Fireweed blooming at Teton Pass, Wyoming

Fireweed blooming at Teton Pass at the southern end of the Teton Range in Wyoming and Idaho.  Fireweed gets its name from the fact that it tends to be one of the first plants to come back into a burned area after a fire.  It has an interesting habit of starting to bloom at the bottom of the flower cluster and working upward.  This photo shows blooming flowers at the bottom while buds are waiting to bloom on top.

Teton Pass is at an elevation of 8,432' and is near the border between Wyoming and Idaho.  The nearest large town is Jackson, Wyoming  near the southern end of the mountain valley called Jackson Hole.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Canada goose at Woodward Park, Fresno, California, posing for the camera

Rick was out biking today and passed through part of Woodward Park, by the waterfowl refuge. There was a large flock of Canada geese seemingly expecting to be fed and it gave him an opportunity to get this close-up. The difficult part was capturing an image that only had one goose in it. Geese are something like the cattle of the bird world. Even if they'll take bread from park visitors, they mainly graze on grass. Rick runs to Woodward Park regularly and on one of those times that he was there, he watched several Canada geese swallowing whole acorns from under an oak tree.

The close-up was equivalent to a 1245 mm telephoto lens with 35mm film camera. The lens aperture was fully stopped down (which is f/8 for this paricular camera), ISO 100, and the shutter speed was 1/400.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!

Hinkey Summit Arch, Humboldt/Toiyabe National Forest, north of Winnemucca, Nevada

 This is a natural arch formed in granite.  It is located in the Santa Rose Range of the Humboldt/Toiyabe National Forest north of Winnemucca, Nevada.  According to the late Robert Vreeland, a geologist who cataloged many of the natural rock spans of the United States, this is a young, cave-type arch.  It has a span of 20 feet, a height of 15 feet, a thickness of 40 feet, and a width of 15 feet.  The top of the arch is over 8000 feet in elevation.

Natural rock spans are a particular interest of ours and we have traveled to many parks and wildlands looking for them.  Although this arch doesn't have an official name, we would like to call it the Hinkey Summit Arch, after the nearest named feature.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Cascade Creek Falls, lower end of Yosemite Valley, below the junction with Tamarack Creek

The waters of Cascade Creek and Tamarack Creek, in Yosemite, meet after flowing down the mountainside then falling over the brink at Cascade Creek Falls before ending up in the Merced River. You can drive into Yosemite Valley, from the Merced direction, and park near the base of these falls and hike over to them. This view, however, is from an area above the Tunnel View and involves hiking down a long slope of granite to a drop-off where you can see these falls from above. A little closer to the edge and you can see the road, as well, but we didn't want to include it in this image. Above the falls are 2 bridges that pass over Cascade Creek and Tamarack Creek. This road leads over to Highway 120, which is the most direct drive westward to San Francisco. Or, you can drive eastward on Highway 120 over the Sierra crest at Tioga Pass to Mono Lake.

This image was taken during the spring of 2004 when the water was running high.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!

Sticky Geranium with a wasp on the petal

A wasp in a Sticky Geranium (Geranium viscosissimum) blossom in Granite Canyon, Grand Teton National Park.  We photographed this flower with insect while on a 3-day backpacking trip from Teton Village in the southern end of the Teton Range and came out at Jenny Lake around the middle part of the range.

This shot was taken with the macro settings on the camera and fortunately there was no wind to cause blurring.

Remember, it's not just a photograph, it's a story.

Norris Geyser Basin panoramic image

The Norris Geyser Basin area, in Yellowstone National Park, as viewed from a hillside at the southeast side of the basin looking northwestly over geysers and fumaroles. Of the many geyser basins in Yellowstone, Norris is the hottest. This northern part of the Norris Geyser Basin is called Porcelain Basin and the feature below us is Porcelain Springs. The colors in the hot streams come from different species of bacteria that can survive in high temperatures. Living things that can live in high temperatures are called extremophiles, and have been of great interest to biologists.

This image is the result of combining 2 images together and is at a 3:1 ratio. If ordering prints, make sure to keep that ratio in mind.

While we were hiking the trails around the Norris Geyser Basin, a couple of people wanted to have their picture taken with us, just because we're twins. So we accommodated them. Made us feel like celebrities.

It's not just a picture, it's a story!

Pronghorn antelope on a hillside in the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park

This pronghorn antelope doe had just run across the road in front of some stopped cars and she settled on this hillside where she and her fawn could be safe and have a good view of the area. The horn of the pronghorn has a bony center and a sheath made of material like the horn of a bison, but it sheds this seasonally and grows new ones each year. A buck soon followed them in a great hurry to get across the road and join them. Rick managed to get some video of the buck while he was making his dash to the road. These are the fastest land mammals in North America. As soon as they were all on the hillside, they seemed to feel safe enough to settle in and hang around where we could see them. The sun was also getting low in the sky when we were driving through the Lamar Valley, which gave the hill a yellowish glow.

One of the best things about Yellowstone is seeing all the large- and medium-sized mammals all  in one place. Soon after taking this picture, we continued on our way and saw a red fox cross the road in front of us, but didn't have time to stop and get its picture. Then we joined people who had seen wolves earlier in the day. Yellowstone and other National Parks are sometimes referred to as America's best idea, we couldn't agree more!

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!

Black-tailed deer face, with antlers in velvet

This black-tailed deer was trying to get a good meal of grass seeds while numerous cars full of people were stopping to watch him in Yellowstone National Park. Deer and other related animals, like elk and moose, grow new antlers every year. During the time the antlers are growing, they're covered in a fuzzy skin called velvet. When the antlers are done growing, the velvet dies and the deer will sometines be seen rubbing its antlers against trees or shrubs to get the velvet to come off. The velvet might hang on in long strips and you can sometimes see blood on the antlers where the velvet still had a good blood supply. After the breeding season, the antlers will fall off from the base and the male deer will be antlerless until the next spring into summer, when the process starts over again. Female deer don't grow antlers, but the related caribou do have antlers for both sexes.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!

Bison enjoying lip-smacking good plants

This bison was part of a large herd right along the park road in the Lamar Valley of northeastern Yellowstone National Park.  During our visit in early August 2015 we saw herds of bison almost everywhere around the Hayden and Lamar Valleys, where they traditionally hang out, but in numbers much higher than we remember seeing before.  Bison are much larger in their forequarters than in their hindquarters partially as an adaptation to having to bulldoze through snow to get to forage in the winter.  The herds we saw had a wide range of ages from massive old bulls to young calves born this year.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Marmot from Grand Teton mountain range, Yellow-bellied Marmot (ground hog of the mountains)

The Yellow-bellied Marmot lives at higher elevations in the Rockies, Sierra Nevada, and other mountain ranges. It's a large rodent related to the ground hog that lives in burrows among boulder fields. We saw this one during a backpacking trip along the Teton Crest Trail on the Death Canyon Shelf after crossing over the Fox Creek Pass. It didn't seem to mind our presence at all and we were able to get this shot from a distance that didn't cause it any concern about our intentions. There had been thunderstorm activity on this day and it seemed the marmot was trying to warm up on the rock.

The Teton Range in particular has a high incidence of melanism among the yellow-bellied marmot population. Melanism is a condition where the animal's skin and fur has a lot of pigment and appears all black. It's the opposite of albanism, in which an animal has no pigment and appears all white. We did see a melanistic yellow-bellied marmot on this day. It's shown below for comparison. On previous trips, we've seen a regular colored yellow-bellied marmot and a melanistic one playing with each other near their burrow entrance.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story!

A mule deer buck with antlers in velvet.  Antlered animals grow new antlers every year and require a layer of skin called velvet to nourish the antlers as they grow.  By the end of summer the velvet dies off exposing the antlers for the mating season.

This buck was next to the road in Yellowstone National Park.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Moose at Moose in Grand Teton National Park

This bull moose was foraging in the Snake River near Moose Village in Grand Teton National Park.  Seems like an appropriate place for them...either that an appropriate name for the place.  Visitors frequently see moose in riverside forests and wetlands throughout the park.  This bull moose and a second one were visible from the bridge that crosses over the Snake River at Moose and were leading to quite a traffic jam as visitors stopped to hike over to see the moose among the willows.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Lone Star Geyser, Yellowstone backcountry, double rainbow

A double rainbow in the mist of the Lone Star Geyser in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park.  A three-mile hiking/biking path leads to this geyser.  When we watched this eruption, only five other people watched it with us.  Contrast that with watching an Old Faithful Geyser eruption with perhaps hundreds of people.

This geyser's cone is listed in "The Geysers of Yellowstone" as being over 9 feet tall making it one of the largest cones in the park.  An eruption occurs about every 3 hours and is typically 30 to 40 feet high and can last more than 10 minutes.

Remember, it's not just a photo, it's a story.