Thursday, May 21, 2015

Pine City

I hiked the Pine City trail in Joshua Tree NP earlier this week.  The landscape features an appealing combination of rocks, pinyon pines, junipers, cactus, and flowers at this time of year.  It's easy to see why artists are attracted to the desert.  The stark lines of the landscape...the clarity of the skies...and the hardy perseverance of the desert plants are inspirational.

Abstract art is easy to create in the desert.  You can boil things down to basic elements...rock, sky.

Along the trail were many fishhook barrel cactus with striking magenta spines.  Some had a few flowers blooming.  Blow up the pic and get immersed in the cactus.

A forest of spines.

California goldfields blooming out of the rock.

Blow up this pic and maybe you can see some of the dozens of bees that were tripping out on this blooming yucca.

A diligent bee works a prickly pear flower.

Rock

The Lizards, thriving in their natural habitat, getting abstract.

Rocks and pinyon pines.

A fine prickly pear flower with stylish red trim.

Seam in rock.  Could be a picture at MOMA.

Boulders and pinyon branches.  This area has many pleasant shady nooks among the pines.  It's a good place to hang out.  Some people were camped in the vicinity...very nice spot for it.

This little pincushion cactus sported a fine set of spines and flowers about to bloom.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Trees Frozen in Time

I visited Petrified Forest National Park last weekend...fifth NP of the trip.  Here's the Painted Desert in the northern part of the park.  After two weeks of remarkable light caused by unsettled weather ranging from thunderstorms to snow, it was actually kind of a downer to have a clear, sunny day.  Not nearly as interesting as black, looming clouds or snow dappled landscapes.

These badlands are littered with wood.  The wood was part of living trees 220 million years ago, in the Triassic era.  Blow up the pic and you can see chunks of wood all over the place.  They are, of course, petrified...buried in mud, over the eons the wood was replaced with silica which, amazingly, hardened into rock with almost perfect likenesses of the vanished wood.

The badlands in the park show a fine variety of shapes and colors.

It appears these chunks came right off someones firewood pile last week.  But they're solid rock...220 million years old!

Badland buttresses.  Much of the rock in the park is very soft sandstone or conglomerate.  It wears away at a fast rate geologically, exposing pieces of petrified wood which are swept into the gullies and out onto the alluvial plains.

Many pieces show tree rings very clearly.

The badlands of Mordor.

The Lizards are standing on the old wood, channeling their Triassic ancestors who walked in the prehistoric forests.

Great tree rings and beautiful crystal colors are common in Petrified Forest.  Didn't read anything about the types of trees these were, but much of the bark looks very similar to that of modern day redwoods.

One of the largest logs in the park.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Journey to Santa FE

On Friday I journeyed to Santa Fe.  I decided to take a side trip via Cumbres and La Manga passes, a more scenic route than the straight shot down 285 from Alamosa.  I suspected I would get some snow over the passes, and I did...here it's coming down hard, but at about 9000 feet the road was just wet.  Over and between the two passes, a little over 10 thousand MSL, it was a different story; the road was covered with slush and several inches of snow were on the ground, with more falling.  I made it OK, going in low gear at 20 MPH most of the time...but if I had known how snowy it was I would have chosen an alternate route.  And of course this all went down on May 15.

Echo Amphitheatre, about 65 miles NW of Santa Fe.  Stroll to the mouth of the hole in the rock and it really is a fine echo chamber.

Fine colored rocks at the amphitheatre.  This is only a few miles from Ghost Ranch, where Georgia O'Keeffe spent many years of her life. I wanted to go to the ranch but the roads are all dirt...mud on this day...and with rain pouring down and having dodged a bullet going over the snowy passes I didn't want to press my luck.

Below the snowline, thunderstorms crackled.  One bolt of lightning hit very close to my car!  The result was fine mammatus near Espanola.  The stormy weather of the last two weeks has been PERFECT for dramatic photographs.

The Plaza in Santa Fe.  This place has been a center of activity for 400 years.

Typical Santa Fe architecture.

The courtyard of the New Mexico Museum of Art.

The same courtyard an hour later.   More snow!

This dramatic weather picture is...a painting.  At the art museum.

The falling snow dappled a sculpture with flecks of white.

The weather adds to the art.  The surreal streaks were devised by no human mind...they are trickles of water running down the wall as the snow melts.

A cool Santa Fe scene...check out the brightly painted pillars.  Art is everywhere here.  And one can see why...the clear air, turbulent weather, and colorful rock formations are all conducive to inspiration and creativity.

San Miguel Mission...the oldest church in the US.  It was built about the same time as the Palace of the Governors here...around 1610.

There is a museum inside the Palace.  Included is this stagecoach from the 1850s.  A rough, cramped, dangerous mode of travel indeed.  A far cry from cruising the interstates in my Solara.  Even cattle car plane travel is comfy in comparison!  We really are spoiled, living in the first world in the 21st century.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

GREAT Sand Dunes

I journeyed south from Denver today, and passed the Huerfano County courthouse in Walsenburg.

The Spanish Peaks from central Walsenburg.  Colorado is pretty much the virga capital of the nation, and it results in good photo ops.

The Great Sand Dunes, in the San Luis Valley, backed by the Sangre de Cristos.

Medano Creek fronts the dunes.  During my last visit here, in mid or late summer about 30 years ago, the creek was fitful, and dried up about a mile upstream from this point.  Today it was flowing robustly.

Abstract dunes.  It appears tranquil in this pic, but a chilly southwest wind was howling 25-35 mph.  You couldn't sit down on the dune...you'd get sand in your face!

I've enjoyed great light for photography for over a week now.  It continued today.

Dune drama late in the day.

A Departure from Spring

I was visiting friends in the Denver suburb of Centennial last weekend.  As anyone who has spent a lot of time in Denver knows, snow can fall at any time between Labor Day and Memorial Day.  (And it can be warm and sunny any day of the year).  So, 5 1/2 inches of snow on May 10 was not a shock.  Dawn revealed a landscape with soft edges and muffled sounds.  Really quite tranquil.  Nobody chillin' in the chaise lounges.

Thinking back, this was the biggest snowfall I have experienced since I left Denver 25 years ago!  And my car has never experienced anything like it...I've had the Solara since January 2008.

Inside my Solara it was actually kinda cozy, with the deep snow blanket letting in a soft light.

The Lizards, however, were floundering.  Here they are standing on the top of my car.

One of the prettiest results of fresh snow is the shroud of white it deposits on trees and branches.  The opportunities for abstract photos are endless.  Blow up the pic for the best detail.

Though this was a May snowfall, it was not a slushfest.  The temperature dropped into the upper 20s with strong north winds, and a bit of fairly dry snow blew under my friends' patio roof and covered some cushions.

This tree was already fully leafed out when it received its cloak of snow.

Tulips were buried.

Later in the morning...the sun is out.  This snow won't last long.  Most of it was gone by dusk...the rest vanished the following day.  The tulips and trees have recovered.  The snow fell Saturday night and Sunday morning...by Tuesday the temperature reached 70...normal for the date.  If you want to see dynamic weather, Denver's the place!

A small remnant of snow persists on a budding blue spruce...the state tree of Colorado.