A quick grab by the side of a boardwalk:
Seen at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana — we were headed from one building to another, I’m glad I stopped to get this shot!
Backlit poppy
Category Archives: Nature
An odd looking thing…
On a recent weekend jaunt to the mountains, we wandered through the Yampa River Botanic Garden in Steamboat Springs. Quite a few things were in bloom, including this unusual item:
It’s Alpine Sea Holly (Eryngium alpinum); never seen one of these before…
Yellow skirt
Seen on our recent Rocky Mtn. road trip:
Captured at the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center in Great Falls, Montana.
Milkweed
On the way home from our trip to Glacier N.P. and the Canadian Rockies, it so happened that we spent a night in Great Falls, Montana. Before we left the next morning, we stopped off to check out the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center — great displays, lots of hands-on stuff for the little one to play with. Oh, and all the landscape plants around the building are historically accurate — just what the Lewis & Clark expedition would have encountered on their way through.
Like these milkweed blossoms.
Sun on a cloudy day
Seen in front of the lodge in East Glacier, Montana:
On our Glacier National Park trip, we drove out to East Glacier to check out the storied lodge there — and were fortunate enough to actually have sporadic sunlight for our visit.
OK, we had sporadic rain too. And sporadic 40 mph gusts of wind…
But with such good scenery, we were happy to deal with the occasional annoying weather.
Keeping an eye on the neighbors
Looking down-canyon from Tower Point in Hovenweep National Monument:
We’re fortunate to have some good friends down in the four corners region, so occasionally when we drive down to visit them, we all take a side-trip to see some of the ancient ruins in the “neighborhood.” Hovenweep is one of the more off-the-beaten-path groupings, but once you drive there you’ve got some nice hikes waiting for you. Most of the sites are on a 2 mile self-guided trail that loops around Little Ruin Canyon — lots of great views, but make sure you take water!
Lavender daydream
Seen in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.
Last chance to see…
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we recently returned from a family road trip to Glacier National Park (and some parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains to boot!). 12 days, 4,000 miles of driving, a bit short of 1,000 pictures taken — a worthwhile if occasionally tiring trip.
Our motivation for the road trip was pretty simple — we wanted our daughter to see Glacier N.P. at least once while it still actually has glaciers. OK, and it doesn’t hurt that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the park.
While the weather wasn’t any too helpful, the scenery didn’t disappoint (although the remaining glaciers did keep playing hide-and-seek with us, courtesy of some pretty stiff cloud-cover).
Sad to say, the glaciers have seen better days. The park had 150 glaciers back in 1850 — now it’s down to 26, all of which are expected to be gone by 2020.
If you want to see all this for yourself, it’s time to hit the road!
Seen some hard times
We ran across this guy at Taos Pueblo in New Mexico — apparently nobody actually keeps dogs as family pets, so a half dozen or so dogs just wander around as strays / community pets. Judging by his left eye, this one got in a scuffle recently.
It took me some tinkering in Aperture before I got happy with this shot — it just looks better to me as a pseudo-antique than as a full color image.
Fade to black
I took this shot over my daughter’s shoulder (she insists on having the window seat) on the flight home from our spring trip to Washington, D.C.:
OK, I’ve tweaked the contrast 6 ways from Sunday on this one, but haven’t messed with the color — which is why I’m amazed at how both the foreground clouds and background sky get less-blue / more-black at the top / bottom of the frame.