More Old Friends

ORMOND BEACH, FL - - First, a correction to yesterday's blog: the birds pictured are sand pipers, not skimmers. On Sunday, the flights of brown pelicans were quite numerous. Above, the leader and below, the followers.
Of course, if you are out walking on the beach you are sure to come across seashells. In some areas, the tides washed up more than in others.

We run into some friends at the beach

ORMOND BEACH, FL - - Early Sunday morning we packed the cameras and headed out...to the beach. The beach is just over one mile from our house, but that parking area was full of vehicles from the surf crowd. One mile up the beach we found an almost empty parking area. There were three folks watching the sunrise. One, who was wielding a long lens, tipped us to wait a few minutes and the birds would arrive.

First up were The Three Skimmers: Moe, Larry and Curley. Below: A Snowy Egret wades in the outgoing surf...and forgets there's an incoming wave. Surprise!!

More Retro, circa 2005

Some days and places were just made for hiking. (Yoho National Park near Field, British Columbia, Canada). And the folks? you meet on the trail are quite friendly. (Hoary Marmot, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada). Both shots are from a trip we took in 2005.

Recap #1

ORMOND BEACH, FL - - So, it's been a week since we got home and there hasn't been much going on: Unload, unpack, try and find the things that were packed up before we left. I confess I have a talent for putting things I'll need away in a 'safe place' before we leave and can never seem to find them when we get back. anyway, here are 3 pics which never made the blog.

Above: Stormy afternoon, about 4 p.m., in Leadville, CO.
Red Mountain mining area on the way out of Ouray, CO. This may be (or may not be) Yankee Girl Mile
Great name for a restaurant and saloon...in Silverton, CO

Gettin' close

CHIPLEY, FL - - Rain, rain and more rain. It's been following us for the past two and a half days. Not that the scenery was anything to take pics of. Anyway from Shawnee, OK we rolled on into Vicksburg, MS and tonight it's Chipley, FL. We're about 350 miles from OB and should be there sometime late tomorrow afternoon.

Halfway there...on Rt. 66

SHAWNEE, OK - - It rained most of the day in our 460 mile interstate run from Santa Rosa, NM to Shawnee. Along the way, as we have for the past three years, we stopped in Adrian, TX. There's not much there except an old grain elevator, an antique store which has great BBQ and was the real reason for our slight detour, and the MidPoint Cafe.

Adrian began in 1900 as a spot on the map denoting a survey station. In 1909 there were enough people in the area to name the place Adrian after a local farmer. The 2000 census noted 159 people in Adrian. The population is still about the same, said one of the folks in the MidPoint Cafe, where we ate lunch. "Only most of them are in the cemetery now," he told us. The MidPoint survives as another Rt. 66 icon. The cafe bills itself that way on the menu, with a sign outside, and with an ad in the "Route 66 Pulse" as the halfway point of Rt. 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles. The free publication bills itself as "The heartbeat of America's mother road."

Since the BBQ place was closed we had lunch at the MidPoint

Still the same old place

SANTA ROSA, NM - - I was in Silverton, CO nearly 25 years ago doing a feature story on a U.S.-based German motorcycle tour operator hosting a group of German riders. This tough tour of duty allowed me two weeks of riding and sightseeing.

Surprisingly, the town of Silverton has changed little in that time. The main drag is still paved...and all the side streets aren't. The big deal in town is still the before-Noon arrival of the Durango & Silverton train carrying tourists for a two hour layover before heading back down the narrow gauge tracks to Durango. The coal-fed steam locomotive might even be one of those doing the work way back when. In any case, the train still makes a nice pic. Note the gray sky to the top left. That's not haze, but snow in the air. It was the direction we were heading when we left town.

Lil Blue gets a record

OURAY, CO - - We spent last night in Leadville, CO, in a nice motel. Unfortunatley, the wi-fi that worked so good with the folks who had MS Word, didn't work at all with our Apple/Mac laptops. So, no blog. This morning we had the first frost of the trip on Lil Blue. The 7am morning sunrise illuminatest the dusting of fresh snow on the mountains in the background.
On our way to Ouray we took a shortcut (read: winding back road with 10mph switchbacks which went up and up and up and then down and down and down...into Aspen) which took us over Independence Pass. The 12,095 elevation was a new record for our Honda Element in the 'how high can you go' category and was also higher than any place we had been hiking during the summer.

Not enough action

SARATOGA, WY - - This stern looking animal is the "guard dog" at our motel in Saratoga. The sad truth is that 'Arthur' is too fat to run very far, very fast and he's too friendly to really do much good. I imagine he practices his 'don't mess with me' look to scare the neighborhood cats away. They probably tease him about hitting the food bowl every chance he can.

Wide open spaces

SARATOGA, WY - - On our 320 mile drive from Cody to Saratoga we passed through a lot of wide open spaces. This overlook has a vista of a portion of the Wind River Indian Reservation with the Wind River Mountains to the left (out of the photo). This was after a winding drive through the Wind River Canyon alongside the Big Horn River. Which leads to an interesting fact: The estimated 2007 population of the 97,914 square miles in the state of Wyoming is 522,830. Volusia County, FL, where we live, has an estimated population of 517,000 in 1,103 square miles. So there it is...either people stepping on each others toes or having so much space that you could probably walk for days in some area without seeing another soul.