I know I have gone a long while without a post. There are a lot of reasons for that, none of which are important. In this post I am testing a new format and trying a few things that will hopefully make posting easier and faster.
In my last post I talked about the cinnamon colored black bear who hangs around near Indian Creek Campground with her two cubs. I was finally fortunate enough to get some reasonable photos of the family.
This is Mom. At this point she had the little ones up in trees while she was searching for food by tearing open logs.
This is one of the cubs keeping an eye on things. Eventually mom called them down so they could move on to another area. When they got down and started heading towards the campground I had to shift back into the work mode and start hazing them in a different direction. One of the cubs got scared or confused and went up another tree only to be chastised by his mother. When he came down from the tree he was in a big hurry to get to mom’s side.
“I’m coming mom! Please wait!”
“I’m almost there. Where are we going from here? Did you hear that man yelling at me? It scared me!!”
I took these photos in pretty low light. It was impossible to get the running cub in perfect focus. However, when I reviewed the images I felt that the blur helped tell the story. I hope you think so as well.
Connie and I moved to Mammoth Campground along with our partners Rick and Donna after we closed Indian Creek Campground. We worked at Mammoth with Russ and Susan, so we still enjoyed the two on four off rotation which allowed for us to do a lot of in the park travel as well as a side trip to the Grand Tetons and Jackson, Wyoming.
This photo was taken just south of Jackson Lake Lodge. There must have been a bus load of people there taking the same picture. I was able to keep the crowd out of my image. The sharp peak on the left is Grand Teton and the rather flat topped peak to the far right with the glacier dissecting is Mt. Moran.
This is a shot of Grand Teton taken from alongside the road at Moran Junction. This is one of those iconic shots captured by virtually all mountain photographers. I have a long story about Moran Junction and the Heart Six Ranch. You should ask me about it some time.
This photo was taken at The Oxbow Bend of the Snake River just below Jackson Lake Dam. The day was absolutely perfect with essentially no breeze thereby affording such a sharp reflection. If there was a bus load of people at that first stop, then there were three bus loads here. It took a good bit of patience to capture this image without people. There must be a shoreline trail or path on the west side of the the oxbow, because for a long while there were people walking into the frame from the right side.
While we were visiting the Tetons and the Jackson Hole area, Connie and I stayed at the Heart Six Guest Ranch. For those of you who have known me from my youth you will recall I used to work at the Heart Six in the summer.
This is an image of the living room area of the lodge. I helped build this addition to the lodge in the second summer I worked on the ranch. I peeled the bark off most of the logs that make up this over sized room and I helped pick out, load onto a truck, transport, unload and install the granite stones that make up the fireplace. That was quite a lot of work, but work well worth the effort.
I know this image looks a bit off. I was in a hurry and didn’t pay much attention to the exposure and white balance. However, my purpose for taking this photo was to show is seen by looking out the window that appears in the photo above. Now, is this not wonderful sight to look upon when you come into this place or what?
I am not talking about a little dusting of snow. We had about a foot in the campground and it was cold.
We decided to make the best of it. We had a few campfires. We went into Gardiner for dinner several nights, but we were noticing that many of the restaurants were starting to close earlier than advertised due to lack of business from the park being closed. That is they were closing early for the season!
One day we did have a grizzly bear join us in the campground. Now, the following photos were not taken while recreating, as we were forbidden from such activities. Think of these images as being scientific research or some such thing.