CLOSE-UP WITH WILDLIFE IN NAIROBI, KENYA: Part 2, Nairobi National Park, Guest Post by Humberto Gutierrez Rivas

Rhinos and Cattle Egrets, Nairobi National Park, Kenya

With many thanks to Humberto Gutierrez Rivas for his report and terrific photos of his family's trip to Kenya last January. His post about their wildlife experiences near Nairobi is in three parts, the first appearing last week, Part 2 today, and Part 3 next week.

This past January our family had the trip of a lifetime to Kenya for 12 days to visit friends in Nairobi, go on safari, and visit the island of Lamu.  There were many highlights of this trip, and one that got it started happened right there in the city of Nairobi.  

Less than 8 hours after our arrival, we were met at the front door of our friends’ house by Amos, our guide, and his safari van.  Our friends had coordinated a day expedition for us to Nairobi’s National Park, the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage center, and Giraffe Center.

Amos drove us from the north to the south part of the city to get us to the park, so we also got to see the early morning activities of people walking to bus stops, walking to work, and opening shops along the road.

Nairobi National Park

Grey-crowned crane in the park grassland.

After leaving the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage, we headed for the entrance to Nairobi National Park. The park was created in 1946 and is almost the size of San Francisco. It’s fenced on the sides that border with the city and is open to the southwest to allow the movement of animals during migration.

Nile crocodiles sunbathe on the shores of the park lagoon.

Soon after we entered the park’s main gate, Amos raised the roof of the van so that we could stand and be on the lookout for animals in the open and not from behind the windows.  There are no bathrooms or housing structures inside the park--just dirt roads. At that point, I realized that the only thing between us and the animals is the chassis of the van. It’s a truly immersive experience, but at times you are reminded that the park is close to the city when you see in the background the city buildings. 

Black-headed heron and Nile crocodile rest on the lagoon sandbank.

Hartebeest.

Nobody is allowed to get out of the van. Amos drove around the park and called out and directed our attention to different animals roaming and resting in their natural environment.  

Impala.

Masai giraffe.

Although we didn’t get to see lions, cheetahs, hyenas, and elephants, we enjoyed many other animals. 

Ivory burning site and mound of burned ivory. 2016 was the last ceremonial burning, with more than 100 tons of ivory.

We spent most of the day at the park, and on our way out of the park to visit the giraffe center, we stopped at the Ivory Burning Site.  It’s a memorial site dedicated to Kenya's commitment to conservation and to end ivory trade by burning confiscated elephant and rhino ivory. Ivory has been burned several times since 1989, and now you can see the mounds of ivory ashes left behind from these burnings. It truly brings to focus the role of conservation.

CLOSE-UP WITH WILDLIFE IN NAIROBI, KENYA: Part 1,Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage, Guest Post by Humberto Gutierrez Rivas

Young elephants at the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage Center, Nairobi, Kenya

With many thanks to Humberto Gutierrez Rivas for his report and terrific photos of his family's trip to Kenya last January. His post about their wildlife experiences near Nairobi is in three parts, the first appearing today, and parts 2 and 3 in the following weeks.

This past January our family had the trip of a lifetime to Kenya for 12 days to visit friends in Nairobi, go on safari, and visit the island of Lamu.  There were many highlights of this trip, and one that got it started happened right there in the city of Nairobi.  

Less than 8 hours after our arrival, we were met at the front door of our friends’ house by Amos, our guide, and his safari van.  Our friends had coordinated a day expedition for us to Nairobi’s National Park, the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage center, and Giraffe Center.

Amos drove us from the north to the south part of the city to get us to the park, so we also got to see the early morning activities of people walking to bus stops, walking to work, and opening shops along the road.

Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage

Our first stop was The Elephant Orphanage, operated by the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and located within Nairobi National Park. Every day, for just one hour, they open the doors of the orphanage center for people to meet rescued elephants and rhinos.

Young elephants get fed two bottles of special formula milk every 3 hours day and night. 

You can’t miss the caretakers, they all wear green coats.  Each orphan has its own stall where they sleep with their caretakers. The elephants come running to the showing area when they are called, and people gather around this area. There are no metallic fences or bars between you and the animals, just a rope, so it’s close and personal.

Orphan stall.

This is the place they retire in the evening where they rest with their caretakers.  They rotate caretakers each night so the animals don’t get attached to any one person.

Caretakers carry big milk bottles with them and some kids and adults feed the elephants tree branches from behind the ropes. 

Elephants come to the showing area each day to become part of the story and mission of the orphanage. 

While one of the caretakers tells the story of why animals end up at the center, and the different parts of the country animals come from, the elephants push and play with each other. 

We heard about the mission of the organization, and we decided to contribute by adopting an elephant for Caroline Arnold.  Her name is Nyambeni. The hour went very fast. 

Sheldrick Wildlife truck at the entrance of the orphanage center.

The Baby Elephant Fostering Program

Adoption certificate for Nyambeni and painting by Angela Sheldrick.

Nyambeni

Gender:    Female

Date born: 1st February 2022

Area found: Meru Region, Imenti Forest

Age on arrival:  3 months old

Comments on place found: Found all alone, stuck in a muddy ditch.

Reasons for being orphaned:  Stuck in a ditch.

The baby elephant fostering program includes a description of the circumstances in which the adopted baby elephant was found, a monthly highlight via email of events at the sanctuary along with a direct link to the Keeper's Diary with notes on particular elephants, and a monthly watercolor painting by Angela Sheldrick.

SPECTACULAR RED ROCKS OF SOUTHERN UTAH: Expeditions from St. George/Ivins, Guest Post by Matt Arnold

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah.

I thank my son Matt for his gorgeous photos and his contribution to The Intrepid Tourist about his family trip to southern Utah in June 2024. He writes:

Over the last few years, I have made several trips to St. George, Utah, as a chaperone for my daughter's swim team, to the beautiful pool at Dixie State University (now Utah Tech University). Impressed by the remarkable scenery and grandeur of the red rocks of Southern Utah, I endeavored to return for non-swim purposes.  This summer we returned as a family and stayed in Ivins, Utah (essentially a suburb of St. George), using it as a jumping off spot for day trips in southern Utah.  

Zion National Park.

St. George markets itself as the "gateway to Zion" and it is certainly an easy ~1 hour drive to the Zion National Park entryway.  St. George is also close enough for day trips to both Bryce National Park and the Grand Canyon, each about 2.5 hours away (northwest, and southwest respectively.)  Even closer is a hidden gem of a state park called Snow Canyon, that is equally impressive and not as impacted and with multiple small hikes to choose from.  

Zion NP. Checkerboard Mesa.

Just driving through Southern Utah, the surrounding scenery and vistas are awe inspiring. If you travel as we did via Las Vegas, as you leave the lights behind driving toward St. George, you are met by the starkness of the Nevada desert, with Joshua trees dotting the landscape.  This ends abruptly as you reach a fracture in the mountains and I-15 freeway plunges into the Virgin River Gorge and into the bottom geologic layer of what is called the grand staircase- and ascend up through various striations and "steps" measuring millions of years of geologic epochs starting with the chocolate layer of Kaibab limestone (which I believe also forms the top rim of the Grand Canyon as well.)  

Snow Canyon State Park. Jenny's Canyon hike.

From there you can eventually step up and ascend through further strata to the Navajo sandstone of Zion and then the Claron formation of Bryce-- spanning from ~225 to 50 million years ago.   All in all, geology is what makes southern Utah tick, from red rocks, to sandstone mesas, to slot canyons, to the various angles of fractures and faults or blobs of rock sticking up from the landscape.

Snow Canyon. Lava flow hike.

To explore the geology, over the course of a week, we started locally with several small hikes at Snow Canyon State Park, within walking distance of our rented home in Ivins.  We followed this with a day trip to Zion National Park and hiked the Narrows (the path is the Virgin river) and would recommend renting a walking stick (at Zion entrance) and bring good shoes you don't mind getting wet (old running shoes worked fine.)  

Zion NP. Narrows hike.

Zion has many other impressive hikes we will have to go back for.   There is a bus system in Zion Valley, cut by the upper reaches of the Virgin river, where no cars are allowed.   It takes about an hour to make it up the canyon and again an hour to get back (you can hop on or off at various stops), with great views of the canyon the whole time.  Another day was a trip to Bryce (2.5 hour drive), for a walk among the hoodoos, making a big loop so as to drive back through the West side of Zion via Route 9 to see Checkerboard Mesa among other impressive formations.

Dinosaur footprint.

While we were on a geology roll, we decided to check out both the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Center- a small museum housing a impressively large set of dinosaur footprints discovered by a local alfalfa farmer while clearing a field. This is a small but impressive little outing. Though not affiliated with the museum, within a 15 minute drive is a site where there are dinosaur footprints "in the wild" with a small trail called the Dino Cliffs Dinosaur tracks, which takes a bit of internet searching and slight off-road/dirt road car adventuring to get to, but was also a short fun little outing.

Bryce Canyon. Near Sunset/Sunrise Point.

The St. George area, besides hosting a large university, is itself an adventure and vacation destination.  The area is surrounded by housing and condo developments that have popped up on fairly recent (geologically speaking) lava beds, which in contrast to the red rock of much of the landscape, reminds me of the Big Island of Hawaii (both for the condo's and the lava fields). The area is surrounded by mountain bike trails, hiking trails, camping and miles of paved roads and trails for biking. In some ways the community is a desert version of Lake Tahoe, or Bend Oregon, marketing itself to those seeking active vacation and outdoor recreation time.   

Zion NP. Checkerboard Mesa.

The one thing we didn't quite account for was the heat in early June.  It was well over 100 degrees much of our visit during the day in St. George. Spring, fall or even winter may be better for some of the more athletic outdoor pursuits (though timing hikes in the morning or evening worked well- and several trips were made to the pool at our housing complex).  Both Zion and Bryce are at higher elevations, so our trips on these days helped take down the temperature a notch at higher elevations (Zion ~4000-5000, and Bryce 6000 feet above sea level.).  

Snow Canyon State Park.

As in much of the west, Southern Utah is full of landscapes that seem endless, and you can't help but feel that there is so much that is left to be explored.  There are additional parks, monuments, trails, and wilderness areas that invite a return at some point in the future.  

Zion NP. Narrows hike.

BUGGING OUT IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Guest Post by Paige Arnold

My granddaughter Paige spent five weeks participating in a summer research project at Glacier National Park sponsored by the Keck Geology Consortium at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I thank her for her perceptive thoughts about her encounters with bugs during her time at Glacier NP. "Bugging Out in Glacier National Park" is republished from the Keck Geology Blog, where you can also find posts by other members of the research team.

My first day in the field, I felt a bit like a moth in the daytime. Surrounded by unfamiliar sights, sounds, and creatures (fellow Keck students included), I felt completely out of my element and like I was being pulled in every direction possible. The overwhelming environment around me led me to focus my gaze on something smaller, something more familiar that would allow me to start with details rather than the full picture: bugs. 

Glacier National Park is full of bugs, the most notable of which to most is the mosquito (impossible not to notice if even one manages to sneak into your tent overnight or if you stand still for a second too long). If you look a bit further, though, there are plenty of insects hiding just out of sight or perhaps below a particularly large rock. 

Some disguise themselves as other species, like the hover fly which adopts the patterning of a bee as a survival strategy. Some are so prominent and strange-looking that even a bug-enjoyer like myself has to stop and ask “oh my god how did that even HAPPEN” (looking at you, sawyer beetle). Some are enjoyed by all, like the Chlosyne Palla butterfly that stopped some of us in our tracks during a particularly busy coring day, and some are widely disliked, like the mosquito (self explanatory). 

No matter how high or low we were, the amount of bugs surrounding us never seemed to drop. We saw the same anise swallowtails and hover flies both down near Swiftcurrent Lake where one minute out of the shade made my vision swim, and up near Iceberg lake, where the ground stays covered by snow in the middle of July. 

Over time, the environment that once felt blinding started to feel promising, and instead of shying away from it I began to drink it in, like a caterpillar eating every leaf in sight in preparation for its eventual metamorphosis. Though my appreciation for Glacier’s bugs started out as an independent pursuit, as I began to feel more at home my interest became more widespread throughout the group. Some bugs we named and held dear to our hearts (Francis, Margo, Margo 2, Margo n+1), and some we briefly admired (or peeked at from a safe distance) before moving on. 

Near the end of the trip, I resonated with many of the bugs I had seen during my time in the park. Over time and continuous exposure, I developed a thicker outer shell like a beetle’s, which allowed me to enjoy the park despite the weather, long days, and unfamiliar camping lifestyle. Near the middle, I began to separate from my cocoon as I gained comfort among the environment and my peers, tentatively beginning to take steps outside my comfort zone. As opposed to the beginning of the trip where I felt like a moth under the sun, in the very last days I felt like the moths we saw on bathroom breaks from stargazing; content, peaceful, and at rest.

 For more about this and other Keck Geology programs, go to the Keck Geology website.