Sunday, April 17, 2011 - Utah Rt 12, East of Escalante UT
< previous day | archives | next day >
Desert Catfish, Dead, with Toes, Escalante UT, April 17, 2011
Dang, I did it again
You may recall I lost most of my nesting Great Blue Heron pictures a while back to that certain fuzziness caused by forgetting to turn the auto stabilization off when I had the camera on the tripod, trying my darndest to get some nice clean shots from farther away than I would have preferred.
Well, this morning I went walkabout with the camera, took some neat shots... and forgot to turn the stabilization ON. The sun was low in the sky and the shutter speed was adequate with image stabilization. But not without!
Tomorrow morning, maybe I'll go walk the route again - or maybe not. Clouds are rolling in. I think there's a storm brewing. If so the light won't be worth a darn. Darn.
Night camp
Boondocked - Utah Route 12 East of Escalante UT
- Adequate Verizon cell phone 1x service is available here - no broadband.
- Locate on my Night Camps map
- Check the weather here
Heliograph routes of the 1890 Practice
The date was May 15th, 1890, and the Army's Department of Arizona had just completed a major heliograph practice; it was, in fact, the largest the world had ever seen. I call it the "Volkmar Practice", after the man responsible for it, Col. Wm. J. Volkmar, the Assistant Adjutant General and Chief Signal Officer for the Department of Arizona. Although the practice lasted only sixteen days, preparations for it took months of reconnaissance and preparation. Involved in the long range signaling maneuvers were twenty-five heliograph stations stretching from Whipple Barracks near Prescott to Fort Stanton near Ruidoso, New Mexico. My guess is that close to two hundred men were involved, both cavalry and infantry.