This is the category that defines normal everyday blog entries that appear on the front page of the site.
We’re nearing the end of our stay at Yellowstone National Park. We’ve been fortunate because the weather has fully cooperated, and the animals have mostly cooperated with our efforts. Smoke wasn’t a big issue either, which seems to be unusual for the western US in 2018.
We’ve certainly collected enough pictures and video clips to keep us busy for some time, but we though now would be a good time to share some of the shots we made this week:
Okay, it’s not actually our first look at Yellowstone. We’ve been here many times over the last few decades. We’ve been here with our 5th wheel trailer, staying in the park and close by in West Yellowstone. We’ve been here camping, and even been here staying exclusively at hotels, like we are this time.
But this is our first trip here in awhile, and we need to point out how much we enjoy it, each and every time we’ve been.
This time, we’re not finding the animals like we have in the past, but we may be a bit early. And when we say we’re not finding the animals, we mean we’re not seeing as many elk as we were expecting. There are plenty of bison, antelope, and even a coyote up close and personal like we’ve never seen before, but the elk are a bit hard to come by.
We usually find the elk along the Madison River between West Yellowstone and Madison Junction, and there are indeed a few starting to show up, but we’re not seeing the large herds like we usually encounter. Also, we usually see plenty of elk just hanging around Mammoth Hot Springs, but not this year. They usually nap in residents’ yards, but so far, not this time.
The Lamar Valley, located along the northeast part of the park is full of life. We’ve encounter large herds of bison and antelope, and we’ve even seen one grizzly bear feeding on a bison carcass.
Enough with the words. Here are a few on the images we’ve made so far. Enjoy:
We were all set to venture into British Columbia and re-visit some of our favorite destinations in Banff, Jasper, and Lake Louise, but after looking at the weather reports nearly every day on our Alaska Cruise, We finally came to the conclusion that spending time in British Columbia this year wouldn’t be the best use of our time.
There were reportedly over 500 forest fires blazing away north of the border, and the smoke and haze wasn’t any better than California, Oregon, and even Washington. Since the primary goal of this trip, other than enjoy ourselves, was to capture some new wildlife and landscape images and videos. With 500 forest fires in the area, it didn’t make sense.
But guess what? South Dakota was reporting nearly normal visibility, so we made some quick changes to our reservations and came to Rapid City, where we based ourselves as we made our way around Custer State Park.
Custer State Park is probably one of our favorite destinations for seeing wildlife. With its modest rolling hills covered with plains grasses, it’s a great place for grazing animals to hang out. We typically see bison, deer, antelope, and more when we visit here and this time was no exception. In addition to a multitude of prairie dogs, we found coyote, deer, bison, and antelope on this trip.
We have visited Custer State Park in the past, and wrote about it once before here on HiddenMesa. You can see the post here.
A short video documenting our trip is in the works, but in the meantime we’ve put together some of our favorite images from this trip. Here they are:
It’s not really fair to judge a town by just one brief trip down its main street, but a walk down the main drag in Skagway reminds us of a story we once read about the famous Sturgis Bike Week in South Dakota. In this story, the author said in part, “If you like motorcycles, Sturgis is the third week of August. If you don’t like motorcycles, Sturgis is the third week of August.”
Skagway has little to nothing to do with motorcycles, other than a motorcycle rental shop in town, but the story seems to apply. The difference is that in Skagway, it applies to jewelry stores. It seems like about 70% of the businesses we saw in town were in fact some kind of jewelry store. Diamonds International—the chain that seems to haunt all cruise ship destinations—has no less than two stores in town.
So, a slightly modified phrase seems to apply to Skagway:
If you like shopping for jewelry, Skagway has an abundance of jewelry stores. If you don’t like shopping for jewelry, Skagway has an abundance of jewelry stores.
Of course, shopping for diamonds isn’t the only thing to do in Skagway. On a trip here a few years ago, we rode the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad for a brief adventure up into the mountains. Great scenery and views of the town from above. We recommend it if you’re coming through on a cruise.
Here are some of the images we shot as we ambled our way around town, avoiding the jewelry stores:
We’re in day two—or is it day three—of our Alaska Cruise aboard the Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas, and today we spent a few hours whale watching.
This tour is one of the Royal Caribbean approved and sponsored tours with a local company in Juneau. The name of the tour company is Allen Marine. They sail from Auke Bay just north of Juneau. We were particularly pleased with the boat they used since it was big; bigger than most whale watching boats we saw on the water. You might think that the experience would be less “intimate” using a big boat, but the real result was that we were afforded a better view, perched atop the tallest thing on the water to observe the wildlife.
Our trip took us north from Juneau, past the Eagle Glacier and into Favorite Channel and Lynn Channel where the naturalist aboard knew that whales were likely to be feeding.
We only saw three Humpback whales up close and personal, but we stayed with each of the animals for a reasonable bit of time and saw quite a lot with just the three whales. And of course, on our way to and from looking for whales, we took in more wildlife. We saw a Bald Eagle, a Bob of Harbor Seals, and a Pod of Sea Lions.
We would love to show you the ship we’re on, and we’ll do just that in an upcoming post, but first, take a look at some of the images from our day on the water whale watching.
We’re about to embark on an Alaska cruise this week, but first, we spent the day walking around downtown Seattle. Actually, we spent just a few hours visiting the famous Fish Market on Pike Place. And yes, we stopped in at the original Starbucks store just to be able to say we did.
A bit of advice if you’re visiting Seattle: Like pretty much any big city, parking is very limited downtown. There’s street parking just like any big town, but good luck finding a place anywhere close to where you might be trying to go. There are parking garages too, but again, you may not be able to find one near your destination. Our recommendation? Use some sort of public transportation to get to and from the downtown area in Seattle. Either a shuttle bus, taxi, or any of the various forms of public transit. We did, and were able to spend our time playing instead of navigating the traffic.
Now, here are a few of the images we made while walking around:
We’re off on our summer of vacationing in the American West, and our first stop is the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. We’re spending only two days here, and not planning for all that much in terms of award winning photographs, but we thought it would be fun to visit as we made our way to California.
We’ve had the most fun at the Grand Canyon in the fall or winter. From a strictly photography point of view, that is the best time for us. The air is clearer then and once in awhile we get lucky and find a little snow on the ground just to accent the images. And of course, there’s a lot fewer people here in the winter.
This is the last weekend in July and as such, we expected wall-to-wall crowding, but yesterday we drove right up to the main gate, waited for about three minutes, and were in. Once in the park, we headed over to the East road and were surprised that nearly all the turn-outs had parking available. There were some clouds to make the pictures a bit prettier, and even though there are several active fires in the area, the smoke wasn’t too bad.
This morning (Sunday), we drove right up to the gate and were in with nearly no delay. Of course, it was 7:30 am and most folks were still sleeping in. We again made our way our to the east road, and in most cases, we had the canyon to ourselves. Not really, but there were surprisingly few people out and about early in the morning. When we left the park at around 10:30 am, we were amused to see that the line to get in the park was backed up about half a mile.
We plan to return later today and tomorrow to get some more images we didn’t do today, but we thought it would be fun to post some that we have for now, so please, have a look at what we’re seeing at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon today:
We’re about to head out for our summer trip, and this year we’re headed out to the American West, our old, familiar, and in many ways favorite travel location.
We’ll head west from Florida, all the way to California and turn right, making a big loop around the western part of the US and southern Canada. And we’ll be posting images and videos all along the trip.
Take a look at what we have in mind:
