Plant Travels and Excursions

Sue and I would like to place on record our sincere thanks to the North American Rock Garden Society; to the Chairpersons, officers and committee members of the following Chapters (Berkshire, Connecticut, Newfoundland, Wisconsin-Illinois, Potomac Valley and Southern Appalachian); to our wonderful tour organizers, Maria Galletti and Alan Grainger; to the dozens of amazing friends we have made during our tour; to the owners and custodians of all the tremendous gardens we were privileged to visit, covet and photograph - and especially to our magnificent hosts, tour guides and escorts who enri

Well, it will still be ski season here for a long time, but it's not too early to start thinking about the coming summer's hikes.

Here are some shots from one we do now and then. The usual trail-in is a scenic, easy hike into fairly high elevation, with a fair bit of elevation having been burned up in the drive, and is consequently, a popular hike... but it is possible to escape excessive human contact (that is, the possibility of anyone else in sight ;)) by continuing on and up beyond the usual destinations.

We set out after finishing work Friday afternoon by air via Amsterdam and arrived Nairobi Airport, Kenya early Saturday morning. Our guide met us at the entrance with his car and we drove off. Early afternoon we reached our first camp, small thin-boarded cabins at about 3000m. In the middle of the night I woke of a sudden thump in the wall. I had my face close to a windowpane and stared right into the eyes of a huge African Buffalo scratching his thigh against the wall. I barely breathed, he was less than 10cm away....

Here's a part of the world you don't see very often! I was fortunate to be an on-board naturalist on a cruise ship to Greenland 5 years ago. Here are some images fro the Stromfjord..the longest fjord in the world, I think! The images were taken at 11:00 pm!

There is still a lot more winter to get through here, but perhaps reminiscing about summer in the mountains will make it go by a little faster? Working on that theory, here are some photos from Banff National Park, namely the hike to Taylor Lake and up to Panorama Ridge. I hope you enjoy them.

For me these are one of the mountain groups that are great to get to for even two or three days. In reach of Seattle the mountains have some great endemics - some you know - such as Campanula piperi and some such as Viola flettii which are very pretty but I hadn't come across at all.

These pics are of Ruby Beach on the Pacific coast with the mass of driftwood on the beach, of the cold rainforest at Hoh Valley and of the endemic Olympic marmot (Marmota olympus if you can believe it) near Hurricane Ridge.

I'll post some plant pics in a follow-up.