Thursday, October 29, 2009
green tomato
Now that our garden has been taken out at the end of the growing season, I think I'm going into cherry tomato withdrawal. They were so delicious and I loved having them available all the time. It won't be nearly the same even if I went to the store and bought some. For one, they wouldn't taste as good...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
fenced in
This photo is a couple of months old and these flowers are all gone now. But they were sure gorgeous and cheery while they were blooming. I don't usually venture into my neighbor's yard/driveway area, but my mom and I were checking out some of the flowers that had to be viewed from over there. I took the opportunity to take some fence photos. They can provide lovely lines.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
succulent!
I think succulents are awesome. I'm not entirely sure why I love them, but I do. This one isn't one of my most favorites, and I don't even know it's name, but I saw it at the botanical gardens and had to take a photo. Eventually when I have more space I'm going to add a jade plant to my current succulent collection (consisting of only one super cute unidentified little plant that Thomas gave me). Right now, mainly because of the multiplying power of the spider plant, I have my quota of plant life.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
evening sun
This summer was a good time for photographing my mom's gardens. As usual, her gardens were gorgeous. Plus, this year we grew vegetables for the first time since I was little. I say "we", but it was really my mom who did all the work. I'm sure we'll do it next year and I intend to get a little more involved, even if I'm not living at home by then.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
night
Just because I felt like it, I'm going to post my first non-vacation photo the same day as the last vacation photo!
Here we have downtown as seen from the top of the Arch at night. Nice, isn't it?
last mountain photo from the cabin
So this pretty much ends the very very late and long vacation summary. If you remember the vacation was actually in early July. Quite a while ago. After this I'll pretty much go back to choosing random favorite photos and more or less proceeding chronologically. I didn't take too many photos for a while this summer, but I'm getting back in the swing of things a little. Autumn usually revives me.
Monday, October 19, 2009
nice view, eh?
Our second day hike was in Paintbrush Canyon. It took us a long, bug-filled hike through the tree-covered side of the mountain before we managed to see anything spectacular, but this view was from the point where we turned around to head down. Definitely worth it. I didn't take this photo, Matt did. While I was filming marmots, they were climbing up rocks to get this view. I went up by myself a little later but didn't end up this high, or with a nice photo like this. It was pretty awesome.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
happy marmot
happy marmot, originally uploaded by cathurynn.
I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've tried to blog a video from my Flickr feed, but here goes! I hope this works. :)
On both of our hikes we saw marmots. They're pretty cute. We also saw a pika, pretty many chipmunks, and some animals that at the time we thought were marmots but now I'm pretty sure were something else.
Anyway, this marmot walked up right behind my mom and I as we were resting and having a snack on a rock above the trail. He was just meandering around, wagging his tail, and eating grass. He was not that far away from us, but he seemed pretty unconcerned. Later, he wandered down to a little den he had in some rocks and kept peeking out to see if we were still there. Then he wandered off to eat some more grass.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
sun and sandbars
On our last full day in the Tetons, we got up early to go out looking for a moose. We knew that people are most likely to see them in the morning along one of the rivers in Jackson Hole, so we drove around and stopped at a couple of places to scan the edges of the trees. We didn't find a moose. It was a pretty morning though.
Then we headed back to the cabin to have breakfast and get ready for our hike the rest of the day. On the way to the trail head we saw some people by the side of the road looking at something. We'd seen people doing this the whole time we were there, and from the road, you can't always tell what they're looking at, or if they can see anything at all. We pulled over to join them and we saw a moose! Actually it was a female moose and a baby moose! They were pretty far away and hard to see, but equipped with binoculars we did pretty well. I have a fuzzy moose photo up on flickr that you can see if you want to click over.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
This will be the last Yellowstone I'll post, but I had to stick it up here because I'm guessing you didn't know there was a canyon in Yellowstone. Or at least, I didn't know there was a canyon in Yellowstone before we went there. It's actually where the name of the park comes from because it is the Canyon of the Yellowstone. There are two waterfalls there, but I wasn't able to get a good angle on them from where we were on the rim of the canyon. Obviously that will be something to take care of the next time I get to Yellowstone.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Grand Prismatic Spring
Our visit to Yellowstone was pretty cool. I wish we had more time there, but we didn't properly anticipate how large Yellowstone really is. Of course, even if we had a more accurate idea of how long driving around really takes, we probably wouldn't have given it more than one day of our already limited vacation. But in another, longer vacation, I would give Yellowstone at least two days.
With our one day (including the drive to and from the Tetons), we did manage to see Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (namesake of the park), and the Grand Prismatic Spring, featured in the photo above. This hot spring and the nearby hot springs were pretty cool. I love the colors of the growth of microorganisms and the deep blue of the water. Plus, we had some awesome skies because it was storming right when we arrived. After lunch in the car we ventured out in our ponchos in the rain to see what we could see, which turned out to be plenty.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
calm waters
On our third day in the Tetons we actually decided to leave the Tetons and head a bit farther north to Yellowstone. On the way up through the northern end of the Teton range, we came across this awesome reflection of Mount Moran in Oxbow Lake. Not only was the water awesomely still, but the sky was nice and blue. Lovely morning for reflections. We were not the only people photographing the sight here, but Dan and I did put in the extra effort to walk the little paths through the grasses down to the water's edge for maximum photo experience.
Monday, October 05, 2009
wide open skies
I'm just going to post two while I'm at it, because hey, why not! I love this photo. The sky was gorgeous this evening and we had stopped along the side of the road to check out some pronghorn that were grazing out in a field. After checking out the animals, I obviously had to photograph the mountains and they sky. Who could resist when they look like this? I did not edit this photo at all, by the way.
wide view
Oops. I pretty much forgot about the blog, and when I remembered I didn't feel like writing. Apparently I'm getting back in the swing of things because here we go again. Hopefully I won't slack off for a month after this entry. :)
On the second full day in Jackson Hole, we went hiking up Cascade Canyon in the Tetons. It was our first hike in the mountains and it was pretty awesome. We took a ferry across this lake to get to the trailhead for Inspiration Point, which is more or less where this photo was taken (of me, so obviously not taken by me). That part of the trail was pretty crowded, but as we headed up into the canyon, the crowds thinned out. It was a beautiful view and a good way to get a feel for the mountains.
