Olympic National Park

Cyndi and I visited the Olympic National Park, Dungeness Spit, Cape Flattery, and the Olympic Peninsula in northwestern Washington this summer.  I saw a new life bird there, the Rhinoceros Auklet.

I saw many Heerman's Gulls.

Our favorite bird, though, has to be the characterful puffins.  The puffins there are the Tufted Puffins.  I had never seen one this close before!

We spent an enjoyable day hiking on Dungeness Spit, and this view shows the lighthouse at the tip of the spit with Mount Rainier in the distance.

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Here is a veiw of the spit.  It is about five miles out to the lighthouse.

We also went to the Hoh rainforest.

Moss covers everything in this area where there can be about 180 inches of rain every year.

We also stopped at a few of the many beaches on the Pacific coast.  The beaches further north were composed of cobblestones.

There were not very many people out in the early morning.

Driftwood was piled high, and this particular image caused me to imagine animal faces looking out to sea.

Further south, the beaches become broad expanses of soft sand.

This trail to the beach winds through a grove of Sitka Spruce, and many of them have burls growing on them.

The sandy coastline goes on for miles, and camping is allowed on many of the beaches.

Pearly Everlasting grew at the edge of the sand.

There were interesting bits of shells left behind by the receding tide.

North Cascades National Park

This year Cyndi and I drove to North Cascades National Park.  On the way there we saw this Eastern Kingbird, in northern Idaho.

We camped in the Cascades, and this Swainson's Thrush was one of many heard calling in the morning.

There were many Townsend's Warblers.

This was the view from our tent.

Diablo Lake, really a reservoir behind a dam, gains its interesting color from the fine suspended sediments called glacial flour.

Nevada

Cyndi and I visited Nevada in the spring.  I saw a new Life Bird, the Lucy's Warbler.  The photo leaves quite a bit to be desired.  I'll have to visit again, I suppose, and try again.

This Cooper's Hawk was near the Desert National Wildlife Refuge Corn Creek Station.

We visited the Henderson Bird Viewing Preserve, and enjoyed the Black-capped Gnatcatchers.

Some of the desert cacti were in bloom.

When I saw these next two birds (Great-tailed Grackle and a Hummingbird) it made me think of that game, Angry Birds.  They do seem to be grumpy about something!

Here is a Prickle Poppy in bloom, with a Joshua Tree in the background.

I think the nicest photo I captured was this Lincoln's Sparrow, another bird seen at the Corn Creek Station, north of Las Vegas.

Maine 2012 (Autumn fungi)

I've fallen behind in blogging, so will just pour this beauty onto the page in one big post.  Maine (or anywhere in New England, to be honest) in the fall just can't be beat.  I grew up there, and here's a picture of my homestead ... long before I was a resident there.  The house is some 150 years old.

Sullivan, Maine.

An autumn hike (Cyndi).

Autumn leaves, beech tree.

Blueberry fields in the fall.

Wave impact at Schoodic Point, Acadia National Park.

Northern Gannet.

Another treeline, this one at the edge of the salt spray zone, showing the pink granite bedrock of the Maine coast.

I'm tempted to say this is an angry ocean.  It was heaving and churning with a stiff breeze blowing cold spindrift onshore amid the clacking of cobbles and the explosive whoomp of the waves compressing air in the caverns at the edge of the sea.  But the ocean is dispassionate, and the seawater coursing through our bodies cares not for the external tempest we call life.

A herd of brown toadstools, showing off their gills.

A shelf fungus exudes moisture from its pores in the damp forest.

Squirrel.

A Hydnum type of fungus, I believe.

Lobster fungus, and though it may not be as tasty as the crustacean, I'm told it is edible ... but check this out carefully before you take my word for it.  I have not eaten one.  I am quite cautious about eating mushrooms, because one wrong identification can have disastrous consequences.  I do love to look at them, though!

Mushrooms and moss.

A yellow Hydnum type fungus.  I'm not a mycologist, but with this many non-vascular plants to be found ... if I lived in Maine, I think I would be!

If this was red, I would have called it "British Soldiers."  But it is pink, and I think it may be the fruiting bodies of a form of lichen.  This is a close-up, they're very tiny.

A colorful toadstool, perhaps in the Amanita family, a deadly poisonous one.

A pure white mushroom with wondrous translucency showcasing the gills.

Autumn color reflected in the ripples of an abandoned granite quarry now filled with water.

The brilliant varied color of Staghorn Sumac in the fall.

New York museums and sights

Here's a quick snapshot of some of the things Cyndi and I saw and did while we were in New York City in October 2012.

The bronze bull on Wall Street.

One of four statues outside the Museum of the American Indian.

A butterfly inside the Natural History Museum.  The exhibit was filled with live butterflies of all shapes, sizes and colors.

The arch at Washington Square Park, on a rainy night.

A sarcophagus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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An Henri Cartier-Bresson moment in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  "I could have had a V8!"

Arms and armor, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Three Muses, sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Statue of Liberty.

Discover Something

I'm spending some of my time participating in a project to classify space photographs, called Galaxy Zoo.

Today I "discovered" this beautiful spiral galaxy with a bar feature.  (OK, not really, other people have seen it, too.  But, it is possible to be the first person to view and help categorize some of these images.  I know somebody else has seen this one because they added it to their library of favorite images, just as I did when I saw it.  What a beauty!)
Don't like astronomy?  There are similar projects where you can assist with cancer research, transcribe museum records, do climate research, map the surface of the moon, or look for space warps (gravitational lenses).  If you like science, you'll love Zooniverse, found at https://www.zooniverse.org/.

The Big Apple

These photos are from my visit with Cyndi to see my Uncle Ralph in New York City, in October of 2012.  I took so many photos, and was so busy with my studies, that I didn't know where to start in posting any.  But, I really wanted to share some, and will start with these gems.

This first one is looking north from lower Manhattan toward the Empire State Building.



This one is just a closer view of the same skyline.



And, this is looking south toward the financial district of lower Manhattan.  A new day dawns and the lights are on in the Freedom Tower under construction to replace the World Trade Center.