Welcome to Breakfast in America
I’m a Brit who unexpectedly emigrated to the USA in 2008, and this is my photo journal.
It’s an eclectic mix of things; there’s no guiding theme or topic. It is whatever catches my attention, what I’ve been thinking, doing, or piques my interest. Currently that’s mainly backpacking and clearing some of the backlog on my ‘honey-do’ list.
Popular pages
Trending longer content.
My favorite pictures and posts
Some selected favorites from all my favorite pictures and posts.
When did I grow old?
Stripes — View from our hotel room
On the lake trail at Piney Creek Wilderness
Pool on Whites Creek, Irish Wilderness
Keeping warm in my hammock
Cottage Still Life
Plectranthus ‘Mona Lavender’
Through the veil
Enjoying the view
Gary and Ginger at the Pole Hollow Cairn
Ginger, immersed in her phone
Clouds
Lower Pilot – From the Coy Bald Trail, Hercules Glades Wilderness
Ginger & Gary December 2020
Morning Tea
Little Paddy Creek on the short cut between the South & North Loops
Table Rock Lake at Piney Creek Wilderness
Ozarks Horizon. Bell Mountain – Day Two
Frosty Morning
Gary on the Pilot Trail, Hercules Glades Wilderness
South Downs – Hiking at Kingley Vale
Grandpa
Watching the Dawn
1144 15th Street, Denver, Colorado
Recent Posts
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Sunday check, clean, and oil
Sunday check, clean, and oil. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. My Sig P938 got very wet while backpacking in the rain at Hercules Glades a while back. Today, I decided to give it a good cleaning and thorough inspection.
The screws on the handgrips were secured with blue Loctite, making them tough—but not impossible—to undo. I wanted to remove the grips to check if any water had seeped in behind them, and to inspect the mainspring without having to disassemble the entire fire control mechanism.
I also removed the safety detent to check for rust. There was none. It’s a fiddly bugger to refit, with the strong spring twice launching it into space before I succeeded in refitting it.
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Camped on ‘Ant Hill’
Camped on ‘Ant Hill’. Hercules Glades Wilderness, May 2025. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Another day, another campsite… I’ve camped on ‘Ant Hill‘ before, but this time, I had to shift to a nearby location to avoid a dicey-looking dead tree.
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Concrete Spring box in ‘Twin Falls Hollow’
Concrete Spring box in ‘Twin Falls Hollow’. Hercules Glades Wilderness, May 2025. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I was glad to see that the twin falls were running when I arrived and took advantage of them for an au naturel shower. The plunge pool was also quite full, but I decided that a shower was enough!
Getting down to the creek wasn’t easy, so after my shower, rather than struggling to climb back up, I decided to hike downstream along the creek. On my way, I passed the old concrete spring box, which you can see to the right in the picture. There used to be a pipe feeding water from the spring to the spring box. It’s still there—just broken and no longer connected.
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Scenic overlook, southwest of Lower Pilot Knob. Hercules Glades Wilderness
Scenic overlook, southwest of Lower Pilot Knob. Hercules Glades Wilderness, May 2025. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. In order to take this picture, I had to clamber on top of this rock.
Colorful — even the rocks are wearing Hunter Orange. Hercules Glades Wilderness, May 2025. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Wear and tear
Wear and tear — That’s what over 100 days of backpacking will do. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. April 2022 — just for comparison. Sig Sauer P938 & Alien Gear Shape Shift Holster. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I’ve now spent over one hundred days backpacking with the Sig and the Alien Gear holster, and both are showing some slight wear from accompanying me on my trips. Considering how often my pack, and consequently my holster and gun get dumped down on stony and rocky surfaces, I’d say they are holding up pretty well.
The plastic holster shows numerous scratches and scuff marks, and the finish on the edges of the Sig’s slide and safety switch has worn off. Additionally, the Allen screws on the grip appear to be scratched as well. This wear and tear is not surprising, as these parts are exposed to stones and rocks on the ground whenever I set my pack down.
The odd mark on the muzzle end of the slide is just water left over from Thursday, when I hiked for over an hour in fairly heavy rain. It wiped off, no problem. I stripped down the holster—which is just a matter of untwisting the locking toggles and sliding it apart—and dried it. In future, I’ll have to remember to check for residual water in the holster after it has been raining.
Drying out — I ended up hiking for an hour in fairly heavy rain the other day. I stripped down my holster (undid the two locking toggles) to dry the inside. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Heating water to make breakfast
Heating water to make breakfast. Hercules Glades Wilderness, May 2025. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Ashes. Hercules Glades Wilderness, May 2025. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I finally got around to using my Firebox Nano wood stove—it’s been ages since I last used it.
As expected, it worked well and left only some ashes for me to disperse.
Below is a picture of my cooking setup, all packed away. The Ziploc bag contains a couple of fire starters—just because I’m sometimes lazy when it comes to lighting the stove—They’re stored inside my Fancee Feest alcohol stove for those times when I don’t feel like starting a fire, which, to be honest, is more often than not nowadays.
Cooking gear packed away. Hercules Glades Wilderness, May 2025. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Camped above ‘Deep Hollow’
Camped above ‘Deep Hollow’, May 2025. Hercules Glades Wilderness. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Camped above ‘Deep Hollow’ May 2025. Hercules Glades Wilderness. Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It’s the last few days of the Spring Turkey Firearms season. Hence, all the hunter orange. Either everyone had already got their quotas, or they’d given up. I heard no shots inside the wilderness, but I did hear some turkeys on my final day 🙂
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Bathing Pool in ‘Deep Hollow’
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When did I grow old?
When did I grow old? Copyright © 2025 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It feels like I blinked, and suddenly I’ve aged — I was writing in my journal when I noticed how old my hands looked. I don’t feel older, but I now have my grandparents’ hands: the loose flesh, thin skin, age spots, and prominent veins.
It’s a tad unnerving to be confronted by one’s advancing decrepitude.
Note
January 2007: Hands (365: 9). Copyright © 2007 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I wanted to capture a picture of my hands from my perspective, similar to this January 2007 picture here. Unfortunately, I don’t have the right tripod extension to do so. Even getting a picture of my hands from above and to one side proved tricky!
However, I am very pleased that the picture I managed to get was what I wanted, almost straight out of camera. I indulged in a few tweaks in Lightroom to remove a couple of distractions, crop it slightly, and get the exact color tone I wanted.
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Journal: Exploring some old trails, Irish Wilderness, April 2025
Time for a change of strategy. Reviewing my last backpacking trip (See Breakfast in America: Berryman Trail revisited, March 2025), I concluded that I’d been putting a lot more emphasis on crushing miles as quickly as possible recently and not taking the time to slow down and enjoy the wilderness. My plan for the trip was different. Besides this Whites Creek Trail, there are many trails marked on the USGS map. I dedicated the trip to exploring a couple of them, looking for water sources, and seeking another campsite overlooking the Eleven Point River.
For details of this trip