Travel Snaps

I love the open road :)

I wish I could have caught some video of him flying. The wind was really fierce at this location and he seemed to be playing with the air currents. It was very cool, but too quick for my hands.

Today, I stopped by the Grand Canyon, which I visited the first time about 15 years ago. It seems amazing it has been that long because my memory of that trip, or at least that part of it, is so clear. I didn't even have a camera on that trip, but seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time was such an emotional experience that a photograph would never have captured it in quite the same way that my memory has. Now, visiting it again, it feels different. There is no recapturing that first moment, but still... it is magnificent.

I've arrived in California and I'm spending the evening in the dumpy little coastal town of Crescent City. On the plus side, I'm walking distance to the beach. The minus side? The weather currently sucks. It was gorgeous out when I left Oregon and even nice as I entered CA, but now it is crappy and overcast.

As I drove Redwood Hwy to get here, I've already seen some amazing Redwood trees and passed through one part of the National Park (which is actually not entirely contiguous as far as I can tell -- there's bits of it here and bits of it there and it is all mixed in with the various state parks).

Tomorrow I'll head down the coast a bit, looking at trees, and hopefully the weather won't be too horrible. Tues and Wed are supposed to be sunny again. In all likelihood, I'll wind up in Eureka tomorrow night and if I can find someplace decent to stay may stick around there for a few days. I have TWO WEEKS to kill before I need to be in Anaheim. I really can't believe I've turned into one of THOSE people, but next year I'm buying an SUV. I would have traveled much more slowly if I had a vehicle I could sleep in because I'd spend more time in the park and I wouldn't have needed to make that cabin reservation for Yellowstone,which forced the speed of my journey. Staying outside the park is a pain in the ass, when the nearest town is 45 miles away -- or in the case of Crater Lake, nearly 70 miles away. And National Forest and National Park campgrounds are, of course, cheap. So when I turn in the Charger, I may just have to get a Nitro *g*

"But Jennifer", you might ask, "why don't you just camp in a tent?" One word: BEARS. Oh wait, let's make that two words: COUGARS! LOL There was Cougar sighting notice up around Crater Lake yesterday. Umm, I'll sleep in the car thank you.The one night I did camp in Yellowstone I ended up moving to the car because I kept picturing BEARS whacking my tent down with one big paw. So I promptly returned the tent to Walmart as soon as I reached civiliazation again :)

So far on this trip, I've lost -- the adapter for my camera's memory card, which I managed to lose before even leaving the house and then somewhere along the way I lost my sync cable for the iPod Touch. That isn't a huge deal because I don't sync it with my laptop anyway since Apple is a pain in the ass and I have a car charger for it. But now I've lost my laptop mouse. Argggh. Not having it makes it very difficult to get any sigifnicant amount of work done. And of course, I'm in a dumpy and tiny little town so there's not even a Radio Shack, never mind a Target or a Best Buy. Hmmmm. I should probably check for Walmart LOL

Alright, time to go walk on the beach... the cold, cold beach.

Today was sunny with clear blue skies, a perfect day to visit Crater Lake. It is quite spectacular. The loop road around the lake itself is 33 miles, theoretically a short drive unless you are getting out of the car a lot -- which I was. So I spent several hours in the park and now I'm a bit exhausted. Tomorrow -- California.

In the first photo, the island in the lake is actually a small volcano. The water really is that incredibly blue. In a  couple of photos, you'll notice what looks like a dark cloud or fog bank that appears to be rolling in -- that is actually smoke from a distant fire. As I rounded the other side of the park I could actually see some of the orange flicker in the smoke as it was starting to rise, but it was quite far away.

I thought I would jump back in time a bit and post a couple of my Chicago shots, since I only posted the one. I took these photos from a bridge at Millennium Park, which is right next to the Art Institute and my favorite of these is the second one with just four buildings and lots of blue sky. One of the things I really like about Chicago is the sense of open space and sky that the city has, which is very unlike New York City where it always feels like everything is looming over me, blotting out the sun.

One of these days I will spend more than a half day in Chicago. I've been there three times, but always on such short trips!

Let's try this again, this time with the photo. If I remember correctly this is Abyss Pool at the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which lies right next to Yellowstone Lake, so it is one of the prettiest geyser basins in the park. Abyss Pool looks bottomless, but is actually 53 feet deep with a temp of approx. 172 F. It is the deepest pool in Yellowstone.