I was honored when Maya’s best friend, Sarinnagh, asked me to photograph her senior portrait.  For 13 years I have enjoyed watching her grow up hand-in-hand with Maya. She is as sweet as she is beautiful and it would be impossible for anyone to take a bad photo of her.

The results from my soccer match this morning were not nearly as satisfying.  We squandered a 2-0 lead and had to settle for a 2-2 tie against the number one team in our division. My 16-day road trip took its toll on my conditioning and let’s just say I have some work to do to get back into shape.

Maya’s interest in a nearby college compelled Jeanine and me to join her there for an all-day computer science open house today.  I have been admonished from sharing any additional details for reasons known only to the women of the family.

A more perfect fall day I can not remember. Cool weather, clear skies, and autumn color in full glory.  I made an afternoon excursion to Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, NH stopping frequently to take photographs along the way.

I paused for an hour to climb the tiny (1832 feet tall) Mount Watatic. Views from the summit were somewhat limited although I did manage the shot below, taken through a gap in the trees. Fall colors this year are outstanding, perhaps due to the severe drought.  I can’t recall a time when the full spectrum of hues were so abundantly present.

By the time I reached Mount Monadnock it was too late in the day to climb so I had to settle for a photograph of the mountain itself.

In addition to two of my soccer games, I have missed several of Maya’s as a result of my recent travels.  This afternoon the CCHS Women’s Varsity was in action against Acton-Boxboro.  After a scoreless first half, Concord Carlisle gave up two avoidable goals in the second half.  Maya has mostly recovered from a foot injury that has nagged her but did not get any playing time in today’s match.  Photos from the first half of the game (rain and darkness infringed on the second half) can be found here.

One of my bucket list ambitions is to visit all of the US National Parks of which there are currently 59. My recent road trip added 8 more bringing my current total to 40. The National Park Service administers all manner of national sites including monuments (124), preserves (19), historical parks (50), historic sites (89), battlefield parks (4), military parks (9), battlefields (11), battlefield sites (1), memorials (30), recreation areas (18), seashores (10), lakeshores (4), rivers (5), reserves (3), parkways (10), historic and scenic trails (23), cemeteries (14), and heritage areas (49).  Of the ten maps/park brochures I collected on my “drive about” see if you can guess which two fall into a category other than national park.
 

Stopping only for fuel, food, and bio-breaks, I completed my 16-day, 7,417 mile “drive about” road trip today arriving at home just before midnight. In total, I visited 8 national parks and 2 national historical sites, traversed 18 states, and listened to 10 audio books. Spending time with Jeanine and Nicolai in Colorado was by far the highlight.  Although I am momentarily exhausted from today’s 15-hour dive, I am already starting to think about my next road trip.

After visiting Carlsbad Caverns earlier in the week, the Mammoth Cave (both a National Park and a World Heritage Site) does not initially seem quite as impressive.  It contains a small fraction of the speleothems which are to be found in the former.  What is amazing is the sheer scale of the cave.  With 405 miles of surveyed passageways Mammoth Cave is by far the world’s longest known cave system, over twice as long as the second-longest cave system, Mexico’s Sac Actun underwater cave, a portion of which Kyle and I explored during his coming of age adventure.

In my quest to one day visit all 59 national parks I have now reached the two thirds mark and consider myself qualified to say that the Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas does not really meet the standard of a National Park.  It should properly be designated as a National Historical Park, akin to the Minute Man National Historical Park in my home town of Concord.  The tiny natural portion of the “park” is largely unremarkable while the hot springs have been capped and plumbed into a common feed system for the entire downtown area Bathhouse Row. Fordyce Bathhouse serves as the park’s Visitor’s Center and is really more of a museum.

There are a very small number of places where you can still see the hot springs and I am afraid this park will be near or at the bottom of my list.

There is very little to see between Midland, Texas, where I spent last night, and the Choctaw Nation town of Broken Bow, Oklahoma, my destination for the evening.  The 8 hour drive is sprinkled with windmill farms and oil fields and damn little else.  I can not really say that my first visit to the Sooner state was worth the extra mileage but it does lift my visited state tally to 47.

Big Bend National Park, located in Texas, has national significance as the largest protected area of Chihuahuan Desert topography and ecology in the United States. Covering 801,163 acres, it contains more than 1,200 species of plants, more than 450 species of birds (including the above pictured Peregrine Falcon ), 56 species of reptiles, and 75 species of mammals. When I entered the park early in the morning, the sky was totally clear.  By the time I arrived in lovely Chisos Basin, I was literally racing to stay ahead of a rapidly advancing fog bank that quickly inundated and totally obscured the mountains.

With nothing left visible to photograph in the mountains, I made my way to the Santa Elena Canyon.

Here the Rio Grande has carved through the mountains to create a very narrow and steep-walled canyon.  The hike in is generally easy except for the necessary waist-deep water crossing of  Terlingua Creek.

On the return leg of the hike, I extended the creek crossing to include a brief visit to Mexico.  The slow moving Rio Grande, pictured below is only about 30 feet wide at the bend and no deeper than 3 feet.  If Donald Trump gets to build his wall, this park will forever be spoiled and such an impromptu international excursion will no longer be possible.  I spent about 10 minutes on Mexican soil before crossing back to the US and continuing on to Rio Grande Village at the opposite end of the park.

The Carlsbad Caverns National Park makes my short list of favorite national parks.  I arrived just as the park was opening and spent the next 5 hours underground.  What a treasure trove! The fact that tripods and flashlights are permitted allowed me to get some nice photographs in the “Big Room.” Many of the speleothems are already illuminated for the visual enjoyment of tourists but not in a fashion that lends to nice photographs. With long exposures and using my flashlight to “paint with light,” I was able to create many images that I am very pleased with.

Saguaro National Park is located in southern Arizona on the outskirts of Tucson established to protect its namesake—the giant saguaro cactus. Many other kinds of cactus, including barrel, cholla, and prickly pear, are abundant in the park.

The Guadalupe Mountains National Park is located 6 hours away  in West Texas and contains Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,749 feet. Located east of El Paso, it also contains El Capitan, long used as a landmark by people traveling along the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line. I arrived just in time for evening light but not early enough to complete a planned hike into McKittrick Canyon. Instead I pushed on to Midland, Texas where, motivated by the desire (and need) for a hot shower, I stayed in a motel for the evening.

The Painted Desert was aptly named by explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado in 1540. Now a part of the Petrified Forest National Park it is a photographer’s dream.  I have often admired this area from 30,000 feet while flying over and was thrilled to have a closer look today.

Famous US Route 66 used to traverse the park and is now commemorated with the exhibit shown below. At many sites within the park, petroglyphs have been scratched, pecked, carved, or incised on rock surfaces, often on a patina known as desert varnish. Most of the petroglyphs in Petrified Forest National Park are thought to be between 650 and 2,000 years old.

The Petrified Forest is known for its fossils, especially fallen trees that lived in the late Triassic period, about 225 million years ago.  Despite looking so natural, these tree sections are now composed exclusively of rock-hard minerals. As nightfall approached, I found myself passing Biosphere 2, the largest closed ecological system ever created. Used only twice for its original intended purposes as a closed-system experiment, both attempts, though heavily publicized, ran into problems including low amounts of food and oxygen, die-offs of many animal and plant species, squabbling among the resident scientists, and management issues. I was unable to gain access beyond the security gate and had to settle for sleeping in an adjacent cow pasture for the evening.

After dropping Jeanine off for her pre-dawn return flight to Boston, I drove 8 hours to the Chaco Cultural National Monument (click on image for a more detailed view) which hosts the densest and most exceptional concentration of pueblos in the American Southwest. The scale, architecture and precision of construction are awe inspiring.  Along the drive I was treated to a full double rainbow, an old fashioned steam powered train, antique Rolls Royce, and mountains full of aspens in bloom.

Once in the park, I completed a 5-mile hike to the top of the escarpment overlooking the ruins for a bird’s eye view. Vertical access was by way of a narrow slot canyon “stairway.”

Wildlife encounters for the day included many elk and countless ravens.

Perfectly timed to my departure from Chaco Canyon, the setting sun turned the red rocks to gold.