On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
This series was created by Alain Chamot (1971-2020) as a place to share our adventures and observations, no matter where we are.
Albatrossity
When Watergirl asked me to put together some photos to help jackals stay chill during the election week, I thought it was a brilliant idea. Then I tried to come up with photos, and found it difficult to imagine what images would help others stay calm.
I know what works for me, but I also know I have idiosyncratic tastes! So I tried to have a mix; mostly landscapes, lots of water and reflections, and some critters. Hope you all enjoy them!
Kansas is not known for it’s beautiful fall colors, but prairies in the fall can be gorgeous, especially when combined with a stream, blue sky, and some reflections. This is a creek a few miles north of where I live, in late October a few years ago.
For me personally, beach time is very relaxing. And beaches in the Galápagos even more so, since they are often uninhabited and pristine. This is Cerro Brujo beach on the island of San Cristóbal, with one of our Study Abroad students pondering a swim with the pelicans, sea lions, and Lava Gulls in that aqua-tinted cove.
Coyotes may not make everybody calm, but this lovely girl was watching the sunset at Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, and she looked so peaceful and contemplative that I had to include this shot. I know that Watergirl likes this image too, so this one’s for her!
More fall colors at a local lake near my home in Kansas. Mostly oaks and cottonwoods changing color and reflecting in the almost-still surface of the lake.
This one is for Alain, a shot of the Great Sand Dunes in the foreground and the Sangre de Cristo range in the background. If you look closely you can also see a flock of White-faced Ibises soaring over the scene.
More beach time. This one, in Tulum Mexico, was very relaxing, since beers and margaritas may have been involved. We stayed in a hotel where our back patio door opened up onto this beach. Every evening we would stroll down the beach about a quarter mile to a tiny restaurant with the best paella I have ever consumed. Dinner, beers and/or margaritas later, we would stroll back in the moonlight to our hotel and fall asleep listening to the surf.
Sunset on the Platte River in Nebraska, with reflections of gold and copper, and sounds of Sandhill Cranes coming into the river to roost for the night. I can still hear them in my head, but if you can’t, maybe you should go there sometime in March after the COVID thing is over. It is magical.
This is what many Kansas roadsides look like in August. There is a reason they call it the Sunflower State.
I love this pine tree growing out of a sheer granite dome in Yosemite National Park. It persisted, and it endures. So shall we.
Finally, of course it has to be an Albatross! This glorious creature is a White-capped Albatross, photographed on a spectacular blue-sky/blue ocean day near Stewart Island, south of the South Island of New Zealand. The world could use more Albatrosses. IMHO.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
great pictures. you make a good advocate for road trips through the Great Plains
JanieM
Breathtaking. And so varied! Going from the Sangre de Christo shot to the beach in Mexico made me laugh out loud. I will be coming back to this set again and again.
West of the Cascades
The world could indeed use more albatrosses, and more Albatrossity. Thank you for the magnificent photographs – I’ve only had occasion three times to drive through Kansas and Nebraska, but each time have been struck by the beauty of the prairies and (in Nebraska) the Sand Hills.
arrieve
All wonderful images, but that albatross! Just wow.
I do feel calmer — thanks, WaterGirl!
WaterGirl
I love the picture of the roadside. I did not expect that! Every time I have driven through Kansas it has been at night. Except for the one time during the day when it was so windy I had to grip the steering wheel with all my might just to keep the car on the road. So I surely wasn’t looking at scenery that day!
Lapassionara
These are so amazing! We lived in Kansas for a while, and we made such good friends there. The wheat fields turned green in the fall, after the planting, so the landscape was so lovely. Thank you for posting these.
zhena gogolia
Kansas is very beautiful.
hitchhiker
I once rode a bus across the plains from Michigan to Salt Lake City, in August. The young woman sitting next to me was from Nebraska, and when I asked her what the yellow flowers were, she gave me a look that said, “Are you fucking with me?”
Sunflowers, in my world, are bigger than frisbees. They sit on top of 6 or 7 foot stalks. I’d never seen them growing like Queen Anne’s Lace along the side of the road.
These are conversations you used to have on Greyhound rides, if you were young and going to see a guy you met once because you just couldn’t stand to be in Michigan for another hour.
cope
These definitely hit the “chill” bone. I feel better already, thank you. These are lovely pictures
WaterGirl
@Lapassionara: I keep trying to catch you to see if you got the message I sent you a couple of weeks ago.
VeniceRiley
Kansas is off the list of places to visit. Just don’t feel lesbisafe in the white plains or the south. Love the ‘tross. What a magnificent bird.
J R in WV
OMG these are great photos.
Restful yet challenging.
Thanks!
Inspiring every time…
ETA: Our tiny ranch in Arizona is above a valley with hundreds of thousands of Sandhill Cranes all winter. So the sounds they make, my cousin calls them the flying cocktail party, are with us all the time. So amazing. They ride on and around the center pivot irrigation units, enjoying the spray. Burbling away.
Yutsano
I have a good friend in Lawrence. Maybe when covid is no longer a thing I should try to pop for a visit next fall.
EDIT: I think my Rainier from the sky pictures would work here well.
BigJimSlade
Bravo Albatrossity!!! Perhaps my favorite set yet!
The coyote looks fantastic. We have coyotes around here, we see some early in the mornings roaming the neighborhood, here in the Santa Monica Mountains in the LA area. I’ve lost a couple cats to them when I was a kid (or cat here is indoor-only, but I grew up a few miles away with indoor-outdoor cats), and now as an adult I find myself wanting to appreciate them, but also seeing them as adversaries when they’re in the ‘hood. They grab people’s little dogs sometimes, too. I didn’t expect to find myself feeling so protective, but there it is.
WaterGirl
@BigJimSlade: Albatrossity knows how much I love that coyote because I purchased a copy of her, printed on metal, and she is amazing on the wall of my living room.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano: From up top:
JanieM
@WaterGirl: Have you read Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Prodigal Summer?
If not, and if you love coyotes, you might like the book. It includes a thread of a plotline involving a woman who studies coyotes, and the material Kingsolver uses was taken from real research, which by chance I had read about in (IIRC) Audubon magazine a couple of years before the novel came out. Kingsolver credits the researcher in her acknowledgments.
WaterGirl
@JanieM: I don’t know that I LOVE coyotes, but I certainly love that one!
I read many of Kingsolver’s novels, but at some point she shifted gears and her stuff was no longer of interest to me.
Animal Dreams is one of my favorite books.
Toni Tadolini
What a lovely collection of beautiful and calming photos. Thank you!
WaterGirl
Thanks, Albatrossity, for being our first Election Respite poster. It had to be you – it’s Monday!
Auntie Anne
Thank you, Albatrossity. Looking at the beach at Galapagos, well, it was the first time I felt calm this evening.
SkyBluePink
What a wonderfully varied collection of calm!
Beautiful photos, Albatrossity – as usual.
Mary G
Two Albatrossity posts makes this horrible Monday better. I could feel my blood pressure dropping as I looked at them. The pine growing out of the granite reminds me of all the good times I’ve had around Big Bear Lake and in the Angeles Crest forests, and of course, of Liz Warren. Democratic ideas are alive, growing, and changing, while the rock is set where it landed.
BigJimSlade
@WaterGirl: 😃😃
Benw
You’re a picture wizard.
stinger
Remarkable photos all. I can count the tiny raindrops on that albatross. Thank you!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@BigJimSlade: Our cats are indoor only too since we moved to this property about 10 years ago, after losing a lot of cats in a couple of years (some barn cats), but I can’t hate the coyotes, who are just trying to make a living like everyone else. Besides, we had a trail cam for a while and we also have bobcats and once a puma was filmed, so who knows who the cat gourmet is. I’ve always been fond of the coyote description by the Navaho, who call it “God’s Dog”.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
The photos are wonderful. The photo of the Platte river is magical. I would love to hear the Sandhill cranes. Maybe in a couple of years?
Geminid
Thank-you! Beautiful photos. The Great Sand Dunes are near Alamosa, CO. A great town to visit! Plenty of flat walking, on the sidewalks or in the park along the Rio Grande. A large bird sanctuary a few miles from town, and a very large one 25 miles north, adjacent to the Great Sand Dunes. Alamosa has a Crane Festival in April.
Albatrossity
Thanks, all. I appreciate the kind words, and I really appreciate the feeling that these images may be helpful in keeping blood pressures down and spirits up.
I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of this series. Thanks, Watergirl, for this great idea!
Dagaetch
Beautiful photos Albatrossity; I didn’t have Kansas on my list of ‘places to go with my camera’, but I guess now it is! Thanks for sharing so many of your images with us jackals.
waynel140
I’ve been to Kansas. It didn’t look like that. I don’t have the eye. Magnificent photography. I’m in awe.