Cactus Forests in the Desert

Hello again my imaginary friend,

I got my tablet PC back from the repair shop last night. Took them a week to replace the touchscreen that broke when I dropped the tablet climbing out of the van at one of our campsites. That slowed me down a bit. Now to do some catching up on documenting our journey.

I had poor connectivity when I posted about our visit to the Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park, so no photos were included. Here are a few:

The saguaro can start growing their 'arms' at around 75 years of age, and can survive till about 250. They are as essential to the ecology as trees are in Ontario. Food, water, home, to a variety of animals.

The variety of cactus was amazing, and the wildlife would be too - but much harder to spot in the wild. Maybe it was the season - I think spring was just beginning and many critters were still holed up waiting for warmer temperatures.

We did see a few animals during the trip and I'll highlight some of those another time.

It's good that my first week back at work was four days. I need to adapt...

In anticipation of spring, maybe snow outside still, but some seeds are getting a head start indoors:

stay warm,
j

A Second Look at Carlsbad Caverns

Hello again my imaginary Friend,

Perhaps if we are going to spend this much time together you might tell me your name? It is Sméagol, Gollum, or something else?

After we visited Carlsbad Caverns in January I made up some nonsense lines for a post because photos and words seemed completely inadequate. But I am stubborn. I do have some photos and as usual I'll make up the words as we go.

I'm new to visiting caverns, but in the New Mexico and Arizona areas I visited it was clear that the caverns, while underground, were also, in a way, above ground. Like a Telly Tubby Hill a mound of limestone rock had been created by geological events, left to tower above the surrounding terrain, and then hollowed out by water, chemistry, and time until a cavern was created. After the unstable bits fall down from above ("Avoid this stage of development" a guide offered (my interpretation of his words)), a structure is left behind that can be ornamented with the formations that dripping water, evaporation, and time will create. And then we can wander and wonder, and we can wish that we had brought our tripod for the camera. I'd be kicking myself over the last, if I had kept up with the yoga.
  

The dark hole is the Hellmouth, and this elaborate human display platter allows the ascending demons to browse and select the tastiest morsels as they set off to rampage the countryside.

Or, it could be seating so normal people could watch the resident bats emerge for a night of devouring nasty mosquitoes and other insects. I dunno. Any bats were in Mexico, wiser than I were they.

The descent was so much more than I expected. Down. Down, level out, down again. Switchbacks like in the photo above, but underground, and over and over. Awesome. I mean that.

This massive column is ancient. Imagine one drop of water seeping down through the earth above the cavern. Imagine it evaporating and leaving behind molecules of mineral. One or a few drops per day. That process built this formation.

Awesome.

A bunch of smaller formations that form in parallel can create fascinating patterns. This one looked like a whale's mouth to someone.

This is the view from the top of this hill. The cavern is beneath our feet.

The elevation above the surrounding terrain makes this an impressive hill, and it holds an impressive secret.

stay awesome,
j

There and Back Again; Lost Dutchman State Park

Hello from home.

After 10,718 kilometres on the clock the van is back in the driveway where it all started. All in all, it went pretty smoothly.

With that much travelling some of the best time was spent fairly stationary. Our longest stay in one place was Lost Dutchman State Park in Arizona, because we had people to visit in nearby Phoenix. Best of all, we really liked the park and the surroundings. The backyard view from our tent camping site, which we occupied for four nights, was easy to fall in love with:

 

The sunsets were rewarding too.

Every night we heard coyotes yipping, yelping, and owls hooting (and in one case making some very strange noises before reverting to the old 'hoo hoo').

On this saguaro you can see our Great Horned Owl friend. He was definitely a regular. We also saw an elf owl who we think lived in a nearby saguaro. Woodpeckers and other birds were spotted but hard to catch a good look at. I'll post photos that I have, for what they are worth, another time.  Roadrunners are quick, furtive, and well camouflaged for their desert surroundings, not like the brightly coloured cartoon version at all. Saw a pair twice near our camp - but no photo ops.

We called these amusing tree-things 'Dr Seuss trees'. They were everywhere.

This view of our sentinel rock at sunset was comforting and I miss it. The next photo is our last camp at Lost Dutchman - we packed up tent and so on the day before to make a quick start the next day. Miles to go and all that.

As we watched our last sunrise over 'our rock' develop we finished breakfast, packed up, and headed North.

As predicted I have some catching up to do and I'll try not to lose momentum.

stay tuned,
j

Grand Canyon

Hello again,

On Feb 6 we woke up to frost and ravens in the campsite. After a hot breakfast we packed up and headed back to the canyon for a better look in the fresh morning light. Several stops at overlooks on our way along the South Rim yielded the following snapshots over the next few hours.

"Should we go now?" I was asked. I said "Either that or we go book into that hotel and spend a week here." It's impossible to photograph this spectacle and be satisfied with the results, I felt. But better to have tried...

We moved on.

stay positive,
j

Flashback: Catalina State Park

Hello,

About two weeks ago we rolled into Catalina State Park, north of Tucson, after visiting the Sonora Desert Museum and the Saguaro National Park (more on that later).

We set up kitchen and had supper done just in time to catch the crescent Moon backtracking from Venus in their complex orbital dance around Earth and Sun. Soon they will be in opposite sides of the sky as the Moon approaches full when we on Earth appear to be caught in the middle between Moon and Sun.

A chilly morning with frost on the van and ice in the kettle.

 

This cargo unit has served us well. I wish I had bought something like it long ago. Very much worth the cost compared to other units I have used over the years. Anyway, it was about -4C outside and still 8 or 9 inside... not bad. In the lower left corner there is a bit of the metallic bubble wrap insulating material we are using in the windows. It seems to be very effective.  

A walk up the hill rewarded with views of this landscape (two weeks ago it was all new and exciting).

I took a walk up the hill to the Romero Ruins site in the Park.

Look for the orderly rows of stones arranged among the undergrowth.

 

These are the remains of the footings of a shelter built around one thousand years ago, give or take.

 I happened upon an impressively old and massive Saguaro. A woman walking her dog happened by and provided scale to the scene so I quickly snapped a photo. What I got was kinda cool:

Also cool were the other weird plants that grow here.

We saddled up and headed north to Biosphere 2 and then on to Lost Dutchman State Park.

Today (Feb 10) we crossed Missouri to St Louis. Dull grey skies and February landscapes. The only photo I took is of what seems to be a mascot of the Interstate Rest Stops:

Tomorrow we will hit the road again on the second last stretch to home.

stay calm
j

Goodbye Texas, Hello Oklahoma

Hello again,

Amarillo to Tulsa. We planned a stop at a State Park, a detour to a Tallgrass area (but how interesting would that be in February?), and then heavy rain made this a simple "let's get there' road trip.

Before leaving Texas we encountered another wind project - again mostly to the north of the highway, and stretching along that horizon as far as I could see ahead and behind. Also more smaller projects here and there. Texas: oil, cattle, wind turbines. Miles and miles. I keep bringing this up because I am so impressed at the scale of the investment.

In Oklahoma, more cattle, oil, and wind turbines, but not quite on the same scale, at least from what we saw in our limited survey. To bypass Oklahoma City we detoured off of the Interstate to sample the countryside. Looked much like home, at least compared to the dramatic topography of Arizona and New Mexico. Fields, cattle, oil pumps, small towns. Fast travelling transport trucks took any fun out of the drive so I headed back the easy-driving Sunday Interstate.

One whole day and not one photo. Not even on the phone. It was a straight through drive, really.

So let's just go on a virtual detour to colour this place up a bit. In backing up photos yesterday I happened upon this one from a trip in 2017.

This is a Great Green Macaw in I photographed in Costa Rica during a February 2017 escape from Ontario winterland. We visited a sanctuary working to help grow the numbers of these amazing birds.

I hope that is suitable compensation for a lack of pics of rain-swept Oklahoma agricultural landscapes. There is a lot of ag history here, for example the cattle trade over the last 110 years. But time and weather didn't allow exploration. Next time.

Tomorrow we aim for St Louis and then two more legs and we're home. Then maybe I'll find time (?) to go back and fill in some more photos of the amazing places we visited on this trip.

stay hopeful and spread your wings,
j

Petroglyphs and Cadillacs - people creating art, then and now-ish

Good Evening,

This morning a short drive took us to Petroglyphs National Monument. Mounds of fractured lava thrown up as recently as 150,000 years ago created a medium for the ancient people of this area.

 

Chipping away at the dark surface layer with chisel and hammer revealed the lighter rock underneath to create images that have endured the elements. Aside from the animal, human, and plant images, most are hard to read meaning into. There are many drawings of the yucca pod (as in the photo above, left and up a bit from the white signpost, and below). The yucca was a very important source of food and fibre.

I like the raven (I think) in this one. These birds have been everywhere we've been in the last week or so. They are looking for food but aren't too pushy about it. They've got character.

You can only look at so many rock drawings, as fascinating as they are, and as fascinating it is to wonder what they meant to the people who made them. So we hit the road towards Amarillo, Texas.

We are heading home and are now back into ground-covering mode, although we will check things out as we go if the weather and our inclination suits. Today we stopped to heat up lunch at Santa Rosa Lake State Park. The road in had a sign that I guess would be useful to people in a region that doesn't seem to have many lakes:

Leaving the park we decided to use our coin collection for the self-pay day use fee. Used up a lot of dimes and quarters... but when I tried to deposit the envelope I found a very narrow slot. Shaking and rattling the envelope, I finally got it stuck neither in nor out. Poking, prodding, wiggling coins through the paper. Then there was a raven on the post overhead, making a sound I hadn't heard them make before. A soft 'coo coo coo coo', more like a dove, or like a large black bird giggling at me.

Soon after entering Texas we encountered another wind farm, similar to one we saw in Texas first time through. I tried to look up how many turbines there are but the info I could find seems out of date.

The turbines formed a swath, sometimes five deep, that paralleled the I-40 to the north. On and on. After 40 kilometres they were matched by another forest of turbines to the south of the highway that went on for over 5 kilometres. The swath to the north then continued to over 58 kilometres from its beginning. Texas is trying to end its dependence on coal and seems well on its way.

We stopped for a quick look at the Cadillac Ranch west of Amarillo. An art installation of Cadillacs planted nose first in the middle of a field that makes a statement about... I dunno. But it was worth the short detour.

You may be able to see some people adding their own graffiti to the evolving artwork.

Aside from observing a perfectly full moon on the way to find food, that was pretty much the day.
Tomorrow on to Tulsa, Texas and whatever we find between here and there.

stay creative,
j

Petrified Forest and Painted Desert

Hello,

We left Flagstaff on a mission: to visit Petrified Forest State Park and the Painted Desert, on our way to leaving Arizona and returning to New Mexico. We even neglected Route 66 attractions such as Winslow Arizona with the opportunity to have a photo with the girl in the flat bed Ford.

Rockified tree trunks and broken off bits litter the ground. The colours are lovely.

Another one of those 'alien landscape' days. There was  a road closure on the Park road so we lost most of an hour backtracking and missed some of the Petrified Forest areas. But nevertheless we were not disappointed.

The subtleties of the colours in the Painted Desert are hard to capture but the otherworldly feelings do not go away.

 The next pictures are from the Blue Mesa badlands.

Newspaper Rock is fascinating, with its dense record of messages from ages ago.

Any of the sites we have visited on this trip warranted days or weeks spent exploring them. Maybe another time... We headed down the highway, dodging the signs to attractions of Route 66 (a more recent cultural relic).

I would never tire of the marvellous variety in the New Mexico landscape, the sky at sunrise and sunset, and the cloud formations over the mountains, in between. The moon is just barely shy of full and hangs in the sky like a fruit that we should be able to reach up and grasp.

Once in New Mexico I decided that I wanted to detour down to Roswell just to try and tour the Area. Two hours later we found ourselves back on the I-40 headed toward Albuquerque. We have no recollection of visiting Roswell. Very strange.


Tomorrow we hope to have better luck visiting Petroglyph National Monument (just a few miles away).

I also hope to continue the hunt for hot peppers (there are many varieties in huge quantities in the supermarkets... I was hoping for something special like a festival, but it's not the right season). I think I am in the right place though:

Then on to Amarillo, Texas, and maybe the Cadillac Ranch and the Quarter Horse Hall of Fame and Museum. 

We'll see what happens,

stay tuned,
j