panoramas – Page 4 – Richard Rathe's Reflections

Apostle Islands 2021

We recently went for a quick trip to Stockton Island in my friend’s new boat. Stockton has the huge advantage of partially sheltered bays with places to tie up the boat. [Full Gallery]

We made an amphibious landing to offload our gear and then moored the boat about a mile away at the pier (seen in the distance above). I pitched my hammock tent right on the beach between mature white and red pines. The level of Lake Superior had recently gone down so there was a more normal amount of beach exposed.

The highlight of this trip came early, as we took a short walk away from the visitors center and came upon this magnificent orchid, the Pink Lady’s Slipper!

“In order to survive and reproduce, Pink Lady’s Slipper interacts with a fungus in the soil. Generally, orchid seeds do not have food supplies inside them… The lady’s slipper seeds require threads of fungus to break open and attach to the seed. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients. When the lady’s slipper plant is older… the fungus will extract nutrients from its roots. This mutually beneficial relationship between the orchid and the fungus is known as “symbiosis” and is typical of almost all orchid species.
Pink lady’s slipper takes many years to go from seed to mature plants. Pink lady’s slippers can live to be twenty years old or more…”
www.fs.fed.us

“These plants require bees for pollination. Bees are lured into the flower pouch through the front slit, attracted by the flower’s bright color and sweet scent. Once inside, the bees find no reward, and discover that they are trapped, with only one point of escape. Inside the pouch, there are hairs that lead to a pair of exit openings, one beneath each pollen mass. The bee must pass under the stigma, so if it bears any pollen from a visit to another flower, it will be deposited before picking up a fresh load on the way out.”

There is a reason I’ve never seen one of these flowers before—June is bug season in the north woods. Campers avoid that month. For this trip the breeze from the lake kept the bugs at bay on the beach, but they were pretty aggressive back in the woods.

There were other plants in bloom but it was obviously the end of the season for most…

The nearby campsites were empty so we had a pleasant evening of good food, good drink, & good company!

For our second day we moved around the corner to Quarry Bay near the site of an old brownstone quarry.

Note the bear locker in the photo above. Much easier than putting the food up in a tree!

I pitched my hammock lower and more securely because thunderstorms were predicted (and came) during the night.

We visited the quarry, which is very impressive but hard to photograph through the trees.

I found another tiny orchid along the trail…

We also saw some critters…

The next day started windy but it abated somewhat as we made our way back to port in Bayfield. We saw a traditional commercial fishing boat along the way.

[More Photos…]

Lake Powell & Beyond 2020

Six Night Lake Powell Trip (Click Map to Enlarge)

It had been ten years since I last visited Lake Powell. This year I went with my college friend Al and his partner Marian. [Full Gallery] Not having our own boat, we decided to rent a houseboat from the Bullfrog Marina. This turned out to be a great idea! With a few exceptions it was clean and well maintained (certain lights and the gas grill did not work). The main problem was how late in the day we got started (nominal “check in” time is 10am, we did not leave until after 3pm). For various reasons the day we left was very crowded (COVID19, low water facilitating small boat campers, last big week-end of the summer, etc.)

In the few hours we had on the first day we headed north to Forgotten Canyon. It was packed with small boats and large groups of people camped on the beaches exposed by the low water level. We retreated and found a small anchorage on a large bend near a side canyon (which we explored by kayak first thing the next day).

Alcove with 100 Foot Dry Waterfall Above

On Day 2 we moved back up the canyon so we could be closer to activities on land. [We were treated both nights to inappropriate music, bad karaoke and loud boat engines. I put in my earbuds and listened to Earth Spirit by R. Carlos Nakai (Native American flute) while sleeping out under the stars.]

That evening (after most of the day’s heat was gone) we made the first of two visits to the eight hundred year old Defiance House Ruins. These are very well stabilized and open to the public. (Kudos to the Park Service!) The first thing you notice are the large petroglyphs on the canyon wall. There is no ambiguity as to their meaning… three warriors with shields and weapons.

The site consists of two major rooms with doors facing in opposite directions. The largest is approximately 8-10 feet on a side. There is a patio beyond the structure with a vertical entrance to the Kiva. (Large Panorama)

Defiance House and Kiva Entrance (Click to Enlarge)

Kiva Ceiling with 800 Year Old Soot from Campfires

We returned the next day (Day 3) and I took some additional 360° panoramas.

We then proceeded about two miles up the canyon. We saw many interesting things including ravens, flowers being pollenated (or eaten?) by large black hornets with orange wings, and what I think were three-toed dinosaur tracks!

The day was very hot so we took a siesta near a grove of small oak trees before we headed back to the boat. In spite of my best efforts I got dehydrated. The temp was in the low 90s with very low humidity. It just sucked the water out of me!

On Day 4 we left that area to do more exploring. We ended up in Lake Canyon (which apparently is a very hard place to find anchorage with higher water). It was less crowded and the people were more considerate, which was a plus. We again used our inflatable kayak to explore a side canyon in the late afternoon.

On Day 5 we headed up the main canyon in what turned out to be a delightful wet-boot hike. It was very pleasant to have running water available at all times!

There were lots of trees and flowers in bloom. We saw several critters including a toad (red-spotted?) and a bat (dead?). We also passed a small ruins high on the canyon wall.

On Day 6 we again picked up our anchors and moved to Iceberg Canyon with its cyclopean rock walls—Truly Magnificent! Here we finally found some real solitude in our own little side canyon where we swam and relaxed.

We took out the kayak and explored the three arms of the upper canyon. We had to maneuver around hundreds of dead trees protruding from the low water.

The south arm has a rockfall that created a separate small lake. Compare with these photos [1] [2] I took in 2010 to see how much lower the water is.

The next day we headed back to Bullfrog and civilization. Click on the video below for clips from each canyon we visited.

See the Full Gallery for more photos of petroglyphs, HDR photos, and panoramas–including my lightening tour of nearby parks Goblin Valley, Capital Reef, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Bryce Canyon. I concluded by crossing the Colorado River at the Glen Canyon Dam (which creates Lake Powell!).

Panhandle Pitcher Plant Expedition 2020

The last time I went hunting for Pitcher Plants was 2017. This year I went about two weeks earlier and learned more about their distribution and lifecycles. I visited six sites in all, moving from Florida into Alabama. [Gallery] I saw mostly pitcher plant flowers as I moved west, apparently the flowers emerge days to weeks before the funnel-shaped leaves.

My first stop was Clear Creek Nature Trail (which is actually part of Whiting Field Naval Air Station). They maintain a nice boardwalk so you can walk over and among numerous White-Top Pitcher Plants.

I had not been to this site since 2013, and the plants were just beginning to emerge. I took a few photos of what was there, and caught a cryptic denizen I did not see until I reviewed the photos at home.

Green Tree Frog on White-Top Pitcher Plant

My next stop was nearby, the Yellow River Marsh Preserve. Unfortunately for me (not the preserve) there had been a recent prescribed burn in that area. I could find only one clump of pitcher plants on the perimeter of the small pond where they had been plentiful in the past.

Fortunately I did not have to go far, just a few steps over to the ditches on either side of the local road!

There were also many Sundews present, including the “Threadleaf” species I’d wondered about in the past (saying it looked like a cross between a “sundew and a fern”). Turns out I was half right!

I ended the first day at Tarkiln Bayou Preserve with about an hour of daylight remaining. They had a nice boardwalk and there were many White-Top Pitcher Plants present in one wet area, along with several Grass Pink Orchids!

The next day was a bust as far as Pitcher Plants go, but I got a chance to explore two new areas that in a few weeks will probably be full of new growth. The first was Weeks Bay Pitcher Plant Bog with extensive boardwalk over and around a large wetland. There were a few flowers emerging from the straw and lots of Fern Fiddleheads unfurling.

I also caught this Green Anole displaying his throat patch.

The second site was much larger, the Splinter Hill Bog Preserve (owned by the Nature Conservancy). There appeared to be several acres of last year’s Pitcher Plants with a few leaves and flowers beginning to emerge. It should be spectacular in a few weeks if there is enough rain.

I went on a long walk into a large tract of Longleaf Pine uplands and was rewarded by several unexpected sightings. After a short boardwalk I saw my first Butterwort (another carnivorous genus)!

Then something even more surprising, peeking out of the straw along the trail were several miniature Blue Irises?! It turns out these are Dwarf Woodland Irises. The ground was not obviously wet and I was climbing a gentle hillside. Wow! I did not see that coming…

I had planned to camp at Wright Lake in the Apalachicola National Forest but it remains closed after last year’s hurricanes. So I stayed in a motel and headed down there on my third morning not knowing what to expect. I was amply rewarded with the best showing of the entire trip!

About four miles north of the little town of Sumatra I noticed a large, recently burned area with many large yellow blooms of Trumpet-Leaf Pitcher Plants. I parked and started walking over the slightly wet uneven ground. I was not disappointed. In addition to the large pitchers there were Purple Flower Pitcher Plants, and what I think were last year’s Parrot Pitcher Plants (not yet emerging this year). There were also Orchids in abundance, at least two species of Butterwort and Sundews everywhere! A True Motherlode!!

Godfrey’s Butterwort (*Pinguicula ionantha*)

[More photos, signs, maps in the Gallery]