Little Bluff cam July 31 - back home again after a long, hot drive across the dust bowl - then a terrible storm blew through during the night (80mph winds and haiil)- no damage here. QUITE COOL early this morning and lovely! Suppsed to be the hottest days of the year this week - looks like we should have stayed up in the mountains a while longer, haha. HAVE A COOL MONDAY!

Journal updated on the 12th

Our new 2024 ARKANSAS WALL CALENDAR is IN STOCK AND available to order! I will have a limited supply at the gallery for pickup ($15), and a few retailers will stock them eventually (BUBBAS BUFFALO RIVER store on the square in Jasper has plenty). But you can order direct from our distribution partner, the University of Arkansas Press here.

07/02/23 Long 860-mile drive yesterday across Oklahoma - not much traffic at all, even through Tulsa! We camped for the night at a National Grassland near the OK/New Mexico border. Drove past volcanoes and climbed rapidly into Colorado this morning, arriving at our campsite in the San Juan Mountains near South Fork by noon. My blood must still have some oxygen left over from last month as I took a quick hike to the top of our area this evening without even breathing hard. LOTS of tiny skeeters everywhere - had to pull out bug jackets (I don't like using repellent all the time).

Hoping to get my blow-up boat back on the water a time or two, and some nighttime photography and other hikes along the way. My lovely bride is with me (YEA!), and the pups too. She drove her Subaru so we'd have a vehicle to run about in - our camper van is not very good at that and limits where we can go (we don't have a "toad"}.

07/03/23 This photo is from the entrance to our driveway and is where I begin hiking each day - it looks northeast towarads the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the far horizon center (40-50 miles away) - easily seen on a perfectly clear morning like today was. I turn RIGHT and head UP the hill that leads to the end of the road about a mile and several hundred feet above our campsite, which is up against the Rio Grande National Forest. Behind me is our campsite (a narrow level spot across a steep hillside that was completely burned off during a massive wildfire iini 2002 - now mostly young aspen trees and open meadow). The far end of our lot also borders the national forest, as a STEEP scramble UP nearly a thousand feet to a ridge leading up to the summit of Beaver Mountain. Temp was 45 at dawn today with beautiful blue mountain skies.

07/05/23 We had kind of a tough start to our stay in the mountains this time. Quite literally as Pam was getting details about a horrible ordeal that happened to a good friend’s puppy dog who had eaten a small towel - and died during emergency surgery during the night, our little Mia gulped down an entire chipmunk right before my eyes. I leapt for her and pried her mouth open to try and grab the critter - but to no avail - she had swallowed it whole. GULP!

We’ve been really concerned every moment since for her, not knowing what might happen. On the one hand dogs eat dead things all the time - including wild critters - that seem to be easily digested. But this one went in whole and we just didn’t know if her little body would be able to process everything without issue. And of course it was in the middle of a four-day national holiday, and we don’t have any vets nearby anyway. Lots of horror stories online about dogs eating chipmunks, though most of those dealt with disease or internal claw marks.

So naturally we’ve kept a close eye on Mia - anxiously on the lookout for any poop to dissect to check for chipmunk parts - and making sure she’s drinking plenty of water and eating - well actually we didn’t know if we should encourage her to eat with such a big load already inside her system?

Just last Thursday at her annual checkup she was diagnosed with some sort of allergy, with her diet being a likely suspect. While we don’t know what sort of things she eats when outdoors, she’s been on a normal high-protein dog food diet for years, currently mostly a mix of lamb and salmon dog foods. Anyway, the vet recommended we get her off of whatever protein diet she’s on and switch to a different protein - suggesting buffalo/venison (deer) instead. She seems to like this new protein - but then we weren’t sure what category chipmunk was in.

OK, cut to the chase. It’s now day three of the Mia chipmunk-in-poop watch, and so far nothing - all functions have been completely normal, and she’s been acting just fine. I don’t know how long it would take an entire chipmunk to work through a little dogs system but the most recent poop this morning was quite normal and healthy - but with never any sign of hair. One of the telltale signs of coyote poop is hair from the various rodents they eat. We figured we’d be seeing some of that come out of Mia. Perhaps the critter remains in her gut and there will be major problems soon - we’ll keep a look out and report any findings.

The little tourist town of South Fork had a day-long Independence Day celebration on July 3rd - their typical day to do this so as not to interfere with other little towns nearby celebrations on the 4th. The volunteer fire department always has a large catfish dinner as their main fund raiser of the year, and from the looks of things it was a great success - we were 3rd in line and must say it was the VERY BEST catfish we’d EVER had! Haven’t seen a final count yet, but previous years they’ve served upwards of a thousand meals for this. Such a wonderful event - in fact it’s them main reason we are here now instead of arriving next week as originally planned.

There was also a parade and rodeo, but we’re still trying to avoid crowds so mostly spent the day lounging around at camp. BUT we did get all geared up for the first big fireworks display here in several years - terrible wildfire seasons of late have prevented them, and it was touch-and-go for this year. But it went off as planned.

This is a very well-known event and folks come from miles and miles around - and in fact most of town and the surrounding hills were packed with onlookers. We opted to drive up into the hills to a remove trailhead parking area overlooking town - got there early so I could climb a hill behind the parking area for an even better photo vantage point. By the time the fireworks started there were 50 or more cars crammed into this lot!

The giant fireworks display was something like 15 minutes long, and when the dust settled I realized I’d photographed more than 180 individual big bursts (more like 200+). My bride was safely tucked inside the camper van with our pups - making sure they were not bothered by the distant bangs. In fact Mia slept through it all, and Wilson only looked up once to inspect a shadowy character lurking near the front of the van.

And while I got so many great bursts of fire and color captured in my camera (a few are shown below), in truth I probably will never use them for anything. Though the little town is tucked in between many towering mountains all around, I was not able to capture the FEELING of that like we got with the recent fireworks display back home in Jasper. Oh well, it was one splendid display of color for sure!

We’ve had several mule deer bucks hanging around our campsite - all still in “velvet” with their antlers around half grown. Some even are bedding down within 100 feet of the van. This morning when I got up at dawn one of the bucks was standing right next to the shed in front of the van, and the pups decided that was a little close for comfort so chased him off. MIA, DON’T EAT THE DEER!

Overall cool at night (40’s), sunny and warm during the day (70’s), and really DUSTY roads. The monsoons are coming soon I bet and we’ll be complaining about too much rain! In the meantime we’ll enjoy the crisp mountain air and keep up our poop vigil.

Afternoon update. I forgot to mention that skeeters and black flies are as bad as I've seen in Colorado - especially the tiny skeeters that you can hardly see - they seem to love me and cover even clothed parts with tiny no-see-um-like itchy spots. I'm not a fan of chemicals so have been wearing my "Bug Shirt" often, even during the heat of the day sometimes. Flies there's no cure for other than long clothing - or a powerful floor fan...

07/09/23 At least the second night I didn’t feel the need to play loud Taylor Swift music as I hiked. But the first night…

The first night (several days ago) I drove up to a remote lake at the edge of the Weminuche Wilderness area about 20 miles from camp, then hiked around the lake to find a good spot to take some Milky Way photos. I would only have about 20 minutes of “dark sky” from the beginning of “astronomical twilight” (about 90 minutes after sunset) and the just-past-full moon rise. Before and after this limited time window the sky is brighter than dark and you can’t see a lot of the stars of the Milky Way.

It was an easy, level hike around the lake and I stopped at three different spots and took sample panorama photos of the lake and sky above it to try and figure out my best spot - I’d really only have time to take pictures at one of them before the moonrise messed things up. I would really know which one location was best until after sunset when the Milky Way appeared, but these three spots would get me close to a perfect spot. After comparing the three daylight pano photos and using an app that showed the location and movement of the Milky Way after dark, I settled on the center spot, about 1/4 hike from the car.

As is almost ALWAYS the case when I get ready to shoot some serious Milky Way photos, I under estimated how long it would take me to get set up, and before I knew it, the sun had set and astronomical twilight was quickly approaching, so I loaded up all my photo gear and headed out along the lakeshore - it was already pretty dark by this time, but not wanting to mess up my night vision I managed to hike to the shooting location without needing to turn on my headlamp.

As soon as i reached the chosen spot I quickly realized I’d picked the wrong spot - there were some trees in the way of the northern-most end of the panoramic scene I wanted to capture. OOPS, I needed to relocate in a hurry as my time window was about to begin!

Part of the trail went through dense forest and I could barely see the path at my feet, but I made it to the other side and onto my other shooting location beside the lake. Still without turning on my headlamp I looked around and tried to find the best spot to set up my camera gear - as close as I could get to the water’s edge without actually getting into the water. While I would not realize until later - after I’d quit shooting at this location and turned my headlamp on to pack up - i had set up my tripod literally in the EXACT same spot that I had picked during daytime - I had marked that spot with a small rock on a dead log, and in the darkness my visual selection of the lake and Milky Way was the same in daylight or darkness!

OK, it had just started to be dark-city and time to begin shooting - the Milky Way was rising and the dark clock was ticking. But OOPS, I FORGOT a key part of my camera setup - I’d left it sitting on the front seat of the car! (not the camera battery - I had four of those with me). But the car was not too far away and I could make it there and back I hoped, but I’d have to turn on my headlamp to have any chance.

As soon as I turned on my headlamp and started along the trail, I looked up and saw a pair of glowing eyes at the edge of the woods just above the trail. I see glowing eyes all the tine in the woods and they are almost always deer eyes. But these eyes were set really WIDE apart, and I immediately realized the only critter out there with eyes that wide apart would be a BEAR!!! Been reading so many accounts of bear encounters lately that a shiver went down my spine in a hurry. Most bears will immediately turn and run off, but for some reason these wide eyes stayed put, even when I yelled out to it. HEY BEAR, PLEASE DON’T EAT ME!

He was not moving, and I had to move or lose my picture opportunity. So I took a big gulp and continued on the trail, into the thick woods part, talking loudly to myself all the way, hoping the wide eye had already eaten dinner.

I made it back to the car just fine - and I”m fact did double or triple speed, got my piece of camera gear, then turned around to head back along the trail. But this time I decided instead of me just talking loud I should turn on a bit of music - loud music - so that all bears in the area would know I’m coming. But as soon as I turned on my phone and my favorite Taylor Swift music started, I got to thinking - I wondered if this would actually alert bears that there was a human around, and/or would they be attracted by Taylor Swift music - you know, card carrying Swifties living in the woods at 10,000’.

Cut to the chase - I made it back to my camera and was able to take one series of photos before the moon rose. AND got to listen to some great music along the way! (NOTE - would never blast music while outdoors like this unless I was under threat of a bear attack - music should be left indoors with the natural wilderness sounds allowed to be uncluttered and free from electric music!)

The next night I drove to a slightly different location and was able to shoot Milky Way photos very close to the car so I didn’t need to worry about bears too much (and didn’t play any music nor talk to myself loudly). However since most of the exposures I was taking were four minutes long, I would tend to wander on down the road a bit and back during each exposure - and I got to thinking not so much about bears lurking nearby, but mountain lions who might be sitting on top of a rock, or behind a rock, just waiting for their next dinner to get a few steps closer…

The next night I did a combo of the first two nights - parked the car just above the lake and hiked down to shoot for about an hour (silently and without any light), then I hiked back up to the car and shot a few long exposures as I paced the road. I never saw any more glowing eyes, although it is perhaps because I didn’t use my headlamp again so would not have seen them even if they were standing just a few feet away.

I stopped for a photo of sunrise at Big Meadows Lake...

MIA CHIPMUNK UPDATE. It’s been a full week now since our little dog Mia swallowed a chipmunk whole, and I’m happy to report that all daily poops and other systems have been completely normal (including one poop about foot long!) and she is not showing any ill effects.

07/12/23 We had a good bit of cold rain yesterday, which was the first break in a dustbowl of sorts here in Colorado - dirt and gravel roads create clouds of dust that high winds whip into mini tornadoes - but mostly just push the dust into every little tiny crack in your car (or lungs) - our little camper van gets daily scrubbings.

Several days ago I delivered my lovely bride to a hotel near the Denver airport for her flight the next morning to Canada. She’s visiting a girlfriend there who has a cottage on an island in Lake Huron - they’ve been getting together at least once or twice a year top paint since they met at a painting convention in New Mexico a few years ago. I’m sure there will be a few terrific paintings done, but mostly I suspect there will be a great deal of fun and laughter - Pam has needed a break from me and the kids and this is a perfect trip for her!

After I dropped her off the pups and I headed to Independence Pass, one of the highest passes in Colorado (near Aspen), and it has a stunning wide open panoramic view from atop the Continental Divide (above 12,000’). I was hoping there might be a clear view of the Milky Way, hum...

It was a long slog from our campsite to Denver - I-25 on a Sunday afternoon with everyone heading back home is not my cup of tee, but Pam found a delightful rural highway and runs parallel to the interstate and took us right out to near her airport hotel.

My drive through Denver and on up into the mountains was pretty tame in comparison, and before long the pups and I had pulled over at the very top of the Arkansas River drainage near Leadville for a snack. For those who only know this river from it’s Arkansas location, boy howdy you should make a trip up to the beginnings of it sometime - it is one of the most spectacular parts of Colorado for sure!

The sun had already set and I was typically late as we left the main highway and headed west past Twin Lakes towards Independence Pass. I’m not a speeder - in fact I’m usually 5-10mph below the limit (especially when in our camper van). But goodness I practically taste the incredible scene that was about to happen way up yonder on the pass, and I still have several miles to get there. And then I saw HIM as I entered the little town of Twin Lakes proper, and a shiver ran down my spine - he’d CAUGHT me!!! I was doing 29 in a 30mph zone, but still I knew I was done for. But I was able to creep on past him without a single flashing light going off. WHEW, that was a close one!

Been years since I’ve driven the road up to the pass, and oh my gosh I sure didn’t recall it being this narrow and steep with NO guardrails! Some parts of the outside pavement were so bad I had visions of the van actually tipping over if I stayed within my land on the return trip down, which I had planned to do in the wee hours of the morning. The more I drove the more concerned I got.

But what the heck, that would be LATER - I’d made it to the top and there was indeed a grand open view of the entire Milky Way shining brightly right there in front of me - YIPPIE!

Turns out the pups did not like to be left along in the van and they barked at everyone that stopped - though honestly I never thought there would be much traffic there after dark on a Sunday night. I quickly found a spot to shoot then hurried back to the barking pups - I decided to move the van to the other side of the highway and away from the popular pass parking area - that should keep them quiet for an hour or two (and it did).

Then I slowly made my way back to the spot I’d located near the edge of the mountain and set up my camera equipment, not turning on any light - there was just enough starlight to find my way (hum, I think John Denver wrote a song or two about starlight in the area - and I’m sure he visited this spot many hundreds of times since his home, Starwood in Aspen, was so close). There are no trees, hardly any vegetation - mostly just rocks and dirt. It was peaceful, beautiful, and oh so magical.

But I had work to do so I set up all my camera equipment and started to take a series of Milky Way photos that would hopefully, eventually, turn into a panoramic of the galaxy that stretched before me from south to north, a full 180 degrees.

I was there shooting in the dark probably an hour and a half before I moved about 100 feet to a different location. There had been a young couple somewhere there nearby me the entire time, and I just had to laugh at how funny it is to hear someone who is stoned and having a grand time - I never really heard many actual words from them, just constant giggling. They never had a light on either, and eventually they just drifted away, smiling all the way I’m sure.

After I’d been at the new location for a little while and was about to pack up and head back to the van (about 12:30am), I noticed a pair of dark figures heading my way - it really was dark, and I had no idea if these were people, mountain goats, or something else. Then I heard “are you taking pictures of the stars?”

Turns out there was a family about 50 over there somewhere and a young boy had wandered over to see what I was doing - again, never a light of any kind did I see. We started a conversation about the stars, planets, and the Milky Way, and what kind of pictures I was taking, etc. He was probably 11 or 12, and seemed like a pretty smart kid, what I could see of him. Actually I really couldn’t see much of anything since it was so dark, but when you are on the same wavelengths with someone you really don’t need visual contact always.

And then another voice spoke up and started asking some really interesting questions - his little sister of 6 or 7 was standing next to him! I’m generally not a big fan of little kids (sorry - everyone I’ve ever been around has been older than me since way back when, not counting Amber, who always seemed a lot oder than she was, still does), but the three of us carried on a delightful conversation for at least ten minutes, there in the dark and an otherwise totally silent night. The boy showed me some things about my iphone and I showed him some apps for finding stars and planets in the night sky - “Look, there’s SATURN right THERE!”

Then I heard a noise - not sure what it was really, and the boy spoke up and said “Oh, that’s my dad calling us in - he has a special bird call that he uses.” And they politely thanked me for visiting with them and disappeared into the darkness, just like that.

Two things came to me. First, how wonderful it was of their parents to get them out not just OUTSIDE at night, but also to bring them up to such a special place and allow them to experience the great nighttime outdoors. And secondly, it stuck me what a great conversation we had and how much I enjoyed their company, even if only for ten minutes, in the dark, at the top of the spine of America - and I never even saw their faces except once or twice when the camera lit up.

Back at the parking area the giggling continued, and in fact a car load of friends joined the original giggling couple and then there were six or seven gigglers. My original plan was to drive back down to lower altitude after I took pictures so the pups would not have top spend the night at such high altitude, but after I spent another hour shooting more photos at the camper van, I decided I it would be much safer for me to call it a night and get a few hours of sleep before attempting the road back down.

In a few short hours I was BLASTED awake, looked around and realized it was already daylight, the pups were asleep next to me. And then another blast. LIGHTNING! We were surrounded by a thunderstorm - YIKES! As I came to my feet I could see a brilliant rainbow out the front window - over yonder near Aspen. Another window revealed some spectacular light hitting some peaks nearby - and yet another window view was of dark clouds where the thunder boomers were coming from.

Of course I had to get UP and get OUTSIDE with my camera! My second thought was did I really need to put pants and shoes on? Well, I put slippers on and grabbed my camera and ran across the highway to the edge of a small pond in my jammie bottoms - there wasn’t anyone around but me - all the giggling folks had gone home.

And while the light was AMAZING all around, it was clear I had slept through the best part of this storm and light show - even the rainbow had been reduced to just a tiny bit way out there. So I took a couple of snapshots with my phone and that would be good enough.

I did in fact drive most of the way down the center of the steep and narrow winding highway from the pass to the bottom - taking no chances! Then soon we arrived back at Twin Lakes and I started to laugh out loud - the cop was STILL there on duty! And I remember they had placed an actual police car with an officer that never sleeps in the front seat in full uniform - he’s been there for years, always on duty, and I bet has slowed down many thousands of folks speeding through! And made others like me feel kind of silly - but that was OK - I was still under the 30mph limit!

OK, enough of all that - I mentioned how hot it is here this afternoon and now I’m packing up the pups and we’re headed back up to Independence Pass to try and take some more Milky Way photos. If the policer officer is still on duty I'll stop and offer him a cup of Iceland Coffee! (he was - but shhh - he's napping)

07/13/23 I spent last night at 12,000' and above taking Milky Way photos (the one below is from about 2am today), then the pups and I hiked for a couple of hours in the meadows above Independence Pass. I'm headed out tonight to try and get another 2am photo - at Big Meadows lake - much lower in altitude (9,000-something) so the sky probably will not be as clear, but I'll take it...

I07/18/23 'm back at camp after spending several nights out shooting stars (a couple of those photos are below, both taken at the nearby La Garita Arch near Del Norte Saturday night). Yesterday I picked up my lovely bride at the AIR CANADA section of the Denver airport - she spent what was by all accounts a terrific week with her best painting buddy, Heather, at her cottage on an island in the Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Ontario. During the drive back to camp from the airport Monday the temps along the front range of Colorado were in the 100's, thankfully only in the upper 80's when we got back at camp. I just installed a shady resting spot for my weary Canadian traveler (photo below). Wilson has been testing this particular grove of young aspens for a while now and rates them as an A#1 spot on a warm day in the mountains...

07/21/23 Here's a snapshot I took on my way home from work this morning - on top of a large granite "plug" that's in the front yard of our "campsite" in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. That's part of the northern Milky Way above (with lots of green "air glow"), and also you can see the Andromeda Galaxy (just above the granite edge, lower left). This old and weathered tree in the center was almost completely burned to death during a massive wildfire here 22 years ago this month, but somehow it has come back to life and about half of it now has new everGREEN growth - YEA! (the tree on the right is a new young evergreen tree that's come up from scratch since the big wildfire)