Tree

One more picture from our recent romp through Hoyt Arboretum...

Hoyt Arboretum

It's hard to believe that it is almost the end of October and the weather is still amazing in Portland. Tom came up for Southern California to visit his sister for her birthday on Friday. On Saturday, Tom came over to hang out with Amanda and I. We ended up going to Hoyt arboretum for a little lunch and meeting up with Brooke. It was a blast walking through the forests on all the trails and laughing at funny facebook jokes. I also had a blast trying to do motion shots. Most of these pictures were taken while walking. It's kind of fun to have the appearance of moving in the picture....

Dog Mountain

So Amanda and I hatched this cool idea this week...A backpacking trip over the weekend. We were planning on leaving Saturday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon. The hike was supposed to be an easy hike--supposedly rated a 2 out of 10 (10 being the most strenuous). Needless to say the person who rated this hike was off his rocker. The climb gained 3000 feet of elevation in a little over 3 miles.
There wasn't really anywhere to camp on the trail so we just did the whole loop in a day: 6.5 miles and 6000 feet of elevation change. Here are the pics from the trip. I think the one of Amanda hiking the trail in the mist reminds me of Scotland--which is a place we'd like to visit someday.

Anberlin

Wolves

One of the cooler things about Yellowstone National Park is the wildlife. There are all kinds of animals throughout the park, from moose to wolves and bears. Neither Amanda nor I had ever seen a wolf in the wild so we were pretty stoked when we came upon the site of an elk kill. A small pack of four wolves had killed the elk the morning that we arrived in the park and they were making regular trips to the carcass to consume it. It was enjoyable watching the wolves, the other photographers were a different matter--I should have taken a picture of the cloud of them. Every time the wolves moved, hundreds of shutters would go off; the wolves even looked our direction a couple of times due to the noise. These pics were taken early in the morning on a 500mm lens that a random guy let me use when his camera ran out of batteries...

Pictures from the Tetons

So here are a couple more pictures from our trip. Most of these pictures are the Tetons. The Tetons have far fewer animals cruising the park, but the landscape is amazing. The mountains are jagged and jut up out of the valley. This time of year the aspen groves are changing color and it is truly spectacular. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. The other cool part about the Tetons is that it had about a fifth of the people that Yellowstone had, so we got to have some time to ourselves as we explored. Very cool...