AUTUMN AT ITS BEST: ALPINE LOOP, AND A DEDICATION

This posting is dedicated to 2 of my favorite people: our grandson Brett, and his wife, Lynda. Their encouragement for my photography is endless, and since it is always accompanied by love and laughter and lessons, I feel like the luckiest amateur photographer ever!
Luckier still am I when I actually get to go out with them and our cameras, which happened earlier this month when D and I visited them on our way home from an extended trip.
Their surprise outing was a drive on the Alpine Loop above Provo in the Wasatch Mtns.

I do not like to tamper with color, but would rather learn during shooting, so these are SOOC.
Brett, I know we were shooting these from all the same places!

I loved the two-toned ferns:

(I should have put this in a frame first.) But, as we rounded every curve, I sighed and gasped because of the stunning colors. Brett finally stopped here just for me; there was no room to pull off the road:Brett pulled over, having spotted this hawk. He just popped open the top and poked his head and camera right up out of the car. I had to get out, and unfortunagely scared the hawk into flight. This one is for you Brett. The body is in focus, but the wings don't look good. Sometimes flight looks good, but not here:

As we came back down through the canyon to lower elevations, the colors softened, and even in their muted state, I thought they were stunning:

Thank you Brett and Lynda, for stopping the car so many times, including for just the little things!

I call this one, "Here's lookin' at you, Babe!"

FRUSTRATIONS!

This morning was an ideal autumn morning, with sun above fog and leaves at their brightest. So, I left early for errands in order to go slowly through Snoqualmie with my camera. I have been watching this particular curb as colorful leaves piled up to more than a foot, so I was anxious to get a photo. As I stood there, getting my camera ready, around this corner came the street sweeper! Slowly, agonizingly, he took away that lovely bank of color right in front of my eyes! I felt like a kid who just dropped a double-decker ice cream cone! Wah! The sweeper's wet path is visible here:


I first went past the mill pond, and here the fog was too thick for a photo of the reflected colors across the water! Wah, again.

By the time I got to the old trains, the fog was lifting, so the effect I wanted was gone - again, right before my eyes!
All these photos are straight from the camera, without color enhancement. I LOVE autumn!
I really wanted the fog, but oh well:

FROST ON THE PUMPKIN!

Well, the frost WAS on the pumpkin, but I didn't get to it before the sun did! This weekend we had our first heavy frost. This photo is of !/2-inch-thick ice on the birdbath. I purposely placed a pumkin nearby so I could try to get some refracted color:

These were ice drops a few minutes before I got there:

And here too, the drops are just starting to melt:

BACKROADS THROUGH WESTERN CANADA, PART 1

We have been on backroads now for 10 days. Our first few days were in the northern interior of British Columbia. We always choose the most "back" of backroads and we are never disappointed with the treasures they yield. The high country on a gravel road pass between Pavilion and Clinton gave us this large black bear and her cub:

And lots of marshes. In this, the solo duck was a mirror reflection:
And one of my favorite subjects is tumble-down aged farm structures. The autumn colors enhance the weathered wood:
From the pass, the atmosphere made these ridges so blue, all in a fading line:
This was actually taken much later, at Maligne Lake in Jasper National Park, Alberta. It had started to snow!

From Dawn To Dusk

Autumn mornings are refreshing! Our last day at home before our trip, I walked across the street to catch the fog spread over the pasture:

Then, back to the house, this was the scene from our driveway as the moon "set":
The same day's sunset over the elk field:
And now we are on our road trip to northern Canada! I was especially looking for red barns yesterday. This one was prime (I don't stop for barns with tin roofs!):

SCRIPTURE/PHOTO CHALLENGE

Someone in the Two Peas group started a challenge of combining a personal favorite scripture with a photo of our own. I did not see the original rules or perameters, but I was so uplifted by the photos I saw posted that I tried one of my own. I chose this scripture because I love it from the point of view of a photographer or anyone who is sensitive to nature's beauty. The photo was taken near Mt. Rainier.

DANCE OF THE SEED SPORES

Yesterday I was sitting here at my computer, enjoying the perfect autumn, breezy weather. I saw, in the flower box in front of me, this seed spore, twisting and swinging around and back while stuck to a stem of ornamental grass. I could hardly believe my eyes that such a delicate whisp of a thing was surviving the wind! I held my breath that it would still be there when I got outside with my camera.

Up and around it danced, with the whim of the breezes:
Still, it hung on, swinging and dipping like a fairy athlete on an exercize bar:
I could have watched this miniscule flora performance for ever!