As the evening shadows lengthened at Anza Borrego, I went wildlife hunting with my Canon (one "n" is correct). With a couple of windy exceptions, it was peaceful time of day with few people interrupting my pursuit of the wily.

Around home, the advantage goes to the hunted as the tangle of chaparral provides a million hidey-holes to disappear into. On the desert, I have more free range. I needed it.

Whale of a time

This spring we returned to Baja for the spring whale watching season. If they were birds we'd say birding, but whaling has connotations of the whale killing industry. Here's the most interesting part of this story. We were in one of the bays that was red with the blood of whales for many square miles. This went on into the middle of the last century. Now the whales come to our boats and bring their babies to be touched by humans! Probably these are not any of the mothers of that earlier era, but they do live long enough to bridge the gap and likely have the memory to go with it. We met the man who had the first "friendly" whale experience, a fisherman spooked by the approaching whales once know as devil fish for their known ability to flip the whalers' boats. He discovered the whales were approaching with no menacing behavior and soon he was taking others to see the whales that approached his fishing boat. A new industry spawned in the 1970s and now thousands of people travel to the lagoons to see the whales where they birth and nurture their young before the long arduous trip north to Alaskan waters.

Before you start looking for my pictures of the whales, let me stop you right here! The camera we took ran out of battery before we made it to the lagoon! Isn't there electricity in Mexico? Well, there is and we had lovely, electrified rooms with lights and everything including plugs in 110V, but the charger was left home. On a previous sojourn to Baja, I tried taking photos and found my camera was too slow. The other problem is we ...were...too ...close! Whales are large and when they are rubbing the side of the boat with their snout it's difficult to take a photo that looks like much. Maybe a wet leather couch? No, not quite. The whiskers would be a give away! A shot of the blow hole, that might be nice? Have you seen the sea lice in there? Now a spy hopping whale would make a terrific photo, and with a fast shutter release time, fast shutter speed and a camera pointed the right way on a steady platform with the light correct for the contrast of sun, water, and dark whale and you have your super memory photo of your trip! Remember, I failed back there with the battery step. The rest is simply out of my league.

We had a day with more whales at out boats than the guide could remember in the last 15 years. Our boat had I think 6 cow/calf pairs at the boat at once, all of them eager to be touched, petted and kissed. While I didn't do any kissing, I did see an animal-neutral person calling most eagerly to whales and kissing them (my sister). Whale mist from the blow hole did cross my face several times and among the initiated, this is considered the whale version of a kiss. It was lovely and given the option of being kissed by whale lips I suppose it is superior.

Was this worth a repeat trip? Absolutely! Many more whales came to our boats and they stayed longer. One pair seemed loathe to leave us before we had to return to shore. I am still puzzled beyond understanding when I consider their behavior. "Friendly" is the word used in the industry, and maybe that explains it. This is simply a most unusual experience to have a 40 ton mother bring or allow her young to approach our boats. In several cases the mothers nudged or pushed their offspring up to and over to our boats. Sometimes the mothers were comfortable getting attention on one side while the young was on the other. Imagine that with any other large mammal in the wild! Maybe a grizzly? NOT! Simple formula for suicide.

Our fellow travelers were eager to learn and fun to share experiences with. We went with friends and family and had our own party of 6 in a total group of 38. Leaving San Diego, we spent 5 nights and 6 days on the peninsula sight seeing the 600 miles down and back; an agreeable way to travel in a tourist bus. The beach photo is from the Inn where we stayed the first night and the Mission is from San Ignacio at the bottom of our drop down the peninsula. Safety issues were non-existant and especially in the village of San Ignacio we felt welcomed where we watched the local high school troop performing area dances from a broad range of localities in Mexico.

We had one morning for birding that produced one I hadn't even heard of, a reddish egret. I have the photo here, but you likely have to take my word on it. The beak is a little pink, the neck IS reddish and the body is about the color of a blue heron. Cool!



Let me invite you to read on to the blog below about my writing and publishing pursuit that is a big deal for me this spring!

Release of new books!

This spring I am very excited to have a few things published in a short time frame. The first is Santa Barbara Fire Song in Three Parts which was just published this week at Smashwords as an ebook collection of stories about wildfire in Santa Barbara. There is a link on this blog that will take you to Smashwords where you can download a free copy! You can read it on your ereader or iPhone/smart phone or your computer. Each story was written for a different age group from young children to young adult. Last year Jen used these stories to begin a discussion with her class on concerns and understanding of firestorms. Not only is Santa Barbara high profile fire country, so are many parts of the world that didn't expect to be. I wrote Fire Song to help kids wrestle with the experiences as well as enjoy the stories.

I am waiting for my hard copy book: The Adventures of Frieda and her Friends. My great friend Kaan from Turkey asked to publish this book a few years ago. He found an illustrator and a print shop and the book was just published two weeks ago. The illustrations are super. The stories I wrote over a period of years. This is good fun for children using a fairytale mode with frog characters in adventurous situations in nature. My hope is to interest more young people to pursue outdoor experience like my characters! Currently I am expecting Kaan will be bringing copies of the book to Santa Barbara. He has also published a Turkish language version of the book which is very exciting to me for the opportunity to have it presented to kids over there!

My teen/young adult mystery novel of current-era characters reaching back in time to mysteries from the early 20th century.From buried clues and researching through 100 years of faded history, the story unfolds on the north slope of Alaska and comes back to local hidden treasure and surprising revelations. Evangeline as Gel returns from the Fire Song to lead her group of intrepid investigators on their journey, while Brandon escapes his vagrant father to frontier of wild Alaska in the throes of the early 20th Century. I expect to release it in the next month or two on Smashbooks as another ebook.

Lower Stanley in the Sawtooth NRA

Here's my hiking bud headed for the wilderness once again. Quick before the rain starts. It doesn't look like thunder and lightening, but by afternoon, it usually happened.



This photo and the one leading this blog right now were both taken from the Stanley, ID city park situated between the chapel, the airport and the elementary school. Not a tourist spot, so I had the park to myself at 4:30 AM while I out waited the fog to get the photos. Wondering why Stanley is so small with all this beauty, I started asking. Check the Stanley weather this winter for a clue. http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=44.2167,-114.9378



This was taken from the balcony of the finest eating establishment in Lower Stanley, ID. The Bridge Street Grill has great food and the deck over the upper Middle Fork of the Salmon River flows right below. A few hundred yards further, the river splits and is reduced to a stream of pleasing proportions, but certainly not suggestive of the appellation: "The River of no Return." We ate at the Bridge Street Grill meeting our best and newest friends there, then went back with my Nephew and wife, David and Barb Cook when they met us for a day.

If you grew up eating trout you caught, you might not order it in a cafe, right? At the Bridge Street Cafe you ought to try it, it might surprise you! I see online, some folks got slow service and didn't like their burgers, well, that wasn't our experience and we didn't get tossed out as suspected hippies or for any otherwise liberal tendencies. Hey! Whadda they know?

Oh, the bridge? Scariest motorway in 6 states I'd say. It has no rails and appears a dark slash above the river, covered with steel, solid as in slick. I'm sure in winter it's worse than it looks and it's significant, the fall to the river. Another one of those times I didn't shoot the photo. The bridge street is about 50 feet long after it drops away from the bridge itself.



Just another rock

Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA)

Finally, the Sawtooth National Recreational Area. If you live near one of these NRAs (no guns involved) you know they are a patchwork of public lands loosely coordinated, but rarely understood. Comprehensive information about Sawtooth was difficult obtain as reps from one group had little coordination with the others.

BUT, the good news is not many people go there. Unlike Yellowstone, the density of tourists is much lower, and mostly nearby folks. Hardly a Californian to be seen, except Carole.



The mountains are well named with a fractal edging on the ridge tops competitors for jaggedness. We hiked into the mountains on several days and located stunning waterfalls. You won't see those in my pictures as they are the most difficult waterfalls to photograph or view. One usually walks up to the base of a great falls and, there you are (or one is), facing a roaring torrent of white water, hurling brickbats of water bouquets over the cliff. At least the names are creative compared to Yellowstone (Upper and Lower Falls).



Lady Face Falls is hidden so we missed it; walked right past on our way to Bridal Veil Falls. Bridal Veil cascades a quarter mile over the mountainside, but the view area for it is amidst a grove of brush where glimpses are possible, but the full view never available at once. We settled for a longer view in the shade of some pines where we ate lunch. Other frustrated hikers told us of Lady Face Falls and we found it was neither in our trip description nor on the map. We found the side trail and proceeded to the brink of the falls where this great yawning crack envelopes the small river. The edge is steep and rounded, but not sheer, so it is most dangerous to approach and impossible to see more than the water dropping away. The sounds were good! The fool hanging to the tree declared the view "awesome!"



The cloud in the photo above looks like poor photography, but it simply faded out to fairy dust on the right side.

Thunderheads threatened and boomed away, but we were unsullied walking in the Sawtooths, Sawteeth? A quick dash from the visitor's center to the truck dumped all the rain we missed in a couple minutes. Better there than five miles from shelter.

Goat Falls, another destination hike. This one Carole picked out and we found the trail more strenuous than the Bridal Veil trail. We hoped the falls to be more cooperative to viewing. It was not! At the end of the trail, it dropped precipitously through a field of moving scree so it looked more like erosion than trail. Carole, being less certain about diminishing trails, sent me out to scout to see if indeed any falls was in the vicinity as we were neither hearing nor seeing evidence of such. I scrambled down and came to a spectacular falls, no doubt named for animal one must emulate to see the waterworks. I panted back up the sliding mess and reported it was good, but not good enough for risking the necessary descent.

We gave up on Goat Falls and sat again under the trees (Doug Fir) looking at an unnamed falls on the opposing ridge that was quite handsome, but distant. We met a family of three + dog looking for some lake unknown to us. After consulting our various maps we all decided they took a wrong turn at the beginning of the hike. To be honest, I thought this poor navigating but I received my comeuppance a day later when I made the same mistake! Careful about judging others! Ha!



Often the riffraff are separated from the posh paying Inn-mates, but here you can see they are not. All these people arrive to gather in front of the Redfish Lake Lodge for water sports, sunbathing, boating, water skiing, beer drinking and hot dog eating.This is the most crowded spot in the SNRA. The resort lodges was directly behind when I shot the photo above. The resort labels the nice lounge chairs to keep out itinerants like me, alas it doesn't work. Here's their story: http://www.redfishlake.com/ I didn't see the usual riffraffy crowd in any of their photos.


Lodgepole pine covers a vast portion of the Wyoming, Montana and Idaho landscape we visited this past summer. Here you see them put to good use as fence to frame tourist photos!

Hot Springs on the Salmon

Often I search my photos expecting to find images that reside only inside my head. After Trekking Nepal, I was sure I shot a photo of broken slats in the swinging bridge we crossed. Fear seared the image to my brain, but I had no photo. Well that's true for today's post. I expected I had shots from Royal Gorge, ID and the little resort we stayed at. Lovely location on the Salmon River with Greg the host being so accommodating. His multi-income site is an anthem to entrepreneurship. I loved the sunset there and was sure I shot up the canyon into the reds of the cliff and the pinks in the sky. Let me check again, but no, it's like that slat photo, only in my head. There goes my dream of being a photojournalist. First, shoot the photo!

I did locate the website which has a few photos: http://www.royalgorgeresort.com/

Greg has some cute little cabins, a bench by the river for five or six RVs, a shop across the highway, hiking trails, hot springs in two locations, a guide service for fishing and rafting, a small store for supplies and probably he could repair your boots too. His hot springs were challenging to find and proved more difficult to negotiate an entrance than I'm used to after the backyard spa. Cute, but... There was only one other RV and no cabin folks while we were there.

At Challis Hot Springs we stopped again. Maybe it was 50 miles up the Salmon and of course right on the river. Hard not to like a river that yields all that pink fish! We wandered around the valley and found the site after a near circle from the town of Challis, ID. More people and a wonderful, hot, hot pool and a cooler pool too. The strange encounter with the host about sent us down the road. First question was about our reservation we didn't have. Ok, I don't make many reservations, one this past summer, so I thought they were full. Next she said we could wait until 2PM and she could get us in. Recall that we drove only 50 miles and it was maybe 10 AM? The food service they advertised was only for the B & B people, so that was out, but we could go swim if we wanted. Next, she reconsidered, after staring at the register, and told us there was one site we could have. The camp was nearly empty then and less than half full by the end of the night! What was that about? This great site could use an upgrade in ownership.








The first photo shows you the top of Royal Gorge, see there nearly was a photo! They were all taken at Challis Hot Springs, which was great place to laze about in hot water and chat with nice fellow traveler from AK, CO, OR etc. As the geology in the photos indicates, this is a tortured place and no doubt the reason for all the hot water. The guy on the ground explained they had to drill all over the place to get enough cool water to cool down the pools and provide drinking water. It's likely this was that same hot spot now residing under Yellowstone. Maybe a geologist relative will set me right on this thinking.

Ghost Town Day

On the map were several Montana ghost towns held over for the pleasure of those gold diggers that missed the 19th Century adventure. These are predictable, a few old store fronts held up by, well, who knows. There are treasured artifacts from the past inhabitants and a creepy element or two bordering on the dastardly or macbre. There's the hangman's gallows in Bannack visible from the jail. The old haunted Masonic Hall populated by young souls dying of a yesteryear plague plays well against the oldest hotel in commemorative MT history. But I had to remember, the Brits regaled us in the hangings and choppings and other public bludgeonings from the past when we were in refined London. One should not be hasty in criticism. The street of tipsy stores in Virginia City, MT, still open as sweet shoppes, espresso coffee shops and the ever present T-shirt factory. Around in back is the side street theater playing a melodrama set in 1856. Feeling deprived of the tribulations of yesteryear, we plunged forward, unaware of how many more such opportunities awaited on the road home.










The train figures large in these exhibits and the slow, slow train from Virginia City to Nevada City both still in Montana was deemed necessary for the transition between these two old-time outposts. Later I clocked this on my odometer as 1.5 miles to cover a time period sufficient to fly to any other western state. Carole received a sewing lesson on a hand powered sewing machine and I had the benefit of a volunteer fur trapper describing the curing and marketing of beaver pelts, buffalo robes and several other beauties. We stayed for the mock court but had to rush to the train station before the villain of the village was duly convicted. Upon reflection we could have stayed for conviction and sentencing and still beaten the train back by walking.

So there we had it, three ghost towns in one day and finding the same corrupt sheriff had figured in the history of all of them. Or was he guilty at all? http://www.legendsofamerica.com/mt-bannack.html