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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,...

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....

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...

Hitting the Dunes in Oceano, CA

By on Jun 9, 2018 in Geographic, Local Flare |

My family is very much a vehicle family. I’m weirdly proud that my mom was resourceful and rebellious enough that she earned some of her college money by street racing – in the 60s. Back when women could be either a teacher or a nurse. My dad can do just about anything mechanically and electrically, as can my brother. My brother has a restored Mustang he takes to local amateur races and he’s drag raced his car in high school. He also loves off-roading. I only got my mom’s lead foot and love of driving. My idea of car repair begins with “Daaaaaaad!” But when my brother came to town on a business trip and decided to stay a couple of extra days to visit me, the very first thing I thought of was: Rent a dune buggy and hit the sand! He was most definitely on-board for that, and I think a bit surprised that I came up with something so perfect for him to...

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