Camping with Suzi

Took some friends from Fairbanks, Alaska to a magical place, Council Rocks.  Click here of a photo album of this location.

Jim and Fred climb to Council Rock

Like too many trails, the one to Council Rocks isn’t well signed.  We sort of ended up making our own.

Cooling off

Recent snow and rain produced numerous puddles and this pond in the scooped out boulder.

Looking back from where we came

While waiting for the men to catch-up, Robin admired Council Rocks interesting geology.

The view reaches into yesterday.

This is view from the top of Council Rocks.  Little wonder why Cochise and his band found safety in the jumble of rocks known, collectively, as the Dragoon Mountains.

I know for many winter is established.  Snow and wind have replaced the snap of frosty mornings and the swirl of colorful leaves but, here in southeast Arizona, we have just felt autumn in the air.  The cottonwoods and Aspen have turned gold and the scattered maples red.  My little Granny Smith apple trees seems to have all the many colors of fall.  It is beginning to feel a little like Christmas.  Wonder if we’ll get any snow this year.

We saw some incredible sights this past summer.  Here are just a few.

South Dakota roadside art

Bird’s nest in trail map holder

Storm is coming

Quilt Sphere

Children playing Hoo-la-hoop in park

Vermont is a beautiful state and the Green Mountain National Forest captures its beauty and uniqueness.

Mad River Valley – You can see why its call “Green Mountain”

View west from Voter Brook Overlook near Moosalamoo campground

A place of beauty

A place of quiet – morning in Hapgood campground.

Surprises – nest in an empty brochure holder.

And a wry sense of humor.

The Green Mountain National Forest doesn’t have as many modern facilities found in other national forests but it does have an over-abundance of natural beauty, quiet, and peace.  Vermont is a unique place with people just as special.  In my opinion, Green Mountain National Forest reflects the people and land perfectly.

Our stay in the White Mountain National Forest was great, wet but super.  It is a great national forest but day after day of rain seriously limited our plans of hiking.  I had hoped to do a couple with waterfalls as their destination (figured all that rain would make the waterfalls impressive) would be rewarding.

Three hikes that were recommended to us but we didn’t “do” were to:

Pitcher and Champney Falls

Ripley Falls off Frankenstien Cliff Trail – not such a pretty fall.

Falling Waters trail (actually the elevation change discouraged us from doing this one – we aren’t buff  twenty-year olds).

Photographs, found on the internet, were probably taken by the buff twenty-year olds,

What’s the connection between the upcoming movie, Hunger Games, and the Pisgah National Forest?   Parts of the movie were filmed in that national forest!  If you saw Lost of the Mohicans with Daniel Day-Lewis, you’ve already seen some the Pisgah National Forest.  The same is true of the first Twilight movies.  Scenes in that movie were filmed in the Olympic National Forest.

There a lots of movies that have used national forests for locations.  Here are some:

-    The Kootenai National Forest served as the backdrop for the 1989 film Always by Steven Spielburg starring Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, John Goodman and Audrey Hepburn. The river running thriller The River Wild with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon was also filmed on the Kootenai.
-    Homeward Bound, Disney’s family film about the journey of three beloved pets, was filmed throughout four National Forests in Oregon: Deschutes National Forest, Mount Hood National Forest, Wallowa-Whitman National Forest and Willamette National Forest.
-    3:10 to Yuma starring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe was filmed on the Santa Fe National Forest in northern New Mexico.
-    The movie Deliverance was filmed in the Chattahoochee National Forest.
-    How the West was Won, a 1962 classic featuring an all-star cast of Gregory Peck, John Wayne, James Stewart and Debbie Reynolds was filmed across the West, including the Inyo National Forest in California and the Uncompahgre National Forest in Colorado.
-    Three Amigos starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short as filmed in Coronado National Forest of southern Arizona.
-    Dances With Wolves, which Kevin Costner both directed and starred in, was filmed at the Black Hills National Forest in southwestern South Dakota.
-    Robert Redford’s A River Runs through It was filmed on the Gallatin National Forest in southern Montana. On some rafting trips on the Gallatin River, guides point out particular points of interest from the film.

And these are just a few mentioned in the National Forest Foundation’s November newsletter.  The list is much longer and would go on for days if we included television series and commercials using national forest location.

So if you want to preview a national forest to see if it might be some place you want to explore, why not check at one of the above mentioned movies or contact the national forest and ask which movies/television shows/commercials have been there.

Couldn’t get my head into the work I needed to do so took a break and re-read some old posts.  It’s amazing how vivid the memories were as I read through this blog about our visit to Death Valley National Park.  I could go back there for another visit anytime, except summer lol.  Since posting that blog around September 27, 2006, I’ve made up a few photo labels.  Here are some favorites:

Titus Canyon

Plants and critters we saw

Sights of the Park

Dinosaurs have always fascinated me.  I think I may have projected my interest for these amazing creatures on my children as an excuse to visit every dinosaur exhibit I could find.   My children seem to have out grown my fascination with dinosaurs but I haven’t.

When we checked into the La Junta KOA I saw a flyer for an auto tour through the Picket Wire Canyonlands (aka Purgatoire River canyon).  One of the “attractions” was Jurassic Tracks.  I couldn’t pass on that.  The auto tour is offered by the Comanche National Grassland and they very graciously found room for us in Saturday’s tour.  To say it was  outstanding, inspiring, amazing, and a long list of other adjectives doesn’t do the whole experience justice.

Fred is putting together an album of the whole tour but here are some photoes I took of the trax.

To be honest, these look like dried up mud but the tour’s guide assured me these are the imprints of a brontosaurus.   If you clear out the mud, the imprint goes down six or more inches.   Some of the imprints were so large you could sit in them.  I’m told the key to look for is a regularity in the pattern.

I was told this is the imprint of a theropod, or meat eater.   While the brontosaurus (plant eater) trax appeared to be a group all heading in one direction, the theropod trax were not uniform, as if they were following and tracking and crossing the brontosaurus’s path.  But what do I know?

Our guide told me this was a “small” or young theropod imprint.  Amazing!  I hope you get a chance to walk with dinosaurs someday.

I have always looked for “things” in clouds, imagining horses and bears and giants and whatever sail across the sky.  (I encourage everyone to try and see something up there.)  So, finding imaginary creatures in the fanciful shapes the wind and water have carved was a natural.

Here’s a favorite – a gargoyle hiding in the rocks near Cedar Pass in Badlands National Park.

It has been a busy and amazing week.  Here are some photos from those adventures.

One of several pullouts along the Badlands NP’s Loop Drive.

Sunrise at Cedar Pass – beautiful.

Butterflies abound in the Buffalo Gap National Grassland.

Indian Creek area of Buffalo Gap NG is the definition of isolation and delightful.

The road through the Limestone Butte section of Buffalo Gap NG.

This is Caleb on The Saddle Pass trail.  Yes, that is a Buffalo Gap NG trail through Badlands formation.  Originally a trail used by the Native People and later white settlers, it is an awesome challenge.  And the whole week has been beyond awesome.