On The Road

frosty

Canyonlands: Southern Utah near Moab. We stayed at Dead Horse Point State Park.

Not a big surprise, but this is a park with a lot of overlooks of canyons. It’s a park where if you want to get away from the main scenic drive to down into the canyons you’ll need a 4×4 … and not our Jeep Grand Cherokee. Something with some real clearance, off-road tires, and a spare tire lashed to the roof along with a couple of jerrycans and some water.

There are four sections to the park, Island in the Sky near Moab (which we went to), Needles, about 100 miles to the south, The Maze, which is only accessible by aforesaid 4x4s, and the rivers (Green and Colorado) with some Class V rapids inaccessible from land.

On The Road – frosty – Canyonlands National ParkPost + Comments (11)

frosty

Capitol Reef: Southern Utah, not near anything, really. We lucked into a Forest Service campground without reservations.

We spent a day in Capitol Reef, taking a couple of short hikes, driving the Scenic Road, and heading down a couple of dirt roads to see some areas that aren’t visible from the pavement.

The park is named after two features: A dome of rock that looks like the Capitol (First picture) and a 100-mile long series of cliffs and rock formations that was a barrier to travel, which the pioneers called a reef (Second Picture).

But as far as our travels were concerned, we had a big oops. We arrived and pulled into Fruita Campground at Capitol Reef NP, where I made reservations last December. We drove to our site and there was someone else’s name on the post at the site … wha? I checked my emails and … we were reserved for JUNE 27th, not MAY 27th!

We figured we’d have to be boondocking since it was Thursday before Memorial Day and everyone was booked solid. There was a Forest Service campground a few miles away where we could fill up the water tank. We talked to the camp host even though all the sites were occupied or reserved, and she who allowed that in seven years only one camper had ever used the handicapped site, so she let us set up there. So, we ended up dry camping in a nice site in a Ponderosa Pine forest. Not too bad.

On The Road – frosty – Capitol Reef National ParkPost + Comments (16)

Happy Monday!  We have another week of frosty.  We return to our regular scheduling next week.

frosty

Bryce: Southern Utah, close to Zion. We stayed at Bryce Canyon Village.

We spent two unplanned days at Bryce Canyon. I had thought we would spend our time in the area at Grand Staircase, which we hadn’t been to before, but there were very few hikes within our capability close to where we were staying. So we opted for Bryce, which we’d seen briefly in 2004 on a cross-country trip with our boys.

We skipped the most popular scenic stops the first day, drove to Rainbow Point at the end of the park drive and hiked the Bristlecone Trail. On the way back we made stops at Bryce Point and Inspiration Point. On our second day, we unloaded the eBikes, rode five miles in, locked them up at popular and busy Sunset Point and hiked down to Wall Street, a slot canyon among the hoodoos. 0.3 miles, 500 feet down … and then back up.

On The Road – frosty – Bryce Canyon National ParkPost + Comments (11)

Steve from Mendocino

There has been some interest in before and after comparisons of photo editing so I thought I’d post a simple series taken from my post regarding collaboration with Janie.  The first of the two images will be the photo as it comes directly from the camera, altered only to fit the file parameters required by Balloon Juice.  The second will be the edited version of the same shot.

These appeared in the 8/24 post titled My Collaboration with JanieM

On The Road – Steve from Mendocino – Photos Before and After EditingPost + Comments (15)

Dan B

Friends invited us to go camping with them at a State Park on the Hood Canal just a few miles southeast of the Olympic Mountains, locally called The Olympics. This is at the southwest corner of the Kitsap Peninsula.

We were excited, especially since we were a ‘bit’ rusty, not having gone camping for a couple decades.

It was timed to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. We found a neighbor to feed the cats and water the many vegetables and flowers in containers and unearthed loads of backpacking equipment that had never been used. It seemed many times we’d never get it together but we did, for the most part.

On The Road – Dan B – The Other OlympicsPost + Comments (12)

BillinGlendaleCA

This was supposed to be a short morning hike from the Victory Blvd. trailhead to Lasky Mesa and back, about a 1 1/2 mile hike a the most. I made a wrong turn and ended up hiking down to Las Virgenes Canyon, then up to Lasky Mesa about a 4 to 5 mile hike. Lasky Mesa is a elevated plain about 1 1/2 miles north of the the 101 freeway west of the San Fernando Valley. I was used as a location for quite a few westerns in the first half of the 20th century and was slated for housing development in the second half of the century.

I was saved from development and is now part of the Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space that extends from the northern terminus of Las Virgenes Canyon Road all the way to the Santa Susana Field Lab. Unlike the area around the field lab which is rocky, the area around Lasky Mesa is rolling hills covered in grasses with oak trees doting the landscape. This area burned completely in the Woolsey fire 3 years ago and some of the oak trees didn’t make it, but ended up being some of my favorite subjects to shoot for this hike.

On The Road – 🐾BillinGlendaleCA – Lasky MesaPost + Comments (17)

cope

Disclaimer: I did not take these pictures.  They record travels both spatial and temporal from before my time.

A couple of years ago I found a box of negatives belonging to my maternal grandfather.  Most are on acetate but some are glass plates.  I have recently started scanning them.  

These images are from his time as a member of the Mexican Expedition to chase down and capture Pancho Villa in 1916 and 1917.  

I have many more negatives including from his time as part of the occupying forces in Germany after World War I.  I might share some of those later in On The Road.

On The Road – cope – Chasing Pancho Villa, Part 1Post + Comments (30)