MissyMisc: September 2009

Sunday, September 20, 2009

BLACK SANDS FISHING DERBY 2009

Sometimes you don't know where your weekend will lead you. For example, to a fishing derby. Didn't know a soul, but everyone was real friendly and happy to pose with their fish.

UP THE BIG DUNE

Remember that movie "Up the Sandbox" with Barbra Striesand where she's a jealous neurotic having hallucinations about her breast size? What was that all about? I don't know because I was only about Emily's age when I saw part of it and that's not what this post is about, except that climbing up the big dune is a bit like climbing up a huge sandbox.

Here Emily pulls up her boots and starts hiking.

If you click on this photo, Emily is the dark dot just up and left of center.

In this photo, Em is the dot descending the farthest face of the dune.

And here she is, red-faced and reaching for the water bottle after climbing and descending North America's tallest single-structure sand dune (470 feet) in under 25 minutes.

SUNRISE AT THE DUNES

Saturday morning sunrise. Just before dawn, Venus and Regulus hang in the east, the year's closest pairing of planet and first magnitude star

The cabins.

A few minutes later.

Off to the dunes and through "the gate". The dunes are full of tunnelling game trails too small to navigate. On the north end of the lake, only this Russian olive arch gives entry to the flats and small dunes leading to the lake.

Evidence of last night's critter party around this bush.

Deer.

Kangaroo mice and one big porcupine track.

On the lake, a big osprey landed in the tallest tree in the shadow of the big dune. A gorgeous bird in the binoculars, but not close enough to photograph.

On the way back from the dunes I got a bit lost looking for the gate. Here it is from the other side.

A Bruneau rainbow.

Back at the cabin, my dune buddy is awake and ready to hike the big dune.

In the restroom on the way to the dune, some dorky miscreant has misspelled his own name. Way to go, "Caper"!

WARP SPEED THROUGH THE MILLER MOTHS! Another adventure on Highway 78.

Emily took this photo of our windshield on our way to Bruneau on Friday night, but the camera couldn't capture the weird hallucination we were both having.

As soon as the sun went down, we started noticing a LOT of moth activity in our headlights. Idaho had a blockbuster Miller moth hatch this year, and the concentrations seem to be especially thick along Highway 78 as it follows the Snake River along the long volcanic scar of southern Idaho. The headlights catch the light-colored moths and illuminate them to a kind of yellow-white glow and then they literally make tracers as the car whizzes toward them at 65 mph. The effect is like looking from the command deck on the Enterprise as they hit warp speed, only the moths are flittering about so the tracers have tiny zigs and zags, making the effect even more like looking into constantly exploding fireworks. It was weirdly mesmerizing and beautiful.