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Skyline Caverns – Front Royal, VA

By on Dec 28, 2021 in Geographic | 1 comment

Have you ever done something monumentally … disheartening? I hope not, but I certainly did so late in 2019. While trying to “clean up” my hard drives, I managed to delete all of my photos. All of them. Erased. *poof* When faced with this sort of situation, I generally have 2 viable emotional alternatives. One is to be rather pointlessly angry – and the other is to walk away until I have the energy to face the situation constructively. Based on my word choice and the long absence, guess which one I default to? Yup, I walked away. For the most part, I put my camera down and walked away from photography for just over 2 years. Of course, in that time we’ve had a global pandemic which, being global, affected everyone. Now I’m finally ready to return to nerd adventuring! Welcome to Skyline Caverns in Front Royal, Virginia, USA! As far as cave systems go,...

Bayou Wildlife Zoo – Alvin, TX

By on Jul 6, 2019 in Biological |

In February of 2019, I took a 3 week trip to Houston. While there, I visited a few places such as the Houston Zoo and others. One of the places visited included the Bayou Wildlife Zoo in Alvin, TX. I have to preface this by stating that not only was it actively raining when I was visiting, but it had been raining for pretty much 2 weeks by this point. Due to that, everything was muddy – from trails to animals. Not an ideal photographic venture… Some animals didn’t seem to really mind – like this white swan. Complete with water dripping off the beak. What I wasn’t expecting really was that this was a vehicle tour site – in which I got to sit in an open safari type of wagon and was driven all over the park to see all the wide variety of animals they had. All patrons also got a bucket of feed and the animals were encouraged to come interact with the...

Glass Beach – Fort Bragg, CA

By on May 18, 2019 in Geographic | 1 comment

A 3-day road trip culminated in a visit to this rather unique geological site called Glass Beach, located near Fort Bragg, CA. It’s is a small section of the larger beach. If you can’t tell by the name itself, this section is completely filled with smooth buffed sea glass. Apparently there are 3 small sites in the area, and this one was a small section of the much larger area. When you park and walk the distance to get to the beach, veer to the left. You’ll see it soon enough. To those tourists who complained that the beach was ‘picked over to the point that no real glass was left’ — look for the sections of Glass Beach which are not inside the park. This area I was in was SO full of small pieces of buffed glass it was truly impressive. If you are one of those folks who likes to collect Sea Glass, this place is DEFINITELY where you want to visit....

Elephant Seal Beach – San Simeon, CA

By on May 4, 2019 in Biological |

I rented a Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 SP Di VC USD G2 from LensRentals.com to see what full frame images would look like. The lens was a 150×600 zoom. The weight of it was more than I expected, so that made using it for the dog show that I originally got it for a bit challenging. I tried one day of the show, but gave up. Even on a tripod, it just didn’t work out for me. In theory, it was designed for use with sporting events but I guess a canine agility show wasn’t what they had in mind. So instead of the show I decided to go up to San Simeon to the Elephant Seal Beach. I usually go up there between December and March for the pupping season, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Turns out, after pupping season is molting season! And there were lots of seals to be seen, that is for sure. I posted the first picture here on my Instagram (follow me to see these...

Brazos Bend State Park – Needville, TX

By on Apr 24, 2019 in Biological, Geographic |

What a glorious outing this was! I wish you had been there. It would have been tons of fun – well, fun-er, because it was tons of fun as it was. I had never seen an Alligator before this trip, and I wasn’t honestly expecting to see one. I figured if I saw one, it would be waaaaaaay over there. I could not have been more WRONG! As Arnold Rimmer on Red Dwarf would say “Wrong, wrong, absolutely brimming over with wrongability.” Ok, let me back up a bit here. I was visiting Houston and looking for somewhere to get some pictures that wasn’t a zoo. Finding Brazos Bend, it took maybe 45 minutes or so to drive there. There’s a small entrance fee and it was a popular park. The perfect day for my walkabout too! Overcast so no harsh shadows, and in the high 70s so not too hot for me. It is a pretty big State Park and offers a lot of options in terms of what to...

Skunk Train – Mendocino County, CA

By on Mar 18, 2019 in Historical |

In August of 2017, I took a trip which included Safari West, the Skunk Train, Glass Beach and the Mendocino cliffs. This time I’ll share the Skunk Train. The good and the bad thing about keeping a blog is that I can compare my progress. This was taken not quite 2 years ago, but I can really tell that my eye has developed a lot since then. Not only that, but my technical skill is increasing as well. Makes me excited to see where I’ll be in the next couple of years! The historic Skunk Train is in Mendocino County, California in Redwoods country. It’s a logging train, historically speaking, and this area is still active logging country. On this same trip, I went to Glass Beach right over the hill from the Skunk Train, and turned out it was Paul Bunyan Days – a local celebration of loggers. Totally unplanned! While now the Skunk Train appears to be used primarily...

Houston Zoo – Houston, TX

By on Mar 17, 2019 in Biological |

I spent 3 weeks in Houston, TX on a business trip and went on a number of interesting zoological nerd adventures. Even better? I GOT A NEW CAMERA!!!! It’s a D750, so a nice upgrade from the D3000 I’ve been using for the last 10ish years. Still need to get lenses which allow me to take full advantage of the full-frame capacity, but in the meantime I can continue to have fun and learn. After spending far too much time on You-Tube looking up all the tips and tricks my brain could process, the very first place I went was the Houston Zoo. Overall, the Zoo was a good trip and well worth the time (and sore feet!). They have all kinds of animals but really their bird collection is outstanding. I just wish they weren’t all behind so many layers of wire. Trying to get good pictures of birds behind mesh was not easy!! This little House Sparrow wasn’t a resident of the zoo,...

Central Coast Aquarium – Avila Beach, CA

By on Feb 10, 2019 in Biological | 1 comment

I was looking through the events of a social meetup group and learned that there is an aquarium close by that I had never heard of. The event was called “Fins & Feathers: Exploring the connection between marine life and seabirds.” The guests of honor would be 2 pelicans from Willow Tree Wildlife. That sounded like such a great Nerd Adventure that of course I had to go!     The aquarium is an educational facility open to the public, aimed at creating a direct engagement between the learner and marine life so close by. It offers a number of programs and special events to help foster this.     One of the main touch tank rooms has this gorgeous mosaic mural. If you want to see the whole thing you can visit the Central Coast Aquarium in Avila Beach, CA from Tuesday through Sunday from 10 to 4. Only $8!   The aquarium has a number of touch-tanks which include a variety of...

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