Tag: Travel
Adventures Around Alamosa
Treasure Hunting
Holy Cacti & Succulents, Batman!
We spent the last day of our trip in the Phoenix area before heading back to home base in Colorado. We weren’t sure what we’d do with the day, that is until my husband got on the interwebs as the trip got closer and found the Desert Botanical Gardens were not far from where we were staying. Since he’s a desert/cactus/succulent/nature nerd (and I mean that in the best and most loving way!), it seemed like a good way to spend our day.
We arrived at the gardens not long after they opened, only expecting to spend a couple of hours there and then head off to do something else. Boy, were we wrong! The Gardens were so much bigger than we realized with tons to see, starting from the get-go with a gorgeous mix of cacti and succulents greeting you just after the entrance.
Admittedly, I screwed up a little by not checking out their camera & tripod policies prior to arriving. Knowing that many botanical gardens have restrictions on cameras – especially with tripods – I played it safe and only brought my phone. To say I started kicking myself for that mistake immediately is an understatement! Not long after we arrived, I was seeing all kinds of macro shots I wanted to take. Then I saw folks coming in with tripod setups! Blerg! I did what I could with the camera on my phone during the day. Guess we’ll just have to go back! (Oh darn.)
Putting my camera mis-planning aside, we dove in. There were so many cool things to see. There’s gobs of variety – a lot of the species of plants in the complex are native to Arizona and they have a lot of non-native species too. The Gardens are setup as a central hub with desert plants, then 4 or 5 different loop trails shoot off of that main hub. One loop takes you through wildflowers native to the area (though we were a few weeks too early for the bloom), another takes you on a nature trail, etc. It was a really nice setup that lent itself to leisurely wandering and taking it all in at our own pace.
Along the way we ran into several awesome docents who filled us in on the different plants around us, how the plants function in the desert, and so on. It also happened to be a bird watching day at the Gardens, so there were a lot of folks running around with binoculars trying to spot what types of birds were passing through. A few of the birders chatted us up, adding to our knowledge of the creatures in this part of the southwestern desert.
The Gardens did have a few art pieces mixed in along the way. My 2 favorites were representations of cacti. The first piece was a sculpture made of the iron spikes that are part of a cactus transplant system developed back in the 30s (if I recall correctly) that’s still in use today to preserve native cacti when they need to be relocated due to construction. The other piece was a Chihuly glass sculpture near the entrance that was sparkling brilliantly as we left. My mother-in-law makes stained glass and fused glass pieces as a hobby, and generally loves anything related to glass. Thanks to her, I knew those had to be Chihuly pieces because it fit both in style and placement when I think of his work.
We spent a considerable part of our day at the Desert Botanic Gardens, so there wasn’t much time to do anything else in Phoenix other than to grab a bite and try some more of the local beer before going home. That’s when I happened upon a near-match of an all-time favorite beer of mine that’s been out of production for 2 years now, so the beer quest was a massive success in my book! (Thank you McFate’s for ending our trip on that tasty note!!)
– JC
Everybody Wants to be Ansel Adams (Including Me)
I’m betting that just about everybody who’s seen a black & white landscape picture has silently and sarcastically thought to themselves, “Nice job, Ansel Adams-wanna be.” I know I’m guilty of it, even with my own shots. But there’s gobs of reasons his name is synonymous with black & white nature photography – he took a lot of damn good shots and did some groundbreaking work in the field in terms of technique!
Maybe it’s because Adams’ work was mainstream in the sense that it appeared in places other than just the fanciest museums so I was exposed to it a little more often, but I usually prefer black & white landscape shots to those in color. Don’t get me wrong – color landscape photography can be really amazing. But, I deal in reality and my reality/luck is that I’m rarely in the right spot at the right time with the utterly perfectly dramatic conditions to get a National Geographic-worthy color shot no matter how hard I try. So instead, I work to find something interesting about the scene nature’s put in front of me, even if it’s not readily apparent the moment I take the picture.
It may sound silly, but that was definitely the case at the Grand Canyon. That vast swath of land is so beautiful I still can’t find words to do it justice. It’s also really hard to capture it in a way that conveys both its magnitude and its beauty. So, instead of frustrating myself with not-quite-ideal conditions, I made the best of what I had. Turns out, the best of what I got was on our way back to Phoenix at the end of our stay in the park.
The morning we left, we decided to head further east towards Desert View Tower to get a different vantage point on the Grand Canyon. The 25-mile drive out to Desert View Tower had quite a few places were you could stop and look out over the rim. What was cool for us was that, after spending 3 days in the Village looking north out into the Canyon and across to the North Rim, this drive put us more towards the eastern side so we were looking up the Canyon to the west, more in line with how the Colorado River flows through it. Because it was mid-morning, the light was just about right to keep things bright, yet still have some dramatic shadows in play, so I activated my inner Ansel Adams and got to work.
I normally shoot my black & white shots in color first, then convert them to black & white later during post-processing. Even in cases when the color is a bit blah due to flat light, I find I can manipulate the monochrome version more easily to get make things come out the way I want it. Using this approach over the years, I’ve built up a sense for what I think would make a good black & white shot based on the Technicolor version in front of me when I initially take the picture. That helps me think through the shooting process to get interesting or dramatic shots. When I get home to review and process the images, sometimes I surprise even myself in terms of what I can come up with in black & white.
Here’s 3 examples from this trip alone where I was really surprised with how much better I thought things looked in black & white instead of color. Each is presented in a slide show so you can see what I saw when I took the picture versus how it changed when I converted to black & white.
Ansel Adams was definitely onto something all those years ago, so I’ll keep channeling him on occasion when it comes to my own landscape & nature photography.
– JC
Down is Optional, Up is Mandatory
No truer words have ever been spoken when it comes to canyon hiking. When you’re hiking up mountains, the harder part of the day is usually the climb, but at least that’s the first part of your day when your legs are fresher. Coming down can still be tough, but at least you’re working with gravity instead of against it.
Canyon hiking is the exact opposite. Your day starts with the “easy” downward trek, but then you have to climb up and out to finish the day when you’re at your most exhausted. The canyons I’ve hiked have been in hot desert climates, so that makes the exhaustion all the worse on the way back up if you’re not careful.
Whether it’s mountain or canyon hiking, it’s still worth it even though there’s different physical and mental challenges involved.
On our 2nd full day in Grand Canyon National Park, it was finally time to dive into the Canyon a little. Before we did, I had to get out to try for sunrise shots again though. I’m happy to say the weather cooperated a bit better than the day before!
Our plan was to head down the Bright Angel trail as far as we could reasonably go on a winter day hike. We fueled up with a good breakfast, grabbed our gear, and off we went.
Trail conditions weren’t too bad, though we found ourselves walking on snow and ice for the first 1.5 miles of the trail. Thankfully, we brought our traction devices to shore up our footing, though that didn’t mean we could blaze down the trail. It was slick and steep enough that one slip in the wrong place and – whoop! – you’d be off the trail and taking a really bad downward plunge.
A little ways down the trail, we came across what may be one of the most amusing – and useful – signs we’ve ever seen in our hiking travels. Aside from providing important safety info to novice hikers thinking they could slay the Canyon on an easy long walk, we enjoyed the artwork. My husband correctly pointed out that the National Park Service probably commissioned someone draw that puking hiker on the sign. That thought gave us a good laugh.
Our goal at the start of the day was modest – just make it down to the 1.5 Mile outpost that’s – you guessed it – about 1.5 miles from the trailhead. Not knowing what the trail conditions would be or how steep the decent would be, it seemed like a reasonable goal. I think we shocked ourselves when we made it that far in good time, even though I was snapping away during the hike as the lighting and shadows changed on our view of the Canyon.
Pleasantly surprised by how good we felt, the trail conditions, and the time we made, we decided to plunge onward and shoot for the 3 Mile outpost. (Yes, about 3 miles from the trailhead. Such creative naming conventions!)
We arrived just in time for a spot of lunch and for the lighting and shadows to go flat on the Canyon. That didn’t mean I didn’t take a picture though because we came across another new trail sign favorite that inspired this post… down is optional, up is mandatory. So succinct and so true! I couldn’t leave without snagging a shot of that sign.
We were still feeling good after lunch and the weather was still pretty stellar. As much as we were tempted to press on a little further down into the Canyon, we decided to be smart and head back up. It was a looonnnngggg, steep, slick, mushy climb, but we made it back out with relative ease. We even found a fossil in rock along the way!
We weren’t sure how far we descended into the Canyon in terms of altitude on the way down, but when we reached the top my watch estimated we had climbed up over 2200 feet in elevation over those 3 miles of trail! They say the Canyon is, on average, 1 mile deep, so we made it a little shy of halfway down to the Canyon floor.
Once we got back to the trailhead on the rim, we got some perspective on how far down we went because we could see the 3 Mile outpost. Yeah, it’s a ways down there! (The oval is an approximation of where the 3 Mile resthouse is along the trail.)
Maybe next trip we’ll get a little more ambitious and climb further down this trail or a different path. For my first journey into the Grand Canyon itself, it was a pretty awesome day!
– JC
PS – The Canyon treated us to a pretty spectacular sunset as the cherry on top of our day. We even came across a little snowman family someone had made, complete with bits of carrot for the noses!
Improving Impressions
Waking up at the Grand Canyon to start our first full day in the park meant getting up early for some sunrise shots. The forecast was iffy, so we weren’t sure if we’d see any sun that early, but I was willing to try in spite of the snow showers lingering from the night before.
The best part of shooting sunrises in winter is getting to sleep in a little later than you would for a summer sunrise. Yay short days and long nights! Sure, the cold isn’t fun, but that’s the trade-off. I also find the cold scares a lot of people off, so I have a better chance of shooting what I want, from an angle I want, without crowds.
On this particular morning, my impressions of the Grand Canyon started to improve and line up more with my expectations. The weather wasn’t ideal, but with a hint of sunlight brightening the clouds of the snow squall moving through just before the sun broke the horizon, I had a funky blueish, moody light to start the day. If nothing else, we could see a lot more of the Canyon than I could the previous afternoon when we arrived!
Knowing I’d have 2 more mornings to hope for better weather, we didn’t stay out long. What started as snow showers turned into a wind-driven snow/sleet combo that stung as it hit your face. It also meant a lot of lens cleaning, so that was it for the day’s sunrise shooting session.
We bugged out and warmed-up over breakfast, then set back out to check out trail conditions and ease our way into whatever we were going to make of the day. All it took was a few hours after sunrise for the weather to start clearing and yes – the angels finally started singing and the Canyon looked like what I had imagined, and far surpassed any expectation I had of it!
Our day found us keeping it simple by hanging out and taking a long walk around the trail along the South Rim. It seemed like every few feet when I stopped to take a peek, my jaw dropped further and further in amazement of the geological feat in front of me.
Though I took a fair number of pictures that morning, when I got home and sorted through my shots, I realized that so many of them looked the same. Then it dawned on me – even though we walked probably 3 miles or so along the rim, the Canyon is just so big that changing your viewpoint by a mile or two doesn’t drastically affect the perspective in a picture! The only things really changing were the clouds in the sky and the shadows on the ridges in the Canyon. Still, I couldn’t complain because it’s just stunning to see.
After our morning spent along the rim, we wandered into the woods and walked some of the greenways that cut through the park connecting different parts of Grand Canyon Village. Under normal circumstances, when the government is operating (argh shutdown!), you can rent bikes to cruise all over the Village along these pathways through groves of ponderosa pines and junipers. It made for a nice wintry walk to bookend our day.
As we wandered back to our lodge, we passed the Grand Canyon’s train station. The Grand Canyon Railway has a long history – predating the establishment of the park itself!
We didn’t ride the train, but it was parked at the station, having recently arrived for the day’s trip up from Williams, AZ about 65 miles away. Maybe next trip to the Grand Canyon we’ll go for a ride ourselves.
With our first full day at the park nearing an end, we called it a day. Tomorrow was shaping up to be a long one since we planned to get down into the Canyon as long as weather and trail conditions cooperated.
– JC
Delayed First Impressions
They say that first impressions mean a lot. Whether it’s a person or a place or an experience, it sticks with you. For my first-ever trip to the Grand Canyon, I was expecting a big “AAAAAHHHHH…” moment with the sound of angels singing as I laid my eyes on that majesty for the first time. Alas, that moment would have to wait – just my luck!
Our trip to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim was a little semi-last-minute journey we decided to take since my husband’s birthday fell on a weekend – an excellent excuse to get away with what little vacation time we had available from our “regular” jobs. We were both unlucky and lucky in the timing and location we chose because we booked the trip before the US government shutdown happened (unlucky), but the state of Arizona bailed us out (lucky)!! (The state provided funding for basic services at Grand Canyon National Park because they recognize it’s so vital to their economy – even in winter.)
We weren’t sure what to expect because of all of the uncertainty caused by the political garbage going on. There was also weather to consider. Heading into the trip, there was a good chance we’d get caught in a storm on the 3-4 hour drive up from Phoenix. That’s where luck struck again and the storm hit 2 days before we got there, meaning the roads were clear, even if the skies continued to look threatening. We tried to stay positive, even though we were a little leery of how all of this was going to go.
Thankfully, travel went as planned and we got to the park about mid-afternoon… just as rain started to come down. The park rangers were working at the entrances to hand out maps & info. (They weren’t allowed to collect the entrance fees that help support the park.) As the ranger handed us our map, she said we should hustle if we wanted to see the Canyon because it was quickly filling in with fog and might not be visible within the next 15-20 minutes at the rate the weather was rolling in. Gah!
We took her advice and got our hustle on and bolted straight to the rim. While impressive and – photographically speaking – kinda cool with the mist & fog in the air, it certainly wasn’t what I pictured in my mind as a first impression.
Don’t get me wrong – I was thrilled to finally be there and recognized I had a few days’ stay for the weather to improve. But, that first impression of the Grand Canyon wasn’t exactly what I thought it’d be.
The weather was steadily getting worse as the cold rain picked up in intensity, but we were able to walk around a bit along the rim to see if anything else was visible. Unfortunately, the ranger was right – it didn’t take long for the Canyon to fill in with fog and ick to become a sea of soupy white blah.
Without the Canyon to distract us with its beauty, I kept my eye out for any little quick shots I could grab with my phone in the wintry rain. That’s when we came across this scenic locator. It looked old, and from the inscription on it, it was.
We couldn’t quite figure out how it worked until the next day when we ran into some simple devices on the trail that were metal tubes that locked into a notch to direct your eye towards a point of interest. It didn’t magnify it at all. It just got your eye pointed in the right direction when the tube rested on a preset notch. We suspect this locator once had one of those tubes and you’d rest it on those notches to see the sights each slot pointed you too. What a magnificently simple, clever solution!
So that was my lackluster first impression of the Grand Canyon. I wasn’t going to let it get me down as we would be in the park for a few days. It was bound to get better – I just had to wait a little bit longer and hang onto that optimism bubbling away in my mind.
– JC
A Love That Runs Deep
My love for Penn State hockey runs deep. Very deep. It stems from my 4 years of doing radio play-by-play for the men’s club team during my college days, calling 2 national championships along the way.
When you work with a team, you spend a ton of time with them. You travel with them, kill a lot of time at a hotel or rink waiting for games to start, and hours upon hours upon hours on buses just getting to the games. Ultimately you form a little family. Even supporting staff like myself form a bond with the team – naturally not as deep as if you were a player yourself – but a bond nonetheless.
For years and years, the Penn State hockey family knew we had what it would take to become a scholarship varsity team and the community to support it. The one thing we didn’t have was enough money. Funding was needed to build a new facility and seed endowments for scholarships and other costs, so we’re not talking chump change.
Then lo and behold… that dream came true in 2010 when the Pegula family made a massive donation to Penn State to make Penn State varsity hockey – for both the men’s and women’s teams – a reality! That donation provided everything PSU needed to build that new arena and put the supporting pieces in place to get the teams on their way.
The team started varsity play with the 2012-2013 season, so we were able to make the trip to to PSU for a handful of games that first year. Heading to PSU for a hockey weekend – for either club or varsity play – always provided a nice excuse for us to get away. The games were always good and slipping away just for a weekend gave us the quick change of scenery that we often needed.
During those weekend trips to see games, we watched the Pegula Ice Arena take shape. We saw it go from a parking lot, to a hole in the ground, to a steel skeleton, to its shiny glass and brick facade. We simply couldn’t wait to get inside for a game! But then we had a little hiccup with those plans – we moved to Colorado…
We left Pennsylvania in July 2013 and the new barn opened in October 2013, almost 3 months to the day after we moved out west permanently. (Figures!) Living 1500 miles away from State College instead of just 170 made getting to games a tad more involved, so we hadn’t been back since the move… until this fall! Even though we had to delay the trip a couple of times, it was so worth it!
As chance would have it, a friend of mine from back in my play-calling days still works with the team (lucky!). Turned out he was going to be at the rink for meetings during the first day of our stay, so he offered to give us a behind-the-scenes tour. He knew I’d be floored by the new facility compared to our old one. He was so right!
To say I was amazed is a massive understatement! Walking through the doors of the building for the first time was one thing. Going out into the seats to see the rink for the first time was a little overwhelming. So many feelings stirred seeing that this pipe dream is now an everyday reality for PSU. It’s hard to find words to describe all of the emotions that hit me.
I kept myself together through all of those emotions (yes!) and the tour was awesome!! The facilities available to the athletes are stunning. The technology improvements alone in terms of tracking your training and the different tools available blew me away.
Our seats for the weekend series of games were rinkside along the boards, so my friend took us up to the last row of the student section – now called “The Roar Zone” – to check out the view. (In my day, the student section was simply called “Section E”, named after the seating section where the students sat.) The Roar Zone was designed so it has the steepest incline allowable by building codes, making it very imposing to the visiting goaltender that guards that net in the 1st & 3rd periods of each game. It also means the acoustics help the student chants and taunts rain down even harder on the guest netminder. (Well done!)
The steepness is no joke, but once we got up there, the view was just something I wanted to soak in. Since it was a non-gameday afternoon, the rink was empty. It gave me a chance to get a little beauty shot of an empty arena (though I wasn’t able to get the shot with a freshly-zamboni’d surface to make it look shiny and new). Can’t complain though!
There’s a bunch of great displays around the concourse of the arena featuring all kinds of PSU hockey history. There’s a display showing every guy and gal who wore every number for the PSU teams during both the club and varsity eras. There’s a bunch of interactive displays were folks can dive into the team histories in more detail. And of course there’s other memorabilia exhibits along the way featuring sticks, skates, sweaters, moments in program history, and so on.
My favorite display might be the one I have a teensy personal connection to – the rink board that a bunch of the hockey family signed to commemorate the elevation to varsity and the dawn of the new era for Penn State hockey. I was lucky enough to sign that board years ago, so there’s a little piece of me in the new building even when I can’t be there in person.
The last stop of the tour involved seeing some hardware… the B1G Conference Championship trophy we won in 2017. Our first! (That conference championship was a bit of a surprise/upset win t’boot.) I never thought I’d live to see our hockey teams be elevated to varsity status, so seeing the trophy was another one of those little surreal moments for me.
I wanted to get more pictures of the trophy, but that photo session was interrupted because the men’s head coach happened to come down the hall and my friend introduced us to him. It was very cool to finally meet the coach after all of these years. For having just met someone with a connection to PSU hockey’s history (little though it may have been), he was great with us. In those few minutes we chatted with him, I could easily see how the guys on the team would skate through a wall for him and why he’s been able to make the men’s program such a success so quickly.
Getting that tour was more than we ever could have asked for on this trip! (Thanks again to my friend – you know who you are!) It was an absolutely fabulous way to start our hockey weekend, and the games were yet to come!
The weekend slate of games were set for Friday and Saturday night. I didn’t take too many pictures during the games since I was too busy cheering and going wild. And naturally, our seats were “terrible”. (Sarcasm fully intended.) It’s been a long time since I got to get that excited in-person at a PSU hockey game, and I enjoyed the hell out of every second of it!
Penn State won one game and lost the other one in overtime, so a good result in spite of us being in the building. (Whenever we attend games of teams that we love, we’re usually a huge jinx and they lose when we’re in the building.) We even saw one of the most amazing goals I’ve ever seen in person at a game – so good it made ESPN SportsCenter’s top 10 plays that night and was ultimately their #2 play for all of November!!
I’d say our hockey-centric Penn State trip was a roaring success!! (Pun intended? Yeah, at least this time anyway.)
We Are!!
– JC
Fall… It’s Been Too Long
The one time each year we miss living in Pennsylvania is during the fall. Autumn in Colorado is beautiful – don’t get me wrong – but it’s very one-toned. And that tone is yellow. So many of the trees native to the area – especially the aspens up high in the mountains – turn yellow. While it’s pretty, it gets a little boring compared to the vibrant mix of hues in the northeast that we grew up enjoying.
With the passing of our dog earlier in 2018 (sob, sniff), we had an opportunity to take a long-delayed trip back to Pennsylvania to catch some autumn colors and see some Penn State hockey. We hadn’t been back to central Pennsylvania since we left 5 years ago and we were incredibly anxious to get back.
Our trip was planned for early November based on the hockey schedule (more on that coming in a separate post), so we knew we might miss the fall foliage. Luckily for us, the unusually cold and wet fall weather delayed the leaves changing color! Score for us!! The drive out to Penn State was gorgeous, bursting with reds and oranges and browns (and yes, even some yellows). Although the sun was setting by the time we landed and got on the road, it was still sublime to see after being away for so long.
Though the main purpose of our trip revolved around the hockey games, we had tons of time to walk around Penn State and State College. The fall scenery in town and around campus was wonderful to see again. (Things on campus and in town changed A LOT since we were last there.) . We had hoped to go do some hiking in the hills, but the murky weather forecast foiled our hiking plans before we even got on the plane. Bummer.
To keep my packing light, I only had my phone with me to take pictures. That wasn’t hard to deal with. The biggest challenge for me was dealing with iffy weather and lighting the entire time we were outside. With that, I still bagged a few shots that reminded me of how much we love fall up there.
I snagged an updated shot of the campus bench I randomly captured back in fall of 2009. I think it may have even been the same bench on campus! (Why I remember these details, I have no idea.)
When we spent the night in State College during our drive out to Colorado for the move, the Nittany Lion Shrine was under construction. The platform under the statue and the surrounding area were being spruced up and we couldn’t access the area. Naturally, I had to get an updated shot during this trip now that the work is long since done. Things got a little tricky because, just as we walked up, a class of students arrived and were all around. I couldn’t really get into grabbing the interesting shots I normally try to get for variety in my collection, but no big. We were just happy to be there!
One day we had some time to hit the campus arboretum. The arboretum is new in the eons since we graduated, and it’s expanded quite a bit since our last visit.
With the crappy weather and lighting, a lot of my shots didn’t come out as I had hoped, but I did come home with one favorite. I think the cairns were my favorite shot because we see so many useful cairns while hiking in Colorado – along with not-so-useful/random cairns people stack to be cute along a trail. At least here there’s no risk of being misdirected into the wilderness by someone playing with stacks of rock!
We didn’t see a lot of sun during our trip (very typical of PSU weather), but it did finally make a brief appearance one morning after breakfast. The sun was in and out and fleeting at best. I lucked out that we happened to be walking by Old Main when the sun did appear and I got a couple of shots of the compass statue I’ve always liked.
It was so nice getting back to see fall scenery the way we so fondly remember it. Hopefully it won’t be 5+ years between trips next time!
– JC