Crazy Horse Memorial

Well, I have kind of a lot of pictures to share from today. Roger and I visited Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota today. What an interesting place, with a Native American museum that is well worth visiting. Crazy Horse was a Lakota Sioux warrior who fought against the U.S. government in an effort to preserve the Lakota way of life. He participated in the Battle of the Little Bighorn (also known as "Custer's last stand").



Over 50 years ago, in 1948, the sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski received a request from Chief Henry Standing Bear, which requested that a memorial similar to that of Rushmore be carved in memory of Crazy Horse. It has been under construction ever since. Not everyone agrees with the memorial, however. Some Lakota people believe that carving up a mountain goes against the spirit of Crazy Horse. Whatever your beliefs are about the mountain, the museum is worth a visit. Lots of interesting things on display, and a lot about Native American history can be learned as well. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the museum (at least I thought so) was the collection of tribal flags from around the country.











(Below: Here's our flag... the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe!)







Above: A painting of Billy Mills, the second Native American ever to win a gold medal in the Olympics (10,000 meter run, 1964 Tokyo Olympics). He is also the only American to have ever won gold in this event. Billy is also a Lakota Sioux. When I was in high school (8th grade, I believe) Billy was at Bemidji State University to do a 3 mile run for charity and to get to know some students. Our Indian Student Association sponsored a trip to Bemidji to run with Billy, and I wanted to go. It was a great honor to meet him, and somewhere at home my dad has a picture of me standing with Billy after the run.



Above: A "wall" of drawings made by people/students from around the world.













Above: Some of the drawings came from quite a distance... such as this one from Chile...



Above: ... and this one from Germany...



... and even one from Thailand!

Bubble Reflection

My reflection in a bubble on Hollow Rock Creek. I was out photographing some small waterfalls on the creek and watching all these bubbles float by. After watching them for a moment I realized that the trees and sky were reflecting in the bubbles. When I stood up and looked straight down on the bubbles, I could see my reflection as well. I decided to have some fun with it :-)

Lake Superior Ice - Last Call

Above: "Winter sunset on Pancake Bay"

As much as I hate to admit it, the ice season on Lake Superior is already over. These were the last ice images I was able to capture along the Lake Superior shoreline this year. Only a few days after these images were made, virtually all of the ice along Lake Superior's Minnesota north shore was gone. It just got too warm too early for the ice to hang around. March is usually the best month for ice on Lake Superior, but this year that just isn't going to be the case. At any rate, this weekend was a great weekend for photographing ice. My friend Roger and I had great fun photographing the ice over the weekend. And, thanks to the above average temperatures, we were actually quite comfortable (re: NOT freezing!) when we were shooting this weekend.



Above: "Crystal Blue", arguably my favorite ice image of this past winter. The center column on my Gitzo tripod actually came in quite handy for creating this image, since I had to get the camera very low to the ground to get the perspective I wanted for the shot. It was also quite tricky to set up, as I was on the slope of a rock that was covered in ice! Below: My tripod setup for capturing the "Crystal Blue" image. (Tripod image captured using my Canon G11 camera).



The above images were made at sunset, the two images below were made at sunrise the same day. We were exploring Red Rock Beach looking for some cool ice formations to photograph at sunrise and were about to give up when I found this small hole in the ice along the shoreline. This little "ice window" was only about a foot to a foot and a half tall, and I spotted it with just enough time to scramble down to it and get a shot of the sun just as it was beginning to poke up over the horizon.



Above Left: Icy Dawn

After the best of the morning light was gone, we walked out to the end of Red Rock Point and just did some exploring. Almost all of the ice was gone from the point; only a few small patches remained. At one point while walking around on the point I looked up and saw Roger sitting on the rocks, enjoying the view of the lake. I couldn't resist making this image of him enjoying the view.

Below: "A Superior View"

Sunset from Diablo

Sunset from Diablo, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

With clouds in the western sky, yesterday's sunset was beautiful. I was hiking in Diablo Foothills Regional Park when the sky lit up with beautiful shades of orange and pink. This area is home to the amazing China Wall rock formation, which stretches across two large hills. Rock outcroppings such as the one in this photo are common in the park.

Queen's Tears Bromaliad

About 30 years ago I gave my mom a start of this plant known as Queen's Tears. It is a Bromaliad named Billbergia Nutans. I lost my plant some time ago. After my mom passed on my sister took most of her plants. Her Queen's Tears had put on lots of babies or pups but hadn't bloomed. Last year my sister gave me one of the plants and last week it decided to bloom. Here are two photos. The pink part looks like one of the leaves but is a beautiful pink. The pink part opened up and the 'Tears' dropped down. Slowly each 'tear' opened showing the yellow stemens while the covering curled back showing the beautiful blue edges. This is a fairly common Bromaliad but still unique as all Bromaliads are. I did read that they usually bloom at this time of the year which makes it a favorite for Valentine's Day. The little blossom is small enough that it was hard for me to take photos of it with my poor camera.This plant also sometimes has nector droplets that fall off the flowers which is another reason for it's name of Queen's Tears. It seems to be very easy to grow. Seems to like to be pot bound before it will bloom and prefers to be watered sparingly. Some sites said it did well where it got some frost but mine is an inside plant so I don't know about that. I have mine in an east window and it gets lots of light and heat especially in the summer.

Vegemite and Chilis

Gareth Llewellyn and Simon Mentz travelled the country for Vegemite.

Vegemite sponsored them on their quest to photograph Australia's 100 Classic Climbs.

Red Chili and Wild Country sponsored me to climb on their Vegemite Promotional Video.

The deal was that they post their stories on Facebook.











And we all did what the big corporate giants told us to.











The Climbers " Made from Vegemite"









Look out for their upcoming book in .

ps. it was in the script that I fall off the top of Evil Wears No Pants.




jj

Cutting the Tree

We decided that since we wanted to get one more load of firewood we would also cut us a Christmas tree this year. We stopped at the Jemez Ranger Station to buy the permit to cut the tree then went up the mountain to cut wood. After we had the wood loaded we searched till we found the perfect little tree and cut it and loaded it on top of the wood to bring it home.