Deer at PT...

When we drove into this side road in Coupeville, ready to hop out and look for a cache, we weren't the first ones there. First an almost-grown fawn wandered up to the door, then a very small fawn, and already grazing on the grass we spotted the doe.







The older two weren't the least bit bothered by having us there, but eventually the little one got a bit spooked and trotted off across the driveway, heading for the tall grass of a vacant lot.



The other two kept on grazing on the landscaping, just as though they were waiting for their appointed time at the physical therapy clinic.

Head of the creek...

We walked the trail from the lake to the freeway, in search of a geocache, but also to explore this tiny new park that links an old homestead site to a huge trail and open space system. We were obviously not the only humans this young buck has come in contact with... he was very curious, and seemed happy to pose for me.

Snake magnet...

On the road early this morning to explore, drive the back roads, and follow the Oregon Trail. We stayed out longer than planned, playing "just one more cache." At our last (really) cache of the day, in the fading light, DW pulled over on the side of a dirt road, and got out to start looking.

I hopped out of the Pilot, and just two feet away, coiled up between two sagebrush bushes, was a Pacific rattlesnake. As fast as I got out, I was back inside. I lowered the window and called for DW, pointing out my window, and saying, "Snake!" At least I think I was saying the word, not yelling it. I'm not sure.

He finally got the message and came around the back of the Pilot to have a look, and his eyes got pretty big. Maybe just as big as mine. But I could still aim the Nikon out the window, and take a few photos. And then we drove to the other side of the road, and found the cache.

I lived in eastern Washington for seven years, and never saw a rattlesnake. For decades I've traveled through the snake country of the West, without ever seeing even a hint of a snake. And twice in the past three months, I've ended up way too close to a coiled rattlesnake for comfort.

Elk and golf

Talk about a double take! As we drove into Estes Park, we spotted a huge bull elk standing in a yard on the edge of the road, and slowed down to watch. I glanced to the right, and told DW to turn around, now. I guided him back to a side road, watching ahead, then pointed toward the golf course. We found the rest of the herd.

There were three big bulls in the herd, including this guy who was close enough to temp a few guys to walk out onto the golf course. Not a great idea.

This guy was roaming around in a golf cart, trying to herd the elk together and off the course. Good luck with that. When he saw the three guys photographing the bull, he headed their way and tried to shoe them off the course, too. Here he had better luck. The elk just ignored him.

When we retraced our steps, the original bull elk was still grazing his way through the yard of this small house. I love having deer visit my yard occasionally, but I'm not sure I'd like having elk visit me.

All this just strengthened my belief that if you don't want to miss out on these unexpected sights, never go anywhere without a camera.

Miata envy...

This guy was grazing his way through my flowerbeds this morning, when he stopped dead and looked out toward the driveway.

There was nothing out there, so I have to assume he was just admiring my little red roadster!

The not-so-baby buck

This guy started hanging around the farm a couple of years ago, first with a small doe, and last year, all alone. His antlers in this mid-May photo are still velvet-covered.

Today I saw him out of the corner of my eye as I walked past the dining room windows. He was walking around under the big cedar tree that overhangs our patio. It's so shady and dark under there, I almost didn't see him. Later in the afternoon, when it was hot and sill, he and his mate took a snooze under the trees in the old orchard.

I'm always glad to see deer on our place, but I always wonder what my neighbors think. Two of my neighbors are avid gardeners: Lucy, who has planted every foot of her gorgeous acre lot, and Jim, who spends all his spare time working outside on his two-plus acres. Our other neighbor, who shares our long side and has horses and cattle (and exotic birds), doesn't mind when the deer visit.

Baby buck

This morning I opened the kitchen blinds and glanced into the orchard, and there he was:  our baby buck, grazing on the bright green spring grass.

My camera was in the bedroom, and Dave was still in bed. I tiptoed in, grabbed my camera bag, slid open the bathroom window while thumbing the on switch, and missed him. He'd moved out to the pasture, so I got the shots I could with no time to fiddle with settings.

Then I leaned my elbows on the sill, and watched until he moved out of sight, down to the pond.

We'd lived at the farm, in this small rural valley, for 25 years before we ever saw a deer. The valley was just crying out for deer, full of horse pastures and orchards, ringed with wooded hillsides. A lot of people besides us had horses, and there was hay and grain in barns up and down the valley. But we never saw any deer.

My neighbors who had vegetable gardens thought I was crazy, because deer can become a real nuisance. But I never had anything on my place that I couldn't share with a couple of deer. They're welcome to apples from the orchard, and all the blackberries (and blackberry canes) they can eat. There's always tall grass to shelter them, and a pond for water. I lost more lettuce and spinach over the years to my flock of geese.

Then five years ago during a cold winter, we had a 4-point buck and a doe spend the day with us, and from then on, we'd see deer a few times a year. This small buck is new. We've seen him twice in the past couple of months, and he still hasn't grown his antlers for the year. I didn't see the doe today; maybe she was bedded down in the front pasture.

Buck in the orchard...

OK...  this is not what I expected to see when I looked out my kitchen window today. The skies had turned blue and grey, but the wind was rising and a storm was predicted. So I expected to see the leaves falling from the fruit trees, not this young two-point buck taking a nap in the shelter of the trees.

We've seen him quite a bit this year, always alone. We don't grow a vegetable garden, so there's not much to tempt him, and I don't mind sharing the orchard fruit and pasture grass with him.

Shy moose...

On the Road Again Day 14 | Moose makes the trip

On a high from our second float trip in three days, we changed clothes and went exploring. We've yet to find an actual town of Island Park, then discovered that it has the longest Main Street in America: 33 miles. That explains a lot.

We did our best to find residential areas, found a few, hidden in the woods. The valley is in the middle of an ancient caldera and ringed by the old rim. The cottonwoods along the river are changing to bright yellow, gorgeous.

The local stretch of the river flows from a reservoir, so we decided to take a look before heading back to the lodge for dinner. As we turned the corner toward the dam, a couple of cars were stopped in the road and I saw why: a young male moose was trying to cross the road. He freaked out a bit and ran back across the road and into the brush, where he stood watching. The others went on but we backed off and gave him lots of space. And when he tried it again, I was standing by the car with my telephoto lens.

Spotting my favorite animal up close was a thrill.

Fruit-loving coyote

We saw a small coyote a few weeks back, limping across our lawn and disappearing into the pasture. And lately we've found doggie (or coyote) gifts on the patio and driveway. This morning Dave glanced out the kitchen window and spotted a coyote in the orchard. I grabbed my camera, and we watched the coyote calmly devour a pear, standing just a few feet from the house. We tapped on the window to get his attention while I took pictures, but he didn't leave until his food was gone. And he didn't go far... a while later I saw him curl up into a depression between some tree roots and go to sleep.

It seems that fruit is a staple of the coyote diet, so our two orchards are going to be a big draw until all the fruit has fallen. I hope that also means that once the fruit is gone, the coyote will also leave. Dave chased him away from his nap, and he will ran off toward the county park.

Tips for scaring them off:  yell loudly, wave your arms, reinforce the coyote's natural fear of people. Yeah... worked really well. Until he came back to finish his nap.

This time we tried pounding on the dining room window, which seemed to be much scarier... he ran away and hasn't come back.

Zero moose

I looked everywhere today, in their last remaining habitat, for signs of my favorite woodland animal. No luck.

Not in the wide valleys and brushy meadows in Waterton park, or in Glacier National Park.

Not along the Pend Oreille River on its course through northeast Washington and into Idaho. Not along the Kettle River from Canada through Curlew and south, even though we saw a lot of the habitat that moose love.

Not even around the beaver ponds in the highlands above the Pend Oreille river, on the drive to Gardner Cave. The ranger there said she's often seen moose at the beaver ponds, especially in the early morning and late evening hours, but we couldn't wait until the perfect time.

After our cave walk we spent some time at the beaver ponds. It's one of the most peaceful places I've ever seen. I sat beside one of the ponds and wished I could have stayed there for a couple of hours. The light was so beautiful in the late afternoon, and the clouds were reflected in the still surface of the pond.

It would have been the perfect place to be, if there had just been a moose.

Frog in a box

What do you call a frog in a box?
Charlie or Willie or Sam?
Probably not.
He came in from the lawn one day
Decided to stay
In a garden trunk full of cool stuff.
Cushions for chairs and buckets and tubs,
Hoses and tools and pruners for shrubs.
Lots of hiding places for a frog and his friends,
in quite an enormous space.
He comes and he goes through a crack in the side,
But always returns to the quiet inside.
So what do you call a frog in a box?
Jack would make sense,
but he seems to like George.

The tiniest fawn

We were out for a day of geocaching with our pal, Ian, who drove over from Portland. Today we tackled another of the geocaching "power trails," this one high in the mountains SW of Hood River. These were tough, and it was nice to have a third set of eyes (and a third brain) to find some of these caches.

Around one bend in the road, a doe trotted out in front of us, and as we waited for her to cross, out from the brush came the smallest fawn we've ever seen. It could have been just hours old, tiny but spunky as it circled around its mom. We hung way back; this photo was taken with my 300mm zoom lens from inside the Pilot, so it's a bit soft around the edges. Just like the fawn.

Singing coyote

Every night for more than a week, I've heard a pack of coyotes barking and howling on the other side of the valley. There have always been coyotes here, as long as we can remember. Lots of open pastures, lots of woods, but the real draw is the nearby creek and all the ponds. There are always geese and ducks near the water, plus chickens and other birds (one of our new neighbors brought several peacocks with him when he moved in; he built an outdoor aviary pretty quickly!).
This pack sounds like it's at the big pond across the road, and it sounds like a really big pack. The first time I heard them, I'd just climbed into bed to read, and had the windows open. The cats usually ignore the sound of a barking dog or the occasional coyote; this big pack freaked them out. James actually stood up and stared toward the windows, and had to be coaxed into relaxing and settling down to sleep.

After midnight, I heard one of them singing solo. It's a treat to hear a coyote sing, sort of a yip-yip that soars up into a howl, and it can go on and on. It's haunting and beautiful to hear.

It got me thinking about all the coyote sightings we've had since we moved here. I wouldn't have thought they'd live so close to suburban areas, but the coyote has adapted really well to fringe rural areas like ours. They've become tolerant of people, wary, but tolerant. I like to walk the back roads near my house, and often see a coyote coming or going between the creek and the open pastures, sometimes boldly trotting down the gravel road in front of me.

They've also adapted to a changing food supply, and people are good at unintentionally providing food for them: garbage cans, leaving pet food outside, and even (sad to say) the pets themselves. Every time I see a sign posted for a missing cat, I just shake my head. I used to let my cats go outside, but finally decided it was too big a risk. Ironically, it was a pair of neglected neighborhood dogs who posed the biggest risk to my cats, not the coyotes. When the dogs started packing, they started killing everything they could catch—cats, geese, ducks, chickens, you name it. But that's a story for another day.

On the positive side, in a world where other natural predators have moved away from people, coyotes can help keep an expanding rodent population under control. And in rural areas, especially where there are horses and cows (not to mention llamas and alpacas), rodents are part of the deal. So we've encouraged barn cats to share the barn by providing food, but built a special shelf high on the wall of the barn, easy for a cat to jump up to, too high for a coyote or dog, and( hopefully) out of the reach of rodents!

Treed Raccoons

We went to our lake cabin this weekend, and after we got the truck unloaded and moved the Adirondack chairs out to the deck, I got a beer and my book, and settled down to read. I hadn't been outside more than a couple of minutes, when I heard the scrabbling sound of a chipmunk heading up one of the fir trees. Except it wasn't a chipmunk—it was a racoon. I watched it climb up the trunk toward the first branch, and there were two others waiting for him.

I quietly got up and went inside, woke Dave up, and grabbed my camera. The three racoons just stared at us. I got a couple of shots from inside, then we went out to the deck and settled down to watch them. They spent a couple of hours in the tree, staring at us until the novelty wore off, then climbed to the next big branch and settled down for a nap, screened behind the foliage, and stayed there for half an hour. They all moved up two more levels, one at a time, following mom. We wondered how they'd get down, and it was fascinating to watch them come headfirst down the trunk, stopping at each branch, then finally making it to the ground.

I love being surprised. Just when you think you won't see anything new, that the sights outside the windows will remain the familiar, beautiful view you've loved for almost two decades, something happens to remind you that life is ever changing... you just have to pay attention.

Great Spangled Fritillary

After our brush with the butterfly hatch in Tennessee and North Carolina, wherever I spotted them I tried to capture them on film. We stopped at a neat park that highlighted logging and cooperage history of Missouri, and also had spectacular perennial gardens. And where there are flowers, there are butterflies. We didn't see this variety anywhere else, but they were sure common in Missouri. Gorgeous, isn't it?

Butterfly Hatch on the Blue Ridge

The plan today is to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway north through North Carolina, and into Virginia, and get as far as practical before stopping for the night. This road is very cool, very uncrowded, and we wished we were in the MX-5.

Upstream we went, into the park alongside one of the prettiest rivers I've ever seen. there are butterflies everywhere: indigo blue, monarch, different colors of swallowtail, black and white. They must have just hatched, because literally, they're fluttering around everywhere. The road through the park is beautiful, with grassy verges and dappled trees on both sides. The mountains are doing their namesake thing: mist rising really makes the hills look smoky.




We went as far as the ridgetop overlook, took pictures, enjoyed the sunshine and distant vistas, then headed back down. We stopped at a bridge we'd seen on the way up, and took more photos. The way the sunlight bounced off the water was really cool.







My favorite is a wide-angle shot taken vertically, with the pattern of river tumbling over rocks repeated until it was out of sight.

Rocky Mountain moose

Good luck charm? I'm thinking Dave's gift of a moose pin brought us luck. Not long after we headed south, out of the park, we saw a couple of people standing on the side of the road, with cameras pointed toward the trees.

We (and everyone else) slammed on the brakes, and in about two seconds, we realized they'd spotted a huge cow moose, grazing in this small meadow. Dave pulled over, pushed me out, and I walked carefully to the shoulder, trying not to move too quickly. I got about a dozen photos before she got spooked by being watched and trotted off to the trees.

I walked back to the car with a big grin on my face. I love the moose, and we've rarely seen one in the wild. The road was a traffic jam. A ranger was walking up the road telling people to move on. Some people had simply stopped right in the middle of the road, so anxious to get a look at wildlife. Dave said the ranger was just telling those people to move… now.

My First 14er

This was an experience I didn't expect: driving to the top of a 14,000+ foot mountain. Mt. Evans is one of many 14,000+ foot mountains in Colorado, but usually lands on top of the list because the road to the top is the highest paved road in America.

Suzie told me that this was one of her mom's favorite places, and she could have come up here every day without getting tired of it.

This was only my second day at mile-high altitude, so climbing another 8,000 feet was faintly disturbing. But oh so worth it! Even on a partly cloudy day, the views were amazing. At the first stop there's a small lake at the foot of a scree slope, hiking trails, and an old stone mountaineering hut. A crew is busy building two new structures, which will be stone like the older one. Construction is tough here--everything has to be lugged up the mountain, tools run by generator, and the weather can change in a heartbeat.

When Suzie thought I was acclimated a bit, we tackled the last part of the road, which switchbacks through tundra to the summit. Just up the first slope, she spotted a big herd of goats, and we stopped for photos. And just down from the summit, we saw another herd. Both groups had pristine white kids, and adults that looked a bit worse for wear! (We also saw clumps of shedding goat hair everywhere, on buildings and guardrails, and on the ground.)

Finally at the top, small parking area, the remnants of the restaurant that burned, and the standing walls reconfigured to create an obervatory of sorts, with openings toward the views. And what views they were! You can look east to Denver and beyond, southeast to New Mexico, and northwest to the peaks of the central Rockies. There are signboards that explain the natural history here, and the old restaurant provides a handy shelter from the gusting winds. It's wide open and bare up here, true tundra landscape. And, it was snowing.

We stuck it out long enough to enjoy the views, took some photos (including this inquisitive little guy who climbed the mountain of boulders to spy on us), then headed down. I was fairly out of breath after an hour at elevations you can't drive to in Washington State, but loved every minute of this day!