Hungry mama moose having some breakfast. Her baby was around there as well, kind of hanging in the grass area. This was the same morning when I took photo of this red fox, maybe about thirty or so minutes later.
Category: Wyoming
Jackson Lake Red Kayak
Parts Unknown
Anyone watching Bourdain’s show on the CNN? I have been watching his “Without Reservations” program for years and liked most of the episodes. With the new show on CNN, while some episodes are very interesting, I have some mixed fillings about many of them. The show is much more scripted now and has very few events that didn’t go exactly as planned. It just somehow lost the flavor of a less budgeted production, which I assume with CNN power and presence they can pull more resources into each place to bring all logistics together.
Some episodes are too on the political side – I guess this is CNN influence on what angle they want to push the show. Like, the latest one about Russia. Pretty much entire hour was about corruption of government power with couple visits to super fancy restaurants that I bet 99.9% of Russians never heard of and it is not how they eat. I was hoping that after short visit to Moscow or St Petersburg, they would go to some other Russian cities and show how the rest of the Russia outside of glitzy and cosmopolitan Moscow lives, but it never happened. At least segment about St Petersburg “communal” apartments was interesting. It is very hard not to bring up politics when you talk about Russia, especially with all the latest events related to Ukraine, and it is fine, I just didn’t see anything else outside of the stereotypical – lots of vodka and caviar – views. I bet 99.9% of them don’t eat caviar on a regular basis either. I haven’t been to Russia for almost 20 years and was kind of interested to see what they are going to show, as I was curious to learn about new “parts unknown”, and was slightly disappointed in this episode. The information about corruption was nothing new to me, as it is pretty much all over the news, unless of course you live under the rock, but maybe CNN’s target audience are folks who live under the rock and have no clue about anything else in the world.
Also, couple episodes ago there was show about southern France, all pretty much around some famous chefs from Michelin starred restaurants. Who cares. One of the most boring episodes ever. At least to me. I’m sure he finds it very interesting to be in that company and eat at all those fancy restaurants and at their private gatherings. For me as a viewer it gave nothing, no desire to go any of those places, no new inspiration about “parts unknown”. I just hope that this show will not lose the adventurous angle. Otherwise it will start losing my attention.
OK, enough complaining about not important stuff and wasting time, lets see something eye pleasing.
Jackson Lake by Kayak
While visiting Grand Tetons National park, do plan to spend a few hours on the Jackson lake, preferably kayaking or canoeing around its shore line. You will be treated with none stop gorgeous views of the mountains, occasional wildlife and if you put some energy and just go one or two extra turns, you will be all alone, without any other tourists or kayakers insight. And, of course, watch out for mama grizzlies!
Friday Mystery Photo
My laptop died on Monday and it took couple days to get the tech with replacement motherboard, so its been another week with not much activity. It appears to be in good shape now, have to do a few more things to it today and then should be 100% ready, but thankfully blog writer is back available and I can look at my photos as well, so not missing the mystery photo day.
Colorful Killer
Pretty much the same scene was already shown once here on the blog, so if you are long termer or don’t mind browsing through my photos then you’ll be able to figure it out pretty quick. Maybe you saw this in person as well.
I put this photo through some HDR process to get pop from the colors, otherwise the original photo was fairly flat and nothing was popping up, color wise, like you see here.
There use to be life on this hill, birds were probably seating on those branches, eating bugs, no more. I can’t really remember if it smelled any bad though, I don’t think this one had any stink to it. What the name of this place?
Weekend Update: As a few of you (David, mithriluna and debibradford) correctly identified, this is the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellow Stone National Park. I’m not sure how long did it take for all that build up around the trees, I’d guess at least a few years, so it is pretty cool how they are standing there, even long time dead.
Friday Mystery Photo
After going on a short vacation I think I get some type of minor travel depression syndrome, getting back to normal life is not as fun and I end up not making many photography posts. This is a bit annoying. Like last week we were in southern New Mexico and El Paso Texas. Most of it actually was not that exciting, we went there to see White Sands National Monument and as part of the trip stopped in Texas. Unless I ever want to go back to White Sands again, nothing else really will bring me back there voluntarily. I did not find it very exciting. I was in northern New Mexico a few years ago and it seemed much better looking than the south part. The Rio Grande below “Truth or Consequences” is nothing but the “Grande”. They suck all that water out into the water reservoirs and it is dry as the desert. Way to go folks, way to go.
Friday Mystery Photo is today, can’t miss it, have to post something, this is my mental commitment, at least post on Friday if every other day does not work out. Something has to be posted, not from very obvious location and see if anyone know where it is. How about this one? Pretty mountains isn’t it. Much better if you are actually there see it all in natural glory. It is not in New Mexico, if you wondered, nor in El Paso TX.
Weekend Update: Thanks all for stopping by! We were on the way back to Salt Lake City to catch our late evening flight and decided to drive the more scenic route in the park. I saw this curve with the mountains behind me and thought that it would make a nice composition, but there were a few cars behind me and I could not immediately pull off the road. I drove over probably for another half a mile or a mile where I could safely turn around and come back here. Then had to wait for this quick fraction of time when there was no one else on the road. It was fairly busy! A few of you nailed it right down: Bri-Tri and avian101 and nildarcook !
Snow Wall at Mt Washburn
Last summer we spent a few days in Yellowstone National park and tried to cover most of what it can offer on such a short visit. We drove to places and hiked where we could. One of those hikes was to the peak of Mt Washburn. It started way down there in the warmer lands and brought us all the way to the snow levels and beyond. At one place we had to walk next to the 10+ feet high snow wall, what left of it from the winter. It was in early days of July, it probably melted by the end of the summer, maybe not, do you know?
We actually liked this part of the Yellowstone, it is less touristy, away from all those crowded hot springs and geysers. When we manage to visit it again, I’d like to spend a night or two at the Roosevelt Lodge, it is very rustic and not far from this place and many other less developed areas of the park.
