Gallup to Albuquerque

Its only about 140 miles on I-40, but yesterday it took me all day to go from Gallup to Albuquerque. In Gallup I stopped by the train/bus station information booth. That verified my plan to play tourist on the way.
South on 602, I saw signs advertising Winfield Trading. Now, I had to check it out.
the store is a seller of fine Indian jewelry. Besides us having the same surname, we are both Nam vets. Had a nice conversation. Left with (bought) a new money clip.
As I approached Ramah, NM, I was getting hungry for breakfast. Not sure what I might find in a small town, I opted for the first eatery I saw. That was Ramah Valley Diner. As it happens, the owner grow up in Iowa and used to run/work at the Perkins Restaurant in Council Bluffs (I-80 and I-29).
On to El Morro National Monument. I hiked the Headland Trail. the trail climbs the bluff and past Ancestral Puebloan ruin, Atsinna. From there, it traverses the top pf the bluff (see photo) and back down. At the bottom you are treated to inscriptions carved into the stone left by visitors years ago - from ancients to early conquerors.
From there, it was a short drive to El Malpais National Monument. I hikes a little of the El Calderon trail. From there I went down Hwy 117. Drove the road up to the Sandstone Bluff Overlook. Then down to La Ventana Natural Arch.
The day was capped wth a dinner with my cousin (an Albuquerque resident).

Aspens and Sea Smoke

This photo was taken on a VERY cold morning in February . I think it was almost 20 below zero the morning I made this image. There was a lot of steam or "sea smoke" as people like to call it, rising off the lake. More common in early winter, it was a treat to see the steam in late February. My friend Roger and I had spent sunrise right along the water's edge taking photos of the rising sun and the ice on Grand Portage Bay.
To give you an idea of just how cold it was, while we were walking through some deep snow drifts to get to the water's edge, I tripped and fell in the snow. My tripod went right down under the snow, and was only in the snow for a few seconds. The tripod had been warm from being inside the car, and as soon as I pulled it up out of the snow it had ice on it. The snow had melted briefly when making contact with the warm tripod and as soon as I lifted the tripod up into the cold air it the melted snow that was on it froze instantly. I had a difficult time the rest of the morning adjusting my tripod legs due to the ice that now covered it.
After about 20 minutes in our first location we headed up to an overlook which looks down onto Lake Superior and Wauswaugoning Bay. From this elevated vantage point it was magical watching the sea smoke as it rose off the lake and drifted out away from shore. Roger has a Vari-ND filter which lets you block several stops of light and I thought this would be a perfect place to use it so I borrowed it for several exposures. The stationary trees and the edge of the ice combined with the moving steam made for a very compelling photo. Exposure time on this shot was 15 seconds, aperture f16, ISO 50. It was taken with my Canon EF 100-400mm lens.

Santa Barbara Scenic

Tall Mexican fan palms line the beach in Santa Barbara. The Santa Ynez mountains rise in the background.

The Sun Sets on our stay at Association Island

The Campground is empty!

Gary finishes up an electric post repair

We leave Association Island and begin our next journey. Our inverter has died and all of the window shades are broken and our microwave/convection oven bit the dust as well! So much for no longer having home repairs!

Rapid response

When the roads in the city centre are choked with Festival and Fringe traffic, and some streets closed to cars completely, the ambulance service still needs to get through. Obviously there's no hospital transport provided by this part of it.
Having seem some of the acrobatic, contortionist, flame-throwing and just downright enthusiastic Fringe street acts, I wonder how much of the business was dealing with injured performers.

I hope to resume normal blogging service soon. So many things have combined to create that TBTB (Too Busy To Blog) syndrome.

The Harold Angel

I belong to a sentimental kind of family - the kind that remembers loved-and-lost people, that revels in sharing images in old photos, in old home movies and on video, the kind of family that not only emails candid photos to each other on birthdays and anniversaries, but also has the birthdays & anniversaries of departed relatives marked on their current calendars.
Sometimes we remember those we loved by raising a glass to toast their memories. Sometimes we remember them in .... the kitchen. Does anyone else connect certain relatives with their favorite foods? We do! Oral history tells us that Grandma Kitty loved kidney stew, horseradish and coconut macaroons, Grandpa Jim ate a whole raw onion every night before dinner, Uncle George was a broccoli fan and the key to Uncle Ollie's heart was a big dish of stuffed peppers.
Beloved Uncle Harold's favorite pie was mince - so his wife, my piano-playing Aunt Helen, made sure that a mincemeat pie was always included in the holiday desserts - a choice that was soundly rejected by the kids in my generation. Luckily for us, Harold's other favorite pie was banana cream - one we were happy to share. His December birthday plus St Nicholas Day plus Christmas also confused us into thinking that Herald Angels were Harold Angels.... not too far off the truth! He died a long time ago, but some years I find myself making a banana cream pie on my uncle's birthday and thinking about him.
Harold grew up in Chicago, second son in a big family. His dad had a furniture finishing shop where Harold learned to like making furniture as a hobby... as a young man he worked in the office of a big furniture company, falling like a rock once he saw my cute little aunt -the feeling was mutual. Harold's generosity and courtesy soon made the whole family love him. A few years after they were married, the Second World War separated them, and Harold served with the Army Air Corps (forerunner of the US Air Force) in the Mariana Islands where he worked on the cameras of reconnaissance planes. He contracted malaria, returning to the US many months after the war ended.
With no children of their own, Helen & Harold shared love and worldly goods with the children of their brothers and sisters. They were wonderful godparents! Harold bought a 16mm home movie camera to record family parties and the antics of the youngsters... and this attention made more than two dozen nieces and nephews feel special, and as time went on it was hilarious to watch ourselves grow up when the projector came out for movie shows. We saw Helen and Harold at least once a week when we were growing up, but he was usually behind the camera - not in front of it, so we don't have enough photos of him.
Aunt Helen and Uncle Harold hosted family picnics at their small, perfect cottage on a large lot - with landscaping that he designed, planted and maintained - even letting a small, flower-loving niece believe she was helping.Harold's post-war work was in textbook publishing - and that lead to a perk for us! The display books from the office were nicely bound outside but with blank pages inside. They were replaced periodically and he passed along the outdated models. Having real books in which to draw & write our thoughts let us pretend we were real writers and artists.
Helen's piano was replaced by a Hammond Organ - she delighted in leading family singalongs. Once the group stopped singing and began talking, Harold would take a turn on the bench - coaxing a different set of melodies from the keys as background music for the conversation. How I wish for a recording of even one song!
The old camera was replaced around the time the older nieces and nephews traded dolls and baseball bats for mortar boards and bridal veils - now Uncle Harold was ready to film the great-nieces and great-nephews , traveling to see the younger generations as they set up housekeeping in distant suburbs and other states. There's the camera in his hand below - outside our rickety student dwelling. They drove 1000 miles to see us, and acted as if they were visiting a palace instead of a dump, complimenting our newlywed culinary experiments as if they were dining in a fine restaurant. That's the kind of gentleman he was.
Harold died too young - long before retirement age - breaking the hearts of all he left behind. Many years later as we ring in .., gone is not forgotten... in this Christmas season, you are still our Harold Angel!

Kneeling in the Mud

We had a lot of much needed rain last night. Unfortunately that meant that the ground was too soggy for me to get back to my digging.So I headed into the garden for a little session with the macro lens and found this beauty down in the hellebore patch. Odd man out amongst the green flowers.Nearby I found this Chinese Lantern Skeleton, I was kneeling in the mud (accidental, I wobbled) trying to get a decent macro shot whenmy very cute 'assistant', Sparky made me jump, when she pushed her sweet little face into the lens. I gave her a fussing and sent her off to earn her keep, catch a mouse, preferably a rat...I picked up the displaced Chinese Lantern and tried again. Very amusing, but not what I was after.

I gave up.



I did the ironing instead.





She probably did me a favour, the ironing basket is now empty!