Take Me to the River

Saturday before Solstice

The last couple of weekends we’ve stayed home due to the increasing fire danger and afternoon thunderstorms at higher elevations. It’s still easy to take a short day trip and enjoy a few hours on the river.

Garden Update

We are finally getting some established and happy berry plants, especially strawberries; but I expect a little haul of thornless blackberries, too. Juniper loves helping with the watering!

Hope you are enjoying a safe and happy 4th of July weekend, friends!

Looking for Adventure…Born to Be Wild

We are definitely getting a jump on camping season and making up for all the weekends we didn’t go out last year. Last weekend was our first campout in Colorado for the year and the weekend before that we were back on the Chama River.

April 23rd – 25th | Chama River

There were a lot more people on the river than when we were last there in March. We ended up in a different spot that had a pretty popular beach. When we weren’t exploring, we were watching all the boaters going by.

April 30th – May 2nd | Colorado Camping

Last weekend we were a little closer to home, just over Wolf Creek Pass. We were lucky to find the traffic on the main road light this early in the season and more dispersed than when we visited here in July 2019.

Puppy highlights included our hike, which ended up in playing with a 2yr old Bernese we met, a few little patches of snow left at about 9K ft, and plenty of drainages, seeps and creeks to splash the paws in.

The new harness got a good break-in and after a short nap, Juni learned how to play frisbee. Or at least how to chase and chomp the frisbee. Besides outgrowing her little pink harness, it looks like all of her baby teeth have fallen out.

The next morning after coffee around the campfire and taking our time to pack-up, we bounced over to Del Norte for a few pizzas and beers before heading back to Pagosa.

Springtime Playtime

Sunday, March 28th | San Juan Riverwalk

With the snow melting and mud season in full swing, the San Juan Riverwalk is a great springtime option for a stroll, and of course there’s the river to play in.

Tuesday, March 30th – Thursday, April 1st

During the workweek a pup’s gotta find ways to entertain herself.

EASTER WEEKEND | April 2nd–4th
CAMPING TRES PIEDRAS & SHOPPING TAOS

With the forest roads still closed in our neck of the woods, camping choices are limited this time of year. So we headed over the pass, stopped for lunch at Three Barrel and set up camp at Tres Piedras.

The next day, we headed into Taos to shop a little bit and takeout our favorite pizza. Looking for a quick pit stop at the Gorge, we were overwhelmed by the number of visitors and ended up with a front row seat to watch this ram graze his way through the rest area.

Back at camp, there was still plenty of time to stretch our legs and explore. That’s how we spotted these Pasque flowers and took advantage of the best snow patches.

Home again and bathed. Ready for another workweek.
Wednesday April 7th– Friday april 9th

We ended the week with both of these hoomans getting their first round of COVID vaccinations. The best part of such a late in the day appointment? Our hometown brewery is open for dinner. It was a blustery red-flag warning kind of a day, so we practically had the patio to ourselves.

Saturday, April 10th | chris mountain

Before running the usual weekend errands in town, we took advantage of one of the first forest roads opening up and hiked about 3.3 miles up Chris Mountain. There wasn’t much snow, but there was still plenty of mud to be found.

How are you celebrating Spring and what new adventures are you looking forward to?

Natural Resources

Last year working for Audubon Rockies as a Seasonal Educator, I visited the second grade classrooms in Pagosa and taught students about insects in preparation for their visit to Four Mile Ranch for more in depth study. This year as the team of educators behind the program begins to think about making content virtual for the upcoming school year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to document a few of the critters around my home and some of the web resources I’ve found.

Community Naturalists

Did you know June is National Pollinators Month? Audubon Rockies Spring 2020 Community Naturalist Highlights features an in-depth article by our local Community Naturalist, Keith Bruno, about how to attract mason bees. Learn the difference between native bees and honeybees and watch as Keith shows you how to assemble your very own pollinator house. Read the full article here.

There are other ways you can play a role in your community as a citizen scientist. Here in the San Juans, Mountain Studies Institute has several projects you can participate in from weed mapping to big horn sheep monitoring.

Or visit iNaturalist, a joint initiative by the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society, where you can id plants and animals, record your observations, and share them with a global network of scientists and naturalists!

Insects Are Everywhere!

They really are—especially this time of year! I captured this little video of a giant bumblebee visiting one of the hanging baskets on my front porch. Then I wondered if I could identify what kind of bee it was? There’s a website for that…

In this 5 Facts About Bumble Bees article from the National Wildlife Federation, I discovered bumblebeewatch.org where you can upload a photo, id the species and have that verified by an expert. I haven’t done that yet, but I think I may have a Bombus fervidus.

Here’s a gallery of some of the insects I’ve recorded in my yard over the years. The robber fly with yellow jacket is the only one that’s not from my home, but landed on me during a camping trip on the Middle Fork of the Piedra. Click on the photos below to view them larger.

Here’s an idea… Start a scavenger hunt! Try to find and document 3-5 insects in your yard or local park or open space. Don’t have a camera to record a photo? Take notes! Draw pictures! Then see if you can id or learn anything new about the insects you recorded using the internet or your local library to fuel your research. Try it again in another month or two. Did you see the same insects? Why or why not? Keep a journal and record the interesting critters you see around you. Get your friends involved, share and compare the insects you’ve recorded. It’s like PokĂ©mon in real life. See how many insects you can observe and collect in your journal!

Who Can Be Found In My Habitat?

I was excited to stumble across the National Wildlife Federation’s website and learn that Ranger Rick is alive and well. It was like finding a long lost friend. Do you remember this raccoon character? I can remember reading Ranger Rick magazine as far back as second grade. It is probably one of the things that inspired my love for nature and wildlife. While it is a subscription based program, NWF’s site has free activities and resources and even more if your school is part of their Eco-Schools program. 

While I was looking for insect photos on my computer, I decided I could post photos of some of the other animals that I’ve seen at my house. Most of the photos I have are of birds because we have a wide variety and many frequent our feeders and birdbath. If you’re a birder, you can record your sightings on ebird.

Some of the special new sightings we’ve seen this summer include an oriole and goldfinch, not to be confused with the grosbeaks or pine siskins. We have a lot of other birds, too that I haven’t taken photos of but can id such as towhees, jays, wrens and juncos. In my habitat, we have the neighborhood herd of mule deer who like to bed down on the hillside, red fox, rabbits, lizards and last year we spotted a gopher snake!

Our Impact

You can’t study the natural world for very long before you realize the role we as humans play in the web of life. For instance, I just read this article in Scientific American about micro-plastics. Our decisions have a much greater impact than many of us understand. It can be a heavy subject; but with continued education and research, we can begin to make personal choices that better impact our environment.

Food waste from someone’s 4th of July celebration. We found watermelon, hot dogs, pork bones, baked beans and untouched ears of corn in and around a creek bed.

Last summer I celebrated my 40th birthday by taking two weeks off to camp around southern Colorado. The joy of exploring the outdoors was overshadowed by people who left food waste in the campsites we visited. In one case, we gathered it all up and burned it in a campfire. In the other, we chose to bury it. If we’d had better resources, we would have packed it out. Not only does this show a blatant disregard for the value of food and thinking about the people that may come after you, but it is extremely dangerous for the local wildlife. If bears become habituated to finding human food, it’s only a matter of time before that bear will end up euthanized. Be Bear Aware.

Unfortunately, most people just don’t know any better. If you’d like to learn about the best ways to protect the outdoors and how to educate others, I’d like to introduce you to Leave No Trace principles. The LNT Center’s website also has an extensive library of activities and programs for young people to learn how to be responsible outdoor enthusiasts.


I hope you’ve found some of these online resources helpful. Next time, I’ll plan to focus more on plants and maybe provide my signature stories and specimens that I share with the students at Four Mile Ranch. Until then, happy trails…