A perfect end to a surprisingly good year...

On Monday, Linda had to work a little, so I took off by myself to a State Park nearby.
I have loved herps since I was a child, and in all of my 33 years I have never seen
a salamander in the wild....until I started hiking in Russian Gulch State Park.  Within
the first ten minutes, I flipped some rotten bark and found my first sallie.  Wow.  A Coastal
Giant!  I couldn't ask for more...but more I got!

Anderson Valley

On Sunday we were picked up by Daniel...

Mendocino & Ft Bragg

So for New Years we went over the hill again, but this time we drove an extra 3 hours to the
Mendocino coast.  It was very rainy and misty when we arrived.

Santa Brings Sigma 50-500mm

 

Chihuahua in the snow

Hunting with my camera...

This morning I got up at the practically unbearable hour of 6:00am, showered, and headed north to
pick up Shawn and do some deer scouting and 4 wheeling in the snow.  I was groggy until I got a green
Monster in me, and then we took off for the mountain range known as Dog Valley, just to the west of us.
We spent about 4 hours driving and hiking in the snow.  As much as I hate getting up that early, it was
well worth it, being in the winter mountains during sunrise with the Nikon....

The snow was very dry and deep in many places, and covered with deer tracks and other small mammal
prints.

VehiCROSS Transmissions, a whole day event...

Saturday was spent down at Clint's parent's house changing his and my transmission fluid and filter.
His parents have a sweet little pad with some horses and everything...

Don't get me wrong...

...l love my kitties.  But here is a perfect example of why cats can be soooo annoying.  Step away from folding CLEAN clothes for 5 minutes and come back to this:

...

 Turkey (before):

Just a few shots from this past weekend in foggy San Fran

Foggy view from the hotel:

Our house...

...is pretty much in the middle of our street.  This is how it looked as of last weekend.
The walls are up and inner structure is well underway.  I can't wait to move!

I guess "his" name is Milo...

I told Linda she could name the turtle.  Even though we won't be able
to tell the sex until it is about 10-12 inches long, Linda thinks it is a boy.
She calls "him" Milo.  So be it.  If my sister's dog can be a boy named
"Rosey", than if my turtle turns out to be a girl she can be called Milo.

MegaloMataMata

Ever wondered how a live animal is shipped across the United States?
Well, its quite simple, but nonetheless interesting.  Opening a small
cardboard box to extract the fragile living treasure inside is something
that I will not forget.  At 9:30am my long awaited box arrived via UPS Next
Day Air.  Total travel time about 18 hours.

Turtles, Portland, Poon and back

On Sunday morning I went to a Reptile & Amphibian swap in Puyallup, WA.
I bought several supplies needed for the proper keeping of my Mata Mata that is on
the way.

Long Day...

I started work today at 8am and worked through lunch until about 4:30pm.
I was crawling around under dirty old desks and running back and forth
from the warehouse to the server room all day.  I'm glad its over.

After work, I went back to Uwajimaya to take advantage of their 10% off sale.
I purchased 8 drinks and 3 snacks to review.  After Uwajimaya I found my
way to a Thai place down by the Space Needle.  I don't even remember
what it was called.  I did however snap this photo of some strange graffiti
on the wall in the men's room.  It was drawn with pencil and I liked it for
some wierd reason....probably because it is really wierd.

NEST BEER

So I am up in Seattle again.  Its raining and I am tired and somewhat bored.
I finished all my work for the day.  Yesterday I worked a full day also, and stopped
off at Uwajimaya afterwords to get Linda some prezzies and get my fix of weird
Japanese food and drink.  Not much else.

The old dirt road home...

Our last day outside before we headed home and back to the drudgery of the daily grind.

Ryan did a little car surfin...

BRD & More Camping

On Saturday we went even farther north to the Black Rock Desert.

Garmin helped out a lot this trip:

Bull Basin

Thursday night we headed out north of Pyramid Lake to the Empire Ranch area for another night of camping.

It must be hatchling time for fence lizards, there were babies all over...

Waking up before sunrise at Dog Valley...

Tuesday night we headed up to the Dog Valley campsite just over the border.
I had to work the next day, so we decided to camp here since it is only about 20
minutes from home.  I figured I could pack up about 6:30am and get home in time to
shower and go to work.

We spent the afternoon hiking up the mountain.  We ascended over 1000 vertical feet
and capped out around 7600'.

Shooting Decay: Episode 1 (Day 2)

And now some shots from day 2 of shooting...

Me with some "safe" tooth paint that was "developed by dentists"

Shooting Decay: Episode 1 (Day 1)

Sunday we drove north or Reno toward Pyramid to find our location.

The following are production stills mostly shot by Linda.

Setting up the crane:

My Running Crew

For the last 10 days, Jim, Tom and Ryan were in town for a minute.  The following
seven posts are from this time of mayhem.

American Flats:

Double-Fisted Snakes!

So tonight was a snake night.  We set out on the usual trail behind our house for a
walk with CeCe.  Right away, Linda spotted a juvenile Great Basin Gopher Snake.
He was pretty easy to catch, since he was right in the middle of the path.  So in my
right hand, I was holding this little baby hissing, biting gopher snake.  And then, we
were walking across the street about half-way through our walk (as I am still carrying
the baby snake) we spot a large Western Yellow-bellied Racer in the gutter!  So, with
one snake in my right hand, I was able to wrangle the racer with my left.  The racer
promptly bit my hand, but then quickly calmed down and just rested with it's head tucked
under its body for the rest of the walk home.  Here is a shot of me once we got home, a
snake in each hand and a grin!

1975...

That will be our address.  Pretty cool since 1975 was the coolest year ever in history.  The only thing that sucks is our house currently looks like this:

It's Official...

...I've been in Reno 1 year this weekend.  Both Linda and I are glad to call Reno our new home.
There is just something about the West....something that only people who lived a long, long time
in the East can understand and not take for granted....

Meana and Tuna have certainly made themselves at home.

Critters abound in my backyard.

Natural camouflage, its really quite amazing.  Now I know why I haven't seen one of these
guys until last night, when we took CeCe for a walk.  This little lizard was basking in the middle
of the path.  The wierdest part about it, was that I spent a few hours on the Internet yesterday at
work, reading about horned lizards, and wondering where I could find one.   Then, as I was walking
with Linda and CeCe, I said, "you know Linda, we should be able to find horned lizards around
here..."  Five minutes later, we walked up on one!   Pretty cool since I was thinking about
them and how I always wanted to see one, and then there one was....

Labor Day Weekend Post #3 (Monday)

On Labor Day we drove a little north out of Redding along I-5 to check out the Mt. Shasta area.  We ended
up at the Castle Crags State Park for much of the time, hiking in the mountains and along the Sacramento
River.

The highlight for me was encountering a Shasta Alligator Lizard:

Labor Day Weekend Post #2 (Sunday)

On Sunday morning we departed early and headed north out of Redding up into Oregon with Crater Lake as our destination.  It took about 3 hours to get there but it was worth it...

Labor Day Weekend Post #1 (Saturday)

Last weekend we headed over to Redding, CA and met up with my pops for a weekend of outdoor activities.  Lassen Volcanic National Park was on the list for Saturday.

 

Surreal...

This is what the clouds looked like at noon today.  I took a few pictures because it was so dramatic looking, and the first break in the blue sky we have had in weeks....months probably.  The photo is not edited at all.  This is the way it really looked...

BIRD OF PREY

On my way back to work from lunch, I stopped at the stop sign in our neighborhood, and noticed this hawk under a tree eating a freshly caught rabbit.  I thought for a minute, and then quickly decided that it was worth it to run back home and get the cameras.  I'm glad I did....

SATAN'S A PIMP!

You know, you should always keep this in mind.  You don't ever wanna become one of Satan's bitches.  Anyway, we saw this car on the way home from a day trip down to Markleeville, CA.  Markleeville is about 1.5 hours south of Reno in Alpine County.  Beautiful country down there.  Another great camping and hiking spot.  I went down there with long-toed salamanders and rubber boas in mind, but didn't find any.  All in all, a good mini-trip to a good spot.

Independance Lake...

Sunday we set out for some more canoeing in California.  The destination was a lake about 60 miles NW of Reno off hwy 89.  As it turned out, the lake is on private property.  We spent 45 minutes wheeling up the side of a mountain only to find private property signs blocking the trail to the lake.  I was pretty pissed about that.  So we went back a little and took another trail that headed north of the lake.  We then came upon some signs that pointed to Independence Lake and a campsite.  So, we decided to take that trail to the lake.  It was confusing, driving to the lake with all sorts of "no tresspassing" signs.  But in the end, we made it to the lake and found out that it is indeed on private land, owned by the Sierra Nevada Power Company, but is open to the public for camping and boating, with a small fee.

The land up there is beautiful, but the lake was very windy and the water was choppy.  We did canoe a little and it was still nice, despite fighting the current most of the time.

GOD, GUNS AND GASOLINE

The Reno VXers

Flowers, flowers, grapes and more flowers...

Last weekend we went over to the Napa/Sonoma area with Linda's mizzle.  Below are a few pics from the trip...

Grapes everywhere.  I plucked and ate just a few. 

Canoeing...

So we bought a canoe this weekend.  Very nice.  You like?

Nohting short of H U G E

So last night I was in the garage working.  This gigantic monster wandered in and needless to say, I was in awe of its enormity...

And just when I thought it was over...

... a new plume of smoke bellowed from the mountainside and blocked out the sun.

A selection of photos from the last 7 days

So my sister and her family came into town for a weeklong visit.  The following photos are just a few that were taken during their week here.

Lake Tahoe: Moie and Alana on the North Rim Trail Hike

Evolution

So, the frogs turned out to be Pacific Tree Frogs and the toads I think are Western Toads.

Another Fire....this one is worse, and a lot closer...

This fire started around 11am I think, its been burning and spreading for over 3 hours.
This fire is visible from our backyard but is thankfully on the south side of I-80, which it
will have to cross before it threatens our house.  The Reno PD and FD have 4th street
blocked west of McCarran and it doesn't look good for structures in that area.  We took
a drive to see how close we could get to the fire....

FIRE

Another fire in the mountains.  This one is much closer.  The planes and helicopters are flying
 over our house and dumping water and fire retardant on the mountainside...

EGG > TADPOLE > POLYWOG > FROG (OR TOAD)

These tads were netted at the park yesterday.  I know there are at least 2 different species here, but
maybe up to 4.  If it is only 2, we have some sort of toad (black ones) and some sort of frog (greenish
ones).  I plan to care for them until they turn into froglets, and then release them from were they came.
I was very surprised to find these tadpoles in a shallow stream that is drying up at a nearby park where
we walk CeCe. Being mostly high desert, I didn't think the ecosystem here could even support
amphibians.  After I gathered them up in a net and brought them home, I noticed there was one dead one.
Within about 15 minutes, the other tadpoles canibalized the dead one.  It was COMPLETELY gone in about
20 minutes...pretty amazing.

Quick Animal Update

Linda took this photo of Meana and Tuna entangled today.
I have never seen them this snuggled before.
Ridiculous, and ridiculously cute at the same time.

Memorial Day at Plumas-Eureka State Park

On Monday we drove about 1 hour NW of Reno to Plumas-Eureka State Park.  It turned out to be
a very nice spot, and we hiked for about 6 miles.  We were all pretty tired from the day before
(including CeCe) but we managed to do serveral hours of hiking, much of what was up some
pretty steep inclines along very rocky terrain.  Supposedly we were in heavy Black Bear country
but we did not have any encounters, which was probably good...

Fordyce Lake - 05-27-07

On Sunday we went about 1 hour west into California to find some trails to Fordyce Lake.  The spot was pretty
cool, but there were a lot of other people there with everything from dirt bikes to rock crawling rigs in the way on
the trail as we drove in.  Other than that, the scenery was beautiful and we got in a good hike.  This spot would
make a great camping/canoeing destination.  There were several of these colorful moths on the trail around
the watery spots.

BRD...

My pops is in town this weekend and today we went to the Black Rock Desert (just north of Reno
about 2 hours).  Its a huge dry lake bed.  We took some photos there, here are a few:

these electric dreams...

For the last couple nights I have awoken and remembered my dreams.  Its been a long time since I remembered
my dreams, which I guess means, something abnormal was disturbing my sleep for the last two nights, but I
don't know what.

Still burning...

...smells like a campfire in the backyard.  Sad.

"Human caused"...as usual

This fire has been burning since Monday.  The photos are from yesterday and last night, taken from our back patio.