2010 July 27, from Cedaredge CO, Hello, Everybody, The past couple of months have been a leisurely drive from the lush Pacific Northwest to arid Colorado, with lots of backcountry camping, some birding and hiking. This is flower blooming time, and I found many more flowers than birds. But I surprised myself by finding two 'lifers' for my bird list, the Evening Grosbeak and Grace's Warbler. In spite of having driven through southern Utah's Canyon Country probably 30 times, I was yet again awed by the amazing variety of fantastic scenery. And the Four Corners Region offers interesting challenge in flower identification: two flowers which I had not seen before, the Dusty Penstemon and the pale variety of Skyrocket, were really mystifying until I found one single flower book out of the ten I carry which showed them. After crossing the Colorado River at Hite Crossing, I started thinking about camping with no shade and the temperature around 100 degrees (F), so took a diversion up through the 'Bears Ears' (landmark peaks) onto the 8500' backside of the Abajo Mountains, which offer a huge area of beautiful ponderosa plateaux cut by spectacular deep canyons. And 75 degrees was a lot more comfortable. I signed up for Verizon's 3G broadband internet service, and with a little gizmo plugged into my laptop and an antenna in the camper window, I can now get on the internet most anywhere I am near enough to a cellphone tower - - and I've been surprised how many places way out in the middle of nowhere have coverage. The new slideshow is: 10 06 07 June July OR CA NV UT CO.exe The server address is: http://www.meetmarsha.com/~john (note the tilde ~ before the john part) Boilerplate follows: Each browser is a little different, but generally you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, or choose SAVE TO DISK and then OPEN if you want to have it your hard drive for future re-viewing. I have used my up-to-date Zone Alarm and SpybotSearch&Destroy to be sure the .exe files are malware free, so you can safely ignore Windows's warning about 'dangerous <.exe> files'. Right-Arrow or Right-Click or SpaceBar will advance to the next picture. Left-Arrow or Left-Click will return to the previous picture. Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc if the show ever seems stuck. If you don't have a high-speed Internet connection it's not realistic to download these large files on a phone line; please let me know, as it is very easy for me to send them to you on a CD. And if you would like any of the individual images, perhaps to print, just let me know. I periodically remove older slideshows to put up new ones; let me know if you want me to send you a CD of any of the 'back issues', or of all of them from 2004-2010 along with their accompanying emails, on CDs. And if you don't want to get any more emails like this one in the future, just let me know. If you have friends who might be interested, I'll be happy to add them to my email list and they can download the slideshows if they have a Windows computer and broadband internet connection. None of this is commercial or copyrighted, the more who enjoy the pictures, the better. Regards, John Armitage 1-970-250-6080 john@qued.com