Garryowen

Someone at the trading post recommended that we come here since we couldn't visit the park. This is a few miles down the highway from Last Stand Hill, and was the location of Sitting Bull's camp before the battle.

Wikipedia tells me that the town is privately owned, and has a population of 2 (which may explain why the GPS got so confused when we were trying to find it.) There's a small museum, and a tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which may (or may not—there is apparently some doubt about this) contain the skeleton of a cavalry soldier found in 1926 when an irrigation ditch just outside of Garryowen was being repaired.

Garryowen started as a railroad station on the Little Bighorn River, where supplies for the local forts and homesteads could be delivered. The name referred to an Irish song that was the marching song for the 7th Cavalry Regiment.

Little Bighorn

The 7th US Cavalry Memorial on Last Stand Hill, at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana. This is where the Battle of the Little Bighorn ended in 1876, when Custer and the last 40 or so of his men were cornered and killed.

It's such a bad picture because the battlefield is currently only open on weekends while they build a new visitor's center, so this is as close as we could get. I was disappointed not to be able to visit the battlefield, but it was hot and the trading post up the road was air-conditioned, so I managed to get over it.

Looking out over the dreary landscape in the opposite direction. The Little Bighorn river is behind the trees.

I haven't posted many pictures of the scenery yet. After the surprisingly beautiful prairies of North Dakota, the northern route that we took across Montana to Glacier National Park was a letdown: flat fields of grass, cattle, sad little towns, and mile after mile of railroad cars along the highway.

We stayed in Missoula last night and took a more southern route heading east to Little Bighorn today. This was a much prettier drive, with mountains and grass-covered hills behind the ranchland. But this is bleak.

Sunday bird blogging

A crow in Glacier National Park.

The World's Largest Purple Spoon

We had two hours to kill this afternoon while waiting for check-in time at what was supposed to be our hotel for the night (we are sleeping elsewhere—long story) and checked Trip Advisor for the top 15 things to see in Browning, Montana. This spoon was listed, although it is actually in East Glacier Park. (If you spend more than a few minutes in Browning, you will understand why they had to extend the boundaries in order to come up with more than half a dozen things to see.)

So we sought out the giant spoon and discovered that it was across the street from the restaurant where we ate lunch, and we had somehow failed to notice it. (This might be a common problem since the sign identifying the spoon also helpfully includes an arrow pointing to it. “Oh, that giant purple spoon! I didn't see it!”)

Bunny!

We've had some really annoying and expensive but also kind of hilarious hotel problems the past few two days, , so I'm going for pictures that don't require a lot of explanation. I'm too exhausted to explain much, and we're leaving at 6am again tomorrow.

So how about a bunny? Google tells me that this rabbit behind our hotel in Glendive, Montana yesterday morning is probably a desert cottontail.

Saturday reflections

Another look at the infant Mississippi River in Itasca State Park. The reflections are pretty feeble, but it's what I've got.

Wild horses

It was a long drive today and I'm too tired to talk about pictures.

But here are some wild horses in the national park yesterday. I think they speak for themselves.

North Dakota

A bison in Theodore Roosevelt National Park today.

One of my fellow teachers had told me, “North Dakota is prettier than you'd expect,” and that's an understatement. Even in the dreary rain this morning, there was something magical about the highway stretching into the flat forever, with the farms and the yellow canola fields flying by.

And we spent most of the afternoon in the park, where there was abundant wildlife—bison, wild horses, prairie dogs—in a magnificent setting.

Tomorrow we cross Montana heading for Glacier National Park.

Wading

It's technically summer, but it was raining much of today and not very warm. But that didn't stop these brave adventurers from wading through—the Mississippi River?

Today was the first leg of our road trip out of Minneapolis, and one of the places we stopped was Itasca State Park, which contains the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

It's hard to believe that that unimpressive stream of lake overflow is the same Ol' Man River that goes from Minneapolis to New Orleans. There are more pictures, but I'm too tired to look at them.

Astronomy Tuesday

This is a composite of more than 1100 images taken from the new Vera C. Rubin observatory in Chile. They called this picture the Cosmic Treasure Chest, and I am dazzled.

It's somehow comforting to see this evidence of the infinite beauty and mystery of the universe when the world seems more than usually cruel and dangerous.

Image credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory

Sunday bird blogging

A not-great picture of a mockingbird, huddled under the roof on the pier last week. He was waiting out the rain with the rest of us, and complaining about it loudly.

Also in Red Wing

Architectural detail on a downtown building.

The World's Largest Boot

For some reason, when I talk about the interesting places I've been and the things I've seen, I don't always remember to mention that I have actually seen The World's Largest Boot. But here is photographic evidence, in Red Wing, Minnesota, home of the shoe company of the same name.

More downtown Minneapolis

Another picture I never got around to posting from Minneapolis: the Wells Fargo Center, designed by César Pelli.

Though the Art Deco design looks very early 20th century, it was actually completed in 1988.

Saturday reflections

 

Downtown Minneapolis, in 2022.

I'll be back in Minneapolis Tuesday, though only for a quick overnight at an airport hotel before heading west on a road trip early Wednesday morning.

OK, that is just insane

Braving the chilly Hudson River in just a speedo, I mean. We've had very little weather that even qualifies as warm recently, and none of the heat and humidity that's typical for this time of year.

Sunday bird blogging

I actually saw a double-crested cormorant sitting on a piling in the Hudson River yesterday. I have never seen one in New York before.

It was gray and drizzly and the bird was too far away to photograph, so here's a picture of a different cormorant in Lake Anza in Berkeley.

Saturday reflections

Pier 34 on the Hudson in the rain this morning. One of my fellow teachers was doing a mile and a half swim in the river today, and several of us turned out to cheer her on.

Urban poetry

A garage or maybe storage in Tijuca National Park in Rio. I like the seating!

Astronomy Tuesday

It has been a long time since I posted one of these, but this image caught my eye: the twisted disk galaxy NGC 4753.

There was probably a collision with a satellite galaxy a billion years or so ago, resulting in these filaments of dust. Gravity is hard on all of us.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: Alexander Reinartz

Saturday reflections

Palm trees reflected in a car window in Berkeley.

The Four Elephant Seals of the Apocalypse

The one on the left is being gently reminded to turn around and face the camera.

Sunday bird blogging

I have many similar photos of this group of Gentoos in Cierva Cove, but I love all of them. I wish I knew what was going on in those little penguin brains.

Saturday reflections

This one has been sitting in the folder for a while—the no longer used El Ferdan Railway bridge in the Suez Canal.

Penguin went a-courtin'

If you look closely at this gentoo in Mikkelsen Harbor you can see that he's carrying one of the very important courtship pebbles in his beak.

Whale bones

There were whale bones all over the beach at Mikkelson Harbor, along with the ruins of a wooden boat.

Back in Antarctica

Looking down on the landing site in Mikkelsen Harbor. This picture gives a sense of scale that I wasn't always able to capture—how small I sometimes felt, with the mountains and glaciers just looming above us.

Sunday bird blogging

A pair of kelp geese on the shore in Puerto Williams, before we set sail for South Georgia.

Saturday reflections

I've been taking a lot of buses again, something I got out of the habit of doing during the pandemic. But with school and tutoring on the Upper East Side, and my knee no longer up to walking as many miles as I used to, it's either buses or Uber, and buses are a lot cheaper.

A view from above

I love seeing mountains from the air, and the Andes always seem particularly photogenic. This was taken on the flight between Rio and Santiago.

The umbrellas of Copacabana

Urban poetry

Christmas Day in Rio. The highway along Copacabana Beach was closed to cars, but busy with bikes and scooters.

And almost every single person was on their phone while they were biking or scooting along. I've never seen that anywhere else; lots of New Yorkers are glued to their phones while they walk, but I've never seen anyone looking at their phone while they're biking. It definitely wouldn't be great for your life expectancy here.

I sold my car not long ago, and while I occasionally miss the idea of it, I really do not miss the stress of driving in Manhattan, where two eyes and a few mirrors aren't nearly enough to keep track of all of the chaos around you.

Cascatinha Taunay

This waterfall is in Tijuca National Park, an urban park in the mountains in and around Rio. It's named for Nícolas-Antoine Taunay, a French artist who built his house on the edge of the waterfall.

More tropical foliage

I do love the colossal leaves in the tropics; I remember seeing some in Costa Rica that were taller than I am. And there was bamboo everywhere.

Jardim Botânico

The botanical gardens were part of my Christmas Eve tour in Rio. They were closing early for the holiday, so our visit was a blur of orchids, bamboo and a lot of tropical foliage.

Another phone picture

This was taken from the couch in my stateroom, in Antarctica obviously.

We were somewhere in the vicinity of either Neko Harbor or Paradise Bay. I probably got up off my ass at some point and went out on the balcony to get a better picture, but I love this reminder of the sheer magic of that trip.

Sunday bird blogging

I'm catching up on odds and ends now that the semester over, and hoping to bring some order to the mess before the summer's travels begin. So here's a white ibis in Miami in January.

Saturday reflections

Cars in a parking lot sporting some amazing reflections.

I took this picture about six months ago—I remember that I was cutting through the parking lot on my way somewhere in a tremendous hurry, though I no longer remember where I was exactly or where I was going. But obviously I had to stop and take this picture.

Anyway, it promptly got buried in the hundreds of photos on my phone related to school and our group chats, and I found it today when I was trying to clean some of the junk out.

Cristo Redentor

Even on a sunny day, with blue skies and puffy clouds, I wouldn't have been that impressed by the statue. It's colossal, of course; those outstretched arms are 28 meters across—almost 100 feet. But you lose the scale seeing it up close. If I'd had to guess how tall it was I would have said maybe fifty feet, but it's twice that. You really get a much better sense of the drama of it from a distance, or in the many photographs taken from the air.

There's a tiny chapel inside the pedestal, which was packed with people trying to get out of the rain, and I sat there for a while. I much preferred the painting there to the statue outside.

More views from Corcovado

I really wasn't expecting how beautiful all of the mountains in and around the city of Rio are. Even on a rainy day.

Rainy day

It's been raining all week here, reminding me of that last day sightseeing in Rio in the rain.

This is the view from Corcovado, the mountain with the statue of Christ the Redeemer. This panorama of the tiny boats and the city in the foreground, and the mountains fading away in the mist, was actually much more impressive than the actual statue we climbed the mountain to see.