Diamond Head
Diamond Head, or Lē‘ahi, is one of the most well known natural
features in Honolulu. It's the remains of an old cinder cone, with a central crater that's not obvious from the ground but shows up great from the air:
Diamond Head from above, looking approximately south. Taken out the window of our plane to Moloka‘i.
Most of the roads you see in the crater are not public - they're actually access roads for a military installation and an FAA installation, except for
the bottom right one, which is the beginning of the hiking trail up to the high point visible on the right side. I took this trail the afternoon before we
left for Moloka‘i. More photos below.
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Mānoa Falls
Mānoa Falls is a short skip and a hop from my temporary home, up at the end of one of many steep, lush valleys that rise to the north from Honolulu.
At the end of the road there's a small parking lot, and then a rocky, wet, slippery trail up another mile or so, maybe less. This morning we biked
up and took the hike. Here's a quick sample.
Relaxing along the stream.
More photos below.
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Why I Like Grand Marais
Posted Fri, October 16, 2009 - 11:25 PM
photography, minnesota
One of my favorite destinations on the North Shore is the town of Grand Marais. As well as being the gateway to the Gunflint Trail, it's filled with
great shops, restaurants, and galleries, and hosts a very progressive community of painters, sculptors, and other artists.
And true to reputation, Grand Marais has also been good to me for photography.
Watching the sunset.
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More Colorado/Wyoming Photos
I've posted some more photos from my Colorado/Wyoming trip.
See more photos of runners from Laramie Daze.
Ian running his course at Bisbee Hill
Or more photos from Estes Park, Garden of the Gods, and Kite Lake.
Riverwalk in Estes Park
Why Is It Called Colorado?
Posted Fri, September 11, 2009 - 3:28 PM
colorado, photography
Here's one reason.
Mount Lincoln from near Hoosier Pass.
The aspens are turning, obviously.
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Garden of the Gods
Posted Wed, September 9, 2009 - 6:28 PM
photography, colorado
On Wednesday we left Estes Park in the morning and arrived near Colorado Springs in mid-afternoon. We got settled in at the campground (which was
nothing much to speak of, a commercial deal hemmed in by the four-lane highway) and visited Garden of the Gods in the afternoon.
The "Kissing Camels" are in the top center of this photo.
The Kissing Camels and White Rock.
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Day Two - A Lie, A Bridge, A Mountain
The next morning, I got a 7 AM start and headed west out of the Black Hills and across the open expanses of eastern Wyoming. At Lance Creek, I headed
off into a maze of gravel roads going west to hit the freeway at Douglas. All the land was still open range, with frequent cattle guards, but the
view was open and much less unnerving than the confines of the Black Hills. The roads were even in pretty good shape, and I made good time to reach
the freeway near Douglas. I wanted to visit an interesting spot mentioned in the gazetteer - Ayres Natural Bridge.
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Day One - Harney Peak and Howls
Posted Sun, August 30, 2009 - 10:07 PM
travel, photography
From Hermosa on the east edge of the Black Hills, it's an easy drive west up to Sylvan Lake. It was about 2 PM, and I was planning to do my usual
Harney Peak trail hike/run to start getting acclimated to exertion at elevation - which I will have plenty of over the next two weeks. Immediately
after entering Custer State Park, we all had to stop for about a dozen pronghorn that wanted to cross the road. I stopped in at the Needles area and
climbed around with my camera a bit. There were three climbers atop the spire just on the west side of the tunnel. I was too late to see them climb,
but found a good vantage point to watch them rappel down the back side. (I actually went over the tunnel and bouldered up to the narrow top of a rock
to get this photo.)
Climber rappelling at the Needles Area in the Black Hills
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Day One - Scuffs
Posted Sun, August 30, 2009 - 2:20 PM
travel, photography
A few quickies from the first day of the Wyoming/Colorado trip.
In the Badlands
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Bits and Pieces
I haven't posted for a while because I've was too busy relaxing at the cabin, then the North Shore. Still a few notable things, though.
Monday through Wednesday at Savanna Lake we had beautiful clear skies. Tom had brought the 8-inch Newtonian and I used it to spot a bunch of
objects I'd never identified before (due to lack of a sufficient 'scope) - M57 (the Ring Nebula), M101, M27 (the Dumbbell Nebula), M15, M2, Uranus, Neptune,
M11, and even the Helix Nebula low on the horizon - faint, but unmistakable. We were also able to see the dusty speckling of the brightest individual
stars in M13 - an exciting addition to the usual "fuzz spot" sighting. The field-glass objects like M8, M31, M33, and the Perseus Double Cluster were
spectacular. One of the things that really made things easier was Tom's green pen laser - after a short consultation of the start charts and a look through
the 10x80s to fix the starfield in memory, I was able to lay the laser against the barrel of the 'scope and position it to within a fraction of a degree
of even very faint objects, in most cases within the FOV of the 25mm (48x) eyepiece.
One thought that struck me during one of those nights is that a sky map is, you know, a map. And my memory for maps seemed to apply, whether
it's on the earth or beyond.
It rained all day Wednesday and Thursday, though. On Friday, we packed up and headed for Grand Marais. It had cleared up again, and on Friday night I
went out to Artist's Point after midnight with the tripod and camera. I gathered a bunch of time exposures at ISO 800, but none were enough to turn into
photos, even when stacked. The signal-to-noise ratio was just too low. Individual bright stars weren't a problem, but I wanted to get the Milky Way
as it descended into the horizon over Lake Superior, and there wasn't enough distinction between the Sagittarius star cloud (M24) and sensor noise.
One interesting point is that I managed to capture orange light from not one, but two towns on the other side of the lake that was utterly invisible
to the human eye. Unfortunately, it only confounded the image further. I'm guessing the layer of humidity lying over the lake probably contributed to
the scattering that caused these horizon effects.
So after a nice relaxing time, I'm leaving again at the end of the week for Laramie Daze. I'll be posting about the courses, both here and on Attackpoint,
and without a portable scanner I'll have to make do with photos of the course maps. That should do. Then, on to Colorado!
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