Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Finding a route

A few weeks ago, I had gone on a hike trying to find a route to the old Massacre Grounds trailhead. I didn't quite get to it, but I was worn out anyway. Well, yesterday I was looking at Google Earth and decided to try going it that direction again, only this time I would follow a large wash. My destination had changed, too. I wanted to get to some hoodoos that are in that direction.


This looks interesting from far, far away, so I want to get a closer look.

The sun sets so early these days I knew I wouldn't have time to get all the way out there. I just wanted to see if using the wash to go that direction would be workable. I quickly learned that being in the wash was a bad idea. Lots of boulders to step over and lots of loose sand to sap speed and energy.


This is not a preferred place to hike.

I stayed in the wash for a while, though, because there were lots of footprints there. Maybe they knew something. I think maybe they didn't. There were getting to be a lot of trees in the way so I got up on the left bank of the wash. Wow, it got a LOT easier to walk. There were a lot of teddy bear chollas in places so I had to be careful where I put my feet, but I didn't have to worry about twisting an ankle.


My favorite variety of cholla, despite all the pain it's inflicted.

I made pretty good time on the way out and wasn't too worn out by the time I had to turn around. On the way back, I learned that I should follow the right bank at first, then switch to the left after a quarter mile or so. It was a successful outing. I learned what I wanted to know.


I think most of the saguaros in this area were wiped out by a fire many years ago. There are black brittlebush stubs all over the place.

It was getting pretty dark on the way back. I figured the rattlers were probably coming out and looking for a meal. The last half mile or so made me a little nervous but I didn't see or hear any snakes. It's a good thing, too, because the internal flash on my camera refuses to pop up. For some reason it thinks an external flash is attached. I wonder if I messed up some setting somewhere. Gotta figure that out.


Got a picture of the moon.

Remember how I used to put hikes on EveryTrail? I started using EveryTrail because it was so easy to transfer pictures from a web album to an EveryTrail hike. A few weeks ago, that function broke. I mentioned that in my previous blog. The very next day, I got a message from Joost. I think he is one of the two guys that started and runs EveryTrail. You know, I gripe about Microsoft all the time, but Bill has never sent me an email asking what he can do to help. Anyway, when I got my jaw off the floor, I sent info on the issue to Joost. It turns out that Chris (the other EveryTrail guy) had responded to my issue on an EveryTrail forum; I thought I would get an email when somebody responded but either I didn't or I missed it. Anyway, the problem seems to be on the Picasa end so there probably isn't much the EveryTrail team can do about it. Well, they may have some connections at Google. Anyway, I'll try it now and then to see if it's fixed. It might already be fixed. I haven't tried it for 2 or 3 weeks. I'm also going to see if I have some software that will resize pictures for upload in batch mode. (I'm an engineer. I'd rather spend 2 hours writing a program to do something than 15 minutes doing it by hand.) I'll let you know what happens. Well, you knew that. Click below to see all of the pictures.

2010_10_11

2 comments:

Adam Elliott said...

That moon shot looks great.

Unknown said...

Thanks, Adam. I thought I had pushed the contrast too far, but I've gotten several positive comments about it.