Another Stroll Down Memory Lane - to the Midwest

In 2000, I took a roadtrip vacation with one of my best friends to Colorado. It was a FANTASTIC vacation and we got to see a lot gorgeous countryside. So, I grabbed several of them in the scanning I was doing earlier and here's what I pulled out - lots of that trip isn't here but we'll just call it a representative sample..

Part of the trip we spent in the Colorado Springs area in an extremely adorable little victorian hotel. The reason we were in the area was to go white water rafting down the Arkansas River near Cańon City.

yeah, that's her and I on the left side of the boat. It was a BLAST - I would totally do it again.


Of course, one of the cool things about going rafting in the Cańon City area is that the Royal Gorge spans the Arkansas River right near there:


of course, one of the really neat things about standing on the edge of a cliff taking pictures of a bridge is that if you stop and look down at the river below you, you can get really cool shots like this!

I really really love this picture and one of these days it will be one that I have up on the wall in my livingroom like the others I posted.

Of course, as with every trip I take, there was hiking. Happily, Jeanette and I didn't seem to have any problem with hiking in the altitude at all. But there is a place in Colorado Springs called Seven Falls - you should see it. I don't have a picture of it in it's entirety because the little camera at the time just didn't have that capability. But it's a waterfall that comes down the mountain and is broken up into 7 different sections. The scenic area has a series of staircases that go all the way up to the top. If you want to check it out, go to sevenfalls.com It's really beautiful but it's quite the hike. Here's a pic DOWN the stairs once we got to the top:


of course, that's not really the end of the hike. Turns out, at the top is a trail up to Inspiration Point which overlooks the valley containing Colorado Springs. Basically, you just follow this creek:


and it there are gorgeous little waterfalls the whole way up like this one:


Sadly, the pics I DON'T have are the ones Jeanette and I took on rocks of Inspiration Point when we got to the top. I think she has them though so I should find out and add them to the collection at some point.

One of the other places we visited was called Cave of the Winds. I love caves so this was a pretty cool trip even though it's very touristy. Still, the caverns were HUGE and there were so many gorgeous things in there. But I did figure out that it's hard to get pictures with a little 35mm point&shoot in a dark cave:

A lot of them turned out like this


and for a little reference - this is about 3-4 stories high


and even the walls can look cool


One of the coolest visual images of the trip started with this:

It's a pic of a stormfront on the eastern horizon that I took from the parking lot after we had dinner at Perkins. Little did we know that it would make for a very spectacular electrical storm covering the horizon that we followed the whole night driving home across Kansas. We finally caught up with it just before dawn, drove THROUGH it for about half an hour and just came out on the other side as the sun was coming up. It was cool to see the sunrise in splendor with lightening flashing right next to it. I wish I had THAT on film.

I gotta tell you, we were gone less than a week and I don't know how we managed to squeeze in all the stuff we did - we were in Denver for the first couple days and we also went horseback riding in the Garden of the Gods by Pike's Peak. I have pictures from that too but I haven't gotten around to scanning any of them in yet

Some New OLD Stuff

So I finally decided to start making use of my scanner to get some of my pictures online from back in the day before a digital camera. Yeah, I have a LOT of old pictures and stuff that I would love to share with people but it will take years to get it all scanned in. But I started with one very long evening scanning in a variety of things and some of my favorites from various outtings (about 50 pictures). I'll try to break them up a little bit into something that makes a little sense... at least to me.

My first group are special to me for a couple reasons but for anyone who has been in my house, they will familiar. Many years ago, I pulled together some of my favorite pictures from over the years and gave them to my brother. Paul was working in the developing world at the time and did his magic to blow them up, crop, edit and mount them for me so that I could frame and hang them in my livingroom.

The first two pictures are from the back yard of a cabin in Montana where a group of us stayed during a ski trip.





Then I have a pic that I took from my grandmother's back yard in Cowell, Arkansas.



Right in the center over my TV is the first landscape picture I ever took. I was 13 years old and on a camping trip with my family in UP Michigan on the shore of Lake Superior playing with my dad's 35 mm for the first time. I didn't have the horizon quite straight and was just discovering what low light does to a shutter but I got a great useable picture anyway. The photog bug had officially bitten. With a bit of cropping and straightening, my bro turned it into a magnificent pic to hang...



the last two were taken from opposite sides of a lake at the 4H Camp I stayed at while working in Atlanta, Georgia for the '96 Summer Olympics.





I will post a few more old things when the muse strikes me.

More Goofing Off in the Snow

So a photog buddy of mine says, "lets go to Minnehaha Falls and take pictures of the frozen falls!" You really don't need much more of an invitation for a bunch of like-minded camera geeks to go play so a half-dozen of us headed down to the park on what turned out to be a really warm day (40+ degrees in Minnesota in January? we call that a thaw).

I was somewhat limited by a damaged shoulder so I couldn't do all the clambering around that I otherwise would definitely have done. And I'm still jealous about some of the pics that a friend of mine got because clambering is something he does in his sleep. I'll give you a link to his pictures at the end... I'm jealous but they are still some phenomenal pictures! Anyway, here's some of the stuff I got from the day:


this is the view of the falls from the walkway at the top - park your car and this is what you see.


yeah - lots of people down there on the frozen creek. Mind you, thawing temperatures and the constant sound of falling ice doesn't instill confidence but.. it's all for the pictures!!


of course, getting down there wasn't as easy as you would think - the stairs were actualy closed and we had to climb over the chains to do it. This is Tim going down rappelling style - I told you he does a lot of clambering. *wink*


yeah, lots of us made the trip but you can see there was a lot of open water. The view was totally worth it though.


Tim struck off on an icey climb to go behind the falls while I was relegated to shots from below in the basin.


but at least the falls are still really cool!


yeah, that's Tim in there... too bad he couldn't just slide down.


really - the ice we were walking on was thinning from underneath and there was a lot of open water.


open water makes for cool pics though


so we met up with the rest of the group and headed downstream




the stairs on the other bank were even worse - but some enterprising kids decided that sledding down in their snowsuits was easier! They giggled the whole way down.


Kinsey kept taking pictures of us so I got one of him!


the view back upstream


something fell through the ice here..


but the layers in the broken ice were so beautiful! Almost like an agate.


it was getting dark by the time we made it down to the big bridge but not dark enough for the lights to come on... darn.


heading back upstream on the other bank


oh wait!! the lights came on! HAD to run back to get this picture..


The falls are pretty gorgeous when lit up at night...


even just heading back to the parking lot had some cool view - this tree lit from so many directions just glowed.

well, that's the highlights folks. If you want to see what Tim got on the same trip, I highly recommend checking out his gallery: http://invisi.us/gallery2/v/invisi/2008/Minnehaha/

First Day of Winter

That phrase sometimes makes those of us in Minnesota giggle at the absurdity of Winter actually waiting until the 22nd of December to arrive... yeah, we're firmly in Winter's grip by then around here. However, this year, the weather conspired to give a touch of recognition to the date regardless of having had permanent snow on the ground for weeks already. It warmed up on the 20th to the balmy realm of the 40's and when the storm front came through on the 21st, it was only just starting to cool down again. That made for an almost rain-like very heavy snow overnight.

Morning on the "first day of winter" dawned with every tree coated with a thick layer of white insulation outlining each twig and branch with white against the sky. By afternoon, the clouds were breaking up enough to make interesting games of light playing off the sparkling snow. I simply couldn't resist taking a break in the middle of my Christmas preparations to run out to a local park and take some pictures. Nothing has lifted my spirits more this Christmas. It really reminded me of poetry:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963), Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening