A Visit to Zapata Falls

March 17, 2017

From my arrival, I've had been really busy, helping first with judging a regional science fair, then with preparations for and working during the Crane Festival.  I looked forward to a few days off and started thinking about where I'd go.

I decided on a visit to Zapata Falls, one of the hidden gems of Colorado that is on the way to Great Sand Dunes National Park.

It was a beautiful early spring day, albeit with lots of remaining snow on the ground. I enjoyed the hour's drive and especially enjoyed the slow climb up the side of Blanca mountain with more and more of the San Luis Valley coming into sight and long views across to the San Dunes. The road had been plowed, but it is extremely rocky and can only be driven very slowly. It took about twenty minutes to reach the parking lot.  I gathered up my camera and hiking sticks and put on heavy coat for the first time in several years - I had left my other jackets in my work van- and started out.  The trail continues a little up hill, but is still easy and only eight tenths of a mile long. I stopped to take
pictures a few times before I saw the clef in the rocks that allows for the waterfall.

Blanca Mountain from just east of Alamosa

View from the dirt road to Zapata Falls

Looking out towards the sand dunes

Another view of the dunes and Sangre de Christo Mountains

I could not stop taking landscapes

The clouds and snow enhanced the views

Soon I was walking into the clef in the cliff into a shadowy world with ice piled against rock walls and the sound of moving water resonating from under the ice.  I continued carefully along the partially cleared path, walking into the crevice in the rocks.


Getting close

The snow was piled against the cliffs

Closeup of the rocks

Inside the falls had frozen to a glorious statue

These kids were trying to climb the rocks in spite of warnings not to do so

A closer view of the frozen falls showing the different textures

This looks like an abstract of two lovers to m

 I took the rest of the pictures on the way back, as the light got a little better.

The trail out of the crevice

A view down the trail to the outside of the crevice

This ice had moving water singing under it, with the ice adding resonance

Another trail view

Sangre de Christi mountains from the trail

Another long and hazy view

I can't get enough of the play of clouds and snow on the mountains

A closer view 

A view as I came back down the road

The view from near the bottom of the mountain

A pristine peak

I arrived back home to see the reason for naming these mountains the Sangre de Cristi, or Blood of Christ. The rising and setting sun can turn them blood red. I get this view many evenings.

On a personal front, I've been learning as much as possible about the flowering plants of the valley while helping to get ready for a safety inspection. I also am just back from visiting my daughter and then meeting with Virginia Scott, the bee expert who is helping me with materials and protocols to maximize bee collection in the valley.

Archeology at My House

March 9, 2019

Most of my terribly onerous jobs at the Crane Festival involved hauling a loud speaker system on a bus and turning it on for the person leading the tour. Then I sat back and enjoyed the tour.  My boss even pulled strings to get me on the Archeology Tour - she said I really needed to know about it.

Imagine my surprise when the bus turned into my yard and parked. I found that my little house on the prairie is on the edge of the Scott Mill site.  I had already been wowed by the talk given by Meg Van Ness, the Region 6 archeologist.  She said this site, identified in June 2009, documents over 10,000 years of use by native Americans and also holds the bones of several species of late Pleistocene animals, including giant bison, mammoth, camel, and horse.  And it holds artifacts into the twentieth century. It is a huge site, comprising at least 250 acres.

I thought the most amazing thing collected from the site was a mammoth tooth. Later we visited the exact spot where it had been dug up. The tooth is now protected with a concrete edging and reinforcement in the root area.

Mammoth tooth - one  twenty-eight 

We passed a field with about 2000 cranes feeding 

This is my house and work truck.  The bus parked just behind where my truck usually parks

Meg explaining the site to us 

Most of the people doing the archeology tour

One of the flints we found on the site

This was another artifact we found

A flint knapper probably sat here and made a point.  We found lots of his little chips

What a flake looks like in situ

This is a mano - the upper rock used to grind grains

We found two points - this is one of them

This is a fragment of a mammoth tooth 

Another view of the same tooth

This is a glass top to a jar - it is pre world war I because it has turned purple due to the
manganese dioxide used to keep it clear

This site has been studied and  the surface cleared, but continuing wind erosion continues to uncover new artifacts.

And got to enjoy all this without EVEN hauling the speakers.  There were three volunteers on this trip and I deferred to the other two. And what fun to think that I am to put another (micro) layer of history on the surface of this site.

This site is off limits to the public, except for when there are special guided trips to it. That is one of the main reasons, we know about it.  Most such sites are kept secret to help preserve them from artifact hunters.

The festival ended on Sunday.  The next morning saw me get 8 inches of snow which caused a power outage. But the mountains sure look pretty.  I stayed in Alamosa that night and enjoyed the view of Mt. Blanca.

An evening picture of cranes flying across Mt. Blanca

Mount Blanca and the frozen pond at Alamosa - it thawed last Thursday

Mt. Blanca from behind the Alamosa Visitor Center

On a personal note, I'm rushing to do and document our annual inspection of our fire extinguishers. I had to take a test to get certified to do this. And I'm working to complete a spread sheet of expected plants that bees visit, together with their bloom dates. I'll get to visit my daughter  and grandson who will be visiting Colorado for spring break next week. 

Annual Visit to Choke Canyon State Park

My friend, Natalie was busy getting her house ready to sell- she just closed on it - and was ready to take a break.  Meanwhile, I was stuck in the government closing and not getting to do much work, so I was bored. My summer boss said she would love to have me come up for the Crane Festival and then Natalie started asking several of us if we wanted to camp out a few days in mid February at Choke Canyon State Park, the northernmost of the south Texas parks. It is at the junction of Mexican and American birds, and eastern and western birds, and is the westernmost place to find the American Alligator.  It has javelina also.


It has been a tradition for me to camp and paddle and birdwatch there the third weekend in February, which is the unofficial first day of Texas spring. I started going by myself, then offered it to friends, then even advertised it on line, which netted me several more close friends. When she asked me what dates I could come, I told her to make a date in early to mid February and I would set my leave time so I could get there.

This visit was not quite as wild as some of them have been.  I couldn't paddle and we had some big winds, so no one paddled. But we had a great time looking for wildflowers and birds and visiting.

We always set up oranges and sunflower seeds in our camp. Many species come to them.

Audubon's oriole

We visited Seventy Acre Lake a few times and always found some good birds.  But there are not as many as we have had in the past. The most exciting bird we have ever seen there was a jacana, visiting us from Mexico.

I think this is a juvenile Lincoln's sparrow

A mix of shovelers and blue-winged teal

One of our walks was on alongside the lake, and then on to the group camping area. Wildflowers were just starting to bloom.

Verbena

I think this is Mexican Primrose

Not sure what this is but had very interesting leaves

A pair of pelicans hanging out together

I think this is a white evening primrose 

Blooming yucca

A closeup of its flowers

Nature's own arrangement

I think this is sweet acacia

 I also love to go find the invasive Mother-of-thousands and see how it is spreading. It must cover about an acre now. On one of my early trips, I found it and thought it was a native plant. I pinched off a little cutting. A piece of that cutting fell into a crack in my steps to my upstairs condo. I came back from a long summer vacation to find it thriving in its crack.  THEN I found it was very invasive.

Mother-of-thousands around a yucca

The bloom is gorgeous 

I caught a caracara watching me take pictures of the Mother-of-thousands

Agarito  blooms - this is know as a nurse plant because deer
won't stick their noses into it to get a seedling of another species

I think this might be bristleleaf pricklyleaf

Part of a large patch of verbena

 A young female vermillion flycatcher

The great egrets were already in breeding plumbage

A lovely sunset

On a personal note.  I have arrived and am almost settled in to my little house in Colorado.  I judged a part of a regional science fair this past Thursday and Friday.  Monday will get hectic as we all ramp up get the physical stuff done to be ready to the Crane Festival next weekend. Part of our staff meeting will involve digging out the pullouts along the nature drive. I'm hoping it will rain enough over the weekend to take care of most of it.  But we have so much snow, we had to plow it up so the thousands of sandhill cranes could find the barley seeds we grow for them.