Amazing Sunrise

I awoke to a red and orange tinted room, the sun shining off the clouds reflected the firey colors into the entire house! this was a quick snapshot that I took. I decided to just watch and enjoy it rather than race off to a good vantage point to try to take a picture which inevitably would no longer be there.

A Birthday gathering for Autumn, the Person-Not the Season.

Road Trip West Day 5 (Sequoia National Park)

Get ready for a boat load of pictures. I narrowed it down to these 20 from about 50 that I wanted to post.....I had a blast taking pictures at Sequoia National Park. I'll give a brief caption of what each one is. They got a little jumbled, and seeing as I still have about 12 days to catch up on I'm going to leave them how they are. Fun Fact: Sequoia National Park is home to over 2,000 Sequoias that have a greater than 10 foot diameter. and another 6,000 under 10 ft in diameter.

This is a 'Baby Sequoia' as in 400-500 years old, haha!

Peace! found in the local Bear-Proof Dumpster

If you enlarge this one, You can see tiny little Abbey way down the path next to some rather large trees.



Found a little stream running by a fallen Sequoia

A fallen tree, looking at old rings. The squiggles are years that the tree grew around fire scars!

Fire Scarred tree. Give it about 500 years and it'll be good as new, assuming there isn't another fire.


A dried Sequoia Cone. Smaller than the average coniferous cone, yet it contains thousands of Sequoia Seeds.




A fallen Sequoia. You can really see the root system still sticking out of the ground. These roots were burnt After the tree had fallen. The roots grow about 5 feet deep but up to 150 feet out from where they are!

A fallen tree with Ab standing by the roots!

Even though this tree is split in two and mostly hollowed by fire, it will more than likely completely heal and grow for upto another 1,000 years.

A 'green' or 'wet' Cone. These will stay green and on the tree for up to 20 years. They actually photosynthesize for the tree, which helps with it's enormous size. These cones will ONLY fall after a fire. The fires below cause the heat to go up and dry the cones, in which case they open up and spread their seeds and then fall to the ground. Without fire, the Sequoia cannot reproduce, they grow only from seeds.

Beetle Rock

Beetle Rock


Campfire, the last night at Sequoia.

Road Trip West Day 3 (Grand Canyon Day 2)

For our second and last day at the Grand Canyon we decided to do a Hike into the Canyon. We Chose to do the Bright Angel Trail and to take it 5 miles down (5 miles back up too!) to Indian Gardens, a little Oasis in the desert. We started at sunrise.

The Bright Angel trailhead.

Funny sign

Enlarge this one; The grove of trees all the way down on that plateau is Indian Gardens, 5 miles down.

Sunrise

Back at the top, 10 miles completed! We finished in the early afternoon I think around 1:30ish. We went to a restaurant that overlooked the canyon, ate portobello burgers, and relaxed the rest of the time. Had a big fire when we got back and enjoyed the stars above, including a spectacular view of the Milky Way.

fire!

Fire

This is an important PSA: "Only you can prevent forest fires"

fun with fire and water

What happens when you dump water on an 800+ degree surface?

Magic! You can make water dance around.

Self Portrait

So I searched all day when I wasn't at work for something interesting to shoot. I guess my creativity today wasn't on top of it's game. I was listening to the Fire & EMS Scanner for El Paso County tonight (which is what this picture is of) and I went to see a fire near Colorado College. However it was pretty much over by the time I got there. One fire truck was already leaving so I headed home. There was a rather large fire going on a few minutes ago, however I didn't want to get a second strike for the evening, since it was about 15-20 minutes away and I don't have a mobile digital scanner yet. So here's an accurate portrayal of what I did tonight!