edpaffjr.comHere are a few photos from my DSLR camera from our recent vacation in and around Virginia Beach. Included are the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and the USS Wisconsin. We have additional photos on another camera that I will get online sometime soon.
Archive for the 'Photos' Category
Here is a set of photos from our day spent in Delaware. We drove to Rehoboth Beach (through Milton) from Hagerstown, Maryland in the morning/afternoon. Later that night we stayed in Seaford before driving the next day to Virginia Beach.
Today I added a bunch of pictures of the Dave Matthews Band Caravan from our camera to kimandedjr.com. Enjoy!
After the Taste of Cincinnati on Sunday, Kim took me on a little tour of her new office building, the Great American Tower. I snapped a couple of photos along the way and am happy to share them with you.
See also: the view of Great American Ball Park from the windows near her cubicle, which is I posted earlier.
A couple of years ago I mentioned a photo blog on boston.com called The Big Picture. And thought that site continues on, the primary contributor, Alan Taylor, recently left there to join The Atlantic’s newly created In Focus. The idea of both sites is the same, but they are often covering different events. I’m still following The Big Picture, but find that Alan’s work with In Focus usually is more exciting along with latest photos. In other words, things that I see on In Focus often later show up on The Big Picture. Either way, both are worth visiting a few times of week when they are updated.
We ventured out on Christmas Eve in search of some holiday lights. We first stopped by the Denver Botanic Gardens on York Street for their Blossoms of Light. There over one million lights cover the winter plants. However, it didn’t seem worth the nearly $10 price of admisison. The ice sculptures were all melted messes, and the coolest part was seeing some of the more tropical plants in some of the greenhouses. I think we would have been better off visiting the zoo, which was cheaper and full of animals in addition to the lights.
Fortunately the entire night wasn’t a bust. We drove over to the Denver City and County Building to take some photos of the light display. Every time I’ve driven past the building since Thanksgiving, I wish that I had brought my camera along. Finally I was able to get some photos on a nice clear night. The lights look wonderful close up and even from blocks away. In addition there is a nativity scene and another display of elves of some sort. Plus Santa Claus is even on the roof! It’s a very bright display.
It was another early morning on our second full day in Grand Teton National Park. We opted to skip sitting down for breakfast so that we could drive out to some popular viewing points for sunrise photos. We first stopped at the Oxbow Bend, where we were treated to great views of Mount Moran, including a wonderful reflection in the still water of the Snake River. Next, we drove out to the Snake River Overlook, which is a location that was made famous by Ansel Adams photo of the Grand Tetons. My photo didn’t turn out nearly as well as his did, so we quickly moved on to the Schwabacher Landing. This was my favorite location of the morning, with plenty of spots for great reflection photos.
We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around the southern roads of the park. We spotted a bull moose just off the side of the road as it approached Moose Junction Entrance Station. We also spotted a black bear down on the Moose-Wilson Road, around the same area we had spotted the moose a day earlier. This area proved to be one of the better wildlife viewing places in Grand Teton. We watched the bear for a while as it was feeding on berries. There was a ranger nearby to keep the crowds inline, and he proved valuable when the bear suddenly decided to cross the road right where a group of us were standing. He warned everyone not to move and to let the bear cross without startling him. It worked, but I think Kim nearly freaked out.
The rest of the evening we spent down in Jackson, Wyoming, the majority of the time at Snake River Brewing. We enjoyed a selection of food and beer while watching the University of Cincinnati Bearcats take on the Oklahoma Sooners. The game didn’t turn out how I would have liked, but the Bearcats played well and could have won had a couple of plays gone differently. As far as the beer goes, they were all very good, and I managed to sample quite a variety in the hours we were there. Afterward, we drove back to the lodge for one last night before making the drive back to Denver the following day. I think I have a few photos from the last day that I’ll get online soon.
On our first full day in Grand Teton National Park, we woke to amazing views out of the cabin window at the Jackson Lake Lodge. We had a quick, but enjoyable, breakfast at the Pioneer Grill inside of the lodge. From there we drove out to Jenny Lake for an early hike toward Inspiration Point. We had already decided to skip the ferry across the lake, and good thing we did, as we were too early and it wasn’t open yet. We detoured from the trail for a quick attempt to see Moose at the Moose Ponds, but didn’t have any luck.
The hike around Jenny Lake was very nice and relatively flat. The trail didn’t start gaining elevation until we approached Hidden Falls and then the short remainder of the hike up to Inspiration Point. We sat here and enjoyed the view for a bit. Afterward, we decided to continue to hike up into the Cascade Canyon, which I am really glad we did. It didn’t take long for the views of the Canyon to be really great. It was already getting late in the day, and we were pretty tired, so we decided to take the ferry back toward our car, cutting out a couple of miles on the return hike.
Once back in the car, we drove out to Moose-Wilson Road hoping to spot some wildlife. We were quickly rewarded with great views of a moose cow. She was busy feeding in a pond and didn’t mind the crowd of photographers. As we were starting to get hungry for dinner, we started the drive back north towards the lodge. We stopped at Signal Mountain for a quick drive to the top for views of the Teton Valley. While in the neighborhood, we decided to have dinner at the Trapper Grill inside the Signal Mountain Lodge. The meal was good, with food much better in quality than what we had while in Yellowstone. In fact, all meals at Grand Teton were better than Yellowstone’s. After dinner we headed back to the room to rest up for another full day in the park.
We were able to sleep in a little at the Lehrkind Mansion, as breakfast wasn’t served until 8:30. Actually we couldn’t really sleep in anyway, so we packed up the car before heading to the dining room. There we met two other couples who had stayed the night and exchanged vacation stories and advice. Shortly afterward, breakfast was served. The owners of the bed and breakfast honored my request for no omelet or egg heavy dishes, and we were served bowls of fresh fruit, pancakes with blueberries and peaches, and thick-cut pieces of bacon. It was delicious!
After our breakfast we decided to swing past the Museum of the Rockies before leaving Bozeman. It receives great reviews, and one of the Lehrkind owners praised the dinosaur exhibit. I wasn’t expecting much for this museum, but I was completely blown away.   It houses the largest collection of dinosaur remains in the United States and possesses the largest Tyrannosaurus skull ever discovered. I spent a good chunk of time in the dinosaur exhibit before realizing that there were other exhibits as well. We had already spent hours inside, so I just briefly glimpsed at some of the other exhibits before it was time for the planetarium, featuring a movie about Mars.
Once we finally made it out of the museum, we started the drive back south toward the town of West Yellowstone via US-191. Along the way we stopped in Big Sky for an appetizer and beer at the Lone Peak Brewery. After our quick stop there we continued down to West Yellowstone, where we hopped on US-20 heading west into Idaho, which became my 48th visited state. We continued south through the Targhee National Forest, before detouring on to the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway. This not only provided views of Mesa Falls it also provided our first view of the Grand Tetons, though it was from quite a distance.
Before reconnecting back to US-20, we hopped on to Idaho Route 32 through Drummond and then Route 33 through Driggs and Victor. We stopped in Victor at the Grand Teton Brewing Company for a few drinks in the tasting room. While I sampled Black Cauldron Imperial Stout and Trout Hop Black IPA, Kim enjoyed some Teton Jack Ginger Ale. It was easily my favorite beer stop of the trip. Afterward, we had dinner at the nearby Wildlife Brewing, which consisted of pizza and grizzly fries. Once dinner was over, we continued south and then east over Teton Pass and into Grand Teton National Park. We eventually made it to our hotel for the next few nights, Jackson Lake Lodge, just a little later than I originally expected.
Per usual, we woke up early on our fourth day inside Yellowstone National Park. We packed the car, dropped of our room keys, and immediately drove down to the Hayden Valley. There we were greeted with some amazing views of the sunrise. We didn’t see much wildlife activity so we left the area and drove over to the Mount Washburn area, which we were told is prime grizzly territory. We completed the drive all the way to the road closing (due to the Antelope Fire) without seeing much wildlife, but that all changes once we turned around and started heading back down toward the Canyon Village.
I spotted an small RV that was pulling to the side of the road, while the passenger was reaching a large camera out the window taking pictures. We were passing on the other side, so I quickly parked the car and hopped out to see what it was. I was shocked when I realized it was a grizzly cub! I sprinted back to the car as quick as possible, realizing that the mother grizzly must be somewhere nearby. Once in the car, two cubs and their mom appeared right on the side of the road in front of us. We watched them for well over five minutes, until a park ranger showed up to scare them back away from the road. I captured some great pictures of the bears.
Before spotting the bears, we had decided to do a nearby hike to Cascade Lake. We were a little hesitant to do it after the bear sighting, but we continued on to the trailhead and started the hike. We didn’t see any more bears, just a few bison that were really close to the trail. The hike was nice and flat and only around four and a half miles roundtrip. It was a lovely day for a hike. After the hike, we continued down to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which seemed like the only part of the park that we hadn’t seen yet. We spent some time viewing the waterfalls, taking short hikes to viewing points, and enjoying the nice views. We ran out of time before we got to explore the south rim, but I feel like we saw enough of it.
With that we headed back for the car to start the drive to Bozeman, Montana. We drove through a few parts of the park that we had already seen, including Mammoth Hot Springs, before reaching the northern entrance at Gardiner, Montana. The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful, and we made it to Bozeman in a few hours, in time for our check-in at the Lehrkind Mansion Bed & Breakfast. I had never done the bed and breakfast thing before, but figured how bad could it be since the house was built by an old brewmaster in the late 1800’s. After settling in and cleaning up, we headed into downtown Bozeman for dinner. We ended up at the MacKenzie River Pizza Company, which was awesome. We also had an enjoyable stop at Montana Ale Works for drinks and desert before heading back to our room for the night.
