The noise you hear is a snow plow operating nearby, probably clearing the road intersection off-camera to the left. An hour later, apparently while I was editing the original video clip of his dash across the road, the bear came back – with the snow plow still operating nearby — and he tried crossing again several times. (I’ve now combined all the clips together.)
More pictures from our gaming sessions, including in costume for Halloween and for our ongoing King’s Dilemma council meetings:
Some of the many titles we’ve played recently: Cascadia, Burgle Bros (1 and 2), Chinatown, Pan Am, Cosmic Encounter, The Bloody Inn, Wiz-War, Mountain Goats, Plague Inc., The Search for Planet X, Maglev Metro, Near and Far, Gùgōng, Decyrpto, King’s Dilemma, Pandemic Legacy: Season 0, Bargain Quest, Nemesis, Obsession, Inis, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Barrage, Evolution: Climate and Flamme Rouge.
Update (11/29/2021): Added pictures from some more gaming sessions in November: Villainous, Unicorn Fever and Chinatown. I forgot to take pictures during our very long but surprisingly truly funny game of Forgotten Waters. D’oh!
Update (12/17/2021): Clay joined us in December on a visit: Die of the Dead, Power Grid, Flamme Rouge and Settlers of Catan — it was Darlene and Adriana’s first time to play Catan! We also got together later in the month at Nacho’s for Bargain Quest and For-Ex.
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Yesterday, Darlene and I came across “grandpa’s house” from the movie The Lost Boys while hiking in Pogonip Park here in Santa Cruz:
It’s now condemned and fenced off but they used the old Pogonip clubhouse for the exterior shots of “grandpa’s house” back in 1987:
And then we found this…
We loaded up the van and headed out last week, stopping first for a couple of days to visit with Troy in Tahoe.
Our intention was to travel on to the Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada and maybe into Utah but we had to cut the trip short and head home early so that Darlene could help a friend. So we spent the couple of days we had checking out Pyramid Lake north of Reno (which is where Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River drain to) and then visiting the Black Rock Desert playa before heading home.
All of this area (and in fact all of northwest Nevada) used to be submerged in a huge prehistoric lake (Lake Lahontan) and the ancient water lines are still obvious along the mountain sides. There are also lots of cool tufa rock formations in the area, though unfortunately much of the area around Pyramid Lake is off limits to the public and open to tribal members only. (The lake and surroundings are part of a Paiute Reservation.)
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More demos of VR for friends, this time with Dave and Kathie, separately with Troy and (updated in December 2021) with Clay:
See also past VR demos with Martha and Dave and with Glenn, Michele and Seaerra:
and my original demo of VR experiences with me and Darlene:
I’ve already posted a series of galleries for most of our Colorado road trip:
This last gallery (Florissant, Shelf Road, Flaming Gorge, etc.) contains more miscellaneous pictures — visiting the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, driving the dramatic, unpaved Shelf Road south out of Cripple Creek, stopping by the Royal Gorge Bridge, hiking out to the dinosaur trackways near Red Fleet State Park (Utah), spending a couple of days at the south end of the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, seeing wild horses in Sand Wash Basin HMA in northwest Colorado, and overnight stops in Wyoming, Utah and Nevada on my way to and from Colorado.
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As part of our month-long Colorado road trip, we spent about four days in Dinosaur National Monument but could have happily spent more if not for the worsening smoke from this year’s California wildfires.
Coming from the south, we started with the canyon portion of the park and spent two nights at the Echo Park campground. One day was just biking out along the Yampa Bench Road and checking out many of the amazing river canyon overlooks.
The following day we turned our attention to the dinosaur fossils and petroglyphs in the western part of the park by taking a slow, rough 4WD road to the other side of the park. (Why take the easy way around??)
At the Quarry Exhibit Hall, you can see hundreds of fossilized dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock:
And we had a close encounter with a pair of bighorn sheep:
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