Coexisting: First Floor Humans, Second Floor Iguanas

Coral-made home with iguanas on the roof - I took the picture in Miami, Florida. 

Do you like this house? I found it interesting for its walls made of coral. It also comes with iguanas on the roof. First floor humans, second floor iguanas. Two species coexisting in harmony. Good balance of nature and urbanism. Don't you think? 

Photo of a Spider Wasp

Spider wasp crawling over leaves in Arizona. 

This is a pepsis, a spider wasp also called tarantula hawk - yes, they hunt tarantulas. These wasps only live in America. Note that the legs are long and spiny. The insect coloration is aposematic - a deceptive trick to warn potential predators that they're dangerous food. They are solitary wasps. Their venom can cause intense pain in humans. 

Touring the Amazing Mammoth Cave

The huge passages of Mammoth Cave. 

Longest known cave system in the planet - geolocation. 400+ miles explored and more to explore. I took the historic tour; two miles walk in around two hours. It was pretty cold down there. Native Americans walked into this darkness two thousand years ago. They came for the gypsum - from the Greek "gypsos", meaning plaster. There are remains of mining operations from the times of the Civil War in the cave. Also, a lot of old graffiti in many passages. I stayed in the campground of the national park. No electricity and coin-operated showers. What a nuisance. 

Gigantic pillars. 

The tour through a narrow section. 

Bottomless pit. 

Mines from the times of the Civil War.

Old graffiti from 1855. 

My campsite in Mammoth Cave Campground.

Many wild visitors here. 

Old Book About Two Ladies Traveling Through the Mojave Desert

They were Edna Brush Perkins and her friend Charlotte Hannahs Jordan; the trip happened in 1920. This article in the website of Death Valley National Park says about the trip: 

Their adventure into Death Valley looked much less like a modern trip into the park today, bearing much more in common with the treacherous journey of the ‘49ers.  

Photo from the book - Public Domain.

Some excerpts from this book and travel planning links follow. 

Ryolite is a typical American ruin. Its boom was very brief.

Rhyolite is a ghost town 35 miles from the Furnace Creek Visitor Center and 4 miles west of Beatty. It's not inside the national park; it's in BLM land - this is the map. More info here and in Google Maps.

Edna mentions the dangers of travelling in Death Valley, pointing to the remains of wagons buried near Stovepipe Wells. This is not the popular waystation of today, it may be the original location east from the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. 

Both the mountains and the valley were named because tragedies down on that white floor during pioneering and prospecting days.

One story is of a party of emigrants, men, women, and children, on the way to the gold-fields with all their household goods, who entered the valley by mistake and could not find a way out; another is of a party who were attacked by Indians and fought in a circle they made of their wagons until the last man was killed. The remains of the wagons are said to be buried in the sand near a place called Stovepipe Wells.

The book also mentions the gold mine of Keane Wonder. 

It was "Old Johnie," an habitué of Death Valley, coming home. He had an unworked gold-mine near Keane Wonder...

The national park says about the access road to this mine: "Drive the Beatty Cutoff Road 5.7 miles north from Highway 190 to the marked dirt road for Keane Wonder Mine. Continue 2.8 miles to the parking area. The road is typically in rough condition and may require a high clearance vehicle with thick tires." - Map location here. 

Salt Creek was another spot visited by Edna and Charlotte,

The curious streak in the bottom of Mesquite Valley was the swamp of Salt Creek.

There were quicksands there, that you could not get out of if you got in. Men and burros has been lost that way. 

This place is 13 miles from Furnace Creek and there is a trailhead there. Check this page of Death Valley National Park for info and this is the geolocation.

About the area of Furnace Creek: 

Furnace Creek Ranch, the irrigated farm in the bottom of the valley established long ago in connection with the original borax-works of the Twenty-Mule-Team brand.

Skidoo is another ghost town mentioned in the book.  

The town of Skidoo lay in a high valley shut off from a view by the surrounding hills.

The website of Western Mining History has information about Skidoo. The national park warns that "Skidoo is located off the Wildrose Road on an unpaved high-clearance road not recommended for automobiles. Nothing remains of the actual townsite."

A hike to this summit may be interesting. 

Pinto Peak is on the west side of Emigrant Pass, overlooking the Panamint Valley and all the region to the foot of Mt.Whitney in the Sierra Nevada.

There is information to reach Pinto Peak in Summitpost. Check the location of this mountain in Google Maps. For hiking information for Death Valley National Park go here, and refer to their Backcountry and wilderness access map.

Red Pineapples: Fruits on Fire

Beautiful red pineapples in Florida. 

They are Ananas bracteatus, a nonnative species to North America that is quite popular in tropical gardens. Some say that it's edible - I haven't tried.

On Front Lawns and Gardening

Seth Godin wrote this to illustrate a blog post related to status:

The front lawn was only invented around the time of Columbus. The idea was to demonstrate that you had time and money to waste. You could take useful land and make it non-productive. You could take labor and put it to work taking care of this non-productive land with no obvious utility in return. A big front lawn, well cared for, was a sign of status and luxury.

(Source here.)

An AI model disagreed with the first sentence.

...lawns existed in some form before Columbus, but the "front lawn" as we know it today is a much more recent invention, popularized in the 1800s, not the 1400s

Seth nailed it in the lawns as symbol of status.

A Little Dinosaur: The Common Collared Lizard

Encounter with a collared lizard while hiking in Palo Duro Canyon. 

We crossed paths in the trail. The little fella remained still for a while allowing for some photos. They are called eastern collared to differentiate from the western cousin, the Great Basin collared lizard or desert collared lizard. The main difference is in the colors. The eastern has more vivid tones. But one can confuse them because temperatures and the season influence over their skin color. They remind dinosaurs when running on their hind legs - check the first photo. This one is a male. Males have well-defined orange bands across the body. These lizards became Oklahoma's state reptile since 1969. Old pioneers called them "mountain boomers" because they believed that they were the source of loud sounds that came from the mountains. Common collared lizards are brave. If you put two males in a cage they will fight to death. Don't do it!

A Week Under the Stars: My Land Between the Lakes Experience

Hillman Ferry Campground. 

Land Between the Lakes is a huge national recreation area. Part of it is in Kentucky and the other side in Tennessee - geolocation. A week of camping at the Hillman Ferry Campground gave plenty of time to explore. The old farm museum, the planetarium, old cemeteries, a nature center, the elk and bison prairie, and a lot of hiking. I got an insane number of photos. Amazing place. 
. 

Beautiful nature. 

Plenty of places to hike. 

The old farm from the 1850s.           

The small tobacco curing building. 

Bad access road to Turkey Creek Cemetery.           

The surviving graves of the old cemetery. 

One of the oldest ones. 

A hiking trail goes to the small Bohanon cemetery. 

Bison in the prairie.           

Pisgah Bay. 

Lighthouse Landing Marina.

My campsite in Hillman Ferry.