down time

Long time, no posts. I've been enjoying some downtime in NJ, catching up with friends and family. It's been good, but cold!

I left New Orleans last week, just before Mardi Gras (been there, done that). On the way north, on recommendation of this guy I met in New Orleans, I stopped at Myrtles Plantation, which is supposed to be haunted by a murdered slave and the two children she supposedly inadvertently killed. My pictures don't show any traces of ghosts, which the staff said may occur, but the house did have some cool door knobs made of glass and filled with liquid mercury.

After, I stopped at Emerald Mound in Natchez, MS, site of the second largest Indian mound in the country (after Cahokia, in Illinois, which I saw some years ago). The mounds seem like any other grass covered hills, until you look a little closer and see the more formalized shapes and sharper angles of the hills.

MOM's ball

My first night in New Orleans, Craig and I went to M.O.M.'s Ball, a private party thrown by the Krewe of Misfits, Orphans and Mystics. It was held in a warehouse on the West Bank where they store many of the figures used by various krewes on their floats in their Mardi Gras parades. The pieces were scattered throughout the back room where the drinks and food were.

The party itself was fine, kind of like my experiences with Halloween in the Castro (exhibitionist without being hedonist), only alcohol was served. Craig set me up with a last minute costume, which I dubbed the "Boy-Faced Dog." Pictures may follow at some point -- the one taken with my camera came out terribly.

after the flood

Yesterday I drove around the Lower Ninth Ward and Gentilly, two areas submerged by the flooding from Katrina. The 9th ward was like a ghost town. Streets of empty houses, and no one around. In one area, I saw a FEMA trailer park on what looked like a church lot.

In Gentilly, I happened across what looks like damage from the tornado that swept through here last week. (If that's the case, the city was quick to put the power lines back up.) You're looking at a wrecked FEMA trailer.

This city can't catch a break.

cedar fever

So, I've been coughing a lot since I got to Austin, like I have a persistent tickle in my throat. I was hoping I wasn't getting sick, as that's the last thing I want to deal with while I'm traveling. But, lo and behold, Enid tells me I probably have cedar fever, which occurs in late winter/early spring. Hopefully it'll go away once I leave the area today.

Who knew Austin was one of the top allergy cities in the US? (not me, obviously)

random snapshots

Things I saw but didn't get a chance to shoot on the drive:

The strangely named Christian Stampede Cowboy Church. If a pickup truck wasn't following so close behind me, I would have pulled over to take a picture. Sorry I wasn't a better documentarian.

The jerky tasting room in Johnson City (yep for LBJ, another Hill Country town on the way to Austin).

The Christian ranch in Hill Country where you can ride a horsey and "experience the excitement that is Jesus." Funny, I never pictured Jesus as a cowboy, but I guess that's what you get when you commercialize your faith.

Camels (!) grazing in a pasture in Hill Country.

Sign on the side of the road when I entered Texas: "Welcome to Texas! Proud Home of President George W Bush"

too hardcore for me

Last night I met up with Brit and his fellow coworkers at Speakeasy in downtown Austin. The bar lives up to its name; you have to enter in through a back alley. No passwords needed tho, unless you count money for drinks.

Anyway, this faux hipster dude was around the bar. Couldn't resist documenting the statement he made with the shirt.

fredericksburg

Site of a great Civil War battle, or a quaint little German-influenced town in the Hill Country outside Austin? Maybe both, I haven't been to the one in Virginia, so I can't say for sure.

At any rate, this Fredericksburg is a nice little town. It has interesting stone architecture, strasses for some streets, and a nice little bakery (thanks for the tip, John S.!). I picked up some sourdough bread and sweets to take to Brit and Enid's.

I also risked the ire of cops and Homeland Security by taking pictures of a bank, but no one seemed to notice, thankfully.

snowbound

Snow kept me from getting out of New Mexico Tuesday night. I pulled over in Carlsbad. On the plus side, it gave me the opportunity to see the caverns. On the minus side, I drove only about 275 out of the 750 miles to Austin that day, and I had hoped to try to make it at least halfway.

The next morning, I drove down to the caverns, only to be turned back, as the road in the park to the caverns was covered in ice, and would be closed for a couple more hours. That didn't leave me enough time to wait for them to open, check them out (which takes about 3 hours), then drive to Austin in order to arrive at a reasonable hour.

In hindsight, staying in Carlsbad was a good thing. It was the biggest town I passed through before I hit Austin.

the truth *is* out there!

I finally have documented proof that we were Visited by extraterrestrials. The government has plausible deniability by keeping the aliens in a liquid-filled tube in an obscure museum in a small town in the American Southwest. I had to sneak this photo before someone caught me, so apologies for the poor quality, but I guess that's de rigueur when it comes to these sorts of things.

Oh, wait, never mind. I was just in the International UFO Museum in Roswell, NM. Sorry, didn't mean to alarm you.

What was a bummer tho was I expected Roswell to have jumped the shark and completely focused on the UFO crash. Instead, you have the museum and a few other businesses nearby cashing in on it, and the rest of the town could be any other medium-sized New Mexican town. Oh well.

tent rocks

The name of this place doesn't have to do with the sideways motion of a tent. Its full name is Kasha Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, it's yet another place full of otherworldly forms, this time looking like conical tents.

The price to experience the park is somewhat steep, as you have to hike a long, narrow slot canyon, then go up a steep side of a formation. It was much harder with snow and ice on the ground, with little room for error. Had we known better, we would have hiked out and done the second half of the loop trail for sunset. Next time.

bisti badlands

Rich told me about Bisti Badlands, a wilderness area kind of in the middle of nowhere. Turns out we made a wrong turn (strangely, not at Albuquerque) on the right road and ended up in the badlands, but not the part we were supposed to be in. Still, we hiked in, GPS in hand. There weren't many inspirational forms on our first leg, plus the lighting was really flat, so we hiked back out, drove down the track a little further, then got out where the landscape was more interesting.

Suddenly the light improved. Leah and I shot for a while, then packed up to head back to ABQ for a not-too-late dinner. The sun was nearing the horizon and it peaked out of the clouds. Leah turns around and the whole area was aglow. We whipped out our cameras and shot for a few minutes more, capturing the warm, golden colors.

And on the way home, we passed the right turnoff. Now we know where to go the next time.

aztec ruins

Aztec Ruins is a good sized ancient Puebloan ruin near the four corners region of New Mexico. The Spanish mistakenly associated the ancient Puebloan structures with the Aztecs of Mexico, tho they never ventured this far north.

This shot was taken inside the Great Kiva. It was a long exposure, about 5 seconds, so thankfully there weren't many people passing through at the time. That's one advantage to traveling during the winter -- many people aren't doing it with you.

canyon de chelly

Canyon de Chelly is one of those hidden gems. It's a little off the beaten path from the Grand Canyon and other major attractions in northern Arizona/southern Utah, but it's so worth it.

You can travel within the canyon only if you're accompanied by a Navajo guide. You get two choices: a group tour or a private tour. We opted for a private 3 hour tour (just like Gilligan's Island). And just like Gilligan's Island, there were times when we thought our tiny truck would be lost in the mud (again from snowmelt). But we were in the capable hands of our guide Ronnie. We saw lots of ruins (First Ruin, Junction Ruin, Antelope House Ruin, pictured at right) and many pictographs -- rock paintings. There were only two other tours in the canyon that morning, thankfully.

After the morning tour, we drove down the south rim, hiking to the White House Ruin, then stopping at Spider Rock for sunset. Sadly, we didn't get much golden light that night.

window rock

We stopped by Window Rock on our way to Canyon de Chelly. It's the seat of the Navajo Nation's government, and the landmark for which the town is named is right next to the tribal offices. As the sun was setting, we had one of those cliched/filmic moments when this Navajo dude started playing his native flute up on a rise behind us.

We got to Chinle, next to Canyon de Chelly, just after twilight.

a glimpse into an ice cave

On the western side of El Malpais National Monument is an ice cave on privately held land. The cave is actually a collapsed lava tube that's oriented in such a way that the temperature inside the cave's mouth stays a steady 31 degrees Fahrenheit year round. The ice is 20 feet thick and made for a good subject. Thankfully there weren't many other visitors, since the viewing area for the cave was a wooden platform, and their footsteps would have caused too many vibrations for our tripods (we had to shoot long exposures due to the low light inside the cave).

the narrows of el malpais

A little further down the road from the lava field trailhead is a two mile stretch of road called the Narrows, so named because the lava field comes closest to this long rock wall. The walls face west, making for good sunset light.

We could have missed the sunset, had we hiked to the Lava Falls a little further down. But that trail was even muddier than the lava field.

el malpais lava field

Sorry for the delay; Leah and I were on the road all last week. The lava fields of El Malpais National Monument was our first stop. There isn't much of a trail to speak of, you just follow a series of cairns across the lava field. The start of the trail was really muddy from all the snowmelt, which made for sticky going. Just as we were about to give up and turn back, we came across the start of the lava field.

It was a little tricky shooting, what with the black lava rocks and the snow making the scene a bit contrasty. It was also a little tricky walking, as the snow could have been covering small crevasses.

three rivers petroglyphs

On the drive back to Albuquerque from White Sands, we stopped in at Three Rivers Petroglyphs, an area coated in some 21,000 petroglyphs from the prehistoric Jornada Mogollon people.

Of course, there's always the Petroglyphs National Monument right in Albuquerque, which is obviously more convenient and has about the same number of glyphs, but then again you're always fighting the battle to keep Albuquerque out of your shots.

white sands

Leah and I drove down to White Sands National Monument. She called it a must see destination for any photographer.

We had the park to ourselves, especially Monday morning when we went to catch the sunrise. Only thing we missed was a full moon hike on the dunes, as they run only in summer.

The dunes are made of gypsum, which is why they're white. Yet they're covered in various extraterrstrial blooms (OK, soapstone yucca).

out for a spell

Long time, no posts. I got to Albuquerque a week ago and promptly got sick. I blame it on the butter paneer I had, tasty as it was. I was out of it until after Leah came last Thursday night.

Saturday I made the effort to leave the house anyway. Leah, Rich and I drove up to Santa Fe for the afternoon (Galen had to take care of a sick little Jackson). We just wandered around town, went to a couple galleries and museums. I finally got to eat some New Mexican food -- had the best guacamole I've ever eaten. Plus we stopped at the Kakawa Chocolate House, which has some amazing chocolate food and drink, done the old school Aztec and Mayan ways, as well as more modern takes. Expensive, yet amazing. Raspberry chipotle chocolate fudge anyone?