It's Your World

It's Your World, or more precisely, my world, which is the theme for P.J.'s monthly photo blog. I looked at the photos I took this month, and it really wasn't many, but there were enough photos that show a good portion of my world, and so without further ado, here's my world and welcome to it.

1. Geocaching

I seriously doubt that I could go an entire blog entry talking about things in my life without writing or at least, commenting on geocaching. I spent last weekend in Paso Robles, mostly geocaching, but also attending an outdoor wedding. Needless to say, I had some free time on my hands and so what better way to fill up the time than going out and finding hidden treasures using just a GPS receiver? I mean, it's better than watching football all day.

This particular shot was taken at an earth cache entitled McKittrick Oil Seep. For those of you uninitiated, an earth cache is a geocache where you learn some geology. You answer some questions about the area and hopefully see some cool geology in the process. This one was one of the better ones I've done, as it involved an oil seep similar to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, although not nearly on the scale of the tar pits. The photo shows an oil seep at the side of the road (yes, that's oil, just coming up out of the ground). There were several other seeps on this side as well as several more on the other side of the road. There was also a seep coming up in the middle of the road just to the right of the shot. I had to watch where I was walking since I didn't want to step in any of the oil and get tar on my shoes. One of the questions I had to answer was if I could see any animals trapped in the tar. I didn't see any, but I actually have seen a mourning dove trapped in the muck at the La Brea Tar Pits, which I offered up as part of my answer for that question. 

In the past, I've done earth caches in all different kinds of area, some in caves, many out in the desert, and some at the beach. They are just another aspect of geocaching that I enjoy.

2. Hiking

My goal has been to get at least 5 miles of walking in per day as part of my daily health regimen and hiking in the hills behind my house or elsewhere happens quite frequently in the mix. At the beginning of this month, I wrote about my backpacking trip in the Sierra in August. Most hikes are not that extreme, but most will be strenuous. I want to stay in shape and live a long fruitful life.

I'm planning another geocaching/camping roadtrip next week where I'll be hiking in Saguaro National Park and Chiricahua National Monument, both of which are in Arizona. I had a student about 15 years ago ask me about Chiricahua National Monument and when I told him I'd never been there, he spent the better part of an hour extolling the beauty of that particular spot. When a 13 year old kid is that excited about something outdoors like that, you pay attention and the park has been on my radar ever since. Next week, I'm visiting, actually camping there and will also be doing some hiking.

3. Meep Meep!

Several years ago, we had a roadrunner living in the neighborhood. Apparently, it was living in the backyard of the house across the street from us. Ironically, the first day that I saw it back then, the very next day, I saw a coyote wandering down the street. Coincidence? I think not, but I digress.

Anyway, the roadrunner disappeared after a couple of months. Perhaps it had run out of lizards to eat there and so it had moved on to greener pastures. I like to think that it was just living the life in our little foothill community, enjoying what the neighborhood had to offer. Interestingly, because of the number of times I spied this particular roadrunner, I was able to hear it squawk a couple of times. No, it doesn't beep like a car as Warner Brothers would like you to believe, but I'm thoroughly convinced that the makers of the movie Jurassic Park, patterned the calls of the velociraptors in the movie after roadrunners.

Earlier this month, I was heading out on a hike and I opened our backdoor and what did I see, but this roadrunner sitting on our fence. Fortunately, I didn't spook it and I was able to quickly get my phone out of my pocket and get a couple of shots of it before it hopped the fence and then proceeded to cross the street over to our neighbor's yard. Whether this is the same roadrunner or a different one, I'm not sure but I hope to see it again. 

4. Butterflies

Over the years, there's a certain theme to my photos as I'm an avid wildlife photographer. The neighborhood birds and insects always interest me and I can usually be assured that I'll see some lizards scurrying out of the way as I walk the neighborhood. Then, in the spring and summer months, it's snake season and I'm getting a reputation as the snake whisperer.

But as always, if I can get a shot of a butterfly, I'm all over it. This American Painted Lady was flitting all around my backyard yesterday and once again, I didn't have my Canon handy, so I had to make do with the phone. Surprisingly, I was able to get quite close to this one and get some pretty good close up shots of it. This one wasn't in the best of shape, as you can see by its battered right wing, but it was holding its own quite well. I am curious since the painted lady migration that we get here in Southern California should have already happened. Did this one get knocked off course? Or is this one just a free spirit doing its own thing? This little bit of additional color in the back yard was welcome regardless of where it's supposed to be.

5. And more animals

As noted above, I enjoy taking photos of animals. If I can get the shot, I'll try to do the animal justice. Since it's getting cooler here as we've inched into fall, the snakes aren't out and about anymore, but the tarantulas have started to come out. I spotted this one a couple of days ago on one of my walks. It was just out for a mid morning walk, just like the rest of us. I grabbed a couple of shots and then thought about what I wanted to do next, so I put my foot in front of it hoping that it might crawl over my foot (yeah, I can already hear many of my friends saying out loud, "Are you nuts?").

Well, the spider didn't want to have anything to do with me, so it just stopped and we were pretty much in a stand off, but then I decided to get this shot, since it gave some scale to how large the spider was. In fact, this is actually on the small size for this type of spider, so I'm thinking this is a youngster.

And there you have it. This was my take on the them, "It's Your World" this month. Please stop by P.J.'s blog to see how other people interpreted this photo challenge and please drop a comment below.

Standin' on the Corner...

Well I'm a standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, and such a fine sight to see. It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin' down to take a look at me.

And this marks the last entry chronicling the road trip my youngest and I took to Wisconsin and back. After touring through Petrified Forest National Park, we headed to Winslow, Arizona to spend the night. Of course we geocached around town that evening including finding a virtual geocache at this spot. Memorialized in song by the Eagles, Winslow has embraced the pop culture references with a statue standing on the corner and a painting in the background making it look like there's a girl in a flatbed Ford slowing down. The building that the statue is facing plays Eagles music most of the day, although I'm not sure how late into the night the music plays. But then again, unless you really hate the Eagles, does it really matter?

Either way, it's a fun spot when you find yourself in Winslow on Route 66. The following morning, we got up, drove into Flagstaff where we had breakfast, then headed home after a very fun road trip.

Adventures

The theme for P.J.'s photo blog for this month is Adventures, and it couldn't have come at a better time, since I went on quite an adventure this past month, though not exactly as planned. But then again, that's kind of the point of an adventure in that you never know how it's really going turn out until after it's done. So here's my five photos from last month, four of which are part of my backpacking adventure and one is of something different.

1. Two striped garter snake

For those of you who have been following along, I've gotten the reputation as the snake whisperer. For whatever reason, I seem to attract snakes to me. I prefer to think that it's because I'm more observant when out walking in the wild, but that's another story that would take too long to tell here. Either way, people say it could be quite the adventure hiking with me. 

My friend Greg and I were on several training hikes up in the Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake area of our local mountains. In Lake Arrowhead, we spotted a Southern Pacific rattlesnake attempting to cross the road. Fortunately, after our car straddled it on the highway, it had the sense to go back to the side of the road and I was able to get a nice video of it as it slithered into the bushes.

This garter snake, a type I've never encountered before, was stretched across the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) when I spotted it. I was pretty content just to lay across the trail while I took some video and photos of it. I estimate it to be about 4 feet long or so, on the large side for garter snakes, but I guess it was enjoying a bountiful time eating some of the rodents out in the wild. We walked around it, I decided to take another photo from the other side, but never got the photo because I accidentally kicked a rock in the direction of the snake and it took off.

2 - 5. The big adventure

We'd hoped that the training hikes at altitude would have prepared us better for the trek ahead, but we miscalculated a little bit. This is the beginning of our hike which was supposed to be a 23 mile loop through the Cottonwood Lakes region, over New Army Pass and into Sequoia National Park. Following that, we were then going to head south on the PCT and then catch the Cottonwood Pass trail back down to our base camp near Horseshoe Meadows. We spent the first night at Horseshoe Meadows, which is slightly over 10,000 feet in elevation and then began the hike the next day.

As you can see, it looks like I'm pretty excited to head out on the trail and I'm not going to lie, I was. The adrenaline had kicked in and my pace was way too fast for the first 100 yards or so. Fortunately, my shortness of breath told me I needed to slow down, which I did and we progressed at a much more reasonable pace for the rest of the trip.

However, what you're not seeing in the first photograph is my migraine headache. Most of my migraines are caused by stress and usually when the stress is released, is when I suffer the headaches. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had a migraine on the first day of Christmas break, the first day of Spring break and the first day of Summer vacation when I was teaching. This hike was no exception. I was stressed. As I noted in my last blog entry, this was the first time I'd been backpacking since I was 19, the week that Elvis Presley died. You can do the math, but needless to say, it had been a long time since I'd been backpacking and I was overpacked. I had way too much food and the other big thing that was weighing me down was my tent. Couple that extra weight I'm carrying with a migraine that my prescription meds are just barely blunting and it wasn't the most pleasant trip I've ever been on.

Still, we pressed on and slowly the first couple of miles were behind us. We'd entered early on, the Golden Trout Wilderness area and then progressed up the hill until we entered the John Muir Wilderness area. The next day, we were supposed to enter into Sequoia National Park, but we needed to finish out this day first. 

With the headache, at least checked for now, the hiking was a bit easier, but I had no appetite. So that meant the weight of my pack wasn't declining either. I forced down some food knowing that I needed calories in my system, but it took me the better part of an hour to eat an entire Clif Bar. If you've ever backpacked, these are snack bars designed for hiking, very dense, loaded with calories to give you energy. 

I think there was another contributing factor as well, in that we were getting smoke being blown into the area from the French Fire, which was about a hundred miles away or so. The views were rather hazy and you could smell smoke in the are. If you look at photo number 4, you can see the view from our campsite was rather hazy. I'm sure this didn't help since we were also hiking above 10,000 feet.

After setting up camp and finding a geocache at the far end of Muir Lake, we hung out at camp and discussed the next day's hike. This would have taken us up over 12,000 feet in elevation and been the longest mileage day of the hike. Neither of us were feeling really well and we made the decision that we were going to end our adventure early and head back down to Horseshoe Meadows and go home.

Some of you might say that the trip was a disappointment. Not really. I learned some valuable lessons from the trip. While my tent is an awesome tent for car camping when I'm by myself, it's too heavy for a backpacking trip, so I need to look for something that's much lighter to carry on my next trip. And there's the second thing I learned and that even though this trip was very hard, it wasn't something that would turn me off on backpacking forever. I'm looking forward to more adventures like this, perhaps even coming back here next year. 

The third thing I learned was I packed way too much food. A guy in camp told me his bear canister weighed 10 pounds for an 8 day trip. I had a 10 pound canister for a 4 day trip. Yeah, I had way too much food. And so I'll adjust.

When we got back to the car at the end of our up and back overnighter, I told my friend, "Let's remember the good things about this trip." And so I leave you with one last photo that I took that morning. The winds had shifted overnight and blew all of the smoke from the fire down the hill into Owens Valley and we were left with crystal clear views. The sun was rising, just starting to hit the tops of the peaks. The waning gibbous moon was starting to set over the same peak and the scene was magical. This is why I go on adventures like this.

As John Muir stated, "The mountains are calling, and I must go."

Please be sure and check out some other people's interpretation of the same theme on P.J.'s blog.