by Justin
Now that I touched on the wildlife, you might be wondering “what about the geysers in Yellowstone, aren’t those the main event?” Well, here you go geyser enthusiasts, this one’s for you! Yellowstone has several fabulous geyser basins, including Midway Geyser Basin, West Thumb, the …
If you have been watching the news recently, you will know that Yellowstone was temporarily closed earlier this summer due to historic flooding. The park was closed down because these floods destroyed roads in the north loop. This closure drastically reduced the amount of visitors …
If you are looking for a fun, structured, guided photography trip, look no further than Krisztina’s trip to Bosque del Apache, New Mexico! She has been a friend of mine for some time, and is actually my photography mentor. The trip is geared towards photographers, but everyone can enjoy it! She is leading this amazing experience in the future, so don’t miss out on it! Just tell her that Justin sent you. Fair warning, you will have to wake up before sunrise on the trip, but the early wake-up is well worth it for the experience you get. She actually scopes out the sites beforehand to let you know what spot is best, as well as where the light will come from for the perfect shot. If you can’t get that perfect shot, just ask her and she will come over to help you, as she puts your photos ahead of her own. The photography subjects in question are snow geese (by the ten thousands) and Sandhill Cranes (weirdly beautiful birds that look and act rather prehistoric). She is also incredibly knowledgeable about birds and photography, and if she does not know it, her friend Dave most likely will. I don’t mean to sound like a walking billboard, but it is hard not to be amazed by all the awesome things she does and how well she knows photography.
If you are wondering how a day on this trip goes, here is what happens. You wake up (or, in my case, get woken up) before sunrise, and drive out in the near-darkness with the rest of your group. When you get to the liftoff spot in the morning, you will have to wait until sunrise for the geese to lift off (for us, they always lifted off at 6:19 a.m., and we appreciated the consistency). After the liftoff at sunrise, you will typically get back into your cars and take a spin around the beautiful forests in the back of the park loop in order to get to a feeding spot. Back there, there is a chance to spot anything from bobcats to roadrunners, so I would keep an eye peeled and a camera ready for any photo subjects that may show up. I also recommend being ready to switch sides quickly, as your subjects can be on either side of the road. After this, you go back to the hotel for breakfast (I personally recommend the sausage patties, but you do you). Midday is mostly reserved for relaxing and catching up on the sleep you lost by waking up before sunrise (see tips section for lunch recommendations). After lunch, you go out before dinner for another photo shoot. It follows a similar pattern as the morning one, but backwards, and you are watching landing, not takeoff. Just fyi, the geese do not land at 6:19 p.m. this time.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you may be asking yourself “why isn’t Justin explaining literally everything about the birds yet?” Let’s fix that, shall we? Bosque del Apache is home to many species of birds, from the Sandhill Cranes to the little Red-Winged Blackbirds that congregated into enormous, noisy clouds (known as murmurations) above the feeding pond. In Bosque del Apache, the biodiversity of the bird species means that there is a photography spot for every style. We liked all the spots, but I’ll provide a quick rundown of what you can find at each major spot and when.
At the flight deck pond, you could mostly get photos at sunrise or sunset, as the birds did not spend the day there, reserving it (mostly) for liftoffs or landings. Slightly before sunrise, you can hear some rustling and honking over the pond. Then, the moment the sun comes up over the ridge, you have to be ready, because all of the geese explode off the pond like they all had 17 cups of espresso that morning. The cranes wake up more slowly (or the geese wake them up when they make the least stealthy exit in history) and leave about as slowly as they can without falling out of the sky from lack of forward velocity in small groups into the oranges and pinks of the rising sun (on the bright side, you have a lot of time to photograph them).
After this, you can head to the feeding ponds, places where you can catch photos of the cranes, blackbirds, and geese. The cranes and blackbirds are usually there, but the geese come and go in enormous flocks that fill the sky with rippling storms of flapping and honking. The blackbird murmurations take the cake for most impressive flocks, though. They suddenly detonate out of the grass and ripple through the air like a flag in a windstorm, then settle down for a few minutes before taking to the skies again. This place is very lucrative for people looking for dense flocks of birds that seem almost impenetrably thick. The portrait shots of Sandhill Cranes are pretty nice, too.
The other spot we went to is the visitor’s center gardens, packed to the brim with songbirds and quails. A particular songbird we liked was the Pyrrhuloxia, a small bird also known as the desert cardinal. We spent both days at the visitor’s center searching every nook and cranny of the garden for this little vibrant red bird. As hard as we tried, we could not find the male and photograph him, despite quite an effort of climbing benches and running in circles to look for him in the trees. Another awesome bird we found was the Loggerhead Shrike, a tiny but vicious carnivorous black and gray songbird that eats lizards and small rodents, and will use barbed wire and cacti to skewer their food and save it for later. If your barbed wire fence or cactus garden has random half-eaten lizard tails on it, you may want to look for this bird in your general vicinity. Also, let me know, I would like to see more of them myself.
We enjoyed all the days in Bosque del Apache (an excellent reason for you to come, too) but here are some highlights of our days. Our first day, we were just getting the hang of the schedule, but we still had some amazing experiences, namely the geese lifting off and the murmurs. My favorite thing from that day was the little fluffed-up roadrunner we found on the way out. The next day, Krisztina took a risk that definitely payed off. Instead of starting our day at the liftoff pond, we went straight to the feeding pond after discovering that some of the cranes roosted there instead. It was amazing, we got to watch as the cranes woke up and walked around a little bit, trying to break the ice stuck to their feet from sleeping in a frozen pond. We also found a poor duck that fell asleep in the middle of the pond and got frozen in, rendering her unable to move until the ice melted. We turned to focus on the incoming geese, then looked back and discovered that the duck was gone, leaving a duck-shaped hole melted into the ice. That night, Krisztina took us back to the pond and we witnessed the weirdest behavior yet from the sandhill cranes… the paratrooper landing. The cranes fly in from high altitudes and stall out over the pond, then half fall and half glide rather awkwardly down into it. We also went to the visitor’s center to find small birds in the gardens. The quails were cute, but the female Pyrrhuloxia we saw stole the show. As you know, wildlife is never predictable (well, except for those geese), and, sure enough, our next trip to the visitor’s center, a bird I do not see much, a thrasher, decided to make an appearance.
In short, this trip is fun for anyone, even if you don’t like photography and are just in it for the birds. I encourage you to try new things and step outside your comfort zone, but you can enjoy this trip so many different ways! I always enjoy having a good time while learning new things, which is why I liked this trip so much. You learn so much about the birds and their behaviors, but the trip is so fun, too! And believe me when I say this, Krisztina is the best guide for this trip and with her in the lead, you are guaranteed to have a good time. You can check out her workshops here: KS Nature Photography
Tips and tricks:
Bring warm gear like your are going to go through the ice age, it is freezing out there: 19 degrees Fahrenheit (yes, I know I am a wimp, okay? don’t rub it in.)
If you don’t want to just submit to eating McDonald’s from the restaurant next door to the hotel, we have some recommendations for food.
San Juan Island is home to a diverse group of species and a lot of great spots to find them. Luckily, the small size of the island made it so that most of these spots were often less than a few minutes apart, so it …
As the San Juan Islands are known for whales, whale-watching is one of the best ways to enjoy the natural beauty of these islands! The islands have several different species of whales, like minke whales, humpbacks, and orcas! We used a company called Maya’s Legacy …
After being trip-deprived and running dry on blog material, I finally got my vaccine and was able to go back on a trip. We recently packed up and headed to the San Juan Islands! While I was on the plane, I was so excited to go on my trip that I was literally vibrating like an insanely happy cat, and, when I landed, I moved off the airplane and into the jetway so fast that I almost thought I had set a world record for fastest plane exit. When we got into the car, I wanted to split from Seattle to Anacortes and straight to the ferry dock. I was really craving lunch, so we stopped in La Conner, and our food was was both really delicious and in a great spot on the river (more on this in an upcoming post about the surrounding areas)! When we finally got to the islands, I was so happy I was worried I might explode, and I was so excited to start exploring the following day!
One of the best ways to enjoy the island’s fresh seafood is to catch it yourself (really, this is easier than it sounds). Crabbing is a surefire way to end up with a crab-ton of food! The first thing I wanted to do in the islands was get a lot of crab, and Corey at San Juan Adventures is the only guy on the islands that does this kind of fishing charter. Once you leave the harbor, you make “squid snow cones” with the bait machine by shoving a block of frozen squid in and watching it get shredded all over the deck and into the bucket. Corey then lets you stuff the shredded squid into a box and close it up. After this, you hook the boxes onto the trap, find a mudflat or sandy area, and toss the trap in the water.
After you toss in the traps, you can basically do anything you want out on the water while you wait for the crabs to get into your traps. We chose to go whale-watching, as there was a group of orcas on the water. We followed them for a while, then ended up going back to check the crab traps. The way you reel in the crab traps is by throwing the hook at a rope strung between two buoys, pulling the rope in, and attaching the rope to the trap winch to pull the traps up. The trap-checking process is extra suspenseful if you end up having to pull seaweed off the trap, and then it turns into a sort of “big reveal” scenario. We ended up only having one crab that was the correct size, actually had good meat, was not female, and was not a rock crab in the traps we set ourselves (although the one we got was the biggest crab I’d ever seen). Rock crabs are actually very territorial, and even end up killing and eating Dungeness crabs. They don’t taste as good, so we tossed them back like bony frisbees with claws attached. We were feeling pretty discouraged after only getting one crab, but Corey reassured us we would get 15 crabs, and we went out to the secret traps that Corey set overnight and ended up getting the max amount of crabs our fishing licenses’ actually permit (five crabs per person).
After we got back from crabbing, we had Corey steam our 15 crabs on the dock, where he tossed them into the seawater to cool them, pulled them back up, and then we chowed down. I think we definitely got too many to eat on our own, as our crab feast took up the entire top of the cooler and literally ended up with crab legs and pincers splayed everywhere. We brought the remainder of the crabs back to the hotel, and, when I got tired of eating crab normally, I made it into tacos that looked like there was a crab trying to get out of them (legs sticking out was the perfect touch to add to the as a joke).
If you don’t want to have crab for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of your trip here, (and this is totally understandable, I was tired of crab too) here are some other meal recommendations. For the first meal of the day, breakfast, I have first rate recommendations for you! We only went to two places, but they were so good we did not need anything more. First up was the Salty Fox, my personal favorite, they sold both savory and sweet breakfast, and both were excellent. For the first few days, I did not know they did breakfast burritos, so I had cinnamon rolls, scones, and croissants, but after I learned about the burrito, that was all I needed. It was a beautiful medley of flavors, and was extremely filling, so it made for a great power meal. The other breakfast place I loved was the Crow’s Nest. They had a lot of delicious smoothies in a ton of different flavors, and there were so many flavors that anyone could find one they liked! I got a burrito called the Islander there, and it was absolutely delicious! As for new breakfast discoveries, I learned I like Arnold Palmers, salsa, and onions (not together, of course, that would just be gross)!
As for lunch, I went to two main locations, the Bait Shop and San Juan Bakery. The Bait Shop had a lot of different types of fried seafood, everything even remotely similar to fish and chips was generally on the menu. I had shrimp and chips there, and it was absolutely scrumptious! The slight crunch of the battered crust and the deliciousness of the shrimp magnified together made an extremely satisfying meal, and the French Fries were good too! If you think you are more in the mood for pizza, you might want to check out San Juan Bakery, and it was delicious and fast! It may have just been the best combination of delicious and easy to promote it to the top spot on my lunch list. They also had a lot of odd variations that you do not find anywhere else, like a potato pizza, but I just had pepperoni, as it was too hard to stray from something I love. The pepperoni had the perfect level of spicy and gooey and crunchy, so it was extremely delicious to eat!
Now, to round it all out, the final meal, dinner! We actually went to a lot of places for dinner, and this means I can give you a broad overview of your options. First up, Downriggers, an easy and delicious dinner after a late whale-watching trip. I only had the fish and chips, but it was really good! The battered coating was a subtle flavor, so you could taste more of the fresh halibut, which was delicious with the quality of fish they used! My personal favorite, Duck Soup, had both a charming setting and exquisitely flavored food! I had a five-spice pork loin, and the flavor was just superb, as the spices they used created a delicate mural of flavors that was absolutely delicious! As for dessert at Duck Soup, we had a chocolate marquis, and it too was delicious, the chocolate was so rich and the raspberry sauce was just a perfect accent to add to the heavy and filling chocolate flavor. If you end up staying at Friday Harbor House, I think that their restaurant is a delicious and easy dinner for the first night. I recommend the burger, as it is just so juicy and flavorful that I may have gotten some juice on my shirt while I was trying to eat carefully. The best part about it is that it comes with… duck fat French Fries! The fries were so tasty, and the burger itself was just amazing too! Overall, I rate the food on San Juan Island as being 1,000,000/100 on the deliciousness scale!
As we walked into the entrance courtyard of Schönbrunn palace, the entire palace seemed to be bathed in a thick sheet of golden light, almost like honey in consistency, and was reflecting off of the grand staircases winding above the arched entrance leading to the …
As the train rolled into Melk, the abbey above the town blazed down over the surrounding valley, almost as if it was welcoming us into Melk. Even though the abbey looked awesome from the outside, that day was actually reserved for a 13-mile bike ride …
As we drove into Vienna, the modern buildings around the outskirts of the city thinned out, and in their place, the ancient arches and domes became more abundant as we entered the historic city center. Later, after we checked into our hotel, we decided to explore the city, and we found some very cool things around the ancient city center, such as the Spanish Riding School, the theater, and the opera house. The theater is an enormous building that was black, but with gold trim and an enormous, tiled roof. It also has fountains and arches all around it, breaking up the design into segments with broad, sweeping entranceways on each of them. At first glance, the Spanish Riding School was only a way into the central square, but once you came out of the tunnel separating the two halves of it, you could easily tell what it is by looking at the famous statue of a man on a stallion outside the entrance. We did not see the horse show, but it is said that it is an amazing event to watch. The opera house is an enormous building near our hotel, that is around the size of a city block, with doorways all over it at regular intervals, leading inside to the enormously lavish theater room. In Vienna, the wonders of the old city center are nearly infinite!
Another one of my favorite sights in Vienna was the state library, an enormous building with tons of domes around the inside, and giant bookshelves towering into the air like skyscrapers in a skyline. As I walked into the library, I immediately felt the calm and peaceful environment inside cause all the past (albeit minor) annoyances of the day leave me. The library also featured enormous enormous murals carved into the roof and painted over in vivid detail (these were my favorite part). This library was also a treasury of historical information, as the oldest book dated back thousands of years into the past. The library also was my second-favorite one I have been to, surpassed only by Strahov monastery, and this is saying a lot!
Another amazing sight from around Vienna was St. Stephen’s Cathedral, one of my favorite churches on this trip. When you come into the square that the cathedral is situated in, the first thing you will see is its roof, blazing in the sun like an enormous mirror. When we went inside, the thing that caught my eye immediately were the enormous pillars around the church, carved into sharply detailed mosaics of ancient stories. Near the end of our visit, my parents suggested doing a tour of the catacombs, but I was slightly overheating and decided not to go in, as I wanted nothing more at that moment than to be in our air-conditioned hotel room until dinnertime, when it would be less hot outside. In retrospect, I probably should have gone into the catacombs, but the heat was screwing up my judgment, which is probably why I did not realize that it would be a cooler temperature under the church than inside of it. As we were leaving the cathedral, I noticed an enormous organ above the door, and although half of it was being restored, the half that was still on the wall was enormous and gleaming like a gold medal. Overall, St. Stephen’s Cathedral was very worthwhile, although, in retrospect, going into the catacombs would have been a good idea.
In Vienna, the food was almost as diverse as the sights. This city is home to thousands of mouth-watering flavors, such as schnitzel, bratwurst, and tortes! For breakfast, we went to cafes all over Vienna, such as Cafe Central, Cafe Museum, and Cafe Schwartzenberg. At Cafe Museum, I got a Mozartkugel drink, with chocolate layers and pistachio cream on the top. As you can tell, this was basically dessert for breakfast, but it was so good! Overall, I think Cafe Museum was the best breakfast we had in Vienna! At Cafe Central, I decided to try ham, but I did not like it, so I had to ask mom for some of her croissant and fruit bowl to tide me over until lunch, but the croissant was spectacularly good! At Cafe Schwartzenberg, I got a bottle of pear nectar and a plate of sausages, which are very good complimentary flavors. Before we left Vienna, as this cafe was our last breakfast spot in the city, we decided to treat ourselves with a marzipan torte that the cafe owners had in the display case, and it was so good! Overall, breakfast in Vienna was positively scrumptious!
Around lunchtime on our first day in Vienna, we stumbled across a sausage place near the opera house called the Green Rabbit, which made gourmet sausages such as kasekrainer and bratwurst, and they were so good! My parents always got kasekrainers, but I got a bratwurst every time, as its flavor was amazing in a subtle way! At first sight, the Green Rabbit did not look like much, but it was so good that we ate every lunch in the Vienna city center here! I 100,000,000,000,000,000% guarantee you that if you try this place, you will love it (unless you are vegetarian, of course).
For dinner, we went on the schnitzel grand tour of Vienna, trying distinct types of it, including pork, veal, and even homemade chicken (we had this at our friend’s house). As you can probably tell by now, my favorite meal on this trip was schnitzel, as it was the perfect combo of tender and flavorful. Schnitzel also had a breaded exterior that was satisfyingly crunchy when you bit into it, and it was also a filling dinner that was very common in restaurants around Vienna! If you go to Austria, you should at least try schnitzel, as it is so good that it would be almost impossible for me to say no to eating it after I tried it the first time on this trip. If you like schnitzel, dinner in Vienna is extremely enjoyable, so I suggest you at least try it if you are even in Vienna.
To fully enjoy Vienna, you must also have the treats! The list of treats I had in Vienna included sour kittens, gelato from Gelateria la Romana, and the Imperial Torte. As for Gelateria la Romana, some of you may remember my Verona post, in which I said how much I loved the gelato this place had, and if not, I will tell you now. This place has the best gelato we had on our three trips combined, and that is saying a lot, as we have had a lot of really great gelato on our trips! This place tops almost all gelato places by a considerable margin and leaves most great shops in the dust! When we went to Gelateria la Romana, the day was so hot that I almost overheated in the tram on the way there, a perfect thing to happen before I had ice cream, as it tasted even more refreshing on a hot day! Another amazing treat we had in Vienna, was a perk of staying at the Hotel Imperial that we got every night when turndown service came. It was a delicious confection made of chocolate and orange that we had every night before bed. The sour kittens, on the other hand, were a souvenir we got at a store when we decided to get a sparkling water to quench our family’s thirst until lunchtime. Overall, dessert in Vienna was worth every Euro we spent on it and more!
One of our most action-packed days in the Salzburgerland region was our time with our friend Samo Rovan (my favorite photographer in all of Europe). The first thing that we did when we got to the rural and beautiful Gosau valley area was have an …
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