I finally managed to get my ass out of bed for another sunrise shot.

Tags:   Seattle sunrise Kerry Park Space Needle Mt. Rainier silhouette cityscape skyline Washington David Hogan

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Point of the Arches, Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park

Robin and I first went here the August before last for our anniversary and got totally rained out. We wanted redemption so we tried again and went back for my birthday in October. Luckily the weather was completely opposite and it was warm and sunny the whole weekend! :)

The funny thing was that we explored a lot more of this beach on our first trip since it was too cold to stop moving and too wet to sit down. On this trip all we did was pitch our tent in the sand and laze around in the sun the whole weekend.

Tags:   National Park Olympic National Park Shi Shi Beach sea stacks beach Washington backpacking camping ocean pacific sunset waves Point of the Arches

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You couldn’t see a damn thing out of the shuttle buses at Zion. Everyone was wet and the windows were all fogged up. We got off at the Zion Lodge and ran for the bus shelter 20 feet away. Running did no good, we got soaked! We ran to the lodge and made a bee-line for the phone where we hastily made a hotel reservation in Bryce. Screw the rain and screw Zion! We hadn’t originally planned on visiting Zion (or Bryce for that matter). We were intending to drive north through the Staircase-Escalante National Monument and hike some slot canyons. Then when the forecast called for rain we had to change our plans. Water makes the bentonite clay roads impassible and the slot canyons dangerous. The last thing we wanted to do was get stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, the weather in Zion was intolerable, and we figured we’d rather hike in a snowstorm than a rainstorm. We sat down in the lodge for a while to warm up, dry off, and have a cup of hot chocolate before heading back down the valley. Just as we were exiting the lodge, the rain let up and we decided to chance a short hike before it started back up again. We hiked up to the falls on the Emerald Pools trail and then up to the Grotto on the Kayenta trail. We hopped on a down-valley shuttle there just as it began to rain again. So that was our Zion experience. Lots of rain and a few short hikes to walk off our Ho-Made breakfast.

Tags:   Colorado Plateau Emerald Pools Trail Emerald Pools Southwest Road Trip 2011 Zion National Park Utah Waterfall Zion canyon cloudy rainy

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Slightly Foggy Seattle Sunrise From Kerry Park.

This was not the greatest sunrise in the world but I am really pleasantly surprised how well this shot turned out. I like my placement of the trees in the foreground and how the mountain appears out of the fog.

Tags:   Kerry Park Seattle Washington fog foggy sunrise Mt. Rainier clear Space Needle cityscape dawn Nikon D5000

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Santa Cruz, CA

We had to drive all the way down to Big Sur to get out from under San Francisco's fog bank.

Tags:   Natural Bridges State Park Santa Cruz hole in the wall long exposure sea stack California Coast beach ocean pacific Singh Ray Vari-ND

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