My favorite people

What a way to close out July - what a day!

Today was an early start for a brew day, making an Irish Red. I brew out in the garage, so getting an early start to avoid the heat of the day is how I do it. I opened the garage doors to get some airflow, which is how I noticed the sky fire - the clouds were bright orange and pink in the east. I heard a little rumble of thunder to the west, so I took a look there, and ran to grab my camera. This rainbow disappeared a minute or two after taking my photo. True to form, Catherine really is the rainmaker - it might be raining here more than it did in Maryland!

My brew day was relatively uneventful - which is a good thing. I took a nice nap after lunch, and then Catherine, Leah, and I drove to El Paso to pick up our new glasses. We all got prescription sunglasses which is super nice in the desert.

It was time for dinner when we got home, and I decided I wanted to play with my camera again, so I broke out some flashes and went to work.

The set up and tear down took longer than the photo shoots. It took me a bit of time to dial in the lights, but once I did, the photos went quickly.

No doubt these are my favorite people - for quick photos, I think they turned out well and may be my favorites so far for this year.

Cheers!

Marc

Rainbows and Monsoons in the Desert

We had quite the storm a week ago, with a flash flood/landslide that closed the road to Las Cruces for 3 days. We had high winds and hard rain for a couple of hours, and on/off hail. It really was an impressive storm. There was a motorcyclist who took refuge under an overpass, but since it was low lying, it was filled up with sand and silt. The motorcyclist abandoned his motorcycle (he got out), but it was buried up to the handlebars in mud/sand/silt.

I was planning to go for a bike ride this morning, but it was raining. I looked out the window and saw this magnificent rainbow. I snapped a couple of photos, but the vantage from the backyard is not that great. So I loaded up in the car and drove 2 minutes to another location with unobstructed views of the Organ Mountains. This is what I saw.

I stayed for about 20 minutes grabbing photos as the light and rain changed, but this is probably my favorite. The rainbow lasted about 45 minutes, it was really pretty cool.

Cheers,

Marc

New Mexico Road Trip!

With Christina visiting, and the long 4th of July weekend here, we all decided to take a road trip through south-central New Mexico.

We started with a drive to Cloudcroft, complete with stops at the White Sands National Park visitor's center (get park coins for Leah and a sun hat for Catherine), at the Fresnal Creek tunnel view in Lincoln National Forest, a country store to pick up knick knacks and some food, and the Mexican Canyon trestle just below Cloudcroft.

We ate at a great barbecue place in Cloudcroft - we got there about 1130 and the line was already outside. Thankfully, they also have a food truck, which is where we picked up our lunch. From there, we drove north to Ruidoso, the Gatlinburg of the Sacramento mountains. We continued north until we drove down out of the mountains, chased by thunderstorms. We made our way to Valley of Fires, a BLM recreation area technically on the northern edge of White Sands Missile Range. It is an old lava flow where the cacti and other plants are slowly taking over.

It rained a tiny bit on us here - not even a drizzle - but it felt great compared to the mild heat of the desert floor.

Catherine found us a very nice Mexican restaurant in Tularosa, with some fantastic chips and salsa! We continued south towards home, which we were having a good bit of rain when we arrived.

We even had a complete, double rainbow, which was pretty cool.

Happy Independence Day!

Marc