Destination Unknown

Morning Visitor

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:04:09 -0600

This guy was in our front yard this morning. I only got one picture, at an odd angle and through our filthy front window, but he was posing for me.

Buck for Your Thoughts

Please, master buck, eat more of my grass so I can cancel the yard service this week...

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In Austin, Texas

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 10:35:43 -0600

Saturday morning, we flew out from Albuquerque on ExpressJet, direct flight to Austin for the National Poetry Slam competitions. I hate flying, with the the lugging of the luggage and the stripping down at the security checkpoint. (It always takes longer when I get female security personnel, I don't know why.)

As we expected, stepping off the plane was like walking into a sauna. It doesn't take long at all to acclimatize to the dry air in New Mexico, and going back to 95% humidity is quite the treat. On top of that, of course, is that it's August and really damn hot, humidity aside.

We're staying at the Extended Stay America, which is expensive for what it is but it's downtown and close to the slam venues, and since we're staying here for a week it will be nice to have a fridge and microwave. The other poets from Farmington are staying at an Econo Lodge way out on the edge of town, but I didn't want to commute in for our competitions, and we don't have a car.

After enjoying the air conditioning of our room for a little while, we went out and took in some of the sights of downtown Austin.

Neat Building

Anyone know what this building is? It's cool.

Guitar Art 1

A lot of cities have public art programs like this one. Someone, usually a business, sponsors the piece, and the artist gets an undecorated form, and they get to decorate it how they want. In Austin, they have guitars. In Kansas City, it's cows, and in Milwaukee, its "beasties." This guitar is decorated with old computer boards, with printer connectors for the struts.

Clydesdale

There were a number of these horse-drawn carriages downtown. I also saw a few bicycle rickshaws, believe it or not, but didn't get a picture of any of them. I have only seen them on TV images of foreign countries up until now.

Classy Dog

Downtown Austin is a justaposition. High class restaurants and night clubs are a block away from places like this, the Dirty Dog Bar, with a picture of a dog... um... being affectionate with a woman's leg for its sign. No, we didn't go in. There are also a number of massage parlors and tattoo joints that looked like each ink came with a free case of hepatitis. One massage parlor's sign said, "Modeling and Oriental Massage." Modeling. I'd never heard that take on it before.

It also became clear while walking around downtown Austin, that it has a serious, serious homeless problem. There were places where the homeless outnumbered the tourists, restaurant patrons, and bar-goers combined. Most of them were just hanging out, and a few were panhandling. Some of them were too busy talking to themselves to be bothered talking to other people. I'm going to take a stand and say that Austin has a problem with the homless, but the homeless apparently do not have a problem with Austin.

I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that Austin has a drinking problem. I have never seen so many bars and clubs in such a small vicinity. Many of the homeless carry coolers that they keep their cheap beer in, and I saw one man just tossing his empties in the grass. Drinking seems to be the local hobby, which is fine with me since I'm on vacation and not driving. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. But I worry for Austin as you would worry for a friend that's hitting the bottle too much. If there were an AA meeting for cities, Austin should go.

Guitar Art 2

More guitar art. I couldn't get a full shot of it due to an unusually high concentration of homeless people congregating here.

Carriage

Another pic of one of the horse-drawn carriages.

Driskill

Another thing Austin has a lot of is really neat old buildings. They were built with style, and they have been well preserved.

By this time, I was getting pretty hungry, so we at a Vietnamese-Thai restaurant called Mekong River. Whenever we're out of town, Strix and I try to find cuisine that we couldn't get back home, and Vietnamese fits that category. After perusing the menu, however, we both got dishes that could be better described as Thai food. Strix had the pineapple curry with tofu. I had a dish called the "Rated R Shrimp." I think the "Rated R" part of the name refers to the spiciness of it. It's shrimp and vegetables, served in a sort of hot and sour sauce. It was very tasty. Strix enjoyed her curry, too, but had them box it up so she would have room for an order of sweet sticky rice, which we shared. If you've never had sticky rice desserts, you should. It's rice cooked down in a coconut milk mixture, and in this case it was topped with custard and a coconut cream sauce. Very good.

If you don't think you would like Vietnamese or Thai food, Mekong also has a New York style deli, right inside the restaurant.

We went back to the hotel for a while, mainly just to get out of the humidity and to nap off our dinner, then went back out at nine to a place called Antone's. Antone's is a dirty-looking blues bar, but it boasts a history of some pretty impressive performers and draws an eclectic and generally clean crowd. Ten bucks a head got us in to see Gary Clark Jr. He was truly amazing, and his bass player Nick Current also sang on a couple of songs, too.

Nick, by the way, looked like he wasn't sure if he wanted to be Brian Setzer or David Bowie, but he did know how to play and belt out the songs.

If you go to Antone's, don't bother with the mixed drinks. They're overpriced and taste a little watery. Stick to the bottled stuff.

Another good reason to come to Antone's: this is where some of slams are going to be. My bout is slated for a different venue, but I hope they have a bar. My poetry will probably sound better if the audience if half-sloshed.

More later. Ciao!

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My Little Friend

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:45:50 -0600

My Little Friend

This is a little guy, but one of the biggest lizards I've come across outside of a zoo. He was about five or six inches long, and not particularly scared of me. I sat right down next to him and watched him for a while. He didn't let me touch him, of course, but it was cool to hang out with him for a while.

Well, Hello There

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Mandalay Bay Shark Reef

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Wed, 02 May 2007 22:51:21 -0600

A lot of these pictures are blurry. This is in part due to my lack of expertise with a camera, but it is also due to the fact that I was taking the shots thorugh thick plexiglass.

If a concert benefit were held on behalf of large reptiles, would it be called Gator-Aid?

Fast Fish

It's hard to take pictures of fish that are just zooming by in front of you. I'm not sure how I got this fish as clearly as I did, as you can tell by the background that he was really booking.

Stingray

I wanted to get video of the stingrays, which was difficult because they kept swimming out of camera shot as soon as I started filming. This is the best little segment I could get.

The Shark Reef had a number of pseudo-Peruvian sculptures, for atmosphere.

Strix and Pretty Fish

Strix taking pictures as a number of brightly colored fish swim around her.

Tunnel o' Fish

You've heard of the Tunnel of Love? Well, it's like that. Except, with fish.

Lion Fish

This is the clearest picture of this fish I could get, and I'm not lion.

Jellyfish Rave

These jellyfish know how to have fun, for invertebrates with no central nervous system. Maybe that's the secret - I wish I didn't have a central nervous system.

Psychejellyc

This is what the jellyfish look like after a night of raving. This is blurry as hell. I couldn't use a flash, because it would have just relfected off the plexiglass, so the camera tried to compensate by increasing the exposure time, but the effect is actually kind of neat, I think.

Jellyfish

More video of swimming jellyfish. I could have stood all day and watched these things. They were mesmerizing.

Mandalay Sculpture 4

That's all for now. Until tomorrow, keep smiling.

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White Sands National Monument

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:21:50 -0600

Originally posted on my old blog on February 23rd, 2006:

We started the day at White Sands National Monument, south of Alamogordo. If you're not familiar this White Sands, its the world's largest gypsum dune field, encompassing 275 miles of land, some of which extends into the White Sands Missile Testing grounds.

The edge of the dunes.

Images from one of the trails. It looks just like snow, and this morning it felt like it could have been. It was just a little over freezing, not that there was any moisture to freeze.

WS Tracks

The sand is very fine and captures perfect tracks of whatever walks through it. These appear to be the tracks of a kangaroo rat.

WS Tracks 2

These tracks look like they were also made by a hopping animal of some sort, but I couldn't tell you what. No thumbnail of this one, since a smaller version of it would just look white.

WS Tracks 3

These are bird tracks, which were all over the place. In a few places, the prints were much larger and there was a lot more space between them. Those prints I imagine to be from a roadrunner.

WS Life Trail 4

A number of plants grow in the dunes. Some of the larger ones, like this one, have extensive root systems that anchor the sand. The dunes move slowly over time, being shifted by the wind, but when a plant's root system anchor the sand a pillar is left behind.

WS Life Trail 5

Certain trees could also live in the dunes. In the interdunal areas, the water table is only 18 inches below the surface, but on the top of the dunes, like here, the trees have to extend their roots as far as 25 feet to find water. [Edit: I since had this photo blown up to poster size, had it framed, and gave it as a gift to my brother at Christmas. It's probably my favorite from this trip.]

WS Life Trail 6

Here and there, you can find dunes that are sprinkled with small particles that are actually crumbled particles of fossilized plant root systems. In some cases, the particles are actual fossils, which no longer have any wood fiber in them. In other cases, the fossilization process is incomplete and the particles still have wood fibers in them. The center of this shot shows a larger piece of a root that is still being fossilized by exposure to the sand. Some of the smaller particles around it are fully fossilized.

It was still early in the day, but one of our goals for the day was to go to Mexico, so we left the park with the idea that we would return the next day for the Sunset Stroll, which is a ranger-guided tour.

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Boque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:09:31 -0600

Originally posted on my old blog on February 21st, 2006:

After stopping at Acomilla, we continued on down I-25, then turned left on highway 380. As soon as we turned onto 380 and entered San Antonio, New Mexico, we saw the sign for the Boque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. We weren't planning on going there, but this was meant to be one of those vacations where you just check out everything taht interests you on the way, so we went on in.

It turns out that it is primarily a bird sanctuary, though they have other kinds of life, too. Here are some pictures from the NWR. Click on an image to enlarge it.

Crane Sculpture

One of several bird sculptures to be found outside the visitor's center as you enter the NWR.

Signpost

A set of signposts pointing to different parts of the refuge.

Cactus

A cactus outside the vistor's center. My hand is in the picture to show scale for the length of the stickers. Even though I was careful, I still came away with a small sticker in my finger. As defense mechanisms go, I think the cactus has hit on a fairly successful one.

Scorpion

A scorpion sculpture. Incidentally, the tree behind the sculpture was buzzing loudly. We couldn't see the hive, but apparently it was the home to several hundred bees. The NWR has a beekeeper on staff who actually collects honey from the hive and sells it in the gift shop.

Eagle

As soon as we entered the park proper, we saw this guy sitting in his tree in the middle of the marsh. I had my camera on its full optical zoom, and this was still as close in as I could get. I was afraid that, one, the camera would be too shakey for a clear shot and, two, that the eagle would be too small to see clearly. Click on the image to see the full-size version, but I think it came out well. I entitled it "Eagle," but knowing next to nothing about birds, I couldn't tell you if that's really what it is, or if it is some kind of hawk. Since the picture was taken on President's Day, however, I am willing to make the leap and call it an eagle.

Jersie and Eagle

We picked up a travelbug at the geocache in Bloomfield the day before. Travelbugs sometimes want to visit certain places or get their pictures taken with certain things. This one wanted "to have its picture taken with unusual animals." So, here's Stina holding the travelbug, Jersie, with the eagle in the background.

Hey, it's a bird sanctuary, so here are some birds:

Jersie and Cranes

Jersie again getting his picture taken with unusual animals, this time cranes.

All in all, the sidetrip into the National Wildlife Refuge was worthwhile. Apparently, if we had come a week earlier, we would have seen thousands and thousands of cranes, but they had mostly all left for the migration north. I did, however, stop in the gift shop and buy a walking stick which turned to be helpful on my hike the next day.

We returned to Highway 380 and continued east. Not too far east of 380 is an historical marker for the Trinity Site, which is where the world's first nuclear weapon was tested. The site itself is actually somewhat south of the highway, and its only open to the public one day out of the year. I know that the atomic bomb detonated at Trinity was extremely weak compared to what is being put into ICBMs today, and that there probably isn't much in the way of residual radiation, but I still don't think I have any desire to visit the actual site.

Trinity

Further east on 380, we stopped at the Valley of Fires National Recreation Area. This is the site of an ancient lavaflow, where lava seeped up through vents and covered the valley. There seems to be different opinions on when this occurred, but all agree it was sometime in the last few thousand years, when humans were already living in the area. That, of course, would explain why the natives called it Valley of Fires. I can only imagine how amazing it must have seemed to the inhabitants here 1,500, 3,000, or 5,000 years ago (depending on which geological estimate you want to believe). Here are a number of pictures we took at the Valley of Fires. Unfortunately, the pictures don't really do it justice. It was an immense valley filled with black, volcanic rock. I'm not sure there's anywhere else in the continental U.S. that you could see that.

Valley of Fires East

A view from the highest point in the recreation area. Most of the lavabed was to the west of us, but this is a view east. More lava is visible, but beyond that is a nice view of the moutains.

Stina at Valley of Fires

Stina watching the sunset at the lookout point at Valley of Fires.

Daryl at Valley of Fires

A picture Stina took of me climbing back down from the lookout point. See my spiffin' new walking stick?

Stina at Valley of Fires 2

Another picture of Stina at Valley of Fires.

The winding nature trail at Valley of Fires. The railing is, presumably, to keep visitors from falling onto the lava rock, which is quite sharp. Unfortunately, we got the park near sunset and didn't have time to take the trail. To get the first picture, I had to climb over the railing and stand on the ledge, which made Stina cringe, but what can I say? I'm a thrill-seeker.

VoF Cactus

Just a cactus at the Valley of Fires that had some interesting coloring. Its reddish hues were brought out even more by the sunset.

VoF Lookout

The lower lookout at the Recreational Area. Nothing special about it, but I thought it looked neat in the sunset.

VoF Contrast in Trees

I like this shot, which I call "Contrast in Trees." I know as much about botony as I do about ornithology, which is to say not very much, but the tree on the right looks like my idea of a tree, what we had back in Missouri where I grew up. The one on the left is one indigenous to the Southwest. I'm not sure if it is even officially classified as a tree, but they grow large enough to be called a tree in my book. Still, it looks like something from another planet. As much as anything, I like the colors in this pic.

After the sun set, we left the Valley of Fires and continued East on 380 then south of 54 to Alamogordo, where we checked into those most luxurious of hotels, the Super 8. This one actually isn't too bad, and even has free DSL which allows me to post my blog. After we checked in, we went to dinner.

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Deer in the Morning

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:17:00 -0700

Originally posted on my old blog on February 14th, 2006:

Deer in the Morning

Despite living in the city, we live in a fairly well-wooded area, and there are numerous deer that co-habitate our neighborhood. They also have very little fear of humans. Here's one I saw this morning. There were three, but they were all leaving by the time I had my camera out and ready.

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