Author Archives: Kate
Ok, I admit it, this image is manufactured. Mark got me a book on Photo-Shopping landscape images for Christmas, and I thought I’d try out some of their suggestions.
Here, I had some great shots of geese on a plain blue sky with my new telephoto lens, and some old, relatively boring shots of early evening clouds (taken with the wide angle lens and polarizing filter). Using some of the methods in the book, this is the result.
Here’s two more shots from our drive home through western Kansas.
Ice can be so beautiful and so destructive. Lucky for this part of the country, there aren’t a ton of trees around. If this much ice had landed in a more arboreal part of the mid-west, we would have power outages galore.
We stopped in Colby, Kansas on the way back to St. Louis Friday night. It turns out the giant snow storm on the Front Range was quite the ice storm in Kansas. As the sun was rising, we drove past this rest area with a comical amount of ice making the trees droop in every direction. I encouraged Mark to make a pair of U-turns so we could go back and take some pics (and a potty break). The light sparkling through the ice coating the trees, fences, and power lines made this about the prettiest place I’ve ever seen in Kansas.
Hey, by the way, Merry Christmas everybody! Happy Holidays, and enjoy the winter solstice!
Merry Christmas to me! I snuck out my brand-new telephoto lens this morning and then snowshoe’d out into this beautiful spot to try it out. Actually, I usually don’t take pictures of this lake, it’s just not usually pretty. But three feet of snow and a heavy morning frost can transform any drainage ditch into a winter wonderland.
Well, this has been a heck of an adventure. There are a whole bunch of incredible pictures in the photo gallery. Check ’em out!
On Wednesday morning we woke up to snow and wind blowing at a sustained 35mph. Visibility was low, but there wasn’t too much snow sticking to the ground, so Mark and I left for work. At about 10:30am, the visibility was even lower, and snow was blowing and drifting all over the roads. The head of my department sent out an email telling everybody to head home as soon as possible, and then the University sent an email saying the school was closing at noon. I started out towards home at around 11. Mark was sent home at 12:30pm.
It took me about an hour to make my way home. I found myself blowing through snowdrifts taller than my bumper in some places, and I was thankful for the 4wd on the suv. It took Mark about 2 hours to make his way home. In the last 30 feet to the garage, the Passat got stuck in the three feet of drifted snow that had already accumulated on the driveway. Mark and I got out and shoveled frantically trying to dig a path for the car before the snow swirled in and filled it back up. Rocking and pushing, we got the Passat into the garage about half an hour later.
The snow came down, and the wind blew all afternoon and all evening. For a while Mark tried to shovel out a space behind the suv in the garage, but gave up and his work was erased entirely within a couple of hours.
Thursday morning I opened the garage to let Liv out for a walk, and there was a foot and a half of snow piled against the door. I wore my snowshoes out and I was happy to have done so. The whole neighborhood was buried. There was a 5 foot drift outside our garage, and most cars were buried up to their hoods. The plow had been through exactly once in the night, and most of the roads were just filled with feet of snow.
Around noon the neighborhood’s little backhoe showed up, and promptly got stuck in the snow. He dug himself out and started helping us with the shoveling. It went much faster after that.
Mark and I were able to get out for a bit in the evening. Most of the main roads were pretty well cleared, but all of the side streets were still buried. I was amazed at how many people I saw out hiking around in snowshoes or skiing around town. The thing that most astounded me was how much fun everybody was having! Everywhere we went people were smiling and laughing at the craziness of it all. We saw more of our neighbors today out shoveling than we have all year, and all of them wanted to talk about how we were doing and how amazing the whole storm was. It was great to see everybody pull together to help out stuck cars and shovel out driveways. The whole town seemed happy to have a snow day!!
Well, I can pretty honestly say this is the first time I’ve ever been somewhere that’s under a blizzard warning. They are forecasting high winds gusting to around 50mph, and somewhere between 10 and 20 inches of snow in the next 30 hours. I posted the NWS map for our area below, I like all of the pretty colors!
Thankfully, we’re not planning on traveling much of anywhere until Friday night, but we are supposed to drop the yellow car off for brake maintenance this afternoon, and that is going to be rather difficult. I think I’m going to take my snowshoes to work with me today… just in case.
I managed to take a lot of really great pictures last weekend. Well, I think they’re really great. You’re welcome to your opinion as well.
I had been seeing a lot of fantastic shots of the northern lights in the last couple of days due to a large solar flare that blew through the ionosphere last week. I was hoping to get some night shots in the northern mountains that might pick up a little magnetic activity, or even the tail end of the geminids. But it was cloudy and snowing, so I just played around with shots of the campfire instead.
The weather report for this weekend called for a decent amount of snow to blow through on Saturday night. Mark and I were feeling a little cooped up and inspired by winter camping exploits of our friends. We decided to dig out all of our winter gear, pack up the yellow truck, and head out to the mountains for a night of snowy camping.
I looked up the status of National Forest campgrounds in our area a few days before, and we saw that Dowdy Lake campground was open year round in Red Feather Lakes. This is a highly residential area in the mountains just south of Wyoming. This is an area that Mark and I have not spent much time in, because so much of the land is privately owned, it can be slightly worrisome to hike and camp around. But, the Dowdy Lake area is a national forest site, and trails lead from the lake to Mount Margaret, a small rocky peak that is a popular summer day hike for people in our area.
We got to the campground a little later in the afternoon than we originally planned, and we spent some time picking out the perfect campsite. This turned out to be time well spent, as the wind picked up over the lake at night, and our site back in the woods stayed still and calm.
Around 2pm, we hit the trail for Mount Margaret. Most of this trail is actually downhill, with only the final summit climb being somewhat vertical. We goofed around along the way, filming bits of “Mark vs Wild” and playing on a wide, solid ice sheet over a creek. By around 3:30pm, we hit an intersection with a sign telling us that the summit was still a mile away. With the sun rapidly setting and clouds blowing in, we decided to forgo the actual summit and head back to the campsite.
In the evening, Mark started a fire, and we had a tasty Chef Boyar-D dinner. As we were getting ready to head into the tent at night, I hiked over to the toilets, and met 3 guys with their 2 dogs that were stuck in the campground because their glow plugs weren’t warming up. They had been out ice fishing all day, and when I asked if they needed any food, water or blankets, I got two firm “No”s, and one “Well, maybe…” They ended up getting the truck started pretty soon after I arrived, and all we gave them was some water and a spoon for their cans of soup. I did find out, however, that in a day of ice fishing, these guys were able to pull 75 fish out of that frozen lake!! And 75 trout at that!! They offered us a couple of fish (as they had so many extras) but we declined as well. I decided that ice fishing just might be a hobby worth taking up in the future!
That evening we snuggled into the 4-season tent. We brought our -10F degree bags, our down sleeping mats, and about 10 extra blankets. It was about 25F degrees outside and the tent rapidly warmed up to over 40F as we moved around and settled in. After we actually cocooned up to sleep, the temperature dropped rapidly towards the external temp, but never got too horribly cold.
In the morning we woke to a quiet blanket of snow over the whole area, and the beautiful white views made the whole weekend worth it. It was a really fun trip, and we had a great time.
More photos from the trip are in the photo gallery.
