I think the most exciting and fabulous thing about traveling is the feeling I get when I come home! The "my own bed" feeling, along with the rejuvenation of daily routines. But that feeling wears off in about a week (specifically, today) and I'm enjoying reviewing the serenity of CA that I'm about to post to wrap up the touristy documentation of my trip. I still need to post pictures from Ed and Carol's 50th anniversary, so stay tuned for that. But here's some other cool stuff from our last two days in the wild, wild west.
When we were in CA, we heard that 800 wildfires were burning, 80 of which were right there with us in Yosemite. I was beginning to wonder if we were in the Smoky Mountains! CHEEZY joke (ka-ching, thank you very much, I'll be here all week). But it added a cool dimension, kind of like fog, to some of the pictures. I didn't mind it. I'd love to come back and see Yosemite when it's NOT smoky, but I wasn't disappointed to see it this way either.
Yes, I really was that close!
These tree roots stood about twice as tall as James. I'd put that picture up, but he wouldn't like me very much.
A sight that you might see anywhere, but it still ended up being one of my favorite shots from the trip.
This is the SUN...It was so smoky that I was able to take a shot directly a the sun in broad daylight. Now, it's a little deceiving...I used my camera settings to make this intentionally darker than it actually was, but check out some of the next few pictures and you'll see how dark it really was.
This is very close to how the sky and hills actually looked.
Again, NOT clouds...SMOKE!
See the little spec hanging out above the smoke clouds? That's a helicopter hanging something down from a rope into the fire. that really puts this fire in perspective! I didn't even see the helicopter until I uploaded the picture to my computer. I was shooting with my 70-200 fully zoomed in, so the helicopter was not visible to the naked eye.
We were always on the go and passing amazing scenery, so several of my pictures were taken from the window of a moving vehicle. I had to weed through a lot of shots where trees jumped in front, telephone wires invaded, and buildings came out of nowhere. But this one, I actually took like this intentionally and love it! Cool on-the-go framing.
