Musings

Yeah, a pano deserves to be BIGger, wider, LARGEr. This is my canvas, however….

Dunno why, but several times today my thoughts drifted back to our fine days at Yellowstone last month.

Can’t be the weather. We had afternoon rain, not forest-fire smoke….

Anyway, here’s a travertine-geyser shot. Think about the hot sunshine, the strange sulfur smells, the unevenness of the boardwalk, the diversity of t-shirt and cap decorations…all contributing to my experience of this moment, captured in pano form by my now wildly outdated iPhone.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Bounty in limitation

Down on the beach this afternoon, I watched the waves rolling in, not crashing, unless your perspective was right down on the beach. After all, no white caps.

Love the wee ridges the waves leave on the sand when they recede. I figure it’s related to differential surface tension along the edges of the liquid.

And there, not far down the beach, a crab claw, all blue-tinted. Poor crab. Sacrificing an “arm” to art…let’s hope….

And, lording it over all the beach-wave (capillary) action, this bee-lure body part (?), no doubt washed up by similar waves, and collected last week by a sharp-eyed cousin/cousin-husband.

Ah, these are the things that catch my eye when our exit is hours away.

Posted at 9:24 PM | 1 Comment »

Time to cool off; thank you, lake. And look at that moon, that dot high in the afternoon’s center-sky.

On the beach, the flotsam and jetsam included this little gem, the nacreous home of an absent, soft-bodied creature.

Posted at 8:21 PM | Comments Off on Hot, sticky—time for a dip

Same lake, different shore-view. Foggy here, too. Love the reeds.

I do not expect to see this many lichen colonizing a metal object. Still, this hay cutting bar implement was festooned.

Posted at 7:18 PM | Comments Off on A different perspective

Our clothes line has been down since the other clothes-line post rotted at the base and no longer stood upright. The remaining post has become a sculpture, bearing mosses and enterprising spiders.

Somehow, other chores keep rising to the top of the to-do list, and the sculpture remains. We hang the wet stuff inside.

Where the tent is. I’ll take that down tomorrow, and maybe replace it with swim-wet gear.

Posted at 6:09 PM | 1 Comment »

With the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers behind us, I was on pins and needles to see Lake Michigan. Our first views were near a series of dock-ruins. This one is made, I think, of concrete sections.

We made a side trip to a wonderful wood type museum in Two Rivers. I knew nothing about the history of the Hamilton company; now I know more.

The previous LkMI shot was from WI. This one’s from MI soil.

Oh, the light! I totally grooved on this evening’s golden hour.

Posted at 10:09 PM | Comments Off on Beyond The Rivers

Mostly there are fields, plowed, planted, this time of the year. What was here was tall-grass prairie. It wasn’t just grass, but an assortment of deep-rooted plants, well suited to occasional dry spells.

Yesterday we crossed the Missouri; today, the Mississippi. Water levels are holding for now, which makes sense given how green the landscape is. The plants, I mean.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Prairie and Midwest

Out early enough to catch the morning golden hour light. There’s even a pronghorn in this field (left of the top of the fencepost).

Our critter species count started early, with pronghorn, red fox, prairie chicken (or grouse?), deer, and ??—I thought there were five notables in the first hour…ah, well. No bighorns this day….

Into the Black Hills, a long-time tourist mecca, tacky to the nth degree.

Dropping down into the Plains, you know the vistas will change. The name Black Hills makes far more sense if you come upon them west-bound. East-bound, they are ragtag cousins of the Winds and Bighorns, not to mention the Tetons.

At first, the valleys still have some character, by which I mean they aren’t just rounded hills.

We duck into the Badlands for one more hit of spectacular geology. And find our last bison. The fellow with this guy was even more scruffy.

So scenic. Most of the Badlands have this grey-white cast.

Some are banded with red, and a very few are entirely reddish.

We both enjoyed the transition zone, where the eroded badlands meets the grasslands. Windy, hot in the sun….

One more milestone: looking back at the Missouri River, fourth longest river system in the world. We’ve been in its drainage basin for days, across several states.

I spare you pictures of the farmland we zipped across after this, speed limit 80mph, like the high mountain passes, good for hammering your mileage. Glad the sun is behind us for this stretch….

Posted at 10:22 PM | 2 Comments »

A little agriculture…lots of irrigation around here, not all productive row-crop fields, but most, it seems to me. And the product must move to the consumption area. Not many alternate farm roads, so we travel the US highways with tractors and combines….

Three long views…different colors. The third is the heights of the southern Bighorn range. Note the surviving snowpack, in the last half of AUGUST, kids.

Midground color variation…red/green (not the man/show), and the grey rocks of the cliffs on one flank of the Bighorns.

I didn’t check it, but the crossing from Ten Sleep to Buffalo seemed to have long, grinding climbs/descents, just as we found east of Greybull. I don’t know if they were 10 miles, but they are close. This runaway truck ramp, really some cable-gates, I thought, is on the descent into Buffalo. (Will they change their name to Bison? Is there even a movement afoot?)

Aha. And the geology. An igneous island amidst eroding sedimentary formations. Or the twenty-second wonder of the world, something like that.

Despite the many signs in the parking lot and along the trails below Devils Tower preaching sensitivity to this place that is sacred to many indigenous Americans, as in, they wish you wouldn’t climb it, the splash page on the NatPkServ website is all about what a wonderful climb it is. Doesn’t even mention the deer, turkeys (no photo), and prairie dogs you may see.

And this deer, in the low ground inside the bend of the river…better photo than the one we saw at DT, and a pretty river to boot!

And now my back posts are caught up! Yay for connectivity and energy…in conjunction. Thanks for waiting for me, Gentle Reader.

Posted at 11:46 PM | Comments Off on Short stories

In the wee hours, rain came. With dawn, we found the haze greatly diminished.

Heading out of town, we saw the skeleton of one of the many corrugated-clad elevators. I never thought about the interior engineering. Here it is: wood. Lots of it. Some big timbers to keep those walls aligned. I hope most of this is being reused.

Took a side trip to see a canyon. It now supports a reservoir, I assume touted to locals by out-of-town politicians as both good for downstream agriculture, a producer of cheap electricity, and a great fishing and recreation destination. In short, build this and you’ll have a better, more inexpensive life.

Maybe.

Notice how light makes all the difference?

Here’s a pair of long-view shots…. The first is the valley above the canyon. Just a valley. A red valley.

Also, we climbed up into the Bighorn range. About 10 miles up and 10 miles down. That is about 10 miles each way of grades up to 9°. Our mileage took a serious pounding. The down did not quite balance out the up-grind.

With that magnitude of elevation change, there’s such a difference between the valleys and the alpine zones. The landscape was generally rounded, often grassy and lacking trees.

Compared to the Winds…hmm. If someone told me I could come back to just one range, which would I pick? Very difficult call. I could go either way. This was the northern and central Bighorns. Tomorrow is the southern Bighorns.

Descending, we checked out this canyon waterfall. I should have recorded the sound of falling water to use sometime as a stress-remover.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Long views