Posts Tagged Washington state
July 30, 2010 – Lake Wenatchee
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on July 30, 2010
Lake Wenatchee
Friday, July 30, 2010
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Hey everyone! Here’s one more picture this week to send you off on your weekend. Or, here’s Friday’s picture to welcome you to your Monday morning. Whichever, it’s all the same to me. You’re looking at Lake Wenatchee, which is on the eastern side of the Cascades, a little bit north of Highway 2, a little bit west of Leavenworth, and a little bit east of Stevens Pass. It’s actually quite a large lake, but here you’re looking at the part where it squeezes down and turns into the drainage river. If you follow it forward, it opens up to the right around the little point that you see there right in the center.
Blah, blah blah, whatever. Look! Pretty! To get here, you have to park in the parking lot at Lake Wenatchee State Park, and buy a sno-park pass. It’s the more expensive pass too, because they also have groomed Nordic skiing here. They don’t actually care if you’re skiing or not, the fact that the groomed trails are there (which you’re not allowed to snowshoe on, for what it’s worth) means you need to buy the more expensive pass. Lame. Sigh. Anyway, go enjoy your weekend!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/250s, f/9.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 17mm.
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July 26, 2010 – Lake Keechelus
Posted by Dave in Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on July 26, 2010
Lake Keechelus
Monday, July 26, 2010
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Okay, I’m back from San Francisco! And despite the fact that I was there in the middle of July, the weather down there felt like this. I don’t think it hit 65 degrees while I was there. Since when does California have crappy weather?? I had no idea, but apparently this isn’t that unusual? (Anybody want to comment on that??) But, I promise I will never again fantasize about moving down to the Bay Area when Seattle is trudging through another crappy spring. It was just under 80 degrees up here the whole time I was down there. Had somebody said early last week that there would be a time that I’d be leaving nicer weather in Seattle than I’d be getting in San Francisco, I wouldn’t have believed them. But, well, now I know.
So, this picture… This is Lake Keechelus. It’s right along I-90, just east of Snoqualmie Pass. I was literally parked in the shoulder when I took this picture, in fact. (Well, not a shoulder in the normal sense – there’s a large extra-wide shoulder right after Hyak that is presumably used as a truck stopover and chain removal zone. So it’s not quite as stupid as it sounds.) I can’t remember the details, but I think I was up there to snag a couple turns at Summit Central, but either it really sucked or it was closed, so I ended up just driving around for awhile, that’s why I ended up east of the pass. Not really sure. But, here’s the picture anyway.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-55mm f/2.8 lens. 1/400s, f/10.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 50mm.
Popularity: 6%
July 13, 2010 – Big Four Mountain
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 13, 2010
Big Four Mountain
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
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Well gosh darnit, I missed Monday again. I hope I didn’t ruin anybody’s day because of it. Oh well, so much for my dreams of going 5 for 5 this week.
Today you’re looking at Big Four Mountain. It’s in Washington, along a scenic drive called the “Mountain Loop”. It’s hard to describe exactly where it is using just text, especially if you have no context, but it’s basically a loop (duh) that lies north of Highway 2 (Stevens Pass) and south of Highway 20 (North Cascades National Park), and isn’t on the way to anywhere. It is its own destination. It’s for sure a pretty road, but as is the case with most mountain roads here in Washington state, it stays down in the lowlands, following the rivers. As a result, you’re surrounded by huge rocky peaks the whole time, but you don’t realize it, because the trees are so thick around you. Once you can get up on the valley walls a bit, you realize how gorgeous the surrounding terrain is, but if you never leave the car, it’s easy to miss.
Big Four Mountain is one of the exceptions to the rule, that you can actually see from the roadway. In fact, there’s a really easy 1-mile-or-so hike that takes you up to the “Big Four Ice Caves”, which I’d highly recommend checking out for all non-hiker types. It’s a very easy trail, with big payoffs. The ice caves themselves form in these huge piles of snow at the bottom of huge granite cliffs. There’s streams that run underneath the piles of snow, which melt them out from underneath, resulting in, well, you know, a cave. Not a cave that you should go into, because they have been known to collapse and kill people, but other than that they’re very friendly. The trail is great for kids, even really little ones. Except for the walking into the caves part. That part’s not great for anyone. But now I’m talking in circles.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. 1/320s, f/9.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 32mm.
Popularity: 9%
July 7, 2010 – Mt. Baker
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 7, 2010
Mt. Baker from the Baker Lake Trail
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
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Hey everyone! Man, it seems like it’s been forever since I’ve put up a picture. Amazing how a holiday weekend gets in the way of everything. And on top of that, today’s post sucks. Very little substance, not much to read. Sigh, oh well, they can’t all be super fantastic, right?
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/250s, f/18.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 65mm.
Popularity: 13%
July 2, 2010 – Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Picture of the Day, Washington State on July 2, 2010
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Friday, July 2, 2010
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Umm, is anybody actually there? I figure by waiting until late in the afternoon on the Friday before a holiday weekend, I’ve already lost my entire U.S. audience. Well, whatever, they don’t know what they’re missing. Me and the rest of you guys can do without them.
Here’s another picture from this year’s Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I found myself playing around with the boundary between tulips of two different colors. Some shots came out pretty well, others, not so much. I found that, in general, I was happiest with those where the very last row of the tulips of the color in front were in focus. I definitely played around with other focus points, and some of them definitely worked out okay, but “in general” (with big air-quotes), this is what tended to work the best. (Other things I tried were: focusing somewhere near the middle of the color in the foreground, focusing at the extreme front, and focusing on the closer flowers in the color that was further away – similar to the idea of focusing on the back of the front color, but definitely different.)
For this picture in particular, I was using my really old Quantaray telephoto lens. To review, that’s the first lens I ever bought to go with a digital camera. It’s passable, but it’s definitely not the best lens I’ve ever seen. But this all comes back to the idea that it’s really hard to find a “really good” telephoto lens that isn’t tremendously huge and doesn’t weigh several pounds. Obviously, there are those huge Canon lenses, the white-ish ones, that are all metal, and are a foot and a half long and like 6 inches in diameter. Those things are fantastic. But a) they’re not anything that resembles cheap, and 2) they’re HUGE, so the idea of taking them hiking is laughable. And recently I saw a reasonably-sized Canon lens that got decent reviews, but it was I think close to 1000 dollars, which is well more than I want to pay for a lens in that range. So this one isn’t that great, but any of the reasonably-priced, reasonably-sized alternatives aren’t quite enough of an improvement to justify the price. With the caveat that, I actually DID replace it recently, with the Canon 55-250, which also got what I’d call “reasonably” (I’m loving that word today) good reviews, and was in the realm of decently affordable. After using it for awhile, it’s.. fine. It’s not blowing me away, but it’s got image stabilization which is nice, so I guess it’ll do for now.
In other news, some random, totally awesome guy with fantastic taste put little old me in the list of his 5 favorite blogs. Neat!
Have a great holiday everyone. Or, if you’re not American, have a great Friday and Saturday, and at least a passable Sunday!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/800s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 248mm.
Popularity: 14%
June 30, 2010 – Autumn on the Merritt Lake Trail
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Picture of the Day, Washington State on June 30, 2010
Autumn on the Merritt Lake Trail
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
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It’s the end of June, folks. That means fall is right around the corner. I’m saying that with a particularly cynical attitude, given that here in Seattle we’re still waiting for our summer weather to start. A common joke around here is that summer in Seattle starts on July 5th. And this year it’s holding particularly true. We’ve still only had I believe one day that hit 75 degrees in Seattle this year. One. Effing. Day. As I write this it’s hovering “comfortably” in the low 60s. But, sometime in the mid-morning on July 5, our summertime high pressure is supposed to finally arrive in earnest, and next week is supposed to be gorgeous. But until the 5th, we’ll be struggling to hit 65 degrees. Sigh.
Right, anyway. Here’s another picture taken in the fall along the Merritt Lake Trail. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you might start to wonder if the Merritt Lake Trail is the ONLY trail I’ve ever hiked in the fall. But the reality is, if you just consider the last couple years, you’d be exactly right. (Amazing what having a kid will do to your best laid plans…) But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a FANTASTIC trail in the fall. Lots of crazy bold colors that don’t seem like they should naturally occur in nature, especially not in that quantity. (Maybe not QUITE as unnatural-looking at the explosion of fluffy pink cherry blossoms in the springtime, but bringing those up is playing dirty.)
Anyway, enjoy the rest of your June. If you don’t live in the Pacific Northwest with me, you’re probably outside having fun instead of hunkering down inside with a jacket on reading stupid blogs on the internet.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens. 1/200s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm
Popularity: 13%
June 24, 2010 – Snoqualmie Pass
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on June 24, 2010
View from Summit Central, Summit at Snoqualmie Ski Resort
Thursday, June 24, 2010
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Apparently this week’s pattern is to post pictures from cameras of lower and lower quality each day. Monday, it was a photo from my most modern SLR body and the “new hotness” lens. Yesterday, it was my old SLR and my crappy lens. Today, it’s from a no-longer-current pocket point and shoot. Tomorrow? It’ll be a pencil sketch on notebook paper.
This was taken from near the bottom of the Summit Central ski area, which is one of four that make up the Summit At Snoqualmie. Summit Central was known as Ski Acres only a couple years before I moved out here, but that’s not relevant.
In other news, I suppose this is a fine opportunity to once again give a tepid encouragement for all of you to vote for me in the Blogger’s Choice Awards. For those of you who aren’t familiar with those awards, it’s a website where you can nominate yourself, and then tell all of your readers to go vote for you. Thus, it’s totally just a dirty trick to get folks like me to do their marketing for them. You have to register an account (with a valid email) to vote, so it seems pretty skeezeball. However, I *can* say that, since I gave them my email a year or so ago, they’ve never send me any kind of spam or anything. That’s not to say they won’t ever, but it’s definitely not QUITE as skeezeball as I expected it to be. The award itself is meaningless, but what ISN’T meaningless is the traffic they send to my page, simply by me being in the running. So, if you feel like helping a guy out, go ahead and vote for me. Here’s how:
1) Go to bloggerschoiceawards.com. I’m not going to link to it, because I don’t want to give them my linkjuice. But type that into your browser’s address bar, and create an account.
2) Go to the Best Photography Blog category. (Also, Best Travel Blog, Best Hobby Blog, and Best Blog About Stuff. I know, I know, shut up.)
3) Vote for me. At the time I’m writing this, I’m in second place, behind some dude who posts pictures that he takes driving around in his car.
Woo, thanks!
Notes: Canon PowerShot SD850 IS (Point and shoot). 1/250s, f/14.0, ISO 80.
Popularity: 14%
June 14, 2010 – Cascade Pass
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on June 14, 2010
Cascade Pass, North Cascades National Park
Monday, June 14, 2010
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Coming up with the opening for a Picture of the Day post is always the hardest part. Today, I decided to not try very hard. Tomorrow, I’m going to just start in the middle of a sentence. And you’re going to love it.
This was taken near Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park. I hiked it last summer with a couple buddies, but for various reasons I completely screwed up my camera equipment strategy, so it’s on my list to go back to this summer, and do it right damnit. We’ll see if that actually ends up happening. There’s only a few weekends here in the PNW that are actually hikable (and the snow doesn’t even melt from the higher trails until mid-July), before you know it the summer’s over and done. Plus, with a young kid, weekends just tend to.. disappear. So, the odds are not in my favor. But the intention is totally there.
Anyway, this was about 200 or 300 yards before the summit of the pass proper. The views on the trail aren’t bad, obviously. You should check it out. But not the same day I do. I don’t want you to take my parking spot.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300mm lens. 1/200s, f/14.0, ISO 400. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 21%
June 8, 2010 – Ingalls Creek
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Picture of the Day, Washington State on June 8, 2010
Ingalls Creek in Autumn
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
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It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a fall colors pic (has it? I actually don’t know, I haven’t been paying attention), so I figure a random Tuesday in June is the perfect time for one. Besides, with the crappy spring we’ve had up here in Seattle, it feels like fall anyway. I mean, seriously, I’m sick of temps in the 50s, I’m ready for some effing sun. Goddamn.
You’re looking at Ingalls Creek, which is up Highway 97 in Washington State, a little ways north of Blewett Pass. (Basically, on the eastern slope of the central Cascades.) The road (Ingalls Creek Road, appropriately enough) is blocked right at the trailhead for the Ingalls Creek Trail, although there’s a bridge and the road keeps going on the other side. (Although if you follow it up the hill for a bit, you soon run into a landslide that blocked the roadway, that’s probably why it’s blocked. Not sure where the road ends up, but it’s sad that they decided to just go ahead and block it off rather than maintain it, in my opinion anyway.) Why am I telling you all of this? Because I’m trying to get across that this picture was taken on the other side of the bridge, just a couple minutes from the trailhead. That’s all.
Ingalls Creek seems to be a pretty decent trail for checking out fall colors. Most of the surrounding forest is evergreens, but right along the creek there’s a bunch of nice bright yellows. I’ve honestly never gone further than an hour or so up the trail (various reasons, whatever), but the part I’ve seen just nicely meanders along the water. No big views or anything, but some nice wildflowers and fall colors (not at the same time though.) So, go check it out. Or, alternatively, don’t.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Canon 18-55mm kit lens. 1/100s, f/5.6, ISO 400. Focal length: 27mm.
Popularity: 20%
June 2, 2010 – Chikamin Peak and Gold Creek
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State, Winter/Snow on June 2, 2010
Chikamin Peak and Gold Creek
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
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Hey folks. Hope you all enjoyed the long weekend, if you live in a place where this last weekend was a long one. This is a picture of Chikamin Peak and Gold Creek. It’s right near Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State. Right on the other side of that row of trees is Gold Creek Pond. There’s a nice little path around the pond, and a cute little picnic area. The story behind it is that, when they were building the interstate (which was not too far behind me), what is now Gold Creek Pond was a huge gravel pit. When construction was complete, they turned it into the cute little picnic area that it is now. How nice of them.
That all being said, I would like this picture a lot more if that little bushy thing at the bottom of the frame wasn’t there. Sigh.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/160s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 29%
May 17, 2010 – Mt. St. Helens
Posted by Dave in Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on May 17, 2010
Mt. St. Helens
Monday, May 17, 2010
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Welcome back everyone, from the best weekend EVER! And by best, I mean “most recent”. My own weekend wasn’t any better than, say, any other weekend, but it’s certainly fresher in my mind. I expect that your experience was similar.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, tomorrow is the 30-year anniversary of the explosion of Mt. St. Helens, here in Washington state. Not too much was known about the peculiar dynamics of a volcanic explosion back then, and only a little bit more is known now. (And Louisiana’s governor Bobby Jindal would like to keep it that way.) But the last 30 years have provided a fantastic change to explore what happens afterward. I’ve covered all of this ground before (so did Mt. St. Helens – ha!), so blah blah whatever, go back and read one of those other entries if you’re interested.
Even the day after the explosion, the mountain started rebuilding itself. The rate at which it has been doing so of course varies over time, but just a few years ago the rate dramatically increased, leading some to suspect that it may go boom again. That of course didn’t happen, but it did spew a bunch of smoke and ash for awhile, so that was fun. Today’s picture is a view into the crater, at the new lava dome that’s been forming. Presumably this will eventually make the mountain resemble sometime like its former self, after it grows a bunch more. That’s sort of what these volcanoes do, as it turns out.
This picture came about via a nice big (and cheap!) telephoto lens, and a decent amount of post-processing to filter through the haze that was in the air that day. (And by “a decent amount of post-processing”, I mean I hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button in Picasa. I almost broke a sweat!) It’s pretty crazy to think that, even during the slower times, a couple dump-truck-loads worth of stuff is being added to the cone every single day. Or at least I think I remember reading that somewhere. God I hope nobody’s using this blog as a reference for their high school science homework. Just about every “fact” that I’ve mentioned is somewhere between loosely researched and poorly documented, and completely made up. So, on that note…
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Quantaray 70-300mm lens. 1/800s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 227mm.
Popularity: 20%
May 10, 2010 – Mt. Shuksan from Yellow Aster Butte
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Washington State on May 10, 2010
Mt. Shuksan from Yellow Aster Butte
Monday, May 10, 2010
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Mt. Shuksan, seen from Yellow Aster Butte. It’s worth noting that Yellow Aster Butte is not actually yellow. “But,” you might say, “the name doesn’t reference the Aster Butte that is Yellow, it is instead the Butte of Yellow Aster!”. And it’s true, there is some yellow stuff out there. But is that aster? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300mm VC lens. 1/60s, f/9.0, ISO 200. Focal length: 55mm.
Popularity: 29%