Colorado Camp 9,033' remote cam May 31 - A final HELLO AND GOOD MORNING from the high country this month - 36 degrees at dawn. It's been a great month at home and at camp. Looking forard to many more chilly mornings in June. HAPPY FRIDAY TO YOU!

Our Canvas Gallery will not be open for walk-ins this weekend but may be available for appointments - Click here for info and directions.

 

Journal updated May 29th (short, trail-work day)

05/01/24 There was a wall of color across the sy-clear skies, warm tems, and a slight breeze just when you needed it. ky at dawn when the pups and I headed out to do a mile or two hike through the woods around our property. The color was short-lived, and I only got a quick snapshot of the last of it as normal blue sky overtook the pink/orange/red sky. Even though sunrise was approaching, the more we hiked the darker it got in the forest. What? - Isn’t it supposed to get LIGHTER? There was a slight breeze that was filled with the sweet aroma of incoming RAIN - oh yea that would be GREAT! And the darkness was due to dark storm clouds moving in, with a boom of thunder off in the distance. It was MARVELOUS hiking as light rain began to fall - YIPPIE COYOTE! But none of the raindrops were hitting the ground. It was kinda weird - I could hear the music of rainfall hitting the treetops, but no sound down at ground level. No matter, it was just a marvelous couple of miles to begin the day.

KETCHUP post. This will actually be for the last part of April, but I decided to just post it here. I only had one group of folks come to the gallery on Saturday, but they were nice enough to leave with a few prints in hand, and a little bit of gas money in our bank account. I would need that. I closed the gallery early since I had a dinner and annual meeting for the Ozark Highlands Trail Association to attend at Lake Norfork Dam near Mountain Home. My plan was to drive on over to the OHTA event (which was GREAT!), then instead of driving back home, go ahead and hit the road BACK TO COLORADO (where we had JUST got back from Friday evening). I had a meeting first thing Monday morning at our campsite there to attend.

Best laid plans, you know. During the first hour of my trip west my lovely bride called and noted there were severe storms - which included high chances for tornadoes and large hail - along much of my route. I had planned to drive several hours into Oklahoma, sleep for a few hours, then continue on to Colorado on Sunday. GOOD THING I listened to my lovely bride - instead of driving directly into and through the stormes, I detoured and went back home to sleep for a few hours. I got up at 4am, but decided to go back to bed when it was clear the worst of the weather across Oklahoma was still happening. I eventually left about 6am.

14 hours later Sunday night I arrived at our campsite in Colorado. There had indeed been killer tornadoes in Oklahoma, but I got to drive through the back end of those storms and the skies were just amazing. Much of the drive through the Dust Bowl area was white-knuckle due to high winds, but since I was in my little cargo van it was much easier to keep it on the road vs. our camper van, which is so tall it acts like a sail and catches every bit of wind. I stopped and took a snapshot showing all the traffic in the OK Panhandle...

At one point while I was driving across NE New Mexico just before sunset, the clouds were so spectacular that I spent more time searching for a great scene to shoot than I did paying attention to the road ahead (NOT really, but it seemed that way). There was this quite amazing sky to my west where at least three different cloud fronts were coming together, and it was just so beautiful - very difficult conditions for a nature photographer to concentrate on driving. In the end I was unable to find a single composition that I really liked (accept for one), and so I just continued to drive on into what soon became darkness.

The one composition I did find went like this. While I was concentrating on those clouds formations, God Beams, and sheets of rainfall over there against the mountains (at 70mph), I came up over a hill and almost right in front of me, just across the highway to my left, was this AMAZING giant tree, all bloomed out with perfect spring greens. AND RIGHT NEXT TO IT was a WINDMILL!!! And all that weather and terrific light was happening in the background of this scene. I could not have asked for better light or a better composition. BUT, OOPS, I was past this scene in seconds and while I scrambled to find a way across the divided highway to go back to the scene - literally within about 15-20 seconds - the SPECTACULAR light on the tree and windmill disappeared, just like that. I MISSED IT ALL and never got even a phone snapshot!

The light was gone, darkness arrived, and I continued on my way. After 14 hours on the road that day, I stopped in Alamosa and sat in the Wall Mart parking lot eating a Wendy’s salad (which was VERY good - I’d not had much to eat all day). And another hour after that, completely exhausted from the long drive across the Great Plains, I arrived at our campsite, crawled into the back of the van, and went to sleep.

Monday morning I was up and had already hiked a couple of miles around and back to camp when my 9am meeting took place (we’re going to be clearing a little more of our campsite spot this summer). Later in the day I headed BACK home, stopping for a few hours sleep at the same National Grassland in Felt, OK where my bride and I had spent Thursday night. By the time I got back home yesterday, I’d driven about 4,000 miles in the past week, including crossing the Great Plains three times in four days. I was one tired puppy!

On my way home yesterday...

05/02/24 This is one of my lovely bride's flowers that's come to life this year (yes, that's a lobster pot from a tiny fishing village in Nova Scotia), and this is our little Mia after our first mile hike this morning - wondering WHEN I'm going to be DONE takiing photos of the flower so SHE can get back into the woods for another lap...

05/03/24 ..I've looked at fog/clouds from both sides now... I LOVE days like THIS! A little rainy, drippy fog that just hangs around and around. Two miles of absolute dreamy hiking this morning before work - there were SO MANY wonderful scenes along the trail I forgot to take any pictures (only these two from both sides of our cabin, taken about 20 minutes apart - 1.1 mile hike). Oh well, sometimes the best photos remain on the internal hard drive inside your head.

05/10/24 CLEAR and BRIGHT this morning with storms the past couple of days wiping the atmosphere squeaky-clean. YESTERDAY morning we awoke to the music of song birds (see the list below from the app we use to identify who is singing) - always such a friendly and relaxing beginning to the day. Then an hour later, as the sun rose and started to warm up the forest, THEY ARRIVED! "The hills were alive, with the sound of CICADAS!!! I don't think we will have the overlapping 17-year varities that have been getting so much attention, though these guys were quite loud, but also with a much deeper voice that I recall. Soon a chorus of FROGS joined in, plus a cricket or two. Safe to say that the full choir of SUMMER BUGS has arrived!

05/11/24 WOW did we have an AMAZING Northern Lights display in our backyard last night - best I've seen outside of Alaska, and 10x more than ever in Arkansas! At first there were just a few colorful curtains in the north, but soon the sky erupted and came overhead and completely engulfed us with a 360-degree show from horizon to horizon. EPIC. LOTS of dancing curtains all around, beams of light shooting at diffferent angles across the sky. My lovely bride was perched on the back deck letting me know when the most active curtains were about to happen, and I was down in the yard below running around with a camera and tripod like a crazy man trying to capture as much as I could. I was ill-prepared for an explosion of moving shapes and color as this, but I got a few keepers. I was actually already set up in the back yard for an 11:30pm appearance of the Milky Way, and had just consumed a large cup of Iceland Coffee when the Northern Light show began (THANKS to FIREMAN JEFF for calling to let us know). Mark us down as being much impressed! I stayed up until about 2am trying to get a good photo of the Milky Way but odly enough there was a lingering cloud back up at 30,000' that was parked across the top of the rising Milky Way Glactic Center - and the clouds were picking up the Aurora activity going on in the opposite horizon - just the color, not the movement. Oh well, UNEXPECTED PLEASURES are often the BEST! FYI, the bright object you see just above our cabin prow is the crescent moon...

05/14/24 I'm told these "Chicken of the Woods" mushrooms really do taste just like fried chicken - but since I'm allergic to mushrooms I've never taken a bite. Looks like they are popping up right now in our jungle-like Ozark forests.

05/16/24 I got down on my belly and had a lovely conversation with this little red mushroom who was hiding under the leaves early this morning along the trail. She was quite delighted be growing up in the beautiful forest. If you look close there are at least two more redtops peeking out behind her.

-51924 Our "summer" trail has been getting pretty grown up this spring and when the ticks come out both the pups and I pick up quite a few along the way. I was late mowing that trail corridor this year, but when I finally got started on it a week ago the tractor went on the blink. I'd stopped and turned it off to get out with a chain saw and cut away a large tree that had recently fallen. Well as luck would have it I got the chainsaw stuck and had to hike back to the cabin to get my other saw. Once I got all of that taken care of and the tree removed, the tractor failed to start. OOPS.

It wasn't just a dead battery, there was something going nuts with the electrical system. For days I worked and studied and replaced a starter part and still nothing - just a wild and whacky dash when I tried to start it. Kind of funny, but the tractor was in such a location and position that there was no way I'd be able to get it pulled out to the yard or road (about 1/4 mile into the woods). I was stumped (bad pun but true).

I finally gave up and called Fireman Jeff - and within 20 seconds he'd come up with a solution. Bad battery, even thouth it continued to provide power to the tractor key. OK that was great, but I would still have to get the tractor out of the woods - it's kind of complicated removing the battery, and I was not a fan of hauling a new battery back in that far. So I tried one last thing - one of those small car jumper batteries that fits in the palm of your hand, given to us by my brother and his wife EIGHT or nine years ago. It took a while, but the little jumper WORKED and the tractor started right up (after five series of tries). YIPPIE COYOTE!

OK, I got the tractor out of the woods and found a reconditiioned battery at the farm store in Jasper, but it took me what seemed like a half day to get the old battery OUT - FIRST you have to REMOVE THE HEADLIGHT, and that required a very special tool (even though these little John Deere tractors are "assembled in the USA" - most if not all parts are still from China.

OK I'll end this folly. I eventually got the old out and the reconditioned one in, and HURRAY, the doomed tractor fired right up! I didn't get back into the woods with it until after dinner yesterday as it was beginning to get dusky dark. There were still two trees to be removed, though too large for the only chainsaw I had left (my previous saw required a small part that had to come from CHINA, of course). Anyway, the little tractor managed to swing way over it's weight class and we got both of the big trees out of the way and the rest of the trail corridor opened up (now that I think about it, even though it was so dark I could hardly see to drive along the trail out of the woods, I never thought to use the headlights - I wonder if they still work after I removed one of them???

05/20/24 Heap big dark clouds hanging around this morning, warm and humid. I just discovered an interesting thing on our hike up to the gallery this morning. The center section of that trail runs through a mature pine forest - some beautiful towering giants along the way. I stopped in the pines for a few monents just to enjoy. As I stood there in the silence, I noticed something - the SILENCE! What the heck - how can the woods be quiet right now? Turns out the answer is probably the same reason why we're seeing a LOT more copperheads - more than ever, more than all years combined here at Little Bluff. Cicadas. Copperheads LOVE them, but cidadas don't like PINE TREES. So there is silence in the pine tree part of our trail, and NO copperheads! Hum...

05/21/24 I made another mad dash across the Great Plains yesterday, with high temps in the upper 90's. After a few hours sleep beside the highway in New Mexico I continued on towards our campsite in Colorado. As I got out of the camper van this afternoon it started to snow and the temp fell into the upper 20's. WELCOME BACK TO COLORADO, HAHA!

I spent a good part of the afternoon wanderiing around on the granite volcano plug that is now part of our property - LOTS of interesting and colorful things to see, including a blooming cactus! My main goal for this trip was to attach little packets* provided by the U.S. Forest Serviice ($8 each) to each of the Ponderosa Pine trees on our property to protect them from swarms of pine beetles that kill the trees. Most of our trees are aspens, but there are nine pines, all on that granite mountain. I nailed them up 6' off the ground on the north-facing side of each tree.

*I know the packet looks like a condom but they are much larger - and filled with "a synthetic pheromone that replicates the beetle pheromone, sending a message to arriving swarms that the tree is full and that the food supply is insufficient for additional beetles so they move on"

We had ordered 10 packets so I had one left over, which I used on a lonely GIANT pine on some wooded property next to ours.

You can see our "granite plug/mountain" and some of the pine trees in the snow photo below.

The rest of today I spent unpacking the van and cleaning up our little spots after a long winter, stoppi ng now and then to take a gander around - it's SPRING in the high country and the trees, a few wildflowers, and meadow grasses are looking might fiine. Lots of hawks and mule deer too.

As eveniing began to creep in I decided to see if I couuld make it to the top of the property - something I could previously never do until day three or even four - but I seem to warm up to altitude quicker in my old age and made it to the top without issue. SO NICE to be here again, although I just checked the weather and it is supposed to be 17 degrees tomorrow morning. Good thing I brought a down sleeping bag!

The last photo is of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains - nearly 50 miles away - taken from our campsite this evening (with a 500mm lens).

05/22/24 It was 17 degrees this morning at camp - YIKES! Lucky for me I decided late last night to drain all the water tanks in the camper van, then I drove DOWN 1,000' to the valley floor and to a rest area a couple of miles out of town to spend the night. It was 27 degrees when I woke up about 5am, so MUCH warmer than back up at camp - and what water that was left in the water lines did not freeze and bust anything (even though I had drained the tanks, 17 degrees back at camp probably would have caused damage). I did drive back up to camp about 6am when it was still 17 degrees but the van was all warmed up and the sun soon began to warm up the air too so all was well. (but of course i didn't have any water, haha)

One of my great pleasures out here is making PIZZA! We have a portable propane pizza oven that does a really good job - after the oven is warmed up for about 30 minutes to 900 degrees, the pizza only takes about 60 seconds to cook (just like in our wood-fired oven back home). The taste is ALMOST as good - the lack of wood smoke flavor is made up a little bit with the altitude - EVERYTHING tastes better at 9,000' and above!

I did have a problem though - no olive oil. Good thing that some of the world's BEST olive oil for pizza is sold at a little shop in nearby Creede, Colorado - the Creede Olive Oil Company. Ohh man, we've had the same flavor oil from other olive oil stores, but nothing comes close to oil from the store in Creede! So I made the scenic drive upstream along the Rio Grande River 23 miles to Creede - I always park at one end of town and hike to the store at the other end of town - gives me a little more exercise. Today that hike both ways was extra special because there was almost NO ONE in town! (It's usually crowded - lots of great little shops along the main drag - which is where my lovely bride and I go to see plays at the Creede Repertory Theatre - SO GOOD!)

OK, back to camp, and for some reason it took me all afternoon to get the pizza dough made, the oven fired up, have a glass of cheap whiskey and coke, and then finally bake the pizza. IT WAS TERRIFIC though! (must have been the altitude)

After dinner I did a quick hike around the short loop here, and oh my the young aspen trees looking back towards camp were just AMAZING - looked almost like fall aspen color! There are even a few young aspens up on our granite rock (with the pine trees).

When I got back from the hike I decided to do another hike as the sun slipped below the ridge and darkness approached - this time I hiked to the top of the Ranch for the second time today (this morning it was 21 degrees when I started) - made it to the top without much effort. On the way down I could feel the full moon rising, though it would still be another hour before it did.

Back at camp I decided to get my camera and telephoto lens set up and ready to shoot the moon through some dead trees that tower over our camp. I got everything set up just fine but our campsite is so far up against the mountain that it was another hour before the moon ever arrived! By that time the landscape all around was fast asleep and DARK, leaving me only the bright moon and dead tree silhouettes to photograph (some of the thousands of mature trees on the Ranch that burned in the big wildfire in 2002).

05/23/24 It was a lot warmer this morning when I crawled out of the van to a startled group of mule deer just below - not sure if I was friend of foe. There have been a couple groups of mule deer does wandering around the property - the other group of ladies I bet have fawns in a few weeks. This afternoon after spending several hours locked up in our little shed that serves as my office, I stepped out into a BRILLIANT mid-day sun and was kind of startled myself to see three quite large mule deer bucks grazing on the hillside without 20 feet in front of me. What was even more startling was the fact I didn’t seem to register with them as anything - they looked up for a few moments and just went back to grazing - even as I walked right on by even closer to them. It wasn’t until I reached the camper van that I realized I had stripped down to my underwear to try and catch a little sunshine on my WHITE WALE legs that haven’t seen the sun since last summer!

Most of my day was spent inside that shed trying to untangle a tangled up mess on one of my computers, and also trying to place a canvas print order from a lab in Texas for delivery to Florida. This happens some times - one of the larger prints was VERY EXPENSIVE, way more than I could afford - but when I INCREASED the size of it just one inch, the price dropped by 75%. The larger print was cheaper! The deer probably didn’t notice so maybe not such a big deal.

I also spent a good bit of the day out hiking - just under ten miles, including another two trips to the top of the Ranch. And I never saw another person nor vehicle. I’ve pretty much got the upper 700 or so acres of this neighborhood all to myself this week.

During one calm moment in the warm sunshine I could only hear a single species of bird singing. My trusty bird ID app told me it was indeed the only species around - then three male Mountain Bluebirds flew right over the top of me. The app was correct! Ten minutes later the group returned, landing back in a small grove of aspens (which is also a grove of small aspens) and resumed their afternoon lullabies. I of course drifted right off into a long nap.

Another hike to the top in the evening after sundown - mostly dark swirling clouds above, but nothing in the way of rainfall today or overnight expected.

OH, and I’ve been seeing a grouse - always in this one particular spot. I got a really up-close look at him/her yesterday - such beautiful, multi-colored feathers. Seems that I’ve seen a grouse in this same spot every year now for a while. I probably should get a closer look - they made have built their own little cabin!

Speaking of a CABIN, oh no on second thought let’s not. Our cabin is our little silver camper van, now getting long in the tooth with about 100k on it - but still going strong! Time for me to wander out into the darkness and find my spot in the back of the van…

05/24/24 Another typical May day in the High Country - BEAUTIFUL but WINDY!!! Very strong winds most of the day. And unlike yesterday, I got to spend most of the day outside (not working on my tan, but actually working, well sort of).

During my morning hike up to the top of the Ranch, I saw the first person I’d seen in a couple of days. As the car pulled up behind me and rolled down a window, the driver took one look at me and said “OH I wondered who the HOBO was hiking up the road - it is YOU!” You can tell that I’m thought of fondly around here. It was Brian, the only other living soul that is currently in the top half of the ranch this week. He’s from Arizona and has been building a new house up near the top of the Ranch, and doing a lot of the work himself. He’s a former National Geographic Photographer - one of three of us that have property in the Ranch (although I’ve only had a few photos published by Nat. Geo. - the other two guys actually were assignment photographers for them). We chatted for a while until his electrician drove up - the second person I’ve seen in a couple of days. Like most of the contractors here, electricians are few and far between and it’s tough to get them.

It was a great hike and I clocked several miles - enough in fact to earn LUNCH! (had my long-time standard turkey-cheese-springmix-wrap). After lunch it was time to get down to work. One of my other main chores for this trip (besides putting out the pine beetle packs) was too “put away” all of the aspen trees that I’ve cut down for various reasons the past couple of years. Most folks here simply pile trees or brush up and wait until winter and then burn them. This is OK but one casualty of this is that the ground beneath the burn pile and several feet all around it become totally dead for years to come. No thanks. I had a better idea.

I decided to move the trees to a location on our property that has been eroding for decades in hopes that this would slow down the erosion. The trees are all small to medium, but the location and trees were several hundred feet apart so I would have to drag them, mostly just one tree at a time. That was OK and it was perfect weather to work up a little sweat. The only real problem was that our electric fence and three-foot tall dog fence were both in the way. After milling around a while I figured out a solution - I disconnected the fencing from several fence posts to where I could lay the fencing down on the ground, then covered it with various materials which acted as kind of a bridge over the fence - so I could drag the trees over without tearing up the fence that was hiding beneath. Unlike most plans that I hatch up on the spot, this one worked really well!

I spent the next couple of hours working on the first pile of aspen trees, which were the most recent ones I’d cut down last year. They were also the heaviest since they’ve had less time to dry out. It was actually pretty easy to drag the trees over the fence and across the meadow and stack them in the new location. One at a time. And since one of my arms is in poor shape I only had one good arm, and that almost always worked just fine. If the tree was too heavy I wrapped a strap around the blunt end of the tree and pulled the tree that way.

My plan was to move 10 trees a day. There were about 30 trees in the first batch. Found out that I loved doing this work so well (and I turned on the Taylor Swift station on Pandora for company), after the first 10 trees I took a break, but then did another 10, another break, and then the last 10+. It was tough work but since it was all DOWNHILL I managed pretty well. IN fact, once I got that first pile done I started on the NEXT pile and got six or seven of those done too - a GREAT start! And neither my arm or my back were screaming at me (TOMORROW may be painful though). Careful to keep hydrated at this altitude, I consumed almost three liters of water in the process.

OK, that would be enough for one day. I figured that my bones would not tolerate any more, and probably would have to recover for a day or two. After only a ten minute snack break and more water, I decided to go check my work and see how it all looked. Then one thing led to another and I found myself slowly wandering across the wide meadow, stopping to look at this or that, which included several new marmot holes, piles of wood left over from the big fire in 2002, and other general items of interest.

Soon I found myself climbing up the granite plug/rock and finding even more neat stuff to look at. In fact I found a LOT of interesting things to look at. I was forced to stop, sometimes getting down on all fours - and take a snapshot or two. It took me at least an hour to cover maybe 100’ up on top. I never realized there was SO MUCH to look at up there! I have always loved to hike up and just hang around. Only today I not only got down on all fours to take snapshots of small wonders like tiny flowers growing out of solid GRANITE, but also because the WIND nearly knocked me over several times (and blew my hat off three or four times). Probably gusts over 40mph. Anyway, there were at least a dozen different species of small wildflowers and shrubs in bloom, and at least two different species of cactus that looked to be ready to bloom in another week or two. Also many different sections of trees from the big fire that all looked like they had just burned, but that was 22 years ago.

At one point I got into kind of a Zen Zone thing with the photos - and realized I only had my phone doing snapshots and not a real camera. Oh well, those would have to do for now but I promised the photo gods that I would return later this week with a real camera and spend some time doing serious photos - after all, those burned logs are not going to change much anytime soon!

This little trip out across the meadow and up onto the granite hill for no other reason than to look around made me stop and think - that I needed to start doing MORE OF THAT! Just for the pure pleasure and joy of exploring, even if it's only in your own back yard.

As evening set in I put my boots back on and leaned into the hillside for another trip up to the top of the Ranch - still against howling winds. Total for the day was about 12 miles and 21,000 steps - probably several of those miles were with an aspen tree in tow!

05/25/24 Work continued today to move more aspen trees to the erosion ditch, although I quit after only about 20. One thing I never knew until several years ago is that young aspen trees have a thin layer of YEAST covering them. YES that kind of yeast - collect enough of it and you can make bread! I probably could bake a loaf or two from the yeast on my pants.

I also started work on a new project here today - rerouting the electric cow and plastic dog fence on both ends of our lot. On one end this would allow cows to access an important water source - the small creek that runs through our property. Up until now I’ve kept them out of the forest part with the creek, but with less and less water available I figured I’d go ahead and let them have it. One the other end of our lot I want to cut off access to a particular section of the steep aspen-covered hillside that contains large populations of chipmunks. Frequently when Mia goes missing, we can find her on this hillside with her head and sometimes half her body burrowed into the black soil after a chipper (Wilson is usually nearby, waiting patiently and trying not to look like a guilty party). The pups will still have a lot of hillside to dig, but hopefully this will spare a few chippers from hours of terror.

So I had no idea if taking down the fencing and rerouting it would be easy or difficult, but I figured what the heck, and jumped right in today after lunch. It only took me a few minutes to detach the electric fence from the fence posts and then reroute it through a very thick section of aspen trees - in fact it was a piece of CAKE easy to do so! Next I had to detach the plastic dog fencing from the posts - that took a lot more effort, and required at least three water breaks to complete! When I laid the dog fencing out across the meadow it stretched all the way to our property line! Then I had to roll it all up, which turned into a bit of a chore - mostly because the WIND was blowing SO HARD that it blew the fencing right out of my hands sometimes!

On a side note that same wind removed our property lot address sign that has been held in place at the base of an aspen tree for almost nine years now - on my hike this evening I noticed that sign was missing, and after a bit of a search I found it in a neighbor’s yard! Later on during my hike I discovered a sign on a different neighbor’s yard was also missing - I have no idea where the wind took it but it had been attached quite well so it must have been one heck of a wind!

Oh yes, back to the fence. I got all of the fence posts removed and installed into their new locations. But then when I started the process of unrolling the plastic fence I realized the route I’d chosen through the thick aspen grove was also right through a QUITE DENSE wild rose forest. Turns out I’m gonna have to spend a good bit of time chopping through the rose bushes to make way for the fence - and then I suspect I’ll need to keep this section cut back each summer to keep the electric fence from touching the bushes.

Then I realized my hat was missing - my prized flashlight bennie hat. I looked everywhere and no sign of it. And it wasn’t until just now while typing this that I figured out what must have happened to it - the WIND got it! And this is kind of funny - it’s a camouflaged hat so I may never find it!

At least during the hunt for my hat I got a few more aspen trees moved over to the erosion ditch.

A couple of wildlife notes. Remember the grouse I keep seeing in the same spot? During my hike this morning I took a different route to the top of the high point here - such a magnificent VIEW from up there! And on the way back down I came upon the grouse AGAIN in the same spot - although I didn’t realize I was there until she took flight. And then on my hike this evening to a different location, I nearly had a heart attack when not one but TWO of them exploded from a tree I was hiking under and took off for the sunset. My heart went into triple time for a few seconds. Seems the grouse here and multiplying like rabbits.

And then just now - past my bedtime - as i’m typing this there is a small mosquito that keeps hopping across my giant computer screen. I don’t really want skeeter guts on my screen so I’ve tried to ignore it. But I guess since this screen is the only light in the shed, he’s not going away. So I had better. Here's wishing you a mosquito-free SATURDAY EVENIING!

05/26/24 Kind of chilly this morning (mid-30’s) but it warmed up quickly as bright sunshine spilled into our little pocket on the mountainside. No grouse were seen today, but I did have two encounters with actual PEOPLE again, both during a morning hike to the top. The first was with the ranch manager - he was out on a little tractor towing a box blade to smooth out the gravel roads (we have 16 miles or so of roads here). That is his full-time job - taking care of the roads on the ranch. Summertime is non-stop gravel management, winter is the same but with snow (removal). Nice to have someone making sure traffic flows well - although the only two vehicles I saw today were his tractor and one other, so it’s still kind of slow and quiet up here in the high country today - YEA!

As I was just about to get back to our campsite area I heard rubber on gravel behind me slowly coming to a halt. I turned around and it was our neighbor across the road, Pascal. He’s a Cajun and his wife is Italian. Both of those bring good fortune to me - last year she made and delivered a big bowl speghattei and meatballs - tasted almost straight from Italy! And today (this afternoon), Pascal delivered a big bowl of shrimp and crab GUMBO that he had cooked up, straight from the Louisiana swamp - YEA again!

But before I could dine on the gumbo, we had to deal with his SUV - it actually had just died when he stopped to chat and would not start. A few minutes later I arrived with our camper van and got him fired up again. Great to have them as neighbors, although this is only the third time in eight years I’ve seen them - EIGHT grandkids he tells me keep them pretty busy back home. (OK, so here are the numbers - three encounters with Pascal and/or his wife, and I got TWO meals - that’s a pretty good deal for me! I’ll keep my eye out for them…)

Most of my day was spent outside working on the dog and cow fence reroutes. I’m happy to say I completed the first one and got a lot of work done on the second and much longer one. This second one is about three times as long, and will block off a lot of Mia’s scared chipper hunting ground, but momma will be happier without so much drama from her little puppy. And guess what - I also moved a few more of the little aspen trees to the ditch - 10 a day was my original goal - there’s still a pile of them left to move but not nearly as much as before!

I discovered eight years ago that you can’t buy plumbing (or electrical) parts around here unless you are a licensed plumber. Seems like almost every year there is some issue that comes up. Today it was our little hot water heater. No heat. After spending a good bit of time watching youtube I am convinced it’s probably best to just get a new one, and so an hour on Amazon later I did! Delivery here on Wednesday.

High winds continued again all day, but there was a new show in town, or rather in the air. HAWKS have arrived for the summer all of a sudden. We see lots of them all summer, and usually a variety of sizes and species. Today’s were all red-tailed hawks, easy to ID since each time they turn against the sun their bright rust-colored tails feather really shine! What was unusual was the fact they were chasing several buzzards around, kind of like WWII dogfights going on. And oh my what a size difference! It was interesting how well the big birds were able to maneuver and avoid the smaller and swifter hawks - aided no doubt by the stiff, gusting winds.

Just in case you were wondering, I still have not found my camouflage stocking cap - and I’m reminded of that fact about this time each night - when it’s time to close up the shed office for the night and walk across the campsite to the camper van - IN THE DARK!

By the time you read this it will most likely be Memorial Day. I’m going to a special event tomorrow in Monte Vista to pay tribute to those who died serving our country in order for us to maintain our freedom. There will be a fly-over by a squadron of F-16C Viper fighter jets from the Colorado National Guard. And if you know anything about where these towns below are located here, you might guess those jets will be going REALLY FAST - they are going to be in Monte Vista at 11am, and in GRAND JUNCTION at 11:15! HOLY MOLY JOHN DENVER!

• Linn Grove Cemetery, Greeley – 10:30 a.m.

• Parker Cemetery, Parker – 10:35 a.m.

• Veterans Memorial Park, Silver Cliff – 10:50 a.m.

• Homelake Cemetery, Monte Vista – 11 a.m.

• Western Colorado Veterans Cemetery, Grand Junction – 11:15 a.m.

• Grand Lake Memorial Day Parade, Grand Lake – 11:35 a.m.

• Fort Logan National Cemetery, Denver – 11:40 a.m.

• Olinger Highland Cemetery, Thornton – 11:50 a.m.

• University of Colorado Boulder, Folsom Stadium, Boulder – 12:07 p.m.

05/27/24 Did you see THEM? The F16C Viper jets? Man they were FAST! I spent a while last night studying maps and trying to figure out a good spot to photograph the jets that were doing a flyby over several towns in Colorado this morning. Drawing a straight line from Silver Cliff and Monte Vista, I found a great location looking right into the snowy Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I had a view of perhaps a 20-mile wide stretch of the mountain range, but had this particular spot picked out where I figured they would appear - Iwas was going to zoom in with a 500mm telephoto lens. (here's about half of the mountains I could see)

Oh boy what I wrong! I arrived about 30 minutes early, tested my camera equipment and waited for 11am, when they were supposed to fly over Monte Vista (which I could see behind me in the distance). They were to have been at Silver Cliff at 10:50, and I was in between. Nice clear blue sky above, although a bit hazy.

Long about 10:46 I heard jets. Oh my gosh they were EARLY! But no matter how hard I looked and looked and looked, I never saw them. NADDA. I know what military jets sound like, and these guys were not any where near me. Needless to say I was not privy to their flight path between Silver Cliff and Monte Vista, but it was a pretty big wide-open valley and those guys make a LOT OF NOISE! I waited around until 11 in case it was some other aircraft I’d heard, then 11:15, but that must have been them I heard, arriving early. And they must have taken a route to the south of me, going around the mountains for some reason.

Anyhoo, during preparation for this I learned how to setup my camera to lock focus on and track an aircraft while taking 15 pictures a second! But I never got to use that knowledge. I also learned that this same camera can also be set up to lock focus on and track the eye of a moving INSECT! That may come in handy one day.

While feeling kind of like an idiot having driven all that way and got so psyched up and ended up with nothing, I did get to drive on over to nearby Wal Mart in Alamosa for my weekly grocery run!

The rest of today was spent outside still working on the puppy and dog fence reroute (ALMOST DONE!), and moved a few more aspen trees (also almost done!). While I was up on the hillside behind camp taking a break at sunset, the clouds over yonder lit up with a fiery display that while did not quite match the spectacle of F16 fighter jets, it was really nice to see, especially on the Memorial Day to remember all the brave men and women of our military who died so that we could continue to live and watch sunsets.

05/28/24 a classic early summer day in the high mountains - and I took every chance to ENJOY IT! (a lot more breaks than usual while working on the hillside - warm and breezy, cool and sunny - stop and smell the flowers, lay back in the fresh green grass and stare at the clouds above..) TOMORROW I'm joining a local hiking club to do maintenance on a trail over near Wolf Crek Pass. I say "join" although even though I filled out their online application and paid them $21.13, they tell me I have not "been approved to join their club yet" and they are still thinking about it. I hope they let me work with them - I have a VERY WELL WORN pair of loppers to use...

05/29/24 I'm one beat-down pupppy this evening after a long day of some pretty tough trail maintenance in the San Juan Mountains. We had two crews working an eight-mile section of trail - starting at opposie ends to meet in the middle. We cut out several dozen trees that had fallen across the trail, and moved ONE BIG ROCK! The 82-year-old gentleman working the winch in this photo was also in charge of the big 20" chainsaw. The boulder was not as happy to coorprate as the downed trees, but we finally got it out of the way. I may take a long nap tomorrow...