Day 01 - 2017/12/28
Flew out of BWI to Vegas/LAS about three quarters of an hour behind the 2017/12/28 11:00 schedule just after the beginning of the Eastern arctic blast stuff which would be making major news for the duration of the trip plus a some. A bit of ice on Lake Erie and everything on the continent I saw as clouds permitted until about Utah had substantial white coating.
Pilot made up lost time fairly well, picked up a Ford Fusion (hybrid) from Dollar (and had a little fun figuring out how it worked), headed for the Longstreet Hotel and Casino (about ten feet over into the casino side of the Nevada/California line) by way of Pahrump, where the light was fading fast and we stopped for dinner.
Day 02 - 2017/12/29
Rolled in the morning for Death Valley National Park and did Dante's View, a bit under 5500 feet and overlooking Badwater Basin - 282 feet below sea level. Huge white salt flat area, really spectacular. And to the WNW through a dip in the Panamint Range (on the other side of the Valley) I saw a distant snow covered range which I'm now fairly sure was topped by Mount Whitney - 14495 feet. So the highest point in the Lower 48 and the lowest point in North America in pretty much the same direction from a single viewpoint. Pretty cool. (And Telescope Peak, 11043, highest in the Panamints and Park, directly across.)
Note: Just found out that Badwater Basin is NOT the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere as I'd believed at the time and as was believed by everybody for a long time. Laguna del Carbón in Argentina is at -344 and also gets to claim the Southern Hemisphere.
Critters... White-Tailed Antelope Squirrels, my best guess, and a Rock Wren.
Down to do the Twenty Mule Team Road; Zabriskie Point; Furnace Creek - oasis, Visitor Center, birds, lunch.
Then down the Valley to Devil's Golf Course and beyond to Badwater Basin, the low point. The latter was something of a mob scene but not unpleasantly so, temperature was comfortable. Dipped a finger in the bad water of the Badwater Spring and took a taste. Wasn't all that bad. (And I never had any signs of being worse for the wear.) The impression I'd gotten from Google Earth was that there was a very gradual grade to the west down to -282 but... five miles out and the same back for bragging rights? Settled for several hundred yards out, opened up my stool, recorded the point on the flat-on-the-surface GPS - 36°13'51.1" N 116°46'24.7" W (and the altitude reading at that point, for whatever it was worth, was -287). But playing again with Google Earth I'm getting -282. So I'll happily go with that.
On the walk back I overheard someone referring to the see level mark white-painted up on the steep valley wall above the stop area and took a look. Bit of a mind-blow too see how far it would be to the surface if one had an ocean to deal with.
Back north for a spin around Artists Drive and to CA-190 and north around the Panamint Range. The Mesquite Dunes to the north a bit before Stovepipe Wells had me majorly drooling. Then back SSW to and then across the Panamint Valley to and a bit beyond Panamint Springs.
Next target was a night's lodging somewhere between Death Valley and the next base of operations - the El Segundo DoubleTree (just south of LAX). (There we'd be holed up for three nights for all the Rose Parade centered package stuff that the travel outfit had put together.) Ridgecrest looked like the best bet.
I was navigating using my Garmin 3590 and Waze on the iPhone. And the latter is little better than inert in the absence of cellular coverage - which was often the case in that neck of the country and was at the time. And I didn't have a great map of the relevant geography in my head. And when I punched in Ridgecrest I got a route which continued over the mountain jumble west of the Panamint Valley to the Owens, south out of that valley to the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station area, then back east a bit to goal. Seemed counterintuitive when considering the Panamint Valley but when I pulled over and tried all Calculation Modes - Faster Time, Shorter Distance, Less Fuel - I got the same solution.
There's a Father Crowley Point overlook pull-off on the north side of CA-190 at about 4250 feet and I took it - with the day's light just about done. Parked and switched off the nav.
Back in the car, fired up the Garmin, told it Ridgecrest, it told me to turn LEFT. Back east to the Panamint Valley for a 79 mile trip to Ridgecrest. Continuing on the previous route would've taken another 94. So I turned left and backtracked eleven miles and descended about 2670 feet to the junction of CA-190 and Panamint Valley Road.
Felt bad about having burned and pretty much wasted all that altitude climbing fuel and couldn't understand how and why Garmin had screwed me over but I think I figured it out as the drive progressed. Garmin had figured out which way I'd been headed and was assuming there was no option for turning the car around before turning the car around would've been a major stupid setback. And it recognized the Father Crowley Point pull-off / parking area but not as an option for reversing course. Fairly expensive lesson in outsmarting the gadget.
Made it to the Ridgecrest Best Western otherwise uneventfully enough and survived Trip Night 02.
birds
-
Steve Davy
- Posts: 1338
- Joined: 2011/07/18 10:37:38 UTC
Re: birds
I stayed in that hotel for about a week back in 2007. I was working for a company that builds UAVs and we were doing some flight demonstrations at the Naval Air Weapons Station. I vividly recall that that entire stupid trip was super miserable.Made it to the Ridgecrest Best Western...
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Smaller world. But the lower points of my expedition tended to be associated with high population density turf.
Day 03 - 2017/12/30
Back on the road - it'll be CA-14 mostly for a long time - for LA.
First stop... Red Rock Canyon State Park a bit north of Cantil - not to be confused with Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area just west of Vegas - which, with the latter's massive prominence, everybody does.
That neck of the woods has Joshua Trees. I'm ALWAYS on the lookout for Loggerhead Shrikes when on Western road trips and I NEVER see any. EXCEPT in JOSHUA TREE National Park some years back I got a fair handful of them easily and in short order. So I'm always in high Shrike alert mode around Joshuas.
Stumble across a small herd of obvious bird people - all female, packing binoculars, one of them in a park uniform, locking onto and commenting on feathered stuff. Turns out that Red Rock Canyon is the name of an Audubon Christmas Bird Count circle and 2017/12/30 is the day. They've already gotten a Shrike or two.
We merge in for a while. Rock and Cactus Wrens, Say's Phoebe, Sage and White-Crowned Sparrows, California Thrasher. The (closed) Visitor Center has an air conditioning compressor on the roof which condenses water vapor and drips it on the roof where - overnight just after the winter solstice at close to 2600 feet - it forms an ice sheet. Ice sheet melts under the sun, water drips off the corner of the building and forms a puddle, little birds go nuts.
We continue down 14 and blunder into the Alta Wind Energy Center. Don't know what it is, have never heard of it before, am totally blown away by its extent. (Untold zillions of huge wind turbines - for anyone else not in the know.) Also some pretty impressive solar farms along that stretch of the trip.
14 merges into I-5 approaching San Fernando from the NW and I-5 runs within five and a half miles of Kagel launch. Need to take a small detour to the LZ.
Park on Gridley, air seems fairly dead. I start moseying around trying to not look too interested in hang gliding 'cause I don't want any interaction with hang glider people. No problem though... Just a couple of paraglider people interested in nothing outside of what they were doing. Truck parked and a red undersurface hang glider set up at launch.
Impressive site/sight for an Easterner acclimated to thousand foot Appalachian ridges. A rather abrupt vertical of about 2170. And also a very abrupt transition from dense sprawl to wilderness - very unlike everything I'd ever experienced in my own flying career.
Lunch then down I-405 for the El Segundo DoubleTree. Approaching The Getty Center we note recently charred hillside on the east side of the Interstate.
Said I'd started off the trip still a good bit on the sick side and expected to maintain the usual slow but steady rate of recovery. I was back to no-worse-than-usual a fair bit before the end but still noticeably under the weather for all the Rose Parade package tour activities. But I felt obligated to participate in everything.
First item was an evening (dark) bus shuttle to Manhattan Beach. Disembarked and went down to the Manhattan Beach beach. Strolled along the surf encountering clusters of tiny sandpipers, doing what sandpipers do with respect to waves. Westerns is the best guess.
Needed some stool time. Set it up on the highest reach of firm damp sand. And it wasn't long before a rogue wave exceeded the position and sucked all the firm damp sand out from under the legs in the blink of an eye. Came real close to getting a winter partial swim in the Pacific.
Went out to the end of Manhattan Beach Pier and scanned the beach to the north. The Dockweiler training patch is 2.6 miles up from there so I must've seen my second SoCal/Grebloville flying site.
Back at the hotel around midnight Eastern Time I get an email message from my Annapolis Christmas Count area captain who's forgotten I'd told him that I'd hafta bail again describing the territory I'm to cover.
Day 04 - 2017/12/31 06:30 PST
Shuttles roll for decorating barns in Irwindale. Visible surfaces of floats are all covered ("painted") with plant materials, mostly flowers. And flowers don't last long so that process is delayed as long as possible. Tremendous amount of effort inside of a short window.
And that stage of production is fifteen miles from parade start position. So they some of the taller entries need to engineer to be able to clear powerlines and overpasses.
Second effort at calling my bird guy gets through to him in the field dealing with brutal temperatures and wind chill.
After lunch we're back on the bus for the LA, Tinseltown, Beverly Hills tour. Try to learn what history I can and get a feel for where things are with respect to each other.
Day 05 - 2018/01/01 05:15 PST
Busses roll for the Main Event which starts at 08:00. Fortunately I'm still jet lagged so it's not nearly as excruciating as it would be otherwise. The busses creep in to their destinations and get sardined into their lot positions.
We've got high bleacher seats at 316 West Colorado Boulevard. They're pretty good:
- facing north / sun will rise behind us
- very near the beginning of the route so:
-- little chance of anything getting broken down before us getting to see us
-- marching bands will be fresh
-- smiles and waves from float riders will be less forced
The highlight of my day starts before the sun make it up to the horizon, long before the start of the parade, about when I'm getting seated. Heard a very out-of-place bird call and looked up. Amazon parrots streaming from some distant roost - I'm guessing the San Gabriel Mountains no more than four miles to the north - to day's activities ranges. A hundred feet from straight overhead to close enough.
With the lighting what it was at first I wasn't able to get much more than black silhouettes and NOBODY was stopping but the flight lasted forever and eventually I was able to get good side shots at birds in full sunlight. The field guide gives Lilac-Crowned, Red-Lored, Yellow-Headed, Red-Crowned, and hybrids as having established populations in the area. Yellow-Headed and Red-Crowned for sure, almost undoubtedly everything else too.
Individuals, small groups, big formations. Went on forever and I don't know when it had started. And the crowd was OBLIVIOUS to them. When you'd point out to nearby individuals what was going on they'd be totally blown away. But minus that they might as well have been Pigeons.
Then things tapered off and it was over well before the start of the parade. Then had to content myself mostly with Ravens.
B-2 with a pair of F-35 escorts do their fly-by. Parade starts, sun slowly climbs.
And of course the lighting that's worked so well for us is doing just the opposite for the participants. They're showing mostly for the good lighting (paying audience, announcers, TV cameras) side of the street; getting blinded and fried by the low but blazing morning winter sun.
Very spectacular show but by the time the last contingent clears to the east I'm about at my saturation point. And it's no quick and easy task for things to get unsardined and moving reasonably freely again.
Lunch then to Victory Park a bit off the end of the parade to get even more up close and personal with the floats. Major mob scene, bus needs to park way the hell east on Sierra Madre Boulevard, organization screwed up, huge lines to gain entrance, lotsa walking in the compound, hot gray sky. Some floats are looking a bit worse for wear with sections starting to wilt. I've got my folding stool with me and others are envious - test flying it and noting the manufacturer.
I try to give all the floats the attention they deserve and then start doing some crude arithmetic on what kind of effort it's gonna take me to get back to the bus by scheduled departure time. Not good. Go into moderate panic mode, push myself well beyond reasonable personal limits, collapse at goal with thirty seconds to spare. Then find out that they've delayed departure 45 minutes to compensate for all the screw-ups.
Oh well, I need the 45 minutes anyway to make a moderate recovery from the forced march. And I get my first trip Scrub Jay just across the road.
Thoughts on the Rose Parade...
It's a HUGE FUCKING DEAL for that corner of the country and pretty substantial as a global scale event. Mega bucks, effort, engineering, creativity getting everything coordinated and those floats on the road. Ya gotta respect and admire all that but I find it a good bit disconcerting that pretty much everything's scrap after another day and a half.
Day 03 - 2017/12/30
Back on the road - it'll be CA-14 mostly for a long time - for LA.
First stop... Red Rock Canyon State Park a bit north of Cantil - not to be confused with Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area just west of Vegas - which, with the latter's massive prominence, everybody does.
That neck of the woods has Joshua Trees. I'm ALWAYS on the lookout for Loggerhead Shrikes when on Western road trips and I NEVER see any. EXCEPT in JOSHUA TREE National Park some years back I got a fair handful of them easily and in short order. So I'm always in high Shrike alert mode around Joshuas.
Stumble across a small herd of obvious bird people - all female, packing binoculars, one of them in a park uniform, locking onto and commenting on feathered stuff. Turns out that Red Rock Canyon is the name of an Audubon Christmas Bird Count circle and 2017/12/30 is the day. They've already gotten a Shrike or two.
We merge in for a while. Rock and Cactus Wrens, Say's Phoebe, Sage and White-Crowned Sparrows, California Thrasher. The (closed) Visitor Center has an air conditioning compressor on the roof which condenses water vapor and drips it on the roof where - overnight just after the winter solstice at close to 2600 feet - it forms an ice sheet. Ice sheet melts under the sun, water drips off the corner of the building and forms a puddle, little birds go nuts.
We continue down 14 and blunder into the Alta Wind Energy Center. Don't know what it is, have never heard of it before, am totally blown away by its extent. (Untold zillions of huge wind turbines - for anyone else not in the know.) Also some pretty impressive solar farms along that stretch of the trip.
14 merges into I-5 approaching San Fernando from the NW and I-5 runs within five and a half miles of Kagel launch. Need to take a small detour to the LZ.
Park on Gridley, air seems fairly dead. I start moseying around trying to not look too interested in hang gliding 'cause I don't want any interaction with hang glider people. No problem though... Just a couple of paraglider people interested in nothing outside of what they were doing. Truck parked and a red undersurface hang glider set up at launch.
Impressive site/sight for an Easterner acclimated to thousand foot Appalachian ridges. A rather abrupt vertical of about 2170. And also a very abrupt transition from dense sprawl to wilderness - very unlike everything I'd ever experienced in my own flying career.
Lunch then down I-405 for the El Segundo DoubleTree. Approaching The Getty Center we note recently charred hillside on the east side of the Interstate.
Said I'd started off the trip still a good bit on the sick side and expected to maintain the usual slow but steady rate of recovery. I was back to no-worse-than-usual a fair bit before the end but still noticeably under the weather for all the Rose Parade package tour activities. But I felt obligated to participate in everything.
First item was an evening (dark) bus shuttle to Manhattan Beach. Disembarked and went down to the Manhattan Beach beach. Strolled along the surf encountering clusters of tiny sandpipers, doing what sandpipers do with respect to waves. Westerns is the best guess.
Needed some stool time. Set it up on the highest reach of firm damp sand. And it wasn't long before a rogue wave exceeded the position and sucked all the firm damp sand out from under the legs in the blink of an eye. Came real close to getting a winter partial swim in the Pacific.
Went out to the end of Manhattan Beach Pier and scanned the beach to the north. The Dockweiler training patch is 2.6 miles up from there so I must've seen my second SoCal/Grebloville flying site.
Back at the hotel around midnight Eastern Time I get an email message from my Annapolis Christmas Count area captain who's forgotten I'd told him that I'd hafta bail again describing the territory I'm to cover.
Day 04 - 2017/12/31 06:30 PST
Shuttles roll for decorating barns in Irwindale. Visible surfaces of floats are all covered ("painted") with plant materials, mostly flowers. And flowers don't last long so that process is delayed as long as possible. Tremendous amount of effort inside of a short window.
And that stage of production is fifteen miles from parade start position. So they some of the taller entries need to engineer to be able to clear powerlines and overpasses.
Second effort at calling my bird guy gets through to him in the field dealing with brutal temperatures and wind chill.
After lunch we're back on the bus for the LA, Tinseltown, Beverly Hills tour. Try to learn what history I can and get a feel for where things are with respect to each other.
Day 05 - 2018/01/01 05:15 PST
Busses roll for the Main Event which starts at 08:00. Fortunately I'm still jet lagged so it's not nearly as excruciating as it would be otherwise. The busses creep in to their destinations and get sardined into their lot positions.
We've got high bleacher seats at 316 West Colorado Boulevard. They're pretty good:
- facing north / sun will rise behind us
- very near the beginning of the route so:
-- little chance of anything getting broken down before us getting to see us
-- marching bands will be fresh
-- smiles and waves from float riders will be less forced
The highlight of my day starts before the sun make it up to the horizon, long before the start of the parade, about when I'm getting seated. Heard a very out-of-place bird call and looked up. Amazon parrots streaming from some distant roost - I'm guessing the San Gabriel Mountains no more than four miles to the north - to day's activities ranges. A hundred feet from straight overhead to close enough.
With the lighting what it was at first I wasn't able to get much more than black silhouettes and NOBODY was stopping but the flight lasted forever and eventually I was able to get good side shots at birds in full sunlight. The field guide gives Lilac-Crowned, Red-Lored, Yellow-Headed, Red-Crowned, and hybrids as having established populations in the area. Yellow-Headed and Red-Crowned for sure, almost undoubtedly everything else too.
Individuals, small groups, big formations. Went on forever and I don't know when it had started. And the crowd was OBLIVIOUS to them. When you'd point out to nearby individuals what was going on they'd be totally blown away. But minus that they might as well have been Pigeons.
Then things tapered off and it was over well before the start of the parade. Then had to content myself mostly with Ravens.
B-2 with a pair of F-35 escorts do their fly-by. Parade starts, sun slowly climbs.
And of course the lighting that's worked so well for us is doing just the opposite for the participants. They're showing mostly for the good lighting (paying audience, announcers, TV cameras) side of the street; getting blinded and fried by the low but blazing morning winter sun.
Very spectacular show but by the time the last contingent clears to the east I'm about at my saturation point. And it's no quick and easy task for things to get unsardined and moving reasonably freely again.
Lunch then to Victory Park a bit off the end of the parade to get even more up close and personal with the floats. Major mob scene, bus needs to park way the hell east on Sierra Madre Boulevard, organization screwed up, huge lines to gain entrance, lotsa walking in the compound, hot gray sky. Some floats are looking a bit worse for wear with sections starting to wilt. I've got my folding stool with me and others are envious - test flying it and noting the manufacturer.
I try to give all the floats the attention they deserve and then start doing some crude arithmetic on what kind of effort it's gonna take me to get back to the bus by scheduled departure time. Not good. Go into moderate panic mode, push myself well beyond reasonable personal limits, collapse at goal with thirty seconds to spare. Then find out that they've delayed departure 45 minutes to compensate for all the screw-ups.
Oh well, I need the 45 minutes anyway to make a moderate recovery from the forced march. And I get my first trip Scrub Jay just across the road.
Thoughts on the Rose Parade...
It's a HUGE FUCKING DEAL for that corner of the country and pretty substantial as a global scale event. Mega bucks, effort, engineering, creativity getting everything coordinated and those floats on the road. Ya gotta respect and admire all that but I find it a good bit disconcerting that pretty much everything's scrap after another day and a half.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Day 06 - 2018/01/02
Roll SE for Irvine, San Diego Creek, Newport Bay area.
First stop - Irvine Ranch Water District San Joaquin Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary Refuge. Looks like a pretty cool habitat area but we don't seem to have access to more than a tiny fraction of it. What the hell, there was enough action at the top patch of it near the public parking to keep things interesting and keep us busy and happy. Highlight was a Kestrel. Also a nice flight of White Pelicans.
Then down to the Environmental Nature Center - a tiny patch of educational facility, habitat, plantings with an active creek, lotsa interesting birds, my only reptile for the trip - maybe a Western Fence Lizard. On the depressing side one sees dying and dead mature trees as reminders of what's going on with the climate.
Next to the Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center with a nice shot of the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve wetlands area and tons of waterfowl, herons, shorebirds. Gonna go with Avocets as the highlight.
Finally to the Vista Point overlook off of Eastbluff Drive just downstream from where the Creek opens up into the Bay and where the birds where pretty thick as the light was waning.
Then down the Coast Highway to Dana Point where we were booked for a whale watching jaunt the following morning.
Day 07 - 2018/01/03
Got to Captain Dave's well in advance of the 08:30 check-in time for the scheduled 09:00 two and a half hour excursion but the sky was pretty gray and they'd moved things back two hours for fear of fog trashing visibility.
Bailed to the west and up the hill a couple hundred feet the Dana Point Marine Life Refuge. Overlook, scrub area. Some Sea Lions parked on a buoy out a bit entertained us with their singing (nonstop). A couple of California Thrashers chased each other through the brush with their tails up looking like Roadrunners. (And that was as close as I got for Roadrunners anywhere for that trip.)
Returned to the docks to board the Manute'a - a catamaran which accommodates 49 passengers.
http://www.dolphinsafari.com/images/headers/Manutea-160358_Copyright-Dolphin-Safari.jpg
And I think we steamed off fully loaded. Wind was nil, water was pretty flat, sky was a bit less depressing.
Picked up a pair of Pacific White-Sided Dolphins in fairly short order.
(Note the more distinctly hooked dorsal fin of the (far) mature male.)
They would be our last dolphins and best look at cetaceans for the expedition as they moved in to ride the bows waves and you could look straight down at them through the clear water.
After a bit we parted company and hunted for Gray Whales - most likely target as they were on schedule migrating down the coast. The females gotta calve in the Gulf of California ' cause the water's warm and the kids don't have the blubber necessary for insulation against the cold stuff.
The Gray Whale is an evolutionary oddity in its one-species family. It's a bottom feeder - rolls on its side, scrapes up the sediment, filters the good stuff out using the baleen. Tough on the low/dominant eye and it tends to get trashed after a few decades causing them to go to Plan B.
We got one in short enough order and moved in close. The pattern is for them to surface and blow then do a sequence of several shallow submersions and surfacings to get properly re-oxygenated. Then there will be the start of a dive in which the flukes clear you know your animal will be going deep and you won't be seeing anything for the next four minutes 'cause it'll be at the bottom feeding.
Note... When these things disappear from the surface the leave distinct, flat, outlined, glassy smooth circle that sharply contrasts with the ambient normal texture of the surface, looks like an oil slick, persists FOREVER, and matches the circumference of the animal and width of the flukes.
The crews are pretty competent plotting during the disappearances likely intercepts and can stay with an individual pretty well for as many cycles as they feel like.
But we'd break off and go hunting for something else somewhere else after working our present target for a while and we'd get new Grays - individuals that they'd recognize - in short enough orders.
The driver and a spotter would be up on the bridge scanning the waters and they'd asked us muppets to assist in spotting duties. At one point I got to feel a bit smug for beating out fifty-couple pairs of eyes and scoring a distant one way off to starboard but we didn't pursue it.
Picked up a shark dorsal and tail fin close ahead at one point. Their guess was a Blue.
The dedicated spotter was a young guy who grown up in Seward (whose profile doesn't show up on the website - as I'd hoped). I was able to hijack him for a bit and get some answers to questions that had been bugging me for years.
We all know that when the moms and their new calves hafta run back up coast to the arctic they gotta run the gauntlet of Killer Whales. And we've all seen the horrifying videos of the pack attacks. And I've always wondered why there's still such a thing as a Gray Whale - what was keeping these attacks from being one hundred percent successful, what the balance issues were.
And the answer is basically that things work pretty much the same way the do on land - think wolves and elk or lions and zebras. Predators can't afford to sustain solid kicks from prey targets 'cause injury is pretty much synonymous with death. And those big mama Grays can deliver pretty devastating strikes with their flukes and can and, occasionally, DO inflict serious damage.
The kids are killed by being pushed and held underwater and drowned - they can't hold their breaths much better than we can. The more mature animals... Forget about it.
Said that Killer Whales WILL snatch dogs - which look and sound a lot like seals - but aren't really interested in humans as meals. Nevertheless, there do arise ambiguous situations in which they start looking interested and that you get the fuck outta the water NOW and that he'd been in one such in Alaska.
Avian highlight - Manx Shearwaters.
On the return we pulled up to and hung out by for a bit the buoy with the Sea Lions - three of them. I don't recall any of them being concerned enough to bother lifting a head.
Bailed through the mountains for Lake Elsinore via the Ortega Highway / CA-74. My first impression upon seeing it was that it looked depressingly low.
Roll SE for Irvine, San Diego Creek, Newport Bay area.
First stop - Irvine Ranch Water District San Joaquin Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary Refuge. Looks like a pretty cool habitat area but we don't seem to have access to more than a tiny fraction of it. What the hell, there was enough action at the top patch of it near the public parking to keep things interesting and keep us busy and happy. Highlight was a Kestrel. Also a nice flight of White Pelicans.
Then down to the Environmental Nature Center - a tiny patch of educational facility, habitat, plantings with an active creek, lotsa interesting birds, my only reptile for the trip - maybe a Western Fence Lizard. On the depressing side one sees dying and dead mature trees as reminders of what's going on with the climate.
Next to the Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center with a nice shot of the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve wetlands area and tons of waterfowl, herons, shorebirds. Gonna go with Avocets as the highlight.
Finally to the Vista Point overlook off of Eastbluff Drive just downstream from where the Creek opens up into the Bay and where the birds where pretty thick as the light was waning.
Then down the Coast Highway to Dana Point where we were booked for a whale watching jaunt the following morning.
Day 07 - 2018/01/03
Got to Captain Dave's well in advance of the 08:30 check-in time for the scheduled 09:00 two and a half hour excursion but the sky was pretty gray and they'd moved things back two hours for fear of fog trashing visibility.
Bailed to the west and up the hill a couple hundred feet the Dana Point Marine Life Refuge. Overlook, scrub area. Some Sea Lions parked on a buoy out a bit entertained us with their singing (nonstop). A couple of California Thrashers chased each other through the brush with their tails up looking like Roadrunners. (And that was as close as I got for Roadrunners anywhere for that trip.)
Returned to the docks to board the Manute'a - a catamaran which accommodates 49 passengers.
http://www.dolphinsafari.com/images/headers/Manutea-160358_Copyright-Dolphin-Safari.jpg
And I think we steamed off fully loaded. Wind was nil, water was pretty flat, sky was a bit less depressing.
Picked up a pair of Pacific White-Sided Dolphins in fairly short order.
(Note the more distinctly hooked dorsal fin of the (far) mature male.)
They would be our last dolphins and best look at cetaceans for the expedition as they moved in to ride the bows waves and you could look straight down at them through the clear water.
After a bit we parted company and hunted for Gray Whales - most likely target as they were on schedule migrating down the coast. The females gotta calve in the Gulf of California ' cause the water's warm and the kids don't have the blubber necessary for insulation against the cold stuff.
The Gray Whale is an evolutionary oddity in its one-species family. It's a bottom feeder - rolls on its side, scrapes up the sediment, filters the good stuff out using the baleen. Tough on the low/dominant eye and it tends to get trashed after a few decades causing them to go to Plan B.
We got one in short enough order and moved in close. The pattern is for them to surface and blow then do a sequence of several shallow submersions and surfacings to get properly re-oxygenated. Then there will be the start of a dive in which the flukes clear you know your animal will be going deep and you won't be seeing anything for the next four minutes 'cause it'll be at the bottom feeding.
Note... When these things disappear from the surface the leave distinct, flat, outlined, glassy smooth circle that sharply contrasts with the ambient normal texture of the surface, looks like an oil slick, persists FOREVER, and matches the circumference of the animal and width of the flukes.
The crews are pretty competent plotting during the disappearances likely intercepts and can stay with an individual pretty well for as many cycles as they feel like.
But we'd break off and go hunting for something else somewhere else after working our present target for a while and we'd get new Grays - individuals that they'd recognize - in short enough orders.
The driver and a spotter would be up on the bridge scanning the waters and they'd asked us muppets to assist in spotting duties. At one point I got to feel a bit smug for beating out fifty-couple pairs of eyes and scoring a distant one way off to starboard but we didn't pursue it.
Picked up a shark dorsal and tail fin close ahead at one point. Their guess was a Blue.
The dedicated spotter was a young guy who grown up in Seward (whose profile doesn't show up on the website - as I'd hoped). I was able to hijack him for a bit and get some answers to questions that had been bugging me for years.
We all know that when the moms and their new calves hafta run back up coast to the arctic they gotta run the gauntlet of Killer Whales. And we've all seen the horrifying videos of the pack attacks. And I've always wondered why there's still such a thing as a Gray Whale - what was keeping these attacks from being one hundred percent successful, what the balance issues were.
And the answer is basically that things work pretty much the same way the do on land - think wolves and elk or lions and zebras. Predators can't afford to sustain solid kicks from prey targets 'cause injury is pretty much synonymous with death. And those big mama Grays can deliver pretty devastating strikes with their flukes and can and, occasionally, DO inflict serious damage.
The kids are killed by being pushed and held underwater and drowned - they can't hold their breaths much better than we can. The more mature animals... Forget about it.
Said that Killer Whales WILL snatch dogs - which look and sound a lot like seals - but aren't really interested in humans as meals. Nevertheless, there do arise ambiguous situations in which they start looking interested and that you get the fuck outta the water NOW and that he'd been in one such in Alaska.
Avian highlight - Manx Shearwaters.
On the return we pulled up to and hung out by for a bit the buoy with the Sea Lions - three of them. I don't recall any of them being concerned enough to bother lifting a head.
Bailed through the mountains for Lake Elsinore via the Ortega Highway / CA-74. My first impression upon seeing it was that it looked depressingly low.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Day 08 - 2018/01/04
Lake Elsinore is a natural lake - I'd always assumed otherwise. Max depth is 42 feet and, after a long enough drought period, min is zero. That happened most recently in the 1950s.
Did birds in the morning at its Temescal Wash outflow (when there's enough water for an outflow to occur) and on the beach in the vicinity. Signs warned fisherpeople not to eat anything they catch.
Put the glasses on the skyline in the vicinity of 33°38'18.52" N 117°23'15.68" W so I saw the launch - even if I didn't know exactly where it was.
Roll for the San Bernardino National Forest. First leg is continuing NE on CA-74 to pick up I-215 at Perris. Perris will be making bigtime national news in another three days.
I can't head back up into the mountains without first making a short detour to Andy Jackson Airpark. Greeted by a Redtail on a pole. Bit of human activity at the facility so I - again - approach warily. Read the signs, seems to be totally public land. And the people are all - again - disinterested baggers. So I let down my guard, interact a little, explore the LZ.
The classic Happy Acres putting green that hang gliders always land in while constantly working on perfecting their flare timing for use in the environments that hang gliders never land in.
Surprised at how uphill it slopes from ridge to valley end/side. Google Earth says it's only a four foot rise over a 420 foot runway length but that's pretty significant for a hang glider in a ground effect skim. And of course all approach possibilities are massively unobstructed. Makes me wanna clip into a glider again just to enjoy the luxuries.
There's a herd of Western Meadowlarks grazing in the grass. Only ones we got for the trip and a nice addition. Lesser Goldfinches on some thistles (I think) at the north end of the parking area.
So then we head over to the nearby San Bernardino end of the Rim of the World Highway and start winding.
First bird stop up top is Lake Gregory Regional Park - good for some water stuff. Then back on the Highway to the Baylis Park picnic ground for a more spectacular view and some soaring Ravens. I'm pretty familiar with a lot of this turf from pulling stills off of some of Jonathan's videos.
Big Bear Lake - the result of a 72 foot dam at the west end. Surface altitude - 6750 feet. We split off of CA-18 onto North Shore Drive and stop for stuff on the surface and pick up a couple Steller's Jays on the other side of the road. All the Big Bears after which it was named were shot out of existence by the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
Continue on around through Fawnskin and observe the Big Bear Solar Observatory:
at the end of its little artificial peninsula jutting out a couple hundred yards into the artifcial lake but at the time have no clue what it is or what it's doing there.
Dammed Lakes always make me a good bit queasy but I'm blown away by the by the natural Baldwin (intermittent) Lake Ecological Reserve area - huge marsh and exposed flats expanses. Looks very out-of-place at that altitude and in those mountains.
Note that both Lake Elsinore and this one dump into the Santa Ana River which dumps into the Pacific at Huntington Beach.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/SAR_Map.jpg
Descend out into the Mojave, get a Kestrel en route to Lucerne Valley, continue on to Barstow where we stop for the night.
Lake Elsinore is a natural lake - I'd always assumed otherwise. Max depth is 42 feet and, after a long enough drought period, min is zero. That happened most recently in the 1950s.
Did birds in the morning at its Temescal Wash outflow (when there's enough water for an outflow to occur) and on the beach in the vicinity. Signs warned fisherpeople not to eat anything they catch.
Put the glasses on the skyline in the vicinity of 33°38'18.52" N 117°23'15.68" W so I saw the launch - even if I didn't know exactly where it was.
Roll for the San Bernardino National Forest. First leg is continuing NE on CA-74 to pick up I-215 at Perris. Perris will be making bigtime national news in another three days.
I can't head back up into the mountains without first making a short detour to Andy Jackson Airpark. Greeted by a Redtail on a pole. Bit of human activity at the facility so I - again - approach warily. Read the signs, seems to be totally public land. And the people are all - again - disinterested baggers. So I let down my guard, interact a little, explore the LZ.
The classic Happy Acres putting green that hang gliders always land in while constantly working on perfecting their flare timing for use in the environments that hang gliders never land in.
Surprised at how uphill it slopes from ridge to valley end/side. Google Earth says it's only a four foot rise over a 420 foot runway length but that's pretty significant for a hang glider in a ground effect skim. And of course all approach possibilities are massively unobstructed. Makes me wanna clip into a glider again just to enjoy the luxuries.
There's a herd of Western Meadowlarks grazing in the grass. Only ones we got for the trip and a nice addition. Lesser Goldfinches on some thistles (I think) at the north end of the parking area.
So then we head over to the nearby San Bernardino end of the Rim of the World Highway and start winding.
First bird stop up top is Lake Gregory Regional Park - good for some water stuff. Then back on the Highway to the Baylis Park picnic ground for a more spectacular view and some soaring Ravens. I'm pretty familiar with a lot of this turf from pulling stills off of some of Jonathan's videos.
Big Bear Lake - the result of a 72 foot dam at the west end. Surface altitude - 6750 feet. We split off of CA-18 onto North Shore Drive and stop for stuff on the surface and pick up a couple Steller's Jays on the other side of the road. All the Big Bears after which it was named were shot out of existence by the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
Continue on around through Fawnskin and observe the Big Bear Solar Observatory:
at the end of its little artificial peninsula jutting out a couple hundred yards into the artifcial lake but at the time have no clue what it is or what it's doing there.
Dammed Lakes always make me a good bit queasy but I'm blown away by the by the natural Baldwin (intermittent) Lake Ecological Reserve area - huge marsh and exposed flats expanses. Looks very out-of-place at that altitude and in those mountains.
Note that both Lake Elsinore and this one dump into the Santa Ana River which dumps into the Pacific at Huntington Beach.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/SAR_Map.jpg
Descend out into the Mojave, get a Kestrel en route to Lucerne Valley, continue on to Barstow where we stop for the night.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Day 09 - 2018/01/05
Head NE out of Barstow on I-15 for Baker and an access to the Mojave National Preserve. An old book says that there's a wastewater area just south of town that's good for lotsa good stuff like Yellow-Headed Blackbirds. We look around see nothing but desert scrub and continue SE on Kelbaker Road towards Kelso. Later checking Google Earth I find that we'd missed it by less than a hundred yards immediately after turning off the Interstate. Extremely visible from above, zilch from car window level.
Finally get my Shrike though, maybe halfway to Kelso. On a Joshua, close in on the right, in excellent light. Damn thing takes off though when neither of us is looking. We get out of the car and scan around but can't get him again. Settle for a Phainopepla.
A car approaches from the Baker direction and stops when he sees us. We're OK, just doing birds, thanks. These are not areas in which you're likely to survive a walk-out - even in the lowest sun time of year.
Pick up a Kestrel and Redtail farther en route to the Visitor Center at Kelso. There they're maintaining a couple patches of lawn and a few palm trees and there's no shortage of little feathered stuff taking advantage of surface water.
NE on Kelso Cima Road, paralleling the railroad, to Cima. I've got some excess restaurant bread I've saved from going into the garbage. See a couple Ravens on the power poles, toss it out the window onto the shoulder, both of them are on their way in a millisecond.
At one point a vista opens up and it's Joshua Trees forever - absolutely stunning. When you're checking out desert areas on Google Earth with its bird's-eye view they look extra bleak, barren, lifeless 'cause the vegetation is widely spaced and nothing gets credit for any height. But it's a whole different ballgame when you're on the surface scanning horizontally or close to it.
Joshuas are endemic to the Mojave desert and I never tire of seeing them. And it's interesting watching altitude and relating it to Joshua dominance. Real low, too hot and dry - nothing. Start climbing towards three thousand you start seeing small, thinly dispersed individuals struggling to make it. At maybe three to four thousand they go nuts. After that it's cooler, Joshuas start tapering back off, doing a mirror image of the other end of the range, and stuff that requires more moisture will often start to dominate.
Survive to Cima, take Morning Star Mine Road north and NE to Ivanpah Road, Ivanpah a short hop to Nipton Road, Nipton a short hop west back to I-15 North towards Vegas. And in just a bit under ten miles we say bye-bye to California.
And no problem whatsoever telling exactly where California ends and Casinoland begins. Similar to but much more dramatic than the Night 01 experience crossing back into Nevada from the south for our Amargosa Valley lodgings.
And from there it's a bit over twelve and a half miles to Jean - which is a lot more substantial than I'd gathered from casual Google Earth observations. There's a prominent sign for a Denny's rising above the Gold Strike Hotel and Gambling Hall complex and we need lunch. Park, enter, immediately gag on the atmosphere of first and second hand cigarette smoke with trace levels of oxygen. And after ten minutes of walking and looking around we're still unable to detect the Denny's and hafta ask a uniform.
Welcome to Vegas region culture. Scores of acres of gambling floor with zero "You are here ^" diagrams and total crap overhead directional signs which get you started towards your goal and then cut off and leave you high and dry as you close on the darkest reaches of the interior. They don't want you to get where you want to go - especially if where you want to go is OUT. They want to frustrate and depress you to the point at which you give up and start playing a machine or table. And that was just a mild taste of what awaited us at the mega hotel/casino establishments at the epicenter of that industry.
So we do lunch and we're at Jean, Nevada.
2015/03/27
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8857/18290284792_24ac8847ee_o.png
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8819/18267685796_64156e9c91_o.png
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5788/23461251751_e98b9c7500_o.png
(Not to mention this Darwin job:
http://ozreport.com/forum/files/copy_2_of_imgp1239_197.jpg
http://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7220/13949046702_ccfa0fafab_o.png
http://www.thekiteboarder.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/opener-532x800.jpg
from 2007/10/18.)
I've got the impact point coordinates punched into the Garmin 3590. South Las Vegas Boulevard northish for a mile and a half then turn in. The lakebed comes into view as we crest the rise. It's fuckin' HUGE. Several pickups, a camper parked here and there around the near "shore"; little tribes of dirt bikes and ATVs speeding around in the distances raising conspicuous dust trails. Every Road Warrior movie you've ever seen was filmed here using pretty much nothing but the regular locals in the various roles.
I pick a prominent track to gain access and proceed. The surface is firm and fairly smooth but I wouldn't wanna go much more than the ten miles per hour I'm doing in that on-road intended vehicle and there are areas that need to be avoided. No standing water anywhere but some surface areas are a bit moist. And everything that isn't yields an ultra-fine dust.
Seems like I'm driving forever but eventually start closing on the far shoreline area. Aiming for a GPS point while not following a road is a little bit problematic and the surface is getting a bit iffy near the final push so I stop and navigate the final five hundred feet on foot with receiver in hand.
I stand on a point as close as the punched in numbers allow (note that there's no little memorial plaque - what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas) and do a slow 360 while scanning my surroundings with the binoculars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdOcksHhwk
Arys Moorhead's Memorial Video
While reviewing relevant material I stumbled upon a couple videos of Allen's of the Jean Lake area from two years plus a bit over a month prior to the 2015/03/27. At the time I downloaded them and embedded them here I'd watched them carefully and determined the location. But at the time of the crash they didn't register.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xaUKROoQ2g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfzEs8QsFY
Jean Ridge launch points - 35°48'31.99" N 115°12'51.34" W and 35°48'45.83" N 115°12'58.15" W respectively.
As I return to the car I'm kicking myself for not having punched my lakebed entrance point into the GPS 'cause I knew that while finding a route into the lakebed would be (and was) a relative no-brainer, finding my way back out could be a lot more problematic - kinda like a lobster pot. I'd noted a parked pickup on which to key but was unable to find it again. (Oh yeah, they don't always remain at fixed positions.)
But then I thought, oh, what the hell, just go way the fuck wide to the left/south and hug the periphery going clockwise and you'll either find your entrance route or a reasonable facsimile. As I started doing that I gravitated to a well used track going where I was intending to and, with one minor glitch, was able to stay on it for a relatively short return to asphalt.
When I'd come to a fork in the "road" I'd taken it and had soon found myself getting into disturbingly loose sand/soil. Went backwards for a while until I could go for the other option and continued without a further worry or delay.
Continued up South Las Vegas Boulevard to the I-15 Sloan interchange which is where the truck bearing the sport's youngest ever victim (assuming Pat Denevan hasn't gotten away with lowering the bar and keeping things properly hushed) encountered a police vehicle; the last molecule of hope was abandoned; and the emergency response, investigative, damage control, media circus developed.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8697/16463566373_3f21d65f25_o.png
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7625/17069957780_1058651e05_o.png
I didn't need to have my eyes open to know exactly what it looked like.
Back on I-15 to get up to speed and blast off some of the heavy fine dust coating and to the Henderson Best Western - which would be our base of Vegas centered operations for the next three nights.
Head NE out of Barstow on I-15 for Baker and an access to the Mojave National Preserve. An old book says that there's a wastewater area just south of town that's good for lotsa good stuff like Yellow-Headed Blackbirds. We look around see nothing but desert scrub and continue SE on Kelbaker Road towards Kelso. Later checking Google Earth I find that we'd missed it by less than a hundred yards immediately after turning off the Interstate. Extremely visible from above, zilch from car window level.
Finally get my Shrike though, maybe halfway to Kelso. On a Joshua, close in on the right, in excellent light. Damn thing takes off though when neither of us is looking. We get out of the car and scan around but can't get him again. Settle for a Phainopepla.
A car approaches from the Baker direction and stops when he sees us. We're OK, just doing birds, thanks. These are not areas in which you're likely to survive a walk-out - even in the lowest sun time of year.
Pick up a Kestrel and Redtail farther en route to the Visitor Center at Kelso. There they're maintaining a couple patches of lawn and a few palm trees and there's no shortage of little feathered stuff taking advantage of surface water.
NE on Kelso Cima Road, paralleling the railroad, to Cima. I've got some excess restaurant bread I've saved from going into the garbage. See a couple Ravens on the power poles, toss it out the window onto the shoulder, both of them are on their way in a millisecond.
At one point a vista opens up and it's Joshua Trees forever - absolutely stunning. When you're checking out desert areas on Google Earth with its bird's-eye view they look extra bleak, barren, lifeless 'cause the vegetation is widely spaced and nothing gets credit for any height. But it's a whole different ballgame when you're on the surface scanning horizontally or close to it.
Joshuas are endemic to the Mojave desert and I never tire of seeing them. And it's interesting watching altitude and relating it to Joshua dominance. Real low, too hot and dry - nothing. Start climbing towards three thousand you start seeing small, thinly dispersed individuals struggling to make it. At maybe three to four thousand they go nuts. After that it's cooler, Joshuas start tapering back off, doing a mirror image of the other end of the range, and stuff that requires more moisture will often start to dominate.
Survive to Cima, take Morning Star Mine Road north and NE to Ivanpah Road, Ivanpah a short hop to Nipton Road, Nipton a short hop west back to I-15 North towards Vegas. And in just a bit under ten miles we say bye-bye to California.
And no problem whatsoever telling exactly where California ends and Casinoland begins. Similar to but much more dramatic than the Night 01 experience crossing back into Nevada from the south for our Amargosa Valley lodgings.
And from there it's a bit over twelve and a half miles to Jean - which is a lot more substantial than I'd gathered from casual Google Earth observations. There's a prominent sign for a Denny's rising above the Gold Strike Hotel and Gambling Hall complex and we need lunch. Park, enter, immediately gag on the atmosphere of first and second hand cigarette smoke with trace levels of oxygen. And after ten minutes of walking and looking around we're still unable to detect the Denny's and hafta ask a uniform.
Welcome to Vegas region culture. Scores of acres of gambling floor with zero "You are here ^" diagrams and total crap overhead directional signs which get you started towards your goal and then cut off and leave you high and dry as you close on the darkest reaches of the interior. They don't want you to get where you want to go - especially if where you want to go is OUT. They want to frustrate and depress you to the point at which you give up and start playing a machine or table. And that was just a mild taste of what awaited us at the mega hotel/casino establishments at the epicenter of that industry.
So we do lunch and we're at Jean, Nevada.
2015/03/27
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8857/18290284792_24ac8847ee_o.png
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8819/18267685796_64156e9c91_o.png
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5788/23461251751_e98b9c7500_o.png
(Not to mention this Darwin job:
http://ozreport.com/forum/files/copy_2_of_imgp1239_197.jpg
http://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7220/13949046702_ccfa0fafab_o.png
http://www.thekiteboarder.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/opener-532x800.jpg
from 2007/10/18.)
I've got the impact point coordinates punched into the Garmin 3590. South Las Vegas Boulevard northish for a mile and a half then turn in. The lakebed comes into view as we crest the rise. It's fuckin' HUGE. Several pickups, a camper parked here and there around the near "shore"; little tribes of dirt bikes and ATVs speeding around in the distances raising conspicuous dust trails. Every Road Warrior movie you've ever seen was filmed here using pretty much nothing but the regular locals in the various roles.
I pick a prominent track to gain access and proceed. The surface is firm and fairly smooth but I wouldn't wanna go much more than the ten miles per hour I'm doing in that on-road intended vehicle and there are areas that need to be avoided. No standing water anywhere but some surface areas are a bit moist. And everything that isn't yields an ultra-fine dust.
Seems like I'm driving forever but eventually start closing on the far shoreline area. Aiming for a GPS point while not following a road is a little bit problematic and the surface is getting a bit iffy near the final push so I stop and navigate the final five hundred feet on foot with receiver in hand.
I stand on a point as close as the punched in numbers allow (note that there's no little memorial plaque - what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas) and do a slow 360 while scanning my surroundings with the binoculars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdOcksHhwk
Arys Moorhead's Memorial Video
Wicawo - 2015/04/04
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdOcksHhwk
Arys Thoring Moorhead celebration of life video.
Created by Ellisa Shiffman
Keep up the great work Joe, Bob, u$hPa, Tim.Michelle Schneider - 2015/07/28
Yesterday was 4 months to the date and Friday 16 weeks to the day. I can't stop crying Arys. I miss you. You was the only one who loved me here. I miss your company , your contagious smile and Your LOVE for life . I failed you, letting you get on the Handglider.
While reviewing relevant material I stumbled upon a couple videos of Allen's of the Jean Lake area from two years plus a bit over a month prior to the 2015/03/27. At the time I downloaded them and embedded them here I'd watched them carefully and determined the location. But at the time of the crash they didn't register.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xaUKROoQ2g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfzEs8QsFY
Jean Ridge launch points - 35°48'31.99" N 115°12'51.34" W and 35°48'45.83" N 115°12'58.15" W respectively.
As I return to the car I'm kicking myself for not having punched my lakebed entrance point into the GPS 'cause I knew that while finding a route into the lakebed would be (and was) a relative no-brainer, finding my way back out could be a lot more problematic - kinda like a lobster pot. I'd noted a parked pickup on which to key but was unable to find it again. (Oh yeah, they don't always remain at fixed positions.)
But then I thought, oh, what the hell, just go way the fuck wide to the left/south and hug the periphery going clockwise and you'll either find your entrance route or a reasonable facsimile. As I started doing that I gravitated to a well used track going where I was intending to and, with one minor glitch, was able to stay on it for a relatively short return to asphalt.
When I'd come to a fork in the "road" I'd taken it and had soon found myself getting into disturbingly loose sand/soil. Went backwards for a while until I could go for the other option and continued without a further worry or delay.
Continued up South Las Vegas Boulevard to the I-15 Sloan interchange which is where the truck bearing the sport's youngest ever victim (assuming Pat Denevan hasn't gotten away with lowering the bar and keeping things properly hushed) encountered a police vehicle; the last molecule of hope was abandoned; and the emergency response, investigative, damage control, media circus developed.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8697/16463566373_3f21d65f25_o.png
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7625/17069957780_1058651e05_o.png
I didn't need to have my eyes open to know exactly what it looked like.
Back on I-15 to get up to speed and blast off some of the heavy fine dust coating and to the Henderson Best Western - which would be our base of Vegas centered operations for the next three nights.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Day 10 - 2018/01/06
Vegas Big Bus Tours bus tours day (starting subsequent to a run through the car wash about 75 yards to the west of the hotel). Double deckers operating out of Circus. Get to park out back for free. We're doing three - two early in the day and an after-dark (not that it ever gets very dark in Vegas).
I go for the upper deck 'cause I'm into visibility. Running downwind it's OK. Upwind the wind-chill is a bit brutal unless you're in the front row protected by the windshield. I quickly learn to sit in the front row where I'm protected by the windshield.
On the second circuit we're gonna do South Las Vegas Boulevard past the Las Vegas Village and Mandalay Bay and I'm wondering how the guide's gonna deal with it. I've got a couple from Sydney cowering behind the windshield with me with whom a rapport has been established and subtly clue them into where we're about to be. We pass through and the guide has no comment. I subtly note to the couple that the guide has made no comment.
But when we return north on the Boulevard the bus slows and he deals with the issue appropriately. I ask about the impact on the tourism industry. His estimate is that it was and remains enormous.
Before the night run I tank up on a couple beers at Circus Circus while having an interesting chat with the Mexican bartender.
The bus rolls fairly well loaded. I still want the upper deck and view but things are a lot cooler minus sunlight, the wind-chill is brutal or worse whenever the bus is moving in any direction, and the front row isn't gonna be available. And the two beers very quickly start translating to a lot of bladder pressure.
The Mirage has a rather spectacular fake South Pacific island volcano show out front and the tour bus gets a real choice parking position to watch it unfold. The main effects are fueled by natural gas flarings and I'm not real comfortable with the carbon footprint thing but amazed by and appreciative of the infrared heat blasts that reach me at the speed of light whenever there are substantial flares.
By the time we get to make the major pit stop at the Golden Nugget my core temperature's down fifteen degrees and my bladder pressure is about 120 PSI.
Agony gets abated but I'm not looking forward to the remainder of the punishment on the bus.
The guides are pretty good at getting us tuned into the landscape EXCEPT...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Las_Vegas
Luxor Las Vegas - Wikipedia
And shortly she describes how during the times of year when the nighttime temperatures are less frigid the beam draws in hundreds of zillions of insects which in turn draw in tens of zillions of bats which in turn draw in zillions of owls (no species given) at the top of that food chain.
The first part of that... Yeah, of course. I've watched it on the small scale with bats working streetlights. The last part... Patently ABSURD. I can't think of a nocturnal owl on the planet that would waste its time and energy trying to operate as an aerial hunter and if anything like that WERE going on it would be a major global draw for bird freaks such as Yours Truly.
And, of course, by totally ignoring the actual issue of my question she did a really excellent job of answering it. (The beam isn't simply totally harmless to avifauna. It's actually a major boon to it. Win/Win/Win - fewer insects and bats; more and bigger and better owls.)
The overall smell I got from Vegas is that it doesn't give a flying fuck about environmental issues, the planet, the stuff trying to live on it. And that's pretty much inevitable given how the economic model works - primarily by raping the Colorado River and feeding and preying upon dangerous human addictive behaviors.
And good luck recycling anything. They load you up with as much "disposable" junk plastic as possible and force you to unload it in conveniently located plastic bag lined waste receptacles.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/nevada-has-a-trash-problem-but-in-reverse/
Nevada has a trash problem - but in reverse - Las Vegas Review-Journal
Vegas Big Bus Tours bus tours day (starting subsequent to a run through the car wash about 75 yards to the west of the hotel). Double deckers operating out of Circus. Get to park out back for free. We're doing three - two early in the day and an after-dark (not that it ever gets very dark in Vegas).
I go for the upper deck 'cause I'm into visibility. Running downwind it's OK. Upwind the wind-chill is a bit brutal unless you're in the front row protected by the windshield. I quickly learn to sit in the front row where I'm protected by the windshield.
On the second circuit we're gonna do South Las Vegas Boulevard past the Las Vegas Village and Mandalay Bay and I'm wondering how the guide's gonna deal with it. I've got a couple from Sydney cowering behind the windshield with me with whom a rapport has been established and subtly clue them into where we're about to be. We pass through and the guide has no comment. I subtly note to the couple that the guide has made no comment.
But when we return north on the Boulevard the bus slows and he deals with the issue appropriately. I ask about the impact on the tourism industry. His estimate is that it was and remains enormous.
Before the night run I tank up on a couple beers at Circus Circus while having an interesting chat with the Mexican bartender.
The bus rolls fairly well loaded. I still want the upper deck and view but things are a lot cooler minus sunlight, the wind-chill is brutal or worse whenever the bus is moving in any direction, and the front row isn't gonna be available. And the two beers very quickly start translating to a lot of bladder pressure.
The Mirage has a rather spectacular fake South Pacific island volcano show out front and the tour bus gets a real choice parking position to watch it unfold. The main effects are fueled by natural gas flarings and I'm not real comfortable with the carbon footprint thing but amazed by and appreciative of the infrared heat blasts that reach me at the speed of light whenever there are substantial flares.
By the time we get to make the major pit stop at the Golden Nugget my core temperature's down fifteen degrees and my bladder pressure is about 120 PSI.
Agony gets abated but I'm not looking forward to the remainder of the punishment on the bus.
The guides are pretty good at getting us tuned into the landscape EXCEPT...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Las_Vegas
Luxor Las Vegas - Wikipedia
This monstrosity really bothers me. Energy waste, global warming, light pollution... And lastly and mostly it's gotta be playing total havoc with migrating birds. I'm seated just aft of the guide and ask her about the issue. She tells me that she/they cover(s) this issue as an element of the tour and will address it over the speakers shortly.Luxor Sky Beam
At 42.3 billion candela, the Luxor Sky Beam is the strongest beam of light in the world, using curved mirrors to collect the light from 39 xenon lamps and focus them into one intense, narrow beam. On a clear night, the Sky Beam is visible up to 275 miles away by aircraft at cruising altitude, such as over Los Angeles.
Each of the 39 lamps is a 7000 watt Xenotech fixture costing about $1200. When at full power, the system costs $51 an hour to operate, with $20 per hour of that just for its 315,000 watts of electricity. The beam has operated reliably since first enabled on October 15, 1993.
The lamp room is about 50 feet below the top of the building and serviced by a staff of two workers during the day. The room's temperature is about 300°F while the lights are operating. Since 2008, only half the lamps are lit as a cost and energy saving measure.
The light of the Luxor low view
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Light_beam%2C_Luxor%2C_Las_Vegas_%286433695339%29.jpg
And shortly she describes how during the times of year when the nighttime temperatures are less frigid the beam draws in hundreds of zillions of insects which in turn draw in tens of zillions of bats which in turn draw in zillions of owls (no species given) at the top of that food chain.
The first part of that... Yeah, of course. I've watched it on the small scale with bats working streetlights. The last part... Patently ABSURD. I can't think of a nocturnal owl on the planet that would waste its time and energy trying to operate as an aerial hunter and if anything like that WERE going on it would be a major global draw for bird freaks such as Yours Truly.
And, of course, by totally ignoring the actual issue of my question she did a really excellent job of answering it. (The beam isn't simply totally harmless to avifauna. It's actually a major boon to it. Win/Win/Win - fewer insects and bats; more and bigger and better owls.)
The overall smell I got from Vegas is that it doesn't give a flying fuck about environmental issues, the planet, the stuff trying to live on it. And that's pretty much inevitable given how the economic model works - primarily by raping the Colorado River and feeding and preying upon dangerous human addictive behaviors.
And good luck recycling anything. They load you up with as much "disposable" junk plastic as possible and force you to unload it in conveniently located plastic bag lined waste receptacles.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/nevada-has-a-trash-problem-but-in-reverse/
Nevada has a trash problem - but in reverse - Las Vegas Review-Journal
Nicole Raz - 2016/06/08
Like many states, Nevada has a trash problem.
"But the issue here is in reverse," said Erik Noack, waste management bureau chief for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.
Throwing trash into a landfill is so cheap in Nevada that it's posing a challenge for the state to beef up more eco-friendly waste management programs.
"It's very, very difficult to cost less money than digging a hole and throwing trash into it," said Brian Northam, an environmental health supervisor at the Southern Nevada Health District.
Although some areas of the country export their garbage to other cities or states because of landfill capacity concerns, Nevada's two largest landfills are projected to reach capacity in several more centuries.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Day 11 - 2018/01/07
Way more of a physical wreck than usual following the previous day's activities. Day is cool, gray, windy. Gusts get ferocious at times and in places.
Mission One is the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area just west of Vegas. It's an east slope rising up to near the southern end of the Spring Mountains Range. (That's "Spring" as in "a place where water wells up from an underground source" rather than as in a season of the year.) The Spring Mountains Range forms a section of the boundary of the Great Basin. Wet stuff that falls on its Vegas side drains to or towards the Colorado River. Wet stuff that falls on its Pahrump Valley side will never make it back out to an ocean as wet stuff.
Joshuas start thickening as we climb the (one way traffic) Scenic Loop Drive but a somewhat recent lightning sparked fire has made an extensive but temporary dent in things.
There's a Sandstone Quarry spur of the main drag which takes one up a wash a bit to a substantial parking area and some patches of relatively substantial and dense shrub and small tree growth bounded by steep sandstone outcroppings. There's a seep area in the in the wash which produces some substantial patches of surface water and the birds are packed in fairly thickly. A little flock of Western Bluebirds puts on a good show.
I get a real good shot at an unfamiliar bird that strikes me as tanager and have plenty of time to note distinctive field marks. When I get a chance back at the car I flip through a copy of "Birds of North America" (Chandler S. Robbins) and come up empty - repeatedly. That night I try the National Geographic guide and quickly get a match with adult Townsend's Solitaire. The Solitaire is a somewhat aberrant thrush that I've had before but not for a good while. I recheck the Robbins guide and what they have was fine but easier to skip over if one wasn't thinking thrush.
Valley of Fire State Park a good stretch NE of Vegas. I-15 to Crystal, then Valley of Fire Highway east to the park entrance. Get a quick glimpse of the second and last Shrike close in to the right en route in desert scrub - not Joshua. Stop and search. Should be easy to find but come up with zilch.
Spectacular geology in the park but don't recall much more in the way of wildlife. Ravens here and there and another Rock Wren in a parking area (and under the car for a bit).
Bail to Overton in the Moapa (River) Valley for lunch. Run upstream along the river to pick up I-15 north of the park. Lotsa birds, I'm hoping for another Kestrel along that stretch and get one. Then back to Henderson for a last night at the Best Western.
Way more of a physical wreck than usual following the previous day's activities. Day is cool, gray, windy. Gusts get ferocious at times and in places.
Mission One is the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area just west of Vegas. It's an east slope rising up to near the southern end of the Spring Mountains Range. (That's "Spring" as in "a place where water wells up from an underground source" rather than as in a season of the year.) The Spring Mountains Range forms a section of the boundary of the Great Basin. Wet stuff that falls on its Vegas side drains to or towards the Colorado River. Wet stuff that falls on its Pahrump Valley side will never make it back out to an ocean as wet stuff.
Joshuas start thickening as we climb the (one way traffic) Scenic Loop Drive but a somewhat recent lightning sparked fire has made an extensive but temporary dent in things.
There's a Sandstone Quarry spur of the main drag which takes one up a wash a bit to a substantial parking area and some patches of relatively substantial and dense shrub and small tree growth bounded by steep sandstone outcroppings. There's a seep area in the in the wash which produces some substantial patches of surface water and the birds are packed in fairly thickly. A little flock of Western Bluebirds puts on a good show.
I get a real good shot at an unfamiliar bird that strikes me as tanager and have plenty of time to note distinctive field marks. When I get a chance back at the car I flip through a copy of "Birds of North America" (Chandler S. Robbins) and come up empty - repeatedly. That night I try the National Geographic guide and quickly get a match with adult Townsend's Solitaire. The Solitaire is a somewhat aberrant thrush that I've had before but not for a good while. I recheck the Robbins guide and what they have was fine but easier to skip over if one wasn't thinking thrush.
Valley of Fire State Park a good stretch NE of Vegas. I-15 to Crystal, then Valley of Fire Highway east to the park entrance. Get a quick glimpse of the second and last Shrike close in to the right en route in desert scrub - not Joshua. Stop and search. Should be easy to find but come up with zilch.
Spectacular geology in the park but don't recall much more in the way of wildlife. Ravens here and there and another Rock Wren in a parking area (and under the car for a bit).
Bail to Overton in the Moapa (River) Valley for lunch. Run upstream along the river to pick up I-15 north of the park. Lotsa birds, I'm hoping for another Kestrel along that stretch and get one. Then back to Henderson for a last night at the Best Western.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Day 12 - 2018/01/08
Prepare to blow Henderson. Note half a dozen tiny rain drops on the windshield. Think that this must be a major event for this neck of the Mojave.
Relocating to the Excalibur for a final Vegas area night. Luxor is next door to the south, Mandalay Bay is two - 0.5 crow flight miles away.
We see if it'll be OK to check in early - late morning. It will. Twenty-second floor. Move in.
Work our way to the High Roller Ferris wheel. The rain, much to my surprise, had NOT peaked and ended with those six drops on the windshield five or six hours before. The Monorail gets us a fair chunk of the way. Hafta navigate through the Flamingo grounds which have a nice little zoo/habitat area with cool birds like Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers in artificial ponds.
With Southwest Airlines you can check in 24 hours prior to your flight and the order in which you check in determines / translates to the position you get to board and select your seat. I love to look and navigate so I always go for way the hell aft to stay clear of the wings (and you're never gonna get fore of the wings 'cause there's too much competition) with a window on the north/shady side - Starboard Out / Port Home (the opposite of "posh") for an East Coast guy.
A loop on the High Roller is thirty minutes. Bad news... Things work out so's we're gonna be on the ride at 16:05 which is 24 hours prior to the flight. Good news... We're gonna be at the top right around window opens time so I'm gonna be in good shape signalwise.
This toy is HUGE and the engineering is impressive and beautiful. Gondola capacity is forty individuals and there are 28 of them. We load our bubble at five percent as it creeps along the platform at a fraction of escalator speed.
Down low T-Mobile's giving me a crap unusable signal and it doesn't get better as we start climbing. But at First Quarter the iPhone's got lotsa bars and I'm in business. Then at showtime we're damn near PRECISELY at twelve o'clock and the goddam signal's back to the total shit level I started with. We're near the center of the entertainment capital of the known universe, at the top of the highest Ferris wheel on the planet, two and a half miles from the McCarran International terminal, a bit over a mile from the center point of the fucking T-Mobile Arena - and my iPhone is about as useful as a brick.
Then halfway back down my bars light up like a Christmas tree and I end up with a surprisingly (suspiciously) good boarding position - way better than I was able to manage for the outbound with the laptop and home cable Wi-Fi connection.
The ride itself...
The weather (ignoring environmental issues) sucked. Everything dark gray, low ceiling, substantial steady rain. But the bubble shed the rain surprisingly well and that visibility issue was pretty negligible.
High Roller, Inc. had determined that its riders couldn't possibly be satisfied with just checking out vistas for the duration of the loop and would need a lot of high tech digital audio-visual infomercial entertainment for the full duration. Wasn't horrible, fair bit was interesting, but it was distracting and I resented the arbitrary intrusion a little.
I have some acrophobia issues. I'm fine on a soaring glider, rim of the Grand Canyon, bridge; in a plane, tree, skyscraper. Not so much weightless on a stalled glider, jumping out of a plane, on a high structure that gives you an unobstructed view straight down. I was OK starting and ending the ride, being at the peak swearing at T-Mobile and the iPhone, checking out the geography and points of interest. Significantly queasy in the high climbing part looking at all the clear air between myself and the asphalt.
I was wearing a baseball cap from the Death Valley Visitor Center gift shop with a Peregrine on the front. This caught the eye of the High Roller exit guy who'd had a Kestrel at about the same age I'd had my first. We clicked, could've talked for hours. Gave me some leads for Henderson bird places I'd have loved to have checked out had time and weather permitted.
Main mission for the day was a 19:00 performance at The Mirage of the Cirque du Soleil's Beatles Love production. Hundred million plus dollar purpose-built theater in the round (the replacement for Sigfried and Roy's act); sound, video, props, effects, physical performances ASTOUNDING. Unfortunately I was pretty shot by that point in the day/trip and was unable to prevent myself from nodding off a few times. Maybe/Hopefully I was only out for ten second clips but that was a show during which you didn't wanna blink. For all that's wrong with Vegas you sure gotta hand it to them for entertainment, creativity, artistry, performance.
Rain was pretty heavy when we left. Caught an Uber ride back to the Excalibur and picked up a couple extra riders from back East en route. They were there for the Consumer Electronics Show which had opened that day. "Yeah, we had to stand in a rather long line earlier today 'cause of you guys." Little did I know.
Prepare to blow Henderson. Note half a dozen tiny rain drops on the windshield. Think that this must be a major event for this neck of the Mojave.
Relocating to the Excalibur for a final Vegas area night. Luxor is next door to the south, Mandalay Bay is two - 0.5 crow flight miles away.
We see if it'll be OK to check in early - late morning. It will. Twenty-second floor. Move in.
Work our way to the High Roller Ferris wheel. The rain, much to my surprise, had NOT peaked and ended with those six drops on the windshield five or six hours before. The Monorail gets us a fair chunk of the way. Hafta navigate through the Flamingo grounds which have a nice little zoo/habitat area with cool birds like Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers in artificial ponds.
With Southwest Airlines you can check in 24 hours prior to your flight and the order in which you check in determines / translates to the position you get to board and select your seat. I love to look and navigate so I always go for way the hell aft to stay clear of the wings (and you're never gonna get fore of the wings 'cause there's too much competition) with a window on the north/shady side - Starboard Out / Port Home (the opposite of "posh") for an East Coast guy.
A loop on the High Roller is thirty minutes. Bad news... Things work out so's we're gonna be on the ride at 16:05 which is 24 hours prior to the flight. Good news... We're gonna be at the top right around window opens time so I'm gonna be in good shape signalwise.
This toy is HUGE and the engineering is impressive and beautiful. Gondola capacity is forty individuals and there are 28 of them. We load our bubble at five percent as it creeps along the platform at a fraction of escalator speed.
Down low T-Mobile's giving me a crap unusable signal and it doesn't get better as we start climbing. But at First Quarter the iPhone's got lotsa bars and I'm in business. Then at showtime we're damn near PRECISELY at twelve o'clock and the goddam signal's back to the total shit level I started with. We're near the center of the entertainment capital of the known universe, at the top of the highest Ferris wheel on the planet, two and a half miles from the McCarran International terminal, a bit over a mile from the center point of the fucking T-Mobile Arena - and my iPhone is about as useful as a brick.
Then halfway back down my bars light up like a Christmas tree and I end up with a surprisingly (suspiciously) good boarding position - way better than I was able to manage for the outbound with the laptop and home cable Wi-Fi connection.
The ride itself...
The weather (ignoring environmental issues) sucked. Everything dark gray, low ceiling, substantial steady rain. But the bubble shed the rain surprisingly well and that visibility issue was pretty negligible.
High Roller, Inc. had determined that its riders couldn't possibly be satisfied with just checking out vistas for the duration of the loop and would need a lot of high tech digital audio-visual infomercial entertainment for the full duration. Wasn't horrible, fair bit was interesting, but it was distracting and I resented the arbitrary intrusion a little.
I have some acrophobia issues. I'm fine on a soaring glider, rim of the Grand Canyon, bridge; in a plane, tree, skyscraper. Not so much weightless on a stalled glider, jumping out of a plane, on a high structure that gives you an unobstructed view straight down. I was OK starting and ending the ride, being at the peak swearing at T-Mobile and the iPhone, checking out the geography and points of interest. Significantly queasy in the high climbing part looking at all the clear air between myself and the asphalt.
I was wearing a baseball cap from the Death Valley Visitor Center gift shop with a Peregrine on the front. This caught the eye of the High Roller exit guy who'd had a Kestrel at about the same age I'd had my first. We clicked, could've talked for hours. Gave me some leads for Henderson bird places I'd have loved to have checked out had time and weather permitted.
Main mission for the day was a 19:00 performance at The Mirage of the Cirque du Soleil's Beatles Love production. Hundred million plus dollar purpose-built theater in the round (the replacement for Sigfried and Roy's act); sound, video, props, effects, physical performances ASTOUNDING. Unfortunately I was pretty shot by that point in the day/trip and was unable to prevent myself from nodding off a few times. Maybe/Hopefully I was only out for ten second clips but that was a show during which you didn't wanna blink. For all that's wrong with Vegas you sure gotta hand it to them for entertainment, creativity, artistry, performance.
Rain was pretty heavy when we left. Caught an Uber ride back to the Excalibur and picked up a couple extra riders from back East en route. They were there for the Consumer Electronics Show which had opened that day. "Yeah, we had to stand in a rather long line earlier today 'cause of you guys." Little did I know.
-
Tad Eareckson
- Posts: 9161
- Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC
Re: birds
Day 13 - 2018/01/09
Heavy rain. Turn on the morning TV news stuff and get the big picture on all the fun stuff that's going on as a consequence of all this destabilized climate / Chinese hoax rain we're experiencing slamming into the SouthWest. Sickening and not surprising.
Southwest 5494 is showing as on schedule, 16:05, breakfast, leisurely pace sorting, organizing, packing. Blow Excalibur at maybe 10:30, roll to the McCarran Rent-A-Car Center, empty and triple check the car. Catch the shuttle to LAS. Check the status as we're entering the terminal. Flight canceled. (Knew my boarding position was too good to be true.)
Get in line to talk to a human for a Plan B.
I've gotta take an anticoagulant because of issues which arose with my 1983 abdominal cancer experience. And it can be tricky to maintain, adjust the dosage lever. (I'd rather err on the high side 'cause a temporary bleeding issue is a lot less serious than another permanent clotting issue.)
I'm standing in line and my left nostril starts running like water. I pull a sponge I keep on hand for such mini emergencies out of my pocket and hope to get things under control in a minute or two. Doesn't happen, sponge saturates, I've gotta dig a second one out of a bag, I shortly have four uniformed airport medic guys on hand trying to talk me into an ambulance ride.
No, thanks, I'm on an anticoagulant and a bit ODed, this shit happens now and then, I'll be OK, sorry. Manage to get things under control and erase all traces from the floor tiles before the biohazard response team can respond.
Plane situation... Come back tomorrow for 5478 at 11:35. (Never got an answer I bought about the scrub. Was told it had to do with a critical low ceiling issue. I DID watch a plane take off and quickly and completely disappear at a few hundred feet well before clearing the runway. But:
- It took off.
- Hours before ours had been scheduled to.
- (As did tons of other planes.)
So start looking for an option for another night. Back at the Henderson Best Western? Sorry, nothing available.
So I pull out the Garmin, set Henderson and other satellite areas as operating locations, tell it to find nearby motels, google them on the laptop for phone numbers, feed the numbers to HM who calls them (I know there's probably a much smarter way of doing this - but that way worked) and gets told the same thing - untold hundreds of times. The Consumer Electronics Show has totally overwhelmed the system.
I finally say fuckit. Let's go back to Dollar, get another car, get ridiculously well clear of Vegas at Pahrump. We find a place at Pahrump but not on the first effort and I suspect that even there we were on dangerously thin ice.
By the time we get the Ford Focus rolling it's clearing up fast. Take NV-160 up through some more Joshua habitat across the southern stretch of the Spring Mountains range not for south of the Red Rock Canyon area, crest at 5500 feet, descend into the Pahrump Valley, head NW for a final 23 miles to goal at the Pahrump Nugget.
Some of the most spectacular stuff I've ever seen. High pressure pushing in fast and hard from the SW lenticular action to the left, clear blue above, sharply defined brilliant orange clouds flaring back into the wind from over the Spring Mountains. Have no clue what was going on meteorologically with the latter. Had never seen anything like it before.
And the higher elevations of the mountains were fairly well blanketed with snow. And the highest mountain we were seeing was 11915 foot Charleston Peak - at our closest point along NV-160 ten miles before goal a bit over thirteen miles to our NW.
It had been dark when we'd done that route the first/previous time before Day 01 dinner. This time it was still light enough to take in the scenery when we docked. Not so light though that HM didn't get pulled over for running with no headlights with a mile or so to go. He's used to them coming on automatically - which is what I told the cop about this rental car situation - and I hadn't noticed what with all the stuff from streetlights and other vehicles in town. He reached in, switched them on, sent us on our way.
From then on dinner and OK for the night.
Day 14 - 2018/01/10
Back to Vegas, retrace our route.
Snow coating on the mountains looked a lot thinner. Don't understand why, wouldn't have expected any overnight melting. Sublimation by a strong dry wind maybe?
Feast my eyes on reasonably frequent pole mounted Redtails. And we're again not having any Raven shortage problems.
Gas and lose the car, catch the shuttle, make it through security. Constantly sorting and shifting things and constantly panicking thinking of lost stuff - like my binoculars - that I haven't. Lotsa stress.
Good boarding position and I get the seat I want. I'm navigating using the Garmin, checking out the geography of the continent. We're hauling ass with a tailwind and maintaining a groundspeed of around 600 mph. I think it was around 450-500 on the way out. Hit maybe the most violent turbulence I've ever experienced. Seat belt light is on a lot. Stays reasonably light until about Ohio. Cross into West Virginia five times. Dock ahead of schedule.
Again REALLY need to get to a men's room. Get to one, think I'm getting back onto the concourse, find myself in another room with lotsa people of the other gender inside. They look at the expression on my face and laugh. I confess that this is the second time in four days that I've done this and that I don't travel well.
The cold is still pretty brutal but we catch an Uber ride pretty quick and I turn the thermostat up from fifty, open some valves, flip some circuit breaker switches - happy that nothing's frozen and burst or been burglarized.
If we hadn't been fucked over on Southwest 5494 it would've been close to dark by the time we'd gotten airborne and would've finished getting dark fast as we blasted east. And we wouldn't have gotten out of BWI until a fair bit after midnight. And I'd missed seeing some of the most spectacular scenery I've ever encountered and not developed a proper understanding and appreciation of the Spring Mountains range. So that one worked out real well as far as I'm concerned.
Closing thoughts...
Most of the habitat we encountered was pretty parched and most of the nonhuman stuff living in it is evolved to deal with it and widely and thinly distributed. During most of the day even during the coolest time of year you can drive at normal road speed FOREVER without seeing anything with feathers or fur - save an occasional Raven. Find a water source though...
And in the tropical forest, savanna, lake, marsh habitats it's hard to walk ten feet or turn your head ten degrees without being overwhelmed.
And it's astonishing to see what kind of havoc an inch of single day rain can wreak in an environment that typically only sees three or four a year in which the surfaces aren't conditioned and vegetated to absorb it. Things should be getting REAL interesting as we really get rolling on melting all the permafrost.
Heavy rain. Turn on the morning TV news stuff and get the big picture on all the fun stuff that's going on as a consequence of all this destabilized climate / Chinese hoax rain we're experiencing slamming into the SouthWest. Sickening and not surprising.
Southwest 5494 is showing as on schedule, 16:05, breakfast, leisurely pace sorting, organizing, packing. Blow Excalibur at maybe 10:30, roll to the McCarran Rent-A-Car Center, empty and triple check the car. Catch the shuttle to LAS. Check the status as we're entering the terminal. Flight canceled. (Knew my boarding position was too good to be true.)
Get in line to talk to a human for a Plan B.
I've gotta take an anticoagulant because of issues which arose with my 1983 abdominal cancer experience. And it can be tricky to maintain, adjust the dosage lever. (I'd rather err on the high side 'cause a temporary bleeding issue is a lot less serious than another permanent clotting issue.)
I'm standing in line and my left nostril starts running like water. I pull a sponge I keep on hand for such mini emergencies out of my pocket and hope to get things under control in a minute or two. Doesn't happen, sponge saturates, I've gotta dig a second one out of a bag, I shortly have four uniformed airport medic guys on hand trying to talk me into an ambulance ride.
No, thanks, I'm on an anticoagulant and a bit ODed, this shit happens now and then, I'll be OK, sorry. Manage to get things under control and erase all traces from the floor tiles before the biohazard response team can respond.
Plane situation... Come back tomorrow for 5478 at 11:35. (Never got an answer I bought about the scrub. Was told it had to do with a critical low ceiling issue. I DID watch a plane take off and quickly and completely disappear at a few hundred feet well before clearing the runway. But:
- It took off.
- Hours before ours had been scheduled to.
- (As did tons of other planes.)
So start looking for an option for another night. Back at the Henderson Best Western? Sorry, nothing available.
So I pull out the Garmin, set Henderson and other satellite areas as operating locations, tell it to find nearby motels, google them on the laptop for phone numbers, feed the numbers to HM who calls them (I know there's probably a much smarter way of doing this - but that way worked) and gets told the same thing - untold hundreds of times. The Consumer Electronics Show has totally overwhelmed the system.
I finally say fuckit. Let's go back to Dollar, get another car, get ridiculously well clear of Vegas at Pahrump. We find a place at Pahrump but not on the first effort and I suspect that even there we were on dangerously thin ice.
By the time we get the Ford Focus rolling it's clearing up fast. Take NV-160 up through some more Joshua habitat across the southern stretch of the Spring Mountains range not for south of the Red Rock Canyon area, crest at 5500 feet, descend into the Pahrump Valley, head NW for a final 23 miles to goal at the Pahrump Nugget.
Some of the most spectacular stuff I've ever seen. High pressure pushing in fast and hard from the SW lenticular action to the left, clear blue above, sharply defined brilliant orange clouds flaring back into the wind from over the Spring Mountains. Have no clue what was going on meteorologically with the latter. Had never seen anything like it before.
And the higher elevations of the mountains were fairly well blanketed with snow. And the highest mountain we were seeing was 11915 foot Charleston Peak - at our closest point along NV-160 ten miles before goal a bit over thirteen miles to our NW.
It had been dark when we'd done that route the first/previous time before Day 01 dinner. This time it was still light enough to take in the scenery when we docked. Not so light though that HM didn't get pulled over for running with no headlights with a mile or so to go. He's used to them coming on automatically - which is what I told the cop about this rental car situation - and I hadn't noticed what with all the stuff from streetlights and other vehicles in town. He reached in, switched them on, sent us on our way.
From then on dinner and OK for the night.
Day 14 - 2018/01/10
Back to Vegas, retrace our route.
Snow coating on the mountains looked a lot thinner. Don't understand why, wouldn't have expected any overnight melting. Sublimation by a strong dry wind maybe?
Feast my eyes on reasonably frequent pole mounted Redtails. And we're again not having any Raven shortage problems.
Gas and lose the car, catch the shuttle, make it through security. Constantly sorting and shifting things and constantly panicking thinking of lost stuff - like my binoculars - that I haven't. Lotsa stress.
Good boarding position and I get the seat I want. I'm navigating using the Garmin, checking out the geography of the continent. We're hauling ass with a tailwind and maintaining a groundspeed of around 600 mph. I think it was around 450-500 on the way out. Hit maybe the most violent turbulence I've ever experienced. Seat belt light is on a lot. Stays reasonably light until about Ohio. Cross into West Virginia five times. Dock ahead of schedule.
Again REALLY need to get to a men's room. Get to one, think I'm getting back onto the concourse, find myself in another room with lotsa people of the other gender inside. They look at the expression on my face and laugh. I confess that this is the second time in four days that I've done this and that I don't travel well.
The cold is still pretty brutal but we catch an Uber ride pretty quick and I turn the thermostat up from fifty, open some valves, flip some circuit breaker switches - happy that nothing's frozen and burst or been burglarized.
If we hadn't been fucked over on Southwest 5494 it would've been close to dark by the time we'd gotten airborne and would've finished getting dark fast as we blasted east. And we wouldn't have gotten out of BWI until a fair bit after midnight. And I'd missed seeing some of the most spectacular scenery I've ever encountered and not developed a proper understanding and appreciation of the Spring Mountains range. So that one worked out real well as far as I'm concerned.
Closing thoughts...
Most of the habitat we encountered was pretty parched and most of the nonhuman stuff living in it is evolved to deal with it and widely and thinly distributed. During most of the day even during the coolest time of year you can drive at normal road speed FOREVER without seeing anything with feathers or fur - save an occasional Raven. Find a water source though...
And in the tropical forest, savanna, lake, marsh habitats it's hard to walk ten feet or turn your head ten degrees without being overwhelmed.
And it's astonishing to see what kind of havoc an inch of single day rain can wreak in an environment that typically only sees three or four a year in which the surfaces aren't conditioned and vegetated to absorb it. Things should be getting REAL interesting as we really get rolling on melting all the permafrost.