More photos online

I posted more pictures on Picasa. Also in the next week I will update my website with landscape and wildlife photos.

A white Christmas

I finally returned from my nice 2-week vacation in the West among family and friends. I went to Colorado first to spend time with my sister Julie and her family plus my dad, Jarom, Emilee, and Cody came up from California and Arizona. Later I went south to Safford and Yuma to visit family and friends. In all it was a lovely trip.

I arrived in Colorado before Dad, Jarom, Emilee, and Cody, which was nice because I was able to spend a little time with the Smacks before the Christmas commotion began. We had a lot of fun. I went to 2 Ft Collins Eagles games with Ted. The Eagles won both games! The Eagles are very good and have won the national championship 2 times in 7 years. The first game they won without having to break a sweat. They dominated the game from the beginning and shot nearly 3 times more shots than the other team. The second game ended with the Eagles winning by penalty shots. I was excited that it went to the penalty shots round because I had never seen penalty shots in person. At the second game Ti, Tate, and Joe came with Ted and I. Ted only had 4 tickets, so he had to figure out a way to get as ticket for Joe. Joe was not going to go, but he was so enthusiastic about watching his Eagles play that Ted didn’t have the heart to leave him at home. In the end another man gave Ted an extra ticket for free. What luck!

After the first hockey game Ted and I went to Walmart to buy stocking stuffers for all the kids and family. After what seems like half the night and multiple calls to Julie to figure out what to buy, we came home with a large Santa bag full of goodies. Ted bought so much stuff that the puny stockings could not hold half of what was supposed to go in them.

The rest of the family arrived late Saturday night from Becky’s. Ted immediately started preparing carne asada. Nothing like carne asada as a midnight snack! Ted made it his personal duty to fatten everybody up. He figured that if everyone was not several pounds heavier by the end of the Christmas vacation then they obviously have no idea how to celebrate the holidays. We had carne asada, salsa, pork loin, smoked turkey, sausage, loads of candy in our stockings, fruit, and numerous other side dishes.

One of Ted and Julie’s friends came over dressed as Santa Claus. After all the boys sit on his lap to tell him what they wanted, he gave them some candy. Then he makes Julie sit on his lap before he would give up his big present from his bag. He brought the boys a Nintendo Wii! They are expensive even if you can find them. The boys were so excited and played as much as they could over the next few days. I must admit that I played my share of tennis and bowling, too, as did all the adults. It is a pretty fun set up. For those who do not know. Wii is an interactive video game. You use a controller in your hand that recognized hand movements and makes your player on the screen make the same hand movements. When playing tennis, you use the controller like a tennis racket. When bowling, you move the controller like you would use the bowling ball. It does a good job of mimicking your movements, so it is like place real life sports. You even get tired and sweaty like when playing real sports. It has several different sports like baseball, boxing, tennis, bowling, and golf.

My holiday tradition: the flu

Unfortunately on Saturday I started to feel the beginnings of the flu. I hoped that it was only an obnoxious cold that does not hamper the celebrations too much. I was wrong. I got the flu with all its body aches, stuffiness, headaches, sore throat, and clogged everything. I was sick for the next 10 days. That was the worst flu I have had in several years. After a week of being sick, I started feeling much better only for the flu to settle in my ear in the form of an ear infection. Luckily the infection was not bad enough to prohibit me from flying home.

I never get sick outside of the holidays. I am single and live quite a sterile life away from any disease vectors. However, during the holidays I spend time with children. I love my little nieces and nephews, but my body cannot defend itself from the relentless barrage of diseases that they have passed around among all their little friends. I hopelessly fall ill to the whole suite. I feel like the poor Indians trying to defend off the onslaught of small pox, measles, and cholera brought to the Americas with the European settlers. In the end it is a hopeless battle. Last year I got pink eye, an ear infection, a sore throat, and a cold. The 3 Christmases previously I had the stomach flu. I guess that is just the price I have to pay to spend time with little kids.

Winter Park and lots of snow!

The day after Christmas we all piled into the Julie’s Denali and Ted’s truck and went up to their condo in Winter Park. Winter Park is one of several resort towns in the Rocky Mountains dedicated to skiing, snowmobiling, fourwheeling, hiking, biking and enjoying the outdoors. The condo was so nice, and we had so much fun. Too bad Jason, Joe and company could not join us in the fun. We were there fore 2 nights. On the second night we went sledding. I was a little worried about the cold because I was still sick. However, Ted bundled us all up from his store of winter clothes that were sufficient to cloth half of Winter Park. Though it was 5°F (-15°C), I was quite warm the whole time. We went innertubing at a hill where you can sled down the hill then use the sled lift to return to the top of the hill. It was so easy to sled numerous times in the hour that we were there. We must have gone about 10 times in 1 hour. We went down several times holding on to each others’ tubes in a large hurling mass. We would change positions within the mass has slid down the hill, so the ones in front could end up in the back by the time we reached the bottom of the hill. Later we made a large string of tubes where each person would hold onto the tube strap of the tube in front of them. We could move around like a large snake as we jetted to the bottom of the hill. One hour seemed like such a short period of time, but it was a good bit of time - enough time to wear out all the kids and get our feel of excitement. Afterward we headed down to the Jacuzzi for a little relaxation. It was a rather interesting experience, considering that there were 7 adults in a hot tub.

Heading south to warm country… NOT!

Next I headed south to what I thought would be warm country. Boy, was I wrong! Safford was cold and windy. I intended to call in coyotes, bobcat, and foxes in Safford, but the weather was too windy. Windy weather makes calling in predators nearly impossible because predators don’t seem to be out hunting that much in windy weather. For those you do not know, calling is a method of attracting predators to you to hunt them or in my case to take pictures of them. When calling coyotes and bobcats I make the sounds of scared/wounded rabbits to attract predators that would like to eat the unfortunate rabbit. While calling, I sit very still and am completely camouflaged, so that the predator cannot see me. It is a lot of fun. Coyotes, foxes, and a bobcat have come so close to me that I could almost reach out and touch them.

Though I did not get to go calling, I did get to do other things like see a lot of family, especially the Kempton’s and the Curtis’s. We stayed at the Kempton’s, which was fun. I have now stayed at the Kempton’s since before all the Kempton cousins left home. I would go over there then go hunting all day in the hills. Those were good times. Sadly I have only gone hunting once, since I left Arizona.

Jason Brimhall has his horses at the Kempton’s. He has a nice little broodmare band of 9-10 and a total of 15. He raises quarter horses and of course has to supply the market with what it wants, which is color. He mostly has grulla, buckskin, and palomino mares, and his buckskin stallion throws good color. Jason, Traci, and I went a short ride through the hills. I did not realize how long it has been since I last rode horses. I was a small buckskin mare and was using a small saddle, which made it worse. After 10 minutes I was already saddle sore. The stirrups were so high that when I took her at a good lope I bounced all over in the saddle. On the way back I switched horses with Traci because Traci was riding a taller bay mare with a larger saddle. Finally I was comfortable! After returning to the house, I took the kids on short rides. My mare decided that she was tired of riding and started playing games with me. She tried to back up into the ditch to get me scared. She sideswiped a fence post and a telephone pole in an effort to hurt my leg. Finally I got mad and started kicking her hard in the flank and did not let her get away with it. She desisted in her mission of sabotage and noncompliance and started to obey me again. Dad did not go with us because he had to cook carne asada for the New Year’s party that night. (I think that the real reason he did not go is because he does not know how to ride horses. Cooking carne asada was just a convenient excuse. I think all those stories of roundup when he was 8 years old are fabricated stories that he has perpetuated over the years to a gullible audience. I need to see him ride to believe.)

On New Year’s Eve we went to Jay and Dustin’s nursery where we lit their branch pile on fire. It made a nice bonfire for an hour. Then we went to Kevin and Kristi’s for a New Year’s party. I am not sure what everyone did because as usual I fell asleep before midnight. I assume everybody had fun. I must say that I enjoyed my late night nap. I awoke and found a group of people putting together a puzzle, so I joined to finish it. Sadly I did not get to do the tradition Safford New Year’s activity. Every time I have been in Safford during New Year’s I have hunted on New Year’s Day. Instead this year I went out to the ranch with Dad, Aunt Barbara, and Jay to talk to Pete (and take pictures).

Hackberry Ranch and the 111

Seeing the ranch was a lot of fun because it looked almost decent. Last time I visited the ranch, the drought was so bad that there was hardly a blade of grass on the range. The range received some rain, and the effects of it were noticeable. The cows and calves were fat. We visited several stock tanks and deeded lands within the ranch. The purpose of the trip was to discuss the details of the ranch with Pete, the manager. However, I was more preoccupied with taking pictures. I encountered several sparrow species at the stock tanks. Sparrows are without peer my favorite birds, so I was excited to find so many of them and get some excellent photos (to be posted later on my website).

I paid attention to some of the discussion with Pete and just shook my head at all the regulations and people-pleasing with the BLM that goes on in order to be left alone. The BLM is a bureaucratic mess as is every government institution. However, bureaucracy has its advantages at times. The San Simon River (ephemeral wash) runs through the Hackberry Ranch. The feed in the flood plain is excellent, especially during the winter. The BLM wants fewer cows on the river, but cannot do anything without public approval. An environmentalist group opposed the measure to limit cattle on the river because they want to remove all cows not limit the number of cows there. The BLM now has to rewrite the whole regional plan because of this dispute, which will take months if not more than a year. As a result the range along the river is left alone and our cattle graze there as they always have because there are no fences to keep them out. For the cows’ sake, disagreement should continue indefinitely.

On another note, the ranch is not what it used to be. I have heard stories that the ranch held at least a couple thousand cattle. When Grandpa William Ellsworth bought the 111 (called 111 because it is 111 sections, and a section is one square mile or 640 acres or 256 hectares), he was guaranteed 800 head on the ranch. He went out there to look and stopped counting at 1,500 head. The 111 could barely support a tithe of that many cows now. That was the fate of most of the desert grasslands. Climate change and overgrazing changed the range from semi-arid grassland to arid shrubland. Probably nothing can be done to reverse the current trend.

After our trip to Safford, Dad and I headed to Yuma to spend a few days before I flew back to Miami. Tony Whalen (my old boss and Dad’s friend) took us fishing on January 3 at Senator’s Wash. It was so nice to get on the water and do some fishing. Tony loves fishing and goes out every week in either Yuma or Lake Havasu where he lives. We have a rivalry going on because he knows that I have only once in my life caught less fish than someone else with whom I was fishing. In the case that I cought the same number of fish as someone else, I always caught the larger fish. That holds true for every time Tony and I have fished together. Sadly for Tony, the precedent still holds. He caught one striper and I caught two. Haha! For the trip between all of us we caught 5 striped bass while trolling (another friend caught 2 fish.) The weather was cold, and I guess the fish were not in feeding mode. At this same location we have caught many more fish.

Dad got more bites than anyone but could not land a single one! He needs to work on his fishing technique. Fittingly Tony Whalen repeatedly invites him to go fishing in Lake Havasu. Dad needs to take advantage of this invite and learn how to fish. Could you ask for a better offer? Use of Tony’s guest bedroom, all the fishing gear you need, a boat, and beautiful Lake Havasu. It sounds perfect.

Thank goodness for Skype

I left a trail of Skype through Colorado and Arizona. First thing that I would do when visiting a place was install Skype on their computer. Skype is a program that allows one to talk with a webcam for free over the internet. I used it to talk to Patrícia in Brazil. It was so nice because we could see each other while we were talking. It would have been a cold and dreary vacation if we could not have spoken to each other for one month. I already linked Julie and Jason linked to my account. Let me know if anyone else wants to set up their account, I can help them with it.

One funny thing that happened with Skype occurred after I returned to Miami. I was talking to Patrícia in Miami on Saturday, and I must have left Skype on at Aunt Debbie’s. It popped up on Aunt Debbie’s computer, and she did not know what it was. Patrícia could not figure out who was talking to her on my account because it wasn’t me. That left us scratching our heads for a while.

Traveling home

Finally after a nice vacation, I returned to Miami on 5 January. I left San Diego on a red eye and arrived in Ft Lauderdale the next morning. I decided to take the train to my house because it is an easy trip of only 1+ hours. The tran to take me to the train station from the airport was late, and I arrived just in time to see the train leave. I had to wait for another 2 hours for another train! I took the train to the elevated train station where I caught the train to my house (a station is only 2 blocks from my apartment). I fell asleep and missed my stop. I got off at the next stop and had to wait nearly an hour for the next train to take me back to my stop. It took 4.5 hours to arrive at my house. I was so tired that I did not go to the track to watch the first big stakes races at Gulfstream. I was sooo disappointed.

Now I am home and back in the grind. I have so much work to do. However, I enjoy my work, so it is good.