Post Archive by Year

Bellagio Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Well we have shipped a bunch of gear home, and are now preparing to drive back to California to put our vehicle in storage.  We will then  make the long flight back to Alaska.  The next few days  will be very busy so I probably won’t post again until Monday from our home sweet home.

Commitments on both ends of this trip made this our longest trip to date, probably a week or two too long – but it has been very fun and productive!  We typically would break this time up into two separate trips, but with the cost of travel from Alaska, it worked a lot better to do one long trip instead of two.  It is hard to believe all the places we have visited, from Borrego to Orange County and even Vancouver, Canada – some of those destinations seem like they occurred in an altogether separate trip.

Although I’m leaving at what is shaping up to be a great desert wildfower year, we are really excited to get back to Alaska.  March is typically one of my favorite times of year up there – then we will be heading into spring and summer – you can’t beat summer in Alaska!  Not to mention, we also have a ton of office work.

We will be updating our collection of Las Vegas photos soon.

Sunset over the Las Vegas Valley, Nevada.

This is another view from the top of the Stratosphere.  I was hoping for clouds over the strip – of course they had to move on right at sunset!

Here are more Las Vegas Pictures.

Joey Logano, Las Vegas NASCAR practice.

It is hard to convey just how fast these cars are going – at places, over 190 mph!  For this photo I closed the aperture down as far as I could ( F/32), dropped my ISO to 100, and ended up with a shutter speed of 1/25th of a second.  I then panned with the car – this left the start finish line along with the background in a nice blur.

Tony Stewart

This was yesterday, just minutes before Tony “Smoke” Stewart qualified for Sunday’s Las Vegas NASCAR race.  Given all the demands from media, fans etc., I got the feeling that finally sitting down in the driver seat was probably a welcome quiet escape; I was hoping to capture that in this photo.  I used a bit of fill flash to help illuminate Tony inside the dark cockpit.

An interesting rock, Valley of the Fire State Park, Nevada.

This seemed to have fallen from a cliff higher up – it sure had a unique shape and color!

Here are more photos of Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.

Janine on Sherbet Hill, Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.

Well, I made the name Sherbet Hill up.  I’m not sure if this amazing place has a name – as I have never seen a photo of this place, but I thought the name was fitting!

We meet up with some good friends from Seward recently, and I couldn’t wait to show them Valley of Fire, so we returned to the Park on Saturday.  I hit a couple of familiar spots, and tried unsuccessfully to find the Desert Bighorn.  We then decided to go for a nice hike.  I pretty much picked a random spot, and went a random direction in a trail-less area to see what we could find.  Well what was found is pictured above – I think it has to be one of the most unique and beautiful little places I have ever seen!  It  looked like someone had poured drums of paint down the side of this hill – words really don’t do it justice.

I have photos with and without Janine – I posted one with her in it for scale – in fact, I have all kinds of variations as there are pretty much an infinite number of possibilities here.  It was fairly overcast – ideal conditions for this colorful landscape.  I wish I had more time – I could spend weeks hiking this park, who knows what else it out there.

Take a look at more Valley of Fire photos