GARY GOES WEST, AGAIN, WAY WEST THIS TIME

ok, i will put it out there from the night shoot, all posed at again, smith lake, a great place for night shoots, reflection shots, etc.



opened up the shutter a little longer, and tried some new to me processing, i just bought a large preset package from serge ramelli, here is one from the natural presets package



and another



and that concludes my saturday on the oregon coast railroad, a long but but interesting photo charter, up next, sunday split between the coast and the columbia gorge, some wild coastal rocks coming up, and some waterfalls
 
thanks mike, that means a lot to me given your train skills,
so let's venture along the coast on sunday, nice breakfast, and on the coastal road, the famed 101, a bucket list item for me maybe some day is to drive border to border on 101, oh the sights to be seen, the photos to be taken, the really weird roadside attractions to be savored, and let's face it, i can find them like an expert.
so it is the usual morning overcast, here is some pacific ocean coastal scenic

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-zK2gxJR/A][/URL]

and a small seasonal coastal waterfall in hug point state park

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-8cmqhQ6/A][/URL]

a closer view

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-ZKs4pfc/A][/URL]

and a little wider

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-dPCrNN6/A][/URL]
 
so we moved to cannon beach, found public parking and moved out onto the beach itself, we lucked out as we were there at low tide, which makes for access right up to the rock. the man on the right sitting in a chair has a spotting scope for bird watching, and he was very nice and helped me out with a lot of local bird knowledge. he invited me to look through his scope, and i was able to view some puffins, he gave me some tips about how they are a burrowing bird, that if the thousands of murres suddenly make a lot of noise and fly around, it is probably because the local bald eagle has shown up to dine on a favored meal, the murres. sadly i was just not skilled or knowledgable enough to get a good puffin photo, those birds are so colorful and kind of round, so their extremely fast and erratic flight caught me by surprise. but at least i got to say i saw some, and that was big on the trip wish list.

haystack rock


those cave looking holes, those are puffin burrows



we next moved a little further north and pulled into another state park, got photos of tillamook rock lighthouse, aka terrible tilly, interesting posting for a keeper i am sure during winter storms, since this coast regularly sees 40 foot waves in winter storms, tilly is a mile offshore , this taken with the 100-400 and the 1.4 tele off the tripod, using all the reach i had on this trip



and haystack rock, from the same place as the lighthouse shot, notice all the people out on the sands to the left, this interesting rock is a cash tourist dollar magnet for cannon beach



the pacific northwest can be problematic for weather, but it never ever lacks for scenes to photograph, i have already decided there will be a return trip, 2019 sees karen and i making a trip to san francisco, she really wants to tourist up the town, but maybe in 2020 i can get her to go to oregon with me, we will get a room in cannon beach for a few days and make daily coastal drives photographing scenics.
gotta go now, neighboring dept riverhead just toned out with a residential structure fire, all residents are out, we may very well be the mutual aid engine
stand down, riverhead signal 4, under control
 
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all righty, let's wrap up our coastal time with one last one of haystack rock, pulled back a little to show more of the rugged and wild oregon coast

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-Ft3wJCB/A][/URL]

so leaving the coast a couple of hours spent in the car sees us back into the columbia river gorge, stopped at vista house, went to multnomah so michael could get some shots and on to latourell falls, hiked on in and took the next series,

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-CKj3Fp5/A][/URL]

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-wKZFmVt/A][/URL]

and at the base

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-ZshGdKC/A][/URL]

and i am hoping michael throws something down here, he ventured much closer to the water than i did and may even have something approaching the backside of water in view

panorama point was closed so we went on to jonsrud point so michael could get a mount hood sunset, and here i thought there was no alpenglow, well the new set of lightroom presets i just purchased last week took care of that, isn't it funny how the sensors today capture so much, but we need proper processing to bring it out

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52018/i-zKxjgrx/A][/URL]
 
so it is monday 5/21/18, after dropping michael off at the airport i had breakfast and decided to take advantage of the sunny looking start to the day and drove the 105 miles on north to mount st helens national park, on up to the johnston ridge observatory, where the observatory building itself was closed due to a power outage that the electricians were trying for 3 days to fix, but the outside was still open and the ranger staff were just doing lectures outside. i left that handicapped parking sign in just to show some scale, this is the sheltered backside of johnston ridge, i do not know what it was named before the eruption, it is now named after a us geological survey employee lost in the eruption who sent some of the last photos ever taken of intact mount st helens





the crater off in the distance



this is really an impressive sight, hard to grasp the enormity of the explosion, the clouds lifted so later in the morning i got some clear crater shots, i got up there just after the park opened for the day so there was still some morning mist around

 
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looking out towards windy ridge, just off the left side if i remember correctly and out about 8 miles was the cabin of harry the hermit, who would not leave his isolated hillside home of 40 plus years and was also one of the 56 persons known to be lost in the explosion. the snow peak is mount adams



i took photos of a lot of the information exhibits, this will be a fairly lengthy set of posts as i found this a really interesting place



back in the days when the park service was valued by the federal government they were able to build some nice park facilities, such as this amphitheater allowing lectures and presentations on the park



the mist has lifted enough, so see, that whole scooped out area, that was all blown outward and/or part of the massive horizontal explosion. mount st helens was not what comes to mind when we think volcanic explosion, we always think of a vertical top blow off, this was a massive sidewards vent eruption



straight out the side towards where i stand, in excess of 200 miles an hour debris cloud of dirt, boulders, ash, lava, trees etc



the observatory building



 
so take a look at this, a stump, not a tree cut down, a solid full grown almost 3 feet in diameter on the trunk at the base tree, maybe a doug fir, snapped right off at the base by the wind shear from the explosion. all that open ridge and across the valley to mount st helens, all of them snapped like kindling. they bring school trips here, most of the crowd in the above observatory photo is a 9th grade field trip. it is hard to comprehend the magnitude of forces involved here, and i have lived through a cat 4 hurricane, and maybe a dozen cat 1-3 storms and i am still in awe of this





i ventured up onto the ridgeline and walked out aways on the ridge trail, and the top had cleared enough to get this better angle into the vent area



that's the trail i ventured out onto, if you wanted to it appears you can easily get another 2 miles closer to the cone



it is starting to grow back, so i am glad i got there before the stumps rot away or are covered by new growth, although this has taken 38 years to reach this point, the growth has had to occur in ash, and that takes awhile to get a favorable ph for growth
scoured clean for miles and miles



the memorial to the 56 known casualties, most of whom were never recovered, many of them couples out camping, this was a very popular area for portland and seattle area residents seeking outdoors

 
the truman trail, named after the iconic owner and somewhat hermit of spirit lake lodge, harry randall truman, presumed dead and under 150 feet of pyrolytic flow, along with his 16 pet cats, he ignored all governmental warnings to evacuate, quite a character, poacher, prohibition smuggler, mechanic, and all around stubborn mountain man

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52118-MOUNT-ST-HELENS/i-KwP9wwq/A][/URL]

and yes while it is constantly monitored, and the mound grows, it could still erupt again,

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52118-MOUNT-ST-HELENS/i-Bn2X9dH/A][/URL]

that lump in the center is what has grown since the may 19 1980 eruption

[url=https://k-gphotos.smugmug.com/2018/PORTLAND-OREGON-TRIP/52118-MOUNT-ST-HELENS/i-6JNKBnx/A][/URL]

and the end, that is all she wrote, the last photo of an epic trip, a farewell for now to the pacific northwest
 
I visited relatives for Thanksgiving back in 1981 and Mt. St. Helens was still smouldering after its 1980 eruption. Enjoyed your captures and seeing how the landscape has rebounded over the last 38 years.
 
A couple more. Hug Point Falls:



Upper Latourel Falls:



Lower Latourel Falls:



Moonrise over Multnomah:



and of course, Sunset on Mt Hood:



It was a great trip and I'll be back in March for the Skookum charter on the Oregon Coast Scenic, so hopefully I'll be able to find a little landscape time while I'm there.
 
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