Yellowstone Trip – All About the Moose (Part 2 of Many)

 Update: 8/16/09 (original post 7/28/09) – Please see the corresponding Errata Page for a correction on the location this moose was seen at

As we traveled through Yellowstone Park we were checking off the various wildlife we saw against the field guild I mentioned in the last post.  There was one particular animal that was successfully eluding us almost the entire time. That particular animal was the following.

Yellowstone Moose

We had completely given up as we headed out of the park to the South on our way to the Grand Tetons.  Literally 5 minutes from the park exit we come upon this fine specimen.  Not carrying the same fear we had with the bears, we actually pulled over on the shoulder and exited the vehicle to get a closer look.  I must say, I was re-thinking that idea when I took this shot.

Yellowstone Moose

From this angle it looked a lot more ferocious and although this one did not have the biggest rack, it was still one of the largest animals we had seen on the vacation.  I am guessing for a brief moment this moose was thinking steak would taste better than those weeds.  Luckily it turned its attention back to the grass which calmed my heart down some.

Yellowstone Moose

Oddly, this was the only moose in the area as opposed to the other wildlife (with exception of the bears) that was not mingling with others in a herd.    The moose was very content to just eat his veggies and taken in the likely oddity of humans pointing cameras in its direction.  The dark fur really stood out against the greenery providing a nice contrast to the photos.   The following shot is probably my favorite since the branch looks like a hand tickling the fur under his snout causing his foot to raise up in a mock scratch.  My dogs do this all the time which makes me laugh.

Yellowstone Moose

It was close, but we did get to check this animal off of our checklist.  Next time we hope to catch one with a larger rack

Yellowstone Trip – All About the Bears (Part 1 of Many)

It’s getting late in the month again and I have a few posts to go to make my quota for the month.  Luckily there is plenty of content waiting in the wings many of which came from our recent trip out to Yellowstone.  I already posted the oddities collection from that adventure and now it is time to start the wildlife segment.  I thought I would lead with something we do not see much of out here in Illinois.

Black Bears in Yellowstone

If you look real close you will see today’s subjects.  Surprisingly, we had just entered the park from the East side when there were a few cars parked on the side of the road and some people looking out over the valley.  Figuring there was something of interest, we parked and grabbed the cameras.  Sure enough, waaaaaay out in the distance were these two black bears.  Keep in mind, I have a full Nikon 70-200 glass fully out and manually focusing this to get through all the trees.   Although not tack sharp for sure, I am pretty pleased I even got them at all.  Here is a zoomed version and it looks like they spotted me.

Black Bears in Yellowstone

Just 5 minutes into the park and we already had our first bear sighting.   Since I was not sure there was going to be anymore chances to see the elusive bears, I was snapping a ton of shots in the hopes one or two would come out decent enough I could prove we saw them.  It should be noted that there is actually snow on the ground.  It was the middle of June and we were definitely feeling the chill.  Apparently the bears were quite comfortable in their winter fur.  These two shots are a little better, but again, there were hard to see with the naked eye and having to manually focus was making it difficult to draw them in clear.

Black Bears in Yellowstone

After awhile they grew bored with watching us and headed back into the woodlands.  I caught this one taking a final look back probably thinking how tasty I would be for lunch.

Black Bears in Yellowstone

The good news is we actually had 3 other bear sightings while we were out there.  Take the jump to see some much better shot.  Well, actually three better shots and one crappy one with a frustrating story.

Continue reading Yellowstone Trip – All About the Bears (Part 1 of Many)

You’re GRRRRRRRRRRR[EAT]

Target Rating SystemIt is very apparent that I spend waay too much time at Target or there is just waay to much stuff to be observed there.  I think this is like my third post based on things that I have seen there and thought was interesting.  This particular incident occurred at the checkout lane a few days ago.  While we were completing our purchase there, something on the electronic register display caught my eye.  On the lower left hand of the LCD panel there was a section labeled as Last 10 Ratings (or something very close to that heading, I forgot to write down the actual words).  Underneath that label was a series of 10 letters which I am guessing where the results of the last 10 assessments.  In this particular situation there were only the letters G and R.  There were definitely more R’s than G’s, but there was absolutely no legend for what they actually meant.  If it was important enough to have it visible to the customer, you would think there would be some explanation for the values provided.  I decided not to question the clerk on the chance the ratings she was getting were not flattering.  The trip home was spent pondering the potential rating options:

G’s

  • Great (Tony the Tiger would approve)
  • Good (Seems kind of boring)
  • Goddess (The male clerks might be offended)
  • Gracious (She was nice)
  • God Awful
  • Get your *ss moving (nothing like a little motivation)

R’s

  • Respectable (Wouldn’t just an O for Okay work better)
  • Really Good (And Jack Handy is happy)
  • Reprehensible (it’s Target.. thinking this is not the one)
  • Really get your *ss moving (the boss is not happy)
  • RaaawwttRoh (for the Scooby Do fans out there)
  • Rest (cause you are doing sooo well)

If anyone knows the real definitions, please drop me a comment because I am running low on other options.  Oh well, time to get some sleep, I the main race of the year coming up this Saturday (Bix7) and I don’t want to give myself any excuses other than I have not been able to acclimate to the heat thanks to this joke of a Global Warming Threat that is keeping it in the 60’s in the middle of July.

AppleDees – Corrected – Ched’duh’s

  Update: 8/16/09 (original post 7/12/09) – Please see the corresponding Errata Page for a correction on the location this event occurred at – note, it was NOT AppleDees but rather Chedduhs. – My apologies for this incorrect identification.

AppleDees

My family recently lost a relative (Father’s brother).  Strangely, this side of the family does not keep in touch that frequently and it is actually somewhat rare when we are in the same place .  Unfortunately, visitations and funerals are one of these times when relatives gather.  Although I expected more, I did get to catch up with some of them and find out what has been happening in their world as of late.  After the visitation was over some of my family went out for dinner.  There were eight of us to be exact and after some discussion came to the consensus to head over to Applebees.  After some navigation problems (I will not go into that to spare the guilty), we arrived at the restaurant and were seated pretty quick.  Our orders were taken by a waiter who was desperately trying to revolutionize the use of the word “absolutely”.  I swear that was every other word out of the kids mouth to the point everyone was responding to his questions with the same word.  Shockingly, he did not seem to catch on to that little tidbit.  After what seemed a very long time, the food arrived and based on the comments around the table everyone was pleased with their orders.

When it came time to pay is when things became interesting.  My father insisted on paying for everyone (wish he would not do that, it’s our turn to take them out for all they have done for us).  Turns out, they had a $25 gift card which they handed to the waiter along with their credit card.  A little while longer, the waiter returned claiming the gift card was empty and had scanned it twice trying to get it to go through.  This was questioned and he indicated the manager was going to come out and discuss the problem.  In the meantime, my niece used her cell phone to call the validation number on the back of the card.  In less than 2 minutes she had confirmed through the Applebee’s hotline that the card was indeed valid and had a $25 credit on it (exactly as stated to the waiter).  The manager comes out, we explain the problem again and he proceeds to leave with the card to check it again.  10 Minutes later, he returns and states “I have good news and bad news”.  My interest peaked.  “I’ll start with the bad news, our systems are down and we cannot check the card” was the next line.  This is odd since we did it on our own at the table without any problems at all.  Surely, they had a working phone in the place if not an employee cell phone.  Then the kicker comes “but I am going to accept the $25 and try somehow to get the money back later”  Back the bus up.  Did I just hear that correctly.  Is that the way you would have handled the situation given a table of 8, well dressed people who are simply trying to use a valid gift card?  My translation, you are trying to screw us but I’ll do your lying cheats a favor and take the money off your bill.  The more we discussed this, the more angered I became.  Since the parents were taking care of the bill and the outcome was the same we let this go.  I seriously doubt this Applebees will be getting any of my hard earned cash in the future – there are likely many other restaurants that would appreciate the revenue.  At this point in time, the consensus is Applebees gets a grade of ‘D’ for this outing.

Some day I might comment on a pretty funny (if not surreal) episode that happened with a bouquet of flowers at the visitation.  Like the wedding topic previously, this one is staying between the family for now.

Happy Fourth of July America

 Fireworks

Once again, the greatest country in the world celebrates its birthday.  This means it is time for the light shows in the sky (courtesy of China firework factories).   Today is another guest blog entry courtesy of my wife’s photography.  We basically just learned the trick to taking fireworks pictures and was out catching the local displays to try it out.  To be honest, the settings are only about 40% of the effort.  It is all about timing since you have to keep the shutter open for a number of seconds.  However, when you get lucky, it sure looks good.

Fireworks

I really like this one she took for a couple of reasons.  The color is really crisp, but generally fountains give off way to much light and overpower the image.  She had the shutter timing perfectly for that oneand gives an interesting shadow as it shot through the trees.

This one came from the same display.  It gives the impression of huge sparklers suspended in the air.  Too bad the fountain had to be cut off the bottom, but that would have probably washed out the shot.

Fireworks

The hardest shots are the large flowering fireworks due to having to guess the timing (about 1 second after you see the propulsion flame go out works pretty good) and harder yet is trying to guess the diameter of the explosion to set the zoom appropriately (yes, we are zoomed in pretty good).  To be honest, the off center ones give an interesting artistic impression.

Hit the jump to see some of these pictures

Continue reading Happy Fourth of July America

Things I Am Unable to Explain

Deadlines Deadlines Deadlines.  Cutting it close this time, but this post brings me to my self imposed minimum of 6 posts a month.  Before jumping back into the trip pictures, something strange occurred today while working in the yard.  It was time to deal with the trimming so I brought the trimmer out, gassed it up and reved it up.  As soon as the engine fired a barn swallow flew up behind me and started hovering in the air.  Actually, it was more like a bird backstroke because the birds body was actually vertical while the wings did a backward flap.  Not phased in the least by me turning to look at him, I decided to play out the situation.  As I was whacking down the weeds a moth flew up into the air.  At that point it all became very apparent.  The bird launched into action, chased that moth down and caught it.  I was impressed, not only was he pretty agile, he (assuming a male at this point) was smart enough to associate my trimmer with dinner.  This went on for about 15 minutes until he was either full or needed a rest.  For the curious, I could care less about the insect.  I draw the line there in favor of actual animals unlike PETA which apparently doesn’t know what the ‘A’ actually stands for based on their recent declaration against Obama killing a fly.

With that out of the way, I’ll lead with this picture.  Take a minute and just absorb the image….

Rock Hard Man

Linda thinks I’m crazy, but it sure looks like a rock man with ummmm… well… let’s just say that is some hard rock.   She vetoed my idea of merging it with one of the pictures of Old Faithful.

While in South Dakota, this truck passed us on the highway.

Truck Skull

All I could think of was the movie The Jerk when Steve Martin picks up the red chair and claims that is all he needs.   I would think the paint would be getting scratched up pretty good, but I must admit, the skull was a nice touch.

Catch a couple m0re shots after the jump

Continue reading Things I Am Unable to Explain

What Are They Thinking?

At Culvers today I was thinking it was nearing the end of the month and I was way behind on my posts.  I actually have plenty of content queued up, but have been having a hard time to sparing the time to get it written up.  The trip out to Yellowstone energized me to start cleaning up my forest acreage and getting the trails cut in.  This has a tendency to drain me especially when I have to end the day with my 7-8 mile Bix7 training runs.  I was jarred back into the moment at hand when a young woman approached the counter with her friend.  She was holding a wrapped hamburger which begged my attention.  Correctly guessing, it was a messed up order.  Two statements made me stand and wonder what was going on in their head.  First, while explaining what the problem was, the young girl states “I threw the onions out the window because that’s what everyone did”  For one of the few times I can’t think of any context where an observed action makes any sense.  Was there a big pile of onions on the side of the road she was simply adding to?  Did she see a whole like of people ahead of her in the drive through whipping their condiments out the window?  I have nothing here folks other than the possibility she was savvy enough to know they come from the ground so returning it seemed like the appropriate action. The other interesting statement was from the cashier.  For some reason she was not stunned at all about the onion comment, but after listening to the issue she responded with “Would you like that made again right now?”  I had at least 4 clever responses in the time that took her to respond with the boring “Yes”.  Possibly a clever cashier followup would have been to simply grab the sandwich and scrape the undesired condiments off on the edge of the counter and handed it back.  It probably would have been job ending, but I probably would have shook her hand after redeeming herself from a stupid question.

Anyway, I decided to get this post on a couple of vacation scenes that made as much sense as this encounter.  First a quiz.  Does anyone out there think Bison are tame?  Does anyone believe that wild animals don’t care about their young?  And lastly, are wild animals entirely predictable?  If you answered affirmative to any of those questions you need to stay out of our National Parks and stick to safer destinations like zoos.  I can’t tell you how many times we saw people chasing out after wildlife to get the perfect shot.  Note, this can all be remedied by purchasing higher powered glass, which is significantly cheaper than getting a horn removed from your rear.

This lady decided that the numerous stay away from wildlife warning signs didn’t apply to her.

Dumb Human

We had already taken a number of pictures from the walkway (with the 200 glass) and was able to get various angles in complete safety.  What this lady didn’t know is there is a calf (guess that is what you call it) on the other side.  I kept my finger on the trigger for funniest home gold.  In case you questioned, the answer is I have little sympathy for stupid people but luckily for her the subject didn’t decide to test her speed.

Then there was this guy.

Dumb Human

The elk are probably a little more tame than Bison, but this guy essentially stalked this elk for 15 minutes.  He was trying to be clever and stay out of view, but checking the angle of the elk tells you how successful that was.  Every time the guy took a few steps forward, the elk would head a little further up the hill.  I joked to my wife that he was being led closer to the tree line so his friends could roll him.  Yes, I kept my camera ready for any violence that might have been initiated.  I ended up 0-2 for content on the my series When Good Animals Go Bad.  Admit it, you would watch it – and you can’t tell me it would be any worse than watching the wife of our removed and soon to be put on trial ex-governor Blowjobovich trying to replace her cuss filled tirade wiretap image with a PR stunt in the woods.  But the funny thing about this is there was another elk (with a similar rack) sitting under a tree not 30 feet from the trail.  The whole time that elk kept a close eye on the guy.  Made me wonder if it was not the humans who were on display.  I wish I could tell what that elk was thinking at that moment.  Maybe it was this.

The Food Chain

A Special Load

 Convoy Ahead

Last year we headed out to South Dakota a week later than this year.  While we were there, the army was carrying out their training exercises in Custer State Park.  Since we were out a week earlier, we came up on a number of military convoys heading out to the park.  One particular grouping of trucks turned out pretty comical.  As w approached one of the semi trucks, something looked odd about the payload.

Military Convoy

Slowly the picture became a little clearer.

Truck Convoy

I have to admit, we did not have the camera out when we passed this convoy the first time.  We laughed so hard we doubled back to take a few photos.  It is amazing the lengths you will go to get a blog entry.  As we passed the truck for the second time, took the payload shot.

Truck Convoy Payload

I think it is our newest secret weapon developed for special urban assaults.  There are probably rocket mounts in the dump bucket and special hummer inflating tires to allow it to traverse any rubble it encounters.  We definitely appreciate the job they do to keep us safe and our Democracy intact.  Good luck boys an girls and in the words of Maximus “unleash hell”.

Eat Dust

Salute the Troops!

The Return of Dinos

First off, I would like to declare for the record that this Blog is written by a MALE.  My brother (who I am sure was snickering the entire time) sent me a link that analyzes the gender of a webpage.  Apparently I am not using the appropriate amount of stereotypical male words in my post.  Here is my attempt to fix that:

Boobs, Beer, Football, Baseball, Rugby, UFC, Boxing, Spitting, Scratching, Jockstrap, Whiskey, Engineering, Monster Trucks, NASCAR, Drag Racing, Urinals, Spike TV and  LAN Gaming… would welcome any additional words if you can think of them …  it is actually harder than I imagined.

Okay, this post is about reemergence of Dinos.  I thought it odd that there were no less than three occurrences of said extinct animal during our vacation.

Sinclair Dino

Obviously you know where this was taken.  That is, if you happen to be someone that also wasted valuable time actually stopping at Wall Drug in South Dakota.  There is actually a large animated T-Rex there sticking with the theme.  I found this picture a tad ironic.  Can any identify why I think that?  I wonder if the Exxon marketing people were savvy enough to purposely put their sign in that position to cause an association with their gas to the Sinclair filling stations?  I assumed you have traveled enough to know that this green and white icon is the trademark of Sinclair.  They usually have smaller ones in front of their station, however, this one was pretty big.

I had my wife snap this one as we drove by at 75 miles an hour.  I can’t believe it came out as well as it did, but she was zoomed in a little too much to capture the human skeleton that was holding on to the leash.

Dino Skeleton

I honestly have no idea what the purpose for it was – possibly for an exhibit that was up the road.   The pending storm actually makes the image look a little ominous.  The last shot was taken while stuck in a traffic jam in Yellowstone National Park.  We were heading back to our lodge on the road that connects the north and south loops when the traffic came to a dead stop.    There were also very few cars coming from the other way which meant an animal was near the road and some idiot was stopping traffic to gawk at it.  I’m all for stopping and admiring the wildlife, but find an appropriate place to pull off, don’t just stop the rented recreational vehicle in the middle of the road for 35 minutes.  Finally the park ranger showed up and made everyone start moving again.  Turns out it was a sleeping bear about 75ft off of the road.  Linda just about blew a bladder because of it.  Anyway, at least I got something for the blog, so it was not a complete waste.

Dino Evolution

Anyone want to guess what city this car was from?  As a side note, based on the scaling relationship that is one large Jesus Fish.

In my best manly Tool Time grunt, I’ll sign off for now.  I’ll have to recheck the analyzer after this post and see if there are any changes to the previously wrong assessment.

Go West Young Man

 Ugh, Buffalo Dung

We recently returned from our summer vacation which means only one thing boys and girls.  That’s right, you can look forward to the next 50 posts being all about the trip.  Well, probably not 50, but based on the number of pictures we took (literally thousands thanks to the digital age) I guess a fair amount of the following will focus on the various scenes caught through our expensive glass.

This year we headed out to take in some national parks.  In particular, this included Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and Rocky Mountain.  Although a little rainy (all out storms to be more precise) and cold (high 30s to low 60s) we still had a great time.  I’ll ease you into the trip experience with some images of various signs that caught our attention.  Unfortunately, I missed the one that intrigued me the most.  As we crossed into South Dakota there was a white billboard with the words “Prepare To Meet Thy God”.  I am not exactly sure how to take that.  Is it meant to be a generic warning to visitors to this part of the country that one should take some time to assess their worth before the inevitable end?  Or perhaps it is an immediate foreshadowing that you are going to die RIGHT NOW by some crazed lunatic hiding behind the billboard.

We did see lots of these signs:

Bear Spray

All I could think of was Hair-in-a-Can like Xmas tree flocking except with brown hair.  Hope nobody reads this and decides they can play another Yeti hoax on the American public.

Funny, I never see this place in the Verizon commercials.  In fact, our cell phones were turned off most of the time due to our batteries draining from no signal.

Can't You Here Me Now?

This one made us laugh out loud.  It has to be one of the catchiest billboards we have ever seen.  And no, I have absolutely zero idea what the intent was but I’ll simply respond with a big Thank You!

Your Wife Is Hot

Rounding out today’s collection of signs is one I made my wife double back for.  As a former Java developer, this sign held multiple connotations.   I figure either they like to mainline their caffeine in this town or they have all converted to .Net like me.  Which ever way you take it, it still ranks as a classic.

Jave in the Rear

That’s all for now.  Check back soon for some more funny images we captured on the way out there.  Once I get done with those I’ll dive into the cool wildlife and scenery shots we brought back.