Central Great Basin Running Races

Ready to stretch your legs? Then it's time to head to the Central Great Basin for some running races!

Saturday, February 25 is the Wild Goose Chase in Delta, Utah. It's part of the annual Snow Goose Festival, which celebrates the migrating snow geese that enjoy the fields around Delta and then often overnight on the reservoir. The race is a 5K and 10K run or walk that goes right along the reservoir for part of the route. Sign up by February 24 for discounted price.

Sunday, June 17 is the Snake Valley Slither, a 5K race with beautiful views of Great Basin National Park and the surrounding area. You can enjoy some of the Snake Valley Festival before the race. The website still has info from 2011, but the 2012 version should be up soon.

Ready to try something longer? Head over to Cave Lake for Ely, Nevada's first half-marathon, Take It To The Lake Half Marathon. Run 13.1 miles in a beautiful setting. A kids' one-mile run will also be part of the event.

Know of any other Central Great Basin races? I'd like to know!

Night Skies

A number of events have recently converged to make me want to be more of a night owl. Not because I want to go chasing mice or go swooping through the air (although that certainly does hold appeal from time to time), but because I want to spend more time gazing up at our wonderful night skies.

I've always appreciated the wonderful night skies out in the middle of the Great Basin. Driving for over an hour to get anywhere means we don't have much light pollution, and since our elevation is nearly a mile high, the atmosphere is thinner and the stars that much clearer. But appreciation is a little different than understanding, and I'm finding that now I really want to understand what's out there in that big, black abyss.

Maybe it's partly due to listening to Douglas Adams' A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book I remember reading in my teenage years. Listening to it recently made me roll with laughter and applaud his creative genius. Perhaps I'm more interested in the night skies because I've been finding out more about the nearby Astronomy Festival at Great Basin National Park this summer June 14-16 (which happens to coincide with the Snake Valley Festival June 15-17--a good time visit the area). Or maybe my curiosity is piqued by some Astronomy magazines I found, which show some outstanding photographs. They also contain some fascinating language that make me scratch my head:

black holes (are there red holes? blue holes? red holes? white holes?)
light years (are there heavy years? sound years?)
dark matter (what about light matter? obscure matter? transparent matter?)
extragalactic (would you like some fries with that? how about supergalactic?)
spiral galaxy (which way does it circle? Is it like toilets spiralling in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres?)
white dwarf (okay, this isn't discrimination, right?)

Now that I have all you who actually know something about astronomy shaking your heads and hoping that I switch hobbies immediately, let me tell you, no, you can't get rid of me that easily. I think I'm going to try to wrap my head around this. After all, it's just a little creepy to look out at all those points of light in the night sky and think about someone on some other planet orbiting one of those little lights looking back at us. A good kind of creepy. A kind of creepy that puts me in my place and makes my worries seem pretty miniscule. And the huge dimensions of the universe are making my head want to bulge out until it has to be contained in an ever-enlarging galaxy. (Okay, astronomers, how many other basic principles did I just mix up in this paragraph?)

So in addition to the magazines and a couple of books, another place I've been gathering some astronomy information is from podcasts. One I particularly like is 365 Days of Astronomy. They have a podcast every day, usually about 10-15 minutes long (which is great for my attention span). The podcasts began in 2009, which was designated as the Year of Astronomy (you remember that, right?), and has continued since then. They're slowly running out of material, which means that they are replaying the best podcasts again, calling them encores. That's good for me! Two podcasts I particularly liked were on February 3, about what to look at in the night sky, and February 5, about space travel in science fiction (remember The Millenium Falcon or "Beam Me Up, Scotty?")

 Listening to the podcasts has made me go out and find Mars, which is in the photo above to the left of the moon. My night photography skills have a long way to go, but you can expect to see more night sky photos--and little bits of astronomy added to this blog from time to time. I won't become an astronomer over night--or even over several nights as I rarely am able to stay awake past 9 p.m., but hopefully little by little I can start understanding what exists beyond our rotating blue orb.

Feel free to share other good astronomy links, your thoughts on the night skies, or what star you'd like to visit in the comments.

Newcomers

 Desert Girl isn't the only one celebrating a birthday in recent days. We've been welcoming lots of new calves on the ranch. These calves are born to heifers, first-time mama cows. And they are absolutely darling!

The ones in these photos are a few days old. They've been moved from the circle field, where they were born, to a different meadow, which I drive through twice a day. That means there's lots of time for oohing and aahing.

 It looks like this calf and heifer are sniffing each other to make sure they've found each other okay.

 This heifer and calf are giving me a dirty stare. I guess they wanted a little more privacy.

The calves love to play and go running all over. I can just imagine these heifers trying to figure out where their little one has run off to.

We've had a really mild winter so far, so that's making these new calves have an easy welcome into the world. We're hoping they continue to do well. If you want to see more about cows on the ranch, just click on the cows label below, and you'll see lots more posts.

Totally Two

Desert Girl recently turned two, and although she didn't quite understand all the anticipation of a birthday, her big brother sure did. And Mom was excited about it, too, so we got to celebrate several times. The first was with cousins on our trip. Everyone was excited about the yummy chocolate cupcakes.

We made it back in time for an improptu birthday celebration at preschool.

I like how the boys are all working so diligently.

Desert Girl has that impish grin down pat!

Desert Girl pays good attention to her Teacher.

Later we had a family celebration at home where Desert Girl dressed up in a pretty new dress and ate more cake.

She's not only good at eating the cake, she's also good at wearing the cake!
We've already seen some early indications of how she's going to be as a two-year old. Fun times are ahead!

Sunday Afternoon

It was Sunday afternoon, which meant a trip to do some irrigating. Due to our extremely low precipitation this year, there's extra attention to how winter water in the creeks is being spread over the land to try to get it as wet as possible before it gets warm and the evaporation rates skyrocket.

This is a fairly new field of tall wheat grass, and it's being irrigated by the old tried-and-true method of flood irrigation. Not too many fields are flood irrigated on the ranch anymore. Most have been converted to the more expensive but more efficient pivot irrigation.

Desert Boy was thrilled to have a chance to use Daddy's real shovel and set off to dig a hole. He's better than I am at using a shovel!

I was playing with camera lenses and enjoying the winter sunshine.

Meanwhile my husband was moving one of the irrigation dams to change where the water was spreading on the field.

I haven't spent much time with this fish-eye lens, so I wanted to try it out some more. I like how on this photo the sun flare extends beyond the circle.

Thick orange plastic is used for irrigation dams. the top is secured first, then the sides, and then the bottom. Generally rocks and/or dirt are used to secure the sides and bottom.

Meanwhile, Desert Girl enjoyed sitting on the bank and throwing rocks into the water. Little by little, she scooted closer to the water. (Can you guess what's coming?)

Here's another view of the dam. This one has some fence posts to help support it.

Desert Boy had moved to a different place to shovel, where the ground was a little softer.

The dam was almost in place.

And I was ready to do something different. So I went for a little walk and got Desert Boy to come with me.

What I like most about this series of fish-eye photos are the shadows. You can see how close Desert Boy is to me.

I was hoping he wouldn't walk right into me!

He stopped, fortunately. He thought the whole thing was pretty funny.

In fact, he laughed himself onto the ground.

He thought he was being so cute, sticking his feet up into the air. I don't think he ever realized that his irrigating boots were on the wrong feet!

I also found out that the fish-eye lens is good for making your legs look really long.

Next it was on to playing with some ice. With the dam moved, the water level in the ditch had fallen, leaving the ice hanging above the surface. Desert Boy couldn't resist grabbing some.

He was proud of his big piece of ice.

But then he couldn't resist chucking it back into the ditch.

A bit later my husband pulled up with a shoeless, wet, and muddy Desert Girl. She had managed to scoot close enough to the edge of the ditch that she had slid right in and was soaked.

She wasn't thrilled about it.

But when she saw her Daddy, she managed a little smile.