Astrophotography

Perhaps I can share my “twopence” on astrophotography.  A collegeaue recently asked about how to get started (and sustained) on astrophotograhy.  This immediately raised fond memories (frustration included) of a similar conundrum I faced a few years ago and my nimble approach towards it. Here is what I did in 6 steps:

2.  Sturdy tripod. I bought a Hama Star 63 for 25 quid years ago and still is the only one i own. No problems to report thru knee deep water and shin deep sand.

Astrophotography is really rewarding as it ticks many fundamental boxes – like,

- undertstanding long exposures,

- understanding film reciprocity (ingore as beginner),

- patience,

that need to be done correctly in order to achieve best results.

Hope all or part of the above helps.  Now perhaps in the next post I should include some of those pictures.  But for the moment, this flickr link will have to suffice

Oh hell yeah- from the man who brought us fried twinkies, fried coke, and fried bacon comes…deep fried butter. Read more from NPR, get the recipe here, and watch one diner’s reaction here.

I’m a fan of the kitschy drawing of Marc Johns. See more of his “treasury of mildly amusing drawings” here.

I’d assumed this trio had set its sights on breaking up years ago; I hadn’t heard about them in about 6 years and the hype that accompanied Are You Green? seems to have dried up big-time.

Turns out, The Sights are not dead at all. They have a tour ongoing and a record coming out; who knew?

Hey, my job isn’t to follow every band down the deep rabbit hole of indie-rock anonymity; my time is precious. I will say, however, that finding Are You Green? on half-translucent-/half-marble-green vinyl (for $7.95 no less) was definitely the highlight of my week. 

If you’re going to spend all that cash on elaborate vinyl, you’d might as well rock like a hurricane in southern Texas, and The Sights, despite their wild inconsistencies, do just that. 

Oh, and I almost forgot — The Sights are part of the semi-garage-rock resurgence of the early aughts that included:

•  The Detroit Cobras (never got to hear them, sadly);
• everyone’s fave neat freaks The Hives;
• personal faves Modey Lemon;
• Garageland, who didn’t stick around for long;
• good-to-great The Division Of Laura Lee;
• The White Stripes (nothing to say, really);
• The Black Keys, another somewhat overrated band;

And tons more I’m not going to name off like I’m everyone’s bitch or somethin’ … just know that a huge glut of garage-rock was plugging up the scene and that only a few of the bands hit on by Kurt Loder were ever worth a damn. (Remember Smile? They weren’t part of that scene but I’ve always liked their staring-at-the-sun asses and The Sights sound a little like ‘em … )

The Sights are one of those bands (though, again, I am basing this solely on Are You Green?). AYG? is a remarkable accomplishment in a genre permanently pock-marked by spotty albums, insanely short live sets and often-terrible musicianship.

Eddie Baranek, principle songwriter for all things Sights, made sure his trio never fell victim to these pitfalls. The songwriting is crisp as a granny smith apple and varietous as Exile on Main Street, with detours into Mc5-style slam/stomp/bomp-rock, early ’80s jangle-fop-pop (I’m thinking Antietam here), proto-garage and many more.

Baranek and co. even venture to bless several tunes with skronk-ular psych deviations that are not only legit but as good as any I’ve heard from a rock band post-’70s, full of panning, Ummagumma-esque bass lines and melting guitar scree.

Sometimes a fantastic debut album is really all you need. The Sights no doubt have more to accomplish, but I’ll probably always be content to stick with Are You Green? (hey, prove me wrong boys; prove me WRONG).

Детройт в семнадцатом году.

Через сотню лет всё довольно хорошо изменилось.

By Jason Fulford for the book Eat Me.

(Via Laughing Squid)

Paul was in Heaven. He finally got to pick olives in Italy.

We were there to help a friend and co-worker with his annual fall harvest. Along with Eric and Alex, we went to David’s home in the country (actually very close to Lake Albano) on a drizzly Sunday morning. The project was spearheaded by David’s elderly Italian father-in-law and avoided by his two tween-aged sons. Wet weather only allowed for a partial picking but the Americans were all-too-happy to be involved.

Then came lunch. When he invited us, David mentioned “something casual”, maybe some pasta. But Paul and I have heard this before. Grateful that we’d brought rich and gooey brownies, as tasty an American treat as any, we were served countless courses of fresh bread, cheese, soup, pasta, polenta, sausages, grilled steak and dessert–three cakes plus brownies. Each dish made even more delicious with their homemade olive oil poured on top.

Several hours and a little wine later, we packed up and headed home, fueled by dreams of an olive harvest of our own someday. At our country villa. Why not?

A simple premise with great execution. From Atlanta based artist Mark Weaver- more photos after the jump. Check out the ever changing set here.

(via Selectism)

Всё по чесноку.

Yes, the holidays are coming and I can think of no better way to get into the spirit of the season than with a tour of Portland’s Victoria Mansion all dressed in holiday garb. The National Historic Landmark, a Victorian treasure, opens for self-guided tours on Friday, Nov. 27, and remains open through Jan. 3.

This is the mansion’s 25th year of offering holiday tours, and the theme Let the Christmas Bells Ring: Celebrating 25 Years of Christmas at Victoria Mansion honors that, right down to the silver anniversary accents. Each year, local designers, decorators, and florists transform the mansion into an over-the-top Victorian holiday showcase.

For a real wing-ding, attend the annual Holiday Gala, on Dec. 3, from 6 to 8 p.m., when nibble and sip your way through the mansion for $50.

No reservations are necessary for the self-guided tours, offered daily, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Admission: Adults $15; AAA/Senior (62 and over) $13.50; $7 for Victoria Mansion members; $5 for children (6-17); and free for children under 6. $35 family ticket.

Get the scoop on the Emerald City’s most famous landmarks in City Sights – Hello Seattle!, a delicious hidden object excursion for enthusiastic sightseers!

As a respected travel journalist, you are on a fantastic new assignment in Seattle, the birthplace of $5.00 coffee, grunge music, and UPS. Your project is to write a featured editorial for the exciting travel magazine, “City Sights!”. You have just 10 days to explore this beautiful city and find all of the interesting facts about famous landmarks and hidden gems. Can you meet the deadline and give your readers a wonderful article to captivate them?

Scour the Seattle landscape to visit 70 celebrated spots like the Space Needle, Pike Place Market and the Seattle Art Museum! Search for over 2,000 hidden objects using your keen eye for detail. Take on additional assignments from your editor and stay sharp to earn trophies. When your are finished with your article, you can even go back to get different item lists, earn better scores, and acquire trophies you may have missed!

Sightsee as a travel journalist on an exciting hidden object assignment

Explore the birthplace of five-dollar coffee, grunge music and UPS

Visit the Space Needle, Pike Place Market and other celebrated locales

Take on additional assignments and earn trophies Go on a family vacation without leaving home!

System Requirements:

Windows 7/Windows Vista/Windows XP

900 MHz Pentium 3 or equivalent

128MB RAM

DirectX 8.0

It Takes Just A second To Say Thanks,

It Takes Longer To The Work On This.

City Sights – Hello Seattle

Всё по чесноку.

Like a Boston Krème Brûlée, the work of DC-based artist Mark Jenkins, takes a unique juxtaposition of setting and ingredients to catch viewers off guard. His packing tape based sculptures have been popping up on street corners around the world since 2003. Learn more about making tape sculptures here. See videos of people reacting to Mark’s work here.

]]> http://movingsideways.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/jiuzhaigou-finale/ Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:28:08 +0000 selfunemployed http://movingsideways.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/jiuzhaigou-finale/

[Jiǔzhàigōu, Sìchuān, China, November 9, 2009]

Panda Lake

The afternoon found me at Panda Lake (altitude: 2587m). Pandas used to frolic and gambol about the lake, before the bamboo naturally died off en-mass in the 1980s.

Today, the only panda in the area.

A reminder that the maintaining the tens of kilometers of boardwalk takes work.

Fortunately, one does not need to walk across the log to get to the opposite walkway.

Panda Lake Waterfall

Panda Lake dumps water 78m down a 50m wide waterfall. This is the largest and oldest waterfall in the park. Panda Lake Waterfall freezes in the winter, which should be a spectacular sight.

A rainbow fragment!

It’s all a trade-off. If I had gotten here earlier today, the light probably would not have been doing this then.

The trail continues past the waterfall and winds through the forest for a while, following Peacock River.

Another panda sighting.

Colorful Lake/Five-Flower Lake

The path eventually comes to spring-fed Colorful Lake, a.k.a. Five-Flower Lake.

With the polarizer filtering out the reflections, the water is amazingly clear in the shallows. All of the green plants in the lake are entirely beneath the water. The lake’s average depth is 4.6m, while the maximum depth is 11.2m.

I was struggling with the daylight at this lake. One moment, the sun’s behind a cloud for five minutes. The next, it’s too washed out for the Panasonic Lumix LX3 to cope with. Still, it was quite beautiful, and a popular lake with the crowds.

The major lakes, ponds, and waterfalls have stone monuments. Tourists like lining up to take their photos next to these monuments.

Five-Flower Lake is popular for newlywed photos, but I suspect these two were actually models.

Pearl Shoal Falls

Pearl Shoal Falls takes some of the water from Five-Flower Lake down a long, gradual slope. The shape of the slope makes the water bubble and froth, resembling pearls. A shoal of pearls, some might even say.

More forest trail

Mirror Lake

Finally, I reached 2390m-high Mirror Lake, the lake I’d had the opportunity to visit earlier in the morning.

This doesn’t look like a lake…

Unfortunately, the lake surface was a little agitated. Some of the other lakes today looked more like a mirror than this one.

Mirror Lake is the lowest sight in the Rize Valley, just before the Nuorilang junction, where the three main valleys come together. At this point, given the short time remaining in the day and the failing light, I had a clear choice:

1. I could continue to see things in a leisurely fashion and take the time to continue the next day.
2. I could rush through the rest of the park.

Somewhat surprisingly, I chose option #2. To be honest, I was feeling tired, and there was no guarantee that the weather would be at all decent tomorrow. If I felt up to it, I still had the entire day #2 to come back and revisit sites, weather permitting. (The title of this post kind of spoils what I ended up doing on day #2.)

Long Lake

So, it was up to the end of the Zechawa Valley in a minibus (transfer at the Nuorilang junction). There was a bit of a wait as the minibus waited for passengers. An enthusiastic band of independent travellers were calling for the driver to take off, already. It looked like they didn’t have any day #2 options. Once at Long Lake, the conductor explained that the minibus would wait for us to finish sight-seeing at the lake, instead of continuing back down. This was to save the park from sending another minibus up to retrieve us later. Her initial allowance of 10 minutes was quickly shouted down. It turns out we didn’t need all that time, because the trails leading down to the lake shore were closed. We could only mill around the observation platform, high above the lake.

At 3150m elevation, Long Lake is the highest lake in Jiǔzhàigōu. I thought I was picking up a bit of a headache from the altitude, or maybe that was just fatigue. Either way, the headache went away when we descended. Long Lake is also the longest and deepest lake in the park.

The sun was pretty much hiding behind a bank of clouds.

As much sun as I had the fortune of seeing at Long Lake.

Colorful Pond

The minibus’s next stop was Colorful Pond. This was turning into an impromptu organized Chinese tour, without the flag-carrying tour guide droning on over a personal speaker. This time, the minibus was going on ahead to wait for us at the next stop.

Colorful Pond sits down from the road. Even through the trees and weak light, the color was startling and gorgeous.

Zechawa Valley

After being meeting up with the minibus, we sped back down through the valley. Upper Seasonal Lake and Lower Seasonal Lake were only given lip service.

We also passed by a Tibetan settlement. The villages that remain in the park are tourism-oriented.

Without any stops, we arrived at the Nuorilang junction in short order. The sun was out, this low in the valley.

Nuorilang Falls

Not far from the junction are the largest travertine waterfalls in the park.

Unfortunately, at this time of day, the sun was directly behind the waterfalls. The morning would have been a much better time to visit.

After walking around the falls for a bit, I got on the next bus and rushed through what I could.

Rhinoceros Lake

Rhinoceros Lake is at 2315m elevation. The second largest lake in the park, it’s 2km long and quite beautiful, even in the late afternoon. Amazingly, the water level never changes.

I’m pretty sure there are no rhinos around here, so I don’t know where the name came from. (Looking on-line comes up with a couple of explanations.)

There’s only an observation deck near the bus stop, but there wouldn’t have been enough time to walk around the lake anyway. At the deck, I ran into a Canadian ex-pat working in Beijing. We ended up  joining forces for the rest of the stay in the park. As our bus approached each subsequent stop, we’d look at each other and shrug. “Sure, why not?”

Tiger Lake

Shuzheng Falls

This part of the Shuzheng valley is dense with smaller lakes and pools.

Shuzheng Mill

Still on display is an old, now non-functional mill. Water flowing underneath provided the power, but the wheels no longer turn.

An information placard next to this prayer wheel said that the wheels are properly turned anti-clockwise. To be honest, I’m not sure if I’ve been consistent about that in the past. Maybe my turning the prayer wheels in the wrong direction negated the prayers of devout Buddhists.

Maybe, as a heathen unbeliever, my anti-prayers have 10x the power of a normal Buddhist…

Shuzheng Zhai Village

On the other side of the road, the Shuzheng Zhai Village welcomes visitors and shoppers. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time or inclination to explore the village. My Canadian comrade was on her way to Lhasa, Tibet with her tour group, anyway. Me, I figure I’ll get to Tibet eventually.

I sometimes feel bad about skipping over places like this. There isn’t a really good reason why these people aren’t as deserving of my attention (and money), just because they’re Tibetans living outside of Tibet. But they aren’t doing too badly. Those buses are probably for Chinese tour groups on a shopping stop.

It was late enough that park staffers were turning visitors back from the more remote paths. Unfortunately, this meant that I wouldn’t get to visit some of the lakes. But the light really was fading, and quickly.

Jinfan are 10m long silk banners, printed with Buddhist scriptures. Tibetans believe that wind blowing over the jinfan “reads” the scriptures. Pretty efficient!

Shuzheng Lakes

I could only peer over the top of Shuzheng Lakes, a series of smaller lakes.

Sparkling Lake

In the summer, the rays of the rising and setting sun make the water sparkle, hence the name. At 2187m in elevation, it’s one of the lower lakes in the park.

I’m not sure, but this might be Sleeping Dragon Lake, due to the travertine shelf running through the lake. It’s supposed to resemble a dragon sliding through the water.

Bonsai Shoal

Out the door

Thus ended my first and only day in Jiǔzhàigōu nature park. The next day, the weather started out overcast and windy, so I just stayed indoors and worked on organizing my Flickr photostream. Later, I ran into someone who had been to the park the day I played hooky, and his photos were pretty good, showing some sun reflecting off the water. I guess it goes to show that weather inside the park can be different from that outside.

[Jiǔzhàigōu, Sìchuān, China, November 9, 2009]

The plan was to get to the entrance by 07:00, the park’s opening time. The travel resources recommended getting in before the tour groups did.

07:00? Ha! I eventually dragged myself out of bed the next morning, only shortly before then. Bed: warm, room: cold. Outside: even colder. After dual-paning my body against the cold, I ended up taking a taxi to the park entrance.

Just past the entrance is the bus depot. I don’t recall anyone ever checking that I had a bus ticket…

The morning ride up to the end of the Rize Valley took around 40 minutes. Along the way, we passed a number of sights, which the conductor identified. One of the first stops was at Mirror Lake, where a small number of people were already taking photographs. A number of passengers hopped off at that point.

In hindsight, I should have done that, too. This early in the morning, the sunlight was fully hitting the face of the mountainside beside the lake, while the water was still dark. Without much of a breeze, the mirror properties of the lake were possibly the best they would get that day.

Instead, I stayed in the bus, which continued up the valley and disgorged everyone at the Primeval Forest.

End of the line, in front of Sword Rock, mostly still in shadow. I’m not sure why they call it that.

Primeval Forest

At 3060m elevation, the Primeval Forest is a mature, coniferous forest untouched by logging. An elevated wooden walking trail loops its way through only part of the 540-hectare forest.

Walking the trail

The Rize Valley has a number of natural attractions along its length, all within walking distance. I could have simply taken a bus from place to place, but I don’t like to be the kind of tourist that merely jumps from “important” spot to spot, skipping everything in between. Besides, I had to get my body temperature up, or I’d freeze to death.

The trail mostly works its way down from the top, descending towards the junction of the three valleys, so it’s an easy walk.

Not many people out and about on the trails. Certainly no big tour groups, yet.

Things warmed up a little once the sun came out, but only while standing in sunlight. Otherwise, it was business as usual (freezing my butt off).

I think I took five slightly different photos of this.

Grass Lake

Named after the vegetation that grows like grass from its grassy surface, Grass Lake looked how grass usually does in winter. The lake is mostly swamp, and sits at 2910m.

Chinese nature parks take a “feet off” approach to avoid impacting the natural ecosystem too much.

Grass Lake is 1.5km long.

As with the other bodies of water in the region, the rich colors result from karst (limestone) erosion and deposits.

Swan Lake

Swan Lake is not far from Grass Lake and sits slightly higher, at 2915m. Like Grass Lake, it’s also marshy, but less so. The lake contains a lot of carbonate material, just like the stuff that put the chill on (spoiler!) Han Solo.

This public service announcement brought to you by Kodak.

At first, the waters were too agitated for a clean mirror effect, but I still liked this. It reminded me of a watercolor, or even an Impressionist painting.

Swan Lake is named for the waterfowl that frequent its waters in warmer, happier times, but I didn’t see any during this visit. I spent some time waiting for the sun to rise above the opposite mountain. Luckily, the wind also calmed down a bit.

A distant pool of light.

I had a new circular polarizer attachment on my camera. Here are a couple of shots demonstrating what a polarizer can do.

All of the surface reflections are kept.

With a twist of the polarizer, a good portion of the surface reflections are filtered out, letting us peek under the water. Ooh la la!

The lake’s depth ranges from 2m to 13m. It’s astonishingly clear.

Eagle Claw’s Cave

At one end of Swan Lake is Eagle Claw’s Cave, at 2900m. The vertical strata in the rock makes it look like an eagle has raked its claws repeatedly down the face of a screaming man. Bad eagle! Bad!

No! Don’t go in there!

Not much else special about the cave. It’s only 6m deep.

Now if it were me in charge of Marketing, I’d have called this “Krazy Kitteh’s Klaw Kave”.

A tactical error

At this point, I made a grave, grave error. Check out the next photo. Heck, flip through the photos above, too. Nice, ultra-blue sky, right? Right! What a nice day! The “clear” weather forecast was spot on.

Silly me, I got caught up in Nature and failed to appreciate how far it was to the next lake. Something like 6km? With my stopping off every so often to take photos, that amount of ground took me a while to cover.

The 6km walking trail would have been even more pleasant when full of colorful leaves, but most of the trees were already bare, clutching vainly at the sky.

After a while, I started getting nervous that I would be missing all the direct sunlight on the other bodies of water, so I started jogging down the trail. Still, that didn’t stop me from still taking photos every so often. How could I resist?

The trail tends to follow the river. All that rushing water wasn’t helping my bladder.

Holy crap! 1800m more to go!

I even jumped back onto the road for a while, but the buses only stop at the designated zones. The closest ones to me were at Swan Lake and Arrow Bamboo Lake. Thanks, park planner!

So where the heck is everyone?!

I don’t think I saw anyone for an entire hour. That was kind of nice.

There’s more color lower in elevation.

Holy crap! the Sequel

Arrow Bamboo Lake

Finally, finally, I reached the outskirts of Arrow Bamboo Lake, named after the arrow bamboo that grow along its banks. Pandas are supposed to love the stuff, but the chance of seeing a panda here were about the same as seeing a panda later at Panda Lake.

I spotted a duck to the side of this footbridge and paced it for a while as it splashed and did ducky things in the water. It eventually crossed beneath the bridge. When I stepped closer, it took off flapping. Coincidentally, I was just about to take a photo of the water, and luckily caught the bird in flight. (The Panasonic Lumix LX3 doesn’t have the fastest response, especially when auto-focus is enabled.)

I consoled myself about the time spent hiking down, telling myself that I wouldn’t have experienced this serendipity otherwise. Small consolation, but I’m easily satisfied nowadays.

Arrow Bamboo Lake is at 2618m, so I’d descended about 300m since Krazy Kitteh’s Klaw Kave. Perhaps the thicker air help keep me from passing out from giddiness when I spotted people again.

Some of the logs seem to float in the water. Maybe because they are. But for others, it’s sometimes hard to tell where the water ends.

Arrow Bamboo Lake is pretty big, with a surface area of 170,000 square meters. I’d have to use math or a calculator to turn that into square feet, but that’s certainly a lot of houses.

Someone owes Bob Ross (R.I.P.) a royalty check. (Not me.)

More fun with the circular polarizer.

Arrow Bamboo Falls

At the north end of Arrow Bamboo Lake, the water drops off 7m along a 150m-wide shelf.

The falls are still growing outwards, due to ongoing calcium and plant deposits, carried by the water. Ten thousand years from now, when the shelf is 151m wide, I’ll point back and say, “Yeah, I was there when it was only 150m wide! You young punks don’t appreciate nothing but your holograms this and instant teleportation that!”

There are a number of places where alternate trails are presented, but perhaps due to the winter season, a number of them were closed off. The only way to Panda Lake would be by bus again, or walking along the road (not recommended, as the buses travel quite fast, especially around the hairpin curves).

Now it’s a horse race!

This post is ridiculously long, so I will stop here, with a bad omen.

A stray cloud, or a heavy smoker lurking in the hills. Harbinger of worse to come?

Saturday was a great day in Adelaide. No airplanes and no scheduled talks or workshops so I could let my mind flow and not hold tight to any particular focus. Lovely.

The day started with a walk to the Adelaide Central market via the Adelaide Christmas pageant route where I saw thousands of people – families – lining the streets waiting for the start of a parade. It is wild to see a Christmas event in 40 degree centigrade heat, with “survival stations” along the way.

I then met up with Mike Seyfang (@fang), Mark Thomson of the Institute for Backyard Studies,  and John Legg and Chris Rawlinson of Helpful Partners. Alas, our buddy Dave Wallace (aka LifeKludger) could not join us. We missed him, because the conversation around tinkering, creatively remixing physical and digital materials to serve real, local needs related to much of Dave’s passions and talents.

Mark had brought up the conversation on tinkering, having seen me muse about it on my blog in the context of technology stewardship. I was hungry for the conversation.

Mike put up a great blog post capturing some of the conversation.  He tied it to my Friday preso on communities and networks and it is worth re-sharing the tweets and links Mike put on the post.

fang #edayz09 a community would notice @dnwallace is not here, the network simply drops the (weak) connection … @nancywhite keynote reflection.

Chris and John run a local consultancy called ‘Helpful Partners’ who specialise in making complex information clear and accessible.

Mark is the ‘old tool’ responsible for the awesome ‘Institute of BackYard Studies‘ home of shed culture and master of the great Australian piss-take. Someone I’ve been wanting to meet for a long time (thanks GB) Author of fine books like :

• Blokes and Sheds
• Henry Hoke’s Guide to the Misguided
• Makers, Breakers and Fixers
• Rare Trades: making things by hand in the digital age

The Central Market meetup was really an extraordinary treat as these four wonderful guys each brought something different that magically connected to what was a very coherent “whole” for me.

Then it was time to meet up again with Michael and on to picking up E-Dayz star, Cathy Moore, and seeing her off to the airport with a few more music stories on the way. Then we drove out to the beach to have lunch with Frankie Forsythe.

With a little break for afternoon work in the cool of the hotel, Michael took me up to Mt. Lofty to see the spread of Adelaide from above and watch a quiet sunset.

Sunday morning Kerry Johnson and her hubbs Paul arranged for an informal tweet up breakfast with Leo Gaggl, his two kids and Annie Ferguson. Coffee, conversation at a relaxed pace was a great topper for my Adelaide visit. Thanks, all!

A while back my friend Austin Light and I started a blog called Beacon Media…check it out here: beaconmedia.wordpress.com

It was meant to be a repository for our art / graphic design.  Beacon Media is not dead, but I plan to add my art to both sites (BM and this site).  Here was my first drawing.  I drew this while in church one day, then added the paint the following Monday:

Then I painted it up:

[Jiǔzhàigōu, Sìchuān, China, November 8, 2009]

Fare vouchers in hand from the kiosk by the airport exit, I was called over to a half-full minivan. The driver asked where I was going. I told him, and he shrugged and waved me in. Since my airplane had just let out, we didn’t have long to wait before the minivan was filled with passengers.

Migu Hostel

I booked three nights at Migu Hostel. Why three? I was already burning one night just by arriving so late in the afternoon. Buses to elsewhere only ran from the early morning. The second night would give me a full day in the park. I gave myself a third night in case I wanted to spend a second day in the park (weather permitting).

It turns out that one of my fellow passengers (from Hong Kong) was also staying at Migu, so we walked together. He was getting a bed in one of the dormitories, while I was getting a single room.

There was a glitch with the first room they showed me – it wasn’t made up yet.

But they kindly gave me another room that was ready. The second room turned out to be larger, which might have been a detriment, as it would be more difficult to keep heated.

But! In this area, electricity is supplied by a private company. All the hotels in the area charge extra for heating (or the cost is built into the room charge). RMB60 to use the A/C all night. I just piled on more clothes.

Out for a walk

Having nothing better to do, I walked out to the park. I wanted to see what the cold weather felt like. I also wanted to see how long it took to walk to the entrance, and scope out the shops and restaurants along the way.

Jiǔzhàigōu park entrance

Before long, I reached the park entrance. Most everyone was already walking out, finished for the day. The light wasn’t that good for photos anymore.

Visitor’s center

The visitor’s center has decent exhibits, with displays describing the fauna, flora, and minerals found in the area, what makes the water so colorful, the economic impact on the indigenous peoples, and the awards that the park has won, among others.

Back in the village

I went shopping for snacks and beverages for the next day.

I asked the shopkeeper how much for the cat. He just laughed.

From Scottish illustrator John Alan Birch come this kitschy sketch: (see more of John’s work here)

(via Beard Revue)

The sights and smells of fall are intoxicating to me. It is my favorite season. I have been collecting images with my little camera, such as this magnificent purple cabbage:

Purple Cabbage

Then, of course, I have to play with it:

Cabbage Quartet ~ by Carol Wiebe

It is difficult to drag myself away from the computer once I am playing with an image. Time dissolves, and the variations keep playing out one after another in a dizzying cascade, like fall leaves spilling from the trees.

Finding the Blue Lagoon

See the Blue Lagoon, locally called “Maira-ira” in Pagudpod. This place is so beautiful. The sand is so fine… And the water is so blue. Since it’s the rainy season, the waves are very strong but still, it’s great to swim in!