This was a carefully crafted trip which allowed easy communication home, and which included two guys who long ago bailed from our group. Bill Lewis who’d finally gotten a real job teaching fifth graders and Dan who’d spent so much time in a sitting position that moving about, even as little as we do, pushed his limits.

So, we headed back to First Debsconeag which tested our four wheel drive vehicles more than our flabby arms, and which has a primo view of Mt. Katahdin.

Our late night swim ranks as one of the best. The water was cold enough to make your skin feel like it was on fire, but a warm breeze meant for once we weren’t first taking off layers of cotton and down before our plunge. But the best part was soaping up under a full moon with wisps of white clouds and faint stars.

No stars, no clouds, this shot was taken earlier in the evening.

There’s lots more to tell but Adam’s been busy at work.

I’m way behind posting every little detail of my life. How do I know? Matthew told me so.

Our trip to Kansas to meet family and friends and tell stories and see my father’s headstone exceeded even what I could have imagined. And the guy’s camping trip to Maine, though intentionally shortened, was liberating.

I think I’ll start with the present and move backwards, which means the camping trip comes first. I’ll cheat and use Adam’s email to the missing member, Mark Schreiber, whose workload forced him to remain in Boston.

“Lewis got a little too intimate for the big fella {a meandering moose}, who decided to keep things strictly intra-species, but he did give ’em a nice dance before departing, we’re told … (Dan and I stayed back at camp and readied the poles and ropes for the firepit tarp the boys were fetching).

Weather was a Cliff Notes of all camping trips — brilliant, lazy sun, endless drizzle, howling gale with a whiff of the Arctic, in that order (with 5:00 a.m. the nominal average changeover bell). And the trip might’ve felt too short but for the last condition, which made “we’re outta here!“ more than acceptable. A good time, though, with a smattering of most of everything from moose to midnight swim, potato launchers, slingshots and LED Frisbees — except for food and alcohol, of which there was rather more than a smattering … We toasted you at first lunch with a tipple of Seksti!

More when Mike has edited up our movie — circa 2008 …”

Adam

Adam is wrong about the date. 2009 is more like it. I brought both my movie camera and my DSLR, but shot more film than stills which is okay, but it does require far more effort to assemble something viewable.

I’ve plenty more of that moose but here he is ambling into the woods (yes, we are way too close)

and here he is before his dance,

and one last photo after his dance, still looking back at us, wondering whether we’ll take the hint and leave.

Believe me, his dance, though majestic and seen mostly through my lens, made my heart stop.

Michael,

Although you love intense color, you might consider these uncolorful photographs by Melford. Many of the shots are sepia, but they could as well be black and white. With few exceptions the subject, Death Valley, needs only one dimension in colorspace.

While you’re at it, get out your 40-inch screen a view Victoria Crater, the largest martian crater  visited so far.

–rakkity

Michael,

Easterners, with a few exceptions, don’t worry about wildfires too much. But Californians and, to a lesser extent, Coloradans,take wildfires as an inescapable part of life. Much like Kansans and tornadoes, probably. Since two of the “Beartoothers”, members of the Fogy Fivesome hiking crew, live in the San Diego area, and my sister & Dad live in Ventura County, I’ve been watching the news with trepidation as the fires spread towards their homes.

Phil, from Solana Beach, lives closest to the fires in that area, and what is more worrisome, downwind from the big one (see map).This weekend, Phil was planning to fly out here to Colorado and do some day-hikes with Chuck and me. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the day before yesterday he laconically wrote that he and Laurie were one of 300,000 from their area who were forced to evacuate. So, he said, maybe he wouldn’t be flying out to Colorado after all. He mentioned that Laurie had told him to go anyway, but Phil wanted (of course!) to stay with her.

I searched for a good Google map of the situation and saw the big red area with a western finger pointing toward Cardiff-by-the-Sea (Solana Beach is the town just to the south, under the green icon). If you click on the triangle near Cardiff-by-the-Sea, a balloon pops up telling you to evacuate if you live in the area).

On one of the Google News items, the firefighters were decrying the hot 80-mph Santa Ana easterlies which were making the fires uncontrollable. A firefighter said, “Those fires are going to be blown right down to the ocean, and we can’t do a thing about it.”

Then I took another look at the map, and saw that there was a fire just east of Fallbrook, where another long-time Beartoother lives–Joe Ajello, the famed mountain biker of the fogy crew. He has a little farm there in Fallbrook with avocado trees. He brings a box of avocados out to Boulder every time he visits.
If you click on the triangle next to Fallbrook, the balloon tells residents they should flee towards the west through Camp Pendleton. (I haven’t seen any of this on the tube or the web, but I have grapes-of-wrath pictures in my mind of people driving out of town with vehicles crammed with all their treasures, their labs or poodles in boxes on the cartops. Can this really be happening?)

The twist in this part of the story is that Joe and his wife Barb are on vacation in Morocco. Or maybe they’re furiously flying home right now? They have a caretaker for their orchard, but he has probably fled town with all the rest of the town’s residents.

Now for a positive turn of events–

My sister lives in Simi Valley in Ventura county, which has several raging fires of its own. None of them are moving towards Simi Valley fortunately, but the valley is full of smoke so thick that a reporter said daytime was like night. Anyway, my sister, a pilot, monitors the wind like a hawk (literally), and told me that the Santa Ana was diminishing in strength.

A few hours later I got another email from Phil. He said that the evacuation was lifted in his town, and he and Laurie could return home. However, he noted that the return to normal wind patterns (no Santa Ana) would make the fires less predictable.He said that he would make up his mind on Thursday whether he’d fly out to Colorado this weekend or some time later.

We’re all keeping our fingers and toes crossed for our California friends.Will Phil and Laurie be able to keep their home? Will Joe and Barb reach their avocado farm, only to find smoking stumps and a burnt-out home? We’re hoping for the best. More stories as events unfold in the next days.

–rakkity

Here are screenshots of two desktops showing very different working styles. To show us yours,  save the photo to the desktop or anywhere you might have prayer of finding it (I’m thinking of PC users), then click the upload button on the gallery.

As many of you know last February I had my father buried in his hometown cemetery in Latham, Kansas. I didn’t have the time to have the headstone installed and my brother, Brian, suggested that we do so in the fall.

Six weeks ago I began calling monument companies to get the stone cut and engraved. I found an online company that required two months advance notice, and I called the guys who provided the burial vault, but they wouldn’t sell the stone to me directly. They only did business with funeral homes. I finally found a company in Wichita who not only promised the stone in less than a month, but also had no problem dealing directly with me. Selling retail if you will. Last month I sent them our design and six hundred dollars and they had it set in place on Thursday.

Originally the plan was to come back with Brian, Diane and Peter, but the event quickly grew to include relatives and close friends from Evansville. We’re here in Wichita now and tomorrow we return to Latham for a second goodbye.

Here’s a short video from last winter. We’ve rented the Town and Country and we’re picking up my father from the funeral home. You’ve got to love the Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper jacket.

Michael,
Boring clouds in Maryland, exciting clouds in Colorado. I’ve been collecting clouds since we arrived here. Here you will find my latest best dozen cloud shots. In the past months there were several phantasmagorical sky views I couldn’t shoot for various reasons, like driving 70 mph down a crowded road (not being a Miller), absent camera, or discharged battery (sob!). But eventually new cloud opportunities will come along. The weather here is always changing–mostly for the better!

–rakkity

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I think Rakkity and the rest of the blog would enjoy this.

Pesky Godson

Mike,

My old buddy Chuck is hobbling around with an undiagnosible knee problem. First his doc told him he had a torn meniscus in his left knee. Then the MRI showed nothing. So he’s going to physical therapy, and his therapist told him to go do a lot of biking. He called me up and said, “I know a great bike trail, want to come?” A couple of weeks ago I would have begged off, but I’m nearly all healed up from my surgery and so off we went. We rode about 10 miles on dirt trails through some pretty prairie country along South Boulder Creek. I liked it so much, I took Beth on the best parts the very next day.

The wildflowers are all gone, except Milkweed seed pods but the fall colors are very fine, particularly with the Boulder mountains hanging in the background under the usual cerulean skies.The prairie dogs are scampering through the buffalo grass, having long since stored up haystacks in their holes for the coming long winter. The red-winged blackbirds have all flown south, but 2 days ago when I was walking on part of the same trail, a barn owl glided noiselessly down to a stump next to the creek and eyed me curiously for several minutes. The rainbow trout in the creek are hiding in the riffles, but the fishermen, poor fellows, are all sitting indoors watching the Broncos.

South Boulder Trail

–rakkity

Here’s a robust (read: maybe too many) photo gallery of pictures Adam and I snapped last weekend. Mine begin with Adam’s face. And, finally, a photo of Dan’s two dog’s which should satisfy La Rad.

Fun story in Wired by Charles Graeber, on Alex Roy’s attempt to break the 22-year-old “totally illegal” record for driving from Manhattan to Santa Monica in 32 hours, 7 minutes. If you read the story (Adam, Matthew, rakkity) take the time to also watch the short videos.