What better way to spend a Saturday afternoon in October?

Foliage peaked this week, along with leaf raking and all associated activities. Just another reason there's no better place to live than Vermont.

We saw and heard Elegant Trogon today... a big deal, as this is pretty much the only place in the U.S. where they can be seen. We got an incredible look, watching him call for at least half an hour beside his nest cavity, where we suspect the female was incubating eggs.

My digiscoped video isn't great, so here's a picture of this guy from the Web:

We saw our first rattlesnake today! Happily, it was in a cooler at the time.

Some of the incredible landscape we've seen heading into the Chiracaua Mountains...

Our trip to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum was wonderful; one of the highlights was the hummingbird aviary, where I digiscoped this beauty, a male Costa's Hummingbird. That really is the color of the purple on his face.




Here's a closer picture from the Web.

My first day in Arizona... it's a REALLY big cactus!

Sam got an early birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa when they came to visit this weekend: two Lego Exo-force sets. He is feeling extremely victorious, as cost overruns were kept to a minimum and the projects came in both under deadline and under budget.

I showed Sam his bike-riding video clip, and he objected. You see, I'd actually cut out the final few seconds of the video. I did it for Sam's own protection. I thought he might feel embarrassed to have everyone see how things actually turned out at the end.

But he wants the world to know the truth. He absolutely insists. The kid clearly has no future in politics.

So here's what actually transpired yesterday in the final seconds of the bike ride--the unvarnished truth, unedited and unsanitized.

Sam and I both had breakthrough experiences today. He rode his bike without training wheels for the first time -- and I learned how to post videos to YouTube that I've shot with my new Flip Ultra.

Without further ado, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's SAM!