On the Road and In Your Backyard

Good Morning All,

I’m back, still cleaning up way old stuff and dealing with lots of tech demons.

This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.

So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.

You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.

For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

 

For the rest of the year, I’ll be cleaning up old pictures. Feel free to use the form to submit more, but like so much I’m dealing with right now, I feel honor-bound to clean up the old archives and get ready for new content. I didn’t realize I’d missed so much good stuff from mid summer and beyond!

 

 

This is from ancient, email submission – Day 2 and more tomorrow! – from PaulB that I missed long ago. Sorry about that, but I’m glad I have some “seed in store”. These are just amazing, and there’re more days coming!

Where it was taken: Mount Rainier National Park
When: July 2, 2017
Commenter: PaulB
Other info: Day 2 of the Mount Rainier vacation, this time focusing on the southern and southwestern part of the park.

1: This beauty was in the back yard of the cabin I’m renting, about ten feet away from my back window. The picture is a bit fuzzy because I was shooting through the screen. There was a herd of 7 or 8 elk moving through the yard, taking a bite here and there as they went. Unfortunately, it was too early and I was only half-awake so I spoiled most of the shots.

2: Ho-hum, another magnificent scenic waterfall. It’s far too easy to become jaded by the amazing sites that are everywhere around.

3: My first view of Mount Rainier of the day. The last time I visited the park was several years ago, also over the July 4th holiday, and the cloud cover never lifted the entire three days I was there. I knew there was a mountain up there but I literally never saw it.

4 through 6: Reflection Lakes. These are probably the most-photographed area of the park, as the lakes are right off the road and you can often get a spectacular shot of Mount Rainier reflected in the lake.

7: Asters near the Reflection Lakes.

8: Rainier is just one of many mountain peaks in this park.

9: But it’s still the granddaddy of them all.

10: A closeup of what I think is the Nisqually glacier. You can tell the glaciers from the snow pack because of the telltale blue color of the ice.

11 and 12: Paradise Inn and Visitor Center, one of the most frequented stops in the park and the second-highest point accessible by car at one mile up (Sunrise Point is higher at 6400 feet).

13: The disappointing part of the trip. Note the sign at the base of the stairs promising that this was the start of several trails. Unfortunately, they were all covered by the snow.

14: Magnificent scenery as far as the eye can see.

15 and 16: Another lovely waterfall.

17: And its younger cousin.

18: A rainbow in the water at Narada Falls.

19: The Nisqually river with its well-known log bridge. The river is laden with glacier “flour,” which gives it its characteristic color. The bridge is sturdier than it looks and is easy to cross.

20: Driftwood/root systems can be very interesting shapes. What do you see here?

21: Rainer’s early claim to fame, aside from the sheer splendor of the mountain, was as a source for hot springs. Two commercial enterprises were opened on opposite sides of the park. This is the set of springs near Longmire, which is near the southwestern entrance of the park. There is still a ranger station, hotel, restaurant and gift shop at this site.

22: More interesting root systems from an uprooted tree.

23: And, of course, green everywhere you look.

 

Just….wow! I can’t wait to share days 3, 4, and 5 with you folks! I’ll intersperse over the next few days.

 

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