Here’s a sunrise for your Saturday, folks. Today (Sept 25, 2021) is National Public Lands Day. Fees are waived at the national parks. It’s a great day to enjoy the outdoors and think about how you can help preserve a park’s environment for future visitors. It can be as simple as packing out what you pack in and picking up trash you see along the trail. I did that yesterday. I saw an occasional candy wrapper and even a discarded mask. I’d forgotten to bring a trash bag with me, but I still had other bags I could use for picking up and carrying trash. It’s good for one’s karma, you know. 😊
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved.
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The Rosy Glow Of Sunrise, Mount Rainier National Park (Washington)
It’s Trivia Tuesday, so here’s a little bit of trivia about “The Mountain.” Mount Rainier is an “episodically active” volcano and the most-glaciated peak in the Lower 48. The indigenous people named this mountain Tahoma or Tacoma, but it’s present-day moniker was bestowed upon it by one Captain George Vancouver, after sailing into Puget Sound in 1792. He named it after his buddy Peter Rainier. Mount Rainier National Park is America’s fifth national park.
Looking at this image might cause you to think I’ve deliberately oversaturated it. Nope. I can honestly tell you that for 20+ seconds, the sunrise colors are indeed this saturated. You have to work quickly to catch the scene, because as quickly as the colors appear, they disappear and are replaced by regular sunlight which turns the snow on the peak blindingly white and risks overexposure of a photo.
See that tiny person standing at the edge of Tipsoo Lake, in the lower center-ish portion of the shot next to the tree? That gives you an idea of the majesty of the landscape: One Big Mountain, One Teeny Person.
This sunrise shot was captured one fine autumn morning, a few months after I’d moved from Texas to Washington state. It’s early summer as I post this photo, and if you were to go there now, the lake would be mostly covered still in ice and snow.
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved.
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A Very Early Morning At Oxbow Bend, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
Did you know that Grand Teton National Park is part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem? You can read more trivia like this and test your knowledge about this national park with the latest quiz and trivia piece penned by yours truly and published in the National Parks Traveler. If you’ve visited this park, then see how much you really know. If you’ve not yet visited, then this should encourage you to put this place on your bucket list of parks to see.
To take the quiz and read the trivia, click on the image above.
As for the image above, I captured it one lovely summer morning during my 1-1/2 day stopover in the park while making my Big Move from Texas to Washington state. Summers are hideous in terms of crowds here, but if you get up early enough, you can stake out a spot with ease for lovely sunrise shots like the one here, along the banks of the Snake River at Oxbow Bend.
Ok, I know it’s Tuesday, but the Labor Day holiday makes today feel like a Monday. Anyway, here’s a video for your Tuesday morning. I call it “Waiting For Sunrise At Sunrise.”
I’m trying to capture more videos when I visit the national parks. I tend to keep them relatively short because most readers’ attention spans aren’t that long, and most of the videos (99/9%) are captured with my iPhone 11 (it’s just easier and the iPhone does a nice job).
So, here’s a video I took while waiting for sunrise in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park. I was at my favorite spot on Sourdough Ridge Trail. I’d like to capture sunrise looking the other way, instead of looking straight at The Mountain, someday, but the parking lot for that particular “other way” spot is always jam-packed and I don’t want to be standing cheek-by-jowl with others at this point in time.
Anyway, enjoy the almost-sunrise at the Sunrise area of the park.
Sunrise as seen from Sinnott Memorial Overlook at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon
Yahoo! The Great American Outdoors Act has been passed! So, now what? How will that $1.3 billion a year over the next 5 years be spent, and who gets the money? Remember, there are 419 units in the National Park System.
The National Parks Traveler has an interesting article asking that very question. Go check it out.
To read the article, click on the image above.
As for that image, I had arrived at the Crater Lake Lodge area around 4:00 a.m. and realized it was too cloudy to get any pre-dawn star shots. So, I sat in the car for awhile before finally venturing out to find the steps leading to the overlook, then setting up my tripod and camera for Blue Hour, sunrise, and after-sunrise shots.
I used my Sony Alpha 7R IV camera and 16-35mm lens for this shot.
Mornin’, Folks! It’s Sunrise Sunday! And, it’s even sunny where I live (it’s been gray and dreary this past week). I haven’t posted much in the past few days because I’ve been busy with family things and working on another article for the National Parks Traveler.
I thought I’d sit down and go through Yellowstone images I hadn’t worked on yet, and found this lovely sunrise image of the Lower Yellowstone Falls. I have a thing for waterfalls, I guess, and this place is magical in the autumn, on cold, crisp, clear days. It wasn’t until later that I realized there were more observation points than I’d first thought, and I never got to see them during my 2019 stay there. Next time I visit this national park, you can bet I’ll be going to the places I missed.
Here’s a sunrise for your Saturday, courtesy of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, in Alaska. May your day be as bright and sunny as the sunrise in this photo promised.
Copyright Rebecca L. Latson, all rights reserved.
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How about a nice, peaceful, beach scene colored by the blush of “rosy-fingered dawn” to start your weekend? I have a feeling dawn won’t be as pretty where I live – it’s been overcast with a low cloud ceiling for the past few days.
Padre Island National Seashore in Texas is a great place to watch the sun rise. I got there at dark-thirty a.m. and just watched the play of colors over the sky and Gulf of Mexico, as the shore birds pattered along the water’s edge looking for breakfast.
Sunrise in this national park is sublime, no matter whether it’s a sunny day, an overcast day, or an in-between kind of day.
And now, in addition to sunrises being sublime, so are night skies, since this national park has been certified an International Dark Sky Park.
The park’s 20th Annual Astronomy Festival will be June 17-20, 2020. I’ve made my reservations for a room during that time. Maybe then, I’ll actually stay awake late enough to get some cool night shots, since I didn’t do that during my previous two visits (sigh). I readily admit that Bryce Canyon is one of my favorite national parks.
I think, in a past post – maybe even more than one past post – I’ve mentioned how different a scene can look at different times of the day, under different weather conditions and/or different seasons. These images above were captured in late July, during different times of day, at the Diablo Lake Overlook, in the Ross Lake National Recreation Area, a part of the North Cascades Complex.
The first image was photographed upon my arrival that first day. It was around 12:30 p.m. The water was a bright, brilliant turquoise shade due to the overhead sun’s position. The mountains were blue and there was a slight haze in the atmosphere, which is normal for summer at high noon-ish.
The second image was captured the next morning during sunrise a little before 6:30 a.m. The sun had cleared the horizon behind me and began gilding the mountain tops while the rest of the area was shaded by the shadows of the mountains behind me.
If you have the time and inclination, where ever you travel, why not visit your favorite landscape more than once to see how different it may look during those particular times.
All images on these posts are the exclusive property of Rebecca L. Latson and Where The Trails Take You Photography. Please respect my copyright and do not use these images on Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat or any other business, personal or social website, blog site, or other media without my written permission. Thank you.
You can reach me at rebeccalatson@wherethetrailstakeyou.com
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