Steve and Judy's Travels!

For a squirrel.

Walking along that fence must be exhausting!

Fish eating diving ducks.  They hunt cooperatively in groups like this.

These mergansers were working upstream past us while we were in Yellowstone.

They don’t nest on the ground like other ducks, they nest high up in trees in cavities.  When the babies hatch, the first thing they have to do is jump out of the tree to the ground or water below.  At one day old!

Loving him some suet.

But then, who doesn’t?

We travel all over the U.S. and we see all these places.  And each place has a name.  New England.  New York.  St. Louis.  Denver.  Longs Peak.  Pikes Peak.  San Francisco.  All these places were “discovered” and named by “explorers” in the last few hundred years.

So we, the people of European descent, “explore” our way across an entire continent, which is already populated.  (The pre-“discovery” population of the Americas is estimated to be about 50 million to 100 million.)  And when we roll into town and encounter a distinctive place or feature, what do we do?  Do we ask the people who have been here for ten thousand years, “Hey, what’s the name of this place?”  Not often.  We say “Wow, look what we discovered”, and make up a name for it.

Does that make any sense?

About Tesla Full Self Driving.  With the latest update, we can put in a destination before the car has even moved, push “go”, and the car takes us there with no further input.  It even picks out a parking spot when we get there, parks, and stops.  Nothing else happens, it just sits there with the climate control running, until we get out of the car and walk away.  Then the car rolls up the windows (if they’re down), shuts off the heat or air conditioning, folds in the mirrors, and locks itself.  Very cool.

So, let’s do a what-if.  What if a person goes to a fiesta, gets hammered, gets back in their car and pushes the button for home.   That would be a lot like calling a cab, which is what drinking drivers are advised to do, but it’s not a cab it’s the driver’s own car.  What would the law say?  Should that person be cited for driving under the influence, because they are the presumed driver of their own car, or lauded for being responsible and getting behind the wheel, but not actually driving?