Eagle Creek in a Heavy Rainfall

Well we are clearly into the rainy season in the Pacific Northwest.  What I had been able to trail run just a few days earlier was nearly impassible on this day.  Small trickling streams crossing the trail were transformed into raging, waist deep, scary, fast moving flows.  Here’s a photo from the same place with much less water.

Find it here:  45°37’22” N;  121°53’42” W

into the fog

It seems like it has been foggy near our home everyday for the last few weeks. Really neat banks of fog roll in and out of the Columbia River Gorge and while I was out road biking I came across this stand of trees that just perfect faded off into the distance.

find it here: 45°36’23” N; 122°11’39” W

punchbowl falls

This is another one of those places in the Columbia River Gorge that makes it so amazing.   Punchbowl Falls is just an easy couple mile hike in from the trailhead.  The falls come spilling out into this “bowl” which is flanked by these really neat granite walls covered with ferns, moss, etc.  At times, it can be quite busy here by not many people walk out into the water (cold most of the year) or if you just wait a bit, eventually you’ll have a people free moment to get a nice photo.  There are several waterfalls along this trail and if you keep going, about mile 6 is a 250ft waterfall with a tunnel going right behind it halfway to the top!

find it here:  45°37’22” N;   121°53’42” W

you can hear it grow

Near Cannon Beach, OR there is a little sign with a turn off for Ecola State Park. The road twists and turns leading you to one of two parking lots with great views of the ocean but what I really liked about this park was the rain forest you pass through getting there.  It was really foggy this day and the forest had a prehistoric feel.  Stopping the car to get out and walk in to the woods just a bit, it was almost like the quiet after a fresh snow - so still and silent but rather than snow, everything is green almost like you can hear it growing if you listened close enough.

Find it here:  45°56’19” N;  123°59’5” W

the fog rolls in

This was my first trip to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.  I had always wanted to visit but never made the time and never thought I’d ever live here.  But a great opportunity came up at Target and I was offered a position based out of Portland, OR so we were here in late September for the first time trying to get familiar with the city and find places to live.  It has been about a year since then, and living in the PNW has been nothign short of amazing!

On this trip, we took a couple days to do some travel to Mt. St. Helens then down the coast through Astoria to arrive at Ecola State Park and this great view overlooking Cannon Beach just as the sunset.

I just visited this location again over the past weekend which prompted me to pull this photo out from the archive to process and post.  It was really foggy this weekend, some neat photos from in the surrounding rain forest are stil to come.

Find it here:  45°55’11”;   N 123°58’31” W

tree, fog, field

Isn’t GPS technology awesome?! I use a GPS to geotag all my photos and post the coordinates and a link to a map for each photo I publish. It’s amazing how accurate these things are and it is really awesome when you can zoom in on a satellite map and see the tree/thing you photographed!

I took this near Ames, IA on the last hundred miles of a spring roadtrip from Minneapolis to Denver, and Death Valley. I didn’t expect to take any more photos and was just focused on getting home but as I got into Iowa there was this really neat bluish fog around this tree in a farm field along I-35.

Find it here: 42°2’33” N; 93°34’9” W