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We took a long Veteran’s Day weekend to road trip to Roswell and Carlsbad. Grams got the spontaneous award for driving over from Lubbock to meet us!

Aven was a fantastic driver (at least at the Sonic drive in)

We spent the night in Roswell, went for a swim in the hotel pool, and then drove on to Carlsbad. It was so exciting to get to the park!

We had a great ranger/tour guide!

It was very exciting to take the 750′ elevator down, especially when they turned off the lights! Then we got to take the ~1.5 mile walking tour around the caverns. We all loved it!

Even the bathrooms down in the caves were cool!

We got super lost, and had to get some new friends we met down there to show us the way out:

We met up with Grams after a nap, and spent the night in Carlsbad. Another good swim in the hotel pool, and we drove up to Roswell. We took a driving break to go to the International UFO Museum.

Torsten and Aven were very good hosts to their new buddy

The main display had a rotating saucer, smoke machine, and aliens that breathed, moved, and lotsa great music and sound effects:

After the museum, we went to the only spaceship themed McDonald’s for lunch, iMovie hacking with Grams, and lots of playing:

It was a very successful drive home (with dinner and Petco stops in Santa Fe) — Aven did fantastic, so we might be ready for some more fun road-tripping around the lower 48! Torsten thought the best part was the caving. We were all very glad to see Grams. And bonus: we got home Saturday night, so one more day of the weekend!! (It is a gray, fire in the fireplace, make frames, clean house, mellow kinda day).

If you need the whole gallery from this trip, it is all yours..

Be Brave, Be Strong: A Journey Across the Great Divide by Jill Homer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fantastic personal narrative about an incredible bike ride. I really enjoyed the read and was completely inspired to do a few short segments of the ride! There were some fantastic “one-liners” My favorite:

“I pedaled because pedaling was the most natural course of action.”

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Data Analysis with Open Source Tools by Philipp K Janert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a good thought provoking read. It is a reminder of lots of techniques I’ve already “learned” — but a great practical review and refresher.

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Although scheduling attempts completely failed, I think at least 3 of the 4 folks got out biking. (at least 2 of us ended up solo). Anyway, I had a good ~25 mile ride today. I want to keep track of the various trails. I was riding 50 psi 2.9″ (74 mm) tires today. Rode on road to the golf course, then single track, then eroded double track down the canyon below our house to the “Y”, then over to the truck route and up the road, then trail/road up the ski hill road (ran out of time..) so turn around, downhill to PEEC, then single track through the canyons back to the golf course and home over by gymnastics/stables..

Quite a fun day! It started out with Torsten’s soccer game (while Carrie and Suka went out for a ten mile run), then up to Pajarito for

We had fun wandering around, running into friends, sippin’ beers, having lunch at the lodge, running through the forest, etc… Carrie took Aven for a drive up in the Jemez at nap time. Torsten and I picked up our season passes — yeah!!!

Then Torsten and I took the lift ride up to the top with our bikes:

It was really a beautiful day. There were areas of fire damage in the ski area, and you could see it in the surrounding hills for sure. It was really amazing how well the grass came back, so the black, brown, and copper trees (and some green ones!) are standing (some sitting/laying) above green hillsides for the most part.

Then rode down! WAHOO! (I wasn’t good enough with the camera to get action shots…)

We finished it with a fantastic dinner and evening visit with Cassie, David, & kids..

Another successful day of fun and tiring out the kids!

Torsten and Matt took the long Labor Day weekend to join the Alaska Friends of the Pleistocene on Prince of Wales. It was great to catch up with everyone, especially Chip, Adelie, Cathy, and UAS students. We got great lectures from Dave D’Amore and Jim Baichtel. Here are the two naturalists on the first day:

Torsten and Matt flew up and met Chip and Adelie in Ketchikan. Due to crazy, constantly changing logistics (standard operating procedures for SEAK), we flew into Klawock early afternoon. Flying over Prince of Wales Island is a fantastic treat! For all of us, and definitely according to Torsten and Adelie, visiting the El Captian cave was the highlight of the trip. Here at the mouth of the cave,

we read up the warning signs:

and got some great info/lecturing from Dave D’Amore on the forest:

Once inside the cave, we learned lots of cave geology from Jim Baichtel and Johanna.. Torsten and Adelie were rapt:

And then Torsten and Adelie got to explore a small side cave (the “kids cave”) that had space for about four people max. Here’s Adelie making the first entrance to the side cave:

From El Capitan, we went to the Beaver Falls Karst hike (super cool!). The boardwalk trails through the sink-holes was fantastic:

Every night, one highlight was S’mores!!! (The other highlight was great geology lectures, and I think Torsten and Adelie did an amazing job paying attention for the ~2 hours lectures!) But did I say S’mores!?!? 🙂

We had a great hike down to Staney Creek, and the naturalists investigated and recorded some fantastic rainforest mushrooms. Amazing early (~3000 years ago?) human habitation was also described during the forest and river-side hiking with Jim.

We had many roadside stops, deer and bear viewings, and saw many spawning salmon. Here are a few more photos of the budding naturalists at work on the hike to the Thorne River erosion site:

After all the fun, we were all very exhausted:

What an incredible experience!! Thanks to everyone that made it possible. Here is the group photo in the front of the El Capitan cave entrance:

And if you desperately need more photos, the whole gallery is available..

On one of the last days in Mexico, we went out to the Coba ruins. They are about 50 km west of Tulum. It was fantastic to visit inland ruins, especially to contrast with Tulum. We enjoyed hiking through the jungle, but we missed info about closing time and were among the last few people being “shoed” out.. The Nohoch Mul pyramid was really fantastic:

Here is Carrie (you can just barely make her out!) half way up the pyramid:

From the top of the pyramid was a fantastic view of the jungle:

As we walked through the jungle (on very good, wide trails) we would come across more ruins:

We found this cool skull carving:

And we found proof of the original Mayan ipad!!

(look at all those apps!!)

What a great event!! Thanks to the county, the volunteers, and everyone who participated. Torsten had a fantastic first triathlon in the 18th annual Los Alamos kids triathlon. Torsten did the 1/2 Mile Bike and 1/4 Mile Run. He said he was “too hot” to swim, but also had gotten raw elbows earlier in the day, so didn’t want to swim. It was an overall extremely positive first time, and he said he definitely wants to do it next year.

Here is queuing up at the start (bike, run, swim was the order) — he ran into a friend at the start:

After the bike, on to the run:

The finish and medal:

And most importantly, the post-race celebration!!!

Torsten’s summary of the triathlon: “AWESOME!” 🙂

More memories of our 40th b-day Mexico celebration time to savor.

Every morning, while I enjoyed hammock time, Carrie went out for an ocean kayak:

And the sunset stroll, five minutes down the beach, to dinner at Casa Cenote, was very fantastic:

Carrie and I are both celebrating our 40th birthdays this August. We flew with Torsten and Aven to Lubbock, and then left them there with Grams & Gramps. We went took a flight to DFW and spent the night at the airport hotel there before flying into Cancun. We drove almost 2 hours south and checked into the Tankah Inn for 4 nights. The first night we walked about five minutes down the beach for delicious fish tacos as the Casa Cenote restaurant and then just across the street to swim in the Casa Cenote. This was a “local” cenote, with a great, relaxed atmosphere. This was a great intro to the birthday celebration.

Here is Carrie swimming in the Casa Cenote before we swam ~1.5km back to the “end” of the collapsed roof of this underwater-river (where only scuba folks could go)

We started day two with the great Tankah Inn breakfast (I had the Omelet Tankah everyday, with fantastic fresh salsa and sauces — I miss it!). Then we went to the Tulum ruins. We opted to get a tour guide for this first ruins, and got the “snorkel in the ocean and check out the ruins from out there” package deal (but saved that part for a few days). The Tulum ruins are unique in the Mayan civilization because they are built right on the beach (Tulum was a later Mayan city and really focused towards trade). The ruins were great!

And we decided that if we were Mayans, Tulum would be our choice:

This iguana at the Tulum ruins must have been on the government payroll for a tourist attraction. Carrie captured fantastic still photos and a great short movie:

It was hot hiking at the ruins, so, well… what ya gonna do?

We went back to the Tankah Inn, walked up to the Blue Sky for a great pizza meal — Carrie saw a bat fly past us! We also caught a cute little snake on the Tankah Inn stairs:

For the next day, we were really getting the hang of this relaxing stuff! We went to Sian Kaan, a UNESCO bioreserve south of Tulum. This was the highlight of the trip! We went ~5km on a really rough road (in about 30 minutes) and got to the tour headquarters. We looked at the maps, got a good intro, and then headed out into the salt water lagoons with our fantastic guide. We went partially up a natural canal through the mangroves, and then hoped out to walk about 1.5 km. We then jumped in, floated down the canal on a lifejacket (powered by the strong current) and monopolized our guide — he had done his graduate work on the birds in the area, so was a total bird nut and super knowledgeable. Then we got back in the boats, out to the ocean, a bit more touring of the lagoon, and then back to HQ for a fantastic whitefish dinner as part of the tour. The lagoons are on the left side of “highway” 109 in this map, while the ocean is on the right:

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and here it is in our photo:

We are heading out to get on the boats:

Here we head up the canal and then get out to walk the boardwalk:

(You can see the canal and boardwalk in this map. At the left end of the boardwalk, there was even a cool Mayan ruin which was used for rest when canoeing up the canal! Carrie saw another bat inside the ruin when we explored in there briefly.)

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The birds at the reserve were really fantastic:

Continued in the next entry….