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.