A no-picture post

But you should read it anyway!

Dana and I took a super-fun trip into Portland on Saturday to visit Powell's Books. While we were there, we perused the rare books room and saw a first printing of "The Hobbit."

"Pretty cool," you might think to yourself, "not worth its own blog post, though." And you'd be right.

After leaving the rare book room, we stumbled on a small table of autographed books for sale. The one that immediately drew our attention was called "Cake Wrecks." We spent the next twenty minutes laughing till our stomachs hurt and wiping our eyes. The book had pictures of truly awful cakes. "This seems like it should be a blog!" I thought to myself. So when Dana and I got home yesterday, we looked it up. Sure enough, Cake Wrecks started as a blog!

Go to it here. No, seriously. It's really funny. I recommend navigating by subject using the categories on the right side. Or, you could do what Dana did, and look at every page moving backwards. Either way, if you've had a rough day and you need something to make you smile (or laugh till you cry) this site ought to do the trick.

PS: Her Sunday posts are always nice/awesome cakes, so you can see some of those too.

Happy Halloween!

          

Happy Halloween from Dana and Ruth!

    

                   

A Taste of Japan

Hello Everyone and

Happy Halloween!

Though these are not technically Halloween photos, they do have beautiful Halloween related colors.

We recently visited the Japanese Gardens in Portland, OR. It was a wonderful day and a great time of year to go. The colors were incredible. Here are just a few of the shots we got. It was also fun to go since Ruth’s sister Emily and her family live in Okinawa Japan right now. We thought of them while we were there.

 

These shishi dogs are much like ones we have seen in Emily’s blog in Japan and also like the small ones they gave to Dana for Christmas.

 

Thank you for visiting our blog. If you liked these photos, there are more at our photo album site here.

Eagle Creek and Utah

So far we have been having a good Autumn. One of the things we did was take a hike in the Columbia River Gorge. We hiked up Eagle Creek to Punchbowl Falls. We wanted to see the waterfalls and the pretty fall colors; we were successful.

Punchbowl Falls is one of the main waterfalls on Eagle Creek. There are about 12 on the creek itself, but we only saw three.

 

This is Lower Punchbowl Falls:

We also got to see salmon spawning. They were making nests, laying eggs, and fighting. Some of the fish were quite large and there were dozens of them. The one by Ruth is a smaller one.

 

We also just came back from a short trip to Utah for a job interview. It was a nice trip, and we saw more nice colors along the way.

We stopped near The Dalles on the way down. And in the Blue Mountains we saw some evergreen trees that turn yellow in the fall.

We visited BYU:

 

And Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, ID on the way home:

Florida

My last collecting trip I went on while still at BYU was a 6 day trip to Southern Florida. I went with one other person and we collected in Miami and near Naples, around the Everglades. This was my first time to Florida and I had a lot of fun. As a side note, my brother Steen and his family have moved to Florida and I hope they are doing well.

We stayed in Miami the first two nights. This was our view looking toward Miami Beach:

We collected in a state park in North Miami.

But we soon were out in a place called Port of the Islands near Naples.

Collecting in Florida was difficult, considering most of it is covered in water and you have to listen for large animals…

But the mangroves were beautiful.

It was also nice that we had some time to drive into the Everglades and see so many different habitats:

This was the road summit:

Florida yielded many more fascinating creatures:

Like this striped walking stick,

or this funky caterpillar.

Giant Lubber Grasshoppers were in great abundance.

And I caught my first mole cricket and found a “happy” spider:

This a rat snake, or black racer that we caught.

Also, we were excited to find an iguana, a species that has taken up residence after people let their pets go.

a beautiful skink

And of course the alligators. I was very excited to see them.

Florida also had lots of birds. The vultures liked the restaurant we ate at several times. We liked it too, they served seafood, gator, and bullfrog.

Heed the signs:

One of the best things we saw were the manatees that came up to the docks right outside our hotel.

Florida was a great adventure and great adventures make insect collecting lots of fun. I look forward to going back and visiting Steen and his family.

Arizona

I am finally posting about my last two collecting trips I went on while still at BYU. The first was a 4 day trip from Provo to Portal, AZ in SE Arizona and back in July. Portal is a beautiful little town that sits in a very unusual setting. It is a popular destination to biologist from all over the world and is home to the SW Biological Research Station. It is a place that is famous for its odd collection of wildlife from birds to bugs and everything in between. Five people went and I drove all 4,000 miles.

Our first stop was outside Phoenix among the saguaro cacti.

The next night was in Portal. The scenery there is wonderful,

including the odd combinations of plants.

The last night was outside Flagstaff. On the way back to Provo we stopped at Meteor Crater, a mile wide hole left over from a large impact.

Flagstaff had this interesting sign at an intersection. Look at it closely:

We also stopped at Navajo Bridge when we crossed the Colorado River.

We caught lots of great insects. We also ran into many other interesting animals.

Can you find the walking stick?

a pleasing fungus beetle

This scorpion fluoresces under black light:

a baby Mojave rattlesnake, isn’t it cute?

And at Navajo Bridge we got to see a rare California Condor:

It was a great trip.

What We’ve Been Up To: Animal Edition!

Before we left Provo, we made sure to visit some friends and places we knew we would miss. Dana’s coworker, Joey, has a great collection of lizards, snakes, and spiders that he lets us play with sometimes. A pink toe spider: so cute! Blue-tongued skink: this one only has 3 legs!

We also stopped by the foot of the bell tower where there are some ducks. We got rid of our bread, they got a snack. This duck is willing to go the extra mile… And this is what happens when you give a duck a piece of bread…

When we got to Washington, Dana made sure to let the kids meet the new pets. Here is Megan with our stick-bug: Can you find him?

At Beacon Rock, this bird let us walk on his dock, Wasn’t that nice of him? And again with the fish ladder, this time with a size reference. They look tasty :-)

Here is a video of the fish ladder!

At the beach in Oregon we saw all kinds of pretty anemones and star fish. Look at all of them! We made sure to get a picture with one of them: Dana gave him a high-five.

Keep your eyes peeled for Dana’s posts on his bug catching trips!