Well it's been a fairly eventful week with exploring, welcoming seven chicks, and seeing the blood moon. So, let's get started...
The weather was nice most of the week and there were a couple beaches I hadn't been too. The first was in an area I'd already visited but the beach was not accessible at that time. The second, was a bit harder to find, even with directions.
During a previous excursion I found a couple hiking trails in the southeast part of the National Wildlife Refuge. You remember this place, it's the part of the island the US Navy used as a bombing range; and it still has unexploded ordinance on it. But at the time, I didn't have enough water so elected to return another day for an early morning hike. This was the day.
I got the refuge about 0800 hours only to find the road leading to the trail heads closed. Returning, I saw the road to Playa Pata Prieta (the beach I couldn't visit before) was open. This is a small secluded beach that sits in a small semi-protected bay.
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| The swimming part of the beach is in the background | |
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| Again, the swimming part of the beach is in the background |
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| This is the non-swimming part |
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| Beach art - wind chimes made from rocks |
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| More beach art |
The next beach to visit is located west of Esperanza. I talked to J of the
Esperanza Inn and found out the road on the map, really wasn't a road; it's a dried creek bed. He told me where to park and said it was about a 10 minute hike to 'Playa Negr
a' (Black Sand Beach).
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| This is a deep dry creek bed leading to Playa Negra |
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| What a naturally cool mix of black and beige sand |
Not sure if I'd mentioned this in previous posts, but Carol has about 40 chickens. Well, with that many hens around, it was kinda hard to keep track of if they are nesting outside the coop. One did and got away with hatching a clutch of seven.
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| I found the hen and two chicks had already hatched |
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| And the remaining five soon joined them |
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| Mama is already teaching her chicks how to find food |
One of the many good things about being on a small island is, after the sun goes down, it gets dark, Colorado mountain top or New Mexico desert dark. We did have some intermittent cloud cover but it was still a good night.
Here are a few of my shots of the eclipse. These shots were taken with my Nikon 3200 DSLR camera with an 18mm to 270mm Sigma zoom lens; nothing fancy, or high dollar.
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| The beginning of the eclipse |
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| With the cloud cover I elected not to do time lapse, just me and my tripod |
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| And then the blood moon started taking over |
During the week I also visited another house sitter and acquired these bananas. Returning to Carol's I hung them under an awning to let them finish ripening. One thing to remember when hanging bananas is the birds and rodents like them more than people do. So, hang them where the rodents can't climb to them and cover them to keep the birds from eating them.
The updated map of my journey
Until next time,
Mike
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