Road Trip!

stever

Crazy eh? Something about Pennsylvania. Heard a bear researcher from there give a slide show about 20 years ago and it was impressive. These bears are denning under people's porches and under trees in their yards too.

Pennsylvania’s Incredible Giant Black Bears (gameandfishmag.com)

kyfdx

We had a black bear locally, a couple of months ago... just a little guy.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/roaming-ohio-black-bear-spotted-in-oakley-near-crossroads-church

slorenzen

@stever said:
Crazy eh? Something about Pennsylvania. Heard a bear researcher from there give a slide show about 20 years ago and it was impressive. These bears are denning under people's porches and under trees in their yards too.

Pennsylvania’s Incredible Giant Black Bears 9gameandfishmag.com)

Incredible.

Here in Oregon, I've never seen(or heard) of anything bigger than about 300 lbs.

In the local we-got-everything store, at the sporting goods counter I saw a picture of a guy that had taken a 320 lb. cougar about 25 miles from my house! He was posing with it as it was laid out over a pile of snow, it looked like a COW!

stever

Shoot, most of the grizz in Alaska didn't get that big. And I never would have guessed a cougar would go more than 150, tops.

Jemez Mountains tour today via Los Alamos, gas in Rio Rancho (next to ABQ), and now heading west to a campground we know about from a past trip.

explorerx4

Kind of wish I was in Cleveland at rhe air show. The picture show up fine in the pictures folder.

slorenzen

@stever said:
Shoot, most of the grizz in Alaska didn't get that big. And I never would have guessed a cougar would go more than 150, tops.

Jemez Mountains tour today via Los Alamos, gas in Rio Rancho (next to ABQ), and now heading west to a campground we know about from a past trip.

Typically, you're right, the cougars are between 100 to 175 for a big male.

This thing was a MUTANT.

I've seen cougar 5 times since I've lived here(usually on a hike or bike ride, just a quick glance as they head for the hills). I'm guessing they were right around 100-120 pounds.

When do we all get complimentary Edmunds chairs?

stever

Five is amazing. All I've ever seen were some tracks in camp. Well, did see a jaguarundi heading from the beach in Ixtapa in the 80's. We were on the side of the road when he crossed.

And why were we on the side of the road? Our taxi had a flat (naturally for me) and the cabbie's jack didn't work.

(Apparently the chairs are on backorder. )

slorenzen

@stever said:
Five is amazing. All I've ever seen were some tracks in camp. Well, did see a jaguarundi heading from the beach in Ixtapa in the 80's. We were on the side of the road when he crossed.

And why were we on the side of the road? Our taxi had a flat (naturally for me) and the cabbie's jack didn't work.

(Apparently the chairs are on backorder. )

The way I look at it, if I've seen them 5 times, they've seem me 1000 times! Very stealthy critters. One of those times, my black lab rousted him(or her) from it's hidey-hole in some blackberry bushes.

That was the day I decided to carry whenever I was out there(logging road).

Let me know when my chair will be arriving...

stever

The chair may have been abducted by aliens at the Very Large Array site near Pie Town NM.

stever

Found a fun "shortcut" road heading for Socorro. Love it when the blue line on the GPS disappears, especially when you are on a "highway".

explorerx4

Found a picture of my visiting bear friend

xwesx

Well, that dude has seen a few visits from Fish & Game. All he "needs" now is a funnel around his neck. LOL

explorerx4

Leaving tomorrow around 5 am for South Bend. Picking up one of the kids after they get out of work in the Cleveland area. The other is going to meet us at the hotel, driving from Madison. Saturday night going to the ND/UofM football game. I've seen both teams play, but not each other. Driving home Sunday morning. A quick 1600+ miles round trip. Theoretically, I should be able to make it into Ohio on a tank of gas. Don't trust the gas gauge that much.

gagrice

Steve looks like you bailed out of the UP just in time. That old GW is showing its ugly face across the Nation. For those traveling in the Northern tier have your chains with you.

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/09/september-snow-in-seven-states-over-seven-days/

stever

Missed the MIT study earlier in the week about GW and more snow, eh? (washingtonpost.com). Now they are blaming the Polar Vortex on GW too.

But yeah, it's nice not worrying about shoveling or mowing. The condo had a meet and greet breakfast this morning - 80° out and our table was talking about skiing and boarding at Ruidoso and Taos. Never fails - get on the ski run and we'll be talking about canoeing or swimming.

imidazol97

@stever said:
Missed the MIT study earlier in the week about GW and more snow, eh? (washingtonpost.com). Now they are blaming the Polar Vortex on GW too.

Yup. That's what they always taught me in science: construct every explanation around the thesis that is expedient and try to make it sound like the data supports that thesis. It worked well for Ptolemy.

But it's not right for GW.

The old World War II vet that I talk with when he's at the quick market where I get flavored coffee says we're in for a tough winter here in W. Ohio. I believe he says it will come early as well. He's predicting some big snows with blowing like we haven't had for the last few years. Haven't had the 10-12 inch snows with blowing and drifting. He should know the pattern better than Farmers Almanac: he's 89. He's seen a lot of winters.

stever

And publish bad data and get egg on your face when the results can't be repeated by your peers. Cold fusion anyone?

We did see tons of wooly bears coming across the northern tier. They were really thick on one section of road. And the crickets at the VLA site were crazy - enough protein there to feed Akron for a day or too.

Durn damp and clouds here; barely warm enough to swim but the hot tub feels nice.

Guess all the kids are back in school and the road tripping has fallen off. Well, there's time to prepare a leaf peeping trip.

Don't forget the tire chains.

gagrice

Now you are in Las Cruces you have some of the best birding in the USA within a couple hundred miles. That whole SE corner of AZ is rich with birds and wildlife. I plan to spend some time there this winter. We plan to camp at the Hampton Inn Lordsburg and take long day trips up into the various areas around Chiricahua National Monument.

http://southernarizonaguide.com/baja-arizonas-best-birding-areas/

stever

There's a new wetland talked about in the local paper today that's going to be a new birding hot spot here, with ~190 species already spotted.

Our Taos friends usually get down to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge every Spring for the migration (then they follow the Snow Geese to AK).

So far, this is the only roadrunner we've seen.

Chiricahua looks really neat.

xwesx

It's been darned cold up here lately. We went from "summer may be nearly over" to "what the... what happened to autumn?!" in about three-days' time. I'm sweatin' it as I try to get my "shed" closed in. LOL

stever

I always remember mid-September up there as being the dicey time of year. We'd always try to get a trip in mid-month and sometimes it'd be sunny and nice and sometimes you'd just have miserable weather. Those trips were usually planned with a backup alternative, like lunch in a roadhouse after driving to the put-in and then bombing back home.

Got rain and it's cold here too. Had to turn the air off and put on a long sleeve T. Only 68° - it's actually a few degrees warmer back in the UP. But looking at my weather bug, your weather doesn't look bad at all (during the day at least).

fintail

Been on the road a little lately. Some of my favorite driving roads are rural highways in eastern WA. My formative years were spent in the Columbia Basin, and the scenery is very relaxing for me. Some would find it desolate, but it soothes me. The almost empty roads and lack of annoyances help too.

berri

Kinda looks like high desert to me. I always like the desert sky, seems like there is always a neat shade of blue up there. In your hometown of Seattle, I think there are often very neat looking clouds in the sky (on clear days that is!). If you ever get down to Arizona, drive a stretch of the preserved RT 66 if you haven't yet. I think you'd enjoy it. You have a good car for cruising those lonely 2 lane stretches. Now throw in some railroad tracks and you'll have nailed it.

xwesx

@stever said:
But looking at my weather bug, your weather doesn't look bad at all (during the day at least).

No, it's fantastic right now. But, that's after a few "early" nights of heavy frost, so garden is gone. Sadness.

xwesx

@fintail said:
My formative years were spent in the Columbia Basin, and the scenery is very relaxing for me. Some would find it desolate, but it soothes me.

Okay, I'm a little homesick now. LOL

Thanks for sharing!

imidazol97

@fintail said:

Looks like farm country in first picture. I love the included image of the home.
What crops do they raise. I see one or two fields that appear to be farm other than hay.

xwesx

@imidazol97 said:
What crops do they raise. I see one or two fields that appear to be farm other than hay.

Hay is actually a fairly rare commodity in much of the Columbia Basin. The soil productivity generally warrants low-moisture food crops (human consumption) such as wheat, barley, oats, canola, and, as I recall, peas. Hay is far more common in hilly country with more marginal soils, such as the foothills surrounding the basin and various pockets within, as are the livestock it supports.

More recently (but probably as much as twenty years ago now!), many of the farmers in the region started baling their straw for use in the paper (was it paper?) industry. Others, particularly near the Columbia River, started growing poplar trees for the paper industry. They are grown on a ten-year cycle. Seems a little odd to see these vast "forests" of perfectly-aligned trees pop up in the middle of a treeless landscape, but I sure do welcome the shade when traveling along I-84 outside of Boardman (OR) in the middle of summer....

imidazol97

@xwesx said:
More recently (but probably as much as twenty years ago now!), many of the farmers in the region started baling their straw for use in the paper (was it paper?) industry.

Maybe that's what the fields I see are. One field has rolls of that straw then, only here it's usually hay that's been rolled up as a food for livestock later when it turns winter.

It did see some row crops in one picture.

The great pictures caught my eye because it's like when I drive back into my home area of eastern Indiana. I love traveling along some of the same roads I drove as a kid. I also love driving through a lot of the rural areas of Ohio and Indiana where the farm country is mostly all there is. Returning to my roots.

xwesx

We went through large swaths of rural Ohio several years back when we drove our 1998 Dodge GC to Pennsylvania. Neat country out there, and I got a kick out of the roads and their tendency to be straight lines for miles and miles, then make a series of 90-degree turns as they snaked between the fields. It's hard to imagine that whole area was once woodland. The amount of work to convert that to agriculture is just inestimable, especially for the time period it occurred.

Oh, yeah... Fin, where were you in that second photo? I see a fair number of basaltic outcroppings, which means those probably are hay fields in that area. There's a region called the "channeled scablands" that has pretty thin soil and a lot of pasture/hay acreage. I find that event rather fascinating. Some of the rivers have cut fairly sizable gorges through the landscape, too, and grapes, tree orchards, and other crops with a higher water requirement are often grown in their proximity.

xwesx

Strange duplication....