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

Guest Feature: Infinite Regress …by Brad Marks (and Family)

Greetings everyone! By the time you are reading this post I will be passing from the severe discomfort phase and transitioning to the path paved by torture. Self-inflicted, of course, so I have no one to blame but myself for my addiction to long distance trail running – hell, I even paid good money to punish myself ha. I have always felt it is good to know one’s limits – let’s hope over the next 15+ hours, mine is somewhere past a 100K! With the focus on the pre-race fretting, the race itself and an unknown length of time required for recovery, Brad has once again thrown me a lifeline with another guest feature. He is also working on additional posts so I might have to promote him from “guest” status to Intrigued Corporate Staff Writer – this position pays the same, but it sounds far more prestigious. Hope it doesn’t cause problems with his lovely wife as our staff writers are constantly being chased down by sexy hordes of groupies. With that, I’ll let Brad take you through another island wildlife adventure.

Take it away Brad…

Have you ever seen the photo of Earth hanging in the blackness of space?  I know some people think that photo is a fake, and that there are rocks holding the flat, Photoshopped, earth in place.  There are many stories about the creation of the earth, most involved animals (elephants, turtles, birds, water, etc.).  One variation of the many involves turtles and was first referenced in an ancient Hindu text. 

Fast forward to modern times.  Two people are discussing a variation of the creation story (heavily paraphrased here). 

Person One says, “Earth was created by putting soil on a turtle’s back, growing the Earth and then holding it up.”

“If that’s the case, what is the turtle standing on?” asks Person Two.

Person One replies, “another turtle of course.”

“Then what is THAT turtle standing on?” asks Person Two.  

Person One says, “Oh no you don’t, you are not going to trick me.  It’s turtles all the way down”.

At this point you’re probably wondering why I’m talking about turtles.  After all, isn’t this a birding blog?  True.  However, if you’ve ever seen a sea turtle glide through water, the motion their flippers make in the water is very similar the motions birds use to fly through the air.  See, I could tie this story back to birds (sort of), you just had to stick with me.  Plus, turtles are really cool. 

Hit the jump to read more about these intriguing creatures!

Continue reading Guest Feature: Infinite Regress …by Brad Marks (and Family)

Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Patch – Part I

Welcome to the Halloween Season — well, technically we here at Intrigued are haunt focused 364 days a year (we take the day after our annual Halloween Haunted Trail event to rest up before starting on next year’s new additions. Speaking of the trail, this year’s extravaganza was held last weekend and based on the feedback we are getting – another complete success! As usual, we learned a few things, have a few things to tweak and more importantly, a bunch of new ideas to make next year even better. Taking a break from putting everything back in storage to give you a behind the scenes look at one of our signature props we added for our guest’s enjoyment this year. Definitely one of our larger projects and will likely take several posts to get you all the pertinent details. Let’s get to it shall we?!

I have always wanted an elaborate entrance to the trail. A defining start vs just pointing them into the woods and telling them to have fun. Depending on the moon, it can also get rather dark in the woods making it even harder to locate the right path to the trail. Unable to remember the exact video, but one of the haunt centric YouTubers I follow – GrimmLifeCollective – (link here) showcased a place that had a stacked pumpkin arch in one of their scenes. That got the juices flowing and started investigating ways to produce one of our own. I do not have the budgets of some of these large production scare factories, so cost was a key element – that and the ability to store it. A big shout out to Allen at Stiltbeast Studios (link here). for getting the ball rolling. His video on making a foam pumpkin (link here) was the basis for what became our signature piece.

Clearly I would need BIGGER pumpkins to use in our entry arch and I wanted to be able to carve and light them up like real pumpkins. Allen’s approach did have a hollow core, but also required you to essentially have a beach ball buried inside each pumpkin. When I saw the cost of beach balls that were the size I wanted to use, that approach had to be improved. Noodled on it for a couple of weeks and then it hit me – I don’t have to create the entire pumpkin at once. With a working plan, materials were ordered and set to work.

Giant Foam Pumpkins for Haunted Trail of Tears 2022

The first ingredient was the beach ball. The initial vision was to have three different sized pumpkins that got smaller as they were stacked up – smallest being the size of the standard ball you see kids playing with or bouncing around concert venues. From there, found two more offerings each significantly bigger than that. A bit shocked at the prices – the largest (42″) was $30, the medium (36″) was $23 and a pack of 3 standard (20″) were $13. Per comment above, needing one for each pumpkin was cost prohibitive. Note, a quick look at Amazon revealed that they are heavily discounted now that the swim season is coming to a close. Now with the pumpkin forms procured, there needed to be a method to help hold the foam and still be able to reuse the ball.

Hit the jump to see how these everyday beach accessories evolved into our latest Haunted Trail of Tears signature addition.

Continue reading Halloween Project: The Great Pumpkin Patch – Part I

Best of the Rest While I Rest to be the Best

I’m back, well, kinda. As the saying goes, rumors of my demise are [somewhat] exaggerated. The good news is I am past the first of the two events that have been consuming every available second night and day. We held our annual Halloween Haunted Trail event over the weekend. I am rating it as a complete success based on some of the feedback we have been receiving on various social media outlets. Some of my readers made it to the event, so I’ll let them chime in on the comments on how they think it went. Ron and his son even came down a day early to help me out as some of my usual volunteers were unable to help this year – that was a huge assist along with Brad providing guest posts so I could focus on the trail. Finally got the haunted trail torn down and in our outbuilding late this afternoon – will move to packing phase after the second of the two stressful events is over. Focus now shifts to the 100K ultra that launches at 5am this coming Saturday. Need to heal some tweaks, get some rest and see what I can do about the 5 pounds I lost putting the trail together. I don’t mind being a little lighter to carry the large hills, but that is a bit more than I am comfortable with. I’ll cover these two endeavors in future posts, right now I just wanted to get something out so you don’t forget about me ha! The good news is Brad has been gracious to give me a few more features to use as I get closer to race time. Enough gabbing, time to get on with your regularly scheduled programming.

Dickcissal found at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, Wilmington IL in May 2016

Hit the jump to see more of the rest.

Continue reading Best of the Rest While I Rest to be the Best

Guest Feature: Hawai’i State Bird…by Brad Marks

Well, the good news is we made it back from Witchita..I mean Wichita yesterday after 10 long hours passing through corn field after cornfield. Pulled into the driveway, bolted into the house, changed and managed to get another training run in. Perfect conditions for the latter half of the actual race – dead tired, legs and back sore from sitting so long and temps dropping as fast as the sun. Now it’s Halloween trail 7×28 (need to find a way to squeeze a few more hours out of each day). Clearly going to be a struggle to get my required posts up with the current pace of things, so pressed the bat signal once again. Brad once again came to my aid – actually, more than came to my aid, brought me not one, but TWO features to help fill the gaps (and I think he is working on another one for you). Cannot thank him enough for the assist and I know you will enjoy this second adventure. I’m going to head back into the woods now and try to get a nasty clown infestation under control – happens every year right before the big party, sigh. Time to step aside and let Brad take the helm once again. Take care and see you down the road.

……Take it away Brad

We were fortunate enough to recently enjoy a lengthy vacation on the Big Island of Hawai’i.  Our daughter and her boyfriend were able to join us for the first week.  We spent time on the beaches, snorkeled, took coffee & chocolate plantation tours, and went to a luau.  We drove to the mountains and stayed overnight on the volcano.  We hiked many miles over hardened lava and through the rainforest and near the coast to see 500-year-old petroglyphs.  We watched every sunset possible and caught a few sunrises as well.

We probably went through a gallon of reef-safe sunscreen (OK, I probably did by myself).  We maximized the “unlimited mileage” on our rental car (a little over 2,000 miles total) even though the island is not much more than 90 miles across.  You would think the Hawai’i state bird would be as obvious as the Northern Cardinal is in our home state of Illinois.  You would be wrong.  We couldn’t see more than two up close until our last five hours on the island.

Nene from Brad Marks

Hit the jump to read more of Brad’s adventure.

Continue reading Guest Feature: Hawai’i State Bird…by Brad Marks

A Chick from the Land of Witches

Coming to you tonight from Wichita, Kansas. Had to pause my Haunted Trail efforts in order to run out here for a family wedding. Could not have come at a more inconvenient time, but I have been working night and day to hopefully get far enough ahead on the trail work to compensate for the loss of 4 crucial days. I have to admit, it has given me a bit of a rest – was starting to get drained, especially with trying to finish off the rest of the pre-taper training runs. Quite fitting we ended up here as Wichita is a Choctaw Native American Indian word that means “Land of Tall Witches”. Just guessing that they were good witches or this place would have more likely been called Wicheville. Before this mountain gets any bigger, how about we turn our attention to another kind of mountain.

Mountain Chickadee found at Lake Tahoe in May 2019

Hit the jump to see more shots of this tiny mountain of a bird – oh, and I should probably clear up some liberties as well.

Continue reading A Chick from the Land of Witches

Cheetle-Jay

Hello everyone! I am back for a likely brief period of time while I’m waiting for some props to finish drying. First off, I wanted to thank you for the warm welcome you gave Brad on his first guest post. Definitely helping me out while I try to get things under control at the home base. There will be more coming from him in the future – in fact he already has some ready to go. Will try to spread out the sugar, don’t want anyone to get over-sweetened and tire of the standard fare ha!

Really good news on the running front as well. Finished my 50K simulation run last week on the approximate course the 100K will be held. Not sure what happened over there, but the CoE site looked like a tornado hit it – downed trees everywhere. Some still over the trails turning it into a wilderness obstacle course. Other areas had been cleaned of the down timber, but so many branches and wood chips were left behind I had hunt/guess to find the path at times. Will be impressed if they get all that scrub taken care prior to the race (in a shockingly short 3 weeks). The simulation did successfully remind me the actual race is not going to be “pleasant” until the moment I cross the finish line – was definitely feeling the last couple of miles of the simulation and that only gets me HALF way there – will thankfully be cooler then.

Enough of that, let’s get to the part you come here to see – the featured feathered friend of the day.

Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay found at Red Rock Canyon, Clark County, NV in February 2020

Hit the jump for more of my Vegas tin.

Continue reading Cheetle-Jay