Happy New Year from Rhode Island!
The clock has just ushered in the New Year from the perspective of those on the Atlantic Seaboard and we have had a nice evening back here at Ruth’s parent's house. For the last few days we had the fun of visiting Washington DC and wore our feet out doing it. But we are in Rhode Island again and wish everyone a wonderful 2010.
Merry Christmas from Rhode Island!
We hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas. Thank you all for reading about our adventures. We also wish you a Happy New Year!
Now here in Rhode Island we had the pleasure of watching a blizzard. It snowed all Saturday night and we woke to a winter wonderland on Sunday morning.
The snow was nice and deep in most places, like the drive way.
But in other places it was more selective in where it wanted to be…like the back garage door…
It was also nice and soft to jump in.
Though some people questioned why we were outside in the first place.
The evening brought a beautiful blue light over everything.
Monday was the shortest day of the year and Dana took the chance to go to Newport and take pictures as the sun set around 4 PM.
From now on the days will get longer again, and soon it will be Christmas!
The few days before we headed out to Rhode Island, Washington was having a very bitter cold snap. Temperatures were down in the 10s and 20s. That may not seem like that cold to some, but it was for Vancouver. We took that opportunity to visit the Gorge and see the ice on the waterfalls. It was a lot of fun.
The first was Latourell falls. It had made a nice big pile of ice where the pool used to be. And while we were there it would occasionally drop a large piece of ice from the frozen top.
All around the falls was a thick layer of ice covering everything. The first shot is the small plants that surround the pool looking much like a little space city. The other shot is the cool looking basalt columns.
This is a perspective shot on how big the pile of ice under the falls had gotten. The little dot to the right is Dana standing next to it.
The next falls was Multnomah Falls. There were a lot of people here, including many with large cameras and tripods.
It, like the previous falls, also had replaced it’s pools with ice.
The third waterfall we saw was Horsetail Falls. The ice it had formed had a wonderful blue/turquoise hue to it.
Dana was also able to walk up to the base of this falls.
We also had fun seeing the smaller details surrounding the falls here. Many things looked like they had been covered with a layer of fondant, like a fancy cake. Here is a leaf that Ruth found.
Little did we know our adventures in the ice and snow were only beginning…
Today was Ruth’s Birthday and we had a good time celebrating it in Rhode Island. This photo is from last week when we were still in Washington. Dana’s family had a little pre-Birthday party for Ruth before we left. Part of it was watching the Christmas Ships in Vancouver in the very cold weather.
Happy Birthday Ruth!
I have finally worked through the full process of publishing a research paper. It is for the journal Invertebrate Systematics. We even got the cover photo.
The article is called: Phylogeny and evolution of male genitalia within the praying mantis genus Tenodera (Mantodea: Mantidae)
I can send you a copy if you really want one.
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.
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:
