Our first view of Pikes Peak, at least where it was supposed to be!
Our plan for the first full day in Colorado was to drive to the top of Pike’s Peak. Unfortunately Mother Nature had other plans, and the mountain received about 8 inches of snow the night before our visit. It was interesting because it poured rain in Manitou Springs the previous afternoon, and when the skies cleared it was clear everywhere except the top of Pikes Peak, which was still shrouded in clouds.
Pikes Peak, Colorado
When we got to the entrance that morning the ranger warned us that the road was not open to the top and offered us the chance to change our minds But we were there and wanted to see what we could see, so decided to take our chances.
Our first real close look at Aspen trees, on the road to Pike’s Peak.We saw him, and even managed to get a photo!He was pretty shy and didn’t have a lot to say. We didn’t feed him.
The entrance part of the road is at an elevation of 7,800 feet – 1,000 feet above Mount Mitchell, the highest point in North Carolina! The lower part of the road is just like driving any mountain road – winding and steep in spots with a few nice viewpoints. Beautiful views, for sure!
I only wish this was our rental car!View from “Camera Point,” the first overlook on the road to Pike’s Peak
We spent some time at Crystal Reservoir Visitor Center at Mile 6, which is at 9,160 feet. That was our first view of where Pikes Peak was, although we couldn’t see it, as it was still buried in clouds. The ranger there said that the road had been opened a little farther up, but that they still didn’t know if they would be able to open it to the top. We decided to press on and take our chances.
Crystal Lake Reservoir, Pikes Peak, ColoradoCrystal Lake Reservoir, Pikes Peak, Colorado
The higher elevations are where things get interesting. There are very few places to pull off, and on the day we visited most of the pulloffs were socked in with clouds. We made it to the overlook at Mile 18 – known as Sheep Sign because there is a sign there about Bighorn Sheep – where they had the road blocked. The ranger there said it was still snowing above and not safe to drive, so that was as far as we could go. It was snowing on us as we talked to him!
Looking down on/from The Switchbacks. I got two shots like this before the clouds moved back in.
We had a little bit of vertigo and dizziness at the higher elevations. This is normal, and wasn’t helped by the fact that we couldn’t see anything to orient ourselves! This feeling subsided as we returned back below 10,000 feet, and we never had another problem with elevation the entire rest of the vacation. For that we were very thankful.
Setting up telemetry for the Pike’s Peak Hillclimb.
I did manage to get a few photos to document our visit. We’ll have to plan and visit again sometime when there is less of a chance of snow. We thought June was late enough, but maybe it will need to be July or August next time!
Serious snow removal equipment for some serious snow!
Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, Colorado
As I go through my images from our recent vacation to Colorado, I’m going to try and do short posts – mostly in order I hope – with a few photos from each of the places we visited. I’ll also try to add a little commentary along the way. Eventually these will all end up in a gallery on my website.
Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, ColoradoI have no idea who this woman is, but based on the conversation it sounds like she is a geologist or environmental scientist of some kind.My “Good Karma” moment – I took this photo then offered to take a photo of the whole group with their camera.
Our first night in Colorado was in Manitou Springs, just west of Colorado Springs. So from the Denver airport we headed south with the idea of seeing what we saw along the way. Garden of the Gods was on our list of places to visit, weather and time permitting.
Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, ColoradoGarden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, Colorado
As it turned out we had time, but we almost didn’t have the weather. It was threatening rain from the time we pulled into the parking lot, sprinkled a few times on the trails then really let go about the time we were leaving. Good timing! It would have been pretty toasty there if we didn’t have the clouds, and good photos might have been a little tougher to come by.
Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs, ColoradoPeople just can’t leave well enough alone.
I got some skeptical looks when I told people that while I was in Colorado I was looking forward to seeing a friend that I had met on the internet. It wasn’t quite that way but it usually got the reaction I was looking for! I’m like that sometimes. 😉
Somewhere in rural Colorado north of Fort Collins
Most of the readers of this blog already know Monte, and a few had already met him. But since I had already met Paul, Earl aka Brooks, and Paul Maxim, I couldn’t take a trip to Colorado without checking in with Monte.
County Road 94 somewhere in rural Colorado north of Fort Collins
When we planned the itinerary for this vacation I wanted to spend some time in Fort Collins, mostly to see Monte but also to visit the town itself. As it turns out, it is quite the booming place, with a vibrant downtown area known as Old Town, lots of breweries and some excellent restaurants.
Sunset along the Front Range of Colorado somewhere north of Fort Collins, Colorado
Monte came to meet us at our hotel the first night we were in town, we spent an hour or so chatting, and as I expected hit it off immediately. You kind of get a feeling for a person after sharing stories and photographs for as long as we have, but you never know. It was great! Kathy got into the act, too. We had a nice dinner and kept each other up well past our usual bedtimes.
Sunset along the Front Range of Colorado somewhere north of Fort Collins, Colorado
The second evening Monte acted as tour guide and took us to some of his favorite photographic locations. Many places I had seen from his photos, and a few that I had not. And mostly places I never would have gotten to – or back from – on my own!
Sunset along the Front Range of Colorado somewhere north of Fort Collins, Colorado
We met up again on our last evening, had another nice dinner and spent a lot more time chatting. Fortunately we were already packed for the return trip to Charlotte and didn’t figure we would get much sleep anyway!
Hmmm, what’s this button do???
Thank you Monte for an enjoyable time! You are a great host and guide, and we look forward to meeting up with you again sometime or somewhere soon!
Tom & Monte Stevens at Slyce Pizza in Fort Collins, Colorado
It’s hard to believe that it was two months ago, but in early April, Kathy & I took our latest excursion to eastern North Carolina along with our friends Bill & Cathy from Ohio. We visited our usual haunts of Belhaven and Washington, but also visited Edenton and Bailey. Here are a few photos from that trip, just for fun.
Random photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaGrain Mill in Bailey, North CarolinaRandom photos from Belhaven, North CarolinaRandom photos from Belhaven, North CarolinaRoanoke River Lighthouse in Edenton, NC.Roanoke River Lighthouse in Edenton, NC.Random photos from Edenton, North CarolinaRandom photos from Edenton, North CarolinaRandom photos from Edenton, North CarolinaRandom photos from Edenton, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North CarolinaRandom photos from Washington, North Carolina
I said I was going to post wallpapers less regularly, and I passed on April. But I was getting tired of that scene and wanted something springy. Spring has sprung here in North Carolina, although the usual spring-almost-summer temperatures haven’t decided to stay yet. We’re still in that “heat in the morning, AC in the afternoon” stage that usually ends in April. That’s OK with me!
There isn’t a lot of lavender here in North Carolina. This is a lavender field in Seafoam, Nova Scotia from a few years back. I’ve been reliving 2013 lately and this seemed like a good candidate to occupy my desktop for a while. I hope it goes well on yours, too if you are so inclined.
Ever since I started using Lightroom to process and manage my photos, I have continuously updated and improved my workflow. I’ve used my workflow as the basis for teaching Lightroom classes, individual tutoring and consulting. I carefully devised a workflow that suits my needs, primarily of organizing and identifying my photos, as well as using the various tools such as Pick flags, color labels and star ratings to tell me exactly where in the process a given photo or group of photos was.
Nightlife on Duval Street in Key West, Florida
Something for everyone in Key West, Florida
As efficient as my workflow has been, one of the big downsides is that I was spending a lot of time in the Develop module for each of my photos, even those that were mostly “snapshots” and would probably never be printed or posted on my website. What eventually happened was that I only had a small percentage of photos that were marked as “finished” and had thousands of photos that had not been processed. These files are ones that I had marked with a Pick flag – meaning that I thought there was some merit to the photo that warranted further processing. And that backlog was getting larger and larger, to the point where I thought I would never get them caught up.
Scenery, Key West, Florida
Part of my workflow over the years has been to create a group of Develop presets to apply to these photos when I import them from my card. I have a set of presets that take care of 90-95% (or more) of the work I do on a photo. But as good as these presets are, they won’t address things like dust spots and crooked horizons, so I would still go in and spend countless hours tweaking and fine-tuning all of those photos, regardless of whether or not they will ever see life beyond my hard drive.
Front porch, Key West, Florida
Ernest Hemingway House, Key West, Florida
One of the many lessons from my recent experience with dipping my toe into the mirrorless camera pool is the realization that the files from the Fuji X-T1 hardly needed any follow up tweaking. I was so impressed with the files right out of the camera that in many cases I didn’t do a thing to them, and anything I did do was purely aesthetic, or “because I could.” It was playing around with the files from that camera that made me take another look at my regular workflow and realize that the files from my Canon cameras were also really good, but that I had gotten myself in the habit of working with all of them that I had lost sight of the fact that all that extra work wasn’t really doing anything significant toward improving the photographs, but it was taking an enormous amount of time!
Key West, Florida
I have had a really difficult time letting go of the idea that every photo had to be “completely done” before I marked it as done. Since most of my files never go beyond my own computer, it’s been my own personal hang-up, and I decided that if I wanted to change it I could, so I did. For the last month or so I have been trying really hard to “trust the Force” and let the presets do their work. I still review each individual file for level horizons, dust spots or other things, but have been working really hard to only make those few corrections and to – as much as possible – leave my hands off of those other controls. So far it has worked pretty well. I can get through a lot more photos at one time, and the extra efficiency leaves me the discretion to spend more time with a particular photo or group of photos when I want to. And gradually my backlog is starting to recede, and that is a really good feeling.
Mom & the Kids, Key West, Florida
In an upcoming post I will talk about some of the benefits of processing old photos with the new software and will show some examples. Sorry, but that will have to wait while I work on some more photos!
Shadow of our plane and contrail on the clouds during our flight from Key West to Charlotte
Not too far from our home is the town of Belmont, North Carolina. Not surprisingly to many readers of this blog, there is a restaurant there that Kathy & I like to frequent. 😉 One recent Saturday night we took the short drive, and anticipating a short wait for a table I took along my trusty 5D. Just some random walking around town stuff, and just for fun.
Several weeks ago Kathy & I finally made our journey to Key West. We had talked about going a couple of years ago, but instead decided to upend our lives for a year while we sold a house and bought another one. Last winter we had just moved in, were recovering from the move and our vacation budget was severely depleted. Things are pretty much back to normal for the time being, so when it came time to make our plans for 2015, we decided that this might be a good time to go.
Key West, FloridaSloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, Florida
Our original idea was to take a week or two and drive to Key West and back from North Carolina, stopping at a few places in Florida along the way. While we like Florida, the idea of using up a couple of weeks’ vacation time on a drive through Florida just to get to Key West might not be the best use of our time. Especially that early in the year when we have to make our meager allocation of vacation days last for a whole year! So we decided to take the money that it would take to drive there and just fly. We’ll get to see the rest of Florida another time, and as fun as I’m sure it would be to drive out through the Keys along Highway 1, that wasn’t high on my priority list. I’ll gladly wait for another time, and if the opportunity doesn’t arrive that will be OK.
The Southernmost Point, Key West FloridaView from the end of Spangler Street near the Waldorf Astoria resort in Key West, Florida
We’d always heard that Key West can be quite expensive, especially in the winter. But we learned a long time ago that the best time to visit a place was when it was best there, and not necessarily the best time to be away from home. Not being fans of heat and humidity, Kathy & I agreed that regardless of the higher rates in the winter season, that was when we wanted to go. So we did our research and went prepared.
The only time I wished for a longer lens.Typical bar on Duval Street in Key West, Florida
As luck would have it, we picked a really good time to leave Charlotte, but it also corresponded with a pretty chilly time to be in Key West. The temperature on the day we left Charlotte was in the low 20’s, and the forecast for Key West called for temperatures in the upper 60’s and low 70’s. Not bad. We missed some very cold weather and some snow with lows in the single digits in Charlotte. Awww! The same front that brought the cold to Charlotte also came through southern Florida, and Key West experienced some unusually cold temperatures by their standards. It still felt pretty good to us, and we had one evening where the temperatures were in the low 50s and one day the high was in the low 60’s. We had hoped for it to be a little warmer but were glad we weren’t sweating!
She gets points for using the popup flash. Points deducted.Remnants of an old wall at the end of Duval Street in Key West, FL
My impression of Key West is that it is pretty much like any other tourist town once you get out of sight of the water. Walking down Duval Street you pass the usual bars, restaurants, junky trinket galleries and T-shirt shops. There are a few really nice shops and galleries, but you have to look for them. Key West even has it’s own Diamonds International, in case you missed something during the last 20 cruise ship ports. During the day, and especially when the cruise ships are in port, it pretty much looks and feels like any other downtown shopping area. After dark is another story, but I usually didn’t carry my camera to dinner so I didn’t come home with any photographic evidence. Suffice it to say that there were sights we don’t usually see in our regular destinations!
Key West, FloridaKey West, FloridaYard Art Obsession, Key West Florida
We managed to do a lot of the usual touristy things while we were in Key West. My friends on Facebook will see that I have proof that Kathy & I visited the Southernmost Point, and we’ve decided that we need to work on getting to the other three points on the compass as well. We toured the Ernest Hemingway House, the Key West Lighthouse, the cemetery, took the Conch Train tour and a bunch of other stuff. The weather turned out to be too nasty for a trip to Dry Tortugas, so if that turns out to be the last National Park on my list of parks to visit I’ll just have to go back and get there. We also didn’t go to Mallory Square for what is supposed to be a nightly sunset celebration. We were pretty much pooped out by that time of the day and still needed energy to walk to dinner, plus the weather was nasty on a couple of the evenings so other than the people watching I don’t think there was much sunset to see.
Something for everyone in Key West, FloridaAround the marina at Key West Bight, Key West, Florida
We stayed at the Lighthouse Court Hotel, one of six properties owned by a group called Historic Key West Inns. It was an excellent place to stay and we would stay there again. I wrote a review of the place in an attempt to win a free return trip, and will publish that as a separate post.
Key West Lighthouse, Key West, Florida
I need to wrap this up so I can get it posted, but suffice it to say that we had a great time, and it was nice to take a vacation that didn’t involve a cruise ship. We have a few more plans in store for the year, but this was a good way to kick things off. A lot of people have told me that Key West is on their “bucket list” and I am glad to say that I have been there.
Remnants of an old wall at the end of Duval Street in Key West, FL
I said I wasn’t (necessarily) going to do a monthly wallpaper, but I keep remembering to do one so here is the third for the year. No promises going forward!
Kathy & I got away to Key West for a few days recently and I’m still working on the photos. I’ll have a few stories to share along with some pictures over the next few weeks.
