Category Archives: Outdoors

Collections, Nature, Outdoors, Wood

Trees and their Faces

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You are about to go on an adventure with me. You’ll need your creative imagination. Think back to seeing objects in clouds as a child. Here, I’ll share with you the faces I see in…wood. Most are fallen trees and branches that have had time to build character. Bear with me, I think you’ll enjoy it.

This guy has quite the hair-do and needs to see a dentist.

Most of what I find are profiles. This one, facing left, has the complete package…an eye, mouth, nose, AND horn on top of its head.

This one is a little more vague, peeking out of the grasses. But I DO see an eye, nose hole, and mouth line.

This may be the best one I’ve ever seen. It’s not a profile, it actually has TWO eyes, a nose, and a mouth. In hindsight, I wish I had taken another view of it to show how important the angle is for this one.

This is another rare, two-eyed face. Unfortunately, it got into a fight and seems to have a black eye behind its long nose.

Now that I’ve got you “seeing” what I see…here is a pretty clear one.

Here’s an interesting one. Or is it two? At first glance, it SEEMS like the same piece of wood.

This one is literally screaming and looking at me as it comes out of the wood.

Two similar ones, but the lower one is thirsty.

This one reminds me of the head of a dinosaur.

Again the complete package of eye, nose hole, horns, and mouth.

Skeleton ostrich head?

Eye, mouth, little horn on top.

Some horns come out the side.

Face? or…giant clothespin.

Some definitely require more imagination…lol.

Eye, mouth, and…an ARM?? Crawling out of the tree!

This one, at a different angle, looks like two fighting with their mouths.

Such big eyes you have.

A sleek one with a mushed-up mouth.

Sleeping Beauty.

October is just around the corner and with that…Halloween!

Thank you all for being loyal followers of this blog over the past several years. It is with great sadness that I announce this to be my last post on this website. It has just gotten WAY too expensive. I will be searching for more affordable ways to share my images with you, my loyal fans, so stay tuned! Creativity is IN the AIR!! lol.

Nature, Wood

Tree Roots

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According to Wikipedia here is a definition of roots.

“In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the surface of the soil, but roots can also be aerial or aerating, that is, growing up above the ground or especially above water.

The major functions of roots are absorption of water, plant nutrition, and anchoring of the plant body to the ground.”

This post is more a collection of a tree’s RSA as defined, again by Wikipedia, below.

“In its simplest form, the term root system architecture (RSA) refers to the spatial configuration of a plant’s root system. This system can be extremely complex and is dependent upon multiple factors such as the species of the plant itself, the composition of the soil, and the availability of nutrients. Root architecture plays the important role of providing a secure supply of nutrients and water as well as anchorage and support.

The configuration of root systems serves to structurally support the plant, compete with other plants, and uptake nutrients from the soil. Roots grow to specific conditions, which, if changed, can impede a plant’s growth. For example, a root system that has developed in dry soil may not be as efficient in flooded soil, yet plants are able to adapt to other changes in the environment, such as seasonal changes.

Now that the science is out of the way, let’s move on to the art of RSAs. Trees are fascinating organisms and have evolved to survive in some pretty harsh environments.

 

This pair is clinging to the edge of Thompson Creek in Oak Creek Canyon just north of Sedona, AZ. This is a creek prone to different water heights depending on the time of year, amount of snow in higher elevations, monsoon amounts, etc.

This tree can be found in East Clear Creek near Williams, AZ. Again prone to different water levels. I’ve seen these roots completely submerged as often as I’ve seen them dry.

Some of the craziest root systems I’ve ever seen have been here at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. To me, these trees look like they are trying to run away. They are nowhere NEAR water as the lake is hundreds of feet below.

More from Crater Lake…

These are also Crater Lake.

This tree was found outside of a school in Phoenix, AZ.

These two are trees found at the bottom of Grand Canyon on the Havasupai Indian Reservation. Look how high that root system below is!

This tree is near Asheville, NC. You can see the small lake right behind it.

This crazy thing was found at Tehachapi Mountain Park in the hills outside of Bakersfield, CA.

This root was found in the jungle near Gamboa, Panama. I’m honestly not sure if this is a tree root or from some sort of plant.

These two sets of surface roots were found in San Diego, CA.

And finally, this set of what looks like smashed lizards or salamanders was also found in San Diego.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Collections, Nature, Outdoors, Wood

Tree Trunks

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My next topic in the theme of trees is tree trunks. These can mostly be broken up into two categories: shapes and patterns. Here are some of the crazy-shaped trunks I’ve encountered.

There are several different types of tree trunks. 1) Single Trunk Trees; 2) Multi-trunk Trees; 3) Clonal Coppices (or trees with sprouts from the base; 4) Clonal Colonies (ie: Aspen trees); 5) Conjoined and Hugging Trees; 6) Fallen Trees;  and 7) Banyan-like trees; to get us started.

I can’t tell if this one has one trunk or several sprouting from the one. Or are they just very large branches…?

This Ponderosa pine was hit by lightning.

I can’t even begin to explain what happened to this tree.

The bark of some of the trees I’ve encountered appears to be shedding paper.

A Banyon type tree.

What the…?!? Several…trunks?

Colorful palm tree trunks.

Yikes! Is this tree OK??

A clever yet natural way to keep things from climbing up this tree.

A tree trunk that seems to have had some trouble heading in the right direction.

Some crazy trunks in San Diego.

Old fallen trunks can be so beautiful. The following images show close-ups of patterns and designs etched into old, fallen tree trunks.

 

Moss of various colors also collects on tree trunks.

   

Some tree trunks close-up have amazing texture, patterns, design, and lines.

This tree was turned into a shrine of sorts in Dubar Square in Kathmandu.

Collections, Nature, Wood

Trees

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I found the keyword trees and figured it would be a pretty straightforward post. I was wrong. As I sifted through the images I saw too many I wanted to share. Thus, this will be a  four-part series throughout September. I’ll begin with trees, move to trunks, roots, and finally the faces I find in trees as I wander.

Trees are truly unique. If you’ve ever read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein you’ll get a glimpse as to how versatile they are.

The structure of a tree is used to keep track of families.

They house wildlife.

They break and land on houses in extreme weather events.

The Ponderosa Pine Trees like to collect snow during a storm and then, as the air warms, drop it in clumps onto the ground or to house roofs with a sometimes alarming thud.

I used this tree as a bike rack.  I locked my bike to it after using it as a shuttle vehicle for a Verde River float.

Palm trees grow randomly on beaches from dropped coconuts.

They can be used as posts for hammocks.

They change color!!

They don’t live forever. But some seem to.

Yosemite National Park has a few Giant Sequoia groves. And by groves I mean maybe 8-10 trees in an area.    Also known as the giant redwood or Sierra redwood can be found naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. 

The Giant sequoia grows to an average height of 164–279 ft with trunk diameters ranging from 20–26 ft. Giant sequoias are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. The oldest known giant sequoia is 3,200 years old.

Wood from mature giant sequoias is fibrous and brittle, trees would often shatter after they were felled. The wood was unsuitable for construction and instead used for fence posts or match sticks. The giant sequoia is a very popular ornamental tree in many parts of the world. The species is named in honor of the Cherokee Chief Sequoyah.

I crouched to get through this one that was lying on its side.

There was a sign with a picture of a stagecoach driving through this one.

Most aspens grow in large clonal colonies, derived from a single seedling, and spread by means of root suckers. New stems in the colony may appear from 100–130 ft from the parent tree. Each individual tree can live for 40–150 years above ground, but the root system of the colony is long-lived. In some cases, this is for thousands of years, sending up new trunks as the older trunks die off above ground. There is a colony in Utah that has been estimated to be as old as 80,000 years. Some aspen colonies become very large with time, spreading about 3 ft per year, eventually covering many hectares. They are able to survive forest fires, because the roots are below the heat of the fire, and new sprouts appear after the fire burns out. Given their clonal nature, Aspen groves are believed to be the largest living organism on the planet.

I found these two trees in Yosemite as well. Both growing out of the granite.

It’s just a cool shot. Dead trees, blue sky…

This path through Henry Horton State Park in Tennessee is a beautiful walk among the trees.

 

A banyan is a fig tree that develops accessory trunks from aerial prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. These roots mature into thick, woody trunks, which can become indistinguishable from the primary trunk with age. These aerial roots can become very numerous. The Kolcatta (Calcutta) Banyan, which has been tracked carefully for many years, currently has 2,880 supplementary trunks. Such prop roots can be sixty feet in height. Old trees can spread laterally by using these prop roots to grow over a wide area. In some species, the prop roots develop over a considerable area that resembles a grove of trees, with every trunk connected directly or indirectly to the primary trunk.

I’ll end with snow and ice-encased Ponderosa pine trees on the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff.

Outdoors, Travel, Weather

Nebraska Dust Storm

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On Thursday, May 12, 2022, we were heading home from our epic 50-day road trip I’ve written about extensively in this blog. We were coming from Iowa City and had two more stops to make; St. Paul, Nebraska, and Denver, Colorado.

The following text is excerpted from my travel journal. The journal is usually made up of bullet point details to keep information organized for future trips and/or add details to photographs. However, that storm generated this detailed account.

From the travel journal with slight edits for easier reading:

Route: Interstate 80 to Omaha then Hwy 92 to St. Paul. 36 mph wind gusts. 92 was a two-lane road, passing large trucks and their wind was scary. Omaha is big. It was hazy, windy, and dusty the whole way. Not as hot as Iowa but the truck temperature reading was still 100 degrees.

PM: Judy texted to say a storm just blew through. High winds, hail, lightning tree damage, and rain.

By the time we encountered it, it had turned into a massive dust storm that swallowed the sun. We pulled over at Rising City to wait it out. We faced north, it was coming from the south.

 

The sky turned to night with black dust and dirt pounding Coyote Hawk. The truck shook,  luckily damaging hail skipped us. It was over pretty quick.

 

As it grew lighter the rain started and we hit the road.

We took the navigation system down to find a local radio station and, as expected, the tornado warnings were beeping. Not that there WAS a tornado but that a storm capable of causing one was on the march. The NWS (National Weather Service) said a severe thunderstorm was moving at 65 mph NE of Columbus. That was north of us as we took off.

Whew. That was crazy. Everyone parks in garages here because of hail. And they have storm shelters. (End journal entry)

Having grown up in the Phoenix area in the ’70’s I was accustomed to dust storm alerts and knew what to do. Dust in the Valley, however, is a light desert tan, not black topsoil from farms. Apparently, that was just a normal spring day in Nebraska! Yikes!

Once we got to our destination and popped the camper up we found dirt for days! We found dirt in places we didn’t know existed…?

 

Animals, Flowers, Nature, Summer, Travel

Washington D.C. ~ Nature

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We arrived home on May 20th from our 50-day camper adventure only to turn around and fly to Washington D.C. on June 8th.

I will begin this blog series where I left off with the last one…Nature. Editing this set of images for this post was WAY more manageable than the previous one. I only had nine days to sort through, not 50!

Let us begin with our airplane journey across the U.S. It was clear skies until we flew into Dallas, Texas where we encountered severe thunderstorms. In fact, we found out we were one of the last planes to fly out of DFW that afternoon due to the storms. Whew! Once we got above the clouds though, it was beautiful.

Our first day in the D.C. area found us on the banks of the Potomac hunting for prehistoric shark teeth.

It was amazing how many we found. It makes one wonder how many are out there because this is a popular activity in the area and most folks find plenty.

While looking for shark teeth down the beach I found this little guy. Definitely a highlight.

Following the morning at the river and a parking lot, and a tailgate picnic our friends dropped us off at Mt. Vernon, home of George Washington. There will be plenty of pictures later in the Buildings blog but I just wanted to point out how cool it was to touch a tree planted by our first president.

In walking along the National Mall and encountering several ponds and lakes, many with duck families merrily swimming about, we learned that the way the ponds were built is a death trap for little ducklings. They can’t get out as they can’t yet fly. So, volunteers, in their infinite wisdom, came up with duck ramps to help the littles get in and out of the water. Brilliant, right?

D.C. is certainly not at a loss of places to photograph flowers. They are everywhere, especially in June. The orange Lillies above are in front of the Smithsonian building while the white rose rests against the Vietnam Memorial.

We stayed on base with our friends and Jake, the family dog, at Fort Belvoir. We had a good soaking one evening.

One day we went to the U.S. Botanic Garden. It is on the grounds of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The Botanic Garden is supervised by Congress through the Architect of the Capitol, who is responsible for maintaining the grounds of the United States Capitol. The gardens are open every day of the year, and is the oldest continually-operating botanic garden in the United States.

The Conservatory is housed in a Lord & Burnham greenhouse and is divided into separate rooms, each simulating a different habitat. The habitats include The Garden Court, Rare and Endangered Plants, Plant Exploration, Orchid House, Medicinal Plants, Desert, Hawaii, Garden Primeval, Plant Adaptation, Jungle (this is the largest of the rooms, and includes a second-story catwalk so that the jungle canopy may be observed from both below and above), Children’s Garden, and Southern Exposure (courtyard), on the south side of the building, which is surrounded by glass walls, receiving more warmth. It features many plants from the Southeast and Southwest, which would not be able to live in the colder District of Columbia climate if not for the microclimate).

Needless to say, we kept getting lost.

The Washington D.C. area is beautiful. We spent most of our time going to museums and seeing historic buildings. The vegetation in the area is SO different from the desert southwest, so GREEN.

Next week I’ll show you some buildings. Buildings is a HUGE keyword on this trip. Lots of buildings.

Until then, happy shooting!

 

Animals, Flowers, keywording, Nature, Outdoors, Travel

Nature along the Way

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Well. Congratulations. You’ve made it to the end of this nine-week set of blogs about our epic 50-day trip around the eastern united states.

I have saved the best for last. You have traveled with me through eight of the nine preset keywords I use for quick tagging images in Lightroom. The final one is…!! (Drumroll please) NATURE!! It’s a monster one because as you can imagine it includes a LOT.

The preset keywords that fit under the Nature umbrella are as follows: plants, animals, weather, water, landscape, trail, rocks, beach, and park. I’m not married to these nine but that’s what I have so far. I then go to say…animals and further tag them with the following: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish, wild, and domestic. I only have eight here because I couldn’t think of a ninth.

This section goes like this: Nature>Plants>Flowers. Once the color words are attached to the image I can then add location, species if I know it, the number of petals, etc.

On this dandelion, I might add the words design, seeds, and stem.

The subcategories I’ve chosen under the Plants umbrella are as follows: flowers, wildflowers, trees, fungi, garden, leaves, green, succulent, and fruit. I literally edited this list while writing this blog. I replaced bark with fungi.

Trees are another one of my favorite subjects. These two images would be tagged with “roots”. I don’t yet have a tree subset as I can’t come up with enough keywords to make it worth the space. The above image would also include water.

I may be coming up with the tree subset as I write this. I could add bark, trunk, texture, moss, design, roots, forest, orchard…Hmm, I have eight.

I don’t consider myself a landscape photographer but I would categorize these two images as landscapes. Landscapes show up as a keyword under nature but that’s it, I don’t currently have a listing of landscapes. I suppose if one DID shoot a lot of landscapes they would be:  Desert, Plain, Wetland, Mountain, Coast, Lakes, Rivers, Forest, and Grassland.

Fungi!!

Now on to animals. It’s a big one. Let’s begin with domestic vs. wild. I don’t have this yet either but one could subcategorize domestic into dog, cat, fish, bird, working, horse, mule, pig, and cow.

This horse was working the streets of New Orleans.

When we stopped to see Ellen’s sister in Mississippi, this guy was in a pen on the property.

This beautiful bird was at my cousin’s home in North Carolina and the dinosaurs below were at my brother’s home in Denver.

My cousin owns four mules and this donkey on six acres outside of Chapel Hill.

These little cuties were escorted across the street, IN the crosswalk mind you, by their Canada Geese parents in Gatlinburg, TN.

I got to watch this handsome fellow eat some Blue Heron spaghetti at our camp in Mississippi.

This Carolina Wren was feeding her babies nestled in a home camera cover at our friend’s house in Weaverville, NC.

I happened to have my long lens with me on a short hike at our camp in Tennessee when this beauty took off from a tree.

South Llano River State Park outside of Junction, TX was AMAZING in the animal department. We spent a lot of time hanging out with armadillos AND I got to watch this mama and her three babies do squirrel activities.

Not sure whose teeth these are but it’s tagged under animals.

We saw a few turtles along the way which is always a treat. These guys were on a log in a swampy area of a park we walked in near Asheville, NC.

We found this fellow on my cousin’s porch in Hillsborough, NC.

My little green friend kept me company while I used the restroom at our camp in Louisiana.

Some of the bees from our beekeeping experience in St. Paul, NE.

Catching flying insects requires a bit of patience and a lot of pixels to delete later.

Water is another of my favorite places to hang out. I’m usually playing in, on, or around it and love finding patterns in its movement. This image fits under Nature>Water>clear, stream, pattern.

There you have it, our 50-day April 1st-May 20th epic adventure has come to a close in my blog world. Thanks for coming along and enjoying our adventure. It was certainly a joy to revisit all that we did.

June found us in Washington D.C. and New York City so STAY TUNED!!

Happy Shooting!

Family, People, Travel, Uncategorized

People along the way

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We are surrounded by beautiful souls in our lives and on this trip, we got to visit some of our favorites and meet some new ones along the way.

I have known Eddie and Michelle for a LONG time. I met Michelle when she came to work at Killip Elementary School in Flagstaff in maybe 2000? Two years later I got a cancelation for a Grand Canyon River Trip and they joined us. Later that fall, in October 2002, Ellen and I got married and we fashioned our wedding after theirs from the previous year. So, our anniversary is one year and one week later than this sweet couple.

This is a spray paint artist we watched in Progreso, Mexico. He was quite good and I STILL can’t figure out how anyone paints anything worth hanging with spray paint. What talent.

We spent most of our time in Houston with my cousin David. Our fathers were brothers, both now deceased. Bong, his husband as of March 26th, could join us on occasion as he was still teaching school when we were there. Dave is retired so we played, a LOT. Looking forward to more time in Houston.

On one of our bayou bike rides in Houston, we came across a wall of murals on the back walls of a strip mall.  This guy came out of one of the doors and we asked if he was one of the artists and he said YES! What are the odds?

A creepy little guy selling clothing in Galveston.

This guy had caught a yellowfin tuna and wanted someone at the fish market to filet it for him but they had already closed for the afternoon so he had to walk his poor tuna back to his boat, dragging its nose along the dock, to filet it himself.

We fund several folks on the South Padre Island Beach searching for treasures.

This is the beautiful couple now living in ellen’s childhood home in Harlingen, Tiffany, and Rudy. They were gracious hosts, let us wander into each room, and even sent us off with a Texas treat bag.

This guy was fishing off the end of the pier at Fountainebleau State Park on Lake Ponchatrain. He caught s small ray of some sort.

This is our very knowledgeable Voodoo Museum guide who took us all around New Orleans and had great stories. And this beautiful voodoo queen ran the cash register in the museum.

This is the artist who makes the mardi gras masks. They are exquisite.

Back at camp, we were approached by Erin who invited us back to her pad to meet Andy. They own the only Four Wheel Camper in the south! Ok, probably not but it’s the only other one we saw once we left Arizona. It’s an early 1990s Granby on a ’73 Ford 100. They live in it full time and travel in between Amazon warehouse jobs. Quite the interesting couple.

I first saw this colorful character coming from behind us, walking down a side street toward the parade. Once she was in front of all the bands she came alive and began dancing along with the music as she made her way down the avenue.

Only in New Orleans…

We stopped to visit ellen’s sister Ruth who happened to be staying with her son and daughter-in-law in Poplar, Mississippi.

THIS was an interesting conversation. We stopped in this coffee shop in Houston, MS looking for help in finding the road and house Ellen and her family lived in 1969-70ish. Ellen mentioned the high school where she was a freshman and this lady lowered her voice and said, in a soft southern accent, that the old high school had burned down in 1973 under suspicious circumstances. When we asked what happened she lowered her voice, even more, looked around, and said that was the year they elected their first Black homecoming queen. Yikes!

We drove from Mississippi to Dollywood then on to Weaverville just outside of Ashville, NC for a day to visit our old neighbors from Flagstaff, Trish and Paul. They were wonderful hosts and gave us the lay of the land and Paul’s signature egg muffins for breakfast.

From Ashville, it wasn’t far to Hillsborough and cousin Wendy and her two charming children. We stayed three days, saw some beautiful country, hung out with amazing people, and talked to our granddaughter on the lid of a trash container.

Then it was the big drive to Ohio! We stayed there for six days and had some wonderful family time.

Evonne and Akacia showed us their favorite places.

Rob spends a lot of time on his craft as a tattoo artist.

Chelsea joined us for Mother’s Day morning coffee.

Rob got to join us on a sunny day downtown.

We went to Evonne’s place of work on our way out of town at the end of the week. They all love her there.

We met these two lovely folks at Sugar Bottom Campground outside of Iowa City. We hope to run into them again in our adventures.

We spent two days at the family farm in Nebraska where we extracted honey from bee boxes with this amazing lady, Becky Puncochar, my half-brother’s Aunt. We also learned about and got to ride a folding bike which we have incorporated into our camping rig, and got to wander down by the Platt River with Jonathan who came to visit from Denver for the weekend. It was a busy two days.

Our final stop was Denver where we got to walk the niece and nephew to school.

Hang out with Chelsea in Idaho Springs and hot tub.

Have dinner with the Prow family.  I taught with Laura at Killip in Flagstaff some years ago. Timothy is a master plumber and Nate hales from Ethiopia. We love this framily.

We had days mostly to ourselves as Chelsea took the week off but got sick and spent time sleeping, everyone else was either at work or school.

Except for this guy, he seemed to be the neighborhood watch guy. Creepy.

People, it’s what travel is really all about. And if they live in cool places? it’s a bonus.

transportation, Travel, Uncategorized

Transportation along the way

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Transportation is another subject I really enjoy photographing. The lines and forms of old cars, the character of bicycles, the stories of old trains, etc. In the world of keywording, this is one of my main themes. Once I’ve assigned an image with the keyword transportation I can then call up all of the transportation images and add more such as bikes, trains, cars, airplanes, coyote hawk, trucks, ships, boats, and tractors. Those are the nine subsets I’m currently happy with.

iPhone 8

This old car was parked in front of the Portal general store.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

This horse trailer sits on the property our friend Michelle looks after in Portal. April was a nice time to be there for the wildflowers.

Lumix GX8, 7-14mm

The space shuttle attached to a 747 at Johnson Space Center. Pretty cool.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

They have a parking lot in Galveston for the cruise ships.  Right in the middle of town. A parking lot.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

Aaahh, the mighty Mississippi in New Orleans. A coast guard cutter heading upriver as it passes a container ship heading south and out into the Gulf.

 

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

A funny little vehicle in New Orleans, perfect for the super narrow streets. It reminds me of the cleverly designed golf carts I saw on Catalina Island years ago.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

This bike was also main themed under art. Duh.

iPhone 8

THIS image was also main themed under people AND music. We were listening to a performer play. I never did see how successful he was at riding and carrying such a large drum.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

In Houston, MS one can pull up behind a tractor in regular rush hour traffic.

iPhone 8

In Tennessee, at Henry Horton State Park we went for a walk on the recommendation of a fellow camper and found these old abandoned vehicles.

iPhone 8

iPhone 8

From the Purple People Bridge that connects Ohio and Kentucky, we spied this tug pushing a barge up the Ohio River.

iPhone 8

We found this boat on a walking trail around the lake at Winton Woods Campground outside of Cincinnati.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

We found this old cart outside a building in the Amana Colony in Iowa. The below is used on the family farm in Nebraska to get around and haul bee boxes to the garage for honey extraction.

iPhone 8

Next week we’ll explore some of the different foods we came across on our journey.

Happy shooting!

Adventure, Outdoors, Spring, Travel

Coyote Hawk’s Grand Adventure…and keywording

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We’re BACK! After nearly three months of nearly constant travel Ellen and I have found ourselves at home for a whole month and, I think I’m finally ready to settle down and weed through the images of two major trips. I’ll start with our first one, the seven-week epic tour of the southeast – midwest -and then home to Flagstaff.

I say three months because we left home in our rig on April 1 and returned on May 20, 50 days later. Then, on June 8th we flew to Washington D.C., trained up to New York City, and flew home on June 28th. Now we’re home for a month before heading off to California and Washington State. I’m going to go through the driving trip first.

With nearly 3,500 images to sort through and what seems like as many experiences, I’ve decided to break it down for you via keywords. For those of you who don’t know, keywording is a system photographers use to locate needed images in the future. For example,  in this first set, I’ve assigned the keyword “Coyote Hawk” to each of the images. Then, when I need images of our rig for this trip to write about, I go to the metadata search area in Lightroom, click on April and May, go to the next column, click on Coyote Hawk, and presto! images assigned with these words appear. From that, I can choose the ones to export and upload to the blog!

I recently learned a new trick in Lightroom that has been life-changing. They have keyword PRESETS!! Wait, WHAT?!? You mean I don’t have to type the words in EVERY. SINGLE. TIME?? Excellent, I’m IN!

I created a preset called AA-Main Themes. The AA is just so it shows up at the top, in alphabetical order. It allows me to easily access, at a click,  nine words to assign to images to begin the process of keywording. Here are my nine main themes: buildings, art, food, transportation, urban, signs, nature, people, and music. Most images will get one if not two of these words assigned and I don’t have to take the time to type the words repeatedly, it’s a simple click of the mouse.

That was my aha moment in working with these pics so now let’s move on to the stories of this trip.

As I stated earlier, this first set of images will be about our camper and what became our home away from home, literally. We had taken Coyote Hawk out for about a dozen nights between November 30th when we picked her up and April 1 when we left for Portal, Arizona. We were still working Tuesdays-Fridays so our camps were only two to three nights at a time, every few weeks; hardly enough time to get into a real rhythm.

What happened on this trip in regards to our relationship to our home on wheels is nothing either of us expected. We figured we’d be SO ready to be home after seven solid weeks on the road, but we weren’t. Coyote Hawk came to provide us with such feelings of safety and comfort that we actually preferred staying in her rather than moving into the comforts of the homes of friends and family we visited.

What’s funny is that people, bless their hearts, thought they were doing us a favor by offering for us to stay in their homes. What happened on this trip is that our camper BECAME our home. The bed was comfortable, our stuff all had a place, and we created systems and rhythms with each other to make our little space a literal home on wheels.

Our first three nights were spent in Portal, AZ. It’s a little community located in southeastern Arizona not far from the Mexican border. Our good friends have a lovely piece of land there just east of Chiricahua National Monument. It was a great place to land on our first big driving day in Coyote Hawk. Heading out from Flagstaff was mostly downhill so we got crazy good gas mileage; 22 mpg to be exact.

At camp, we generally need two things: a shower and a toilet to go #2 in. We have a small, nighttime toilet we use to pee in and an outdoor shower if we need it. Luckily these guys let us use their toilet.

After three nights and two days with our beautiful friends, we headed to Texas. We crossed New Mexico on Highway 9, drove through El Paso, and ended up in Junction, Texas, and South Llano River State Park.

We LOVED this park. We wished we had brought our bicycles, as there was some riding to be had. This is also where we got to interact with armadillos for the first time. That will be in a later post.

By April 6th we were heading to Padre Island National Seashore.

It turns out that in Texas one can just drive on any beach and camp. Pretty cool. As you can see we were quite a distance from any other camp. But as you can also see, the winds had picked up the afternoon before, blew hard all night, and blew sand all over our mat. It blew so hard that we moved our truck, in the middle of the night, to face the wind and try to reduce some of the rocking from the gusts. Needless to say, with fine sand blowing everywhere and no relief in sight, we called it after one night and headed to Harlingen.

We were supposed to be in Harlingen for two nights, and one day and that one day was to be spent seeking out Ellen’s childhood home and neighborhood. We instead added our Padre Island time and ended up being there for five nights, four days. We were actually in Walasco, TX staying at Magic Valley Park. It was billed as an RV park but this is what we got, a slab of concrete in some grass, surrounded by mobile homes, 95% of whose residents had just left to go back to Canada. It turned out to be a really nice, safe place to camp. We had laundry facilities, a pool, a hot tub, and a shower and bathroom at our disposal.

Coyote Hawk was also our daily drive. Luckily she was easy to maneuver on city streets. Here she is parked on Ellen’s childhood street.

One of the upgrades we decided our rig needed was to tint the truck’s windows. Wow, what a difference it made with the sun and heat.

From Harlingen, we headed to Houston to stay with cousin Dave and his husband Bong. We easily could have camped in the driveway but were invited into an upstairs room and private bath. It was here that I think we began to realize that staying in the camper is easier and just as, if not more, comfortable for us.

Following Houston, we headed south to spend two nights at a KOA on Galveston Island. It was a KOA Holiday property and had a very country club/resort feel. Not exactly our style. But it worked, was close to the beach, and had laundry, shower, and bathroom facilities, so we were good.

Again we were happy to have a smaller RV as we parked on city streets and meandered through cemeteries in Galveston.

After only two nights and a day to explore Galveston, we headed to Lousiana and Fontainebleau State Park. It. Was. Beautiful. We LOVED it there and again, wished we had bicycles. We spent four nights there, and three days.

On all three days we drove the 25-mile-long causeway over Lake Ponchatrain twice into New Orleans, and once to visit the Whitney Plantation.

From NOLA we headed north into Mississippi to see another of Ellen’s childhood homes in Houston, MS We camped at Davis Lake Campground 20 minutes from Houston. We parked at the town square and wandered around a place where Ellen and her family lived in the late 1960s for 18 months.

The next stop was Henry Horton State Park just south of Nashville, TN. This was another park we loved and wished we had bikes to explore with. We didn’t bring the bikes as we didn’t want them hanging off the back, ripe for theft, as we visited the cities on our trip. Stay tuned and you’ll see what we came up with.

We stayed here for two nights and a day. We’ve decided that, when possible, a layover day is a must. It’d be a shame to pull into such a beautiful park in the afternoon only to have to pull up stakes and head out first thing in the morning.

THIS two-night, one-day experience was all about Dollywood! We stayed at The Ridge Resort in Sevierville, Dolly Pardon’s hometown. The RV park had a LOT of concrete, very manicured lawns, twice-daily trash pick-up (I’m serious), and giant bus-sized RVs surrounding us. We felt like we used to after canoe camping at Lake Powell and paddling over to the restaurant for a meal and mixing with all the clean houseboaters. We were a bit out of our league.

Following Tennessee, we headed to our friend’s house in Weaverville, NC, just outside of Asheville, NC. No pics were taken of this camp as we parked in an out-of-town neighbor’s driveway and stayed in our friend’s house. It was a lovely time hanging out with Trish, Paul, and the pooches.

Here we are in Hillsborough, NC at my cousin Wendy’s home. This is her barn and that window on the second floor? that’s our little one-bedroom apartment. It was a lovely private space and we SO appreciated being offered to stay there, which we did, but, as I stated earlier when we visit again, we’ll just stay in the Hawk.

From North Carolina, we went through five states to get to Cincinnati, OH, and visit our beautiful family of Evonne, Rob, and Akacia. We camped 20 minutes away in Winton Woods Campground. It was a wonderful five days, six nights with family.

From Cincinnati, we traveled to Sugar Bottom Campground just outside of Iowa City, IA. We met the most lovely people there but oh my God it was hot and humid. That was a two-night, one-day layover on our way to Nebraska.

In Nebraska, we stayed at the  Puncochar Family Farm. It has been in the same family for over 100 years. Yes, we parked next to a dumpster, but it’s full of building supplies as the house out of sight to the right of the truck is being renovated. We drove to the farm on Thursday, May 12th, stayed Friday, Saturday and  headed to Denver on Sunday.

In Denver, we stayed in the basement of my brother’s home. There was no other option. The above picture reinforces for us how well we chose the size of our rig. We were able to park in downtown Denver without a problem.

This post kicks off the blog series that will tell the stories of all those images posted to Facebook in April and May of our epic spring adventure. Thanks for tuning in and I hope you enjoy revisiting the adventure!