Dog Canyon Camp

Catherine took Leah to Albuquerque for an academic competition this past weekend. Leah took second in the state!

Since the girls were gone, I hopped on the motorcycle and made the trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park - on the north side, just across the state line there is a remote (very) campground. 

It was a nice enough get away, but I was actually under the weather and should have stayed home. Oh well, this is what I got.

For those of you wondering - that is my tent down low towards the left. That thing has served me well, that is the tent I bought when Catherine and I first got married so we could camp up in Nicolet, Wisconsin.

Cheers,

Marc

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everybody!

We made our way home from Payson, Arizona today. We drove through the Tonto National Forest. The wildflowers were blooming, so we stopped a couple of times along the way to snap some photos. This one was a random pull out that I think captures the juxtaposition of dry/wet, desert/succulent that was so prevalent on our trip. This one was a hillside covered in yellow flowers with saguaro cacti; other hills were covered in blue flowers with the saguaros. It was quite the sight to see!

Cheers,

Marc

Saguaro sunrise

I got up a bit earlier than normal to go check out the west unit of the Saguaro National Park for a sunrise - the east unit (closer to where we stayed) was tucked up pretty tight against the Rincon Mountains, I knew it would be a challenge to get direct light early enough. 

Sadly, no one wanted to come with me. It was a nice little trip from the hotel, 30-40 minutes along a twisty road. The photo above and the one below are just a couple of feet from each other, but pointed in the opposite direction. Since we had basically a full moon, I tried to capture that between the arms of a saguaro cactus. The light to the east was also very pretty!

I drove the remainder of the loop after the first two photos. Earlier on the sun was quite low, so it produced some great backlighting effects.

It didn't take too long for the sun to climb high enough to make the light uninteresting on the close-up scale, but I found this little hill overlooking the road that I thought turned out pretty nice.

We just finished dinner at Flagstaff. The mountains still have snow here, it should dip well below freezing tonight. We'll do some local exploring - I had thought about going to Sedona, but we got detoured today and dealing with traffic does not appeal...NM might have ruined me!

Cheers,

Marc

Saguaro National Park

With the Bataan Memorial Death March out of the way and a move in the very near future, we decided to get out to see what Arizona had to offer. 

We picked up the kids after school and hustled over to Tucson. We got there pretty much just in time to catch a sunset at Saguaro National Park.

I think everyone enjoyed the sights - they all broke their phones out to snap some photos.

Leah found a nice little perch here at Javelina Rocks (below - her site was hidden just to the right of the photo).

We were treated with a pretty little sunset - literally minutes after we arrived.

We'll start making our way north tomorrow to do some more exploring. Cheers!

Marc

Milky Way Arch

I learned some valuable lessons shooting this. Overall, I am very happy with the Milky Way arching over the satellite dish, but the camera cropped out the ground (my fault, in-camera setting that I didn't know I had set).

I'd love to go back and take another crack at this.

Marc

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument

Leah and I got an early start (more on that later). We got back to the hotel in time to wake up Catherine and Ian and catch a breakfast. We then drove about an hour north and east from Socorro to visit the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument - a string of 3 Pueblo settlements with some Spanish Missions.

First was Abo. We had the place to ourselves, even the visitor center was closed.

Next up was Quirai. There was a nice overlook with snow-covered mountains in the background.

Afterwards we did Gran Quiriva. We went back the way we came to have a nice lunch in Mountainair at the Shaffer Hotel. All in all, it was a nice day tracking down some sites that I passed on my way to White Sands that I wanted to more fully explore. Mission accomplished.

Now to the early start. Socorro is about an hour from the Very Large Array, which I have been past several times now. I knew it was a dark sky location and we wouldn't have to contend with moonlight washing out the stars.

So we loaded up and made the drive. As in my previous trip, it was COLD. We left Socorro at about 40*F and it was 21*F at the VLA.

Cheers,

Marc

Box Canyon, NM

For our first vacation in what feels like forever (yay - Bataan is done!) we drove north to Socorro, NM. The winds were ripping, but that didn't stop us.

This little canyon will get a visit early tomorrow morning to see the Milky Way core, assuming the clouds cooperate. For today, Leah and I hiked up from the arroyo floor. Catherine and Ian walked down the arroyo - we found them from our perch up high.

Afterwards, Leah and I went to explore a cave on the opposite wall of the canyon. Along the way, we found this weird tree made out of rocks - at least, we think it looks like a tree.

We got snowed on shortly after this photo. It was still 50 or so where we were, it was just cold enough at altitude to give us some snow. New Mexico really is a strange (enchanting?) place.

Cheers,

Marc