Vacation! With start-up glitches! (and updates)

I'm off on my first real vacation in more than three years. Because spammers, years ago, led me to put even this small blog, in terms of readership on moderation for comments, and because I'll probably be "unplugged" a fair amount of the time, my apologies if you don't see a comment go up right away.

Unfortunately, it's gotten off to a fucked-up start. Southworst had to scrub a plane and find another for my flight out of Houston. That, in turn meant I missed my rental car pickup, and Dollar shuts in Albuquerque at 11:30 p.m. Yeah, they'll hold it, I've been told, and I can get it ASAP Saturday, but, that doesn't feed the bulldog who already wanted to be on the road.

I guess on the car, I should have noticed, via Priceline, that Dollar closed relatively early. That said, none of the rental companies here are open after 1 a.m., and by the time I got my checked bags and got shuttled out there, I would have, at a minimum, been cutting it very close for comfort.

Update, Aug. 9: Things are better as of Sunday afternoon. I'm at a local coffee house in Durango, after hiking Chaco Canyon during the day on Saturday, then speding time with my brother in Farmington on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. I'll do some putz-around hiking at Canyon of the Ancients on my way out to Canyonlands, then head back over into Colorado.

Update, Aug. 12: Canyonlands was nice, though I deplore removing trail mileage figures from the latest trifolds, and worse, apparently putting at least one new cellphone tower in or near the Needles, and removing the old big-ass sign that warned that cellphones basically didn't work inside the park.

I did get some great (I think) astrophotography pix at both there and arches.

Right now, I'm in Boulder, Colorado, recharging camera battery as well as being online. The pix, at 3200 or 6400 ISO, at 15-30 secs, suck up a lot of juice.

But, I'll shoot some tonight, too, at Rocky Mtn. National Park, as part of the first night of Perseid meteor showers!

I'll have pix and thoughts from the Desert Southwest when I get back. I hope.