storm 9-23-16

On Friday, 9-23, the first cold front of the season blew through the west. Just a days after the Equinox there is snow on the La Sal mountains, as if Winter can’t wait to arrive.

Yesterday I drove to Grand Junction, along scenic highway 128 from Castle Valley, past Dewey, and through Cisco. The views were spectacular. Well, the views are always spectacular, but the red rock set against clouds and well-defined storm cells was extra special.

I pulled over several times to take a pic.

Like all photos of dark skies and sweeping scenic views, the picture does no justice to what the eyes see.

Still, it translates well enough, and I really love what the pictures show.

Enjoy!

The storms on radar:

storms

Approaching storm 1:

storm-1-castle-valley

Storm 1 and Fisher Towers:

storm-1-fisher-towers

Looking back after driving through the northwestern corner of storm 1:

storm-1-looking-back-toward-dewey

Final pic–looking back at the edge of storm 1 from Cisco, UT:

storm-1-looking-back-from-cisco

Driving toward storm 2:

storm-2-approaching-2

Dramatic clouds looking toward storm 1:

clouds-between-storms

When I arrived in Grand Junction, the storms had split and gone around the city, but the sky and the sunset were pretty spectacular. Here’s a shot from the parking lot.  No filters here, it really looked this apocalyptic.

the-apocalypse-i-guess

hummingbird

Google Photo Assistant stitched together several photos I took of a humming bird last week into a cool little .gif.

This was taken in our garden:

hummingbird

sunlight

Once a week I drive to Grand Junction, Colorado for errands, appointments, etc.  I love leaving the house before the sun comes up, and watching it rise along the drive.  Between my house and the interstate, I typically do not encounter any other cars (about a 45 min drive)–just me, the rabbits, the crows, the eagles, the deer, and the prairie dogs.

Today there were some really interesting storms at the horizon.  Once the Sun came up, they made the normally very dramatic sunrise especially interesting.

Here’s how it looked:

grand-junction-colorado-sunrise

Grand Mesa

Yesterday, Beth and I drove through the Grand Mesa National Forest. The forest is 541 square miles of beauty on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies.

sean and beth grand mesa

The day started with an intense rain storm in Castle Valley. It’s been particularly dry this year, so I’m always happy when we get a stray thunderstorm (as much as the lightning makes me [and the dogs/cats] nervous).

castle valley rain

The rain would follow us west, looking particular scenic as we drove along I70, and as it approached the mountains we wound our way up, putting on a pretty amazing lightning show.

I70 Rain

It rained for most of the drive.

Along the way, we passed many mountain lakes–usually lined with pines or spruce or aspen. According to the United States Department of Agriculture site, this forest has over 300 lakes.

After the Forest

After we left the forest, we turned of Highway 65 for 45 1/2 road, which carried us back to I70.

This part of the drive was surprising, as it reminded us of the remote, rocky landscape similar to where we lived, but with less towering mesas and buttes. Technically listed as being in DE Beque, CO, the road twisted through well worn rocks, with homes hidden by standalone boulders and twisted junipers.

It had just finished raining, and everything everywhere sparked with the sunlight.

de beque

Before the Forest

One thing I really like doing is finding and exploring (or at least, driving slowly through) small towns in the middle of nowhere.

Cedaredge is a charming small town of ~2000 people beneath the slopes that contain Grand Mesa National Forest (fun fact, Grand Mesa is the largest flat-top mountain in the world). It has several orchards and vineyards, and we enjoyed stopping at a very lovely fruit stand that had fresh-picked apples, plums, and peaches.

cedaredge
photo src

We stocked up and hit the road.

I talked to a nice woman that worked at the fruit stand and she told me to come back in a week or two for freshly picked Honeycrisp Apples.

I’m there. Since the plan won’t include an hours-long drive through the national forest, I’ll have time to explore Cedaredge a bit more.

With apples. Mmmm.

sunflower-bee

sunflowerbee

When I went for a walk outside this morning, I saw the biggest bumblebee I’d ever seen before. It flew through the patch of sunflowers growing near the house, and dragged down each flower it visited. I didn’t get a pic of that bee (it moved on before I grabbed my camera), but I did stop and take several other pictures.

Here’s a hummingbird visiting the trumpet-like pink flowers of the red yucca (also called hummingbird yucca, fittingly) among the sunflowers:

hummingbird

And a bee on a flower set against the blue sky:

bee and sunflower

orange

castle valley sunrise
from my morning walk

that shade of orange…

sadie

We got a new puppy on Saturday. Her name is Sadie.

sadie bed

Hi Sadie!

Why did we get a new puppy?

Well, why not? I’ve always adopted dogs that were a bit older, and wanted the experience of raising one from a pup. Also, our Basset hound Penny seems to get bored sometimes. She tries to play with Lucy, but Lucy doesn’t quite know how to play. She just stands there and wags her tail.

So, puppy.

It’s been a busy few days, integrating her into the house.

Training her to sit, getting her used to the kennel, trying to not stop working to pet her ridiculously soft puppy face every five minutes…

I filled out the adoption paperwork last Tuesday, and met her at Petco on Saturday to make sure she’d be a good fit. We both had a long day, and a long drive back to Castle Valley.

sadie sleeping
Sadie slept most of the 4.5 hour drive home.

She’s been amazing, though.

We’ve had her sleeping in the sun room, with the doors shut to keep her from the rest of the house, since we are still working on basic ground rules (including please ignore the cats) and she has not whined or barked once. She just goes to sleep and waits excitedly when I get up for me to come and visit.

She has not gone to the bathroom on the floor, either. Amazing, for a puppy.

Sadie is getting along really well with our other dogs, a basset hound and a basset/lab mix.

three dogs

We adopted her from the Utah Friends of Basset Hounds, which is a fantastic organization. 🙂

My cat has not quite gotten on board with this whole “let’s get a dog” idea, but she’ll come around, eventually.

Welcome home, Sadie.

dust devil

a dust devil forms in Utah
On Feb 29th, 2016 I was running some errands in Moab, UT (last minute getting the car registered before it expires–no surprises there for Last Minute Markey).

As I was leaving the nursery in Moab–picking up some wonderful herbs to plant in the backyard, I saw the wind kicking up dust. I watched for a minute and it looked like it was getting more and more organized. I grabbed my phone and started to recording. I was too worried about missing a moment of filming, I forgot to not film vertically, like a dope.

Oh well.

The video is still pretty awesome. This thing goes from an interesting to swirl of dust to a tightly organize funnel in a matter of seconds. Very cool to watch the formation and dissipation.

Watch it on full screen. It’s amazing.

grocery trip

One of my favorite things to do is take long car rides.

This works out fairly well, since it takes about 45 minutes to get to Moab for gas or groceries (or any other errand). Sometimes, though, I like to double the drive-time and head to Grand Junction, CO.  It’s 90 minutes each way, but half of the drive is up the Colorado River canyon, and it looks like this:

colorado river state road 128
source

The other half of the drive is down no-man’s-land I70, which is pretty empty.  This stretch of highway runs between Grand Junction, CO and Green River, UT, with nothing in between.

castle valley to grand junction

Summer can be a bit unpleasant, as the tourists jam up the road a bit, but most of the year there are only a handful of other cars on the road until I get to the city.

Three hours to listen to audio books, catch up on podcasts, and sing until I lose my voice? It’s one of my favorite things.

Last night I was coming home and a super-bright meteorite lit up the sky briefly. I was listening to “When All We Have is Taken” by Edison Glass, and not another car on the road the whole drive home. I almost hit a lazy hawk, and an even lazier skunk, but it was otherwise uneventful.