Here we go, another set of archive photos that I’m going to pretend I uploaded back in January when I actually went on the trip.

We visited Colorado in January for no particular reason (aside from cheap tickets and a 3 day weekend). We weren’t there a very long, but we visited Rocky Mountain National Park, the Celestial Seasonings factory tour and Denver. There was more we would have liked to do, like visit the Denver Mint or more random factory tours, but a lot of things weren’t open for Martin Luther King Jr Day. Next time!

Anyway… It was very cold (of course) and we only allotted enough visit time for one sunset and one sunrise in the park. The sunset turned out to be a dud, but the sunrise was decent enough. There was more wildlife than I expected (mostly elk), so at least that provided some fun.

We found these guys first on the way to the park, chilling alongside the road. They fought for a bit while we hid near the car in case they decided they wanted new head-butting targets. After that we explored the park a bit, found more elk and bighorn sheep. The rivers and streams were all frozen but you could see rushing water through holes in the ice some places. We had to be really cautious on all our wanderings–the ground was icy everywhere.

Anyway, there was no sun, so there was no sunset. I vowed to return for sunrise, even though that was mostly cloudy as well (none of the tall mountains were visible). In general we’re starting to learn that we need to allow for more time at parks when we travel, especially in bad weather seasons. It’s just too unpredictable.

Sunrise was nice — I found some elk to chase around in the below freezing temperature and ridiculous winds. Travis sat in the car with the heater running (he’s good at this).

And my cloud elkscape:

Other than that, we had tea and scouted out Denver skyline sunset/sunrise. The first shot is sunset from a random parking structure, the second is a panorama from the balcony of our hotel.

This is mostly a test post to tweak some settings on my new site.

I’ve decided to try and see where photography will take me in the world, so this prompted a site redesign and the creation of business cards.

I’m excited for my little box of business cards.  I got them from moo.com, primarily because they allow you to get different photos on the back of each card.  They are good quality and thickness, although I think when get more I’d like something with a nice glossy coating instead.

I’m still fixing up my site–I probably need to make a nicer header and reformat old blog posts.  Not bad so far though.  I also need to add some posts for recent travels (and fix the dates).

Other than that, I have one more week at my job and I’ll be in California to check out photography leads and hit up the beaches for sunrise.  Fun!

New Blogs (with old dates):
05/29/11 – Columbia River Gorge Waterfalls
05/31/11 – Mt. Hood National Forest
01/15/11 – Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Blogs I’m behind on (sad face):
06/16/11 – Caddo Lake State Park, Texas
07/02/11 – Aerial Dallas
… there’s probably more… *sigh*

Ordinarily rain isn’t a bad thing.  I’ve found some of the best lighting and clouds come as a storm clears. The issue is, tall mountains tend to be the first thing to be obscured by storm clouds, and one of the last things to clear.

The primary objective for our Oregon weekend was to finish off our 2010 National Parks Quarters Parks: Hot Springs, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite and finally Mt. Hood National Forest.

As much as I would have liked to drive loops around the mountain and take pictures from all vantage points at all times of day, it turned out that we only saw the mountain at 2 separate times our entire weekend. The first morning, when I woke Travis up at 4:45am (we are dedicated!) and went on a looong drive in circles around the mountain looking for a good vantage point. We found a random road to drive up to get some sunrise shots.

On the way out we decided to scope out some lakes… We didn’t actually find anything spectacular for future (nonexistent) sunrises, but we did find a few early morning vantage points of Mt. Hood while was visible (it then hid behind the clouds for the next two days).

After that morning, we spent most of our time visiting the waterfalls of the Columbia River Gorge over and over waiting for the weather to clear. We hit up our Oregon winery (another random goal through our travels) and toured the town of Boring, Oregon. We drove around in circles for many more hours, and then supplemented it with many naps.

Our final night at Mt. Hood we were again driving around the mountain crossing fingers for a glimpse of Mt. Hood. We decided to check out Trillium Lake and to see if the view would be good if it were to ever clear up.

We arrived at Trillium Lake, and although it wasn’t entirely promising I could see a few patches of blue skies and the bottom third of the mountain. I decided to break out my Nook while Travis listened to podcasts in the car, and I sat on the edge of the lake staring at the mountain/clouds willing it to clear.

I spent several hours there, hoping the clouds would clear while watching some kids try to fish sticks out of the water. The skies slowly cleared, but the tip of the mountain was still covered by some very determined cloud coverage.

Finally, just 20 minutes before sunset, the mountain finally cleared. I got my pre-sunset shots just before the clouds rolled back in and covered up the entire mountain. I decided to call it so we could go get some dinner, but as I tried to leave we ran into a local photographer who said the clouds could come and go at will, and that we should stay just in case.

I was fairly skeptical as I had waited the past 3 hours just to see the mountain for a whopping 15 minutes, so I wasn’t too convinced it’d come back for sunset. However, we struck up a conversation, and in the end we were guilted into staying. Luckily we did, because although it wasn’t a spectacularly colored sunset, Mt. Hood did decide to come out and play.

And now we are 5/5 on 2010 National Parks! Time to start thinking about the 2011 and 2012 quarters. So far we are 1/5 on 2011 (Glacier National Park in Montana), and 0/5 on 2012 (although we do have Denali National Park in Alaska on deck for August). No worries though, Oklahoma and Mississippi’s parks are only a weekend drive away, and we’ll start planning out the rest.

We used to have really amazing weather luck; I don’t know what happened.

Our past few planned trips have been very wet and cold. There was the -19°F Grand Canyon, the freezing temperatures in Colorado (oops, still need to write that blog), the snowy Yosemite, and now a weekend of rain in Oregon.

On the bright side, the grey rainy skies make for excellent waterfall photos. The lack of patchy sunlight makes for nice, evenly lit water, and it’s far easier to slow down the shutter speed to get silky waterfall shots.

Our entire weekend pretty much consisted of checking to see if Mt. Hood was visible, then taking a drive down the Columbia River Gorge to look at waterfalls. We saw most of the main waterfalls multiple times, which gave me ample opportunities to scout shots and figure out exactly which lens I wanted to soak in the waterfall mist.

All of my lenses were thoroughly sprayed by the falls, and after the weekend I bought an array of lens cleaning devices so Travis would stop shouting at me for using my shirt sleeve to dry my lenses.

The soggy weather also gave me an opportunity to test out opportunities to test out some techniques I hadn’t tried before: stacking macro shots.

I found some lovely dew drops on the way down to Latourell Falls. I’m not entirely sure what the flower was, but the water had cool refractions of the plant below it. I took a series of shots focused on different parts of the flower, and then stacked them in the computer when I got back to get one shot. Fun times!

Overall, I think my photography has improved since our last trip to the Columbia River Gorge.

We visited Yosemite only 7 months ago, but decided to visit again since our last trip was marred by bad weather. The high elevation roads were still closed from winter, so we didn’t visit any places we hadn’t seen before. We instead focused our efforts on obtaining photos of the valley from different vantage points, as the weather seemed to be more agreeable than the last time we were here.

Our crazy photo schedule involved waking up for sunrise (6am), exploring the park until the majority of the tourists arrived (around 10am), then we would go take a nap until mid-afternoon and head back out again for hiking and sunsets.

The first day I was determined to get a photo from the Tunnel View vantage point with all the peaks visible, since when we were here in October there was rain and fog. We then decided that we’d wander up to Inspiration Point, which turned out to be 1.3 miles uphill with 18lbs. of camera gear.

The view at Inspiration Point was similar to Tunnel View, of course, but because of the higher elevation the further mountains and Half Dome had nicer proportions against the closer peaks. We spent an hour there relaxing, enjoying the solitude—we saw 2 people going down the trail as we were going up, and that was it for the entire hike. It was surprising not to run into anyone else, especially when Yosemite is so busy usually. Anyway, while we were sitting up on Inspiration Point trying to be inspirational, the sun/clouds moved into the perfect spot to turn Bridalveil Falls into a vivid rainbow of mist. It only lasted for a few minutes, but it was really spectacular.

Around then, we decided we wanted to be at Inspiration Point for sunset. This proved to be a dilemma, since sunset was several hours away, but we hadn’t brought anything to kill time up there. We debated our options: going down and coming back up, going down and giving up, staying put and being bored, or… continue walking upwards, then return back down for sunset. We decided the last option was the most appealing, because although it required us to continue walking uphill for another hour or two, it would make the return trip pretty quick.

The following morning we woke bright and early for a mediocre sunrise over Half Dome, followed by a morning of waterfalls.

Pohono Bridge & Fern Spring

Cascade Creek

Burned Area near Foresta

Gates of the Valley – Valley View

After our long day of driving in circles and fighting the crowds (Saturday was significantly busier than Friday), we settled down for an overcast (fail) sunset of the Half Dome before heading back to the hotel for some pretty terrible hamburgers.

The following morning my alarm went off at 4:45am again, but (to Travis’s delight) it was raining outside, so I allowed us to go back to sleep until 7am.

We packed up our bags and checked out, deciding to stop by the park once more to see the Giant Sequoias and leave the park via the South entrance to Fresno. However, once we got outside, we discovered that the rain at our hotel was snow in the park—luckily our rental car had snow tires, they were turning people away. This ruined our passage to Fresno, as the road was closed (we’ll see those Sequoias someday), but it all turned out okay, as we got some really spectacular photos of the valley as the snow cleared off the mountain peaks.

These photos almost made us miss our plane. We ended up cutting it pretty close (and missing our pre-flight In-N-Out), but it’s okay, since we have In-N-Outs in Texas now too! Ha!

Overall we had a great Yosemite weekend—the waterfalls were huge and the weather was decent, plus we managed to get both spring and winter pictures in 3 days. We missed out on the hikes to Vernal Falls and Mirror Lake, and the road to Glacier Point still wasn’t open. Perhaps next time.

Oh! And we also saw a bear!

But no, really—when we were hiking down from Inspiration Point we did actually see a bear. I whipped out my camera to try and take a picture, but Travis decided it was more important for us to stay alive than to take pictures of the bear staring at us, so he shook his walking stick and shouted and scared that ol’ bear away.

This here is Muffin, my adopted bear, since I wasn’t allowed to go pet the real bear *sad face*

After doing some research, we decided to start our search in Texas Hill Country, primarily because it sounded like a scenic backdrop where I could find rolling hills covered in bluebonnets. This was not the case.

On our road trip 2 years ago we passed by a giant field of bluebonnets (but chose not to stop, for whatever reason), so I knew what a bluebonnet field *could* look like. I had a very clear idea of the minimum size requirements for my patch of bluebonnets, and unfortunately nothing in Hill Country made the cut.

It seems we either went too early for were on an off-year for bluebonnets around Hill Country. We found some scattered up and down the various highways, and occasionally we found a likely looking patch in a distant field behind a tall fence and a plethora of “no trespassing” signs, but we never found the giant field of flowers I was imagining.

To placate me, we stopped at both the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center (Austin, TX) and Wildseed Farms (Fredericksburg, TX). Both only had small patches of bluebonnets, so I took some detail shots and bought a jar of Peach Amaretto Pecan Honey Butter as consolation.

Three weeks later we decided to continue our quest for bluebonnets. After extensive research of the Texas Wildflower Hotline and browsing recently uploaded and geotagged photos on Flickr, I finally found a promising spot in Ennis, TX. I probably should have looked at Ennis sooner considering it’s called the Bluebonnet Capital of Texas, but I had thought Hill Country sounded so much better…

Anyway, we drove down through Ennis and wandered around, finally finding a satisfactory field of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes along a side road. I’m not sure if it was private property or not, but there was no fence and another person was there doing a photoshoot with his dog.

The bluebonnets seemed to be a little past their prime, not as lush and vibrant as the ones we had spotted at the beginning of April, but I finally got my field picture and now I know where to go next year.

While the original plans for our weekend jaunt down to Texas Hill Country involved bluebonnet fields, wandering Austin and possibly venturing down to San Antonio, we ended up spending most of the weekend wandering the Texas State Parks in Hill Country.

Our first stop was Pedernales Falls State Park, a scenic park along the banks of the Pedernales River. We stopped by Pedernales Falls & its scenic overlook, where the river drops about 50ft over a 3000ft stretch of limestone. The area is dotted with various cascades and pools, many surrounded by people picnicking and fishing.

In the evening we stopped by Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, a park featuring giant rock formations of pink granite. We found a side path which lead to a giant pink dome which we then hiked up to watch the sunset over Hill Country. There were some really interesting sliding rock formations (even aside from the fact all the rock was faintly pink), and it was a very enjoyable place to wander for the short time we were there.

Other than that, we did a quick stop through Hamilton Pool which consisted of a grotto/swimming hole area, as well as a trail to a different part the Pedernales River. The grotto was pretty neat, although there were a lot of people swimming and the waterfalls were pretty light. We also walked to the Pedernales River, although the hike seemed a lot longer than the trail sign had promised. Once we found the river we celebrated by rolling up our jeans and relaxing in the shallow areas until the aggressive fish started trying to eat our feet. Bad fishies.

So we had a productive weekend, taking a weekend jaunt up to Arkansas to visit Hot Springs National Park and coming back via Oklahoma on the Talimena Scenic Byway. We still need to revisit Oklahoma to visit Chickasaw National Recreation Area (a 2011 quarter), but we liked the idea of bumping our state count up to 40. That’s 40 states in less than 2 years. Our remaining states are Alaska, Hawaii, N. Dakota, Deleware, Kentucky, Tennessee, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas — some of those are weekend trips, whereas some are longer excursions. We also like the idea of our 50th state being one neither of us have visited — I’ve been to Deleware, he’s been to Hawaii — so those are out. Maybe Alaska? Anyway…

While Hot Springs National Park was not established as a National Park until 1921, the area was set aside as a federal reserve back in 1832, which is why it’s featured as the first of the America the Beautiful Quarters (rather than Yellowstone, the first National Park established in 1872.

The park itself is more of a historical park than the scenic areas one might usually associate with national parks. The natural thermal hot springs in the area piped the bathhouses on Bathhouse Row in the historic area, and it was a popular place to visit through the 1950s for the therapeutic bath treatments. Nowadays, the town looks like it hasn’t changed since the 1950s, and not necessarily in a quaint restored way, but more of a “we haven’t touched some of these buildings in 40 years” way.

Bathhouse Row:

The bathhouses themselves are mostly out of use — 2 are used for modern bathing/spa purposes, 1 is the Hot Springs MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), and 1 is the Hot Springs National Park Visitors center, where you can tour the bath facilities as they were 50 years ago.

Other than touring the Fordyce Bathhouse/Visitor Center and wandering up and down historic Bathhouse Row, we visited the Park Administration Building (which has the fountain & door featured on the Arkansas quarter). A lot of the fountains up and down the street are piped with the hot springs water, so they’re hot to touch and you can see the steam rising. There aren’t any natural springs around anymore (except a small “Hot Water Cascade” waterfall/fountain at the end of the street). There are also several filling stations where you can bring water bottles or empty jugs and fill them with Hot Springs water.

We would have considered taking some water (just for fun) if we had known, but we were too lazy to find jugs once we were there. Other than that, we took a mineral bath at the Quapaw Bathhouse, and then wandered around on the trails. We also visited the Winery of Hot Springs (which was mostly very sweet wine) and walked up a tall hill to find a nice panorama of the town.

Our original thought was to visit all 50 states by 2015 — not such a difficult task considering we went to 37 on our road trip (although we’re still debating if some of them we drove through quickly like Illinois and Alabama count towards our goals).

However, after thinking it over we’ve decided that visiting all 50 states by 2015 wasn’t ambitious enough so we’ve decided to add a new twist. The U.S. Mint has decided to run an 11 year, 56 coin collection of America the Beautiful quarters featuring one National Park (or National Monument, Historic Site, etc) from each state and U.S. territory. We’ve decided our new goal is to visit each of these historic sites and take photographs to pair with the silver bullion America the Beautiful coins in (what will be) a very large wall art & collage collection.

So far we’re off to a strong start for 2010 — we acquired the bullion coins a month or two ago, and we’ve been to 3/5 parks and are planning to visit the other 2 as soon as possible. I also acquired some prints and various matting/cutting equipment so we can start to decorate the walls of our new home.

2010:
Hot Springs National Park – Arkansas – Visited March 11, 2011
Yellowstone National Park – Wyoming – Visited June 24th, 2009
Yosemite National Park – California – Visited October 22, 2010, May 13-15, 2011
Grand Canyon National Park – Arizona – Visited December 30, 2010
Mt. Hood National Forest – Oregon – Planned May 28-30, 2010

• American the Beautiful Quarters
• America the Beautiful Silver Bullion Coins™ for Investors

To deal with the 4 day move instead of the week plus we’d anticipated, we ended up shortening our trip to only the Grand Canyon, which ended up being miserable and cold with lots of road closures and ice.

Moving Day!!
After waking up from 3 hours of sleep to find it unexpectedly raining (a rarity in CA, so we hadn’t even thought to check the weather in advance), we spent the morning preparing for movers who were supposed to arrive between 10 and 1. They arrived an hour late and proceeded to take 9 hours to pack our 2 bedroom apartment into their truck.

We finally left CA at 11pm hoping to reach the Grand Canyon by sunrise (it would be an ~8 hour drive in good condition); however our plans were thwarted by rain, sleet, icy roads and excessive road closures, slowly turning our 8 hour drive into 13 (we got to sleep on the I-40!).

We then decided to hold off on sleep to wander the Grand Canyon briefly in sub-freezing temperatures (15°F when we got there, 9°F when we left, not including windchill and the fact it was snowing on and off). Had a little bit of luck when the clouds cleared, but it was mostly just snowy and cold.

The next morning we woke up to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon. After checking the weather on the internet (see, we’re learning), I found it was supposedly -30°F outside (oh, it was only -19°F or so), so I dressed like a crazy person with fuzzy plush pajamas under my jeans tucked into multiple pairs of socks with 3 long sleeved shirts/sweatshirts, a jacket, 2 pairs of gloves, hats and scarves. I even cut holes in one of my long sleeve shirts so I could pull the sleeve over my thumb so not even my wrists would get cold.

I’m not sure whether it was the lack of windchill or my crazy dressing, but I found the weather to be far more tolerable than the evening before, so it wasn’t so bad to stand out there watching the sun rise over the canyon.