A Look into my Life

Well, once again, it's that time of the month where P.J. has his monthly photo blogging challenge. This month's theme is "A Look into my Life." I figuredwith the amount of photos I took this past month, I should be able to come up with five photos that sort of personify me.

1. Geocaching and travel

As you all know by now if you've been paying attention, I love to geocache. I also love to travel which works out well since they go hand in hand with each other. Last month I attended two geocaching Mega Events, one in the Los Angeles area (Spring Fling) and the second one which was in Flagstaff over Memorial Day weekend (GeoWoodstockXX). Both of the events were put on by the same individuals, so there was a lot to compare and contrast but if push came to shove, I'd say the GeoWoodstock was Spring Fling on steroids. It was just bigger and better all the way around and that's to take nothing away from the Spring Fling. 

Let's just say over the course of five days in Arizona, I got to see a lot, find a lot of geocaches and just have a really good time enjoying this crazy hobby that I've been doing for over 23 years. With the two events and other geocaching excursions I did this past month, I found 430 caches, which was my second best month ever. 

I've said in the past and I'll say it again here; geocaching takes me to places that I wouldn't necessarily visit were it not for geocaching. I mean, I got to stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona while the store across the street played "Take it Easy" in a loop all day long. Unless you make it a point, a lot of these interesting tourist spots just get driven right by, but because I have an interest in travel and geocaching, I've gotten off the main highway and done some scenic byways that I might have missed otherwise. Watch the Pixar movie "Cars" and I think you'll understand perfectly.

2. Hiking

I also really enjoy hiking along all kinds of trails, but I have a big interest in longer trails, trails like the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) and the Arizona Trail (AZT) to name a few. I've hiked portions of all of these trails in my lifetime and while my age is starting to become a factor in how much backpacking I can actually do, I haven't ruled out the possibility of doing some section hikes on any of these trails. I've just become more accustomed to the finer things in life, like an actual bed to sleep in when I travel as opposed to a sleeping bag and sleeping pad on the ground.

While in Flagstaff, I was able to hike a portion of the AZT. Once again, geocaching was involved. We'd gone up to finish off a geocaching adventure up in the mountains north of Flagstaff and we'd noticed this cache just off the road at a turnout. We decided to find that cache after finishing off the Adventure stop and I am really glad we did. We pulled off at the trailhead, then took a side trail, which took us down to the AZT, which then took us up to the junction that led us out to the meadow you can see in the distance. Eventually, we found another side trail, which led us to the geocache we were looking for, one that had been hidden in July 2001. It's always cool to find caches that are 23 years old. As time goes on, these old caches are becoming rarer and rarer and so they become valuable in the game for different challenge caches out there that want you to find old caches.

3. Photography

If you're still reading along, you're probably noticing a theme for this entire entry, but you knew that was going to happen anyway, didn't you? Anyone who travels knows to bring a camera along to record their journeys and refresh their memories when they get back home and I'm no exception. 

This particular shot wasn't taken on any trip I took, but I happened to spy this ladybug right outside our community center about two blocks away from our house. I really loved the large amounts of yellow and green with that little splash of red thrown in which made for a very pleasing image in my opinion.

My photographs tend to lean heavily towards the natural side of the earth as opposed to the cultural side of things and so I have lots of landscape type photos in my galleries and photo albums. I will also tend to have lots of animal photos both large and small. Looking back on this blog entry however, I think I've actually achieved a good balance between nature and culture this time around. Sometimes that's just how it goes.

4. Food

When I'm out and about traveling, I tend to lean toward more local cuisine, especially when I'm eating at the dinner hour. This trip to Flagstaff last month was no exception. We had Mexican food, we had Neapolitan Pizza, and then we had some American comfort food in the form of this Texas burger with sweet potato fries and a stout chocolate porter. And yes, there's bacon in there too. Just looking at that photo makes my mouth water. This meal, for the most part, was the perfect ending night of that weekend.

Please also understand that for lunch I'll usually eat at a place that's tested and true for fast food, mainly because I have an agenda that I like to complete. We ate at In-n-Out for lunch one of the days on this trip. It was quick and easy and I can now say I've eaten at the highest elevated In-n-Out at just around 7000 feet above sea level. In fact, it's the only in-n-Out I've eaten at where they didn't have the crossed palm trees (a corporate symbol) out in front of the restaurant. It's just too cold for the palm trees to survive. So it's fast food for lunch but breakfast and dinner are really supposed to be savored when I'm traveling.

5. Family

I really couldn't go an entire blog entry about myself without talking about my family and particularly, this little gem. I found myself getting to hang out with my favorite tiny human in the middle of the month in Paso Robles so her parents could attend a wedding there. We got to hang out all weekend together, play in the park, go to a farmer's market and then enjoy each other's company in the evening while her parents were at the wedding.

I don't know if you've ever heard the sayings about being a grandparent, but everything you've heard is definitely true. Being this tiny human's Papa is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. We're fortunate enough that we live only a half day's drive away from them, so I get to see her on a regular basis. That, plus the technology of the day where we can FaceTime at meals really allows me to see her grow up. And yet I'm still amazed when I look back at videos from six months ago and see how much she's grown. Let's just leave it at, I'm really enjoying this part of my life.

And there you have it, my take on the theme "A Look into my Life." Please feel free to comment and check out the other entries to this month over at P.J. blog.

El Malpais

I still haven't covered all of my road trips from this past summer and fall, nor have I even covered all of my road trip from 2017. And so it goes. With the social distancing now in effect in the country, I have more time to deal with stuff here and not do those frivolous things like hiking and geocaching. Well, I'm still doing the former and practicing social distancing at the same time. But, on to the real subject of this particular blog.

Part of the fun of solo road trips is you can stop where ever you want to stop and explore things that might not happen if you're with other people due to a set agenda. As I was driving between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Flagstaff, Arizona on my October road trip, I spotted signs for El Malpais National Monument. I'd never been there before, so why not stop and visit?

One of the drawbacks to doing something like this however, is if you have somewhat of a set schedule, stops along the way sometimes get short circuited, because you don't have enough time to do a proper visit. This was the case with this particular stop. I basically saw some of the "greatest hits" of the monument, but really didn't get to explore it in depth. Had I had more time, I probably would have spent the night here, camping in the campground and then moved on later the next day, but I didn't have camping gear with me on this trip anyway, so the point was moot.

The park is rich in volcanic activity, with sandstone bluffs sticking out above several different lava floes in the park. There were several earth caches that I worked on during my brief stay in the park, so I learned that there were at least 7 different periods of volcanic activity across the plains as I looked out from the top of the sandstone bluffs. Much like my time at Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho this past summer, I could actually see the different floes, because each had a different characteristic and age to it based upon the amount of vegetation that was growing within the floe.

I did a couple of short hikes to viewpoints, at one point hiking along the Continental Divide Trail (CDT), one of the big three trails in the United States that run north to south. The CDT runs from the Mexican border in New Mexico all the way into Glacier National Park in Montana. Because it's a relatively new trail, unlike the Appalachian Trail (AT) or the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), the route is not as clearly defined.  In fact, right here in the monument, there were two possible routes you could choose if you were hiking through the park along the CDT, one which went inland seen in the first photo, or the other which went along the road and was a little bit shorter. Either would count if you were hiking the trail, but if I were backpacking the trail, I think I'd opt for the part that went through the monument as opposed to along the road. In my opinion, road hiking is not that exciting.

The last thing in the park I explored that day was the La Ventana Arch in the southern part of the park. La Ventana is a natural arch formed due to wind erosion. Looking at the photos I took, it's a little bit difficult to see the arch, unless you see the sunshine on the back part of the sandstone bluff behind the arch. I was there in the morning hours and the sun was not in the right place. I'm sure the view would look differently, were it later in the day and the sun was shining on the arch as opposed to in your face in the morning hours when I was there. Still, I got some pretty cool shots of the arch, one of which I'm using right now as my wallpaper on my desktop computer. Needless to say, I intend to visit the park again if I'm driving along I-40 in New Mexico. At least this time, I'll know what I'm getting into and save some extra time to explore some areas more in depth.

Many people I know who really enjoy our country's national parks, tend to forget about the smaller national monuments. That means the crowds are smaller and there's more space to enjoy the quiet solitude of a particular spot. This is definitely the case here at El Malpais. I'll be back sometime in the future.