(click on image for larger version)
Gallery: Fern Lake Trail – September 6, 2009, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Viguiera is a genus of flowering plant in the Asteraceae family. A plant in this genus may be known as a goldeneye. These are herbs to bushy shrubs and they bear yellow or orange daisylike flowers. There are about 150 species native to the New World
See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
(click on image for larger version)
Gallery: Silverton and Animas Forks area – September 6, 2009
Silverton was the setting for some of Shaun White’s 2010 Olympic training. Taking advantage of the secluded locale, terrain and snow fall, Red Bull built a private halfpipe for the snowboarder. Known as “Project X,” the halfpipe was completed in Feb. 2009 on the backside of Silverton Mountain and allowed the boarder to perfect some of his gold medal winning moves far from prying eyes.
See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
Here’s what the radar looks like for us this evening. Red bordered areas are tornado warnings. 🙁
We’ll be watchin’ late this evening, I think. I’ll post an update in the morning.
Last evening was one of those interesting severe weather evenings.
We knew that storms were approaching and I had just seen that there was a tornado warning for our area, but it looked like the storm cell was going to pass south and east of us.
Then our phones started ringing – all three of them.
We’re subscribed to a severe weather warning service from one of the Arkansas television stations. It calls us when there is a tornado warning for our area. It is a lot more specific than the National Weather Service warnings.
It was time to head for the storm shelter.
We only stayed down there for about ten minutes. We waited until we could tell that the intensity of the thunder and lightning was dropping.
Some areas got hit pretty hard, from what we’ve gathered so far. One of the tornadoes had gone very near the Little Rock airport and they had to shutdown operations for a while. Fortunately, our daughter, who had been in Dallas for a week on business, had been on a plane that landed before the severe weather got to the Little Rock area.
Our forecast for today includes the possibility of severe weather, but it’s much less likely than yesterday.
Here’s a short video from my new phone of some of this morning’s rain.
Gallery: Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain, Arkansas
(click on image for larger version)
For information on the park and mountain, please see our Petit Jean Information page.
Petit Jean State Park, situated on Arkansas’s Petit Jean Mountain, which rises above the south bank of the Arkansas River between the Ozark and Ouachita mountain ranges, is 3,471 acres in size and was the first park in Arkansas’s system of state parks. Buildings of log and stone, constructed during the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), are found in many areas of the park and impart a rustic feel. Petit Jean, the “flagship” of the Arkansas state park system, is managed by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism. Petit Jean is Arkansas’ only state park with its own airport.
See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
While we’ve both had a cell phone for a number of years now, neither of us have been inclined to want anything more than a plain-jane, run-of-the-mill, simple phone.
When the i-phone came out, it looked interesting and like something that would be really great for some folks. However, I really didn’t see much use in it – for me. Or any of the other smart phones that are out, for that matter.
I know. There’s an ap for this and an ap for that, everywhere an ap ap.
A whole bunch of aps to spend time and money on – time and money that could just as well be used on other things.
Also, I really didn’t want to have to pay extra for a data and email plan – when it really didn’t seem like we would be using it that much. When we were considering a new phone, we actually thought about getting one smart phone and one not-so-smart phone, but it was only a passing thought.
Yesterday, we finally decided to go for it and get new phones and stopped at one of the local Verizon stores. We switched from AT&T, who had bought the company we had originally been signed up with, Cingular. Until 2008, Verizon wasn’t even available in our area, but then they bought Alltel, which had been our service provider before Cingular.
We went with the Palm Pre Plus. While it’s got plenty of bell and whistle features, the current pricing and options for it were the best fit for what we were looking for.
We’re still working our way through setting all of the contact lists up and figuring the things out.
___________
We know a few people who still do not have cell phones, let alone a smart phone.
What about you? Cell phone? Smart phone? Old fashioned home phone only?
Last week we took a short trip to eastern Arkansas and, after that, over to northeast Kentucky.
Our first campground was at Village Creek State Park. The park is located on Crowley’s Ridge, a geologic anomaly of rolling hills in eastern Arkansas’s Mississippi Alluvial Plain.
With five trails totaling 7 miles, we had hoped to spend one day in the park doing some hiking.
Unfortunately, there was some kind of gnats hatching out. After taking one walk the first evening where we couldn’t get away from them, we decided to alter our plans and check out some of the other parks in the area.
The first day, we went to Parkin State Archeological Park and Jacksonport State Park. The next day, we drove over to Memphis and spent a few hours at Mud Island. I’ll be posting more on these as I get the photo gallery set up for each one.
The last evening that we were there and the next morning before we left, we didn’t have much problem with insects at all.
Our next destination was Paducah, Kentucky, so that Karen could go to the annual Paducah Quilt Show. Karen has several posts on her blog from the quilt show:
A couple of weeks ago, we took a drive down to Hot Springs to visit Garvan Woodland Gardens.
(Click on any of the images to view larger version)
We’ve been in Arkansas for nearly 30 years and this was the first time we had visited this wonderful attraction.
Photos from the visit are included in my newest photo gallery, Garvan Woodland Gardens, Hot Springs, Arkansas.
The Garvan Woodland Gardens is a botanical garden in Hot Springs, Arkansas, USA. The 210 acre garden is owned by the University of Arkansas and open almost every day during daylight hours, for a fee.
The gardens are situated on a wooded peninsula with 4.5 miles of shoreline on Lake Hamilton. The gardens feature rocky inclines reminiscent of the surrounding Ouachita Mountains, floral landscapes, streams, and waterfalls in a natural woodland setting, plus a Japanese Garden with Japanese maples and tree peonies, a conifer border, and various flower and rock gardens. Its collections display hundreds of rare shrubs and trees, including camellias, magnolias, roses, and over 160 different types of azaleas. (Wikipedia)
Gallery: Garvan Woodland Gardens, Hot Springs, Arkansas.
See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
Another awesome video from the volcano. (video from ITN)
In this video of the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, shock waves can be seen emanating with each explosive pulse of lava, clearly causing displacement of the cloud of smoke, ash, and steam.
