On The Road

Elma

One of the things I like to do, when I travel, is to visit botanical gardens. I went back through my travel photo archive for some pictures to share. The first part is a visit to Keukenhof Gardens in the Netherlands. This trip was with the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association in 2008. It was a river boat tour of Holland and Belgium and the garden visit was an excursion. Although the distance from place to place in the Netherlands is insignificant by American standards, the traffic made for a long bus ride.

On The Road – Elma – International Garden Tour Part 1Post + Comments (13)

It’s Albatrossity Monday!

We are still lower on OTR posts in the queue than we normally are.  The insane stuff that’s happening sucks the energy right out of me, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that!   That said, to state the obvious, if we want this bit of beauty in the mornings, we need the posts from you guys to publish.

So please consider maybe taking a break from the madness, dig out some pics from a favorite trip or pictures of your garden, or pics of something that’s meaningful to you, and submit a post to OTR.

Albatrossity

Well, I don’t know about you, but my head is spinning from all the news and noise from last week. Some good, some bad, but definitely too much. Turn off the firehose, please. Nevertheless, spring is on the move here in Flyover Country. And even though there is news every day on that front too, it seems more relaxed and enjoyable.

On The Road – Albatrossity – All Teal, All the TimePost + Comments (13)

pat

I’ve been putting together calendars every year since 2013.  This was put together in 2019, before Covid  hit.

 

On The Road – pat – Calendar 2020Post + Comments (13)

I have been so distracted by The Horrors that I had lost track of how low we were on OTR posts in the queue.  We’re good thru Wednesday, and then it looks like we’ll be taking a break until you guys send some in.

Albatrossity

We’re done with kingfishers, but not done with wanna-be kings, at least at the time of this writing. So we’ll start with a new batch of bird images and a new family, the Anatidae (ducks, geese and swans), since it is spring and some of these will soon be coming to a local body of water near you. These are familiar birds for birders and non-birders alike, either as the real thing at your local park, or as cartoon characters. And there are a lot of them; one taxonomy classifies them into 53 genera and 174 species worldwide. We’ll start with some North American species, then head wherever else I have managed to get a halfway decent photograph of a duck.

On The Road – Albatrossity – Ducks (not in a row)Post + Comments (23)

TKH

In the past seven years I have spent quite a bit of time hiking in the arid US Southwest, in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Two of these hikes were the so called Hayduke route that runs from Arches National Park through Canyonlands NP and Capitol Reef NP, and then through parts of the Grand Canyon to Zion NP. When hiking along the Colorado at the bottom of the Grand Canyon one has to cross the river from the right bank to the left bank as the cliffs stop you in your track. You can cross the river by packraft which will weigh you down by about 7-9 pounds for raft, paddle and life vest, which for an old fellow like me is “bah humbug”. I have used a packraft once while crossing Utah on a route of my own devising, but the hike plan ensured that I could load up the raft shortly before I needed it and could cache it shortly after I had used it. This is not possible on the Hayduke. The alternative is to catch a ferry ride from one of the rafting parties that go down the Colorado from Lees Ferry to either Diamond Creek on the Hualapai reservation or to Pearce Ferry on Lake Mead. On both occasions I have been fortunate to catch a ride in pretty short order after reaching the cliffs. Ever since I had been wondering what it would be like to spend 2+ weeks on a raft or paddle boat going down the Colorado. This summer I found out.

One can do this trip in either of three ways. Either you or somebody you know applies to a lottery for a launch date and, should you win, then you find other people to join you to spread the cost over more bodies. Or you join a group of people you don’t know that has just won the lottery. The third way is to go down the river with a commercial outfitter that has a concession from the National Park. The latter is the way I chose. I don’t know how many more years /months I have to do trips like this and waiting to luck into a slot on a private trip did not appear to be attractive given the “urgency”. I would also have to be on social media to find out when a lottery winner was soliciting applications for joining their trip. “Bah humbug” to that. Moreover, I am out hiking six months of the year and incommunicado for much of that time. It would not exactly be easy to find out about opportunities to join a private party. Whereas with an outfitter you know exactly which time to block out on your calendar for the trip you signed up for and you can arrange  your other activities around that. It was also important to me to do the trip in the shoulder season, either early Spring or in Fall, since I can’t cope with heat particularly well. Being at the bottom of the canyon when it’s 100+ degrees in June, July, August is a ‘thanks but no thanks’ for me.

Going in I had no idea what to expect. In the event I had an absolute blast! Running multiple sets of rapids every day on a paddle raft with a knowledgeable guide steering, surrounded by the roar and froth of “boiling” water was wild fun. Stretches a quiet paddling or just floating on the moving water followed these minutes of wild excitement, so that you had time to contemplate your surroundings and metabolize the adrenaline. This was a “hiking intensive” trip, so we got off the water several times a day to hike in side canyons to see some human artifacts from the native peoples that lived in the canyon hundreds of years ago, some geological sight or a waterfall for a fresh water shower. The lead guide had been a geology minor in college and as a result we got an education, in the best possible way. After this trip I will never look at a pile of rocks by the side of the road in the same way as  I did before. The rocks indeed do tell a story.

The daily routine was that at 6 AM the conch was blown when the coffee was ready. We had breakfast and tried to be on the water by 8 AM after receiving a briefing as to the plan for the day. We would paddle, run a few rapids, go for a hike, have lunch on the shore, do some more paddling and running of rapids or hiking. Somewhere between 4 PM and 6PM we would pull to shore, set up camp, do chores, cook , eat dinner. Paddler midnight was at 8 PM. For those to whom this sounds like way too much work there is an opportunity to do only half a trip, either from Lees Ferry to the Kaibab trail corridor near the South Rim park headquarters or from said trail corridor to Diamond Creek. A  half trip lasts eight days. Lastly, you don’t have to paddle, it’s just what I prefer to do. The alternative is to ride as a passenger on one of the rafts that carry all the gear and supplies. The guides row these rafts and for the passengers it’s dolce far niente all the way.

I am not an action camera guy, so I have no pictures to show from our time in the rapids. You have to paddle like a madman and there is no time to take the camera out and capture the white water around you. Second, on day 8 I went into the drink when a lateral wave came out of left field and washed me out of the boat (don’t underestimate the power of moving water!). Even though my phone (= “camera”) was in a zipped ziploc bag inside a “water-proof” pocket of my paddling vest, it did get wet while I was being spun around in the “washing machine” of the rapid. It only regained “consciousness” shortly before the end of the trip. I am already signed up for a repeat trip and I will be better prepared next time. If OTR will still be an ongoing concern on BJ at that time, I will submit some actions shots from within the rapids at that time.

On The Road – TKH – Rafting the Colorado through the Grand CanyonPost + Comments (21)

Beckya57

These are from my recent trip to Baja California Sur, to snorkel, kayak and whale-watch.

On The Road – Beckya57 – Baja BlastPost + Comments (14)