Musings
A different falls on a different mountain river.
The lovely D suggested a lady-expedition today, and a cozy foursome set out for a mountain winery luncheon and a walk in the woods to a lovely waterfall.
We found the winery dining room quiet and stately until a large party emerged from the tasting room to be seated around the corner from us. Think: boisterous. Still, we had a grand time. Tried the dry rosé; nice. Also enjoyed a quick visit to the barrel room; great visuals.
Later, humid walking made us appreciate the cool mountain streamwater. N and I waded; D swam; P said laughing, “looks cold!” Found a few wildflowers and iridescent blue damselflies. No ticks. No snakes. The best!
Unfortunately, this was in the Chattahoochee National Forest, and we discovered loggers taking out the larger trees (selective cutting) on the ridges above our river to make better habitat for Peruvian…um…finches(?), a migratory species. Not the ambiance D was expecting.
Thanks, D, for the invite.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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This was actually last evening’s (ever-so-slightly double) rainbow, but still a fitting visual for my last day here in Virginia.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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I freed the rhubarb (five wee crowns) from the worst of the quack grass and weeds. I’ll give them another purging later this summer.
Meanwhile, guess where we played today (for an hour or so only, but still!)….
Posted at 6:36 PM |
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See the dome of the tower at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta tucked in there? Never been, but I often find my eye is drawn to it….
Mostly, it seems to me, we get rain that’s a blanket across the region. Sometimes a broad strip of rain moves through. What we had today is rarer, just a few tiny storm cells. We drove from a not-rain area, across a not-rain area, and arrived at a just-rained area, on our trek to a small, fun get-together. We heard the hard rain stayed for just a minute, and was followed/preceeded by just a few minutes of sprinkles. No precip while we socialized, but a few sprinkles—enough to get the pollen off the windshield—as we headed back. Then, no-rain all the rest of the way.
Or maybe it’s that the broader rain areas are more winter and the small cells are more summer? Meaning we’re in the rain version of the transitional season?
Anyway, the skies cleared incompletely, and the sun after-glow gave us a gorgeous skyline view.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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We had eight miles of unpaved road coming northeast out of Chaco. Actually, this well-dried zone was a preferred section. Most of the rest was so washboarded that we traveled at around 15 mph to avoid shaking the car to pieces. Had this been wet, um, no Prius clearance…. The wash we crossed yesterday that hosted a trickle was completely dry today. The state is suffering severe and extreme drought levels which benefitted us—the road, though rutted, was dry.
Back, before the ancient ones left, the tree rings show many consecutive years of extreme drought in the AD 1100s. By the end of that, people had left the mountains and canyons, migrating south to the river valleys, including that of the Rio Grande/Río Bravo.
* Kiva is a Hopi word referring to special-purpose round (and sometimes rectangular) rooms that has been adopted by Southwestern archaeologists to refer to semi-subterranean circular rooms of various sizes built for ritual purposes and sited, usually, in a plaza or amongst residential rooms. They characteristically have four support pillars, a firepit, an external air source, and the roof is often missing today, drastically changing the character of the space.
I am wondering if the fact that we had no kiva associated with our tent, as is true of the other campers and park residents, relates to the drought situation, hence the title….
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Perhaps THE coolest thing about camping out in a place like Chaco Canyon is the night sky. See the moon? (Duh.) See Orion to the left?
Stunning as the view was, we were even more aware of the wind. And the afternoon/overnight airflow was termed “breezy” here, and expected to become “windy” on Sunday.
Cleverly, I had brought canned turkey chili (thank you, TJs) that was edible cold, for our evening meal; I don’t have the stove skills to work around that much wind. One couple had nosed their pickup into the wind and had their stove fired up in the bed of the truck just under the back cover. The flame was still wild.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Please note: if you find yourself in Cortez, Colorado, at dinner time and your wallet is not entirely aplastado,* dine at The Farm Bistro right downtown and you will purr in happiness.
We even shared the restaurant with Osprey backpack folk, there for an employee banquet, and still were exceedingly happy, totally sated, and entirely pleased….
* Flattened/crushed, in Spanish. Also, here’s Osprey’s advice on how to pack your pack….
Posted at 9:42 PM |
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Spider Rock, home of Spider Grandmother/Woman, creator of the world to Puebloan peoples. In White-folk traditions, this is a 750-foot sandstone double-spire.
The light in the desert. Geeze. You venture out early to catch oblique lighting. You wait through the heat of the day when the more direct light flattens the viewscape. Then, in late day, the light gives its gift to photographers and painters once again.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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There’s nothing to give you a sense of scale here (this is a wide view), except if you can see whitish streaks or threads just left of the red rock in the draw to the left. Those streaks are foot-trails. Human hiking trails.
The eye candy of Las Vegas I go for the most is west of town, at Red Rock Canyon in the Mojave Desert. They say canyon, but to me it’s more walls of rock and high outwash plains. The reddest formation meets the gravel of the desert creating a compelling visual boundary.
The red color of the Aztec Sandstone comes from oxidization of iron oxide components; whitish layers either didn’t originally have the iron oxide, or it has leached away.
Posted at 10:22 PM |
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Different day, different view, different time, different light.
Excitement of the day…was when a California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) soared just over our heads at one of the vista views, using the gusts coming up the cliff-face at our feet. (We could see clearly the two tags, one on each wing, shown in a photo in the WikiPee entry….)
Posted at 8:51 PM |
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