This blog post is longer than would be ideal, but I don’t see an easy way to split it up, so I ask your forbearance. The last month has been pretty challenging. Since I last wrote, many areas we hoped to visit, such as most state and national parks, and some national wildlife refuges, have […]
Category: Natural History
A Tale of Two Deserts
[Written Match 20] Last night, it rained steadily at our dispersed campsite at 2700 feet elevation, with the temperature dropping into the thirties. This morning, when we woke up with the first rays of sunlight, we were treated to the splendid sight of the mountains ringing our valley, being covered with fresh snow, to within […]
Madagascar: Unique and Imperiled
Our international birding trip this winter was to Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, after Greenland, New Guinea, and Borneo. It is located in the Indian Ocean, about 250 miles off the coast of southeastern Africa. Madagascar is nearly a thousand miles long and about 350 miles wide, oriented from NNE to SSW. […]
2019 Wander Wrap-up
From Great Basin National Park, in eastern Nevada, a long drive south took us to southwest Utah, during which we lost nearly all our elevation and the geology changed dramatically, with the appearance of spectacular red sandstones, colored by hematite (ferric iron oxide). Just outside St. George, we visited The Nature Conservancy’s fascinating White Dome […]
Crossbill Puzzles
We crossed back into the U.S. on Sept. 3, in Montana, with one month before we were due in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We first visited Glacier National Park (NP), an old favorite, but it was disappointing as Manyglacier had far fewer mammals than last time we were there (October, 2001), and was much more crowded, […]
Ten Thousand Taxa
After leaving the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, we spent another long day driving east and south to and through Alberta. It was sobering to return to extensive civilization after about three months with only occasional glimpses thereof, in Whitehorse, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. We no longer had to pull off the road whenever we detected […]
Retreat!
On August 13 we got a good fresh water fill in Dawson City (not something we take for granted!), but had difficulty locating some fairly basic food and drinks that needed restocking. Heading southeast on the Klondike Highway, we took the side road to Keno, an old mining area famous for its alpine butterflies. This […]
The Dempster Highway (Part 2)
We left off last time on July 31, camped at Engineer Creek at Kilometer (Km) 194 on the Dempster Highway in the Yukon Territory. A long drive the next day, with some rain, took us past the Arctic Circle and through the fourth bioregion along the highway, the Eagle Plains (Km 248 – 410). These […]
The Dempster Highway (Part 1)
We crossed from Alaska back into the Yukon Territory on July 27, via the very scenic Top of the World Highway, which provides good access to high, dry tundra. Just before reaching the Yukon River, we visited Orchid Acres, a phenomenal protected area containing thousands of Spotted Lady’s-Slippers, Cypripedium guttatum. Like the plants we had […]
The Dalton Highway
Leaving Fairbanks in dense smoke from wildfires, we took the Steese and Elliott Highways north about 80 miles to the beginning of the Dalton Highway, a.k.a. the Haul Road, which runs 414 miles one-way to the town of Deadhorse, the publicly accessible gateway to Prudhoe Bay. This road exists to support the oil fields, and […]
