Greetings folks! Linda and I are currently on the road and pointed westward. Unfortunately, some bad luck right out of the gate. Our travel planner (read Linda) planned this trip with dog show bookends. Ruger was supposed to run in a FastCat event (100 yd doggie dash) two days in. Just before departing, we find out they canceled that due to forecasted rain – too late for us to get our campground fees back. On the return leg, the boys had 5 days of shows at Purina Farms in Gray Summit, MO. Well, that place was hammered by a tornado a week before we left taking out most of their auxiliary buildings. So far Purina has just canceled the first 2 days of FastCat, but the Poodle Specialty is still on for the last 3 days (so far). Let’s hope the middle of this trip makes up for all the setbacks. Side note, per my previous comments on Las Cruces, NM, they just had a huge shootout there where 18 people were shot (3 killed) at an unauthorized car show. Shocked I tell ya, shocked. While we fill the freed up days and rethink our planned stops, Brad is going to take the reins and bring you a new adventure across the pond.
Take it away Brad…
Jan and I were in the middle of the western European Wildlife Intrigued office staff reviews. We decided to do a bit of digging. Deep digging. Below street level type of digging.
Modern day Rome is built on top of ancient Rome. And Ancient Rome was built on top of Even Ancienter Rome. Ad infinitum. Did you notice that I snuck in some Latin? Every time a business or building wants to expand, eventually digging has to start. When digging happens, precious artifacts are unearthed. Everything stops while the finds are identified, cataloged, valued, and carefully removed. Then digging with a toothbrush begins and the cycle repeats until there are no more artifacts in the way, or the project stops because it ran out of money, or a bit of both (see the Rome Metro expansion project news).
A bit of backstory before we get to the photos. Jan and I were in the final country of our six-country inspection tour. Technically, four were full-sized countries and two were micro-states (both were life goal destinations). Going through that many airports and passport checkpoints is not conducive to carrying a lot of expensive camera equipment. We made the choice on this trip to only use our smart phones (iPhone 16 PRO and Samsung Galaxy S22). I know, I know, there are limitations with using phones as cameras, mainly action and bird photography. Landscapes and candid portraits turn out pretty well. Bird photos or moving subjects . . . well, not quite as much. Downloading hundreds, nay thousands, of photos from an iDevice to a Windows device later . . . please don’t get me started. C’est la vie. É Cosi. Such is life. At least I didn’t have to adjust the timestamps on the photos from the phones. Back to the story.
Hit the jump to learn more about this featured foreign feathered friend!
Continue reading Hoodie…by Brad Marks
Wildlife Intrigued 