A word of warning that the new place is, well, new. It still needs some cleaning up and rearranging, some prettifying really but I promise to not make you do any work, I’ll just dust around you. It won’t be long until you wanna take your shoes off, grab a soda and relax there. Heck you can come in your jammies if you like. I don’t mind at all. Maybe we can have a pillow fight!  Woo hoo!

Turtles are pretty common along Missouri roads and we happened upon this guy on a dead end road so I was able to take a few moments to admire him. I don’t know if you can tell, but he’s pretty good size.

When I moved that rock from in front of him he decided to retreat and peek.

{Snake alert for Aims}

We decided to try to find a cache at Jolly Mill but as we crossed the bridge (the bridge we were on is the third photo from the top) we saw this swimming in the water below.

This water moccasin (western cottonmouth) was no baby either, he was big, and he wasn’t alone, we counted three of them.

See the fish below him? How cool.

That is one huge crawdad!

There were some nests on the bottom side of the bridge, and hanging out of one was. . .a snake skin! EEEK! I’m outta here!

Btw: we did NOT go after the cache.

This was a view from a cemetery in Texas and I couldn’t help but think of Jenni in Kansas when I saw it.

We stopped at a cemetery near the highway in Oklahoma, somewhere after I poked fun at the naming of the Washita River (I kid you not). I kept singing WY! Sheet a River, I’m a dork that way. But back to the point, this cemetery was inundated (they nest in colonies) with Great-tailed Grackles.

Huge, happy, hungry (apparently) Grackles. And these photos are of various ones and pairs, not the same one over and over.

So many of the mama Grackles had bugs in their mouths, I am assuming for babies and the daddies were telling us to get the heck away from their trees, where I assume the nests were.

A word of warning that the new place is, well, new. It still needs some cleaning up and rearranging, some prettifying really but I promise to not make you do any work, I’ll just dust around you. It won’t be long until you wanna take your shoes off, grab a soda and relax there. Heck you can come in your jammies if you like. I don’t mind at all. Maybe we can have a pillow fight!  Woo hoo!

I was able to park and just walk in a small area near the car in clear terrain (keeping watch for snakes) and see all of these birds. There were also a few who avoided me a little better, sorry for that.

A few Bullock’s Orioles.

A couple of little woodpeckers.

(This one cracked me up, as he peeked around making sure the coast was clear for him to lunch on the “no picnicking sign”.)

A cute little Lark Sparrow perched on a rock.

A few Finches, I kept scaring the poor female off her nest. She built under a picnic shelter and each time I passed under the shelter she scared me as much as I scared her.

But my prize of the day was the privilege of seeing, in real life, with my own two eyes, a Painted Bunting. I had only seen this bird in my bird book and thought it would be cool to see one but I feel especially special that one happened to be at the canyon during the the short time I was there watching.

So bright and colorful, people often mistake the Painted Bunting for an escaped pet tropical bird.

He wouldn’t let me get any closer but I hope you can see how beautiful he is. I soaked up his song while my men waited for me at the car.

Identification An adult male Painted Bunting is arguably the most distinctive songbird in North America, with the combination of a deep blue head, red underparts, a green back, and a red rump. While not as brightly colored as males, female Painted Buntings are also distinctive. The female has an overall greenish plumage which is more darkly colored above than below. ~quoted from Audubon (They left off the red eye ring mentioned on other sites.)

Isn’t he beautiful?! I got too close apparently and off he flew. I enjoyed my time in his presence and hope you have too.

As we drove out of the park Dennis pulled off to the side and I shot this bird from the car. I’m pretty sure it’s a Western Kingbird.

A little further down the road we scared few vultures off from their meal but one paused long enough for a shot.

A word of warning that the new place is, well, new. It still needs some cleaning up and rearranging, some prettifying really but I promise to not make you do any work, I’ll just dust around you. It won’t be long until you wanna take your shoes off, grab a soda and relax there. Heck you can come in your jammies if you like. I don’t mind at all. Maybe we can have a pillow fight!  Woo hoo!

Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon of Texas? After playing at the Cadillac Ranch for a while we headed south of Amarillo to Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

The Canyon is 120 miles long, as much as 20 miles wide, and has a maximum depth of more than 800 feet. Its elevation at the rim is 3,500 feet above sea level. It is often claimed that Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States. The largest, the Grand Canyon, is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft. deep. ~quoted from Palo Duro Canyon dot com.

Although this was my second time there, the funny thing is I really haven’t taken any photos of the canyon. The first time we were there we biked like crazy, wiping out, brushing ourselves off and biking some more. This time the guys hiked to a cave to explore a bit and I guarded the car (not really) and snapped photos of flowers and birds. I’ll show you some of the cool flowers I saw today then we’ll do the birds tomorrow. If you want to see the canyon I’m afraid you’ll have to click the link up there.

Texas Route 66 themed rest area.

Taken with the point and shoot as I was too pooped to carry the big ‘un.

We only cut across the northeast corner of New Mexico and after the little stop at the Volcano we made it quickly to Texas.

Doing some geocaching along our way, we discovered this neat cemetery just outside the Texas Boys’ Ranch.

This is a grave in the nearby pet cemetery. Notice the tennis ball on top of the cross.

We spent the night in Amarillo and bright and early the next day we went to the Cadillac Ranch. Although we had driven by the Caddies many times over the years, we had never stopped and walked up before.

Due to the fact it was raining I left the big cameras in the car, so all these shots were taken with the point and shoot.

You are encouraged to leave your mark on the cars. So while I walked around snapping a few photos, Haden shook the paint cans lying around trying to find some paint.

Looks like someone spent some time there.

There’s a virtual cache there and Haden found some paint so the guys painted our handles on the car with the tires that don’t turn. Check - another cache found by bandits and Lil’ Banditto.

And Haden made his own mark. Proof we were there.  But the funny thing is, our marks are most likely already painted over.

After visiting the Sand Dunes we made our way to the Capulin Volcano in New Mexico. We stopped along the way to do a few caches and I found a little critter.

He enjoyed his sunning rock and enjoyed watching him.

It really is neat finding a splash of growing color amongst the rock and the sand and barrenness.

We made it to the Capulin Volcano National Monument and my guys walked the rim, a mile long trail. I walked a portion of it, then went back to the bottom to wait. It stands about 1000’ above the surrounding landscape, with the mouth/crater being 400’ deep. It is really an awesome place and you can see for miles when you stand on the rim.

The mouth/center is concave (it’s an example of an extinct cinder cone volcano) and it acts as a huge megaphone. So you can be down in the bottom, or anywhere along the rim and easily hear what someone else says. Remember that if you ever visit. I really enjoyed just sitting there, in peace, cool breeze blowing and voices drifting from a half mile away.

As we exited the park and continued down that long road, we came upon the neatest sight. We all yelled, “Was that an owl? I think that was an owl.” And Dennis quickly did a Uie and back we went.

As we pulled into the turn off the owl looked around. But he seemed ok with me shooting out the window.

Isn’t he the cutest little guy?!

He stood up, proud and tall.

Then he hunched down in a great diving pose, momentarily.

And the next snap was only feet.

We saw him land on the ground near the road and we quickly drove over. He watched us pull up alongside where he landed, only his head showing and we were puzzled. He was in a hole? How odd for an owl to be in a . . . oops, he’s gone, being the curious soul that I am, I cautiously got out and walked up to his hole. I peeked down into the ground but only saw. . .

I never knew that an owl would live in the ground but after a little research I now know he was a burrowing owl, a small ground-dwelling raptor and they are declining. He’s listed as threatened in Colorado.

I totally just noticed that the tree on the right looks like it has a huge mouth open ready to eat those deer. Look out deer! Run for your lives! You totally see it too, don’t you?

Due to the change in plans, aka skipping the Royal Gorge, we had some time to do something else, now what would that be? As we sat around the campfire the night before we noticed that the Great Sand Dunes National Park was only about a mile away, or 100 miles as the car drives - ok, I exaggerate. But hey, why not. Sand dunes, here we come.

Don’t let those mountains fool you, those dunes are huge. In fact, they are the tallest dunes in North America. You can hike all over the dunes; all 30 square miles of them. There aren’t trails, you just take off wherever you wish. And I thought it was really cool that they even have a couple of wheelchairs you can borrow that have huge wheels and go in the sand.

To get to the dunes you have to wade across Medano Creek. It’s not deep but nice and cool, relaxing. There are even little rippling waves that splash over your toes, they call this phenomenon “Surge Flow” (and yes I totally took that from the visitor’s guide).

Dennis and Haden decided to hike up the dunes, I decided to keep my feet cool in the creek and look for birds. But, I took this little point and shoot back to the car and pulled out the big guns (aka huge honking lens).

Immediately, this little sparrow posed for me.

He was just so cute I kept snapping. But finally I moved along.

I know these last two pictures aren’t the best but I’m hoping someone can tell me what kind of bird that is. He was bigger than the sparrow, mostly gray, with a little reddish/brown top fluff. Looked like his wings and tail were kind of a yellowy olive green?

This is the back of one of those red eyed birds I showed you a few days ago. There seemed to be as many of them as there were magpies.

Speaking of Magpies, look who’s coming.

I guess he needed to cool his feet too.

Crocs even work at the dunes. Ahhhh, refreshingly cool water. (Dennis took this one, he came back early from their hike and together we waited in the water for Haden.)

Then he was off in a flash.

Just in time for one tired Haden to return. He made it about halfway up the dunes and headed back. He said for every little bit you go up you have to go back down before you can go up again, like rolling waves, and he got pretty hot up there. The tallest dune is 650’ high.

We had plans of staying near the Nekked Lizards and getting to meet them on this night, but after our long travels and all the sightseeing from Denver to Colorado Springs, and the atlas not being 100% correct (imagine that) we ended up way south of them. So we missed our opportunity to see the Royal Gorge. Dennis and I have seen it but Haden hasn’t and we planned on taking him. And those 50-60 miles may not sound like much but trust me on a several thousand mile trip, they feel like a lot. So while we missed the Royal Gorge and some Awesome Lizard hospitality we did see Bishop’s Castle.

We were surprised to find that Bishop Castle was even in our GPS. We had no clue it existed until we stumbled upon it. And it was really cool, but getting onto dusk and me being tired I was too lazy to go back to the car for the proper lens and never got a full shot. So you get to deal with my pieces of it.

This 160’ tall castle has been, and is being, built by one man, Jim Bishop, since 1969. While we were there he was working on the dungeon, which by the drawing we saw, looks like it’s under the wall. The wall will encompass the property and have a walkway on top with towers in the corners.

That’s my little monkey at the top.

Not my monkey here. You can kinda make out the dragon’s head at the peak on the left.

I did find a YouTube video if you’d like to see more of the castle

And finally we made it to camp. We camped in San Isabel about 10,000’ up on the mountains and froze our fricking butts off. To say we got any rest is an overstatement. We had on three layers of clothes, including hoodies with the hoods up, several blankets and yeah, not one wink of sleep. But we managed to get the tents up next to the river before dark and enjoy a campfire before we attempted sleep. Needless to say, we were up and on the road early the next day.

After Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs we made our way over to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. These were built by the Anasazi, at the foot of Pikes Peak. You’re free to go in, touch and explore, which we did.

And after exploring we were fortunate to be there at the right time to watch some Indian dances performed by three generations of Indians. We better hurry, they drums are sounding.

Don’t you love the bright colors?!

Father and son twirled and stomped for our pleasure.

Feet pounding to the drum beat.

I don’t remember what this dance was called but he explained that during the dance his shadow was supposed to resemble an eagle hunting. Very cool!

It was imperative that the children living on these cliffs be taught balance and coordination so they were given hoops to train with. Notice all the hoops are piled together at the beginning.

As the boy danced and spun, very quickly I might add, the hoops were in constant motion.

Over the arms and across the back, but he didn’t stop there.

He stomped and jumped until the hoops were around his legs. (Grandpa looks a little nervous in the background.)

He needed a break after he was done. Not sure why. But we were off and on the road again.

While climbing around Haden found a friend and I found a few too, but don’t ask me what kind they are.

I thought maybe this was Towhee, but the red eye throws me. After looking him up I found out that he is a Spotted Towhee.

Reminded me of a bluebird but it had no brownish/orange breast, just white. I did see aa eastern bluebird in the same area.

While watching the rock climbers this little house wren (at least that’s what I think it was) came and perched on a post.

Black-headed Grosbeak.

There were a lot of these tiny flutters around. Not sure what they were but not much bigger than a hummingbird and very quick.  I didn't research long but the closest thing I saw in my bird book was maybe the Black-tailed Gnatcatcher?

Doesn’t she look like royalty?

This little fellow plopped right down in front in of me.  I think he's a Red-backed Junco.

Then he flew above and serenaded me.

If you traveled with my fellows you would be as amazed as I am that I got any birds. So while these aren’t as nice as I’d like at least I got a few and I think I could figure out what they are if I went to look them up.  Most of these are birds we don't have in Wisconsin and since being home I haven't seen many birds in my yard at all so I'm glad I got these and a few other new ones while traveling.

Next stop on our vacation route was Garden of the Gods. It’s really a magnificent place and we could have spent a lot more time there but we had other places we wanted to see.

There were some rock climbers on the day we were there. And it was pretty cool to watch them scaling up.

Such a magnificent view, with the mountains behind.

We had walkie talkies with us so we let Haden go off by himself for a bit, he was dying to climb a little and I wanted to look for birds. He was unaware that we could see him at this point.

But we called to him and snapped a photo for his grandparents. My little Mountain Goat. Although, at 16 he doesn’t like to be called little.

He’s a pretty good climber. But I did remind him that he doesn’t have insurance so don’t break anything.

He had great time wondering around, didn’t break anything and did wear off some of that been-in-the-car-too-long energy.

It really was that blue.

After spending the night in Denver (and after getting distracted by the cute little church and fun walking trail), we made it to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Yippee! I know you are rejoicing too. We were not sure if the road we wanted to travel would be open or not; according to the website it’s closed until May 31st because of snow and we were there on May 25th.

We got lucky and road was open, the day before it had been shut down and it just opened about 30 minutes before we got there.

As we went up, up, up, we ran into snow, and lots of it. Hope that mound doesn’t fall over on the car.

If I remember correctly, this was the highest point we were at, close to 14,000 feet. Dennis was affected by the altitude the most. He had a continual headache for most of our Colorado days. But considering we live at about 800 feet, I think we can easily get altitude sickness at 2,000’.

Just thought the rocks looked cool sticking out of the snow.

Curvy, narrow roads winding up.

Imagine the view if that pile of snow wasn’t there.

Oh yeah, that’s pretty. Even if the snow is way taller than the vehicles.

Uh-oh, I think he better watch out, that snow pile looks like it’s leaning.

And then we went back down. We didn’t stay up there very log, seems even sitting in the car it was difficult to breathe. Forget trying to hike.

What do I see there?

But these two Moose (mooses? Meeses? Meese?) were rather boring so we went on down the road and came upon some more.

Don’t you just want to bury your face in his ears?!

I’m not sure if he’d like it though.

Maybe the baby one would let you.

Isn’t he the cutest?! He is a miniature copy of his parents.

Guess his ear itched. I bet he heard us talking about how soft they looked.

A little further down the mountain.

And a little further. I would never have thought there were pelicans in the mountains.

And a couple interesting plants.

I swear I’ve seen this stuff for sale at Wal-Mart.

What is this stuff? It reminds me of artichoke.

I kept hearing this noise that reminded me of crickets all around me. It didn’t take long to determine the source of the noise.

I know those aren’t awesome hummingbird photos but that’s all I could catch in this spot. (Better hummers later.)

A cute little what’s-it bird. That’s as close as he’d let me get.

And a Black-billed Magpie, or two.

I was very curious about these birds; it was the first time I had ever seen one. I’m not sure if I ever got a better photo of them or not. You see I still haven’t looked at all the photos I took yet. But, I wanted a Magpie to stand still for just a moment and let me examine it. Instead, they wanted to hide in the tall grasses or fly away when I aimed the lens. Maybe they smelled me. Did you know they can use scent to locate food, unlike most birds?

South Dakota rest stop along I-90. 

On our trek up to the Rocky Mountains we happened upon a cute little church.

We pulled in the parking lot and walked the path in front of the church and around the small pond. Such a cute little rock church!

The view of the mountains from there wasn’t bad either.

And Jesus watching over the church. I finally got up the guts to walk up the stairs to the church and I found a sign about visitors being welcome and telling where to go if the church was locked. Luck would have it that a Priest was there, cleaning up from a wedding.

See, I told you it was small. But I really enjoyed poking around a bit.

St Catherine of Siena stained-glass window.

We didn’t make it to Jewel Cave but we did take the time to take a tour at Wind Cave National Park. Before our tour started we walked around above the cave a bit and I poked my nose in some flowers while some birds tried to poo on me. I don’t have a clue what kind of South Dakota birds these were, but my guess is an Oriole and a Warbler?

This reminds me of adeformed orange sea turtle, saying hi, but. . .

It’s just some sort of evergreen eating fungus.

Yellow Warbler (That was my guess but thanx for confirming it Pamela)

Yellow-breasted Chat

I took a few photos in the cave just for practice. But really, a cave, in photos, just seems like a rock. Still, I’ll share a few.

Wind Cave is extremely long, miles of maze but we just went through a portion of it. It doesn’t have stalagmites or stalactites but it does have lots of a formation called boxwork.

I think our guide called these some kind of popcorn.

By the way this area shines I think there’s gold in that there cave.

Some sort of teeth formation, sabertooth, tiger tooth, something.

Do you have any idea how we got into and out of the cave? Take a guess. It is two different ways. One way to get in and another way to get out.

Cool, a Buffalo. What?! You wanna go closer?

Well this is as close as I get after I heard that buffalo can run up to 35 mph. See that gleam in his eye? And he has teeth in that open mouth and I hear he bites too. He looks like he might get up soon, see ya!

UPDATE: The entrance to Wind Cave is a revolving door, believe it or not.  Then we descended stairs and wound around.  Right before we exited the cave we were taken to an elevator.  And to get out we rode the elevator up, exited a small building and walked up a slight hill to the visitor's center and parking area.

Next up, Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

You can see it from the road. Mostly, I like this photo because of the flag in the foreground.

Walking up from the parking. I thought all the flags were kinda cool.

Almost there.

Closer still and I like it. But, I wasn’t satisfied with that, I wanted to feel like I could reach out and pick his nose. So I grabbed the 400mm lens and, let’s pick some noses. Oops, is that disrespectful?

I kissed Abe’s cheek. Ok, not really. But it feels like you could, doesn’t it?

The lines are where cracks had occurred and have been repaired.

As we were leaving we came upon another herd.

See you at the next stop.