Road Trip, part 3

I have lost track of days - we made it to Dad and Pam's place in Florida, where we started the family part of the great road trip. 

We toured some of the newer parts of The Villages and took a couple of nice walks - as well as enjoyed the dining opportunities! Unfortunately, I did not think to get any family photos : (

Cheers,

Marc

Road Trip, day 2

Another 9 hours or so on the road yesterday, those make for long days in the car!

We drove through some rain, which coming from the desert these past 2 years (and working about a mile from home) made for a different experience. We stopped in Covington, just north of New Orleans. Catherine found us a nice restaurant to have some authentic Louisiana food.

Cheers,

Marc

ROAD TRIP!!!!!

We are officially on the road, in between duty stations. I had my change of command yesterday, and we hit the road right after it. 

We are headed to Joint Base Lewis-McChord . . . again. Though we ARE headed to the completely opposite corner of America before we go there.

I'll keep a running map going until we arrive - probably throw some photos in for good measure. We will be stopping along the way to see family and friends, but need to get Leah to Dallas for her academic competition. She is representing New Mexico for biotechnology.

Cheers,

Marc

Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument under stars

I almost forgot to post about my camping trip to Aguirre Springs!

So after my City of Rocks camping trip, I came home for one night which turned out to be a great idea due to torrential rains.

I loaded up the van for a little trip just up the mountains to Aguirre Springs. I had my eye on this gnarled, old tree as a potential backdrop for the Milky Way. The skies are nowhere near as dark here as they are at City of Rocks, so the Milky Way is a bit harder to pull from photos, but I am overall still pretty pleased with how these turned out.

I even turned around and photographed the mountains to the west without any hint of the Milky Way.

I am going to miss these mountains!

Marc

It's Milky Way Season

Not only is it Milky Way (galactic core) season, but it was a new moon and I was enjoying one last camping trip before we leave New Mexico.

I went back to City of Rocks State Park south and east of Silver City, north and west of Deming. If I took the "direct" route, it would be 2-2.5 hours to get there, but I took the scenic route complete with detours, so I got in a bit late. 

Early enough to set up my tent and go into town for dinner, though I got rained on during my return trip and more a bit after I got back. Just enough to make me retreat into my tent...but this is the desert, so the rain didn't last long and dried up pretty quickly.

Shortly after midnight I got up and had a great time wandering through the monoliths and taking photos of the Milky Way. The green skies are from "airglow" not Photoshop and not northern lights. While I didn't see that with my naked eyes, it certainly showed up on my camera screen after every shot - kind of cool!

Cheers,

Marc

Bisti/De-Na-Zin

After our daytime scouting trip the day before, I used my knowledge of the lay of the land to go take some Milky Way photos.

I am still learning on that front - I would have centered the hoodoos in the foreground a bit better, if I had known. Not only is it quite the process to bring all these photos together (the stars are 8-shots each, stacked and 7 shots across; the foreground was another 7 shots across that all had to be mooshed together in Photoshop, but I had to "find" them in the pitch black.

Getting to the location was not terribly difficult since we had scouted the area the day before. That said, this area is REMOTE and DARK. I have a pretty good idea of where I was, but there is no chance I'd be able to get back to this same spot in the dark - I'd be lucky to find this in the daylight!

Cheers,

Marc

Los Poblanos Inn & Bisti/De-Na-Zin Badlands

We're on another road trip. This time we hit the road as soon as Leah got back from school on Friday and made our way to Los Poblanos Inn in Albuquerque. We stayed there on our way home from the Grand Canyon back in 2014. We remembered it as very comfortable - and we weren't wrong.

We started Saturday with a nice brunch at the farmhouse at the Inn, did a bit of shopping, then hit the road for Bisti/De-Na-Zin, a remote little corner in the middle of nowhere northern New Mexico.

It was a 1.5 mile hike or so from the parking lot to the Alien Egg Hatchery with no real trail to follow.

It was a mostly level hike, not too strenuous. I am really glad Catherine and the kids came with me.

Cheers,

Marc