Colorado Camp 9,033' Cam May 31 - aspen leaf shadows dance in the sunshine - HAPPY WEDNE SDAY!

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05/22/23 Most of the time as I wander along trails through the forest I'm totally engulfed in the surroundings - visiual delights of everything - shape, texture, and color, aromas of the earth, the sweetness of blooms, feel of crisp cool air, or sunshine on my face. Movements of the trees, grasses, and critters jumping from tree to tree or darting through the branches on feathered wings. It's all sort of exciting and relaxing at the same time.

Often though I will hike with my head down, focused only on the next step before me, looking for things that most folks never see - and also trying to keep from tripping and falling on my face!

Yesterday I got a glint of light from the trail ahead just a moment before my boot landed. I stopped and had to stare a moment or two or three, scanning the ground that had been worn down by miles and miles of our boots - this was on the loop trail here from the gallery to the cabin that goes right through the middle of the historical home location. I THOUGHT I saw SOMETHING, an unusual shape in the dirt. With just a tiny spot of green - can you see it?

I got down on my knees and took this photo, then reached and pulled up an amazing tiny glass jewel about the size of a quarter!

When I pulled it out and brushed it off - and spent about ten minutes at the gallery sink trying to get it all cleaned up - I knew exactly what I was going to do with it - a gift for my lovely bride...

That was yesterday, but this morning I discovered an object we'd been looking for for a week - a nut off the bolt that connects a small (and very rusty, with one rotten tire) cart to her lawn mower. I'd hiked the driveway dozens of times looking for this little guy with no luck, then all of a sudden today THERE IT WAS - right at my feet - YEA! Now she just needs a new tire and some more duct tape and the cart will be good as, maybe good for another trip across the lawn with a batch of picked-up dead branches.

05/23/23 Look at this beauty along the trail to work this afternoon - an amazing native wild rose beaming out to the world - I'M ALIVE AND LIFE IS GOOD! Me on the other hand is kind of hung over from a "photo" high being up all night working in a waist-high pasture of hay - trying to take some Milky Way photos. I got home at 6 -something this morning (a full 24 hours awake and on my feet - kinda tough on this old geezer!), but slept 'til 12:30 this afternoon - so I agree with Miss Wild Rose, and a HAPPY TUESDAY TO YOU!

05/29/23 I was on the road early yesterday headed out across Oklahoma and New Mexico just in time to check on the cow fence that protects our little camping spot in Colorado - they will release a heard of free-range cattle on June 1st and each winter a herd of elk usually tear up the cow fence. But of course there are many other great reasons to spend a few days in the Colorado mountains (I just use the cow fence as my excuse)!

Literally within minutes of telling my lovely bride over the phone that the trip to that point had been easy with no weather issues and it would continue to be smooth sailing the rest of the way - I came upon a wall of GREEN clouds off to my right that would terrorize me for the next 45 miles. With storm clouds green means HAIL, and driving a vehicle with a giant front windshield like our sprinter van has the last thing you want to see is green clouds! Turns out it was a massive storm front that soon hit me right in the face - not only high winds, hail, and heavy rain, but it was also a HABOOB! (blowing red dirt!) It was very weird to see the green and red mixed together in those clouds. Any of you who know Hwy. 412 between Guymon and Bose City know there aren’t too many places to stop and hide, so all I could do was press on and hope to make it through.

And I DID! The only hail I got was small, but it was major pucker factor trying to keep the big van on the road all that distance. And when the rain finally quit I found myself driving inside a black tunnel - with bright sunshine at the far end. Kind of funny though - it was brand new BLACK pavement and I could not see the road, only the black all around me and the light at the end of the tunnel, which turned out to be Boise City.

As I was leaving Boise City I looked around and saw what had to have been one of the most intense RAINBOWS I’ve ever seen. Which of course caused a problem - I needed to photograph it somehow, and needed SOMEthing in the foreground that was terrific! I drove on out of town and finally pulled over when I found a lone tree on the horizon and the rainbow directly behind the tree. But there was so much other stuff in the way I gave up and found another scene - a herd of cattle charging across a field with the rainbow behind them - directly lined up with a giant transmission tower of some sort. Not the wilderness photo I was looking for, but rainbows don’t last forever and that was my only shot.

Haha, funny joke on me. Once the rainbow melted away and I drove off, there was a beautiful windmill now 1/2 mile down the road I could have shot the rainbow with!

But then not too far after that I realized the clouds were starting to get crazy and I found a large lone tree in the middle of a pasture that would make a perfect foreground. The winds were howling and the sun had reached the horizon and was about to disappear - I didn’t have time to grab or use my tripod so I ran across the field without - then realized I’d left the camera battery in the van so I had to run back and get it. The light was changing really, really fast, and I was kind of getting frantic - it was an amazing scene. About 100 photos later (all with different light it was changing so fast), I returned to the car in hopes at least one of the photos was in focus, and continued on.

A couple hours later I arrived at the base of the Capulin Volcano in New Mexico I’d been wanting to take a nighttime photo of forever, and since skies were supposed to be clear after midnight I was hoping to get a Milky Way photo there. I found a good spot to shoot from, but it was too early so I decided to take an hour nap - by then the Milky Way would be up above the volcano - and I hoped skies would be clear. An hour later (1am) I was out the door and standing next to my camera and tripod - but no joy - clouds had moved in and no stars. I returned to the van for another nap, woke up at 2, still solid cloud in all directions. One more try - and another hour of sleep, and YIPPIE!, the clouds were clearing.

But in those three hours I was napping the Milky Way had moved out of my target window so headed down the highway looking for another spot, and eventually did find a great view of the volcano with the Milky Way directly over it. One small problem. THE WIND was BLOWING 40-50mph and I could barely stand up, much less get a sharp 10-second exposure of pinpoint stars. The moon had already set and the terrain I was standing on was mostly black lava rock, so it was REALLY dark out there. And the chunks of lava made it kind of tricky to move around on - as I went from tree to tree thinking I could stand behind one to break the wind. The trees did break the wind, but also blocked the view, duh! (the wind was blowing almost directly from the volcano direction).

I was a funny sight no doubt to any nighttime critters about - my only hope was to push the shutter button to start the ten-second exposure, then I would wrap my entire upper body around the tripod while pushing myself towards the ground (I had a two-second delay to accomplish this before the exposure started). I shot a couple dozen photos this way until the Milky Way had sunk into the volcano and it was time for me to give up.

So OK, it was about 3:30 in the morning - almost 24 hours since I’d gotten up to leave yesterday - so I decided to return to the van and take another nap. Since I had taken three one-hour naps waiting on the stars, and also a full one hour nap late afternoon, I would only need another couple of hours to get a normal night’s sleep and continue on my journey. And that’s what I did, eventually arriving at our campsite in Colorado about noon.

I have no idea if the volcano photo turned out or not, but at least one of the lone tree and waco cloud did, so the trip has been worth it!

05/30/23 After the big storm and the volcano the rest of the drive to Colorado was pretty normal. There was a steady stream of oncoming traffic - mostly folks who’d been in the mountains of the holiday weekend heading home. I much prefer to head into the mountains after they’ve emptied out a bit. Oklahoma was surprisingly green overall while New Mexico was mostly brown and red. Colorado was just beginning to turn green - the aspens and cottonwoods putting on their new leaves and a nice spring-green that’s so refreshing. Not many wildflowers yet, but with all the water they had over the winter I bet it will be an epic wildflower later this summer.

The goal of my trip was to inspect for and repair any damage to our campsite - usually the cow fence has been town down by wildlife, but also usually there was water system has a break or leak, plus a downed tree or two across the driveway or the camping pad. Much to my great delight I found only one major break in the electric fence - either a herd of elk or a large bear took off with the single-wire fence and hauled it half-way across the wildflower meadow, breaking a half dozen fence posts with it. Usually there is more damage so I was a happy camper about that!

No major tree-fall damage anywhere on the property I could find - yea! There was an issue with the water system that I’ll have to take care of today at the hardware store in town - we have a really good well here but the part of the piping above ground does suffer during the long winter here that can reach way, WAY below zero for long periods of time.

Right off the bat when I first arrived I saw a pair of Western Tanagers - the male of this species if quite possibly the most colorful bird in Colorado - we’ve only seen them a couple of times here, but I would see him three times yesterday - looks like they might be nesting here. Also saw a nesting pair of Western Bluebirds that have set up housekeeping in one of Pam’s three bird houses.

A momma mule deer and her twin yearlings hung around all afternoon, often grazing right across the parking pad - seemed to not be too afraid of me or all the noise I was making while setting up the roof and walls of our iron gazebo here, the third job on my list (after repairing the cow fence and the water line). Later I saw a much larger mule deer buck - he was clearly not with the ladies, but then he later on was with them. Perhaps momma had triplets and this guy had grown really fast - already had a rack of velvet growing. At duck all four of them grazed on through one of the young aspen groves next to the camping pad and helped me enjoy the sunset.

I unloaded the van and unloaded the shed and set up various things that we’d use here during the upcoming summer - including the propane pizza oven (our wood-fired oven back home is just to large and heavy to haul out here, but the portable propane model does a pretty good job). My bride is not with me on this short trip, but I’ll be forced to cook up a pizza or two while I’m here alone - just to make sure the oven still works after sitting all winter.

It is very quiet in our little 1,500-acre neighborhood, and I only saw one vehicle pass all day. Though I spent a good bit of the afternoon and evening inside the shed taking a look at the photos I’d taken the previous day on the trip out here. Unlike last summer, I don’t have a large computer screen with me, just a pair of laptops with their small screens. One of them is my main computer, but I can’t work on the Cloudland Journal with it. So my second, much older computer, is the one I work up and post the Journal with - the screen only works about half the time, and then only about 1/3 of the screen. Also that keyboard repeats many of the letters so I have to go back through and delete a lot of messy stuff, but I’ll keep trying to work with it for a while longer (that software will no longer work with modern computers).

As evening light began to arrive I headed out for a mile loop around our “short” route - everything was pretty much the same way I left it last August, though there is a brand new two-story log cabin under construction. It is so small it appears to be just a garage, but it’s going to be a really nice little cabin with a million dollar view.

After my long drive to get here I mostly snacked through the afternoon and never made any dinner before retiring for the night. I got up about 4:30 this morning to a chilly van and shed, but enjoyed a warm cup of mocha and COLD smoothie for breakfast. Time to get this post transferred over to the “journal” computer and uploaded, then I’m off to the top of the mountain (actually just to the highest point in the neighborhood - about 5 or 6 hundred feet above my current location of 9,033’ at the campsite. It’s my standard two-mile wake-up hike, and I’m hoping to do it at almost full speed without any altitude issues - wish me luck!