After leaving Anza-Borrego State Park (SP) and the Sonoran Desert, we headed north, stopping to visit with our friends Jim and Ellen Strauss in Pasadena. We reached Carrizo Plain National Monument (NM), located west of the southern end of the Central Valley, just before dark. This area is notable for both wildflower displays and a […]
Category: Natural History
Sonoran Desert Wildflowers
We left El Paso on Feb. 22, 2½ weeks after returning from Ecuador, for a 7½ month trip through western North America, complementing the focus of 2017 on the center on the continent, and 2018 on the east. The primary goal of the trip is to explore Alaska and northwestern Canada, which we last did […]
Ecuador and Thermal Scoping
Eileen and I just got back from 20 days in Ecuador on a birding tour (“Jewels of Ecuador”), run by Field Guides, Inc., with whom we have previously traveled to Kenya, Brazil, and Thailand. The group was fairly small, with 7 participants, simplifying the logistics as everyone could fit in a single vehicle (a small […]
2018 Wrap-up
Leaving Cape May, we headed west to Front Royal, VA, to repeat the drive we did last fall, down the Skyline Drive (through Shenandoah National Park) and the Blue Ridge Parkway, as far as Asheville, NC. The fall color was very inferior this year, with only a few decent areas, at the very highest elevations. […]
Cape May Migration
Starting September 29, we spent 16 days in Cape May, NJ, a peninsula famous for its fall bird migration. It is a very interesting area because the migration is exceptionally diverse (involving songbirds, raptors, and seabirds), complex (in terms of the effects of weather and geography), and well-studied (with several long-running counts organized by the […]
New England
Leaving the James Bay region in mid-August, we stopped for the night in Ashuapmushuan Provincial Park, southeast of Chibougamau, Quebec. We expected to head out first thing in the morning, but discovered that, despite the remoteness, we had a good cell signal, enabling us to catch up on a number of tasks that had piled […]
James Bay
This blog posting is more than twice the usual length, to keep the information on this infrequently visited area within a single entry. After finishing up our “Southeast” agenda, which took about six months, there were no firm plans for the remainder of the year. Cooler weather, more remote camping, and paddling opportunities sounded good, […]
