Day at the races

The Rumble Mountain Rage is a downhill race held every year in nearby Port Alice. For the first year ever it didn't rain and the 2.5 mile down hill course was dry!

The first picture is my stepson Jake who lives for this sort of thing. The other two pictures are as shot. I took about 300 pictures today, I'll be able to do something with about about 1/4 of them.

It's summer time!

It's definitely summer time. Lots of colors sprouting around here. These are a few of many different flowers my wife has planted around the property.

Happieness is...

"Sunny" decided to dig himself a nest... Nothing more satisfied than a dirty dog!

Old time electricity

This is a steam powered electric generator that was built in 1887. The generator was used to supply electricty to an underground cavern where the owner gave large parties. It was used until 1917 when they replaced the steam powered generator with a kerosone powered generator. The ingenuity of the common man never ceases to amaze me!

Rare exotic orchids?

Actually I found these exotic looking flowers attached to a Chestnut tree in bloom. Who would have known?

Doing the chicken dance

OK, technically it's a rooster and I think he was more mad than dancing. The sad thing is I think the rooster is a better dancer than I am! LOL

Sunset in the woods

The weather here on the West Coast continues to be hot and sunny! The last several days have seen temperature records broken. Today at dinner time it was 33.9° C. on the shady side of the house, that would be just over 93°! Usually we figure we're doing good to get to 75° around here in the hotest part of the summer, and it's only the begining of June!

But you won't here any compalints from me! I love golbal warming! Bring it on! Let's hear it for Al Gore and the NASA Scientests! LOL

My intended target

These water lilies were my intended target the other day until the visitor showed up. They don't even look real but they are!

Old boat graveyard

Where do old boats go to die? The boats in this picture found themselves on the bank of the Tsulquate (pronounced snow=qua=tea) river a short walk from down town Port Hardy. If nothing else they have made a great place to play with a new lens or try out a photographic tecnique over the years.

La Grenouille (the frog)

This started out as a shot of two water lilies until I had a surprise visitor pop up so I changed my focus just a little, literally and figuratively.

He seems to have a pretty nice "pad". LOL

Todays theme: Focused

Last few days have been sunny, hot and dry wich is totally out of character for this part of the world, but it sure is great for taking pictures!

The last from Fantastic Caverns

Here are the last of the photos of Fantastic Carverns. I don't want you getting bored with a big hole in the ground!

These are called "the Twins". Can you guess why?

These last two photos are of the same formation. The bottom photo is from an angle and the top photo is from directly beneath the formation looking up.

More from Fantastic Carverns

This is the original carving left by the group of women that first explored the caverns. It's amazing that they went in there with just candles and could see anything. Without lights it is truly pitch black underground.

As I said before, they have some of the bigger features lit so that you can see them and give them a little dramatic effect.

Canadian Bald Eagle

Aparently there are no longer any American Bald Eagles on this (the Canadian) side of the border. This new requirement to produce Pasport when crossing the border has really fouled things up... LOL

Fantastic Caverns

I spent a little time underground this weekend at a place called Fantastic Caverns near Springfield, MO. Missouri is known as the "Cave State" with 100 or more new caves being found each year. Some are small and others are, well, not so small.

Fantastic Caverns was discovered in 1862 but not explored until 1867. The first explorers of the cave was a group of women from Springfiled, MO who were part of an "activities club". The cave goes back into the ground for more than half a mile and there are two levels. The top level is 125 below the surface. The bottom level still has water running through it and can only be accessed by special permission and only during the dry months of the summer. The bottom level requires hard hats, flashlights, knee pads and no problems with tight, enclosed spaces!

I didn't have to do any crawling around in the mud and dirt to get these photos, the cave has been a tourist attraction for many years now and they have some of the more stunning features lit so you can see them better. All I had with me was the on-board flash on the Nikon D80 so I had to put all of these through photoshop to brighten them up a little. I may have over done it some but I wanted to make sure all of the features could be seen.

I will put up some other photos over the next couple of days.

Final approach

Coming around for final approach. Note the use of lower inboard air spoiler just like the fighter jets. This is a tight crop of what started out as a fairly dark picture. (Thank goodness for Photoshop)

Big Bird (not the yellow one)

I'm not quite sure what kind of bird this is. Something from the crane family I would think. I was driving down the road the other day and this guy flew by me and made a couple of circles. I actually shot this photo while I was driving. I guess that's not any worse than texting while you're driving but I wouldn't recommend it.

I did have to crop this photo quite a bit to get the image larger. I just couldn't get him to fly along side of the car!

Tempting Fate!

Crows have been pestering Eagles since the dawn of time. There is much Native fokelore to do with this very subject.

As I was looking through some Eagle pictures from a few years ago I realized that the Crow in this picture is actually pulling the Eagles tail feathers! Talk about tempting fate! One gets a better appreciation of just how big an Eagle really is when you see one in the same picture with a Crow.

Strange Architecture

I came across this strange building in southeast Missouri last week. I'm not sure what it is and I couldn't find anybody around to tell me. I do know it was built in the mid to late 1800's and was possibly used during the Civil War as a watch tower. Either that or a very tall, skinny guy lives there!

Water Skeeter

This is about a 50% crop of a shot I took with my 70-300 at maximum zoom as close as I could get and still be in focus. Who ever heard of a 300mm macro lens? In this case it worked out fairly good.