Month: October 2022

Happy Hauntings

Well, it has been one hell of a month leading up to our favorite holiday. Our annual haunted trail, the 100K attempt, the prediction race at a local cemetery a few nights ago and the rather sad news covered in the last post. Through all the ups and downs we finally made it and can now relax and enjoy a day devoted to all things that go bump in the night….and day…

Haunted Trail of Tears 2022

My haunted trail reaper had a growth spurt this year – decided to add over 3 feet to increase the scare factor. Although not shown, the son of Nyx has an animated lantern and thanks to a flea market find earlier in the year, now has a real scythe. Then there is the flaming pumpkin tradition. Nothing sets the mood for horror night better than 3 feet of flames spewing out the top of an evil Jack-o-Lantern.

Haunted Trail of Tears 2022

Some like to look at clouds and let their imagination flow…me, I prefer flames. The shot above is one of my favorites from this year’s haunted trail – like a Rorschach test for the inner demon, everyone sees something different. I personally see the face of the devil hiding behind an upside down cross. Might be therapy in my future..although this was a bit ominous.

Sturtevant Haunted Farm 2022

One of the tombstones that immediately caught my attention in the Sturtevant Haunted Farm cemetery (has my initials). It just occurred to me I have yet to introduce you to one of the creepiest haunts in all of Illinois. If you are not faint of heart, hit the jump for a quick look at some of the scenes awaiting you at that location.

Have a Happy Halloween everyone – let your spook flag fly high!

As promised, hit the jump to see some shots from this year’s visit to Sturtevant Haunted Farm in Walnut, IL

Continue reading Happy Hauntings

A Face Only a Mother Could Love…by Brad Marks

Welcome everyone. I have to apologize for being a bit out of pocket lately and probably going to be spotty for an unknown amount of time going forward. Linda’s oldest brother is not doing well and need to focus on helping her and the family where I can. In the meantime I am going to put you back in the very capable hands of Brad for this and likely a few others as we close out the month.

Take it away Brad!

When I was in middle school (summer 1977) my dad took my sister and I to see Yellowstone National Park and the American West.  He wanted us to experience the park as he did in the summer of 1960.  After driving from central Illinois for what seemed like weeks we arrived at Yellowstone.  He took us on a Readers’ Digest tour of the park, driving the whole loop in just one day.  We did get to see Old Faithful, the Paint Pots, lower Yellowstone Falls, and a bison or hundred.  But as night fell, we exited the East entrance for my great aunt’s house outside the park.  (BTW, after he passed, I found the slides he took while we were there in 1977 as well as those from his trip in the 1960.  Now I have photos of Yellowstone from 1960, 1977, and 2008.  While the park structures haven’t changed much, the car styles and photo quality sure have.)

Fast forward a bit to 2008, I thought it might be fun to take our family on a driving tour to see a few of the larger National Parks in the western United States.  Since they are so far apart, we wanted to see as many as time and patience allowed.  My daughter said “Dad, it’s just a bunch of rocks, do we have to spend so much time there?”  Being the parent, and rather enthusiastic about the parks I said “Of course we do, it will be educational!”  Instead of driving we flew to Salt Lake City where we rented a car and drove to Yellowstone to stay for three days.  When we were leaving Yellowstone, my daughter asked if we could stay a few more days.  I said “I thought you said it’s just rocks”.  She said “yeah, but these rocks are so cool!”  We drove 700 miles from the June snows of Yellowstone to the 100+ degree temps of Moab, UT for Canyonlands and Arches National Parks for a few days.  More cool rocks!  And the finale, not because of grandeur but mostly because of geography and our travel route, was two days at the Grand Canyon. 

Fast forward to Spring 2022.  When we were planning a visit to western Colorado with our daughter and her boyfriend, she asked if we can visit Arches National Park.  I said it’s just a bunch of rocks. But she then said “yes, but they are really cool rocks!”  Actually, it has been very fun and rewarding to watch her grow into a very cool adult. I could write a whole series of articles on that original six state 4,000-mile driving trip, but that’s a whole different story (maybe a future multi-part series here if Brian starts training for another 100k run).   This article is on one solitary creature; the largest living land bird in North America and some say so ugly it has a face only a mother could love.

California Condor by Brad Marks

Hit the jump to read more about Brad’s ug….hmmmm… let’s go with “inner beautiful” feature.

Continue reading A Face Only a Mother Could Love…by Brad Marks

Hell’s and Bell’s

Greetings my blogger friends! Pretty much a hodge podge of a post today. It has been very busy here at Intrigued and wanted to do a bit of housekeeping to get everything “cleaned up” before we start transitioning into colder temps – well, should probably clarify that as “consistently” colder temps as we had our first flurries of the season a few days ago and we’ve been dipping into nightly frost zones. Been some cold runs lately as well. Good news is it will be back in the 70s for the weekend and then after that, who knows.

While recovering from the ultra beat down, I’ve been able to tick off a few items on the to-do list. First, I finally got my Birding Life List updated – per the updated nav-bar on the left, sitting at 317 (plenty more already in the tin, but they have to be featured here to get the tick). Then went and updated the Birding Chronicles page (link here) with the latest on the “Average Year” efforts. Ron has closed the gap and sits at 280 to my 284 (he might even have two more from a recent outing).

With that out of the way, I moved onto the newest signature prop for the Haunted Trail of Tears. This year, there was a new fancy entryway to set the stage.

Haunted Trail of Tears Pumpkin Arch 2022

It took a good 10 months to bring that arch to reality and admittedly pretty proud of it. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to produce video tutorials on my new YouTube channel (link here), unfortunately, wasn’t versed enough to bring it to bear on this build. If you are interested on how this arch came to be, I’ve put a 4 part series up on the mothership which goes through every detail.

Part 1 – Pumpkin Creation (link here)
Part 2 – Pumpkin Arch Structure (link here)
Part 3 – Arch Columns (link here)
Part 4 – Putting It All Together (link here)

Next up was starting to chip away at the Haunted Trail Recap. Probably going to be a while before I can get to the detailed walk throughs, but I did manage to get the Gallery published with shots taken during the prep, build, day walker and night scare. Those captures can be found on our Smugmug site (link here). Note, there are several pages with over 300 images. My partner in haunt, Paul, made another great video to give you a feel for what the trail is like – Beware, someone opened the Gates of Hell!

Bri’s been one busy guy! A big thanks to Brad for filling in with some great posts while I was recovering and getting caught up on the to-do list.

Didn’t want to leave you hanging without a wildlife post, so hit the jump to read about today’s featured feathered friend.

Continue reading Hell’s and Bell’s

Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Arch – Putting it All Together Part 4

In the previous 3 installments of the pumpkin arch project, I’ve brought you the details behind the creation of the pumpkins (link here), the structural arch support design (link here) and recently the fabrication of the supporting arches (link here). Now that all the major pieces are finished, it is time to put it all together and bring this concept to life. At this point I was feeling really good about the progress. Except for some minor glitches it was shaping up to look amazingly close to the original idea. The Haunted Trail event was quickly approaching and any major changes at this point would be difficult to fix in time. To help tamp down any lingering concerns, decided it was time to do a test assembly.

Halloween Project: the Great Pumpkin Arch for the Haunted Trail of Tears 2022

Hit the jump to read more about this year’s signature addition to The Haunted Trail of Tears.

Continue reading Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Arch – Putting it All Together Part 4

Bat Country

Hello my wonderful readers!! It has been a while for me – at least on the wild side of Intrigued. Before I go any further, want to give a big thanks to Brad for filling in while I focused on the haunted trail and more importantly, trying to get back on my feet after last weekend’s beat down. He has really upped our game and brought us some great adventures. Based on all the positive comments, we hope to transition Brad from “lifeline status” to regular contributor. Hoping he is up for it! Just need to negotiate some of the details (hazard pay, office size, profit sharing percentages, film stipend, number of ultras required to compete in a year, access to corporate jet, bonuses for weaving “craptastic” into posts etc.).

I will likely cover the race in more detail in a future post, so I’ll just sum it up with “imagine being stapled to a chicken trying to cross an eight lane highway”. Cold, wet, beaten, bruised, blistered and at some point you eventually ask yourself why they hell am I stapled to a chicken. The results were bittersweet. I came up a mere 10 miles short of the 100K, but shaved nearly 2 hours off my 50 mile time and won my age group. Pretty bummed I didn’t hit the main goal, but when I hit 50M Linda gave me the stern “you’re done” look. Normally I’d fight her, but essential parts were bleeding/oozing and that last loop would have likely been 3 hours of intense pain. This one smarts a little as I rarely miss a goal. I owe a big thanks to the encouragement everyone extended leading up to the test!

Okay, back to why you are really here – to read Brad’s latest adventure ha! Time for me to suck it up and get back to work. Bringing you a special feature today that I’ve been saving for this very month. Give a great big welcome to my latest +1.

Bat Falcon found at Santa Ana NWR, Texas in January 2022

How cool is that!!! Eeesh, guess it is a little hard to make out. There’s a good reason for that – Ron and I were standing in near darkness at our southern border trying to get this uber-rare bird in the tin. I was trying every trick in the book, crank up the ISO, ratchet up the aperture, drive shutter speed to dangerous levels, stand on one leg, blood sacrifice to the camera gods…pretty ugly. How about a visual aid.

Bat Falcon found at Santa Ana NWR, Texas in January 2022

There, now you can at least tell it is a bird – and with a major clue to what species.

Take your best guess and hit the jump to reveal the mystery guest.

Continue reading Bat Country

Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Arch Needs Elevation – Part 3

Thankfully Brad is taking care of the wild side of Intrigued while I try and recover from a mighty beat down. Not really up to going through my image catalog to find, process, upload, prep and then think of something clever to say about the creatures that are targeted for that sister site The images for this Halloween project were already ready to go, so I just need to give some narrative on the elements of the build …sooooo much easier (and these I can do from the couch with bags of ice on my legs ha). Just to bring everyone up to date, we’ve covered the following so far:

Pumpkin Creation (link here)
The Arch Support Structure (link here)

Now if you look at the revised sketch, you will notice that the plan includes two columns to support the pumpkin arch.

Halloween Project 2022: The Great Pumpkin Arch for the Haunted Trail of Tears

Admittedly, there was a quick thought of making the guests limbo under it, but Linda gave me the quick, hard, no uncertain term “No” response on that one. I let her think she swayed me, although there was a critical design consideration of having to get my UTF under it. This way she gets to tell the story to her friends that she kept them from having to get their butts dirty hehehehe. Anyway, I needed to build two columns and I basically used a lot of the same approach used in the Gargoyle platform (link here). That column turned out really nice and, therefore, no need to deviate too far at this point.

Hit the jump for a behind the scenes look at the columns supporting our new entrance to the Haunted Trail of Tears

Continue reading Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Arch Needs Elevation – Part 3

Guest Feature: There’s a What in the Tree? …by Brad Marks

I am definitely not in any condition to provide you a quality post. Although my race last weekend is officially over, my legs and various other body parts (some of which I didn’t even know I had) are in a constant bicker to see who can complain the most. Advil has apparently met its match! “You torture us like that and then try to bribe us with those puny anti-inflammatory pills !?! – we tell nerves to illicit more pain you fool – now crawl into the kitchen and get us some frozen peas!!!” Such a cranky bag of parts. Anyway, I’ll eventually get to a race recap, but for now, let’s just classify it as bittersweet. While I try to get everything calmed down, blisters popped, blood cleaned off and knots pressed out, I’m once again turning wildlife post duties over to Brad. Today’s adventure is a little closer to home and definitely rings the “Intriguing” bell. I’m sure you will enjoy. Note, WordPress was rendering the images a bit too small to really see the details, so I went ahead and added links directly to the photos so you can view the full picture – you can also use the link Brad provided at the end to view the complete gallery.

Take it away Brad…

Brian and I were both fortunate enough to be able to retire at relatively young ages from the same company.  And after 30+ years of running around like a (fill in your own phrase here) it is nice to have a slow day ever now and then. (BTW, Brian still needs to learn this) One afternoon while sitting on our four-season porch reading, Jan asks “is that a raccoon in the tree?”  I grabbed my handy bird binoculars and took a look at the mulberry tree.  It was a very still day so when parts of the tree move all on their own, something larger than a bird is moving in the tree.  The critter was out at the edge of a branch near the tasty leaves, but had no mask or stripey tail.  Coincidentally my camera was nearby so I tried a few photos.  It looks like a . . . no it can’t be one of those . . . in a tree.  I ran upstairs to get my really long lens to see if I can tease out the identity.  At first, I didn’t believe what the camera was telling me.  A quick internet search revealed that yes indeed, these animals do sometimes climb trees.

Groundhog in a Tree by Brad Marks

Hit the jump to read more about this surprisingly nimble creature

Continue reading Guest Feature: There’s a What in the Tree? …by Brad Marks

Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Arch Part 2

We are back with another post covering the creation of this year’s signature piece for the annual Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears event. If you recall in a previous post (link here), I took you through the making of the pumpkins themselves. Although a key component of the overall scene, there were still a number of parts that needed to come together to realize the vision from the original quick sketch.

Pumpkin Arch for Haunted Trail of Tears 2022

Hit the jump to see how this early sketch of the arch started coming to life.

Continue reading Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Arch Part 2

The Ankle Tester

Howdy everyone! Guessing you were expecting a race recap from my recent ultra-marathon efforts. Based on the mere fact this post made it out (barring any devious pre-scheduling ha), you know I at least survived the ordeal. The results of that race are a bit of a mixed bag, so I’ll need to wait a bit before updating everyone on how that went as a whole. Unfortunately, my procrastination this year – which I completely blame on retirement – has caught up with me. I always recap my races in chronological order and depending on how much you follow the mothership side of Intrigued, you may have noticed my annual trek up to Davenport, Iowa to run the Bix 7 has been missing.

Well, that race did happen and along with the recent ultra was one of only two formal races I’ve participated in so far. There is another one scheduled for the end of the month, but that will be the last for ’22. Little bit lighter load this year due to traveling and other commitments.

Bix 7 Race Davenport, IA, July 30, 2022

Hit the jump for a recap of the first race of the year.

Continue reading The Ankle Tester