Coyotes and skinny dipping (12/22/2025)

Walking in the woods behind our home is one of the most pleasurable things I (we) do.  As you know, I am a huge fan of what is called “forest bathing.” No, this has nothing to do with getting naked in the woods during a rainstorm or in a river, pond or lake.  Although that does sounds like fun (at least when the weather is warm).  We have done some skinny dipping in the past, but I am not sure I want to embarrass myself anymore with this old body. 

My favorite skinny-dipping memory was the time we did it in the mountains above Logan, Utah.  We had been hiking with our friends; we were hot and happened upon a pool in a creek.  It was so inviting.  The four of us stripped and jumped in.  After sitting in the refreshingly cool water for approximately ten minutes some hikers approached and when they walked by, we recognized the male in the group as the dean of our college at Utah State University.  Both Jeff and I knew him well and the only thing we were able to do was wave and say “hi.”  The next day we were both somewhat on pins and needles, wondering if the dean would say something.  But we never heard from him about the incident.

Enough about that and back to my more recent experience.

We have coyotes in the woods behind our home.  While we already knew that, and saw one a few years ago, our sighting of them has become increasingly frequent.  Wildlife watching has become our sport, ranging from fornicating deer to coyotes.  We have been told there are at least bobcats back there and now we have been told that there was a bear sighting nearby.

Well, don’t go wildlife watching with two dogs on the leash.  The dogs go absolutely ballistic the minute they even sense a wild animal.  While the hound howled and the other barked incessantly at the screwing deer or any other deer they see, but coyotes eat the cake.  They go nuts.  On top of that, the coyotes don’t give a damn.  They just stay where they are and look at you with this attitude of “bring it on.”  I had to walk by them one day while they were approximately 60 feet (20 meters) away from me, with two insane dogs that I hardly was able to control.  The coyotes just stood there and watched me struggling (walk) by with two absolutely bonkers dogs.

By rough estimate we have approximately 17 square miles (11,000 acres) of forest behind our home.  For our metric folks that is around 44 square kilometers (4.400 hectares).  That is large enough for coyotes, bears, and bobcats to hide.

I am still working on an inventory of all the beech trees directly behind our home.  Yesterday, I set out into the woods on my own, at the advice from my wife.  She knows my love for nature and for forest bathing.  My goal was to go to one of my favorite beeches and just sit at its roots, meditate and inhale nature.

It was somewhat quiet out there; however, it was frequently interrupted by the sounds of civilization.  An airplane was landing at the airport nearby and you could hear the incessant noise of traffic on the highway.  Finally, I heard the call of the pileated woodpecker.

It felt good to be out in the woods, although it was difficult to relax and meditate with all the crap going on in the world around us.  Despite all that, I definitely need to do it again.

 

We call the Blondy and Yote

Crazy, just relaxing in clear sight 

At my favorite beech

On the road (9/12/2024)

Not a very imaginative or original title, but it is appropriate. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been traveling the famous U.S. highways and some of the byways. This last time, it was a quick trip across, delivering one of our cars to my daughter and her spouse. We had three vehicles and that is more than enough for a retired couple. It was a solo trip this time; my wife stayed home to take care of the dogs and bonsai. In addition, it is hurricane season and it always feels risky leaving home for an extended period. The region was hit by a tropical storm when we took a similar trip last year.

In the past we have taken a few road trips across and I still enjoy it. In 1979 we drove from Delaware to Utah for our graduate studies. We did the opposite trip in 1981 on our way to a new job in Nepal. Those were my really first multi day road trip. On the way we visited my wife's friends in Lexington (KY), Louisville (KY) and Columbia (MO). We continued on through Denver to Cheyenne, and ended our trip in northern Utah. We drove an AMC Pacer, which looked like a fishbowl on wheels. On the way back we raced through Nebraska, Iowa and the Midwest; we were in a hurry. We somehow fixed my wife's paintings (she's an artist) to the ceiling of the car, and the gap between the paintings was occupied by our two cats; our two dogs were on the back seat. The other memorable thing that I remember is hearing Barbara Mandrell’s song titled “Crackers” over and over while driving through the prairie states (Nebraska and Iowa). It always amazed me that this song was so popular in the Bible belt since she invites someone back in her bed after a fight and I didn’t think it was her hubby.

Our next trip across the continent was in 1986, but now from Delaware to southern New Mexico. This time in a Honda Civic Wagon, with the same two dogs and only one of the two cats. The most exiting episode was when our cat escaped out of our room of an Indian run motel, in Artesia, NM. We had to stay another night before we found our cat and we could complete the journey. We got to know that town quite intimately that layover day. During those study years we made one more road trip, back and forth for Christmas vacation. Another time we drove to Dallas and flew from there to visit the grandparents of our 1 year-old daughter. In the mean time we made some other trips: to Corpus Christy for one and later on to California (the San Luise Obispo area).

Finally, we did the trip across that I describe in last year's posting: Yorktown to Montana to Long Beach and back home. In addition, my wife drove across one time to take our daughter to Sacramento and now I did this solo trip. I also made a solo trip from Gallup (NM) to Richland (WA) and from Virginia to Maine (I-95). We also have traveled to Charleston (SC) by car. In the past we frequently traveled the Pennsylvania Turnpike when we lived in Cincinnati and visited the (grand) parents in Delaware.

What highways did we take. We lived on Route 66 in Gallup, NM, and we did other Route 66 sections in Arizona, California, Oklahoma, and Missouri. These past two years Interstate 64 was a common route in our trips across the country. We have also traveled Interstates 70, 35, 40, 44, 15, 70, 76, 80, 84, 10, 37, 90, 94 and 95. Highway driving is fair. It is a great way to quickly get from point A to point B; however, the landscape typically flies by. We always joke that the Texas Interstates are the reason we were able to conceive our daughter; all those early arrivals in motel rooms and having time for more time for intimacy (aka wild monkey sex … we were still young … sorry daughter). Naturally, the radar detectors assisted in our speedy arrivals.

Honestly, I like the byways. We have taken large sections of the Lewis and Clark trail through Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho, and Montana. We have driven some of the country roads in Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Arizona on some of our other cross-country forays. I like those much better. It allows you to sightsee and just spend time to take it all in.

Things have changed over the years. While in the old days we poured over maps to plan our trips; Google maps is now my go to source. I still plan a trip marking destinations and aiming to keep a day's drive to around 300 miles (480 km). That distance can amount to approximately 6 to 7 hours of driving. Going west is easier because you gain time when crossing into another time zone. Going east you can lose an hour and a 7 hour drive all the sudden results in an 8-hour trip (on the clock) when you cross into the next time zone.

This is just a sampling what we have done. We have spread our wings and shared our exhaust gasses with many places. We still enjoy traveling the highways and byways by car (and now our van).

Bison near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  All the pictures below are from my latest trip.

Me at the North Rim

The Four Corners

Highlands of Colorado

The Colorado Plateau (5/2/2024)

If you are somewhat of a regular, you know I always have a few books open, and yes I need to update my reading list on this blog. Currently, I am reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. While this is a required reading as I describe <here>, I am getting a lot of enjoyment out of it. Abbey is a radical; he was on the FBI watch list, and I just read that he wanted to grind up all the domestic dogs into hamburger and feed it to the coyotes. He was hoping that this might change the tune of coyotes and make them more pleasurable to listen to. I have heard many coyotes in the Chihuahua of southern New Mexico during the field work that I was doing for my Ph.D. On top of that we have seen and heard them in the woods behind our home here in suburban Virginia. I dare to differ with Abbey in that I actually enjoy their shenanigans and howling.

Abbey's description of the landscape in the Moab area hits me in the guts. I spent time in the area in 1980 and 1981 to do field work for my Masters. His description of the landscape is amazing: the Henry Mountains, Dead Horse Mesa, the La Sal mountains, the towns of Hanksville, Blanding and Moab, the Bear’s Ears, and of course Arches National Park. My research plots of the time were in the Henry Mountains, near Fry Canyon, in the mountains near Monticello (between Blanding and Moab), and near Green River. 

I realize now that I might as well have spent time on some of the mines Abbey wrote about but were abandoned when I spent time there in 1980. Abbey wrote about uranium prospecting in his book, and I was working on the results of all that work.  As I am sure, a lot of you are aware of, uranium was used to generate energy and for more sinister reasons such as blowing up things and killing millions with one small bomb.  Southeastern Utah and the Moab area is littered with mine shafts dug into the cliff sides and piles of waste materials that were dumped below those holes. These dump sites were bare, and we were doing research on the revegetation of these piles. 

 My research involved the revegetation of uranium mine-spoils. Uranium and its mining features heavily in Desert Solitaire. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s uranium was in huge demand; areas in Ontario Canada and in the Canyon lands had some the largest deposits of that mineral in North America.  At the time Blanding had a uranium enrichment plant.  I also worked on a site of another uranium enrichment plant in the Red Desert of Wyoming, just north of Green River, UT and Rawlings, WY.  That plant had a large herd of wild horses nearby and it was always fun watching them gallop through the area.   

One of my favorite experiences was my work near Fry Canyon. The canyon was aptly named, it was scorching hot in July. My thermometer read 110 degrees. It had the typical desert vegetation of juniper, salt bush, galleta grass, Indian rice grass and I remember seeing mallows, sunflowers and cacti. We had our two dogs with us and during the day they slept under the truck I was driving. We had to drive up a dirt road in the canyon and arrived at my plot after maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes off-road driving. Camping there was fun as well. Just nice to be out so remote in the desert with no extraneous sounds or lights. It is something that the folks I follow on YouTube (my guilty pleasure) that live in vans out West often do. I remember wondering about cougars, poisonous snakes, scorpions and coyotes.

In 1980 we showed my parents around the Four Corners Region when they visited from the Netherlands, and we took them to Moab, Arches and Dead Horse Mesa. What still amazes me was that during our visit to Dead Horse Point, we were standing and looking at the Colorado River, when a car drove up and two Dutch ladies stepped out, speaking Dutch. At that point there were five citizens of the Netherlands and only one American on the point. Quite a coincidence. One of my favorite memories is that after the meeting we decided to drive down a dirt road to the Colorado River. My wife Donna walked in front of the car (an old AMC Pacer) to move all the big rocks out of the way, make sure we would not bottom out or slide down the ravine.

As I mentioned before, we returned to the area in 1992 and it was great to see it again. I was more of desert rat by then, after getting my Ph.D. and subsequently having lived on the Colorado Plateau in Gallup. Abbey's description of the Navajo, the people, the nation and the treatment of the people was very familiar as well; I spent 3 years working with and around the Navajos. I describe our recent visit to Gallup and the region <here>.

Anyway, these are some of the things that I am reminded of when I read Abbeys book. While he is an interesting writer with great observations, his book can be tedious at times because of the run-on sentences and the difficult words. This is something I try to avoid in my lousy writing, but Abbey is a master. I found one sentence that is an entire paragraph long and in print was something like ten printed lines in the book. Moreover, I had to use a dictionary to look up some of the words he uses. But he was radical; while most of the time I agree with him, I would not dare to put some of it in print. He had guts and called it out.

I hope it was somewhat interesting and motivates you to pick up this interesting book.

September 24, 2024, my return to the desert of the Colorado Plateau.

Nomads, days 13 and 14 (9/18/2023)

We woke up in Logan Utah, with the destination in sight. We slept decently, even after being relocated by the folks that stole our site. But let’s first resume my daily log.

Day 13: Logan UT – Cedar City

Day 14: Cedar City – Zion National Park (Kolob Canyons) – Moapa Valley (NV) – Hoover dam – Henderson (near Las Vegas)

Back to Logan. We were not particularly happy as you might have noticed above and in our previous post. The memories that flooded back from our time there were interesting. Together we received around $1000 in stipends, and we lived of that and savings that we had accumulated from my Uganda job. We cleaned our home and did laundry on Saturdays and hiked on Sundays. When we left town at the end of our studies, our landlord gave us our deposit in the form of a check. When we arrived on the east coast four days later, we learned that she had blocked payment on it without giving us any reason. Our discussions with the waitress, the evening before (shew was from Texas and obviously not from the prevailing religion), somehow had brought other negative feeling up about our stay 42 years ago. I am still amazed how events from so long ago can jaundice someone’s impressions and feelings. It harks back to some of the stuff I read in “The Art of Travel” (look at my first post for the reference <here>).

After breakfast at McD. (we wanted get the hell out of the campsite ASAP), we again drove by our old home and decided to go view the campus. We hardly recognized it, so much has changed in the 42 years although a few things looked familiar. I was looking for houses friends used to live and tried to remember parties we had while driving to campus. However, those homes were gone and now were the sites of commercial buildings. We remembered our friend Allen who was always in shorts and even biked to campus in shorts during snowstorms. We also again discussed our very good friends Jeff and Maria. Jeff had rheumatoid arthritis and one afternoon they came to our home, giving us all their booze, because they had decided to turn Mormon. A couple of weeks earlier we had been skinny dipping together in a creek in the hills.  Jeff committed suicide soon thereafter; he could not live with the pain and the outlook on his future.  In those days, they did not have the drugs we have now. We hit the road after that and took off for Cedar City.

The drive took off some of the pressure, I personally was delighted to be back in the basin and range ecosystem. I love the Great Basin Desert. We initially wanted to go to Bryce Canyon NP, but changed our minds, since it was getting hotter again. In other words, we found a dog friendly Holiday Inn Express; I booked a room online and set that as our goal. Our intention was to go for a hike after checking in and visit Zion the day after. Well, by the time we got near Cedar City we were hit by some major thunderstorms and the hike never materialized.

Zion stayed on our list, but a visit the next day revealed to us that this National Park wasn’t dog friendly. The Kolob Canyon scenic road was partially closed, and we walked the dogs on a section of the closed part.

Goodbye Utah, hello Nevada; one of the few states I had never set foot in. Lunch at a taco stand in Moapa Valley while watching a flock white faced ibises; they were what looked like grazing in a flooded pasture. This was followed by the drive through the Lake Mead scenic area. In Nevada we had entered the northern regions of what looked like the Mojave Desert, I was delighted to see creosote bush and the sparseness of the vegetation. The geology was amazing, as well. Here I am in my element, at home; being an arid land ecologist. We loved seeing the lake and the white ring showing how the water level had dropped. One of the rangers told us that the level had come up 26 feet these past few months.

A visit to Hoover dam, and a hotel. It was 98 outside and we were not thrilled with camping. This turned out to be something. It seemed that only the casino hotels in the area were dog friendly (guess why). Honestly, they sucked, or the one we ended up in did! You had to enter a smokey casino with dogs to get to the elevators, but we survived it. These are some of the perils of camping in a van with dogs.

What did I learn to date? We need a rooftop AC, if we want to do this more regularly in the warm part of the year. To be able to operate the AC on sites with no electricity, we will need to generate our own power. In other words, we need to install solar panels on the roof and a battery system. Something to investigate when we get back home.

Zion

The taco truck

In the sand dune area with petrified sand dunes

Same as above, with our van.  The temperatures are 98

The Hoover Dam

The carpet at our hotel.  Should I take my shoes off?

This is where you walk your dog, in the parking lot of the casino

Nomads, days 11 and 12 (9/15/2023)

We are making progress. I am writing this on day 14, but I will get there in my next post. But let’s summarize:

Day 11: Great Falls (MT) – White Sulphur Springs – Three Forks – Dillon

Day 12: Dillon – Lemhi Pass – Tendoy (ID) – Logan (UT)

Boy that looks like two relatively short trips, but they were not. The trip from Great Falls to White Sulphur Springs was absolutely exhilarating. This was most likely the most beautiful landscape we encountered up to that point. It made us want to retire to Montana, were it not for the threat of winter. We traveled through a number of ecosystems leading us to a lodgepole pine forest and a ski area (Showdown).

While it was downhill after that, it really wasn’t from a landscape viewpoint. We again hit extensive grassland areas, had lunch on the road somewhere; however, we hurried up to get to Three Forks and the Missouri Headwaters State Park. This is where the Missouri splits into three fairly equal rivers. Our heroes (Lewis and Clark) had to decide which river to follow. Looking on the map (which they did not have of course), they named the streams from left to right the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin rivers after the President, Vice President and the Secretary of the Treasury. Albert Gallatin was of course the guy who bankrolled the expedition.

Since the Jefferson River somehow veered to the west, they decided to follow this stream. This was also part of the insistence of Sakakawea their Indian guide who was originally from close to this area. We had a great walk with the doggies in this park. Jasper went wading in the Gallatin and of course, I slipped and went into the river as well (I slipped into the treasurer). There is a nice knoll/hill we climbed up on, which gives you a nice view of the confluence.

Then it was off to Dillon, our destination for the night. I know we would be able to see Beaver rock on the way down there, a hill that Sakakawea recognized as a sign that they had arrived at their original hunting grounds. It lifted the explorer’s mood, knowing they had taken the correct stream and were ready to cross the Rocky Mountains and the continental divide. We had a great stay in Dillon and had pizza delivered to our van in the campground.

After a great night at a great campground, it was our turn to really go into the Rocky Mountains to find the continental divide in Lemhi Pass. Lemhi pass is the same site the explorers crossed and met the Shoshone Indians and Sakakawea’s brother who was the chief. It is slightly more convoluted than that, but you will have to read up on that yourself.

After a short trip on the Interstate highway, we turned on a dirt road and it was 20 or so miles to the pass. We passed some absolutely gorgeous countryside, that made me want to buy a ranch somewhere in these mountains. The ecosystem went from grassland to Rocky Mountain Juniper, to Pondarosa to Lodgepole Pine. As an ecologist it was absolutely great to see and learn. There was a memorial at the summit (7700 feet in elevation) and we had a great walk in the area while being fairly loud to alert any potential Grizzlies to stay away.

The dive down to Tendoy was another exhilarating experience. It was a steep dirt road that is absolutely unsuitable anything larger than what we were driving and absolutely no trailers. We ran into a cross country cyclist on the way down, and a local who couldn’t believe that foreigners from Virginia came all the way up here on vacation. Lunch and gas were in the town of Lemhi, a few miles south from Tendoy, the place we finally hit a hard top road.

Subsequently, it was back in the van and the drive to Logan, UT. We both received our MS degrees from Utah State University in Logan, in the fall of 1981. We had never returned, so this was a homecoming, of sorts. We both felt extremely apprehensive to return, while we had good memories (of hiking), we also had some not-so-good memories having to deal with the culture of the time.

In the past 42 years, Logan has changed a lot, in particular along main street. The town had become like every other town, you would not be able to distinguish it from any other Main Street, USA. In the center of town, it all rushed back, and somehow, we were able to drive to the home we rented 42 years ago. It looked the same, except the day-care and post office next door to us were gone. The home next door where two couples lived until one of the husbands was killed in a car accident was still there. They used to use the brick on the outside of the home as a climbing wall and practice. After they left it was occupied by a lady and 4 to 6-year-old daughter. The lady used to entertain men (for pay) and then she would kick the daughter out who would come it on our porch and cry. At the time, we had moved to an apartment behind our first home (this apartment is gone and is a driveway now), and we would take care of her for an hour or so before the girl was allowed back home. We did this all while finishing our thesis. We were too naïve to call child protected services or any other authority about this situation.

As you can imagine, all these things came rushing back, and even more so while having dinner at the local microbrewery and talking with the waitress. We asked if we could buy a can or two of their beer, but no you could only do this at the state liquor store, another place of bad memories to us.

When we got back to the place where we were camping, some other campers had moved into our spot and we had to relocate. The office was closed until 10 am the next day and we were not waiting for that to complain; we wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. But it all was a good reminder of what living there 41 years ago was like. More about Logan in the next post.

The road to Sulphur Springs

The three forks of the Missouri

And into the Gallatin he went

Beaver Rock, there is so much to write about this.  The ranch at the bottom of the rock is managed by a couple who are ecologically minded and really manage the area for wildlife.  Very impressive!

Camping in Dillon, MT

Clark Lake, ready to go to the pass.

Pronghorn at the start of the dirt road

The start of the climb.  The next few pictures (below) show the pass and the divide)

Our old home in Logan, UT

The Logan Microbrewery, we had to hand over our driver's license to get registered in their (the State's) database of drinkers.  In the old days you had to become a member of an establishment (usually $1.00 per year) before you could order an adult beverage.