Our national parks

The national parks are our shared Heritage. Here are a few pictures from the three parks I was fortunate enough to visit last year.

Olympic National Park

Mount Rainier

Glacier National Park

No rain…but here’s a deer

For Cee’s Black and White Challenge: Animals this week, I’ve been playing with some of the Black & White Filter Presets in Adobe Lightroom using a couple of pictures taken at Hurricane Ridge (Olympic National Park in Washington State) last summer.

Picture 1:

Orange B&W filter preset

Blue B&W filter preset

Original

Picture 2:

Yellow B&W filter preset

Original

Red B&W filter preset

Green B&W filter preset

And a couple of dears:

My Empress

Yellow B&W filter preset

Original

…and my half sister Sam (we have different mothers!)

Blue B&W filter preset

Original

The captions (you can see them by hovering over the picture) say which preset was used. I included the originals so one can see how the filter works with the original colors.

Happy holidays, whatever flavor you prefer and a Merry Midwinter!

 

Journey to a magic kingdom

This Journey wasn’t to Disneyland. A few weeks ago we went to the Olympic National Park and took a short walk up to Marymere Falls.

Storm King Ranger Station

Culvert under US 101.

Entering the magical kingdom.

Woodland path

Boulder of life

Sprite on the bridge

Giant tree and bridge

Marymere falls

Who lives here?

New bridge

Woodland path

New life springs forth

Back to the real world

Sigh

The hike  (it’s really just a walk, there is a short steep section but it has stairs) starts at the Storm King Ranger Station on the shore of Lake Crescent. It doesn’t have the awe inspiring grandeur that is present in other parts of the park but is has a magical charm.