2025 Adventures

Updated: Dec 30, 2025

January

A friend asked me to pick up some batteries while I was out shopping last week, so I happily grabbed a package of batteries that were on sale...

Oh my!! What horrid packaging!!

The package shows a little illustration of scissors trimming around the edge, so I did that... but there was still no way to get a battery out of this absurd people-proof packaging. What were they thinking?

Or, "why weren't they thinking" may be the more appropriate question here.

I trimmed and cut and pulled and twisted to no avail. Nonetheless I kept on trying...astonishingly it took several minutes of additional trimming, cutting, pulling and twisting to get to a point where the batteries could be removed from the package. But then there was no place to conveniently store them, because the package was destroyed.

And I'm told that the packaging by other battery companies can be even worse! Heavy sigh.

It seems that all too many US companies only care about short-term profits, not long-term customer satisfaction.  That's a pity. This too shall pass.

 

 

February

Unusually mild weather here in early February, a lot of snow up in the mountains, but warm and sunny down here on the flatlands:

Well, it had been warm and sunny... with a temperature over 70 degrees at noon, but suddenly an arctic cold front arrived and dropped the temperature nearly 30 degrees in 30 minutes:

 

 

March

Ugh. Winter.

 

April

 I was visiting a friend who enjoys everything flamingo, and I was telling her about the brightly orange-colored flamingos that I had seen in Rio Legartos, Mexico which get their bright orange color from the carotenoids in brine shrimp, which then led to some pondering about how certain animals learn to eat certain foods, and further led to the following little experiment with Google Gemini's image creator, as a whimsical thought about how they might learn about eating brine shrimp:

 

Whilst hiking south of Boulder, we met this rattlesnake. At first it was very defensive, it coiled up and started rattling for a while, then eventually relaxed and went on its merry way:

A wonderful sign that winter is finally ending...flowers are beginning to bloom along the hiking trails! Yay!

Some lovely sand lily flowers... such a splendid treat after a long winter:

Mustard family... Bladderpod?

Prairie Agoseris (False Dandelion) flower:

Wavy Puccoon flowers... nature has such endless creativity!

 

May

The days are getting warmer, and more flowers are peeking out every day! What a wonderful time of the year! Such splendid regrowth and recovery from the frigid days of winter.

Closeup of a Larkspur flower:

 

Death Camas... contains highly toxic alkaloids which can kill cattle, horses and sheep:

Wallflower just beginning to bloom:

A beautiful wild iris:

Wild Honeysuckle flowers:

  

June

Every week there are more and more wildflowers blooming along the hiking trails, and I'm so thankful that winter is over!

The Colorado state wildflower, a Blue Columbine, the first one I've seen this year, near ButtonRock Reservoir:

I never noticed this little flower before, apparently called Sticky Starwort:

Looking across Buttonrock Reservoir, I noticed an odd serpentine patch of calm water snaking across the otherwise rippled surface of the lake. the "snake" was probably a quarter of a mile long, and lasted for 15 or 20 minutes, gradually weaving about on the surface and then disappearing.

Creepy waters! The water flowing toward this little dam appears pitch black and yet the surface is as reflective as a mirror:

A pair of pelicans happily cruising a pond near my house, frequently slurping up fish as they patrol the pond:

Each time I see this silly sign it makes me chuckle, or maybe it's more of a chortle, well, whatever it makes me do, the sign is certainly not very helpful. It proudly warns of the dangers of a natural gas pipeline, but then mentions "oh, by the way, the pipeline is not here... it's somewhere else".

 

July

In a very wet spot along the trail, some lovely pink Bog Laurel flowers:

I am always fascinated by these little Saxifrage flowers which happily grow along creek banks. They are so "busy", with splendid white petals with green trim near the inner edges and brilliant pink anthers:

Tiny Bishop's Cap flowers, about 1/8" (3mm) diameter:

At an elevation around 10,500 feet, along the Long Lake hiking trail in Brainard lake Recreation Area, on our way up to Lake Isabelle:

 
In mid-July there was still snow along the trail as we approached Lake Isabelle:

In Rocky Mountain National Park, Mills Lake, at an elevation of around 10.000 feet.

This large elk was just hanging out along the side of the hiking trail, apparently enjoying watching the funny looking two-legged hikers meander by... perhaps this is an elk's version of watching TV:

My magnificent sounding 1974 Guild D50 guitar developed a bubble in the lacquer, which I tried to ignore for several years, but eventually the nitrocellulose lacquer crumbled off of an area about 1 inch in diameter. I decided to sand it down and spray on a bit of new nitro lacquer to protect the wood. The sanding process went fine, and the freshly sanded area looked fine:

But as you can see from the photo, the grain filler fell out and left deep pores in the rosewood which needed to be filled. So I looked on some luthier web sites and saw that a particular product was widely recommended for grain filling in rosewood, so I bought a bag of rosewood colored grain filler, mixed it with some water, and spread it on the rosewood to fill the grain.

But when I started sanding off the excess grain filler, I found that the beautiful reddish-orange colored rosewood was now stained black!!!

On my... this is dreadful!! Or dreadnought-ful. The colorful reddish-orange of rosewood is now black.

I sanded down 5 or 10 thousandths of an inch of the rosewood to get back to the right color, but unfortunately the black stain is very deep into the wood.

It turns out that this is a well known phenomenon: the tannins which give the rosewood it's rich colors react strongly with water and iron to produce a nasty black stain. The rosewood provided the tannins, the grain filler provided the water, and somehow some iron ions got into the mix, producing this horrid black stain.

This little bit of refinishing looked like such an easy task! And it would have been easy if I would not have tried to use water-based grain filler, which provided to water for that reaction. Where did the iron come from?? I don't know. Perhaps from the original grain filler?

I put the guitar away for now, and hope to someday discover a way to remove the dreadful black stain, and then spray some nitrocellulose lacquer to cover the repaired area.

Much later I discovered that the Guild Westerly factory's original method for grain filling was to sand lightly lacquered rosewood to get some orangish colored wood dust, which they mixed with a bit of pumice and some more nitrocellulose lacquer as a filler. After several repetitions of that process, the grain was eventually filled with a combination of rosewood dust, pumice and lacquer. And, interestingly, you can see the orangish color of the original grain filler in the first photo. I wish that I had known that method when I began that adventure!

Oh well... onward.

Sometimes signs can be more true than they were designed to be!  I noticed this very appropriate sign while I was sitting in a long, long, long line of very slow-moving traffic waiting to enter Rocky Mountain National Park.

And sure enough, the cause for the traffic back-up was indeed a very slow entrance station:

Eventually, I got into the park. Here's a photo along the trail heading up to Cub Lake:

 

August

Nice hike on the Arapaho Glacier trail, this photo taken at about 11,000 ft elevation above Rainbow Lakes.

Along the trail... Monk's Hood flowers:

Krishna, is that you?? A flute playing squirrel... very funny:

On my way up to Blue Lake, I stopped to enjoy the flowers along this little snow-melt stream, at an elevation a little over 11,000 feet:

Lovely Blue Lake, in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, elevation about 11,500 feet. I got here just in time to eat lunch, enjoy the scenery and head back down the hill around before the rain arrived:

Yikes... this Arctic Gentian is a sure sign that summer is ending in the Colorado mountains. They are lovely flowers, but they bring such an unfortunate message. They are among the last flowers to bloom up here, and they foretell the arrive of the snow.

There was so much snow early in the year that many of the high trails were still snow-covered and impassible for me until the end of July, and now, at the end of August, the hiking season is already drawing to a close.

 

September

Yup... summer is ending in the mountains.

It is interesting (to me) that some aspen trees turn yellow, some turn a reddish-yellow, and some decide to be almost red:

Silly rabbit imagining that he is invisible, hiding from me on the steps of an old mining cabin in the Caribou Ranch open space:

Then I headed southward for a few days of meandering in New Mexico. My first stop was the Walatowa slot canyon area in the Jemez Pueblo. A magical red rock area!

Brilliant red Indian Paintbrush flowers in the midst of the red rocks:

Not very easy hiking in the Walatowa slot canyon, although the red rocks and blue sky are spectacular. But it is a sobering thought that each these huge rocks which now reside in the bottom of the canyon were formerly "up there" somewhere before they plummeted to the bottom... are there any more about to fall?? I hope not. As the Lakota say "Hóka-héy"... onward.

This is a very unusual display of flowers... a cooperative display. At a first glance you might think that you're seeing one flower, but there are actually three separate flowers which grow together, which is apparently an advantage for pollination. It's called Trailing Four O' Clock:

This is such a delightful place for a stroll! It is so colorful! So magical!

 

And now down the road to the Zia Pueblo for some totally different scenery, with hoodoos and balanced rocks.

Fortunately, there were still a lot of balanced rocks which had not yet fallen down (or been knocked off by vandals):

A very funny place! The Hoodoo Trail in the Ojito Wilderness.

Interesting colors in these hills, red layers covered by greenish layers. I wandered around for hours and never encountered anybody else exploring this area. As I was leaving, I did notice two people arriving:

 

October

Back in Colorado now.

 Wandering in the Caribou Ranch Open Space, as the Aspen trees finish their colorful show:

I don't know if this trail into the trees looks welcoming or if it looks mysterious, but it certainly is lovely!

 

About a mile from my home, at Lake McIntosh. Such splendor!!

 

November

A brilliant sunset tonight:

Not to be outdone by yesterday's sunset, tonight the Colorado sky turned green! (with envy?) This was the brightest aurora that I've ever seen, it was so bright that I could take this photo despite the lights of the neighborhood!

A view of a different part of the aurora from a dark country road outside of town:

I had to laugh when I saw this label on a 40 or 50 year old vaporizer! Very funny. Nowadays I suppose customers would be greatly offended by such a direct, truthful approach:

 

December

I suppose that this had to happen sooner or later. This sort of thing seems to happen here in Colorado about this time of year. I'm not fond of these days when the ground, the trees and the sky are all white:

But I'm always very thankful a day or two later when the blue sky returns!

 

 

I noticed these white globs on dozens of prickly pear cactus pads whilst hiking this week, and at first wondered why, or how, the birds were only pooping on the prickly pears.

It turns out that the white globs aren't bird poop or fungus but rather they are "homes" for a tiny scale insect, the female cochineal, and her offspring. The insects secrete a fluffy, white wax to protect themselves from predators and water loss.

When crushed, the little critters yield a brilliant red pigment (carminic acid) which historically was a major cash crop, prized by Aztecs and Spanish as a vibrant red dye, and which is still used today for natural coloring in food (like red M&Ms), cosmetics (lipstick), and textiles, often labeled as Carmine or Natural Red 4. The next time you enjoy a product with natural red coloring, just remember that it is made from smashed bugs. Yum.

Rather nifty sunset tonight!

On a stroll over to Lake McIntosh, near my home, I was delighted to see a Bald Eagle sitting atop an old cottonwood tree, surveying his (or her) empire, accompanied by the rising moon:

 

Well.... that's it for 2025. Hopefully there will be more adventures in 2026!

Thanks for stopping by! 

Happy Trails...