Tag Archives: Utah

Cloud Cutting

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Many of you long time readers are aware of *The Institute’s weather modification program. We developed this ability to modify and even create certain kinds of weather early on in The Institute’s development. This was done for many reasons, all of them altruistic, but mainly for money. The Institute is expensive to run and maintain and we seek funds wherever we might find them.

We have different projects in the works constantly to fund our operation, from our innovative metal can retrieval program from the roadsides of our Nation’s highways to assisting NASA with their Space Program by supporting probes to Uranus and beyond. We have an outreach program where we have housebound or incarcerated individuals address envelopes for various corporations to help keep the Post Office’s Junk Mail program alive. That keeps untold dozens of postal workers busy and gainfully employed. There is no project too small if it assists us in maintaining the integrity and longevity of The Institute and brings in a buck or two.

Our supremacy had been untouchable in the weather modification arena and we had been so far out front that you had to jump up in the air real high to even see our dust. Then the Aussie’s got in the game. Man, they are tough. Their program to limit rain and cause desertification of huge areas, if not all of their country, has been unassailable. Our program to “drought up” California has been good but we can’t even touch what the Australians are capable of. Which is difficult for us to admit. Right now they’re the ones we watch.

Because of their (we’re talking about those miserably overachieving Aussies here) ability to make inroads into the weather modification business in general, we have had to look for other areas of the business to augment our extensive programs. We believe we’ve hit on something the rest of the WeatherMod group hasn’t touched yet and that is the untouched field of Boutique Weather. This is a small business at this time but we think the potential is absolutely enormous.

There are many very wealthy States that have incredible tourism businesses. States like Colorado, Utah, Arizona ( a biggie ) Montana, parts of New Mexico and when they pay their bills (which is why we have them in a “droughtie” right now) Northern California that are looking for that edge to keep those tourists coming in and to keep them there longer. That’s where we come in. We are already supplying many of those states and other small touristy kind of countries with custom-designed sunrises and sunsets. With our new custom “Cloud Cutting” ability we can custom tailor those sunrises and sunsets by ‘cutting’ the edges and shapes of the clouds so that they can feature or highlight a tourist drawing element, by allowing the light to be directed on them for maximum viewing pleasure. Think, Devil’s Tower, or parts of the Grand Canyon, Isis for instance, where before you had a pleasant sunset that sort of showed off the various elements of the scene, but now with our Patented Applied For “Cloud Cutting” technology, those individual elements can be seen by those money-toting tourists much more clearly and colorfully than ever before. Talk about making it rain greenbacks, we can hardly keep up with the demand for these new custom tailored clouds. Now coupled with our ability to create clouds of any size, shape or profile we feel we have a real winner here. Need God beams, we can do that. Need tiny or large holes or openings in your cloud for extra special effects? We can do that. Right now the sky’s the limit, so to speak.

The image featured above is over the Eastern edge of The Institute’s testing grounds where we work on many of our new weather projects. This is the program at work using the new “Sun nibbling” feature where we are sculpting the edge of the cloud to perhaps highlight a small secluded cove on the Eastern Seaboard, or perhaps one of the little canyons that feed into the Grand Canyon, or a meadow up in Yellowstone where elk graze in the early morning or evening. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

We have high hopes for this new element in our Weather modification program and already interest is running high for this unique new addition and we see big things on the horizon. Watch the sky above and stay tuned for further innovations.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

Spring Portraits

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March is “When The Bluebirds Get Here” month. So is February. And sometimes April if the weather has been particularly bad, but this year the month is March.

In the past we had to rely on natural migration schedules to get our quotas of Western Bluebirds. They can be in short supply due to their being the most popular of the bluebird species, and they have often been coerced into going to other states by handouts of Bluebird chow, favorable nesting sites and one state who shall remain nameless but their initials are Utah, tried to make it their state bird, thereby gathering some legal advantage of some sort. In the past we have had to offer some of our sister states to the West a premium of two Stellar Jays and a Clark’s Nutcracker to get one Western Bluebird.

As you know The institute has its own Ornithology department with trained and highly intelligent bird guys (and girls) studying birds, bird books, bird seed, bird brains, and lately bird genetics. That’s the big one. That’s the one that is going to put us on the map bird-wise. Genetics is the new thing. It’s like plastic was in the 60’s. Huge.

They found that they can yank the DNA right out of a bird, futz around with it, and stuff it back in and make big changes to how a bird works. Our problem had been that bluebirds don’t like the cold so as soon as the temp drops much below 60 degrees they haul their little feathered keesters south for the winter. That’s the problem. While they’re down there they can be swayed by any one of those unscrupulous Orno guys from other states and we lose our stock of bluebirds.

The problem was birds head south, then we lose them. Solution, and this is where genius comes into play, is we took that bluebird DNA and added a whole bunch of genetic stuff to it before we repacked it back into the bluebirds. For instance we added the anti-freeze gene to it so now our bluebirds are good down to about -126 degrees, we added a fixed route from anywhere South directly to The Institutes front door to their GPS gene, we added the Horsepucky detector gene so that they can tell when they’re being conned by those guys from Utah, and lastly we added an extra amount of Bluebird blue to their blue color gene so we now have the brightest Western bluebirds in the northern hemisphere.

Their was one more big change we are experimenting with and this is the first spring to see how our experiment worked out. We added an extra gene to the Anti-freeze gene to make a small number of bluebirds hibernational. Hibernational is a term we just made up here in our Ornithology department that means these particular bluebirds can lower their body temperatures down to the approximate temperature of one of those Big Gulp Slurpee’s you get at 7-11 and then be buried in neat rows in the snow over the winter to be ready to emerge at the first sign of Spring.

When the snow melts as it does every spring the snow bound bluebirds slowly awaken as they respond to the sun’s rays on their little beaks, and they pop up through the snow like Pasque flowers and start hanging around, getting an early start on Spring. It gives them at least a two-week head start on those Utah bluebirds so they are already hooked up with a bluebird chick, found a good nesting box, etc. and our supply of Western Bluebirds is guaranteed. Their GPS gene tells them they’re already here so they don’t take off and go cruising somewhere else so we got them locked. Our own inbred species of Western Bluebirds. Neat Right? Science is really cool.

We are photographing each of our newly altered bluebirds and tattooing an ID number on the underside of their tongues so that we can better keep track of them. Here is the first reconstituted Western Bluebird to emerge from its snow bunker. He seems in fine shape. We’ll let you know how he does in the reproduction department as the data come in. So far it looks great.

Unexpected Views

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Just North of Mexican Hat, Utah as you travel Hwy163 to where it joins with Hwy 261 the San Juan river makes a mighty bend in its generally East to West flow. It flows past the town of Bluff on the East and makes it way in a serpentine fashion westward where it meets the Colorado river and finally dumps into Lake Powell.

The junction of the two highways is just a place in the road where you decide if you want to turn left on Hwy 261 and head on up to Moki Dugway and Muley Point or stay on 163 until you finally get back to Bluff. Lots of times as you’re traveling from one incredibly scenic spot to another you get into traveling mode. As there may be 100 or so miles between places you want to see you put yourself in autopilot and head down the road at the most prudent speed you can tolerate and watch the mile markers tick off  the miles. After all you can’t be late for something spectacular.

The roadside scenery, as incredible as it is, becomes a blurred streak outside your windows and it isn’t until you check back in to reality and find that you have to stop to make a decision about which route you need to take or let the dog out to take a whiz, that you begin to notice your surroundings again.

That’s when you realize that everywhere you look is an unexpected view. If these particular hills have a name, we’ve unofficially named them the Zig-Zag mountains, it’s  not on a sign anywhere. We looked. That doesn’t lessen their scenic quality one little bit. What it does though is make you want to retrace your path to see what else you missed while you were speeding along getting to some place else where there might be scenery. That’s the one huge problem in traveling through the Southwest, there are unexpected views all over the place. Next trip will be to see all the unexpected places instead of racing to see the expected ones.

Yellowstone Diorama

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This idyllic scene of a herd of grazing buffalo in the Lamar valley is not what it seems. It is a specially constructed life-size model prepared by our master dioramaticians here at *The Institute. Many of our readers know that there are many divisions, departments, sections, areas, teams, worker bees and bee-ettes, programs, units, centers, groups, systems, agencies, bureaus, commissions, that make up The Institute. We even have an office just to keep track of all the different divisions, departments etc. where important work is done.

One of our lesser known departments is the bureau of Procurement, Construction and Installation of Dioramas or PCID as it’s known in the trade. It is there that we make the amazing dioramas that you see in many of our National Parks and other places where they don’t have adequate scenic areas for the public to view.

If a National Park or even a scenic-poor state such as Utah or parts of Arizona want to dress up their highway systems with dramatic views they will contact The Institute where we will develop a plan to add interest along some of their more desolate roads, thereby transforming those roads into revenue-producing Scenic Byways. The State or National Park then has the option of adding roadside stands, local entrepreneurs, and whatever local color they think might add interest.

Another use for our patented, modular, fade-resistant, weatherproof dioramas allows game-poor parks such as Yellowstone National Park to have animals in scenic environments on demand for those times when the live animals are not present or have been killed off by local residents around the park.

Our unique but uncanny ability to mimic local conditions, coupled with incredible taxidermy techniques allow our experts to create dioramas such as this Diorama of a buffalo herd along the roadside in the Lamar valley, that defy detection by anyone cruising by it at 45 – 60 mph. Plus our patented Extend-A-View ™ Dioramas let us create dioramas that can extend for several miles along an otherwise dull and boring road, keeping the occupants interested and thinking of lunch or possibly souvenirs of the amazing “Scenery” they are passing by. We can also supply a more complete package with our dioramas that include a complete line of scenery specific souvenirs, knock-down roadside stands, trained actors that can simulate the local culture and color, plus accessories such as a live horse that can be tied to the side of one of our retail units providing sure-fire traffic stopping appeal. Other animals available upon request.

No detail is spared when you order one of our complete dioramas. The diorama above, our deluxe Buffalo Extravaganza, includes approximately 1800 full size American Made, Plains or Mountain Buffalo, each with life-like glass eyes and true-to-life coloring, plus a large assortment of cottonwood trees all with drip tube watering systems, or if necessary due to budget constraints, these trees can be constructed of a special weather-resistant Paper Mache guaranteed for 3 years, and our own proprietary turf made of recycled tires.

Many of you have driven by our dioramas and didn’t realize it. Those of you who have visited Zion National Park and marveled at the Desert Bighorn sheep located near the tunnel at the east side of the park will be surprised to know that was our model “Desert Bighorns and Laser-etched Rock Formation #66903”. Or perhaps you have been to the Mt. Evans Scenic Byway in the Rocky mountains where you will have seen one of our largest installations, the “Mountain Goat and Craggy Scary Drop-off Cliff  installation,  #994216-a”. We provided all the natural looking gray boulders that litter the mountainside and installed close to 3000 life-like Mountain Goats and Bighorn Sheep all over the 14,000’+ mountain, some of them animatronic in nature to provide movement and interest for those hardy tourists wheezing by the side of the road.

We are currently working on a secret installation of a completely different nature than we have ever attempted before, for a not to be named city near Puget sound. The parameters so far are for us to provide a complete aquatic diorama that will include sea life such as ship-resistant whales and animatronic Orcas, or killer whales, that can do tricks such as flip baby seals into the air and catch them in their mouths, plus many other items too numerous to mention. Estimated date of installation will be early 2019.

The next time you’re on a vacation in Yellowstone and see some spectacular looking scenery look for the little brass plaques saying “This Scenery provided by The Institute” to the trees and other hard surfaces and give one of our buffalo a good rap in the side to see how life-like it feels. You’ll be surprised.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Anasazi Garden

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When many people think of the desert the first image that comes to mind is the Great Sahara desert, or perhaps the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, or the Great Sand Dunes of the Southwestern United states, or even your back yard if you don’t water it. A place barren and inhospitable to life. A place where nothing grows and you dare not venture far from water lest you perish. Which is a pretty easy thing to do if you’re standing out there in the noon day sun with no hat, which we would hasten to add you shouldn’t do, even if you are English and that comes natural to you. We’ve noticed that whenever we’re trapped in the desert and near death we always have a vision of Joe Cocker in his bright red English soldiers jacket singing “With a Little Help From My Friends” marching on before us. This always saves us and we make it back to civilization in one piece, thirsty but alive, but then we’re experts and trained for this kind of thing. But that’s just us, your mileage may vary.

But if you are somewhere like Johns canyon, Utah and its early morning you’ll see something entirely different. A desert garden literally brimming with life. It may be different than what you’re used to thinking of how a garden should be, but then you’re in a different place than you would normally be. As you journey through the canyons you will see small gardens tucked away in every nook and cranny, one after the other until you realize that this is a veritable oasis in the middle of a desolate land.

We are always struck by how similar in feel these desert gardens are to Japanese gardens, which couldn’t be more opposite in nature. The Japanese garden being lush and green with carefully manicured plants, with small trickling streams feeding into water-lily filled ponds, compared to this dry desert garden with its carefully chosen plants, tucked in amongst the boulders, placed just so to take advantage of what ever moisture may be sent its way. The color palette of this garden with its earth tones and giant boulders selected for their color and texture and positioned to fill the space but not overwhelm it is the same in feel if not color, as you find in the perfect temple gardens of Kyoto.

Sometimes we think, that is the experts in our botanical department who are paid to think about these things, think, that there must have been an early visitation to this land by wandering Samurai gardeners who traveled the world spreading their knowledge of how to make a perfect garden where one couldn’t possibly be, teaching people like the Anasazi how to have beauty in their lives in an inhospitable place. A group of Ninja gardening warriors, as it were, dedicated to creating beauty in even the most unreceptive, belligerent landscapes. Or not. But it’s as good a reason as any for the gardens being there.

Our First-strike gardeners here at *The Institute’s World-wide Center for Horticultural Research and truck farm have been collecting gardens just like this one and transporting them root and twig, back to our Botanical center completely intact, where our own hybrid gardeners keep and protect them for posterity. We have gardens similar in size and scope to this one that we have found throughout the world and brought back here to the Institute for safe keeping and our own personal viewing pleasure. Sometimes we let the public view them but not very often. You actually have to have some kind of pull to get in. If you’re interested write us and include your bio and an 11,000 word essay on why we should even let you in the front door and we’ll get back to you if you qualify. Thank you in advance for your interest.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

The Egg Inspector

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In our long-standing tradition of bringing forth new and unusual information about our animal neighbors the Director and instructors here at The Institute would like to unveil a new program. It is called Our Animal Friends At Work or OAFAW. Periodically we will feature the occupations of our animal neighbors and highlight their activities and responsibilities.

Given the sheer size of our collective national parks, monuments, refuges, natural areas and other places where the public can come and view the scenic wonders and abundant animal life, humans cannot perform all the jobs required to maintain and keep these areas in working order. Consequently some of these operations have to be delegated to our animal partners.

Our first featured guest employee is a hard-working dedicated individual who is in charge of a very important position at Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in Utah. Meet Chief Inspector Long-tailed Weasel, or simply LT as he is known to his colleagues. He has a very important job here at the refuge in maintaining the integrity and quality of the eggs that are produced by all the different species of migrating birds that stop off here at the refuge on their way to somewhere else.

 Literally thousands and thousands of migrating birds pass through the refuge and many will stop off and lay their eggs in nests, depressions in the ground, nests hanging from the bullrushes ringing the shoreline, or for those who can’t be bothered just laying them anywhere they happen to feel like. Without supervision and guidance there is ample opportunity for mishap or just a general lessening of quality of the eggs produced here. That’s where LT the Egg Inspector comes in.

He works tirelessly but ceaselessly, observing, locating and entering every nest he can to check the egg clusters integrity. When he finds a nest his first job is to check on the eggs within for quantity, color, size, conformation, shell integrity, and the well-being of the contents inside the egg. This he does by performing a procedure called CIOEIU (pronounced SEE-Oh-E-EEW)  or Cracking It Open, Eating It Up. If in his opinion the egg contents bear further investigation he will proceed to perform CIOEIU on each egg in the nest until he is sure the viability of the eggs is correct. This is a thankless task as he gets little or no support from the owners of the nest, in fact he is harassed and discouraged from performing his duties at every nest he checks. But he perseveres because that is his job and he must perform it regardless of public opinion.

There are many selfless dedicated animal volunteers that perform thankless tasks like this every day of the year to keep our natural areas open and operating at peak efficiency. Without them we would be overcome with problems that we would be hard pressed to solve ourselves, so we thank you Chief Inspector Long-tailed Weasel and all others like you for doing what needs to be done. Because of you Nature is a better place.

Color Encroachment

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There is a growing problem here in the West. You don’t hear much about it in the media because there are powerful influential groups that profit by it, and by powerful I mean the entire states of Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, Arizona is a particularly bad offender, New Mexico, and yes, parts of Colorado. The problem is color encroachment.

Color encroachment is an insidious problem that insinuates itself into your experience of the west in many ways. For instance, lets say you are driving along one of the back roads in any of the afore-mentioned states, gazing occasionally at the  bland, unremarkable scenery passing by, all grays and tans and pale washed out, bluish tints of the sky, when out of the corner of your eye you notice a small seemingly insignificant amount of color creeping into view. It may just be a lighter shade of tan with a hint of yellow in it amongst the roadside vegetation. Or perhaps a reddish hue to the distant rock faces and a deeper purple-ish color to the low-lying mountains off in the distance. Then you come around a corner and it smacks you right in the face.

Incredible shades of indigo blue and deep purple, rose-colored hillsides and brilliant greens of trees next to lesser shades of yellow and pale oranges in the grasses, the deep earth tones of fences and boulders. This is color encroachment. This is raw elemental color and it is right in your face. This new spectrum of color doesn’t stay safely away in the distance, it comes right down to the roadside threatening to spill out right into your path. The dangers are obvious. Black tire marks on the pavement as vehicles screech to a stop. Burned private parts from the spilled coffee of unaware drivers who become GobSmacked by the sudden sight of this massive color change. Digital cameras of all types filled to the brim with the ones and zeros of abused pixels. The list goes on and on.

There have even been traffic accidents caused by this massive influx of color, none fatally so far, but it’s a real possibility that it could happen in  the future. Many of the states have begun to take steps to control color encroachment but so far it has been too little, too late. Wyoming for instance has started fencing in much of its color as you can see by the image above. This has helped a little but since the color can be overwhelming to those visitors who have never experienced it before, it isn’t enough. Utah and the main violator Arizona have begun running public service ads warning the unwary and first time visitors to their states about the dangers of color encroachment, but there is a powerful lobby of resort owners, tourist orientated businesses and the auto repair industry trying to keep these to a minimum, shown only late at night after the info commercials, and they are pressing fiercely to do away with them altogether.

What has been recommended by the various auto travelers associations to combat color encroachment, has been to prepare yourself before you leave on that trip of a lifetime, by looking closely at old copies of Arizona magazine, watch the various videos and documentaries that show the wonders and colors of the west and practice placing contrasting but harmonious colors on a sheet of paper with a selection of magic markers. This will go a long way towards making your trip a safe one and still allow you to look at the colors of the ever-changing scenery.

Following those few simple suggestions will get you there to that colorful wilderness you long for and bring you back again safely without harm.  And remember to pay attention to those signs posted along the highway saying, “Drowsy drivers cause accidents”.  When they should really say “Drowsy drivers fall asleep, run off the road and scream out over the cliff onto the canyon floor miles below much like Thelma and Louise. Don’t do that.” They haven’t posted the “Beware of Color Encroachment” or “Color Encroachment Ahead” signs yet but prepared drivers have them in the forefront of their minds as they drive the beautiful but colorful highways and byways on the West. Remember, Be Safe and as they say out here “Vaya con Juevos”.