RMNP

Had to find another Nat'l Park to visit to make the annual pass truly a discount. Luckily, Rocky Mountain National Park was not far away.

Read more...

Nice marmot

Marmot pretends to be invisible.

Husband calls out "marmots, marmots!". Marmot wonders if it might not be invisible after all. And hippity hops away Now cleverly disguised as rock, invisible again. Phew! Safety marmot!

Read more...

Driving home...

By now, on the way back to Boulder, we'd picked up one or two extra passengers.

Due to my propensity for driving off the road (so says my fussy husband) I wasn't allowed to steer our bus along the relatively precipitous last part of the road to Ouray. Ouray itself is a good place to stay, with an historical town centre and nice places to eat. But I'm not sure about these astonishing coffees. I had just a regular latte, which seemed harmless enough.

Read more...

Train etiquette

Much like in Scotland, where it is important to dress like your dogs, in Japan you should dress to suit the train on which you are intending to travel

Shonan-Shinjuku Line 

Read more...

Ancient peoples

The 6th bear of the trip was the hardest to spot of all - the inlaws spent some time stomping around in the sun saying it did not exist - it was only visible from a particular angle.

Apparently some of the doodles are older than others. I wonder why so many of the ancient people are depicted carrying beachballs. The cool thing about the ancient peoples that lived in what is now the USA, is that quite a lot of their being ancient was done rather recently. This must be great for those who study the evolution of ancient peoples. This (Mesa Verde, in Colorado) is about the same age as the Daibutsu.

Read more...

Utah tree #2

Another Utah Tree (dead, naturally) especially for David B Benson.

Read more...

Beach

A break from jules' unpaid advertising of the the US National Parks.

Weather update: it is now nice and warm here in Kamakura. Fiery red sun!

So, for more fun than you can bear, and if you don't want to pay 2 USD to swim energetically at the relatively clean pool, you can get pissed at the beach instead. And thousands do. By 5pm everyone is getting tired, life guards included, and those that have not already passed away will soon head home.
I'm including this photo just because I'm amazed the panorama worked at all. All I have is some HP photo-stitching software that came with a now defunct printer.

Read more...

Utah flowers

Yucca

cacti option of pink or yellow

Read more...

Slickrock

Moab slickrock is anything but - actually quite sticky as rock goes. However, it is famous in the mountain biking world. So it was quite a thrill to visit it for a joggette one dawn. Quite glad I didn't have a mountain bike with me. We saw three in total and they were all moving a lot slower than we were on foot. With its scary angles, it is the sort of course that, for mountain biking, I'd want to gradually build up confidence on over a period of weeks or months. A one-day trip would be sure to be disappointing. Well perhaps when we grow up we can take our MTB tandem to Utah...

After the exercise we enjoyed a particularly good breakfast in Moab.

Read more...

Lizardy

Mother-in-law had me photographing all sorts of things for purposes of identification with my fantabulous 2012 Christmas present, a D600 (Nikon DSLR). Normally I would not have bothered as I knew the objects were too far away, the light all wrong, or the camera settings pushed too far to make a potential photo good enough to hang on the wall. However, it was quite a revelation. Although binoculars give the better experience while you are viewing the wildflife (I "only" have a 300mm lens), the photos enable confirmation of sightings. I was well into this by the time we met the Utah lizards. Previously I'd have thought they were all just the same brown lizard, but I learned that there are many different sorts. Here are two examples:

Read more...

Canyonlands

Yes - it's a real packrat! You can tell because it is carrying a pack. Among the paleoclimate community they are famous for their ancient middens found in places like this, so it was nice to at last meet a live one.

Read more...