and then the precinct worker put a sheet of paper through a printer which printed my electronic ballot and told me to go over to the voting booth and follow the instructions. So I did. I got one step in and there was an internal code 103 error. Neither worker knew what that meant and they couldn't clear the machine without rebooting it. They also had to open up the machine in order to get my ballot.

Once someone had voted at the other machine, I asked if I could vote on that machine with my ballot. Sure.  So I went through the procedures again and the machine gave me the same error. Until I retired this past spring, I used to teach computers at the middle school. Thinking to myself and troubleshooting, my ballot caused two different machines to error, indicating that it's not the machine, but the ballot that's the problem, especially since it was taking other people's ballots and allowing them to vote.

So now, the precinct workers voided my ballot and we decided to go through the process again with a new printed ballot.  I figured I'd be their Guinea Pig this morning to help them out, although I heard both of them vent their frustrations that they'd not gotten any kind of training on these machines. That, in itself, is a very bad thing if they're planning on rolling these things out en masse next spring.

So a new ballot was printed, I went over to the machine, started the process and got the same error message - Error 103.  Troubleshooting again, now it appears as if perhaps it's not the ballot, but the machine at the source doesn't like me for some reason. Needless to say, we didn't go through the process on another machine after that, my ballot was again voided and I went over and voted the "old fashioned" way, by inking my ballot. 45 minute after I'd walked into the building, I was walking out with my "I Voted" sticker. At the moment, I'm not impressed, nor am I satisfied that this could stop willful hacking of the system. I may end up going to absentee balloting in the future.

Liquid

Once again, it's the end of the month, which means it's time, once again for P.J.'s monthly blogging challenge. The theme for this month was liquid. I have to be honest with this one. When I first saw the theme at the beginning of the month, I figured there would be no way that I would be able to come up with anything for the theme, let alone five shots. But, once the month got underway, I saw ways that this would work, so bear with me as I think I'm stretching the boundaries a little bit with this theme, but at least I didn't have to resort to any photos of snow. Snow? Yeah, I actually saw it snow in a city for only the second time in my entire life, but that's another story that I'll tell at another time.

I'm actually doing these in chronological order, which means this first shot was taken on October 20th. Yes, I did the entire theme in less than 10 days. At first, I thought that I might get by with 5 different cave photos, because after all, what creates a cave but water? And so I figured I was done, but I'll not post a bunch of photos of the caverns, because after all was said and done, I was able to come up with 5 different liquid shots. And to also be honest here, this blog entry is sort of a teaser for other entries I'll be writing about next month.

1. Phoenix, Arizona
In my last post, I mentioned that I would be on an extended road trip and I just came back from that one Sunday. The main purpose of the trip was a visit to the Denver Art Museum to see a very large collection of Claude Monet paintings. The collection was only going to be there from October to February, so I figured this would be the best time to go to avoid really bad weather. Anyway, the first day of the trip took me through Phoenix. And, as usual, I spent some of the time on the drive geocaching. I ended up in downtown Phoenix, where there is a large war memorial to all of the different wars our country has been involved in. Part of this park is where I discovered the USS Arizona's anchor. Pulled from the liquid depths of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, this anchor is on permanent display at this park in Phoenix. Around the base of the anchor are all of the names of the brave men who perished on that fateful day in 1941.

2.  Guadalupe Mountains National Park

This was a new place I'd never visited before and originally, I had planned on camping here, but things fell through on the opposite end of the trip, so I ended up staying at motels along the way. This was actually a good thing because camping was very limited in this park. The Guadalupes are the extension of Carlsbad Caverns, only above ground. I spent most of the morning exploring the Caverns, and after having thoroughly explored them, I ventured south to this national park, just across the border in Texas. This park is mostly wilderness, which means little to no roads and mostly backcountry camping and hiking, something I wasn't equipped for on this trip, but I was able to get a feel for this area nonetheless. 

West Texas is pretty much desert and the Guadalupe Mountains rise like an island out of this desert, providing refuge for an abundance of wildlife and plant life. I took this photo of this prickly pear cactus mainly because I liked the contrast of the brown and greens with the light violet of the flowers on the left. And if you're ever stuck out in the desert without water, you can, in a pinch, open up the cactus and get some liquid refreshment which will sustain you for a little bit.

3. Monet

The reason this trip happened in the first place was because of this collection of paintings. I can't remember where I first heard about this exhibition, but as soon as I knew about it, I started making plans to see it. The exhibition was falling at a perfect time: the fall and winter following my retirement. Since this exhibition was only happening during this time period, I probably wouldn't have been able to see it since I was working during most of that time. That's one of the benefits of retirement. I highly recommend it.

The main building of the Denver Art Museum is undergoing extensive renovation and the museum is in the annex building across the street. This means the collection of artwork on display is small at this time, but they had some interesting works dealing with the study of light. 

The bottom two floors of the annex were dedicated to Claude Monet and his life. Each of the patrons were given audio guides to learn more about the paintings and about different periods of his life. The galleries were arranged in approximately a chronological order. Since he created most of his lily pad and pond paintings near the end of his life, this was the last room of the gallery that I walked through. The way the liquid paint created the illusion of the liquid water in the lily pond is just amazing, in my opinion.

4. Chocolate Porter

Coming home later in the week, I ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of the nice things about traveling is checking out the local cuisine. There were times on this trip where I'd eat at a place that I was familiar with because I just wanted a quick meal and there were times when I wanted something a little bit more tasty and different. That night in Albuquerque was one such nice, so I decided to try a local barbecue place. It was recommended to me by the waitress that I try the burnt ends sandwich, a decision which I will not regret. I also have an affinity for dark, very dark beers, the kind you can almost chew. This chocolate porter certainly filled that bill and went quite well with the barbecue sandwich I had. The Nexus Silver Taproom will be someplace I will probably visit again should my travels take me through northern New Mexico.

5. Continental Divide
Finally, on my next to last day of my trip, I traveled from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Arizona where I would spend my last night. Heading toward Denver, I missed when I exactly crossed over the continental divide, but this spot along Interstate 40 is very hard to miss. With signs on either side of the freeway, it's pretty much a spot where travelers stop and get their photos taken.

It's also the spot, where liquid falling to earth gets separated. Rain and snow falling on the eastern side of the continental divide will eventually make it to the Gulf of Mexico. In this case, the water would flow into the Rio Grande, which forms the southern border of Texas with Mexico. Rain falling on the western side would eventually flow into the Gulf of California and into the Pacific Ocean. Most of the rain that fell here would flow eventually into the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon.

It's always intrigued me how cartographers were able to graphically map this out and figure out where each little stream would eventually drain. If you've ever looked at a map of the continental divide, you'll see some very interesting details. In southern Wyoming, it actually splits in two, creating a basin where the water doesn't flow to either, but either evaporates or flows downhill to the lowest point in that basin where it percolates back down into the groundwater. Further north, in Yellowstone National Park, there's a lake that literally sits right on top of the continental divide. The lake has two outlets, one flowing to the Atlantic Ocean and the other flowing to the Pacific Ocean.

For hiking enthusiasts, there's also the Continental Divide Trail, a national trail which loosely follows the Continental Divide from the southern border of New Mexico all the way to the northern border of Montana. Somewhere in this area, I also crossed over that trail.

And there's my interpretation of the theme liquid. Some might call this a stretch, but it worked for me. Please check out P.J.'s blog and scroll down to the bottom. You'll see other blogs and their interpretations of the same theme. And as always, feel free to comment. I won't bite.

Above and below

My last stop on this last road trip was Great Basin National Park. Located in eastern Nevada, it protects portion of the basin and range territory that comprises most of the central part of Nevada. One of the few glaciers in Nevada is in this park on Mt. Wheeler, which is the highest peak, at over 13,000 feet, contained solely within the state of Nevada. The park, which was created in 1986, expanded the original Lehman Caves National Monument, so there's also underground wonders here.

Nevada's Highway construction crews slowed me down quite a bit on the day I drove down to Great Basin.  I probably lost an hour of time just sitting in the Jeep while road construction happened along my intended route. But, many areas talk about how they have two seasons: Winter and Road Construction. At least I wasn't adversely affected by it.

Once I got into the park, I immediately headed toward the campground, as it's first come first serve and it was late enough that it could be filling up, which is was. I think I was able to snag the next to the last campground site, but it was a nice site in my opinion. There was a small stream flowing through the center of the site, so I pitched my tent on the opposite bank. The water wasn't flowing very strong, but this site wouldn't be very ideal during high water instances, but it suited my needs perfectly for the next two nights.

The next morning, I went for a hike out to Stella Lake and then up to get as close to the glacier on Mt. Wheeler as I could. Since I was up above 10,000 feet, the air was thin, but the trail had lots of hikers on it, all enjoying the beautiful mountain air. Once I got fairly close to the glacier, I took some photos, and tried to remember back to the last time I was here about 15 years previously. That year, my two boys and I hiked a little bit closer than this shot was taken and actually walked on the glacier. I would have had to walk a lot further this year to get to the glacier because it's receded significantly over time. It's estimated that if current conditions continue to prevail, the glacier will be gone in the next 20 years. That's sad to think about.

After getting back from my hike, I then purchased a ticket for an underground tour of Lehman Caves. There are typical formations in this small cave.  Stalactites hold tight to the ceiling, while stalagmites, might reach the ceiling. The cave, however, is most famous for its shield formations. These shields are two disks with a thin layer of water in between them. The water drips along the edges forming the cave formations.  Carlsbad Caverns, in New Mexico has a grand total of 2 shields in the entire cave. Lehman Caves have over 300 shields and it's a tiny cave system compared to Carlsbad Caverns.

The park service is, at the same time, trying to combat White Nose Syndrome, which is a fungal infection that is fatal to bats. It's very contagious and has killed millions of bats in the eastern United States over the past 5 years. It has been identified in California, but no bats have been affected yet in this state, but the fungus has been found on brown bats in the state of Washington.

The rangers were relying on the honor system, but I felt that the people who were entering the caves were abiding by the rules set out. I have been in a cave in Idaho, so I had to disinfect my iPhone since I took it into the cave. I brought a second set of shoes on this camping trip, so I just wore the other shoes for this tour. They had ammonia baths for shoes if you didn't have a second pair to wear in the cave. Soak the soles for five minutes and you'll be okay.

Next week, my plan is to be in Carlsbad Caverns. I know I'm going to have to disinfect my phone again, but since then and now, I've purchased a new pair of shoes, so I'll be good to go for this trip. Hopefully, this infection will not spread much beyond where it is located now.

Craters of the Moon

There are a variety of things that I enjoy about road trips. Visiting places again to rekindle the enjoyment that I had the first time around is one of them, but I think visiting new areas and exploring things I haven't seen before is even more exciting. That's one of the reasons why I decided to visit Craters of the Moon National Monument on my first road trip this summer.

The park, which is located in Idaho, has been on my radar (bucket list) for quite some time. My time in Idaho, previously, had been limited and I'd never gotten this close to the monument before, although I suppose you could argue that my youngest and I could have stopped there while heading up to Yellowstone National Park, but I guess the lure of the geysers was stronger than the lure of the lava fields. This trip, Craters of the Moon was going to be one of the central pieces of the trip, one where I'd spend a longer period of time to really explore the park.

I got there early in the afternoon, since I only had to drive from Pocatello, Idaho. While on the drive, I stopped here and there to find some geocaches, but I wanted to get to the park early in order to secure a good camping spot. First come, first serve sites area always unpredictable. Many times previously, when I'd visited Cedar Breaks National Monument, I had my pick of the campground, but this trip when I stopped there, the campground was almost full. Needless to say, I wanted to make sure I had a campsite.

The campground is one of the coolest campgrounds I've ever encountered in a national park or monument. I believe the park service just literally bulldozed spots out in the middle of this huge lava field. Many were very secluded, with high rock walls all around, which was very important, as those rock walls cut the wind that whipped through the campground and park during the day.

I got a pretty nice campground and then went around and explored what I could that afternoon. I drove outside of the visitors center area over to an overlook that gave me an incredible view of the lava fields that formed the park. From this vantage point, it was very easy to see the different fields and to tell which were older, based upon the size and amount of the vegetation. The older fields had Limber Pines growing, while younger fields had small sage and plants, or perhaps very little at all.

I then came back into the main area of the park and drove the loop drive, stopping at pullouts here and there to work on several earth and virtual caches that were present in the park. The virtual cache took up the most time because it wanted me to get information from different points around the park, so I decided to concentrate on that. Even so, as I worked on one part of that cache, I ended completing another earth cache which was located at the top of a huge cinder cone in the middle of this particular area. 

The views from the top of that cinder cone were amazing as you can see from the second photo. I actually went back and forth with myself whether I wanted that second photo to be in color or black & white, but as you can see the color side won out. Whenever I take landscape shots, I always look at them as to whether they'll look good in black & white, mainly because I'm a big fan of Ansel Adams' photography.

Finally, after a good afternoon of exploring, I went back to camp, ate dinner and walked around the campground marveling at all the stars I could see in the night sky. Many of the parks in this area of the country have been designated "Dark Skies" parks, because of their remoteness to city lights. Few of us ever see many of the stars in the night sky anymore due to light pollution, so it's always nice to get out in an area where you can see the Milky Way galaxy at night. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the Milky Way for very long, since I happened to be there during the full moon cycle for the month and the moon, once it rose, pretty much washed out much of the sky.

The next day was spent exploring the far reaches of the loop drive and areas I hadn't been able to get to the previous day. I went on several hikes, including the tree molds trail, where I got some nice landscape shots and was able to see some tree molds created by the lava flowing around trees and preserving their outlines. I also got to see where the lava fields stopped flowing near some splatter cones. One splatter cone was called Snow Cone, because it had a large snow dome down inside of it.

That evening, I was treated to a spectacular sunset. After dinner, I decided to head out to one of the parking lots on the loop drive so I would have a large expanse of area in which to move around and take some photos. The evening sky did not disappoint. I have several others, but I think this one, is by far and away the best of the bunch that I took that evening.

Craters of the Moon is one of those parks that if you're going to see it, you really want to go see it, mainly because it's far off the beaten path. It's uncrowded and if you get there early on a trail, or stay late, you pretty much have the place to yourself. I got on the Tree Molds Trail around 8 in the morning, hiked the two miles or so all the way out to the end of the trail and encountered one other person the entire time I was on the trail. Another trail that I walked after dinner and before sunset had no one on it and it was like I had the entire park to myself. It made it very easy to get lost in the beauty of the earth and forget about the crowds. This is someplace I'd visit again.

Webcams

This is another geocaching post, so if you're not into it, you can skip this one. One of the overlooked geocaches that are out there in the world are webcam caches. The premise behind a webcam cache is you go to the posted coordinates and there's a webcam nearby. You either get a friend from home to go on the webcam's website and grab a screenshot with you in the photo, or you grab one yourself using your smartphone.

Webcams aren't allowed anymore, mainly because there's no container involved. The ones that are still around have been grandfathered into the system and they are few and far between. After doing a search on the geocaching website, there are 255 active webcam cache around. I have logged 8 webcam caches, with two that have been archived, so I have the possibility of finding another 249 more. 

I used to own one, but had to archive that one, because the owner of the actual cam kept moving it to new locations and finally disabled it. That tends to be the big reason why webcam caches get archived; the actual camera becomes obsolete.

Finding webcam caches would take me all over the planet and would keep me busy for years. According to the map, you can find webcams on 5 of the seven continents, with none being found in Asia or Africa. Yes, there's a webcam down in Antarctica. 

I've signed a challenge cache challenging me to find and log 25 webcam caches. When I signed it, I'd only found 6, so I'm two closer than I was when I signed the challenge back in December of last year. The photos from the last two are the ones on this page. The first one was taken on the central coast north of Morro Bay, CA. It's very hard to make me out, but I'm that vertical figure right in front of the dark car in the parking lot on the right. If you look close enough, you can a small white dot just to the left of me in the photo. That's an actual seagull that I could have reached out and touched. It didn't want to move, so I just had the photo taken with it.

The second photo I had help from a friend of mine in taking the photo, since the webcam can be remotely controlled from the website. I texted a friend and she took over the controls of the webcam and there I am standing on the corner in Pocatello, Idaho. It doesn't have the same ring as standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, but the shot was taken and I was able to log the cache.

I just need to find 17 more webcams so I can log that challenge cache. I guess I need to get down to Balboa and get that one. There's also one in Tucson, Arizona where I'll be passing through in a couple of weeks, so that one's on the list too. This challenge is going to take me a little bit longer to finish than some of the others.

Nature

It's time once again for the monthly photo challenge by P.J.'s A lil' HooHaa. When I first saw this month's challenge, which is Nature, I thought to myself this one is going to be very easy. But then I didn't anticipate what was going to occupy most of my month and that definitely got in the way of me going out and taking a lot of photos. I still was able to get out and take some photos, just not in the quantity that I anticipated. You'll see what I mean as you scroll down through the text and photos.

1. Suburban rattlesnake
This one is a little bit of a cheat, but it relates to a story that happened in September, so I'm counting it.  I actually took this photo on August 25th and also blogged about it. But that's not the end of the story.  You see, I love snakes. I'd much rather encounter any kind of snake than what they eat, which is mostly rodents. Now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of rodents that are very cute and fun to see in nature (squirrels and rabbits come to mind), but anything that will control the rat and mouse population in my mind is a very good thing.

This is where this story takes a different course, because a week later in the first week of September, I spotted this same snake, but it was 10 feet below me in a drainage canal.  This wasn't really a very good thing, because unless it was able to find some way out, the snake was going to probably die prematurely.  I thought the only way this snake was going to escape was for someone to throw a large branch that it could then crawl up on and get out of the drainage canal.  (First off, let non-California readers know that drainage canals here mean flood control.  They are normally dry except during the rainy months of December through March.) Dropping a branch into the canal wasn't going to be practical, so I resigned myself to the fact that the snake was probably going to die.

That is until about a week after that I was walking in the same area and noted a side drain that I knew led up into the spreading area below the dam that the main drainage canal serviced.  Cool.  That meant that the snake most probably got down there by that side drain which also meant that it could get back out of the canal the same way.  Nature finds a way.

2. Ouch
First thing I have to say is getting old sucks.  But it beats the alternative. Nature has dictated that aches and pains take longer to heal as you get older and you get mysterious maladies that for the life of you, you can't explain how it happened. I'd love to say I injured this while out hiking, like I fell getting to a great overlook and strained my knee. Perhaps I strained it while running a marathon, but those of you who know me well know that I don't run. I much prefer taking a much slower route everywhere when I'm on my feet.  Nope, as best as I can tell, this happened as I turned to get out of my computer chair and I strained the right knee as I twisted on it.  I've done the same maneuver countless number of times in the past and nothing has ever happened, yet this time, nature decided to tweek my knee, which in turn has really curtailed my outdoors walking for the past month.

The knee is getting better, but it's definitely not 100%. Last week was the first week since the injury that my FitBit has registered three days in a row of 10,000 steps or more, so I view this as a major accomplishment. I'm taking it easy because I don't want this to become a longtime problem.  I have things to do and places to go, one of them being Denver in the middle of next month and I want the knee to be good for that trip.

3. Sunset

The nice thing about nature, even though you may have limited mobility, it somehow comes to you. That's not the case with this next photo, but I think you get the gist of the statement. You don't have to be out in nature to appreciate a nice sunset. You could just step outside your front or back door and the sunset is right there.

This past weekend, I went on an overnight road trip to Paso Robles to view Bruce Munro's Field of Light at Sensorio.  The website describes the Sensorio as being comprised of "an array of over 58,800 stemmed spheres lit by fiber-optics, gently illuminating the landscape in subtle blooms of morphing color that describe the undulating landscape." My daughter and son-in-law went there earlier at my suggestion and they both loved it. I was planning on going earlier in the month, but my injury set me back a couple of weeks. My daughter suggested that I get there a little before sunset. The lights of the artwork aren't as readily apparent, but the sunset that nature provided helped set the stage for what I was going to see later on.

I've always been intrigued by temporary pieces of art like this, especially environmental art that attempts to blend the art into the landscape. I had just graduated high school when the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude created their Running Fence project in Northern California. I didn't go see it though it was but a half day's drive from where I was living at the time and I regret not going to see it. When they created their Umbrella Project for Southern California and Japan, I made it a point to get out there and see it, at least the California edition of it. It was wonderful. And I also know that art is a form of beauty that is in the eye of the beholder. Some people will look at it and think, "really?"  For me, I love environmental art such as this, so Sensorio was right up my alley and I made it a point to getting up here to see it.

4. Saturn and Jupiter
Nature is not limited to what is on the earth, but also what's in the sky, even to things that we can't even see. While at Sensorio, the night sky was also on full display. Had I gotten there a little bit earlier, I might have gotten a quick glimpse of Venus and a small crescent moon, both of which were preceding the sun through the sky. Once the skies became really dark, as I walked through the field of Sensorio, I was also treated to Saturn and Jupiter.  For those of you non-astronomers, Saturn is the fainter white dot in the upper left, while Jupiter is the much brighter white dot to the right and downward from Saturn. Both planets can be seen very easily in the night sky right now and I felt the two planets viewed above the field of lights was just nature trying to enhance the human-made artwork.

I ended up walking through the fields on the paths for a little over two hours and these two photos are just the tip of the iceberg of the ones I took. I'm still going through all of my shots and processing them. I suspect that in the near future, I'll have an entire blog entry dedicated to the field of lights, so stay tuned.

5. Pelicans on a sea stack
As I made my way back home the next day from Paso Robles, I stopped along the way several times to take in the sights and to do a little geocaching. This particular spot was where there was an earth cache. Earth caches are virtual caches which don't have a physical container. You have to answer geology related questions after viewing the area and reading about the area on the earth cache page.

This particular earth cache dealt with some sea stacks that are just off the coast near Pismo Beach, California. The geology of how these are created is very interesting and I really enjoyed doing this particular earth cache. Once again, geocaching brought me to a place that I might not have visited were it not for this silly hobby that I so enjoy. Most likely, I would have barreled down the freeway at top speed, looked at the ocean as I drove by, but never really stop and appreciate how nature fashions the shoreline like it does. The topper of it all were all of the pelicans that use the stacks as a roosting area. As you can see, there were scores of the birds. The earth cache page also says you can see cormorants and California Gulls on the rocks. I did not see any cormorants, but there was at least one gull who had chosen to roost on the fence next to the bluff where this photo was taken. That gull must have been well fed by humans in the past, because it had no fear of me whatsoever. I believe that I could have pet it if I'd wanted to, but I resisted that urge. 

And there you have it.  These are my interpretations of the them for this month of Nature.  Please check out P.J.'s for his interpretation of the theme for this month.  At the bottom of that page, there will be links to others who have participated in this monthly challenge. As always, please leave a comment here.  I try to respond back in a timely fashion. I promise, I won't bite.

Potters Pond

This is a geocaching blog, so if you're not into geocaching, you can probably skip this one right now.  But if you enjoy my geocaching rambles, then you'll probably want to continue reading.

Following my night of camping at Cedar Breaks National Monument, I headed to Potters Pond in central Utah.  Most of you who are into geocaching know that there are challenge caches out there for all sorts of things.  Some are silly and others are rather challenging, for want of a better word.

Challenge caches are just that; they challenge you to do something in order to claim the find on the challenge cache.  They can be as simple as find 25 geocaches, to finding a geocache that was hidden in every month since geocaching has been around, to all sorts of other options in between. I worked toward three different challenges on the second day as I drove to Potters Pond.  One was for 100 contiguous county finds.  Before this day, I'd found geocaches in 95 contiguous counties, so obviously, I needed 5 more counties connected to the ones I'd already found geocaches in to get me to 100.  By the end of the day, I'd be up to slightly over 100, so mission accomplished and by the end of the trip, I'd be up to 117 contiguous counties.

The second challenge I was working on was to find more caches above 8000 feet. This particular challenge, I haven't found yet, but it's on my "to do" list.  It's located up in the Sierra Nevada, above 8000 feet obviously, but it would also mean a hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, something that I want to do more of anyway.  It's on the back burner, but as long as I'm at altitude, I might as well get as many as possible.  I'm not sure how many I have at the moment, because it's more difficult to check (I'm on a Mac, so I don't have ready access to GSAK, a Windows based program for geocaching), but I found 12, possibly 13 more that were at over 8000 feet, so I added to the list.

The third challenge was getting Potters Pond. For the uninitiated in geocaching, the Jasmer Challenge challenges you to find a geocache that was placed in every month since geocaching started, way back in May 2000.  Yes, this means you have to find a cache that was hidden in May 2000, plus June 2000, etc., all the way to the current month.  Before this trip, I needed 3 more months, June, July and August 2000.  On my road trip two summers ago, I'd found the oldest geocache in the world, Mingo, so May 2000 was covered.  I'm also fortunate, since I started geocaching in March 2001, there were some of those older caches still around.  In fact, my very first cache find was hidden in December 2000, so I've never had to worry about that particular month.

August 2000 has always been kind of problematic, since there are only 3 geocaches in the entire United States that are still around that were hidden in that month, one in upper Michigan, one outside of Atlanta, Georgia and Potters Pond.  Potters Pond is also at altitude and under snow for probably half the year or so, so it's definitely a summertime grab.  So that became the focus of the day.

Potters Pond is located along a trail near a campground.  The tricky part is finding the correct trail.  Once you find the trail, it's a pretty easy maneuver to get back and find the cache.  I did my homework and when I arrived at the campground, I hiked back, found the correct trail, found a couple of other caches along the way, then walked back into the woods and eventually claimed the prize.  The one photo of the actual pond is what I have as proof that I was there, mainly because the mosquitos that day were horrendous.  As long as you kept moving, you were okay, but as soon as you stopped, they descended, as if they were vultures coming across road kill, even biting through my shirt.  Needless to say, I traded travel bugs quickly, signed the log quickly, replaced the cache quickly and got moving again.  But, I now have August 2000 off of my list and I'm only a road trip to northern Oregon away from completing the Jasmer, as there are caches still around up there from June and July 2000.

If you want hints on how to get there, which roads to take, don't hesitate to ask someone who's already found it.  Bushwhacking would take a lot out of you.  The trail leads right to it.  I listened and learned.