https://cindyknoke.com/
I have stopped counting, which is a very good thing, but thank you sincerely for being here. Last count there were 1,110,870 internet views and visits. 125,268 wordpress comments and growing. 15,362 internet followers... Thank you & join us!
I retired early after 27 years as a psychotherapist/mental health director (Cindy Barton LCSW) and moved to the outer limits of no-wheres-ville to a home I call "The Holler." My closest neighbors are coyotes (packs and packs of them and they are HUNGRY), rattlers (lots and lots of them and they are MEAN), and free range cows/bulls (the bulls aren't too friendly either!) Forget cell phones. They don't work out here. Forget GPS, it misdirects. It's best not to wander too much out here, the people (and their dogs) are kinda twitchy.
To reach The Holler you turn right at the reeking chicken farm, down a bunch of pot-holed semi-streets/dirt roads, past the abandoned refrigerators and occupied old RV’s and then things get kinda dicey.
My friends usual reaction to the trip to The Holler is, “You’ve got to be kidding!” Or, “Next time let’s meet half way.”
This is our little bit of heavenly Appalachia right here in rural California.
I blog about traveling, photography, Holler happenings, and anything else that strikes my fancy. Stop by the blog and take a peek. It’s safe. I promise.
Cheers,
Cindy~
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
It is the Venice of Portugal, replete with canals and gondolas,
but quieter and more peaceful.
There are old Azulejos tiles all over Aviero,
many depicting the town itself.
Except for cars,
and wonderful street art, Aviero hasn’t changed much from the scenes depicted in the old tiles.
Cheers to you from peaceful Aviero~
Note: My new theme! WordPress tech support was really helpful in sorting out many of the aforementioned blog problems. So thank you WordPress support. You are appreciated!
The blog continues to be overwhelmed with WP errors. There is the unfollowed followers issue and there are now 26K+ and growing daily, PHP warning in my WP site logs linked to WP installed/managed plug ins.
PHP warnings are caused by unwanted errors in code or script. They are warnings that there are problems that are likely to cause bigger problems in the future.
Additionally, Google has identified 1.26K blog pages not able to be indexed by google due to redirect errors.
I am not hopeful that this will be fixed.
So, unlike the rain in the desert,
making wildflowers, rivers and waterfalls,
this blog continues,
to burn.
Cheers to you from the wet and happy Sonoran Desert~
Note: Desert wildflowers in order are: Bristlebush, Prickly Pear Cactus, Desert Willow and Desert Marrow.
Rains continue into May in the desert which is unheard of.
Note the people midway up the mountain to give you perspective on the scope of of the superbloom which cover many mountains.
Blooming Brittlebush carpet the foothills in vibrant yellow blankets.
This bloom in Whitewater Wildlands Conservancy is ‘Off the Beaten Path.’ Most superbloom areas in Southern California are mobbed with crowds, but even on the weekend, there are very few people here. You hike by yourself in the wilderness.
The river for which the conservancy is named is full of snow melt cascading into the desert from the surrounding mountains,
filling natural resevoirs to capacity with overflow.
Southern California mountains and deserts are happy!
Cheers to you from the desert in May.
Note: I am traveling now and continuing my ‘Off the Beaten Path’ travel destination series as I go.
Kotor is exactly such a place. It is charming, unspoiled and an explorers paradise.
Kotor is one of the best preserved medieval old towns in the Adriatic.
It is a desiginated as two separate Unesco World Heritage Sites. First, for it’s buildings of medieval significance, and secondly for it’s Venetian defensive structures built at the height of Venetian power in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Cheers to you from the first in a series of ‘Off the Beaten Path Places’ in our small world~
Look at those ears! This watcher caught me unaware through the window at dawn. I shot him through double paned glass in the rain. Holler coyotes are quite bold now, coming through our fences before dawn and hanging out. This is a sub-adult, so I suspect he dug under the fences.
You can see he is bold, made and held eye contact, even while I grabbed my camera case, pulled out my camera, removed the lens cap, and got a few shots.
Since he didn’t back off, I opened the door, and walked after him. He sashayed off after I yelled.
This guy in Death Valley also stood his ground, but he was not challenging, more interested.
He sashayed off too.
These are more Holler sub-adult coyote siblings. The one who stared at me also has a sibling. All four are about the same age, sub-adult.
This is an adult. Coyotes and Grey Wolves may be the only ‘pure’ wild canine species still surviving in North America. Most other wolf species have at least some coyote DNA.
There are also a lot of Ceonothus Silk Moths at The Holler right now. Ceonothus is lilac. We live in Lilac California, named after the wild lilacs that grow profusely here. Ceonothus Moths lay their eggs on wild lilac. They have a wing span of up to five inches, have no mouth, live only a matter of days and only live to reproduce.
They are calm and beautiful creatures who are not afraid of humans.
