Happy New Year!

From the Skinners in New Mexico - we wish you a happy, healthy, and blessed new year!

Cheers!

Marc

Cloudcroft Trip

We took a trip to Cloudcroft this past weekend for a short get away.

We drove up Friday night, enjoyed the pizza at the Cloudcroft Brewery, and then headed to our cabin.

It was a pretty little secluded place, and we had snow Saturday morning with a dusting of accumulation, enough to make the roads a bit treacherous.

I took advantage of the cabin to set up my lights and snap some photos of my favorite people.

Cheers!

Marc

Driving through the years

I took the kids for their first real driving lesson this weekend, which spurred a trip down memory lane (see what I did there?).

I wasn't really looking for these photos, but stumbled across this one and went looking for more.

We started off driving to the nearest parking lot, and just practiced starts, stops, and low speed turns.

We did that for about 30 minutes, which let the kids get the feel of the car and how it handles, while getting comfortable behind the wheel without other distractions.

We then did some driving around the neighborhood area, again, about 30 minutes.

Once they were getting comfortable with the 15-25 mph range, we headed out into the desert with a theoretical 55 mph limit. Neither kid went much above 45, which was just fine by me. We had the roads completely to ourselves!

I know it is cliche to say that time flies or that the kids grow up fast...but it is true!

Cheers,

Marc

City of Rocks State Park - camping with Ian

Ian asked to go camping - so I picked this weekend and we went to City of Rocks State Park, about two hours away from here. Leah didn't want to go and Catherine had a scrapbooking thing, so it was just the boys.

We went to Sparky's for lunch - I don't think either of us would ever pass up Sparky's! From there, we took the scenic route through the Gila National Forest. I forgot how awesome that road is!

I planned this weekend to time it for a new moon - meaning dark skies all night long. Unfortunately, it got more and more cloudy as we got closer. That didn't stop us from taking a little hike to explore the place.

We got back and set up our tent, and I lamented about the weather, thinking that the clouds were too extensive for even a good sunset. Boy was I wrong!

I was cooking dinner, and kept running from the stove to the camera to snap some more photos, the light just kept getting better and better.

The weather app I have said it would clear off near midnight, so we settled in for a strawberry/rhubarb cobbler in the dutch oven, which turned out fantastic.

While that was cooking, the dense clouds magically disappeared, so I could take some dark sky photos. I took some photos of the Cygnus and Gemini constellations, and turned my big lens on to Orion for some (hopefully) better shots of the Orion and Running Man nebulas (top right) and the horse head and the sword and flame nebulas (bottom left). Totally worked!

Unfortunately, the wind picked up a bit in the morning and our canopy was destroyed. It was still relatively new, but had served me well through my Utah trips and through NM. There was no place to stake it out...bummer.

Cheers,

Marc