Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

This really is a full service blog.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

How stupid are these people?

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

So very ready.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

This blog will pay for itself.

You are here: Home / Photo Blogging / On The Road / On the Road and In Your Backyard

On the Road and In Your Backyard

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On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.

From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.

Submit Your Photos

Good Morning All,

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!

 

Today, pictures from valued commenter ?BillinGlendaleCA.

When I graduated from high school, my dad gave me a choice: I could go to grad night at Disneyland or go on a hike with out church group in Yosemite. I wisely chose the hike.

We started at Glacier Point on the southern rim of the valley. Glacier Point has stunning view of the valley including Half Dome. The first day we hiked from Glacier Point, above Vernal and Nevada falls to the campground in Little Yosemite Valley. We spent a day there to rest before hiking to the top of Half Dome. We spent one more night in the Little Valley before hiking down past Nevada and Vernal falls to Yosemite Valley.

These pictures were all shot on Kodachrome slides that I’ve scanned. Since I didn’t shoot these with a graduated density filter to balance the sky with the foreground, I’ve darkened the sky in Photoshop(otherwise the sky would be just kind of white).

All pictures were taken in the 3rd week of June 1978.

Half Dome from Glacier Point

This was the start of our hike, being late June there was still quite a bit of snow on the mountains in the background and even a patch of snow on Half Dome.

Vernal and Nevada falls.

This is also from Glacier Point and shows Nevada falls upstream and Vernal falls below with Sentinel Dome to the left of Nevada falls.

I have a print of this photo in my bathroom.

Yosemite Valley.

This is looking down at Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point. Until about a week ago when I re-scanned these slides, I thought this picture was taken from Half Dome.

Yosemite falls.

We’ve finally started off on the trail from Glacier Point and there was a nice view of Upper and Lower Yosemite falls between two pine trees.

A Bruin.

Before we began the hike to Half Dome, we noticed that we had a visitor to our camp, a bear making his(or her) way back from having breakfast in the Merced river. This picture freaks my step-daughter out, “Dad, you’re too close to that bear”.

Chain line up Half Dome.

After a hike of 3 or 4 miles, we reached the final portion of the climb up Half Dome. It’s a chain attached to poles mounted in the rock on the back of Half Dome. Going up is pretty easy, going down was challenging.

Yosemite Valley.

This is Yosemite Valley from the top of Half Dome. El Capitan is pretty much in the center of the photo.

 

Thank you so much ?BillinGlendaleCA, do send us more when you can.

 

Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.

 

Have a great weekend everyone, lots of great stuff up for next week!

 

 

One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email

Reader Interactions

59Comments

  1. 1.

    raven

    I went up to Triple Divide Peak about 20 years ago. I couldn’t believe we were the only ones up there in July!

  3. 3.

    Van Buren

    In the summer of 77 , I took a H’S class called Outdoor Survival. This was in Huntington Beach. The school district turned down a week long hike in Yosemite, so the teacher resubmitted it as a trip to the “Northern Tehachapis”
    Thusly I was introduced to the wonders of Yosemite.

    This will only be funny if you know California geology.
    Awesome pictures

  4. 4.

    raven

    @Van Buren: That’s funny, I did my climb with my buddy who lives in Bezekely. He has a geology degree from Cal and at one point we were having trouble figuring out where we were and he said “I’m a bad geologist”!

  7. 7.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @raven: I don’t think we needed any permits to climb Half Dome and there were only a few people up there. Now days, you need a permit because there are so many people that want to make the climb.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Nice. Going down is always more difficult than going up… unless you have enough rope.

  13. 13.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @p.a.: The pics were scanned using a 35mm film/slide scanner and I used 7 samples at 7200 dpi to produce each about 65 megapixel image. Using 7 samples almost produces a HDR quality file, but I still had to go into Photoshop to reduce the brightness of the sky.

  19. 19.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Every now and again we use ‘cable ladders’ in caving. They suck donkey dick. You actually climb the sides of them by hooking your heels on each rung. It’s been more than a few years since I used one but,best as I recall, going up sucked every bit as much as going down.

  25. 25.

    satby

    Beautiful pictures Bill!
    I visited Yosemite in 1974 and briefly again about 4 years later. Just gorgeous, though I admit every time I saw an old guy taking pictures I hoped it was Ansel Adams. Never was.

  26. 26.

    HinTN

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I made the day trip from The Valley up to the top of Half Done and back just after Labor Day in 89. I had grand plans to hike up and back to Glacier Point, rest a day and do Half Dome. When I got to the place above the falls where the decision had to be made I knew damn well I could do one or the other but not both. Half Dome is a remarkable place. Beautiful pix, Bill. Thanks!!!

  30. 30.

    Alain the site fixer

    @p.a.: sorry I missed the moth pic, I’m doing a bunch of smaller stuff Monday, so that’ll run.

  32. 32.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @HinTN: My nym links to my Flickr album page, all shots I post here are in the “Balloon Juice – On the Road” album. I believe you have the option to download there, though it’s a lower res version than the original and has my watermark on it as it does here. The original TIFF file is a couple of gigabytes.

  33. 33.

    satby

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, I was in my late teens / early twenties back when I was there. Now I look at the chain ladder picture and my first thought is “no f**king way”. I can still hike, but no more death defying feats for me.

  35. 35.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @debbie:

    Nice to see that word “Kodachrome” again.

    Kodachrome
    They give us those nice bright colors
    They give us the greens of summers
    Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day
    I got a Nikon camera
    I love to take a photograph
    So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

    My family almost exclusively shot slides when I was growing up, so the vast majority is Kodachrome. The shots my wife and I took in the 80’s and 90’s were on Kodak Gold.

  36. 36.

    maurinsky

    Fabulous pictures! I read that national parks are getting record numbers of visitors this year, I’m assuming it’s because people are worried these tremendous public assets are going to be phased out by Trump.

  37. 37.

    debbie

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    Right! Most of my portfolio from art school still survives on slides and, these billions of years later, they show zero fading. Can’t imagine a Canon printer doing better than that!

  38. 38.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @debbie: I have some really old slides that are showing fading, but I think they’re Ektachrome and also about 60 years old.

    @maurinsky: Thanks.

    I’m trying to figure out whether to send in Milky Way pics from Joshua Tree or pics from Seoul next. Decisions, decisions…

  39. 39.

    Alain the site fixer

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: yeah my big scanning project is tons of Eitschrime slides, many processed in foreign labs and so who knows the quality of the chemistry! Some are faded but many have chemical deposits and such from atmospheric condensation and smoke and other fire residue from when my family home burned.

  40. 40.

    Waratah

    Great photos Bill, i am debating showing these to my daughter because I know she will want to climb that rock.

  43. 43.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Alain the site fixer: Thanks for the heads up when these would run, it’s pretty useful to know out here on the west coast so I’d know to be up. Some of the pics we took on our first trip to Korea were developed there and they did a absolutely awful job developing them(we had to so my wife’s dad could see the pics). One of the challenges in scanning those pics is correcting the problems. On the positive side, once I’ve cleaned them up, I’ve got good digital negatives.

    One thing I’ve noticed in scanning these slides, is that the scans are so detailed that I’m noticing blisters in the emulsion; probably caused by showing them in a slide projector.

  45. 45.

    Quinerly

    @Central Planning:
    For some reason, I can’t pull up that email acct on the smarty pants phone. Will check on the laptop when I’m back in St. Louis this afternoon. It’s the old ATT account, I think.

  46. 46.

    Quinerly

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Actually from Kitty Ivan. He spent the night shut up in the bathroom in the Charleston, West Virginia Motel 6….showed him your nature shots to perk him up. The last time he free roamed in the Motel 6, it got ugly. Kitties can crawl up and under the mattress. Never lift the mattress in a Motel 6 to look for wayward pu?? y. But, I digress?

  51. 51.

    Elizabelle

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Had to see what OTR feature had drawn 50 comments. Your photos — and subject matter — are superb.

    I wish sometime we could do an LA/Glendale meetup and Photoshop class with you. In awe of your slide-scanning and correcting skills.

    I have a bunch of family and travel photos (my dad’s work, from the 1960s) that I would love to look through and share with my sisters. Would love to learn what to do to scan them and enhance any that need help. (The slides may not.)

    Also a bunch of negatives from prints; wonder if those could be developed or color corrected. Hate to see our Technicolor life on the fade.

  52. 52.

    Barbara

    These pictures are just amazing. They are beautiful in their own right, but I have to say that it is even more amazing that there were so few other visitors to Yosemite during the summer. Now, you have to make reservations just to get into the park. I am not nostalgic, per se, the fact that people love national parks makes it much easier to preserve them, but how special it must have been to have a glorious day like that in the uncrowded wilderness.

  54. 54.

    Quinerly

    @Elizabelle:
    It’s a point A to B kinda thing…cheap place to chill when traveling with a pet or pets in this case. I have found some I routinely return to in Oklahoma when driving to NM and the one in Tucumcari is quite good. Of course, nothing like the FDR room at Winslow’s La Posada where Poco can watch trains all night.??

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    @Quinerly: I think we need to do a BJ La Posada meetup — for a few days — sometime. It is heaven. With great coffee and food and art and trains.

    And petz!

  56. 56.

    Miss Bianca

    Great photos,Bill. So, you were taking awesome photos from a very young age? Jealous! I’m a very poor photographer and artist who would love to be accomplished at either or both!

    Alain, just putting the word out that I will be heading to New Mexico Sunday eve and staying for a couple days – would love to meet up with some NM jackals! (O.Felix Culpa, are you there? Are you listening? Bat/jackal signal going up!)

  57. 57.

    J R in WV

    BillnGlendale:

    Great photos, as usual. Thanks for doing all that digital lab work scanning and tuning up old slides. That’s not as big fun as the taking of photos is, but it allows you to share your art with the world – well done!

    And Thanks!

  59. 59.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Elizabelle: Thanks…me teaching a Photoshop class? Oh, heavens no; I’m still learning myself. This was mostly adjustments of exposure in Lightroom and just using Photoshop to put 2 differently exposed part together.

    @Miss Bianca: I’ve been taking pics since I was in Jr. High and even had my own darkroom. After high school I was mainly just a casual camera shooter, I guess I got bitten by some photo bug about 4 years ago.

    @J R in WV: I scanned everything about 3 years ago, now I’m going back and re-scanning them in higher quality scans(resolution and color). I’m only really applying post processing to a tiny fraction of the pics. It’s kind of interesting to take a travel pic from 25 or 35 years ago and turning it into a picture you’d want put on the wall.

    @eclare: Thanks.

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