Seguin, TX to Galveston, TX

Today we drove across rural eastern Texas. It is actually quite pretty, though also very drought-stricken.



Small town in Texas, not sure which one.



Dead corn... there was a lot of dead corn everywhere, apparently due to the severe drought in this part of Texas... it is actually on the news right now.



Houses on the barrier islands south of Galveston. Despite being on stilts, a lot of the houses even south of Galveston were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Ike. Apparently the area to the north of Galveston was completely devestated by Ike last year.



In some parts of Texas you can just drive right down to the beach. Also the water is almost bathtub-warm and the air is so humid that the camera fogged up when I took it out of the car, thus the 'misty' look to this photo.



More hurricane damage... this pier was almost completely destroyed. There is also a hotel with a missing, burned out third floor and another one with an enormous chunk missing from it (not photographed).

The water seems really warm right now but hopefully the developing El Nino conditions will prevent any hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast this year - El Nino often decreases the strength and frequency of storms in this area.

Carlsbad, NM to Seguin, TX

I used to have a real park service uniform, but grad students have to wear this one.


Entrance to Carlsbad Caverns




Mediocre pictures of a beautiful cave.


Texas: Wal-Mart and Tamarisk


Boring area in West Texas


Hill country is pretty. Lots of live oaks, reminds me of the Sierra Foothills.


Welfare in Texas?

Las Cruces, NM to Carlsbad, NM

There are some beautiful, high mountains in southeastern New Mexico, north of the Guadelupes, on Apache land. I don't actually know what they are called...






The dry plains around Roswell, NM are really boring and flat... why on earth would aliens (or even weather balloons) choose here to land?

Just a bunch of sick yuccas.



The Pecos River flows through Carlsbad... well mostly it doesn't flow at all because it sits behind this little dam.


Carlsbad caverns is beautiful and amazing but impossible to photograph so I don't have many photos. Go check it out yourself! (but be warned the hotels nearby kinda suck... and not sure if there is a campground)





That last one is the companion to a big rock formation we found in Arches a few years back.

Benton, AZ to Las Cruces, NM (the long way)

Today we drove from Benton, Arizona to Las Cruces, New Mexico. We took some back roads and passed through Sierra Vista so it was not a direct route.

We checked out a really neat cave but I don't have pictures of it because cameras aren't allowed...

The back roads were pretty:


Cottonwoods along a river in Arizona




An open pit mine near Bisbee, Arizona, runoff, and tailings... toxic, I guess, but interesting.


open road in Arizona


Granite Gap, New Mexico.


The second half of the drive was boring and less scenic. Highway 10 through southern New Mexico traverses what could only really be described as a wasteland.. much less diverse and scenic than the deserts of California and Arizona, at least on the flatlands.


Even the Continental Divide is dull and dusty!


This mountain looks a lot like Boney Ridge back in California.


Church near Los Cruces, NM.

There are additional pictures on my flickr and facebook accounts, I don't have time to post 'em all on here.

Day 1: Torrance, CA to Benson, AZ

Note: I am having problems with Flickr so some of the photos are linked from Facebook and may not work.

In any event, the drive out of California was uneventful.

Once we passed between Mt. San Jaciento and Mt. San Gorgonio, we had left Southern California behind. I probably won't be seening it again for at least 5 or 6 months.

Here's Mount San Jaciento with some corporate stuff in front of it.


The first part of the drive across Arizona was uneventful, as well. There was lots of cactus and there were abundant dust devils, as usual. The desert seemed fairly green due to the generous amounts of early monsoon moisture this area has received.




After a while we saw thunderheads building in the distance. (The weather forecast called for a shutdown in the monsoonal flow today, with thunderstorms very unlikely.)

Thunderstorms are hard to predict...



Hmm... looks like it might rain...



A rainbow!



I was disappointed that there were no thunderstorms forecast, because the Arizona monsoon was supposed to be one of the highlights of the drive to Atlanta. But the desert does what it wasnts, and while rain is rare, it is also very unpredictable... as is lightning.




(it isn't really hitting the sign)

Note that these pictures are screen captures from videos, which accounts for the low resolution.

As is usually the case in the desert, the storm was short-lived. After some rain and even more lightning, the storm moved to the northwest, leaving behind sweet-smelling mesquite and a beautiful sunset (not pictured)



Tomorrow we hope to check out a cave (cameras not allowed, unfortunately), then meander towards El Paso or somewhere in that vicinity. No thunderstorms in the forecast tomorrow, either, so we'll see!

Leaving California, Part III

This is my last night in California for a while.

I'm at my parents house in suburban Torrance right now. Tomorrow we head east. I saw a dragonfly in the yard today, and I can't imagine where it came from. There aren't really any natural places near here. Apparently it is traveling as well.

It is good that I am leaving, I feel that my roots here have circled, like a tree left in a pot too long. Nevertheless, the process of 'uprooting' is a bit difficult. There have been several sad moments in the last week, but mostly I am just restless to go. It's time to leave. I hope I can sleep... it's hard to sleep before a big trip.

Hopefully I'll have pictures and stories from on the road posted soon.

Slime Flux

Slime Flux, originally uploaded by inyopfc.

The oak in my parents' yard apparently has slime flux. This is upsetting... I planted this tree circa 1995 and it is already a mature, beautiful oak. I am gonna be super sad if it dies.

Slime Flux

Slime Flux, originally uploaded by inyopfc.

I scraped some of the bark off of the affected area to reveal squishy, gross rotting wood that smelled bad.

Borders of Slime Flux

Borders of Slime Flux, originally uploaded by inyopfc.

This is the border between the part of the oak infested with Slime Flux and the part that isn't. I cut the affected part away... hopefully the tree doesn't die.

Leaving California, Part II

So I'm sitting in my home of the last four months, a house owned by the Park Service known as the 'Brown House'.  (Apparently it is a reference to someone's name because it is not brown).  Almost all of my belongings are at my parents' house in Torrance, and my room here (at least the half of it I use) is pretty much empty and sterile.  I just mopped the kitchen and bathroom.  In about an hour I will be leaving here, and will be back to being nomadic for the first time since 2005.

Packing is such a weird, cathartic process.  This time it is hard because I can only bring one truckload of belongings with me.  The rest goes into a storage unit my parents have, or gets thrown away.  I don't really want to bury my parents in junk, and I don't know when if ever I will live in this area again, so I am getting rid of anything I can.  I've already given away a ton of my belongings, which feels a lot better than throwing it away or dumping it at a thrift store (which while a good deed just doesn't feel as good as giving stuff away).

It looks like we'll be leaving LA on Friday, which will put us in the desert for what may be the hottest few days of the year.  I was hoping for some desert thunderstorms, but they are unpredictable and tend to hang over the mountains, away from the roads.  In the least, there will be storms when I get to the Southeast.

I'm about to pack up my computer, so from here on out I may only be using my little laptop for a while.

Basketball :(

Basketball :(, originally uploaded by inyopfc.