Olaf Danielson's Blog, page 10

Confused and bewildered in the American Southwest

The earth seems to be cracking around me.  I'm confused and bewildered.  I have never spent so much time looking things up on the internet or in the "Urban" dictionary.
          I haven't posted for a while and it isn't because we haven't had anything to report, in fact, maybe too much to report.  I've had a rash of lousy internet and well, some of the places we've went to....well...reporting from there would be covered under something akin to the CIA, and basically to mis-quote Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, "Only those that know where it is, know where it is."  but well, where we are staying now, deserves some mention, as vague as it may be.

Let us get you up to speed...

We stayed in Phoenix for a while, then went to extreme Southern California where I drive over to the Salton Sea and saw a strange "White headed" Ruddy Duck.  It is probably the rarest bird I'll ever see but in the end it is just a ruddy dick with a white head.
Then we went to San Diego to see Silja's Brother and sister-in-law Bill and Nina who are sailing their way from Portland OR to Cabo San Lucas Mexico standing next to the Gypsy.

After that there seemed to be a lot of confusion going on in my mind trying to figure things out.  We left De Anza and drove to another DeAnza, this one south of Green Valley, AZ near Tucson.  We visited a couple I knew from birding.  Thor and his wife, Joan live in Green Valley and we came to visit and hike in the Florida Canyon for something to do.  We couldn’t stay in Green Valley at the Green Valley RV Park because I am not 55.  No one can live here if they are under 55, they can't even stay at the RV park overnight.  I wonder how that is even legal, and it certainly isn’t right.  What really is wrong with kids and families?  Can they have segregated communities, too?  To be blunt, we just don't like it, but we like Thor and Joan.   View from Thor and Joan's patio
            Well after a great dinner and a lazy morning, we pulled out on I-19 and drive into a worsening cross wind that progressively strengthened until we got to Tucson and then had a head wind until we got off at Benson.   Big Bird bounced along on washboards as we followed a rather curvy route out in the desert.  The road got a little narrow and loose until I decided to drop my tow car off the trailer about a mile from the destination.  We found the place early and had the pick of camping spaces.  We met the host, Dana, who was giving a tour to four older people from New Mexico that were dressed like it was January in South Dakota.  Apparently, they were just visiting to check out the place.              I found this place on a website as a destination.  I asked everyone who is anyone about it, and most hadn’t heard anything, but Bev Price had been here and thought we could get our RV in, and we did.  The owner is a man named Dana, he survived a wildfire in Southern California by having his dogs waking him up and being able to leave on a moment’s notice as the fires bore down on him.  His next door neighbors neighbors asphyxiated trying to survive the flames in their pool.  As they say,  they chose poorly.  He then spent some time in New York before coming to Arizona to take care of his grandmother.The Desert Sanctuary, he now owns, was built as the Sri Ram Ashram and was co-founded by famous Harvard Professor and LSD advocate Timothy Leary.   In the early 1970s, Bill Sheatsley, Bill Haines and their spiritual brothers bought a tract of land in the desert outside of Benson, Arizona and founded Sri Ram Ashram naming it after their guru, Ramamurti S. Mishra. Bill Sheatsley designed and built almost singlehandedly the poured concrete structures that became its hallmark residences, classrooms and meditation hall.   A lot of what actually went on here and how much Timothy Leary had to do with it has apparently been lost to history.  Was this a place for LSD experimentation?  It is a bit scary.  Richard Nixon once called Leary the most dangerous man in America for his drug beliefs.   He did spend time in 38 different prisons, some sort of record that doesn't seem like a record that should be remembered.  Certainly, the ashram had to become a center of drug experimentation and of baby boomers searching for what they perceived they lacked in their lives.   What else was it?  Did people find the peace, harmony, and enlightenment they craved?  I don't know.  I think enlightenment in life is what you make it.  Look around you....this may be all you get so enjoy it.  Of all things, The Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries was held August 31–2 September 2, 1979, at the Sri Ram Ashram in Benson, the foundational event that began the Radical Faeries community.  This event was described as a four-day acid trip without the acid by participants (if that can be believed).  As it looks, Sheatsley’s interests moved on to other things, as did the baby Boomers who by the 1980s had moved back to Ronald Reagan and to making a living.   What happened in the early 80s to the Baby Boomers?  Maybe they just got tired of the drugs, the fast cars, the drinking, the wife swapping, and everything.....when I got 18 in 1984, it was basically over.  They even moved up the drinking age to 21, 9 days after I got to be 18, but they ended the draft.This places history was not over though....In 1985, the World University purchased the former ashram and called it the Desert Sanctuary Campus, located at the foot of the Rincon Mountain Range near Benson, Arizona, and in 1987 completed the move of its operations from California to the latter location.  Dr. Zitko’s teaching was a combination of New Age theosophy philosophy and promoted world peace through world education.  He authored several books that embodied the alternative perspective on education and life represented by the university: New Age Tantra Yoga (1974) and The Cybernetics of Sex and Love (1985).  He was also an early lecturer on Lemuria, a theorized lost continent including a lost race of four-legged beings that died out due to various theories that range from a flood to finding sex (they were hermaphrodites that laid eggs) and interbreeding with humans after they found out they liked it and died out, but many of us have their genes in us.  In the Bible The sons of god bred with the daughters of man and giants were begotten.  Look up Lemuria if you've never heard of it.  It will open your eyes into how many believe....  So, this property went from a drug induced hippie type ashram to a University based on Tantric sex and teaching odd metaphysical and occultist theories (Theosophy), including that the current human race is derived from insect like aliens, and we are searching for a lost enlightenment when the Lemurians died.   So the Ashram tried to get enlightenment through LSD....and this university through higher teachings, hidden knowledge and sex....both of which could be called a religion. After Dr. Zitko's death at the age of 92 in 2003, interest in the University waned and the property fell into disrepair over the years and all of the structures had caved in by the time the current owner Dana Dawson bought it twelve years later.  Where the money from the sale went is a question placed on the internet., it is supposedly in trust somewhere.  Dana spent five years rebuilding the historical structures and in general, it looks quite nice.  They have cabins and nice pool area.  They could use some leveling fill for the campsites, though.  So what is it now?  To be fair and honest, I’m not really sure.It is hard to figure out what the goal Dana has for this place.  Is it a center of free-expression?  Is it just a cool place to visit?  What?  It is an open place although as I write this, we are the only people here so it is hard to get an idea of who visits the B&B or cabins, or what he wants.  The internet doesn't say too much of what visitors he is striving for.  Dana, though, has listed the place for sale for $1,500,000 with a realtor.  It is "adults only" but it is definitely not what that can mean in some places of the "Urban" dictionary.   The owner is just afraid of liability, he perceives kids (like Green Valley?) as a liability.  He hosted the annual meeting of the Bears of the Old Pueblo here last week.  For those of you that don’t know, in the gay community, a bear is often a larger or obese hairier man who projects an image of rugged masculinity.  Not that there is anything wrong with this, or nor that I care, but I was just showing how this place still sort of attracts groups and people from the periphery of society.I guess I'm from the periphery of society.  The sanctuary doesn’t even have its own internet and uses the odd little site called hipcamp.com.  In thinking about this place, we are looking for future locations to visit and spend large chunks of the winter.  Unfortunately, no matter how much we end up liking it, I find it hard to get too enthused about a place that may end up purchased by a Hollywood movie star in the not too distant future.  That may seem like an odd comment but John Travolta and Sandra Bullock own places that are within a few miles of here. Our RV here



A couple in a smaller class-c motorhome passed us as we were going on a walk.  The rig had New Mexico plates.  They were parked at the other end of the camping area when we got back.  It was good to not be camping alone.  I was hoping maybe they would be nice people.  They were working on their motorhome, so I never went down to see them.  We would have lit a campfire but due to the wind, open fires were banned.  About a half-hour later they zipped past us and headed out.              I ran into Dana the owner, again, who said, the guy had to take his companion to Sierra Vista but was coming back afterwards.  I was thinking, no one is coming back.  One wasn’t driving up here after dark. I figured, so I hope he got paid.  This isn’t exactly the highest end campground in the world, but it was better than a National Forest campground.  Dana also said they were going to the Halloween party at Mira Vista in Tucson.  I was thinking about that.  So, the party is tomorrow.  Mira Vista is full, I know, I called them.  That party involves drinking and how exactly were they getting back, or where were they camping tomorrow night?   Oddly, the RV returned about 9:30 much to our surprise, but at first light it drove off again.  Understanding people is a difficult undertaking.           So....The Desert Sanctuary....to be a fly on the wall in 1975 at the Ashram....to be a fly on the wall in 1990 at the Tantra workshops.....for us, we went walking in the mountains and saw butterflies and birds, and I put up our feeder...it was a safer and more conservative, or so I thought.
we kept running into Nabakov's Satrys an insect named after the same Nabakov that wrote Lolita.  Have any of you ever read Lolita?   A much older man with sex with I think a twelve year old, as her step-father, yet considered one of the best novels of the 20th century.  Vladimir Nabakov--a famous Novelist, Professor, who was also a great entomologist, with four butterflies named for him....but a man promoting incest and pedophilia? 
Nabakov's Satyr
Oh well...it was just a novel...or was it?  You know Nabakov would have stayed here if he had been a little younger...(Lolita was written 15 years before the Ashram was built) but maybe those were the times...I'm just so confused as to what actually are my times?  It seems like the cultural world ended in 2000, and maybe with 9-11 it did, but that was 18 years ago and we act like it was still yesterday.  Maybe the Baby Boomers just knew how to live. 

Olaf

More butterflies and birds...it isn't that birdy down here.
Arizona Sister

Anna's Hummingbird at our feeder
Arizona metalmark
Dainty Sulphur  

Eating our way across the Mother Road

It was like we were doing some crazy Route 66 tour these last two weeks.  We planned on following the old route as far as Flagstaff before heading south, it looked as though we caught the classic highway in Tulsa, but no...we actually started in Chicago, where Route 66 starts.We flew up to Chicago to celebrate our son Tyko's (Seth) matriculation into medical school at Rush University in Chicago.  They call it a "white coat" ceremony where they issue the white coats to each first year medical student.  Each student stood and introduced themselves, said their major, where they went to school and where they were from. One student claimed he majored at Arizona State in Partying, our son went to Ripon College and majored in Computer Sciences and Biology.  There is only one student from South Dakota at Rush, though, the few the proud, I guess.  Our other twin, Allwin drove down from Madison and we had a nice visit, celebration and ate food at Greek Town and then he drove us back to O'hare and we flew back to Tulsa to continue our journey westward and catch back up to the fabled highway.  We had to miss a wedding of a friends' daughter in Massachusetts but our son was sort of a late addition to Rush and so we couldn't do it all in a very short period of time.             John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath Could not have said it better.  “Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66—the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from Mississippi to Bakersfield—over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys. 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”            Now the road’s children, I-44 and I-40 are also still roads of flight, of retirees coming down from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, and the Dakotas heading to points south and west to escape the coming winter.  The road through Oklahoma is now called the Will Rogers Memorial Highway and as he was from a town northeast of Tulsa, he undoubtedly traveled it many times.  Many have traveled the route to California before us trying to make it big in Hollywood, but few did.  Even Oklahoma’s most famous native actress Joan Crawford didn’t take it to find fame as she was discovered as a dancer in New York City and had already left NE Oklahoma.  Famous singers like Toby Keith (my favorite C & W singer) went the other way from Clinton OK to Nashville but in reality, he went both ways playing the bars, honky-tonks, and fairs before they were famous.
            The trip back from Chicago was delayed and our departure gate from O’Hare to Tulsa was changed four times.  It was 1 AM by the time we landed and walked to our hotel near the Tulsa Airport.  After we woke, we picked the dog back up from the kennel, and tracked down something for breakfast.  Near the dog kennel was a small manufacturing facility with the name Daylight Donuts on the trucks.           It turns out upon further research the Daylight Donut Flour Company has been around since 1960 even though the company started in 1954.  The founders, a couple with the last name of Day developed a light flour recipe for donuts.  59 years and three owners later, the company now has over a thousand outlets and seems to be expanding.              We tracked one down which looked like the 1980s were calling and the small shop out in the middle of nowhere on the edge of Tulsa reminded me of the bakery in Frederic which closed sometime during the Clinton administration.  It wasn’t much to took at and the interior was no better.  We bought two donuts and two cinnamon bearpaws.  The taste test…it was a clean and light donut, not too sticky, and best of all, no greasy aftertaste.  It was okay!Crispy Cremes used to leave a funny aftertaste before I stopped buying them.  The donuts at most convenience stores in the upper Midwest also have this after taste.  Two coffees, a bottle of orange juice and the four donuts, the cost…just $8.50.  Quality at a good price, maybe it was 1984?  Maybe Oklahoma is okay after all?           We drove on the famous old route through Sapulpa, home of the world’s largest gas pump, into Bristow, past DePew, and turned before we got to Stroud, where we picked our rig back up before continuing westward.  Stroud is famous for having, of all things, a UFO landing pad.  All of these towns feature cafes and old gas stations registered as National Historical Structures.

            We took off and headed west down the Turnpike after driving through Stroud, avoiding a repeat visit to the UFO landing area.  We made our first mistake of the day continuing on the Turnpike instead of following I-35 into OKC and then turning on I-40 west.  The second toll booth on the Kirkpatrick Turnpike was exact change only, we caused a back up and then finally throwing $3 into the change hopper it never gave us a green light but we drove on.  It was impossible to do this from the window at my rig.  I had to send my wife outside.  The woman in the other lane parked her car and walked out into our lane to use the change machine.  Cars were four deep when I drove off and I could see her first dollar got caught up in the wind and she was chasing it.  Why not have a manned toll booth here when the first one is manned?  Why not warn trucks and tourists to stay off this toll way, at least give a credit card option for trucks.  My okay verdict was being negated.After bailing out at the first road, old highway 66 again and looking in my rear view mirror for troopers, we finally found a way to get on I-40 and continue the journey.  I suppose I’ll get a fine from the mail.I pulled off the interstate in Sayre, heading for our next stop, a very late lunch at a second Punjabi truck-stop, the Highway 40 Truck Stop.  When you think of Oklahoma I'm sure you think of donuts and Indian Cuisine...right? The line of old wheels dividing the truck stop from the restaurant.
I also needed diesel and turned in towards the pumps.  It seemed easy enough but before I could do anything about it, I either went over the edge of a curb or a speed bump.  Afterwards, I couldn’t figure what it was doing there.  I wasn’t moving that fast but when the bump hit the rear tire on my side the interior compartment of the rig was tossed violently and I heard  a huge crash.  A cupboard full of dishes lay scattered on the floor.  Potato salad in the fridge was ejected from the fridge as was a bottle spaghetti sauce didn’t bounce.  It was a disaster of broken glass, china, food, and non-broken stuff.  After making sure all the pets had avoided the carnage we started to clean up.  One of our cats was lucky he was in a kennel.  The worst was the freezer door wouldn’t now close properly.After cleanup and fuel, we decided at least to give the food a try.  We went in what looked like the restaurant and tried to order, but the guy took one look at us and said, “no for you, other place.”  He headed out the door and then led us around to back.  I wondered where we were being led to.  I guess goat meat is only available outback.  Apparently, we were pegged as meat eaters and as such, we were offered the Goat Meat shack in back. 
               It was good third world curry, bones and all.  When we wanted a diet coke, he walked over to the trucks stop to get it.  I must say though, all in all, the food in Nebraska was better, and I’m not sure I’d stop here again, mostly due too many painful memories over the speed bump.  These truck stops still made me wonder…               Twenty-four miles later we left Oklahoma and entered the Texas panhandle where it decided to rain, and I guess that is all I have to say about that.
There is the “Leaning Tower of Texas” in Groom, but, well, that is a story for another bit of prose.
            You see a lot of odd things on the road when you drive, odd signs, odd people, and odd weather, and sometimes you see odd things on RVs, this picture says it all We got all the way to Sun Valley Arizona, a town that had seen better daysand camped literally a few feet off the old Mother Highway where so many came 70 years ago
Sun Valley not to be undone by the counterpart with its same name in another state also has a "gated community"  This is Arizona's idea of a gated community
So Route 66, Donuts, Goat meat, leaning towers of Texas, gated villages, and open spaces and lots and lots of species of butterflies, next stop Phoenix just a short turn south off old 66
Butterflies: 15 lifers, here are a few pretty ones, I'd seen the buckeye before common buckeye
Red-banded skipper
Swarthy Skipper

Oklahoma is Okay

...or is it?
We are hanging out on old Route 66 between Tulsa and Oklahoma City enjoying the warmth of the early fall as it is about 30 degrees warmer here than it is at home.
Bucket List item #149 see Spiro Mounds and the Oklahoma Runestones (yes they have at least 4), so being a bit of a rainy day, we decided to take the drive to almost Arkansas to knock off this item.
Spiro Mounds is a rather odd mound, reportedly built over a rock cairn just like those in most of the European countries and it is also weird in that there are reports that a full armored man was found buried there, reports are the key word.  Nobody really knows for sure

In one of the saddest deals ever, just about as bad as the breaking into the museum a decade ago in Kentucky, between 1933 and 1935, Craig Mound was excavated by a mining enterprise that had bought the rights from local landowners to excavate and to keep or sell the artifacts they recovered. Tunneling into the mound and breaking through the Great Mortuary's log wall, they found many human burials, together with their associated grave goods. They discarded the human remains and the fragile artifacts—made of textile, basketry, and even feathers—that were preserved in these extremely unusual conditions. Most of these rare and historically priceless objects disintegrated before scholars could reach the site, although some were sold to collectors. When the commercial excavators finished, they dynamited the burial chamber and sold the commercially valuable artifacts, made of stone, pottery, copper, and conch shell, to collectors in the United States and overseas. Most of these valuable objects are probably lost, but some have been returned through donation and documented by scholars.  The ones returned are reportedly beyond amazing.

I had to see the place.

So we drove three hours and then to the front gate and we were confronted by this...
The sign says closed due to flooding and should reopen by the end of September, but upon further investigation,
the duct tape that said September was over tape that said august over tape that said July over tape that said something..."hopefully" had been added at a later date.  It was a sign made from two colors of duct tape, a cooler cover, four woodworking clamps, and metal that looked found on the side of the road.  The state spares no expense, apparently.
We walked the dog.
I thought about sneaking in, but well, we just left.
I had a back up spot...
So we drove down to Heavener to see the runestone.  Found in a gully on a huge rock over a century ago, this runestone has caused controversy.  Was it real?  It seems like an odd hoax.
The place was a state park, but Oklahoma gave up on it for some reason, and the city bought the property, and this is a city that has seen better days...why did Oklahoma abandon this treasure?
It means "The Valley of Glome" a marker rune for property.  This is from a much older Futhark than the Kensington Stone from Minnesota and I could go on about how Europeans could have got here hundreds of years before Columbus, but I won't.
I would have liked to stop at the gift shop and the interpretive center, but they are closed on Thursday, and it was...Thursday.
They have found other runestones...these are listed as housed at the Kerr Museum nearby, they just have a replica of the Poteau Stone here, found three mountains north.
So after hiking back from the stone, I needed to clean off my muddy feet My wife caught me in my redneck moment of how a country boy cleans his feet
So we drove down some back roads to the Robert S. Kerr Museum to see the Shawnee and Poteau stones... Located at the former Kerr Mansion and Conference Center (Kerr was Oklahoma's 12th Governor, a Senator for 14 years and founder of Kerr McGee Oil Company).  It was closed and looked in disrepair.  We did a Google search standing on the driveway.  The property was declared surplus property by the state (It was donated to the State and a local college by the Family in 1978) and auctioned off for a song and a dance last year, it had been closed since 2013.  Even the wall by the gate was falling over.  So in a building that looked to have a leaking roof, paint falling off rotting walls reportedly has the best remaining Spiro artifacts and three runestones...maybe this state will auction that off too? I guess the only thing of educational value here is football?  How can a state with so much oil, tons of oil, have saved none of it for anything like this.  Why abandon this mansion?  You look at the cities around.....Heavener, Spiro, in fact every city and village we drove through, are filled with more abandoned gas stations, store fronts, houses, to be honest, it is quite shocking.  The only thing that looks to be expanding is medical marijuana   Here is the "Stress Releaf" Dispensary.  These things are everywhere.  We even drove past one on a nearly abandoned road near the Kerr Museum housed in a double-wide, so this is the state's growth industry....maybe if everyone is smoking nobody cares that the state seems to be falling apart...
Well I saw my year scissor-tailed flycatcher, the state bird, I saw three lifer butterflies yesterday, but today was a 350 mile fiasco.........is Oklahoma okay?  I don't think so.

A Nuthatch Story

(Excerpt from Wearing that beach plaid wherever you go)THE FIRST DAY of the hunt for the endemic nuthatch (Sitta Whiteheadi) of Corsica began on the 13th of September.  It was Friday the 13th.  I should have noticed. Nuthatches can be a bit troublesome but every time I needed one, if I found myself in the right habitat, the little buggers would show up.  If not, a little call could induce them out of hiding.  Like big year plans, the plan to find this life bird would not go as a simple walk up into the trees and was full of many twists and turns and most of them, were on the Corsican road system.            The highest point on Corsica is just a bit over 8,000 feet.  This is higher than Donner Pass.  This is higher than the entire state of South Dakota.  Being just around fifty miles across, and with the whole eastern side of the island being basically one big alluvial plain, when you get to the mountains, they are steep.  Steeper than I ever imagined.             We chose to head south towards L’ Alta Rocca to look for the bird as the road seemed simple enough and since this bird lived in pines between 2000 and 6000 feet high, and this area had a national forest, finding one should prove to be pretty easy.  The Google map function told us that it would take just short of two hours to get to Levie, just under 100 KM away.  We would not see Levie until after 3 PM, and we would drive into the mountain village minus one very elusive bird.            Our search started when we reached the pine forest near a closed ropes course.  It was very birdy.  A spotted flycatcher fallout was there, and we saw the other endemic bird, the Corsican finch.  These flighty things buzzed around the tree tops and only a lone one stood out to be photographed as best as I could.
Corsican Finch
            I thought I heard a nuthatch but after a while I started to doubt even my own existence.  It seems all things named beginning with Corsican were interesting and unique.

Corsican Heath, a very small orange and brown butterfly, only one we saw

Corsican Wall Brown.  Common up on the mountains.
We saw the species that were around, two species of butterflies only fly early in the year, so we had no chance for them.  We saw pretty much everything, and a surprising total of butterflies which were as numerous up on the hiking trails as anywhere I’ve ever been.  One can tell that insecticide is not used here to the degree it is elsewhere.The views from on top of the mountains were stunning.  It was almost too much intensity for my camera, but we got the last parking spot at this trailhead and by the next village, even the cattle had to stand in the road as there was no place for them to even stand.



            The roads got narrow, my tire warning light came on for a low tire, but it looked okay, and so not ever seeing a place to do anything about it, I cautiously continued up the scary road.  the traffic heavy and the climb, steep and slow.  We had a nice picnic down on a stream near the road and then continued our search for the elusive nuthatch.  It was a bird that didn’t seem to exist at least not where we were.  We drove on and eventually focused on seeing some of the megalithic ruins, hoping that a nuthatch would just find us. 
            We drove around to Levie and then tried to find the museum to get some direction to find Cucuruzzu, one of the hill-top forts that are here.  The signs here are hard to figure out.  Nine times out of ten, the distance is blacked out, and half the time both the French and the Corsican word for the are blacked out, the French name is almost always blacked out.  No one here understands anything remotely in English so asking directions, not a chance.  I finally parked at a church in Levie and we walked to where I thought the museum was.  It was below that without much of a sign.            We paid 4 euro to see the museum and get direction to the ruins.  We communicated in hand gestures and by the woman working at the museum in holding tickets.  We clearly understood that our ticket to the museum got in free to the ruins.             We drove to the ruins and got slowed down by a flock of sheep on the road and then found the parking lot being careful not to hit this rock.  Maybe they should have just moved it?  We then learned that after we showed the woman at the ticket place here, that we got in free at the museum in Levie, not the other way around.  It was only another 2.50 Euros, so it wasn’t that bad.            We were hot and tired but survived another two kilometer walk up and down the hills and saw the ruins.

Olaf at Cucuruzzu.
I got a nice photo of a silver-washed fritillary as we were stumbling around.  It was my seventh lifer butterfly for the day.   Silver-washed fritillary.
            It was half past six and we had two hours of sunlight left and tow hours of hard windy driving to get home, minimum.  I took off thinking of lifer beer.  I drove, Chris played odd music for a while until something more fitting to driving, Lady Gaga came on, and the ladies in the back got tossed around the back.  The tire held and best of all, I beat the computer estimate of arrival by ten minutes.  I was drinking my beer by 8 PM.   It was a long twelve hour day, everyone was exhausted, and we dipped on the elusive nuthatch.  I spent the next day buying internet and looking for better options of where to go to get this bird.  I also needed a day off from the narrow roads.  Only one person on Ebird had reported the nuthatch in the past two months, just one.  This one was quite far away and on the downhill side of the mountains.  I looked around and the closest looking hit, and one I thought I could find was in a village named Ghisoni.  It was about 40 kilometers away.  This tick was from April and he had seen four, but…had walked four kilometers.  So did he just start in Ghisoni or what?  I looked at other spots and some were about 2000 feet above Ghisoni in elevation so I figured if we struck out there, we’d keep going up, the road, however looked like it was a lot less of a road after that.I spent the rest of the day sans clothing, it was just too dang hot outside and drank about a gallon of water and almost four glasses of wine.  I even drank a couple of beers, make up beers from previous lifers.  I watched French volleyball after everyone went to bed.The next day started early as warning light and all, we headed up the hill again in the search of the little bastard nuthatch.  I had thought the roads were scary from before but this road quickly narrowed and then on the other side of the tunnel is got even narrower.  I crossed a bridge that was only eight feet wide but still had the lines painted down the middle.  I needed a break and we were in the pines so we got out and started looking.  A brownish bird flew up.  I took a quick picture.
Cirl Bunting
            A lifer Cirl bunting greeted me, the nice yellower male flew away from my side, but one takes what one can get.  I walked up a small road and we called and called.  We did find a pair of lifer goldcrest for both of us but the only bird that came out well were coal tits, yet another tit on the island of Corse of course.
Coal tit, resembling a couple of our species of chickadee
            I had wasted enough of the day down low, and we needed to get up to Ghisoni.  We parked the car on the outside of town and I looked up as I got out of the car and saw small birds working right away in the pines.  One certainly looked like the ass-end of a nuthatch and I called it out.  Chris never saw it and I lost it without a picture.  Would that be our only chance?  I sure hoped not, but sometimes…it can be.  If you are a birder, you understand that. We walked around the road into Ghisoni without seeing another bird.  Dejection and desperation began to well up inside me.  “Oh, the futility of it all.”  I muttered as again Chris fell behind me and started to photograph passing motorcycles making the first corner into the village.  I kept looking for something, anything that would take us up into the pine trees.  I got to a very narrow bridge, probably the narrowest one of the whole day, so narrow, no one had even bothered to put a line down the middle, just in case two motorcycles would dare cross going in opposite directions.I spotted a sign, not unlike ones I’d seen in the alps giving hourly directions to major cities, it was six hours to somewhere, 9 to another, 12 to somewhere else.  It was just across the bridge and so finally getting Chris going, we crossed and turned right up the trail.  We noticed a lack of traffic.  Chris stopped and started to snap pictures.  A dog was chewing on something leisurely lying in the middle of the road.  Traffic had stopped and the dog, didn’t care.
I walked up the trail leading my dog photographer buddy, Chris behind as I walked up the trail.  It soon split and I remained following the river for about a hundred meters before the trail became either a cement driveway into someone’s house or a narrow bridge that appeared to end in a garden, a really small garden.  There was also a gate,  I was apparently at a dead end.  I turned around and met Chris 50 meters behind me and passed him and led him up what looked like a set of switchbacks up the mountain above town.  Two hairpins later, the trail straightened out above town following the back of some three-story buildings.  I followed a retaining wall when I heard a man on top of the retaining wall shout at me something in the local version of French or is Corsican a version of Italian?            “Pardon?”  I asked, trying to process.  He repeated himself with even more gestures and stood, domineering over me about six feet above me.            “Je’n comprend pas.”  I said honestly, I had no clue what he was saying.              He uttered what was clearly a frustrated obscenity.  Smacked himself on the head.  Yes, I am dumb.  I thought.  He motioned for me to go back using both hands. I lifted up my camera.            “Si, si.” He said forming his hands into a square which I took as being a picture.  He then said something else and now as I was still standing used both arms his hips and his head to get me to go the other way.  Confused I obliged.  He mumbled what could only be another expletive as I met Chris at the corner.  The man was still watching us and Chris could see him now as well.  I stopped and as we caught his eyes.  He motioned up the hill again.  He said something that Chris described later fully.  “He is speaking Cussican to us.”  He said laughing going up the hill.  From then on, we called the local language Cussican.What this man was trying to direct us to, wasn’t clear.  In the back of my mind I remember similar episodes always from non-birders that without exception led to finding the target bird but I looked up where we were going, very scattered old pines next to clearcut areas.  I walked up, passed an old narrow trail to a cemetery, and then the trail nothing more than a cow trail which eventually petered out.“He must have thought we were looking for the cemetery.” I said turning around and feeling hot.  The coolness of the morning was gone.  The dry Corsican heat was replacing it.  I had given up, it was time to head down the hill.  The nuthatch would remain unseen.  Chris agreed and led me down the hill.  I played the nuthatch song some, but as of yet I hadn’t heard anything concrete and it seemed the only thing I had called in was tits.  I saw a bird come in and figuring it was a coal tit, decided I wanted a picture.  I put the camera on and noticed something…IT WAS A NUTHATCH!

“Nuthatch!”  I said loudly trying not to scream.  We were in ear shot of the local guy.  I wasn’t sure if Chris heard me, so I repeated more slowly, but loudly.  “Nut…hatch!”  I kept taking pictures.  Chris was right behind me and got the bird.  It flew off.“Bingo!”  I said.  “I’m not doubting any local again.  “Chris though wanted better pictures so deciding seeing a bird straight over our head was not a good plan, we got up higher in the ancient cemetery.  For all I knew, Napoleon was from this village and his parents are here. 

Corsican Nuthatch the lifer bird of this trip.
            We did get better photos from the cemetery and while we were there Chris got a lifer bonus bird, a long-tail tit, yet another tit.
Long-tailed Tit, a much different looking subspecies than the one I previously saw in Sweden
            We saw a cow walking up the path and I told Chris to get my picture petting it and then something odd happened.  It stood its ground, snorted and feigned a charge.  It didn’t have a great tit, a blue tit, a coal tit, nor a long-tailed tit, it only had one tit because it was a bull!  I could see the headline.  American Tourist Birder killed by bull, the Corsican Nuthatch was his last bird.  Maybe the old man was warning me about the bull?  There was a bit of a stand off with this creature before it gave way a little and then took a quick step toward us, and then gave way again.  It was time to go, bird gotten, bull avoided, and it was getting hot, and I had a long trip back to Riva Bella.             The road was more scary going down and when I got two cars behind me I let them pass and when we got to the one lane road where we met some cars, two of the women in the lead car we hanging out the window cell phones in hand, trying to get video from the chasm below.  Then, they just stopped, for no reason, finally I got back around them, avoided cars, vans, and many, many motorcycles and got to the bottom.   Then I pulled over to look at a red kite overhead.            “Look at that pipe.”  Chris said pointing to a massively leaking water pipe feeding water to the towns below.   
            It made for entertainment, if nothing more as the water was just falling into the chasm below where a smaller creek had been sucked almost dry by the water diversion plan.  The leak was just giving the channel more of its water back.             Later, we saw a nice red kite perched on a power pole.  This was our best look at this bird the entire trip.  Many are seen soaring overhead but we weren’t in a place to see them like this at Riva Bella.            We were back by one, we had seen the nuthatch as one of three lifers for me on this little outing and had been safe.  Safety when driving in Corsica is a big issue as people here drive aggressively and many of the (mostly German) RV owners go up roads I’d never try to even my pickup truck.            They say Corsica is a place where the locals believe in omens and the supernatural.  Napoleon never trusted the Corsicans despite being from here.  He thought it was better to have someone other than a Corsican govern them.  I had met an old man who ordered me to do something.  It was either, get your ass up that hill and see that nuthatch or get the hell off my island before you hurt yourself.  I’m not sure which but I hope he gave me the bird, like I said this has happened to me before, and it seemed a rather strange coincidence, but for me, coincidence and birding seems to be commonplace, maybe too commonplace for just my own dumb luck.            The Corsican nuthatch was off my lifer board, I don’t think I will ever see the rarer Algerian nuthatch which lives in an isolated mountain range in northern Algeria.  I’d probably have to convert to another religion to do that and I already have a couple of religions.  The bird I found in Corsica numbers are declining as well and I suspect might be threatened soon as woodpeckers and logging of all things have taken their toll.  See them while you can, I guess, and at least I have this one.  

Ode to the blueberry god

SO THIS takes us all back around to the Smoothrock Lake fish camp trip.  This is now the annual tradition that started way back in 1982.  I’ve written about this many times before in my blog and various books.  August 8thcame like a thief in the night, silently, unexpectedly, and without a lot of prodroma. I woke up at my Enemy Swim Lake cabin on the 7th after hearing a short-eared owl outside, a year bird, and drove to our home, mowed my vacant lot, completed the closing and rental of my ranch, drove to my RV,  found the rest of my stuff, went to bed, got up early, drive to my dad’s place, packed a car, and started the long drive to northern Ontario.            What would happen this year?  There were no forgotten passports or expired ones this year.  Things were going well.  The border guard looked at us funny and asked “are you with the guys ahead of you?”              Taking the lead, I quickly quipped.  “It depends on what they have done.”  She smiled and then asked how much alcohol we had.             My friend Jeff Rapp parroted the rehearsed tally.  “Four liters of booze, a case of beer and a bottle of wine.”            “I see you aren’t the drinkers of the group.”  It turned out the other pickup with four adults in ti had 10 liters of booze and other assorted liquors and my boat partner Greg doesn’t even drink.  They got a $94 USD fine for the duty on this hoard of spirits at customs.  At least we didn’t have to stop at the LCBO in Thunder Bay, the provincial liquor store for more.  I guess it was going to be the usual fun trip.              While we were paying the customs fee, we missed the visitor center closing time by three minutes, and then had to go to Canadian Tire in Thunder Bay to buy our fishing licences.  As I waited for the others, my boredom led me to the fishing tackle section and well, it cost me a further seventy dollars because too many baits from Canadian manufacturers were looking intriguing.  I was shopping my way north this year, or so it seemed.  I had done the same thing in Duluth.  Maybe I’d even catch a fish or two on one of them.  I always tend to use the same baits so I probably wouldn’t.            This year’s trip had an odd feeling about it.  It was like I was just going through the motions.  I didn’t have a real plan, no feelings of some thing I needed to do, and no bucket list items.  I circumnavigated the lake last year, which used to be on my bucket list.  I have caught so many really big fish that I don’t really expect any more.  So, we just went fishing, and right away on the second day I caught a marginally decent pike.
This 35-inch northern that held lead for trophy for some of the week
The weather had been in a bit of a constant pattern, warm with a western wind and as such, it appeared that the pike had turned off from eating or at least in the way we liked to fish them.  Later, the second day we I dropped Greg off for blueberry picking and I went birding for a little while.  I went out to the hanging rock, a rock deposited on an island that looks like it should fall in. There is a herring gull colony and sometimes a common tern colony on this island or the one a hundred yards away.  I saw some herring gulls, no terns and came back to see what I could see in a bay, but all I flushed up was a merlin.  It was something.
Herring gull
            I was going to title this chapter the legend of Seamonster Bay continues, except that nothing truly odd happened in Seamonster Bay.  For the legend to continue, something odd or memorable had to happen, but nothing did.  For some strange unexplained reason, four eagles circled us as we came into fish coming back from our annual grilled cheese run.  I make grilled cheese in the old barbecue near the seemingly abandoned camp at Fungar Lake Outpost.  This year, I lit the gas grill without looking inside and as it heated up, a grill scraper melted and caught on fire, I had to pull out liquefied plastic and stomp on it.  We still had tasty grilled cheese sandwiches.              I began to start asking questions.  Are seeing seamonsters, a vortex, or even bigfoot prerequisites for having a memorable trip?  Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.  We didn’t run into the game warden.  We didn’t have engine trouble.  I didn’t hit a rock and I guess we really didn’t catch any good fish.  That’s okay.  Mediocrity is the expected and the expected is normal.            I did see a dorcas copper next to the cabin, a diminutive lifer butterfly I had never seen before, and then I saw a few others.  That was about as good as the trip up this end of the lake went. 
Dorcas copper
Green Comma
Common branded skipper
The wind was, as usual, howling in our faces coming out of the Caribou Arm into the main lake but it wasn’t that bad.  I have experienced much worse.  We went back to camp, the guys had beat us back and were both out of ice and diet coke for mix but like good drinkers they made do.  A good drinker can improvise, and they did.  I was reminded of the first few years we were here when they had an icehouse and harvested ice in the winter and kept it all summer covered in sawdust.  Brian, my dad’s best friend, had to chip off ice for his cocktails making sure that no sawdust got mixed in with the Canadian Club.  Now it just takes a trip to the ice machine.It was a couple of days later when I felt fate had again taken over my life when we were heading up old, Lonebreast Bay.  I passed a single canoeist and we stopped to chat with him.  Later when we decided to have lunch, after a walleye fishing bonanza, we came to Lunch Island and found this same canoeist setting up camp.  “Hey, are one of you two doctors?”  Daniel, the canoeist asked.  This old guy, at least mid to upper seventies in age was on a twelve-day solo canoe adventure and was about five days from getting picked up.  He had scraped his shin a few days earlier and it looked bad.  It didn’t hurt him to walk on it, but it was in that marginal area between inflamed and infected.  If I had seen him in the Emergency Room, I would have given him a shot of something but was it worth calling for a seaplane to evacuate him?I looked again and marked the edges with a pen and told him if the redness expanded, he needed to use his device he had with to signal for help and have them fly him out.  We ate and left, and then later that evening, I began to think.  Did I run into him for a reason?  Five days is a long time and maybe I should try to help him. I found a bottle of antibiotics I had at the cabin and then convinced a camp employee to drive me up in a faster boat.  It was a twenty-two-mile round trip, but I think the older guy was worth it and hopefully if there is a little infection, what I scrounged up will knock it down.  It may not help but doing nothing wouldn’t help either.I worried that no good deed ever goes unpunished, but we as people don’t seem to help out the unfortunate as much as we should.  Helping a guy out in the bush with a bum leg is the least a doctor should do.  Maybe I would get some credit from the local fishing deity who would let me catch a large fish?  I could only hope.  Unfortunately, it was a different god that paid me a visit the next day.The Finns have a pagan god who they say is in charge of the blueberry crop.  Vainamoinen was said to have saved the starving Finns one year by making the blueberries grow lush.  It is said he is the deity one prays to when they need something done.  I’m not sure what that means.  His powers, though, are not absolute and praying to him only has mixed success.  The Swedes probably would have had one for blueberries too except that at some point, they took the Norse gods, probably as some missionary for Odin made it to Uppsala and everyone converted from the old form of paganism to the new.  The Norse gods and goddesses don’t seem to care about the berry crop.  In the process, blueberries lost out and the old gods left.  Maybe Vainamoinen also left and went to Canada?   On a small island we call Burnt Over Lunch Island, the old Finnish blueberry god had apparently found a home.  I have never seen such clumps of berries and our fishing trip turned quickly into a berry trip.  I have never filled a half of a bucket so fast.  I’m not sure if any of the First Nation bands worshiped a god of blueberries.  If they or the European Canadians ever did, the blueberry god would be worshiped every summer.  It was odd how on a place of destruction, such bounty grew.
I was thinking of how a crazy bunch of canoeists accidentally burnt this island a few years ago and now, the blueberry god returned with such a bounty of the tasty and succulent small blue orbs.  At camp we made blueberry pancakes and then homemade ice cream with blueberries on top, such is the extent of the roughing it that we partake here on Smoothrock Lake.    The penultimate day was a fishing bust.  The pike were turned off and even catching small ones became a tiring chore, so we went again to pay homage to the Blueberry God.  I was still hoping to get a year bird on this trip, and I was kneeling as if in prayer.  Then I heard them.  I walked to the boat and stood out on a rock.  A flock of Canada Jays (formerly gray jays) flew in and I took some photos.  I watched and eagle fly by.  It was that easy—a gift year bird and then satisfied for a while I went back to picking berries.
Vainamoinen delivered me a bird I needed.  Sometimes we get what we need and not what we want.  I got a bird and blueberries, but big pike and walleyes…maybe next year.            I ran into the old canoer again.  His leg was better, so I guess I helped him.  He never made it to the Wendell Beckwith cabin on a neighboring lake.  The idea of this cabin was like a little seed.  Who was Wendell Beckwith?  Why do people make a pilgrimage to such a forlorn spot in the middle of nowhere just to see a cabin?   The Wendell Beckwith cabin from the internet, is it the House on the Rock in cabin form?
Also why did he call the island he lived on, the center of the universe?  These are questions I need to know and visiting this cabin is now getting added to my bucket list…maybe next year I’ll have more answers to this.              The last day was like a Seuss story.  we caught no fish in No-fish Bay, and also no fish in One-fish Corner, but we did catch a single fish in Two-fish Corner.  One fish, two fish, blue fish, green fish or something like that.  It was better but nothing to brag about.  We ended back up at Seamonster Bay and stranger things began to happen.  We were being watched by and eagle and a herring gull expecting us to leave them some culled fish or something.  When we didn’t, the gull got mad and took things into its own control and started attacking my marker buoy.  Then it started to tow it away before I scared it off.  It was an omen and possibly the Blueberry god was giving me a not so subtle hint that it was time to stop fishing.  Something like this would only happen in Seamonster Bay.  we spotted an elusive pine marten and then called it a fishing trip and drove back.  So, there it was, a week of fishing.  A couple of chances for nude birding.  We picked a lot of berries, and we caught fish.  The pike-ometer showed 189 pike at trip’s end, my second lowest total in a week ever here, finishing off the last ten years at over 3000 pike.  A slow year for us is like a lifetime trip for others.  Everything is relative.I also heard of a strange and mysterious place nearby, do I have to even mention that it got added to my bucket list?  I now have to figure out how to get to it but that would be a trip and a tale for another time.  This trip was about Vainamoinen, or so it seems.  It seems blueberries were what we caught the most of.  This god is one that gives a little and takes a a little and it was now time to go home.  Hopefully, I had given enough.What about the Pike Championship?  It wasn’t my year this year.  Dr. Jerry McCollough of Wadena caught a 41-incher.  It was his year to win the ugliest trophy in angling and pet the beaver.  The annual tradition for the winner while holding his prize money.
Dr. Jerry with the Falun Trophy behind him
I also helped an old canoer.  Vainamoinen provided and yet, he didn’t help me out with the pike, but that is the way of this deity, he is both good and bad, much like the Finnish and Canadian bush.  There is always a bigger fish and, for me, another fishing trip.  Until next year…

Driving The Punjabi Road

Overton, NE
Sitting in the middle of Nebraska in Overton, west of Kearney is quite a gem.  I call it the best 1/2 star truck stop in the world and better yet it is just one of a series of such truck stops.  They are not a chain and not centrally owned, but all have a similar theme.  I call it, "Following the Punjabi Road", The Los Angeles Times wrote an article a month ago, calling I-40 the Punjabi American Highway, where many of the immigrant truckers from the State of Punjabi drive routes to Arkansas and Indiana.

There is more to travel than a bunch of bland extremely overpriced monopolistic truck stops called Flying J, Pilot, Travel Center and Love's (Flying J and Pilot are owned by same company including Warren Buffet), but you need to take a chance.

These hidden gems are scattered out here serving the Indian Truckers, There is the one in Sayre, OK on I-40 near Lawton featured in the LATimes article which we will hit in September that is vegetarian and leans more Sikh, although a Sikh trucker driving for the Singh Lines was a couple of booths away happily eating his lunch in Overton and talking in native tongue to the owner's son, serving him.  These are in Deming NM, Laramie WY, and somewhere just in the border in WY and many other places.

 from the LATimesThere are Punjabi trucker schools, mechanic shops and these truck stops cater to them more than just the food.  The owners of the place in Overton, the Chaudhery's sent their two sons to business school in Lincoln at Univ Neb to help run the operation.  
These truck stops are also giving them great prices on fuel.
These have the cheapest diesel of any truck stops by far.  Near by to Overton, the Pilot charges $3.02 for diesel but Jay's the Truck stop in Overton, Nebraska.....$2.58

$44 cents a gallon cheaper?  That is no typo.  I saved $30 on a 2/3 fill, for a trucker?  Wow!   Why give your money to Warren Buffet?  I can go on how Love's etc is gouging America's travelers but I won't get into that.  Now this truck stop ain't much to look at and is just out of a 1982 movie, or is it 1975?  The expansive parking area is rough, and filled with pot holes, ruts, and weeds.  It desperately needs gravel and a grader.  The whole place needs a coat of paint, maybe three.  They are unbranded as that costs money.  The bathrooms, well I've had worse in outhouses, but that isn't saying much and the whole place hasn't had a cent of overhead done to it in a decade.  The Chaudhery's run a low overhead operation, and you know, I'd rather buy cheap diesel, but the restaurant was clean, even though the booths had lumpy seats.  

The food, though, IS to die for!  Wow!  Like best meal for 15 bucks a man could eat! The naan bread is the best I've eaten and the curried chicken good and the coconut milk chicken was even better than that.  It was the highlight of the day!
One happy passenger boarding Big Bird filled with coconut chicken goodness.  
So do the Punjabi Highway, save a few bucks and have some good food and find these gems, just don't worry about the outside.  Come eat until you're stuffed and drive off happy.  Exit 248 on I-80 should be circled on your road atlas.  I'll report from Lawton next month.
Olaf
PS.  a few wildlife shots...Some bugs of Nebraska: Common checkered skipper
Gray Copper
Colorado bugs: Colorado haistreak (state butterfly of CO)
Mountain checkered skipper 
Dun skipper (cell phone camera)
taxiles skipper (cell phone camera)
Some birds:  I was hand feeding the hummers, and from hanging a feeder on my awning on the RV, but even though I got a good haul of birds, cameras and pictures were scarce where we were camping (banned?) so all I have are these.
Broad-tailed hummingbirds

rufous hummingbirds

Juvenile western bluebird

You know...we are at the end...

We are camping at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Akron, Colorado.  A couple with a baby and a chihuahua walks past while I am photographing a tornado (above).  "You know it's the end!"  The woman says to my wife.
       "What you say?"  My wife replies.
       "You know it's the end!"  She repeats.
      "I don't think the tornado is coming this way."  My wife replies ignoring the question about salvation given to us poor tourists from South Dakota
       The woman tried to reengage my wife about her being saved and she just wasn't getting what the woman was asking so finally as the rain came, "God bless you." she said scurrying away, dragging the chihuahua who possibly wanted to stay, I had just made a steak, it smelled good outside.
    ....it has been one of those days, answers to questions not asked, directions given to places we aren't going, and solutions to problems we don't have.
     Ah travel, got to love it.
     I'm just thinking I may have come up with a pithier answer.
     We lived the parable of the sewing and harvesting of wheat today, except even those seeds sowed on the ground here, bad ground which is marginal looks really good, so go figure, maybe that is me, sew the Good News with marginal me, and maybe even that will even bear fruit.


They've had so much rain up in NE Colorado there is even standing water and American Avocets, something this drought prone country rarely has.   McCown's longspurs were playing in the mud (photographs for another time) and I even got a spotted sandpiper

 
I'm up here doing a little business on my way to a convention, Big Bird the RV is out and about and we are doing the camping thing, we were up in Minneapolis and got to see the Union Pacific Big Boy drive past
UP 4014 BigBoy, only functional 4-8-8-4 left operational, built 1941
I had a presentation at the Minnesota Global Birding meeting in Uptown in Downtown Minneapolis and on my third slide the power went out and stayed out for the entire period until 5 minutes before closing and I had stopped giving my photo-less description of the birds of the South Atlantic...it came back on 1 hour 40 minutes after it went out, it couldn't have been more precise to screw up my presentation...It was the biggest fiasco in public speaking, maybe even birding, and it was so Olaf.....I spent so much time on that talk, I could have cried, but actually I did.

so then we headed west, and stayed last night dry camping at a boat landing ten miles west of Lincoln, NE, I had taken steroids for my trismus (jaw pain) and frozen jaw from too much oral surgery last month and I got severe abdominal pain, that at times put me to tears, or maybe it was just the jaw pain, or maybe....it was the dang presentation....what are the odds of a power failure....


It wasn't all for naught, as I heard my year bobwhite and I got a photograph of a silver spotted skipper, the commonest skipper but one I hadn't photographed before

   
So tonight, I'm thinking this is my lucky week...
I got severe gastritis
I had the presentation from hell
The dog had diarrhea twice in the RV
The internet where we camped in Minneapolis went out
The Twins blew a big lead again the Yanks
My computer fried a motherboard, and 800 bucks to fix so I'm pitching it, I got most everything transferred out

Why do I think its been so lucky?
because the tornado didn't hit us, being this close to the ends times, I guess I guy needs to be careful...and heck....it is so nice to get out with the RV, spend time with my wife, and see and experience new things, I'm sure I got a chapter in a book about this trip and we really haven't gotten anywhere yet

More to come....mountains tomorrow, if this continues there are going to be a lot of blogs because there is going to be some really crazy things happening

be safe, the end is nigh and it will come like a thief in the night or so I've read

Olaf

The Milk and Butter(fly) Run

Its Butterfly Season out on the prairie and I've been searching the grasslands for new and interesting butterflies as well as seeing many of our native species of birds.  Next week should be an even bigger week of bugs as the flights of early summer skippers should begin.  The week before and after July 4th tis the season of prairie flowers and prairie butterflies, but with the late spring, it could be a weird year of say Dakota skippers about without cone flowers up yet       In the middle of this, I see a post about a bonanza out west of me, Baird's Sparrows in the Grand River National Grassland and in numbers....I've looked for them out there before, almost every year, and some years I see one, but other's I've struck out.  Dan Svingen posted last that he'd seen many, and had some great photographs, so I was smitten, It was time to go....It was time for the MILK RUN!       I name this annual tradition the Milk Run because it is an early morning point to point focused trek of birding.  The true Milk Run, I leave my cabin at 0130, head west, sometimes stop at Grand River Bridge on the river if low water but I need to get to Lemmon, SD 250 miles west of me about first good light.      In my experience with Baird's, they start signing way before dawn, not as early as Nelson's but early, and if the sun is too high, they stop and become hard to get.  My usual trip is to turn on Reidy Road, drive it south to County 2, drive through pasture 7, go south to a couple of pastures areas that hold long enough grass for Baird's, scour the prairie dog town for Sprague's pipit, hit the state highway, go south, two miles to the campground, use the facilities, then drive across the dam on Hugh Glass Road.  Back in 1823, almost exactly where I always get Spotted towhee on a hillside, Hugh Glass was attacked by a grizzly bear protecting two cubs, Glass abandoned for dead by his party, came to, and stumbled and limped back over 200 miles to Fort Kiowa, near what is Chamberlain SD now.        On My normal milk run, after the towhee stop I drive hard back up near Lemmon, hit Hwy 12 head west and drive to Bowman County ND.  I scour the Rhame prairie for McCown's Longspurs, sometimes driving almost in Montana near some sage crouse leks I know of, then turn for another historical site at Riva Gap area, where our starving Calvary massacred women and children native Americans, I get some birds and drive like a maniac back home crawling in sometime after midnight, tired, car weary, but happy after seeing a lot of birds.     This year, I had hoped to look for some butterflies and as such planned on turning back around after cursing Hugh Glass and thanking the grizzly bear's spirit, although it should have killed him, leaving the Arikara tribe the honor of doing so in 1833.  The only good thing that came from Glass is a free camping site near his monument near a Bureau of Reclamation Dam on the Shadehill Reservoir, I ponder if we ever needed, that ruined some good birding habitat.     The rain continued, so I didn't go out to get butterflies, but Baird's sparrows were everywhere.  It was such a surprise.  Baird's along with their cousins, Nelson, Henslow, and Le Conte are notoriously skittish birds, heard but never seen, or seen as LBB flushing and never sitting up, but this year, I kept hearing the sparrow in the green lush prairie grass (some years, it only grows a few inches, but today, it was almost knee high, and so I'd walk into the grass, flush the bird and try to get a photo, it was so dark so long in the morning due to the weather, the birds never turned off, and so it continued.  I got soaked being out in the wet and instead of quitting, just peeled off the wet clothing and continued.  You know I'm not a shy birder in terms of what I wear and I hate such wet duds.  They were drying nicely on the passenger seat with the heat turned up and car running. I didn't want to wear my bathrobe I had with outside and no one was anywhere near me, so it didn't matter.  It was just me and a prairie full of sparrows. Baird's Sparrow one of about 50
Grasshopper sparrow, actually less numerous than Baird's if can believe that
Chestnut collared longspurs, numerous especially on "Longspur Hill" where I always get their tick for the year, lately I go see them near my cabin but a bird historically I list from the same spot over and over again
The willet pair is still at Willet Valley a name I give for a valley with a pond.  They always get territorial just by driving by and stand in the road
It was so dark out then, I also heard my first Baird there and this is the typical photo I can get of this elusive bird, if I can even get this That is about as good as I ever get.  Some points on Baird's ID, first, they are very light, almost looking white, much much lighter than a Savannah, and is their face from other small sparrows on face, they also got more tail than grasshopper, or Nelson's, the second....when you flush them, they fly low and dive right in never sitting up.  If they post, they are something else.....except....this year, on the road, on fences, anywhere but in the grass.  Maybe it was because the grass was wet, maybe it was because there were so many, maybe it was just luck, IDK, but it was some good butter from the milk run.
I left for home photographing old grain elevators from near ghost towns before getting harassed by a drunk Native getting gas in McIntosh SD.  "Indian Killer" was his accusation against me.  I'm not sure if it was my "Wapiti" plate on my car that attracted him thinking I was kin only to be a white man in a Shoshoni named car.  Then he asked me for a few bucks.....He wondered off, and I drove away There are a lot of things dying on on the prairie the last 200 years, Natives, Grizzly Bears, the frontier spirit, small towns, butterflies, and thankfully Hugh Glass 
Views of the prairies from my hopefully ranch Monday and Tuesday
Upland sandpiper
Common ringlet
tawny-edged skipper

Melissa Blue

Pearl crescent

American Lady

Peck's skipper

Silvery Blue

The craziest thing I saw this week was this moth, a snowberry clearwing also called the hummingbird moth

just a taste of butterflies yet to come
I'm around in July.....make NE South Dakota your butterfly stop, or better yet, go see those Baird's next week!  It will never be like that again

A River Runs Through it

All adventures have a flavor to them.  Some are spicy and some are more like vanilla.  My last adventure, reported here,  is difficult to pin down as to exactly what that flavor is.  This trip is like the spice "grains of paradise" or also called alligator pepper, you taste it and have no clue what the pungent peppery flavor mixed in with citrus is from, you just know it is good, maybe great, definitely exotic, and all you know is that you want more, but you also know, it will be difficult to find it again.  So that is as best as I can get in giving you an impression of what I did the last 10 days.          They say what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, or at least it should and unfortunately, a lot of what happened on this trip I cannot share, and yes, we also went to Vegas.  Even with releases signed, and on this blog, my blog, I have standards.  It isn't like I or we broke any laws, violated any religious standards...well just setting foot in Vegas might violate that, nor did we even risk the ire of the police but I guess you are just going to have to read the book and I think, now, there will be one.   I've done a lot this year, and have a lot left to do.  No one will read it but that is okay, my kids need a diary of the year that is 2019.  On my newspaper column, I can say even less, I'm not even sure what i can say.  Maybe "we rafted the Grand Canyon as a river runs through it."          In 2013, my year-long adventure culminated on Attu Island.  This year, it is hard to identify the exact pinnacle of the year that will be 2019.  Was it Africa?  Was it South America?  Was it Tristan?  Was it the big cruise I took in January?  Maybe it will be France, or Galapagos, or possibly Costa Rica?  What I just did this was not even on my bucket-list, it was on my wife’s as it was she that had planned this trip, but that was okay, it was still a great trip.  Yet even this float trip down the Grand Canyon was not her first, yet this one was better, much better, and I think for both of us, the best trip of 2019 will be this one.            I posted on Facebook this picture, saying:
A view that would overwhelm a painter.  Stephen Greenfield replied, “Photography can't do it justice either. More than any place I've seen, the Grand Canyon requires 3D, to appreciate the immensity of the space.”            After a few years of waiting on a list to even get the opportunity to go on this special once in a lifetime, trip, we were able to get on with this very special expedition of the Colorado River  organized by Beverly Price of Phoenix.  It would be her 11th organized trip and her probably last such adventure, she is retiring and so, unless someone takes up the mantle of organizing this, this near annual event may end.  It was a trip those other rafter also down on the river last week on other trips that ran into us will be talking about for years maybe more so than their own trip and it wasn't to see Olaf.                It should also be noted that 2019 is the 100th Anniversary of the formation of the Grand Canyon National Park, a park the US government has tried repeatedly to destroy by placing dams as recently as a few decades ago and as recently as last year, someone tried to convince the Navajo Nation to allow a cable car and restaurant to be built at the mouth of the Little Colorado River which would be almost as toxic as the building of the Glen Canyon Dam.  This trip was to both celebrate the 100 years of the park and Bev’s ideals of what you should wear or not wear on a rafting adventure,  and it was this that made the trip extra special.  For my efforts, I earned a cute t-shirt, made new friends, and and fell in love with a place I had only seen from the top.  We also tested sunscreen, and it was really good sunscreen.  Later, we made a pilot laugh flying in, and got cheers from passing rafts all in a sense of wonderment, and some from Australia, I think were envious, but then again those from "down under" are more open minded.            The trip started in Vegas and it ended in Vegas.  It was a gamble of a different type.  I have never been to Las Vegas before one of just three major US cities I've never been to, New York, Jacksonville FL, and Vegas.  I can't say that any more, I'm down to 2.  We met the group and got organized.  Silja and I took in two shows of Cirque du Soleil.  One featured very skimpy clothing while they spun around, and the other, well, the other, they had even less on, what is less than "skimpy"?  This would set the tone for the trip.            I took Leroy the penguin to see Hoover Dam, I can't show you the picture later from Arizona.
He tried to fly off but I caught him for his Nevada picture and then, we later flew to Marble Canyon over the Grand Canyon to stay at Cliff Dwellers.  Silja had a three-bagger flight, three special bags to remember the flight that came close to the Vermilion Cliffs, my wife never saw them as she had her head in a bag, yea ...that bag.  Would it be an Omen?  It would turn out to be the worse thing that happened to us.            We met the rest of the expedition at the motel in the desert, mostly couples from all over North America.   Expert river runner and paddler Dave Kashinski led this special Hatch trip as head boatman, a man who has been down the Colorado in a small boat more than anyone has or will be. Dave liked one liners calling the Colorado River “a river too thick to drink and too thin to plow.” He was also featured on the reenactment movie of the 1869 John Wesley Powell’s mapping voyage down the river. Our other boatman was Erik Deitemeyer, a quiet guy that plays guitar, and also leads the ski patrol in the winter in Wolf Creek Pass, CO.  He was another hand-picked expert to lead our river run of 188 miles down the bottom of the canyon.  Our swamper was Thad Avery a young man from Flagstaff not even 19, who has been running the river since being fifteen.  He was an amazing guy that had lost his father at aged 12, a famous Neurosurgeon to a freak fall on a rock, yet is one of the most well-adjusted Millennials I have met.  He was a gamer , and by half way through was as much a member of the group as anybody and fit in with the crowd.  He gave me hope for the future.  So along with them, the 32 of us left Lee's Ferry and rafted the river for 8 incredible days last week. Ron, our photojournalist who drove down from Page and took photos of the start of the trip and from Navajo Bridge.  He gave me a t-shirt, "Raft Naked" I stashed it in the bottom of my boat bag because if one wore the t-shirt....
            Now mind you this was not a trip for everyone as you might guess, but for different reasons.  In fact, floating this part of the Colorado is not for the meek.  There are serious rapids, and just following the Park rules makes for quite a hardship for some.  Bodily functions seem to freak people out.  Dave even told stories about it.  You cannot be shy about the body on these trips.  First, urination is only in the river., men and women, if you go on the sand, it smells like a cat box soon enough.  "The solution for pollution is dilution."  A least that is what Dave said.   Special toilets are set up at the edges of camp for other bodily waste that are quite open, only this last one had any cover at all.  
Toilets with a view, and sometimes like this one directly next to or below my cot.  Showers or baths are in the cold river, and it is unbearably hot outside, peaking at 107 the last day.  Luckily we did not have any freak storms which are historically ferocious.  We slept under the stars,  with camp sites separated by rocks, a few ants or less, but at least off the ground on a cot and generally were in the sight of everyone and everything but the 13 women, 16 men, and three guides on this trip were not shy, in fact, we were the opposite of shy.  Honestly, I’m not sure how the other groups do it.   Like I said, we were testing sunscreen and well, it worked well, 8 days in hot sun on a river with nothing between me and the sun but just this sunscreen and I have a nice light tan, and no burns, nothing even red.            The trip details, we had two rafts built out of surplus army bridging supplies, and we went 187.4 miles. The canyon was literally overwhelming both in scope and terrain.  The group really meshed and was the most together group I've ever been with on an adventure.  In some respects, we had to be, but everyone noticed this and that was the real highlight of the trip.  The couples were all cool, adjusted and calm, there was no fights, no nothing but pure enjoyment of the outdoors and we worked as a team to get the gear moved and made sure no one got left behind.              Sadly after it all, the food, the rapids, the hikes, the laughs, the hugs, the "duffel lines" to move gear, we dressed the final morning at dawn and waited for a helicopter to take us to Bar Ten Ranch

We then boarded three planes from the ranch to take us back to Boulder City and then home
Sights:Certainly other people took better photos, and not having the releases myself, I am careful of what views of people to include on these but the views are stunning.  Someday I'll get the official trip pictures and I may share some of them, and again, you might have to read the book to get the full story.








          Birds:It was no panacea but I saw 18 year birds, the best of course were the condors, but seeing Lucy's warblers were fun
California Condors #9 and #54 at Navajo Bridge, we saw a third later on, then none
Black-chinned hummingbird
Clark's Grebe
Least Bittern in Henderson NV
Lucy's warblers dominated the lower canyon
There is nothing like a Yellow-breasted chat
Common Raven

Butterflies: Common Buckeye
Dainty Sulphur Pipevine swallowtail (a poisonous butterfly)
Marine Blue Orange skipperling Queen Reakirt's Blue
Variegated Frittilary   Checkered skipper, cannot tell species without sending a specimen to a lab to IDReptiles: Desert Spiny Lizard
Western whiptailmammals: Desert Bighorn sheep
I also had a mouse in my shoe, that was unphotographed
So that is it, a crazy and fulfilling trip, tiring and exhilarating.  We got some sun, some birds, and we got wet, very wet.  It was something we will always remember.  It was the seeds of paradise, a flavor and a trip for the ages that I hope, hope others get to go on at least do the regular river rafting adventure.

Buying the Farm (or in my case, the Ranch).

Comedian Joan Rivers once quipped, I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, "Get the hell off my property."  Nothing is comparable to owning your property.  I’m also reminded of John Wayne in Chisum at both the beginning and end of the movie sitting on his horse up on a hill watching over his land, and knowing that everything he is seeing is his.              Unless your names are Ted Turner or John Malone (the two largest private landowners in the United States) very few people will ever own enough land to do what John Chisum was portrayed as doing in the movie bearing his last name, but it is a nice dream.  It is said that one should always dream, and I guess, dream big.            The other day while I was driving around birding seeing migrants arrive into northeast South Dakota for the very first time in 2019, I came across an auction sign not far from Summit.  I was on a road I almost always bird every year.  I tallied my year upland plover sitting on a fence post nearby and then I saw more signs.  It was a huge tract that was at auction and not only that, it was property I knew well for just last summer I hiked on a corner of the property as well as on the adjoining tract of National Wildlife Refuge.  I was not looking for birds but looking for many threatened butterfly species as well as two rare endangered butterflies, the Dakota skipper and Poweshiek skipperling.  This latter butterfly has not been conclusively seen around these parts in over a decade, it is only believed a small population in the prairies of southern Wisconsin have kept the butterfly from being extinct.  In South Dakota, the last one identified on another parcel of the Waubay National Wildlife Refuge, nearer to my cabin.            What I experienced in 2018 on this parcel of virgin grassland was a cornucopia of butterflies. I saw many species of skipper, fritillaries, and other varieties of the colorful insects, most of which I didn’t knew existed before I found them and looked them up.   Regal Frittillary
My wife also found a dead Dakota skipper and I photographed another butterfly that made me suspicious for the elusive skipperling.  The photo was inconclusive for identification by experts, however, and probably it was something else but it gave me hope, hope one could still be there, just waiting to be found.            So there I sat, on the edge of the old Meridian Highway, the name of a route envisioned in 1911 to run from Winnipeg south first to Galveston and later to Laredo.   This was the first north to south route in the middle the United and this was long before large parts were decommissioned after the Interstate system was built and US-81 was moved to I-29 in these parts of South Dakota.  It could be mind boggling to think of how much commerce drove past where I stood.  Now I could lay down in the middle of the road and it could take an hour before anyone would hit me.  It wasn’t the bygone era of travel that I wanted to save, it was the butterflies and I began to think.  Someone needs to buy this property.  If not me, then who? Olaf had only a Forster's tern to share the view on ranch property on the old Meridian Highway Black tern
Savannah Sparrow              I was sure my wife would talk some sense into me but, shockingly, that was not the case.  So, I thought about it.  I talked to people who knew more about land than I did but none of them, not a one, talked me out of it.  So, on the morning of the auction, divided up into three parcels, I woke up at four in the morning to worry about how much I should bid six hours later.I went birding to think.  I spotted a magnolia warbler and got a really nice photograph.

I thought about butterflies and my legacy.  I thought of quotes from people who knew about the legacy of land than I did.  I even thought about Joan Rivers of all people and the quote above.I harkened back in thought to those that formed me and my thinking.  I wondered.  What would Edward Abbey say?  In Journey Home he wrote on the appreciation of wilderness “loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need—if only we had the eyes to see.”  But the land I was looking at was just native prairie, it was not wilderness and Abbey was a creature of the desert.  I thought about Ted Turner, who still owns more prairie and ranch land than anyone save the US government.  Ted no longer owns the Atlanta Braves, CNN, nor is married to Jane Fonda and is not as rich as he used to be mostly as he gave a billion dollars to the United Nations, but Ted Turner is still buying land.  He wants to own 2 million acres when he dies.  He is 40,000 acres short.  What would Ted Turner say?  He’d say, if you like the view, buy the view.  I guess I like the butterflies so I must buy the butterfly habitat, otherwise someone would destroy it.I came home and moped and talked to my wife.  She was more willing to bid higher than I was, so I set my price, which would basically be what it took, and then the auction started in earnest.  I watched and then, nearing the end, I bid on the smaller of the two largest parcels, the one nearest the wildlife refuge tract.  I avoided the other, but as the end neared, someone would up the bid on my parcel by a thousand dollars, resetting the clock at four minutes to end.  As I had a large reserve bid, there was little danger of them ever hitting my theoretically highest bid, and at that, I would go higher.  The problem was, this bidder was costing me money and it was making me angry.  He (or she) had the highest bid on the larger parcel, and it wasn’t moving.  So finally, angry that I couldn’t just claim victory and go out and bird, I jumped his bid a thousand.  I was now the high bidder.  With thirty seconds left, he both over bid that by a thousand and jumped mine up five thousand dollars.  Which, again, just cost me some money, and then just as it was going to close, he raised it again by a thousand, resetting the clock.  Really angry now, as this was the seventh time he’d raised my bid without ever getting near my reserve price, I looked at his higher bid on the big parcel.  I upped him three thousand, and then waited for the four minutes to run past, and he never bid again. Greed had cost him (her), I was willing to share, but no, he had to have it all.   I had won, but all I felt was nervousness.  I get no joy from purchasing anything.  My grandparents had filled me with buyer’s remorse on anything.  Had I done the correct thing?I was now the owner of two tracts of land joined at the center by a section line.  Combined, I could walk over two miles without ever setting foot on another’s property.  To be honest, it was a bit overwhelming.  The former owner prior to it being taken over by the creditor had filed bankruptcy just before the auction.  Assuming that process didn’t cause some interference, I was now the owner of a ranch.  In relation to Ted Turner, I was just a small landowner but to me and to most people, this was no small matter.  Now I just have to wait until closing and then…figure out what I’m doing with it.  I need to learn about how much grazing is enough.  Who would be a good renter and what would I need to do to promote the colorful residents of the sections of prairie that I now am the stewards of?   I now have more questions than answers.I don’t expect to get many paying butterfly enthusiasts out there just as don’t expect to see many birders.  This will be a quiet victory as none of the insects or the birds will tell me thanks.  No one will pat me on the back but maybe myself.  I assume this will be a ranch-sized headache but at least it isn’t a house in the hurricane-prone areas.  I may not be the most handsome or have Ted Turner’s money, but I always say to my wife, “at least I keep it interesting.”  I could be the most interesting man in the world, or so some say.  I name all years, as they all have themes.  Most of them are good, and all have stories attached, sometimes, many stories.  2016 was the year of the big year, and 2017 was the year of the hurricane.  Last year, was the year of the butterfly, and 2019 it appears will be the year of the ranch.  What could happen and what I could find, only God could guess.  All I know is, I have some exploring to do on soon to be, my land.  I have fences to walk and I think I will own something like 22 miles of fence.  I also have lists to make and pictures to take.  It is going to be a busy summer.