Random Photos from Road Trips

[Rick Quinn]

This was taken at the Lago de La Cocha, near Pasto, Colombia, at an elevation of 9700 feet. My friends and I used to drive my truck out there for the weekend and stay in a lovely lakeside hotel. We'd go out on the lake and fish for trout, and whatever we caught, the hotel restaurant would clean and cook, and serve it to us for dinner. Without a doubt, the best trout I've ever eaten!

Rick

[Mark Sedenquist]

You were missing the llama, so I fixed it for you.

Rick

Oh, that's funny!

mark

[Rick Quinn]

The first Sony Walkman didn’t go on sale until July of 1979, and yet here is a prototype version, carved in stone, no less, that predates the official release by at least 1,000 years. Ancient aliens? Who the heck knows!

When I was tooling around Colombia in my Powerwagon (circa 1973), my sister and two of her friends flew down to join me for a few weeks. Quite naturally, we took a road trip, and toured some of the most interesting parts of that wildly diverse country. The photo was taken during one of our stops, at the San Agustin Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Huila Department of Southwestern Colombia, a mountainous region near the headwaters of the Magdalena River. Within the park is the largest complex of funerary monuments and statuary on the South American continent, hundreds of monolithic statues, carved from blocks of volcanic rock, standing as much as twelve feet tall. (The statue in the photo above is about six feet tall). The complex includes dozens of burial mounds, hundreds of standing stones, and an assortment of elaborate mausoleums built with massive stone slabs. The statues represent gods and mythical beings, and were erected to adorn and protect the tombs of elite members of a society that flourished in these fertile intermontane valleys for more than two thousand years, beginning ten centuries before the time of Christ.

[Rick Quinn]

Here's another odd bit of ancient history, closer to home:



Photo taken in Natchez, Mississippi in the Spring of '79. At that time, from the perspective of a couple of long-haired young folk passing through in a Volkswagen bug, the deep south felt like a foreign country (where we were not entirely welcome).

Rick

[Rick Quinn]

The "arrow tree," formerly located alongside US 191 (formerly US 666), south of Alpine, Arizona. This pine was a favorite target for bow hunters passing by on the highway. The tree died (duh), and the last I heard, it was felled in a thunderstorm. So much for THAT silly tradition!

Rick

[Mark Sedenquist]

The "arrow tree," formerly located alongside US 191 (formerly US 666), south of Alpine, Arizona. This pine was a favorite target for bow hunters passing by on the highway. The tree died (duh), and the last I heard, it was felled in a thunderstorm. So much for THAT silly tradition!

Rick

That is just bizarre. I had never heard of this before. I can't even imagine walking anywhere within 100 yards of this tree--seems like the chance of being hit by an errant arrow would be extreme.

Great capture.

Mark

[Mark Sedenquist]

Do you know what this structure is? Or where it is located?

It is in the ghost town of Standardville, Utah and is a coal storage tank.
I was going to do a field report about this canyon and the ghost towns, but I don't seem able to find the time.


(September 30, 2024--Mark Sedenquist)

[Mark Sedenquist]

This sweet teddy bear is chuffing at her two-year old cub who is wandering up to our car on the Bow River Parkway near Banff, Alberta.

Shortly after I shot this photo, this Ma Grizzly turned toward the car and chuffed at us a couple of times. Mildly intimidating to being this close to a Grizz and having her dumb cub walk up to our car.


(May 30, 2023)

As you can imagine, we weren't opening any windows or doing anything to cause her any grief. She and her cub were about to go and check out the garbage dump at a nearby campground.

The reflection is on the inside of the windshield.

We hadn't intended to get this close. But the bears crossed the road in front of us and then the silly cub swung around and approached our car. Ma Grizz also turned around and headed in our direction.

But she snarled a tad at the cub and he reversed direction and joined his ma in the trees. We drove on by and left them in peace.

[Rick Quinn]

That's a bodacious bear! (And a bit too close for comfort!)

My next pic was taken along the Alaska Highway, just west of Liard Hot Springs. This Canadian Bison was big enough and close enough to my Jeep to be a threat, but he was too busy eating flowers (fireweed) to so much as notice me.



Rick

[Mark Sedenquist]

That is an awesome photo of a bison bull. Yeah, I don't know how close you were, but that seems a tad closer than ideal.

But a magnificent beast, none-the-less!

Mark