Posts Categorized: travel + places

More Dreams

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, travel + places.

Fri. 11.09.18 – Last night I had more bizarre dreams that bordered on nightmarish. It was truly cold here in Mammoth, with the low of 12F / -11C, and El Coache’s heater worked overtime to keep the internal temps around 54F / 12C. As a result, every time the heater cycled back on – loudly – I vaguely woke up. When one is roused from sleep on a regular basis, one tends to remember most of the dreams from the REM sleep one does get.

In last night’s case, it was dreams of other people hitting my rental car and me being stranded with a rental car employee yelling at me about my insurance. Somehow, in each dream, Family Hernandez (Alex, Paige, the boys, and Penny Laine) showed up to drive me home and rescue me from bad rental car employees.

My brain on anti-histamines and being woken up by an RV heater is a rather frightening place. And yes, with all of my serious allergy problems of recent years, I am a daily or twice daily anti-histamine taker – I like living.

I am renting a car next Wednesday and plan to pull two sets of rental car insurance, just in case – as Alex and Paige may not be available to pick me up.

Furthermore, I am wearing ear plugs tonight.

The Vermilion Flycatcher

Posted by & filed under art + photography, travel + places.

Vermilion Flycatcher In flight, I Vermilion Flycatcher In flight, II Vermilion Flycatcher In flight, III

03.01.18 – I have a new-old ambition that I am going to do my best to start and continue as of today: daily blogging (regular public writing) – even if it is only a little tidbit or bio bit or photo.

Let’s start from the photos of the Vermilion Flycatcher that I took two days ago at the La Paz County Park, Parker, Arizona – which is in a manicured riparian zone next to the Colorado River. Photos were taken by Ms. Jen with her Nikon D800 and a Nikon 70-200mm f/4 lens.

Ms. Jen’s Travel Video: Kofa, Palm Canyon, and the Kokopelli Spiral Labyrinth

Posted by & filed under oh, california, travel + places.

This was originally posted as Early Access at my Patreon account.

I have received requests for videos on the adventures of RV living, so here is the first.

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Feb. 20, 2018 – On Saturday of President’s Day weekend, I drove to the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge to camp and take some night sky astro photos. When I arrived, I found the Kokopelli Spiral Labyrinth on the road to Palm Canyon.

The afternoon was beautiful and the earth art spiral was beautiful.

Video taken by Ms. Jen with her Lumia 950 camera phone.

Embrace the Blur : A One Day Drive to Arizona and Back Again

Posted by & filed under photos + text from the road, travel + places.

To Arizona: Palo Verde Tree with a bit of Inadvertent Tiltshift Back to California: Taurus and a Truck from the Car Window

Sun. 11.06.16 – Today including a whirlwind, blur of a drive out to Arizona and back home to Huntington Beach in one day! The madness was more than just an opportunity to spend $36 on gas; I was on a mission to pick up my friend Belle le Cane. I will be dogsitting Belle* for much of the month, so expect more photos.

Per usual, double click on the photo thumbnails for the larger versions and lightbox gallery.

*And Belle will be sitting on Scruffy…

Wanderers

Posted by & filed under ideas + opinions, travel + places.

Wanderers – a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo.

Mon 12.01.14 – Digital artist and animator Erik Wernquist has created a wonderful short film on space exploration called Wanderers.

Wanderers is a vision of humanity’s expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available.
Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea of the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds – and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.

The nice folks over at Cumbrian Sky have written a good blog post about the film and what it evokes:

Every few years a space exploration-related film comes along which actually *gets* it. It gets the beauty and drama of space exploration. It gets the beauty of what’s “out there”. It gets it Right. Every few years a film comes along which, with its breathtaking images and optimistic message has the power to excite and inspire a generation, and leaves even the most hardened space cynic picking their jaw off the floor.

Ok. Hands up who thought I was talking about “Interstellar” there… ?

No, I wasn’t. I know that’s the movie of the moment, and huge amounts of bandwidth has been eaten up with glowing reviews, praising to the sky its accurate science and its deep message and meaning. Review after review claims that it will be as inspirational as 2001 was when it was released. So I imagine you were thinking it was Interstellar I was talking about.

No, it wasn’t. I was talking about a film called “Wanderers”, posted yesterday without any fanfare on the Vimeo video sharing site.

Go watch it and then go look at the gallery of stills from the film as they are wonderful.

Thank you, Mr. Wernquist!