Going to the Sun Road

Glacier National Park is one of my favorites. Grand vistas everywhere you look, probably a little dangerous driving there becuase everyone is looking out and up :)

There is an amazing road you can take up and through the mountains in the park called the Going to the Sun Road.  It keeps climbing up and over Logan Pass, this photo was taken from in the pass looking back out northwest. Put Glacier NP on your bucket list and go if you ever have the chance!

Find it here:  48°41’48” N;   113°43’5” W

Twilight at the Rim

We took a family trip down to Crater Lake and saw this beautiful sunset!  Crater Lake is a collapsed volcano that after it exploded, the lake formed inside the rim.  Then the neat island (Wizard Island) started to form in the lake as the volcano cone started to grow again - so cool!

 

It was a great trip - I brought my bike along and had a great day of cycling around the 35mi Rim Road which circles the rim of the volcano and has great views of the lake along the way. The views were amazing as the winding road bumped up near the rim here and there along the way!  Despite a blowout and a flat, it was still an awesome ride!

 

The weather was perfect fall temps for sightseeing afterwards and we had this awesome sunset and pink glow in the lake at twilight. 

 

Find it here: 42°54’39” N;  122°8’30” W

 

moon, mountain, alpenglow

Have you been to Glacier National Park? It is absolutely amazing, everywhere you look. There is this really cool road carved right into the mountainside named Going to the Sun Road. There are plenty of pull outs along the way to jump out and take in the scenery on it’s climb up and over Logan Pass.

We made it to the top in time for sunset and grab this photo of Mt Reynolds with the moon passing by. Be on the lookout for mountain goats and rams. It is crazy some of the vertical faces they can climb up! Very cool!

I’m going to have to get back here one day with my bike and cycle up Going to the Sun. Looks like 30+mi and 7,000ft of elevation gain. Hard work going up but awesome going down! :)

find it here: 48°41’43” N; 113°43’8” W

the divide

Death Valley is one of those places that can feel very surreal.  From the dunes and mud flats to the amazing colors that seem to change throughout the day, it’s like another world.  I never get tired of going there, you know what I mean if you’ve been there too :)

This photo was taken at Ubehebe Crater.  It is an ancient volcano, with lots of loose pumice and a little trail going around the rim that beconed for you to walk down it, and when you do it’s like you have tunnel vision since you don’t want to slip down the loose pumice on either side.  I used a tilt-shift lens to only get that sliver in focus.

find it here:  37°0’34” N;   117°27’17” W

behind the weeping wall

It was a perfectly dry day, yet water was streaming out of the face of this rock wall in Zion National Park.  We stopped here just for a few hours while driving from California to Minneapolis.  It was way too rushed as we also stopped at Bryce Canyon National Park (at sunset) and drive to Moab, UT in the same day. I think I was hallucinating by the time we got there.

I’m looking forward to getting back to Zion next fall when I’m going to spend two weeks driving around the desert southwest camping on my Jeep!

find it here:  37°16’11” N;  112°56’19” W

pray for rain

i like photographing trees that seem to be out there all by themselves doing their own thing (i’m sure you could psychoanalyze that) so when i got to Arches National Park, this tree on the shoulder of Balanced Rock caught my eye.  i only had one day to spend in this park but it was a great day with moody clouds and rain passing through.  this place is definately on my list to get back to again, hopefully for a few days and at least one overnight in the park to photograph the stars.

Find it here:  38°42’4” N;  109°33’53” W

a small creek flows here

Driving along CA-41 (Wawona Hwy) in Yosemite, you cross several small creeks that you really wouldn’t otherwise notice except for the small brown signs on the side of the road. Alder Creek is one of those and this is just a few hundred feet down from the road. If you are coming in through from the Oakhurst side entrance, be on the lookout for it a bit before you get to the Wawona tunnel. Whether you go up or down the creek from the road, you won’t be disappointed.

Find it here:  37°34’47” N;  119°40’43” W

the long fall

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten around to adding a new post here.  You know, life/work (mostly work) get in the way.                                                                        

This is the first photo I’m uploading from our trip to Yosemite.  While the weather was beautiful, it wasn’t really nice for taking pictures - there didn’t seem to be a cloud in the sky for the entire time we were up in the Sierras, not even a hint of those great afternoon thunderstorms that seem to build there.  Anyway, any trip to Yosemite is a great one and what’s a trip to Yosemite without a stop at Glacier Point.  This view of Upper Yosemite Falls from across the valley and used a 10 stop ND filter to smooth out the water.  Often at this time in the year, the falls (especially this one) have slowed to a trickle but with all the snowpack from the season, they were still flowing strong.

Find it here:  37°43’50” N;  119°34’26” W

Arch Rock - Joshua Tree National Park

This is Arch Rock in Joshua Tree National Park.  It’s just a short 0.3mi walk off the White Tank Campground parking area.  This area is very rocky and I was out in the complete darkness (it was new Moon) for about 2 hours.  I kept freaking myself out thinking I was hearing a mountain lion wandering around out there with me - not that there was, I was just being a chicken, ha ha. 

Taken about a hour after sunset, 2min 50sec exposure.  The bright cluster of stars in the center is the Pleiades and just below that is Taurus and  the star Aldebaran.

I’d like to get back out there sometime soon and find an angle to capture the Milky Way in the background and maybe try out some light painting.

Find it here:   33°59’10” N;  116°0’56” W

Sheep Eater Bridge

Do you ever really notice how tall and narrow bridges are when driving over them? I don’t. Sure, you can look out over the sides and to the periphery but while you’re in a car, I don’t think you really ever notice just how “exposed” you really are. I only really notice this when walking out onto a bridge, getting halfway out and feeling the railing coming up waist high then looking down and back to the beginning and end - you get that feeling of Wow, this is way up/out here! This is the Sheepeater Canyon Bridge in Yellowstone near Mammoth Hot Springs, it made me feel this way.

Find it here:  44°57’32” N;  110°40’50” W

Emerald Pool at Black Sand Basin

Yellowstone has to be one of the neatest places in the US.  You could spend days exploring all there is to see here not to mention having Teton National Park right next door.  This is by far, my favorite place to take a road trip.  Isn’t it strange how so many people travel outside our country to see “beautiful places” and haven’t even explored their own backyard yet?

This is a photo of the Emerald Pool at Black Sand Geyser Basin.

Find it here:  44°27’40” N;  110°51’18” W

The Tetons Lay Beyond

I took this photo on the first day of our trip to Jackson Wyoming this summer.  This is very near the southern entrance to Teton National Park one of the most beautiful places I have ever been - you can’t go wrong taking a picture in any direction. This one is just outside a horse pasture at one of the first pull outs into the park.

Find this here:  43° 48’ 36” N; 110° 31’ 40” W

Get Bent!

Is this one crazy tree or what?  While driving in to Coulter Bay to see Jackson Lake in Wyoming, this tree caught my eye a ways down an empty parking lot.  It was so unique that I had to stop and take a picture.  I’ve seen trees bent before for landscaping reasons (with cables, etc) but this one was just in some random part of a parking lot in the middle of the “island” strip that ran between two lanes.  I took this shot from a very low angle and the lens I used is so wide, it lets you get up real close.

Find this here:  43°54’15” N 110°38’39” W

Teton Pastures

The whole Jackson, Wyoming, Teton National Park, Yellowstone area is just amazing. One scenic view after another. If you’ve never taken the time to visit this part of our country, you’ve done yourself a disservice. There is days of exploring and learning to do here and beauty in every direction you look. It’s almost impossible not to take a great picture no matter what season or weather. This picture was taken just as we entered Teton National Park on our way to Yellowstone. I think we started off pulling over into every little turnout (there are many) and reading the monuments, taking in the view. You can’t help but want to stop, but then after a bunch, we realized if we continued on with this, we’d never make it to Yellowstone!

If you want to see the exact spot where this picture was taken, I geotag all my pictures. You can click on the picture to get to my Flickr photostream which has a map or click this link here to get to a Google map look for the green arrow.

Find this here:  43°48’37” N;  110°31’40” W

Beach Day at the Edge of the World

Coulter Bay on Jackson Lake in Teton National Park. There was this really cool storm forming just west of the Tetons in Idaho. We were listening to an Idaho AM radio station broadcasting the emergency warning and hearing the lighting “pops” crackle through the radio. This beach is covered with these large flat/smooth stones thus the course look to it.  Just after taking this photo, it started to rain, one of those really cold summer mountain rains, it was awesome!

Find this here:  43°54’21” N; 110°38’51” W

Lone Tree in Teton National Park

After spending two days at Grand Teton National Park this lone tree caught my eye just as we were leaving the park.  We had just finished a great trail run around Jenny Lake and went back to take a few more pictures.  While the Tetons are beautiful, I think this might be my favorite picture from the trip.

What is really cool is the ability to geotag your photos.  If you click here, you’ll see a green arrow  on Google Maps where I was standing and just to the east is the tree and its shadow.  Even cooler, is if you go into Street View, you can pan to the right and see the tree from the road.  Technology is amazing!!

To do this, I added a diGPS Pro to my Nikon D700 which stays connected all the time.  It’s just a small dongle that hangs from the neckstrap on a custom little 1” strap I made.  I haven’t noticed a drop in battery life and it only turns on when my camera is on.  There are other solutions to geotag photos, but they all either require you to find the location on a map after (on your computer) or the dongle records the location constantly then you have to match that up to your pictures afterwards (based on time) on your computer using special software.  With the diGPS, it writes the GPS data into the EXIF info of the picture when you take it so there is no fussing around afterwards.

Find this here:  43° 42’ 21” N;  110° 43’ 28” W