Man, I love a good ol' barn...

...especially when there's nothing but good memories and a little luck still holding them up.  It doesn't hurt the scene any when they're backdropped by the San Juan Mountains in SE Colorado. This one is in an epic battle with the elements and gravity but is fighting the good fight. I love to think about the day when the last board was nailed into place and the family first looked with such pride upon their brand new barn.

This picture was taken north of Westcliffe, CO, at sunrise one morning as I was headed from Denver to Phoenix (via backroads and state highways, obviously.)  👍

Great Sand Dunes National Park

I love this place any time of day but especially near sunset when only one side of the dunes have light. These are the highest dunes in all of North America housed within one of the youngest national parks in the national park system.

For a sense of scale, you can see some people (yeah, those dots) on top of the highest dune in this next picture.

Sangre De Cristo mountains in the background

Yep, they're steep! Noah and I hiked barefoot across a partially frozen stream to start this hike up.

Lightning over Arcadia Lake, Edmond OK

Boom.

Lunar landscape via New Mexico Volcanoes

This picture was taken along the road that leads to the iconic Capulin Volcano at the US Park Services National Monument of the same name.













Capulin Volcano is located roughly near Des Moines, NM, which is pretty much right next to nothing you've ever heard of.


The closest town in Oklahoma is actually only 75 miles away from the volcano.  But Kenton, OK, is also near the OK state line you've likely never crossed...the one that borders New Mexico.  When you leave Kenton headed west, it's not long before you run into dirt road (4x4 only in bad weather) and that then carries you further into New Mexico.

I've loved every visit to Capulin Volcano and once was able to make the one mile hike around the rim.  It's an obscure, but wonderful off-the-beaten-path sort of destination - my favorite kind.

If you are headed to Colorado Springs from Oklahoma, I highly recommend taking the volcano route (Amarillo | Dalhart | Clayton | Raton) since it costs you next to nothing in drive time but affords you lots in beautiful scenery.



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And as a bit of travelogue...

The view as you head west out of Oklahoma from Kenton.

The paved trail on the volcano and expansive view afforded from the same.

View from the top.  You can see the parking lot at the bottom right of the first pic and over my right shoulder in the second pic.

Trippin'...at Canyon de Chelly

It's pronounced Canyon de 'Shay', it's in NE Arizone, and it's not a good place to not be sure-footed. Remote shutter releases are cool but that last step is a doozy.

Reflections at Great Plains State Park

Last summer Noah and I went on a surprisingly wonderful little weekend camping trip. It wasn't surprisingly wonderful because I didn't think we'd have a good time. But the remote location was even more enjoyable than I had hoped.  I must add, and the internet as well as Noah can confirm, the bacon cheeseburgers at the 3-table Tom Steed Reservoir Bait Shop are just amazing!  Oddly, my bride narrow-mindedly frowns upon eating in the same store where you can by earthworms and dead crawdads for bait.

Here are a few pics of world famous (not really) Tom Steed Reservoir in the early pre-dawn hours.

Sunset at Morro Bay, CA

Having made multiple trips to the area (Los Osos, CA) to visit a customer, I found a tiny little Travelodge that affords a view of the bay and Morro Rock from one of the few tiny little hotel rooms.  It's a tiny little town where it essentially never rains and practically never gets above 75 degrees.

In keeping with the theme of tiny, so goes their harbor.

Morro Rock, whose outline you can see in the background, is a volcanic plug that rises about 580ft out of the water. For my OKC friends, the Chase Tower is right at 500ft.

I love visiting there and standing on the surf break as the sun sets.

Sunrise Thunderstorm in Oklahoma City

Talk about good timing!  The sun and the storm danced in perfect concert to create this beautiful scene on the east side of Oklahoma City.  The windmill, the cows and the pond provide a sense of scale that otherwise would be lost and then detract from the scope of the storm clouds.  Had I only been able to get closer to the pond (I'm not so much into trespassing!), the reflection in the water would have added yet another wonderful element to the photograph.

You really have to take a macro approach to understand why the views can change so dramatically even in what most people consider a very flat part of the state.  Just 1/4 of a mile to the west of this spot is a ridge line that completely obscures the view of the horizon.  

This picture was taken from roughly where the "X" is in the map below near Hefner Rd and Midwest Blvd, right on the edge of the North Canadian River 'valley.'  This is where the earth gets REALLY flat, making a prime location for both occasional flooding and, if you've ever driven Midwest Boulevard here, sod farms.  This drop off in elevation to very flat land provides an incredible and unobstructed view of the eastern horizon.

Hoover Dam @ Night and some Lake Mead drought

Day or night, I've never regretted a stop at the Hoover Dam. This place is a modern marvel of engineering and a grand human vision.

The star-burst pattern around the lights is an effect typical of many lenses at very high f-stop #'s (very small apertures).

Check out how much the water level has dropped in Lake Mead between the top picture taken in 2001 and the bottom one taken in 2009!

Union Station in the City of Fountains - Kansas City

Everything's up to date in Kansas City
They gone about as fer as they can go
They went an' built a skyscraper seven stories high
About as high as a buildin' orta grow!

At least  that's what Will Parker said about Kansas City in the musical Oklahoma.f

While in Kansas City for a conference, I wandered over (e.g. hiked 8 miles that night) from my hotel on the far north side of town to as far south as the World War I museum.  Of course that included a stop by Union Station which was, for all intents and purposes, completely empty on that week night.  It was far too kind for the operators there to empty the place for me and my camera to enjoy.

Wikipedia says that the height of activity (approx 670,000 passengers) at Union Station occurred in 1945 at the end of World War II.  After that, it was a steady decline until closure in 1985.  It was almost demolished several times until a public/private partnership found means to save the station in 1996.

Here are a few of my favorite images of my private, self-guided tour of the place.

One of the more interesting things about this curvy, wide-angle image is the lighting. Under most circumstances you'd never see such balanced lighting inside a structure with many windows except maybe at noon.  In this case, the light on the left (east) wall was directly from the sun shining in the right (west) windows.  The light on the right (west) wall was reflecting off a large glass building outside and to the east of Union Station.  Confused yet?

Hey that's me.  Or two of me, actually.  All in a long, single exposure, too.

St. Louis Gateway Arch up close and abstract

This is what the arch looks like when you press your toes, your knees, your belly and your chin right up against it and take a picture...just in case you were wondering.

An (almost) thunderstorm over Lake Arcadia

This short video is comprised of 660 individual images stitched together and rolling through at roughly 24fps. I let the intervalometer sequence out too soon and missed some key parts of the sunset.  What a rookie!  Nonetheless, I restarted it and caught the quick death of a little rain shower over Edmond just before the sun finally set.  The best set of images in my opinion are around the 22-24 second mark.

Miniature human action figure(?) @ Red Rock Canyon in Nevada

See that itty bitty climber?

Frozen sunset reflection on Lake Hefner

Let's face it.  The wind ALWAYS blows on Lake Hefner...except for the extremely rare day when it doesn't.  On this particular day of December 10th, I almost froze while taking these pictures. You can see ice on the rocks (always a good combo) on which I was climbing while taking these pics.  But what a sight!

Swoosh!

And we have lift-off (of ye ol' Canadian Geese).

Sunset over Whidbey Island, WA

Idyllic in every way.

Lake Hefner Sunrise

Just some tomfoolery with the camera body and lens while the shutter is open.

Great Blue Heron in the Rio Grande National Wildlife Refuge

Great blue heron hunting at sunset

Lone scissortail flycatcher in heavy fog

Along Midwest Boulevard near Spencer, OK