I tracked this guy for over two hours through the wilderness. He knew I was following him for sure as we would move from trees to fields then back to trees. After the first 10 minutes, it was obvious that he was a million times more agile… and I was a million times more dirty. After the event, not only was I covered in dirt and leaves, but it took me half an hour to figure out where in the world the road and my car was!
I checked the sweet internet earlier in the day to see exactly what time sunset was in Yellowstone. I have the sunrise/sunset website bookmarked, which is kinda strange, maybe… Anyway, It said 7:03 or something like that. I knew full well that it means the exact moment when the sun dips below the horizon, so the sun really “sets” about 30 minutes before that… but that didn’t help me get into the right position to see the sun right before it dipped below the mountains.
Luckily, there was a fine band of yellow sky lit up above the mountains, reflecting across the Madison River.
It was just me and about three hours of sunset at Yellowstone. I feel very fortunate to be friends with the head ranger at the park, and just beforehand, at his home, he listed off about four awesome places to go see it. He was right! Also, he let me borrow his tripod, so that was a real life saver (as any good ranger is known for!).
I figured just about the worst place to stand in a lightning storm was a gigantic old tree. So, of course, I doubled those odds by erecting a metallic tripod at the base to capture the moment… sorry mom…
While I was at this conference deep in the mountains of Montana on the Wyoming border, we took a break one day to hike up into the mountains for several hours. We hiked up with a varied assortment of people, including a world class opera singer named Laura Loge. After we reached the summit (where there was still snow) and shared a lunch, we began the journey back home. Halfway down the trek, we stopped in this beautiful little valley and we implored her to sing some opportune opera while in the green amphitheater.
She sang perfectly and it was an utterly surreal experience. I flipped on the wide angle to get both Laura and her enraptured audience to the right, a bit further down the trail.
Laura told me afterwards that it was actually called an "art song", as opposed to the opera she had been singing nightly by the fireside in the cabin to all of us.
If you want to find out more about Laura, visit her homepage at www.lauraloge.com/ !
I had an incredible time at the ranch for the week. We took the horses for a few hours until we got to the junction in Yellowstone, where I then took Gerry’s car out for an adventure around the park. I drove all over the place until I was able to find this area to hole up, listen to music, and wait for the sunset.
I’ve spent my 4th in the wilds of Montana, out exploring the periphery of the ranch. I had a long photohike in mind, but I ended up getting distracted and never made it too far during the long walk. I also took a break to do some sketching… which is not good because it is really cutting into my photography time!
Hope you all have a good fourth!
I walked with this neuroscientist from Houston and a bunch of other smarty pants on a 5 hour hike around Yellowstone and over a mountain range. We didn’t bring enough water, so we would stop at snow runoff areas like this.
