Exploring the Home State

Exploring the Home State - Wild Basin

Wild Basin is in the southeast corner of Rocky Mountain National Park, about 20 miles from Estes Park. We took CO HWY 7 from our homestead, traveled through Boulder and up through the canyon to the Wild Basin Trailhead. Not so many tourists here, and that was good. The trail parallels the river and was cool and shaded. A fairly moderate and flat trail to Calypso Falls, but it was pretty much uphill stairs on uneven rocky ground to the Ouzel Falls. Not as rocky as Zion and we weren’t hiking in the river this time. The scenery was lush and green, wild flowers were in bloom and the dark thundering clouds rolled in as we reached the Ouzel Falls and witnessed some pretty dramatic lightening. Light rain at first then the drops got bigger. Some of the streams we crossed on the way up had considerably more water on the way back. We were fortunate that the heavy, heavy downpour didn’t occur until we were on the road to Estes Park. Made for a rather treacherous trip down the mountain. We finished off the evening at Flavor of India in Longmont - awesome food!!

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Grand Teton and Yellowstone - Wyoming!

The second road trip of the year we headed to northern Wyoming to visit the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. We stayed in Colter Bay, a village in the Grand Tetons, renting a rustic cabin for 4 nights. This was the home base for our adventures of exploration in the parks. We had a bit of weather the first two days, after all it is Wyoming and you always have to be prepared for anything. It was quite cold, around the lower 40s in the day time , cloudy and rainy. We bring our 'Wyoming Bag' on every road trip (gloves, beanies, and 32 degree jackets). This is not great weather for photography, but we pushed through. We brought the IR converted Lumix cameras just for fun. We did some cool stuff in infrared in the Badlands two weeks ago and wanted to keep the trend going. Camera: FujiFilm XT5, Lumix LX 100, iPhone Grand Tetons in Infrared We started the trip in Cody, Wyoming over the weekend intending to avoid the weekenders in the parks. We strol...

Road Trip Home

I am ready for the pandemic to be over so I can get back to world travel. What I am really missing is traveling with a tour company where they plan everything and all I have to do is show up. For this trip we took two weeks vacation and drove out to the San Francisco Bay Area with a few stops here and there. It was time to see the family - it has been a while. Cameras: Fujifilm XT4; Lumix LX100 IR Conversion Suisun City Waterfront, California Utah Salt Lake City is a good halfway point from Denver. For the Utah stop, I chose Antelope Island to search for Ibis to photograph. That meant that we would need to bring the big glass, so needless to say, again, we had a bunch of gear with us. Antelope Island State Park is actually within the Great Salt Lake and there were buffalo! The website mentioned buffalo on the island, but my luck of never seeing them where the websites say they are, I was not expecting to see any. The buffalo were roaming free o...

Knosos - Crete

The big archaeologic site on Crete is Knosos. According to Greek mythology, the palace was designed by famed architect Dedalos with such complexity that no one could ever find its exit once inside. King Minos who commissioned the palace kept the architect prisoner to ensure that he would not reveal the palace plan to anyone. Dedalos, a great inventor, built two sets of wings so he and his son Ikaros could fly off the island, and so they did. On their way out, Dedalos warned his son not to fly too close to the sun because the wax that held the wings together would melt. The son flew too high and fell to his death in the Aegean. Camera: Fuji XT20 The Minoans were a peaceful peopled put all their energy into innovations. They has sewer systems and brought in clean drinking water that they piped to the site from the river and underground springs. The river no longer exists today but Crete has an underground aquifer and is largely self sufficient...

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