Twenty Mule Team Canyon

Our first stop on Dec. 10 in Death Valley was the Twenty Mule Team Canyon.  I think it's one of the locations they used to mine borax from, or travel with the mules to move the borax around.  It's a canyon you can drive through in a car, but we got out in lots of places to take photos and climb up on the surreal rocks.

Some of these photos are Ed's and some are mine, which explains the difference in colour tone.

We climbed up one of the hills and found this little statue that someone had left behind:

Here he is, pondering from his high perch in his desert milieu:

Next stop will be Dante's View, which looks over the lowest point in North America from way up high on a mountain ...

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

When we got to Death Valley, we were tired from the drive so we only did one very short hike at these dunes.  These are the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes.  It was late in the day and that is probably the best time of day to see them as the light is warm and makes for interesting shadows that shift every few minutes - it was a bit hazy too. This was December 9, 2012.

Lots of footprints in the sand there - these are heavily visited dunes.

A few days later we visited them briefly again on our way out of the park, here are Ed's way superior photos of the dunes on Dec. 14:

Drive to Death Valley, last December

I've been promising these photos for a long time!  In December I visited Death Valley National Park in California.  This is an amazing place - it sounded kind of boring but somewhere that I should visit to say I was there, but it ended up being one of the most visually fascinating places I had ever been.

Here are a few photos from the drive there on December 9, 2012.

We stopped at a salt-flat lake on the way there, here I am on the shore:

This is inside the park.  We saw an animal trotting towards us in our lane as we drove along the road:

A coyote!  This guy wasn't too afraid of us.

We stopped and took some photos of the road here, Ed took this one of the road winding up into the next range of mountains:

These gravel mountains remind me of the landscape around Arctic Bay on Baffin Island:

... and here we are coming out of the mountains with our first glimpse of Death Valley.

We're going to visit some sand dunes next ... don't go away!

Spock's Rocks

Yesterday we took a little road trip out to see the Vasquez Rocks.  These are a little bit north of Los Angeles, near Santa Clarita.   They're famous for being the set for the worst fight scene ever (12.5 million YouTube hits can't be wrong) from the first season of Star Trek.

They're pretty amazing:

Here is Gorn, back in 1966, at the start of the famous fight scene :

And me, 47 years later in 2013:

Here is a screen capture from the Star Trek Movie at another spot in the rocks.  The mountains on the right were digitally added, the one on the left is the real one:

... and here are the guys from Big Bang Theory doing their tribute at the same spot ...

And me, same spot:

Here are a few more photos of the rocks and the hike we did around the park that they are in.  Spot me in the one below...

The rocks have these interesting craters in them - it seems from looking at other spots, that other rocks were embedded in this sedimentary rock and then came dislodged over the years, and the spots eroded out:

I loved this curvy rock formation, very surreal:

... and that was our trip to Spock's (Vasquez) Rocks!  I know I am completely unreliable when I say to stay tuned, but I do have photos from trips to Death Valley (back in December) and Joshua Tree (earlier in March) National Parks, and I am going to post them, so don't go away!  Or... don't go away too far, and keep an ear out for when I post them ...

The Dentist's Igloo

I passed through Resolute on my way to and from Grise Fiord.  While I was there, a friend told me about an igloo that one of the travelling dentists had built out behind the sea cans beside the South Camp Inn.

It's a small one, it could probably just hold one or two people, and even then you'd have to fold them!  It's pretty good though - the small gaps in the walls are probably due to strong winds since it was built, it had been there around 3 weeks or so at least before I visited it.  There was drifting at the entrance so I couldn't go inside (plus, it was minus 42 out so I had to keep moving, and keep my mitts out of the snow!).

The Vagabond boat

For the second winter, the Vagabond arctic research boat is overwintering at Grise Fiord.  They spent last winter at the South Cape of Ellesmere Island, frozen in the ice, around 2 hours by skidoo from Grise Fiord.

This year, they are overwintering on the beach of Grise Fiord itself!

If you want to read more about this interesting expedition, the Vagabond has a blog at http://www.vagabond.fr/news .

Grise Fiord Community Centre

I just came back a few days ago from a week in Grise Fiord.  Here's something that was new since my last visit:

The new community centre is under construction.  I guess I don't need to call it the "new" one, as there is no old one.  Grise has not had a community centre before now, all community events have been held at the school, at least in recent years.  This new building will house the hamlet offices, a few other offices, and a gymnasium / gathering space.

It's on a nice site overlooking the pond ... the only unfortunate thing is it blocks the health centre's view of the mountains at the mouth of the fiord.  Ah well, progress.  I think it will be a beautiful building when it's complete.

Big Stumps trail

OK, this lazy blogger is ready to show you the last of her summer vacation photos!   On August 31, the day we headed home, we stopped at the Big Stumps trail on the way out of Sequoia National Park.  This was one of the areas logged in the late 1800's.

The night before, we had bought a little baby sequoia at the gift shop.  As it was summer, we couldn't leave the little guy in the car while we hiked, or he'd bake, so Baby Goliath came along in my backpack.

Here he is, being introduced to his giant relatives:

Here's me in a stump - I can't remember if this tree was cut down or if it fell from natural causes, it looks like maybe the latter:

Here I am on the stump of the Mark Twain tree.  This one was cut down to give a cross section to the New York Natural History Museum, I think in the late 1800's.

This is a tree they started to cut down a long time ago and then changed their minds.  It lives on.  There I am at the base looking at the cut:

Here's what happened to too many of the giants as they were felled, they shattered as they hit the ground and were left where they fell.  I'm in this photo, see if you can find me:

And for a happy ending, here is Baby Goliath, at home in Los Angeles, in his new pot.  I expect he'll need a new one sometime in the next 1000 years.  In the meantime, he is surrounded with pointy sticks to protect against squirrel incursions.