Daily Image - Mar '23 Archive

02 Mar 23 Forty five years ago this past January I made a trip to visit the Naval Air Development Center (NADC) in Warminister, PA as part of a Flight Surgeon / Flight Physiologist / Flight Psychologist tour of all the East Coast Naval Air stations, to get an idea of where we might like to be posted for our first tour of duty. During the visit I had an opportunity to meet and speak with two individuals with whom I would become fast friends. Dr. Cohen and I somehow got into a conversation that evolved to my discussing with him my work in bubble detection using Doppler ultrasound. He was very interested and encouraged me to try and make NADC my choice of tour. I did, and I was fortunate enough to get that assignment. (I was to learn later that my boss in Pensacola sent everyone he didn't like there so I guess I was going there anyway!) Mal and I became close friends and we worked together on assignments at the Command and socialized after hours. He lived in the high brow section of Philadelphia and among the many things we did was to be invited to join the Society of Ancient Instruments, a rather old family association of musicians, and got to enjoy private concerts in the homes of some of the members. (I also had an invitation to audition for the oldest men's choir in the city but chickened out at literally the last minute - I was there to audition but couldn't get myself to do it.) Mal and I worked on several projects involving the NADC centrifuge - today's offering-, a 40G man-rated centrifuge with a 10G/sec onset rate and capable of cabin (gondola) pressures and temperatures up to 10K feet. All the Mercury and Gemini astronauts trained in this centrifuge. Due to the amazing intelligence of D.C idiots, this magnificent machine was sold to the lowest bidder for scrap metal a couple decades ago because these far sighted individuals could see no further potential use for such a device!!!! One of the first things I recognized when I got involved was that the bar in the gondola measuring light loss was of little to no use even though it was an industry standard. I proposed a new light bar that would fully measure light loss, recording tracking error, and be capable of shutting down the centrifuge should the occupant lose consciousness while riding in the gondola. I got permission to do it, but ran into some personnel problems in getting it completed. Mal offered to help and we got it done. We applied for and got it patented. The Command didn't want to give some young Ensign credit for it and decided to name it after the civilian, Dr Cohen. Mal said no way and had it named after the Command. I wanted to go for graduate work and Mal encouraged the Command to give me the time to make it happen. He sat on both my M.S. committee and my Ph.D. committee even thought he had to travel from CA to PA to do so at his own expense for the Ph.D program. He was also instrumental in letting me do some things on the centrifuge that would not have been possible without his support including one project that eventually led to my becoming, for a period of several years, one of the world experts in the field of in-flight Loss of Consciousness. After I retired from the Navy Mal joined me for a photo shoot at Mt Baker and made three trips to Yellowstone. We both enjoyed the opportunities to go shooting together and were considering a shoot in Yosemite during our last conversation a couple months ago. Such was my very good friend who sadly graduated from this world last Tuesday. I will sorely miss him. This one's for you my friend!! The original is a USN official print I scanned for the purpose and converted using a plug-in called Fractalius.

13 Mar 23 For 4 of the 8 years we lived in Montgomery Village, MD we had a pair of Mallard ducks that visited us each morning and evening. One morning the hen - today's offering - showed up from out of nowhere and took a drink from a watering dish we had at the side of the front door for the dog. After having her visit for several days in a row we decided to add a plate of food for her which she readily accepted. It wasn't long before the drake began to accompany her and from then on it was a twice daily visit for 4 years. After being provided food for a period of time the hen apparently began to believe that it was due her and if we were late in getting out the food she would walk up the steps to the screen door and begin tapping on it until we came out with the food. Interestingly the drake never came on the steps. Normally they would arrive a few minutes before we left for work around 0600 and be waiting for us when we returned around 1730. One year she brought their brood up to the house for us to see; that was a real treat. Just as she had suddenly arrived at the start of the 4 years they also departed in the same manner. One of the neighbors who was aware of her behavior told us he thought she had moved on to another location in the neighborhood where the home had a pool as there was a Mallard hen now residing there. Guess it never hurts to move up the social ladder. This is straight from the camera. Tap Tap Tapping at Our Door Nikon D70; 80 - 400; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 5.6.

15 Mar 23 A possible optical illusion for the Ides. Sometimes, when I'm basically just killing time waiting for some particular animal action to occur, I take the opportunity to single out an individual and just watch it to see what it might do. Case in point is the seagull that is the subject of today's offering. I was working a low tide and in particular the Great Blue Herons fishing in the location. They had moved on and while waiting for them to return I thought I might get the gulls to give me something to shoot, in particular their devastation of the shellfish now easily available. While watching that activity, this individual decided to do some stretching and I was able to catch it in mid stretch. The timing was such that the bird looks like it is missing a section of its body. You never know what you can capture if you are patient. 😉 This is straight from the camera. Optical Illusion Nikon D70; 80 - 400; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1 /1,250 sec @ f / 5.3.

14 Mar 23 Depending on where you walk - on the trails of course - at either the Paradise or Sunrise visitor areas the view can be spectacularly different. Most of the time when I visit I concentrate on either the mountain itself, cloud patterns surrounding the mountain, or wild flowers. Anytime I can combine all three I consider it to have been the equivalent of having purchased a winning lottery ticket. Guess that tells you how often I've gotten all three at once. 😂 There is one other thing I'm always searching for and that is waterfalls. Washington State actually has an 8 panel brochure called A Magical Misty Tour which you can download that describes 24 specific waterfalls located in the Olympic peninsula that some of you may like to acquire. But these 24 waterfalls are permanent structures and available year round; what I like to find are those that are temporary. Those that suddenly appear only to disappear after a short period of time may not be of the type that make it into brochures, in part because of their limited availability and in part because they may not be as spectacular, but they are a great find nonetheless. Today's offering is an example. While walking along an isolated portion of one of the less traveled Paradise trails, I came upon this section of rock with water seemingly gushing out of nowhere. I couldn't help at the time but think of Moses in the wilderness being told to strike the rock to bring forth water for the complaining Israelites. I don't have Moses with his rod in the photo but it does show water coming forth from the rock. This is straight from the camera. Strike the Rock & Water Will Come Forth Nikon D70; 80 - 400; ISO 200; 1/1,000 sec @ f / 5.6.

21 Mar 23 Today we'll look at some water in a solid form as both snow and ice. Mt Rainier, our tallest mountain at 14,410 feet, is an active volcano and the most glaciated peak in the contiguous U.S. with 25 major and many minor ones which serve as the source water for 5 rivers. It also sports 50 different trails of which I've hiked I believe 5 of them. The longest one, appropriately named the Wonderland Trail, runs 93 miles and while I've wanted to cover it I never have. At this point I think it unlikely I ever will but I have hiked portions of it. One of my favorite trails is the Skyline Trail, a mere 5.5 mile loop which starts and ends at the Paradise Visitor Center at 5,400 feet altitude and climbs to 6,800 feet. It is primarily a north / south loop with the Nisqually glacier on its west side and lovely wild flower meadows on its east side. At the 6,800 foot trail top is the starting point for climbing to the summit. The shot for today was taken as you start up on the east side of the trail. The walk is not difficult PROVIDING you plan properly for it which means proper hiking clothing and plenty of water. At these altitudes you dehydrate rapidly and there is nowhere along the trail to get water. But the trip is worth taking as I can assure you it is one spectacular view after another. Do it in July when the wildflowers are in full array and it will be a walk you never forget. Zoom in to have a good look at a couple of the glaciers. The day I took this the sky was a solid blue so I added a few clouds to make it a bit more interesting. Bird's Eye View Nikon D70; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1 /250 sec @ f / 8.

20 Mar 23 Thought I'd go with a theme for this week and chose water. So water in any form will be the subject each day and let's start off with a waterfall. One of the great things about flying is the perspective you get of things when you are above them, and a waterfall is certainly a great candidate for viewing from above. I'm sure many of you have had an opportunity to view Niagara Falls, perhaps from a photo observation point, in a small boat like that in the photo near the middle left directly across from the observation road, or from the air. If you've had an opportunity to do all three you know what I mean about the flight perspective. I've seen it only once, and that was from the air. So for those of you who haven't seen it from the air here is a shot of how it looks. Makes you wonder what the view is like when you travel over it in a barrel. Thinking it gets a bit misty half way down. Although there are three falls at this southern end of the Niagara Gorge, I can only account for two of them. From this vantage point I'm thinking our neighbors to the north have by far the best view from the ground. Other than removal of a couple of distracting elements, this is straight from the camera. Looking Down Nikon D70; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/320 sec @ f / 9.

31 Mar 23 With all the national trauma of these last several days I thought this Friday's macro /closeup should be something of a calming experience. Living as we do in an evergreen forest we get two sessions of things falling on everything (TFOE would be the military's acronym for it). Those two things would be the green pollen that coats everything for weeks at a time and the cones that drop off the trees. The pollen is a real mess, especially when you try to wash it off your windshield, while the relatively soft oblong cones are just a nuisance. For the most part the cones are a bit above eye level so not easy to closely examine without a good set of binoculars or a long lens. But when you can see them up close when still attached to the tree they are rather pleasant to see. Today's closeup is just such a shot. I had to do a little digging to find this one taken a few years ago but I felt like some nice green and gold would make for a relaxing image. The repetition of a single pattern, albeit with some degree of minor variation, is what I find relaxing; perhaps you too will find it so. This is straight from the camera. Shining Brightly Nikon D200; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f /11.

23 Mar 23 Today is the fourth of the water images and this time it is just falling snow. On a trip to Mt Rainier with the forecast being one of clear skies all day, we started out driving past the Paradise summit heading back downward to find a specific waterfall I wanted to shoot. Midway through my shoot I decided I wanted to do some smooth waterfall shots and walked back to the vehicle to get a ND filter to achieve a long exposure. Returning to the waterfall and placing the filter on the lens I resumed shooting only to begin thinking something was wrong with the filter as I was suddenly seeing a lot of spots through the lens. It took me a good minute to realize that there was nothing wrong; it had started snowing. Within a couple of minutes it really started coming down so we headed back to the Paradise parking lot. Along the way we stopped by the group of lakes collectively known as Reflection Lakes although most folks shorten the name to Reflection Lake and only consider the big lake worthy of photographing. This shot is of one of the small lakes in the group. After spending a few minutes shooting here we drove to the parking lot, took a maybe 30 minute nap and awoke to bright sunshine for the rest of the day. This is straight from the camera save for some small amount of straightening.  Snowing Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/400 sec @ f / 7.1.

01 Mar 23 A little bit off the I-5 beaten path on the way to Fir Island is found the Debay's Swan Reserve, the only swan reserve in the continental U.S. It is home to a large variety of birds, mostly aquatic but not exclusively, and a lovely park to boot, especially in the summer when everything is green, but it does require a fee or a Discover Pass to visit. The birds use it for a wintering over spot and like most reserves you never know what you'll see on any given day. We've only visited it once but we do need to see it again. On the day we visited it was a bit stormy, the light was fading even at our 2 p.m. visit, ground fog was building, and there were just a few ducks paddling around for interest. We stayed for about an hour hoping for more critters but no more were to visit. The light even at that time was very interesting making for images that looked as though they had been shot through a sepia filter. As interesting to me as that was, I decided to mess with it some and made 15 different variations of the original capture. Of those Jan liked one that was an attempt to create how I thought the evening would have ended and that's what I'm sharing for today. It is a bit dark but then that's how the afterglow light generally looks. It needs to be viewed in a dark setting and you'll need to let your eyes adapt for a few minutes to fully appreciate what's there. For those of you who live in the greater Mt Vernon area, if you haven't visited the park I highly recommend it to you. Just remember it is a wild bird reserve so there is no telling what you may see on a given day. The original was straight from the camera and then modified using the Topaz plug-in Impression 2. Afterglow Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /11.

07 Mar 23 I'm gonna go with a short series from the Gas Works Park this week so those of you who want to make a triptych, or grouping of four, will have something with which to work. For today I'm sharing a shot of part of what I consider to be the main display area. Since I'm totally unfamiliar with how the plant was laid out when it was functional I can't tell you anything about the equipment in the shot. But I do think it possible that not all of this stuff is in its original location and that it has been arranged to make for an interesting and now colorful display. I looked through my collection of shots to see if I might have recorded an informational sign or two but couldn't find anything at all. So I'll just have to leave it at being a fun place to go look and see. The day I took the shot the paint was obviously fading so I took the opportunity to give it a new coat. This is straight from the camera but with a new paint job that I think is close to how it likely looked. Fully Colored Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f / 4.

08 Mar 23 Here we go with the 3rd of 4 from Gas Works park. A creative one for today - Jan's pick out of 13 - just to switch things up a bit. Probably should have corrected it for my not having held the camera straight but you can easily so do if it bothers you. 😂 What I truly need is to have a graph paper screen like that which was available back in the old Nikon F days when you had a choice of several interchangeable viewfinder screens. Some things don't get better with time. This image is another section of what I described prior as the main display. No one challenged that statement so it may be correct. I once again have attempted to restore what I believe were the colors when freshly painted; the conversion added a little to that. The machinery was made by Ingersol Rand and those of you familiar with the company's logo may be able to recognize it on that red section near the right center of the shot. Lots of color, lots of fun, lots of things to do in this park. Tomorrow we'll finish up with another outside portrait so that those of you who like to play with triptychs or more will have a "balanced" set of images. This was straight from the camera save for the conversion using the Topaz plug-in Glow 2. Outlined Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/60 sec @ f / 4.

09 Mar 23 Last of the 4 images from Gas Works park and this time another portrait presentation. That should give you a balanced set with two each horizontal and vertical. Removed several naked apes and a couple cranes that I considered distracting but left in the two birds just above the upper left pipe. I don't have any idea what this structure is but you may be able to come up with your own answer based on that overhead view I shared as a bonus Wednesday. Whatever it is I was attracted to the brilliant oranges of the rusty metal set against the greens of spring grass and blue sky. Of interest to me at the time I took it were the two items that look like control valves based on the wheel at the top of each one. The interesting aspect was that there is no apparent way to get to them. A display board explaining all this stuff would have been really nice; perhaps there is one there now. This capture is 13 years old; I'm thinking there is likely a lot more colorful material on the side of this structure now. Plenty of material to keep a curious photographer occupied for the better part of a day. If you live reasonably nearby it might be a good time to give the park a visit. This is what the camera captured save for the adjustments I mentioned above plus a sky replacement to replace the totally gray sky that day. Standing Tall Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture priority; ISO 200; 1/250 sec @ f /11.

06 Mar 23 Depending on the response I may use this subject either as a triptych or as a set of images from the same location. Among the many parks in King County, Seattle's Gas Works Park may be one of the most known, in part, probably a big part, because it is the end point the the annual summer solstice nude painted cyclists parade. As you might imagine, the park is full of "picnickers" long before the parade ends there. But it is also a favorite of some folks, photographers such as me, as it is the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant. When the site was abandoned as a working plant the grounds were given to the city which then "sanitized" everything leaving just the steel structures/equipment in place. Over the years most of the equipment has been painted a dazzling array of colors making it a rather eye catching sight. The Mountaineers Photo Club used to use it as a location for one of their classes; they still may so do but I haven't been a part of the club for over a decade. In addition to the old equipment, you have a wonderful view of the city, a hill for kite flying, and plenty of space for kids to play. As it sits on the shore of Lake Union you also have a nice view of watercraft of all kinds, and the coming and going of very low flying float planes. But it is the colorful ruins that really attract me. Today's offering is of one of the few remnants that haven't been painted but it is one of my favorites for the way the metal has aged. If you reside within a reasonable driving range of the city and haven't visited this park I highly recommend it to you. Except for summer solstice weekend; you won't find a parking place for miles!!! 😂 This is straight from the camera save for the sky; it was totally overcast so I swapped in a more welcoming sky. Aging With Dignity Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/125 sec @ f / 8.

Jan' B-Day Our crazy weather has been such that many of our landscape plants, natural and those we've planted, have gotten a bit confused. As a result one lovely large outdoor fuchsia bought the farm while the bleeding hearts, wild and cultivated, are rapidly reaching for the heavens. Looks to be a bumper crop of both. With that in mind I thought a shot taken from an earlier time might be the perfect offering for this Friday's macro / close-up as well as Jan's birthday - some amount of green for St Patty's Day of course. As I often do with these flower subjects, after getting the original looking acceptable, I make several creative versions, this time 14 of them and this is the one she chose. A bit surprising to be sure but so far her choices have fared well. We'll have to see how this one does. After a bit of cropping and cloning out a few distracting elements, I used the Topaz plug-in Impression 2 to create the look. Turnerized Nikon D300; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 640; 1/500 sec @ f / 8.

22 Mar 23 We started this series of water with a liquid phase on Monday, followed up with solid phase yesterday, and today we'll have a look at the gaseous phase. A good friend and neighbor traveled out west from MD to join me on a trip for a three day shoot at Mt Baker. Weather here generally being unpredictable in the fall, we left our abode in a downpour with the weather forecast being one of precipitation for the entire weekend. But by the time we got to the Ranger Station in Verlot the rain had quit and the recommendation of the Rangers was to make it up to Picture Lake as quickly as possible as the break in the weather wasn't expected to hold. So we beat feet up there and encountered no rain but plenty of fog and it was rising up from the valleys with great haste. But it was also sunny above the fog and the fall colors were at peak. Interestingly the sun was causing the snow on the mountains to look an off yellow while that on the ground not so much. Of course everything I shot was in color but in processing this image I thought that a B & W version presented the fog better than did the color so I decided to share this one as a black and white. Now the purists may disagree with my calling fog a gas and in a major sense that is correct but fog is air - a gas - containing tiny water droplets and it is mostly air, so that's my rationale for calling fog a gaseous phase of water. A bit of a stretch perhaps, but it works for me. 😂 Other than conversion using the nik Silver efex pro 2 plug-in, this is straight from the camera. Silvered Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/400 sec @ f / 9.

10 Mar 23 About a week back Jan shared with me a gorgeous photo of some ice taken in Sequim that was very different! I commented that I wish I had a shot like it in my collection but that I'd never even seen anything like it. She told me I was wrong and that we had seen some before and that I had taken some shots of it. I told her she was mistaken and she countered with why not look at ALL your photos and "see if I'm not right." A reasonable challenge as I just needed to look through maybe 200K or so images. So for this Friday's macro/close-up I'm sharing a copy of that shot I didn't have. Now it is nowhere the quality of the one she shared with me but I'm thinking most of you likely haven't seen this type of ice before so I'm sharing it anyway. It is called Hair ice and I've taken some material off the web to share with you about it. I do think you'll find it interesting. You'll need to zoom into 100%, maybe more, to really appreciate this type of ice. This is the only time I've ever encountered Hair ice. After you read the paragraph below you'll know everything about it. "Hair ice, also known as ice wool or frost beard, is a type of ice that forms on dead wood and takes the shape of fine, silky hair. It is somewhat uncommon, and has been reported mostly at latitudes between 45 and 55 °N in broad leaf forests. The meteorologist (and discoverer of continental drift) Alfred Wegener described hair ice on wet dead wood in 1918, assuming some specific fungi as the catalyst, a theory mostly confirmed by Gerhart Wagner and Christian Mätzler in 2005. In 2015, the fungus Exidiopsis effusa was identified as key to the formation of hair ice. The fungus was found on every hair ice sample examined by the researchers, and disabling the fungus with fungicide or hot water prevented hair ice formation. The fungus shapes the ice into fine hairs through an uncertain mechanism and likely stabilizes it by providing a re-crystallization inhibitor similar to antifreeze proteins. Hair ice forms on moist, rotting wood from broad leaf trees when temperatures are slightly under 0 °C (32 °F) and the air is humid. The hairs appear to root at the mouth of wood rays (never on the bark), and their thickness is similar to the diameter of the wood ray channels. A piece of wood that produces hair ice once may continue to produce it over several years. Each of the smooth, silky hairs has a diameter of about 0.02 mm (0.0008 in) and a length of up to 20 cm (8 in). The hairs are brittle, but take the shape of curls and waves. They can maintain their shape for hours and sometimes days.This long lifetime indicates that something is preventing the small ice crystals from re-crystallizing into larger ones, since re-crystallization normally occurs very quickly at temperatures near 0 °C (32 °F)." This is straight from the camera save for some cropping off of a section that was over exposed and blown out. Surprising Find Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 400; 1 /160 sec @ f / 9.

16 Mar 23 As most of you likely know by now, I'm a big fan of Sasquatch. Always on the lookout to see if I can grab a shot. During undergrad school my best friend claimed to have had a visit to a forested plot of land he owned that had on one end a rather steep cliff. One day he went there to find large human-like footprints leading from a stash of full 50 gallon drums to the cliff edge with a couple of drums on the beach below. Back before the days of cell phones and he didn't have a camera with him so of course no pictures to share with his story. But I have one to share with today's story. Got this shot on a foggy morning. I noticed some strange movement in the fog; by the time I grabbed the camera the bi-pedal creature was fading out of sight in the fog. Interestingly she - I think female due to apparent size - had a four legged critter walking right behind her. Not sure if it was a companion or a hunter but I'm thinking companion as I heard no sounds to suggest otherwise. One of these days I'm gonna get that prized shot. This is straight from the camera. Seeking Sasquatch Nikon D500; 18 - 200; ISO 800; 1/ 80 sec @ f / 5.6.

03 Mar 23 Back to Friday fare with another macro/close-up and for today a close up of some moss that dropped, along with a small branch off an alder tree, overnight in a mild wind storm. Enough to scare Maggie, but then, Maggie is afraid of her own shadow so it wasn't all the blustery. The moss is in the form of hundreds of little 6 pointed stars overlapping each other and is somewhat interesting. Combined with the whites, creams, and light browns of the alder branch, it makes for a rather nice Natural piece of art. This particular specimen was lying in the driveway so I just brought it into the house and played with it for a few minutes. After getting the original to look as I wanted, I made another 13 varieties of it and Jan chose this one which is supposed to look a little like a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. I had picked this one, plus the original, plus one I created to look somewhat like native art as the prime candidates; this obviously got the final vote. Always fun to see Natural art; you never know what's in store until you slow down and take a close look. I took the original, cropped it a bit and then converted it using the Topaz plug-in Impression 2. Georgian Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 100; 1/60 sec @ f / 7.1 with full flash.

24 Mar 23 Time to leave the water stuff and take a look at what the water can assist in providing for this Friday's macro / close-up. About an hour from here is a "local" nursery Jan likes to visit because in addition to their huge variety of plants they also have a Hobbit House. Inside the nursery proper they also have a large inventory of Hobbit stuff so you can create your own Hobbit habitat and decorate it with small plantings to taste. I like the nursery for the wonderful variety of cacti and flowering plants plus they welcome photographers and up until 2020 at least held an annual photography contest. I participated once but the submissions didn't do well. That however hasn't kept me from shooting each time we visit and that was what we did just two weeks ago when they had a lovely display of flowering tulips. I took a series of close-ups of a very colorful group of them and had Jan select one she thought you would all appreciate. I had to debate whether or not to leave the colorful cluttered background as shot or replace it with a black one; final decision was to leave it in place since a) I don't think it is too distracting and b) I think the dominance of the purple flower lets it hold its own. This is straight from the camera. Up Close Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 1/500 sec @ f /11.

30 Mar 23 Driving along Hwy -20 you will see several vertical mile marker signs telling you how far you have traveled along the road from I-5. You don't see them prior to the 50 miles mark or at least I've not seen them before that point. At the 100 mile point there is a small roadside park with more parking area than there is space available to picnic or just view the location. it is a spot where some of the river rafting folks gather but I've yet to see from where they launch their craft. The little park has a nice display board telling you a little about the area and a couple of picnic tables. If you opt for the picnic table closest to the parking lot entrance you get a lovely view of the Skagit River protected by a stately wooden rail fence to your right, a huge evergreen directly ahead, and a view of the Diablo Mountains beyond the tree. On the opposite side of the river there is a stand of alders that birds of prey frequently inhabit. For those of you with a curiosity and a sharp eye there is one Bald Eagle hidden - extremely so - in the shot. A free year of mailings to anyone who can find it. 😂 This is what the camera recorded. Picnic Spot Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Apertur Priority; ISO 200 ISO 200; 1/640 sec @ f /11.

27 Mar 23 As you travel east along Highway 20 you parallel the Skagit River on the south side of the road until you reach the town of Marblemount at which point the road turns north and the river is then on your east side. This is the point where the Cascade River joins the Skagit River. It is also the point where you can take a smallish bridge over the Skagit and travel further east for a distance generally depending on the time of the year. Shortly after crossing the bridge you pass the Rockport fish Hatchery - I shared a photo of cherub Selby standing next to a salmon that was bigger than she was at the time a while back - and then continue on to a small pullout providing a nice view of the Diablo Range of the Cascade Mountains. On this last trip we got within a couple miles of the lookout when we encountered a road closed sign. I was a bit disappointed but after observing a couple of other adventurers go past it seemingly without problems, I figured we'd do the same. Our first encounter was a couple sizable boulders in the road but they were easily navigable and we continued on until we encountered a sizeable block of granite stretched across the road. We approached it with caution and with maybe 6 inches to spare drove around it to continue our way to the pullout. As it turns out visiting in March, as opposed to our normal Dec / Jan time frame, wasn't as fruitful as we had hoped it would be so next time we'll plan accordingly. But we did get to see some nice rock work we've never experienced on previous trips so I thought you might appreciate seeing the road block. Made several versions of the shot; this is Jan's pick. Other than using the Topaz plug-in Impression 2, this is straight from the camera. On Canvas Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 640; 1/60 sec @ f /11.

28 Mar 23 Anyone look to see if Wiley might have been under that rock? One list member asked if I had looked, we didn't, but I vaguely remember hearing something akin to a meep, meep while we were out looking at it. Just up the road maybe two blocks from the rock is a nice, but smallish, waterfall I've routinely shot although it wasn't nearly as robust this trip as I've seen it in January. It extends some up the hill, takes a bend to the left, and then continues its climb. That of course assumes you are looking up at it from the road and not down from above. With a little effort one could easily climb up the hillside to where it exits the land. There is a pullout right next to it where you can safely get off the road and shoot. The runoff goes under the road and continues down the mountainside on the other side. The road is somewhat wider at this location so I think whoever designed the road gave some consideration to the waterfall as a visitor attraction. Should you visit I think you will find it such. This is what the camera captured. Softly Falling Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 50; 1/4 sec @ f /22 on a tripod to get the cottony look.

29 Mar 23 Instead of turning off Hwy - 20 at Marblemount, stay on the road and continue another 15 miles northeast to the town of Newhalem - Thread in the local native language - where you can visit the location where all the workers lived when creating the 3 dams - Ross, Diablo and Gorge - on the Skagit River that provide roughly 20% of the power for Seattle City Light. There is a small museum, two different picnic areas, a small general store, and, of greatest interest to me, an old locomotive and coal car that served the construction sites many decades ago. It sits on the very edge of the property parallel to the road. The engine is open and you can climb up to see the controls and gauges. I'm thinking since I made the climb and was impressed by what I saw, how much fun it must be for kids. Now I'm sure many of you have seen display trains before, but how many of them had whitewalls? Old Number 6 must have been a very important train indeed!! If you happen to be considering a drive to view the 3 controversial dams on the Skagit this would be a great spot for a picnic lunch; maybe we'll join you. 😁 This is straight from the camera save for some lighting adjustment and a bit of cropping for composition. Whitewalls Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 320; 1/200 sec @ f /11.