Tag: St. Vrain State Park

Unfortunately, it has been a bit since we last talked. Not to steal any valor from the fine men in the Seals organization, but we are officially in our Hell Week[s]. Traditionally, our big haunted trail event (link here) would be scheduled for next weekend, however, due to the insubordinate ankle, we opted to push the date to mid October rather than cancel it outright. Good move as there is no way we would have been ready by this week. That delay doesn’t mean we can sit back and take it easy – for the last several weeks I have been getting very little sleep due to coordinating tasks, fixing broken props, building new scares and everything else related to the haunt. I just looked at the current project plan and there are 306 tasks at the macro level and that is growing daily ugh. Add in dealing with rehab visits, daily workouts and everything else life has been throwing at us (more like a barrage) and sleep has become a luxury. Fortunately we live for the haunt so that is wrapped in enjoyment (big thanks to my brother Ron who has been spending every weekend down here to help us out). Long story short, overly pressed for time, so I’ll probably be a bit scarce for some time going forward. I’ll try to keep you updated as we progress to the big event. Upmost apologies for delays in responding to comments and keeping up with all your fine blogs during this time. For now, Brad is going to take time away from preparing for his upcoming field assignment and step in to give me a breather with one of his adventures. While I take a brief few minutes to celebrate being released from crutches today, I’ll let Brad take it away…

Lately, Jan and I have been taking on more global photo assignments for Wildlife Intrigued.  It’s not that we are running out of birds locally, far from it.  We want to get to the far-flung parts of the map while we are young enough to handle the strenuous travel distances and locations.  Sometimes, Jan and I use a travel agent to help with details in a part of the world we’ve not yet been to.  Often times we have already been to a location and take pleasure in setting up travel on our own, even if the Intrigued corporate jet isn’t available.  (Isn’t that worldwide pop tour over yet?)

For the same reason, these stories almost never appear in a linear fashion.  It’s sort of a “timey-wimey” thing.  Sometimes I have a story just waiting for me to take photographs to complete it.  Or I have a bunch of photos, and no story.  A TARDIS would be helpful in the story writing process sometimes.  This story was actually started way before the one about an Eastern Kingbird (link here) that we found about 100 yards further around the lake a bit earlier in the same day.  Circumstances, our travel assignments, and me almost deleting all of the bird photos lead to this one being delayed for over a year. (see end of story for details)  

During one of our back-to-back-to-back photo assignments from Intrigued HQ, Jan and I were on the downhill side of an early summer trip to Colorado visiting our daughter Allyson.  She is also the editor working in the Wildlife Intrigued Western (or Mountain) office.  Both the Intrigued corporate jet and motorhome were otherwise occupied, so we completed the 14-hour journey in our Regional Office vehicle.  Truthfully, I like travelling this way because we can take much more gear along than the airlines allow.  As an added bonus, Jan and I get to stop at Runza for lunch on our way across Nebraska.  Both directions.

Hit the jump to read more about today’s featured feathered friend.