First campout of the year! It rained cats and dogs, but a bad day camping is still a great day. We did a hike around Cheeseman Reservoir and saw the remnants of the Hayman Fire. The fire was 7 years ago and the lack of trees is still pretty startling. There is considerable ground cover now, but it won’t be a forest again for a long time.
At about 4:30 am Sunday morning, Angie woke me up and said “John! There’s some kind of animal making a noise out there!” We both lay quietly and listened; soon a haunting scream could be heard through the canyon. Very spooky! We think it was a female mountain lion crying for it’s mate as we have heard they sound like a woman screaming. Or it was a woman screaming. For an hour. I hope it was the former!
As I mentioned, it rained quite a lot, so I didn’t take many photos, but here’s a few.
This video was shot by Jean Francois Chabot (captain of the T&C Explorer) last July. One of the guests and the divemaster Jack spent almost 45 minutes swimming with a whale shark who decided to have a rather spectacular interaction with the snorkelers.
Angie and I went scuba diving in the Turks and Caicos last month (March 2009). It’s a great time of the year to go because it’s not really “tourist season”, therefore the boat was only half-full. We spent a week on the liveaboard Turks and Caicos Explorer II
A huge bonus for going at this time of the year was the Humpback Whale sightings. We saw Humpbacks 4 or 5 times a day for the entire week. At one point, we tried to jump in and snorkel with them, but they were too fast and went deep before we could get close.
The diving was superb, lots of great coral, fishes and beautiful turquoise water.
Here’s a link to a great video which was shot and edited by Chris LeBlanc. This is a nighttime Manta dive two weeks ago in Kona, Hawaii (click on the photo for movie — warning - it’s big and will take awhile to download):
We had such a fabulous time on our 2007 tour of the campgrounds of New Zealand that we finally splurged on a 2008 Fleetwood popup camper. It’s a Cobalt, the smallest of the Evolution series, with the essentials: pump sink, heater, propane stove, electricity (battery or plug-in), and comfortable sleeping for 4 friendly people. It’s really easy to assemble and tow (so John tells me; I haven’t learned yet). As soon as we signed the papers, we headed home, pitched camp right in front of our house and tested the nap potential (excellent — with the windows unzipped a lovely breeze flows through the interior). Our first camping trip is less than a week away, when we visit the Florissant Fossil Beds not far from here. Stay tuned for answers to questions like, “how cold does it get at night in the foothills?” and “what essential item will we forget?”
We went to Crested Butte to ski at the end of February - it was the most snow I have seen at a ski area in at least 20 years. The piled up snow on main street from plowing was over 10 feet high in places. Great skiing, great weather.
