A little holiday cheer

What do you do, when your kitchen is an old west saloon?

You use it as a set for making YouTube videos.

Made a little video staring yours truly, featuring a Cowboy poem about Thanksgiving. The poem was written by S. Omar Barker, from Songs of the Saddlemen, 1954. Enjoy. 

This video is a satire response to my cousins original video which I'll post below, I can't take credit for the character of Sidewinder Smith, it was a blast to make, and I may do more awkward poetry videos later. So have some fun sit back with one of my favorite drinks from Dunkin' Donuts, a caramel macchiato!

Elden Smith - Sidewinder Smith (A Short Story)

Road trip time...

A trailer for a road trip? When it involves a dad and a teenage daughter on a 2k mile trip in four days... You bet! And of course I'm going to make a parody out of it. For you're viewing pleasure.

Three years and 100k later, and still going strong!

2010 Kia Soul + Sport

I know everyone thinks I'm crazy, but this little car has become one of my favorite cars I've had. Not only is it fun to drive, but it is balanced well enough to tackle most of the dirt roads in the desert. I've been through soft deep sand, snow, mud, ice, and even a flood! The Soul seems to handle them all. If Kia ever comes out with a 4 wheel drive or even an all wheel drive (which they are hinting they will, with a hybrid rear electric motor) this little grocery getter, econobox will be unstoppable! By the numbers, this little tike will turn five this year, with 100k miles. I've put new brakes on the front, a new battery, and three sets of tires. I drive 60 miles a day on what would best be described as a goat trail of a road. No rattles, no squeaks, no oil leaking, or burning. And even with the big-ass rack still get 26 MPG; not too shabby Kia, not too shabby.

Turning the world upside down...

An early monsoon maybe?

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Proud redneck...

Like American Express, never leave home without them!

Love spring flowers!

Back in town after a weekend of camping in Death Valley,  more pictures to come.

Spring has sprung....

Some of the many wild flowers blooming in the desert.

It seems everything in the desert just wants to stab, sting, or otherwise hurt you.

Doggie photo-bomb. 

My Saturday

With the wife and Franken-daughter away for the weekend, (visiting a friend in Boise, ID) I decided  to take a long hike in our local mountains. It's been a few months since I've done a good long hike. This one almost did me in, the first mile about killed me! Those who know me better, know that I've been interested in taking a couple of long backpacking trips in and around the West. I've been researching, and purchasing everything I would need, but I've forgotten to get outside and work on my health, strength, and endurance.... Time for me to do more working than talking. So that leads me to pushing myself to hike some 8 miles today.  It was a good hike, I'm just a little out of shape!

There was also a lot of snow on the trails in areas, which made things a little more challenging.

More adventures with night photography...

Experimenting with some colored light while taking a long exposure, not happy with the graininess, ISO was set a little to high, now I know for next time.

Just because...

Hope everyone had a great St. Patricks day!

Words of encouragement

Hiking in our local mountains...

More inspiring words

Some uplifting words for today

You know what they say...

A family who takes photos together stays together. Selfie taking Franken-daughter her grandmother and I on an early pre-dawn photo trek in our local hills. 

More words of encouragement

Made with #Pixlr #Photography 

Words of encouragement

Made with #Pixlr #photography

I always try to look at the situation differently

It's all about perspective.

One of my favorites

Love this one,  even looks better in a print!

Love this one from New Years 2015

A great image. One of my favorites.

Pioneering Arizona's transformation, reinvention and introducing Kingazjay-Pixx

I've been dormant for awhile. A long while. I've always wanted to make this blog more than its been,  but haven't been able to come up with anything interesting. My daughter and I (I affectionately call her Franken-Daughter on Social media) have a shared hobby of photography. For Christmas I bought her a nice starter DSLR camera (One better than mine for crying out loud) we like to take hiking trips in and around our hometown in Northern Arizona. When we're out and about we try to grab the cameras, or at least take an interesting cell phone pic or two. Who doesn't like a good picture? So for now I'm going to turn this blog into a photo journal. I really like macro-photography so be prepared for some great up close and interesting images in the future. For some great on the spot pictures you can checkout my Instagram account (there is a link to the right) I will also posts links to them on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. I can be found by the username Kingazjay on all social media. In the future I want to offer my really good images for sale matted and framed, so if you see anything you like drop me a line (you can also Email me at Kingazjay@ Gmail, Live, or Yahoo, whichever you prefer. For now my new venture will be called Kingazjay-Pixx not sure on the name, so I'm going to put it to a vote....

My ugly mug...

Such a great day to enjoy the new year.

Still enjoying the snow at the ranch, great way to kick off 2015

Great afternoon to sit by the fire and read a good book,

I don't know how long the snow will hang around, so I'm going to enjoy it as much as I can.

First storm of 2015

On New Years eve 2014, our area was hit by a large snow storm, and low temperatures. It started snowing around 11 pm on the 31st, and didn't stop until midnight the next day. The town of Kingman saw a good 6-8 inches of snow, and the higher elevations way over a foot. ADOT had to close several major roads and the interstate due to the snow and later on ice. We knew the storm was going to be big so we spent the evening in town, unfortunately we wouldn't be able to make it back out to the ranch for two more days, and then only using a borrowed 4 wheel drive to make the trip! Here are some of the first pictures taken by Franken-daughter.

Great photo from Franken-Daughter

So far 2015 rocks.

Life of a dog.