Category: Travel

Travel Photo Challenge Day 4 Christmas And The Continental Divide

Timothy Price51 Comments

Christmas 2020 sunset

One reason I don’t generally do photo challenges is that life in real-time is so much more interesting than the challenges. For Day 4 of the Travel Photo Challenge, I am starting off with four photos that are less than four hours old from when I took them to when I’m posting them. To help maintain proper social distancing, and keep things nice and airy, we celebrated Christmas with family outside this afternoon. We had two fire pits and two space heaters spread out to keep us warm.

I’m not featuring another photography today, I will resume with a featured photographer tomorrow. My Day 4 Travel Photography is from December 2009 when Laurie and I hiked on a short portion of the Continental Divide Trail west of Cuba, New Mexico.

The landscape was not as exciting as the badlands, except we could see Cabazon looking to the southeast. Cabazon is the largest of 50 volcanic formations in the Rio Puerco valley between the Jemez Mountains to the northeast and Mount Taylor to the southwest. Mount Tayler is a large volcano that stands at 11,305 ft (3,446 m) above sea level. Jemez Mountains has Valle Grande, a large 13.7-mile (22.0 km) wide volcanic caldera with a high point at 11,253-foot (3,430 m) above sea level. Cabazon stands 1,100 feet above the valley floor. The top of Cabazon is 8,000 feet above Sea Level.

The Continental Divide Trail is a 3100 mi (4989 km) trail between Chihuahua and Alberta. The continental divide snakes its way up the western side of New Mexico, through Colorado, heads northwest across Wyoming, along the border between Idaho and Montana, and then up the western edge of Montana. Runoff and rivers on the western side of the continental divide flow into the Pacific Ocean. Runoff and rivers on the eastern side of the continental divide flow into the Atlantic Ocean.

We celebrated Christmas outside and kept warm with fire pits and space heaters.

A Christmas bunny dropped by to wish us seasons greetings.

Jupiter & Saturn on December 25, 2020.

Looking SE from the Continental Divide Trail at Cabazon and another large volcanic plug in the distance. December 2009.

Travel Photo Challenge Day 2 Mesa Verde

Timothy Price48 Comments

Saturn is slowly making a circle around Jupiter. December 23, 2020.

My favorite photographer for today is Julie at Frog Pond Farm, https://frogpondfarm.co.nz/, in Waimauku, West Auckland, Newzealand. I have followed Julie for many years. She is a lovely person, a successful farmer, and a wonderful photographer. Frog Pond Farm is about as close to paradise as one can get.

For day 2 of the travel photo challenge, I present you with a lot of photos of Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado near the New Mexican border. We went to a Native Plant Society convention in August 2008 in Farmington, New Mexico near the four corners where New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah meet. The session we had signed up for was canceled at the last minute, so we drove up to Mesa Verde and spent a wet afternoon exploring the cliff dwellings. If you are afraid of heights, cliffs, steep climbs, and sheer drops, then Mesa Verde is not a place you want to visit.

The introduction on the Nationa Park Service website reads: “Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 to preserve and interpret the archeological heritage of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from 600 to 1300 CE. Today, the park protects nearly 5,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. These sites are some of the most notable and best preserved in the United States.” See https://www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm.

 

 

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Travel Photo Challenge Day 1 Breaking the Chain

Timothy Price51 Comments

Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas.

Joni at Rum and Robots nominated me to be part of a travel photo challenge. I normally do not participate in WordPress awards and challenges. However, since this is travel photo related, I thought it would be a good opportunity to post some old travel photos. What I gathered from the challenge, is to do at least one travel photo every day and nominate another blogger to participate in the challenge each day for 10 days. In other words a chain blog.

I am going to post travel photos from the past since covid cooties did not allow us to travel as planned this year. I’m am also going to post the link to a photographer I follow each day, but it’s so you can visit their sites and see what kind of travels they have been up to. Otherwise, the Chain Breaks Here. I’m not nominating or challenging anyone to participate.

The first photographer I’m giving mention to is Bruce Welton. Bruce is our main programmer at the office. He has appeared in various forms on this blog over the years. However, with the demise of downtown, and the fact that he works from home during the covid crises, we have not done any downtown photos together in a long time. But alas, Bruce has been making day trips around New Mexico and has done wonderful photos of some of the places he’s visited. You can see photos of his day trips on his Echoes of Eden blog at http://www.brucewelton.com/category/day-trips/

Day 1 includes photos of Concordia Cemetery in El Paso, Texas. We went to a Native Plants Society convention in El Paso in 2004. Before we headed home, we stopped by the cemetery and had a look around. At the end of this post are photos a Christine’s new young cottonwood tree.

You can read about the Buffalo Soldiers on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Soldier

Richard Ramirez slept here. I read that Richard Ramirez (serial killer) lived in a house across the street from Concordia Cemetery when he was young. He often slept in the cemetery, and one of his favorite places to sleep was said to be John Wesley Hardin’s grave.

Back to the present, Christine who has Before Sundown had laid claim to a tree in the bosque about 1/2 mile north of Beaver Point. Since the cranes have been roosting south at 4th of July Point, I haven’t walked north for quite a while, so poor Christine’s tree has been ignored. Christine, who loves sunsets, asked if she could lay claim to a young cottonwood by the levee that’s on my way to Beaver Point, therefore, I walk by it every time I go to Beaver Point. Christine’s new tree is in a great spot for sunsets, and tonight had a decent sunset.

Christine’s Tree, young cottonwood on the right, looking east with the Sandia’s in the background.

Looking west with cololful clouds at sunset.

A panorama of the wild sky radiating from Christine’s Tree.

Desertscapes

Timothy Price15 Comments
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On the way to Payson, AZ

These are a series of desertscapes on our way home from Gila Bend, AZ. There is smoke hanging in the hills from controlled burns.

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North of Gila Bend, AZ

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North of Gila Bend, AZ
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The smoke and the early morning sun make the hills look like paper cutouts.

On The Brink

Timothy Price36 Comments

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Last Friday night we went to the San Diego Maritime Museum. They have a Soviet Foxtrot B-39 diesel-electric attack submarine on display in the harbor. There were videos about the Cuban Missle Crises, with details of what went on in the submarine from Soviet archives that were uncovered in a meeting in Cuba in 2002. The submarine is 300 feet long. We entered at the front torpedo tubes, and as we walked back towards the “After Torpedo Room” to the exit, the submarine went on and on and on.

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View climbing up from the After Torpedo Room.