Photo Redux

Well, I said way back when that I'd post more photos from my trips to the Olympic National Park. I didn't mean for this to take so long, but there were hundreds of photos to weed out, then several were prettied up in photoshop and/or lightroom.

What I'm presenting here is just a couple of my favorites. You'll have to visit if you want to see the rest...

This first photo was from my trip to Point of the Arches at Shi Shi beach near the far northwestern edge of Washington. This was taken at sunrise on my walk back to the car.

This next photo is from the meadow of the mountain goons. I mean goats. If you look hard, you can see my camping spot where I didn't sleep, on those rocks in the middle right of the photo.

And this last one is a photo of the alpenglow from my camping spot over Lake of the Angels.

We've been very busy here at Fam Skinner (that's Deutsche!). Ian has started the second grade, and Leah has started Kindergarten. And now Catherine has landed a part-time job teaching cooking in Olympia. My work has been crazy busy, and I've just started back into school for my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree!

You know what they say, a rolling stone gathers no moss...

Have a wonderful day everybody. I'll try to prod Catherine into uploading some photos of the kids getting on the school bus this weekend. If only things would slow down, sheesh!

Tschuss,

Marc

Point of the Arches

I had some questions after a post a while back about "sea stacks". You'll see a bunch of them below.

I'd seen some photos from here on Google Earth while researching Olympic National Park a month or so ago. I knew right then that I wanted to go there. BUT. And this is a huge "but", it is difficult to get there. It is at the far northwestern (read furthest point away on the Olympic peninsula) point, and the only access is after driving small, winding roads, to/through the Makah Indian Reservation where a recreation pass is required, then a two mile hike to the actual beach (Shi Shi Beach). Once on the beach, the Point of the Arches (sea stack formation) is another 2 miles away. This isn't a place to easily take Catherine and the kids.

So this past weekend, Catherine and the kids flew to Miami early Saturday morning, leaving me a weekend free to myself. Perfect timing!

I dropped them off at the Seattle airport and then picked up my stuff and made the long drive to Shi Shi beach and the Point of the Arches sea stack formation.

I had a blast shooting at sunset, and made sure to get up early for sunrise.

Lucky for me, it was still low tide in the morning, which opened up a lot more photographic possibilities. The rocks in the foreground are totally submerged, and the rock formations are completely surrounded by about 3-4 feet of ocean depth at high tide.

I did some more exploring in the area on Sunday, Cape Flattery on the northwestern-most tip of the lower 48 and the Sol Duc (or Sole Duck, depending on who you ask) region of the park.

Overall, a tiring weekend. But I wouldn't have it any other way. Shi Shi was awesome - I slept right on the beach which let me stay up late and wake up early and literally have 5 steps to where I wanted to stand to take photos.

Okay, okay. Enough talk about photography. Hopefully you all enjoy. I know I sure did.

Cheers,

Marc