“Bluer than Blue- Louise Lake” Photo of the Week #52, selected in May, 2020
Somewhere in between Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in the Cascade Range of Washington State, we came across the bluest lake I had ever seen. Located near the town of Packwood and within the Mount Rainier National Park boundaries, Louise Lake reminded me a lot of some of the beautiful ponds of the Rocky Mountains, only with a much darker hue. Though we were in a bit of a hurry to see both National Parks in a single day, we simply had to pull over and enjoy the view.
Interestingly, and perhaps unbelievably in this day and age, the colors in this photo were not modified by Photoshop or similar software. You’ll just have to take my word for that… The location of this pond sitting in the middle of a thick green forest was also appealing to me.
“The Fog at Weaver Ledge” Photo of the Week #51, selected in May, 2020
When I first see this photo, it takes a moment to remember whether it was taken in Oregon or Maine — such is the way of coastal zones. There are even parts of the Rocky Mountains that this could have depicted. Weaver Ledge is actually located near a pond on Bass Harbor Head, Maine, across the point from Ship Harbor.
Fog inundated Maine almost our entire visit, which I’m told is normal during late summer there. Luckily, the area is so beautiful that it mostly enhanced the view. There is something about the juxtaposition of bright yellow flowers and lush green vegetation against a dull gray fog that is pleasing to the eye.
“ Towering Giants” Photo of the Week #50, selected in April, 2020
Tucked quietly away in a canyon near the Northern California shores is the Redwoods National Park, a forest of immense trees that visitors don’t soon forget. Hundreds of years or perhaps even a millennia old, these trees have survived everything that man and nature has thrown at them, except logging. When the gold rush petered out mid-1800’s, miners took to harvesting the nearly 2 million acres of giant redwoods and their success nearly cleared California of them. The Save the Redwoods League was formed in 1918 and in 1968 the Redwoods National Park was created for their protection. The remaining redwoods have been thriving ever since.
Though photos never do these towering giants justice, they can be vivid reminders of walking the forest and the feeling of awe from even a short visit. To paraphrase Danny Glover in Grand Canyon, “Yeah, those trees are laughing at me, I could tell. Me and my worries. It’s real humorous to that old forest.”
Nadyne and I grew up near mountains, she in Tucson, Ariz., and me in the Los Angeles Basin in Southern California. We shared a love of mountain views and their majesty. But, like the song lyrics go, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?” We moved to Kansas, where the nearest mountains were almost 300 miles away. In fact, we used to joke that from the 12th floor in the Wichita City Hall you could see all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Sorry, Flat-Earthers, the curvature of the earth kept this from being true.
We experienced an interesting phenomenon in Wichita that extended to many flat plains locations: claustrophobia. How can being in a wide-open space cause such a feeling? I finally figured out that it has to do with a finite horizon. Walk or drive anywhere with mountains and the sight of the range gives you an internal sense of the size of the space you are in. Take away the mountains and either you have a non-distinct view of the infinite horizon or the horizon becomes the building rooflines, treetops or the top edges of tall hedges. That loss of a distinct space can be unnerving to those of us who grew up around mountains, and it didn’t seem to affect native Kansans at all.
Believe it or not, there are health benefits to visiting a mountain range. There are several reports that spending almost any time in the mountains can trigger weight loss and high altitude is known to decrease your appetite and make you feel more full. People who live in or spend considerable time at higher altitudes, which would include cities like Denver, Colo., and Santa Fe, N.M., are less likely to die from a heart attack and have lower risk of cardiovascular disease. The fresh air you breathe in the mountains, free of toxic gasses and air pollution, gives your lungs a chance to breathe in a better mix of oxygen. Pine scents also tend to decrease hostility, depression and stress. Mountain trails also provide some of the best exercise available and the opportunity for bonding with friends, family and that special someone.
You can extend all the benefits I embraced with trees to the mountains as well, since more trees inhabit mountainous regions than all other geographical zones combined. Speaking of geography, and therefore geology, there are three major ways mountains form, all as a byproduct of plate tectonics. Volcanic activities occur when one tectonic plate is pushed beneath another, causing magma to be forced to the surface. The “Ring of Fire” was created in this manner, as have the series of dormant volcanoes in the Cascades, site of Mount St. Helens. During tectonic plate collisions, when two plates plow into each other, one plate is forced upwards, creating ranges such as the Appalachians, Himalayas and Mount Everest. The least-known is rifting, when rocks on one side of a fault lift relative to the opposite side, such as with the Black Forest in Germany. I don’t want to make this a geology course, but as we tour America, it is interesting to see how the different mountain ranges were created and how they have changed over geologic time.
The “purple mountains majesty,” though, is why we love to visit the mountains, with photos not exactly doing them justice, and with views sometimes so amazing as to render us awestruck in silence.
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I’ll complete this discussion with a quote from a famous 19th-century novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote, “Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.”
My parents never took me camping, not that Los Angeles has ever been a camper’s nirvana. They did, though, support my joining the local Boy Scouts troop, the leaders of which took the members camping a few times a year. We visited the Angeles and San Bernardino National Forests, the Mojave Desert and other areas around Southern California. I vividly remember hiking to one of the peaks in the San Gabriel Mountains and shivering in the cold because I had failed to anticipate and pack for 30-degree temps at nearly 8,000 feet.
Even so, I loved camping and enjoyed it as often as I could over the years. When my oldest daughter was less than a year old, we camped in the Yosemite National Forest, and she was no worse for wear from the experience. I think all of my kids enjoyed the experiences we had after moving to Washington State. Camping and fishing were two of our primary activities every summer.
The kids grew up and I moved to Western New York, and camping was less available, so for years it was a forgotten habit. It wasn’t until my wife and I moved to Las Vegas and realized we both had the itch to travel and see America that my vagabond nature returned. However, this time it would be glamping, not just camping. “Glamping,” or “glamor camping,” is the term some people give to camping in RVs rather than tents. As you get older, tent-camping becomes much less desirable.
Campouts are not just for families any more — we actually camp full-time. One of the popular aspects of camping is the huge variety of types and styles available to the average person. Even tents have improved to the point where they may not even be recognizable as such. Canvas cabins are as spacious as wooden ones. Hard-side pull-trailers and traditional tent trailers have been combined into “hybrid” camping trailers. Fifth wheel trailers can range from small 20-foot rigs to huge 45-foot toy haulers and you can utilize from one to five or more slide-outs for even more space. Several have side and/or rear raised decks.
Then there are the myriad of types of motorhomes, from a regular van conversion, rated a class B, to a larger and more sophisticated class B+, to the traditional class C motorhome on a larger chassis and truck cab with the usual overhang for a bed or storage, to a bus style class A. The lines between the styles and classes are being blurred more each season. Glamping just doesn’t get any better, or more expensive.
No discussion about styles of camping would be complete without defining the types of camping. It is estimated that there are over 15,000 RV resorts, parks and campgrounds in the U.S., and they range from rustic forest or state campgrounds without or with limited hookups, to more traditional parks with or without full hookups, to neighborhoods of park model or manufactured homes that allow RVs, full-service RV resorts with amenities that never end. If you want to rough it, you can boondock or dry camp, which is basically picking a spot in a forest or meadow, on the plains or in the desert, and making camp without any services or amenities except what you brought for yourself. Fortunately, most RVs are completely self-contained, sporting water and waste tanks and a generator or solar system for power, so a week or less is totally possible to enjoy in this manner.
Communing with nature is never better than when you experience it while camping. Usually, the location you choose will provide plenty of fresh air, and often hiking or biking is readily available relatively close by. So, the health benefits are all around you, including a reduction of stress and a happier mood. That feeling of glee you get when you take your first breath of air in a campground isn’t all in your mind — it’s due to a release of serotonin from breathing in the extra oxygen produced by trees and in the forest. When you are out in direct sunlight, you’re receiving an abundance of vitamin D, which allows your body to better absorb calcium and phosphorous. Even mild activity usually equates to a good night’s sleep, and the natural surroundings may allow or even suggest some soothing meditation.
RVers and other campers are ordinarily a social bunch, so it is easy to make new and long-lasting friendships. This is true whether you camp over a weekend, over a season or full-time. Not only did we make lifelong friends while camping in Colorado, but developed a surprising number of friends and acquaintances we met after hitting the road a few short years ago.
There are many ways that camping or glamping can provide happiness in your life. It did that for us in such abundance that it is now our daily way of life.
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I’ll close the subject with a quote from a British politician, Margaret Beckett, who experienced glamping: “Some people think that going on a caravan holiday is a slightly more upscale version of camping. Let me assure you, it is much better than that. You know that you will have your creature comforts wherever you are. I never have to pack light, and I can put the kettle on in any location.“
Note- just a reminder that this was written and published before my wife, Nadyne, passed away. I will be continuing to hit the road and visit family around the country, as I described.
Reason #31- Hiking Trails
My first hike occurred when I was in the Boy Scouts at age 14 in the Los Angeles area. My troop’s leaders drove us up into the San Gabriel Mountains to a trail head and we proceeded to hike 6 miles up into the forest. I hated every minute of it.
We set up camp for the weekend and, on Sunday, we broke camp and hiked back down the trail — a bit easier walk, but I was still not a fan. I had overpacked, which wasn’t ever going to happen again. A few months later, we hiked one of the Seven Peaks trails in the San Bernardino Mountains. That was the first time I had climbed to a mountain peak. Looking down over the valley below was exhilarating, despite poor visibility through the smog.
Health-wise, hiking is one of the best all-round activities you can do. Here are the Top 10 from Health Fitness Revolution and author of the book, “ReSYNC Your Life,” Samir Becic: hiking increases fitness, allows you to take control of your workouts, tones the whole body, helps prevent and control diabetes, lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, and may improve the antioxidative capacity in the blood of oncological patients, helping to fight off the disease. It’s a social activity that increases creativity, increases happiness levels, curbs depression and allows you to commune with nature.
My own preference for hiking really stems from my vagabond spirit — there is only so much of nature to see from the highway. On one of my hikes in the mountains when I was in my 20s, about 5 miles from the road, we came across a car, probably circa 1920s, terribly rusted and nearly completely imbedded into the mound of dirt in which it was sitting.
On another walk at Lake Mead, outside of Las Vegas, I found a dilapidated pleasure boat from the ‘50s or ‘60s sitting on the desert floor, in an area exposed from the lake’s recent retreat due to drought. You just never know what you’re going to see. Also, the farther you are from civilization, the more apt you are to witness wildlife — in the wild.
In America, we are so fortunate to have city, county, state and federal departments that create and maintain hiking trails in all 50 states. You can hike in so many terrains, too, including sandy desert, rocky mountains, thick forests, alpine elevations, spongy tundra, dripping wetlands, lake or ocean beaches, and so much more. Although public abuse of those trails has begun to force some trail closures or additional fees, there still seems to be a commitment by the appropriate agencies to keep lands available to use. Also, there are many volunteer groups that periodically tend to trails and trail heads.
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I’ll end with a quote from American journalist Nicholas Kristof, who said, “Wilderness trails constitute a rare space in America marked by economic diversity. Lawyers and construction workers get bitten by the same mosquitoes and sip from the same streams; there are none of the usual signals about socioeconomic status, for most hikers are in shorts and a T-shirt and enveloped by an aroma that would make a skunk queasy.“
Trees have been a wonderful gift to humans and the planet. Fossil records indicate that the first trees lived approximately 385 million years ago and they continued to flourish until they covered the earth as recently as 2 million years ago. They grow larger than shrubs and have a single main stem, but there is no defining attribute between a tree and a shrub, made more confusing by the existence of dwarf or small trees, and sometimes a tree’s growth can be stunted by its environment.
By all estimations, there are over 3 trillion trees growing today, important for their value to the world: absorbing carbon dioxide, removing and storing the carbon while releasing oxygen back into the air, supplying wood for burning (for heat, cooking, creating power, etc.), giving timber for construction, providing shade for cooling, slowing water evaporation, providing food for humans and wildlife, and furnishing a canopy and habitat for wildlife, in addition to adding beauty with the seasonal changing of colors, brilliant flowers and leaves. It’s pretty difficult to put up a kid’s swing without a hefty tree branch to hang it from. Even forest fires can be beneficial — killing disease and numerous insects that will prey on the growth of the forest, providing nutrients for new generations of growth and refreshing the various habitat zones the forest encompasses.
The largest, tallest and oldest trees in the world all happen to be located in California and Nevada, with the General Sherman Tree, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, the largest by volume (52,500 cubic feet), Hyperion, a coastal redwood in Redwood National Park, the tallest (380 feet), and Promethius, a Great Basin bristlecone pine growing on Nevada’s Wheeler Peak, the oldest (currently estimated to be 5,069 years old). An honorary mention goes to Methuselah, a bristlecone pine in California’s Inyo National Forest, has a verified age of 4,852 years old.
While all of this is interesting, as well as important to humans’ well-being, I compare a forest to the vivid draperies in an otherwise bleak apartment. Trees provide the backdrop to our views of the world and landscapes without them are often cold, somber or grim. Fall colors differ around the lower 48, with the yellows and light greens of the Rocky Mountains, the oranges and reds of New England and the full spectrum in the country’s midsection. All are beautiful, sometimes spectacularly so, and we always look forward to drives through the colorful foliage in autumn, no matter where we happen to be.
Aspects and parts of a tree are often compared to human attributes, such as the roots, trunk, branches, growth, leaves and seeds. Having deep roots, a sturdy trunk, virtuous family branches, solid growth, spreading leaves of goodwill and the seeds of liberty are all positive expressions of humanity. Perhaps that is why the Japanese art of “bonsai” attempts to produce small trees that mimic the shape of real-life trees.
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The ever-famous naturalist and environmentalist John Muir, whose black-and-white photography of nature, true masterpieces, can profoundly move anyone who sees them, said, “A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.“
“An Emerald Delight” Photo of the Week #9, selected in July, 2019
A few miles north of Crested Butte, Colorado, nestled in the Elk Mountains between Mount Baldy and Mount Bellview, is a lake with a beautiful hue. Crested Butte has some of the most beautiful sights to explore and Emerald Lake is certainly no exception. The alpine lake sits above 11,000 feet and is one of two so-named lakes in Colorado, the other being in the greater Rocky Mountain National Park.
Shortly after taking this photo, we had it printed to canvas and framed for our (then) living room wall — the centerpiece of the room’s decor! The sun, clouds, shadows and pines made the canvas print appear as a painting, especially when the sun shone on it from the nearby living room window. The color print is now one of four prominent photos in our fifth wheel’s living room.
As always, please click on the link to view the clear, full-color image:
Below is a 360-degree view of one spot in the middle of the Jedediah Smith State Park near Crescent City, CA. Here we found an absolutely beautiful forest of giant redwoods. Notice that the some of the trunks are wider than the road?
Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park is a California State Park that preserves old-growth redwoods along the Smith River, approximately 9 miles east of Crescent City, in the far northwest of the state. The 10,430-acre park is named after explorer Jedediah Smith, the first American to travel by land from the Mississippi River to California, passing through the parcel that is now the State Park. It consists of 9,500 acres of redwood trees, including several groves of old growth trees. One of the groves, totaling 5,000 acres, includes the world’s largest (not tallest) coastal redwood, which measures 20 feet in diameter and 340 feet tall.
Photo of the Week 004- Originally Selected 6/8/19- “Summertime Greens”
Nestled quietly in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Bear Lake can always be counted on to provide pleasant scenery. As always, please click on the link to view the clear, full-color image:
Trappings of the Years 