BigJimSlade
And we’re off – if you look closely, Mürren is across the valley (we walked around there the day before – it’s lovely! But I didn’t take many pictures there.) Embiggen
by WaterGirl| 19 Comments
This post is in: Hiking in the Alps, On The Road, Photo Blogging
And we’re off – if you look closely, Mürren is across the valley (we walked around there the day before – it’s lovely! But I didn’t take many pictures there.) Embiggen
by WaterGirl| 17 Comments
This post is in: Hiking in the Alps, On The Road, Photo Blogging
Before I continue, I have to note that traveling from Chamonix to Grindelwald, we took six trains. We only had to wait between 5 and 20 minutes for each one.
Männlichen is a mountain that separates Grindelwald from Lauterbrunnen. It has excellent views all around, especially of the mountains that dwarf it, the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. At a pass between here and the higher mountains is Kleine Scheidegg, where a cog railway connects the 2 valleys.
For this hike we took a gondola up from Grindelwald to Männlichen. From there we would walk a short spur trail called the Royal Walk, then turn around and head towards Kleine Scheidegg, then up to where the Eiger Express from Grindelwald drops off people off to get on the train to the Jungfraujoch (a spectacular viewpoint like Aiguille du Midi, but we didn’t go to this one), or to hike or climb or see the Eiger Glacier. After having lunch up there, we continued down to Wengen, a lovely town perched about 1,500 feet above Lauterbrunnen. From there we took a gondola back up to Männlichen and another back down to Grindelwald.
Today we’ll cover up to lunch time.
Views to the peaks behind Lauterbrunnen valley. Embiggen
by WaterGirl| 27 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging
I had a few days off from the Home of the Orange Apron around Labor Day, so I decided to take the opportunity to get away from the oppressive heat in LA by driving 5 hours to someplace much, much hotter. The weather reports on cloud cover looked good, so I decided to go, I mean it was hot in LA, how much worse could it be? I learned that it could in fact be much worse, the temperature got down to a balmy 99 degrees just before sunrise and the promised clear skies were overcast much of the night.
This was not my first trip to Death Valley, I’ve been there a couple of times before; however my last visit to the valley was 55 years ago before it was a National Park. Many parts of the Park were not open due to flooding in early August. The road north to Ubehebe crater was closed and the road south was closed south of Badwater. So there were only two ways in and out of the park, I decided to drive in from the east taking I-15 to Baker and then heading north to Death Valley Junction and then east to Dante’s View for the sunset over the valley, this worked well. I had planned to head down to Badwater from there and shoot for the night, but pretty thick passing clouds made that impossible. I drove to the Mesquite Sand Dunes to get a shot of the setting moon, but that was about it. I drove back to Badwater to get the sunrise and then drove back out to the west to meet up with the familier US-395 for the trip back to sunny(and still hot) Glendale.
This probably the last set of photos that you’ll see taken with the NX-1, the next set you’ll see will be shot with the Sony A7iv.
Death Valley Junction is pretty much a ghost town, but they do have a large plaza anchored by the Amargosa Opera House.
On The Road – BillinGlendaleCA – Death ValleyPost + Comments (27)
by WaterGirl| 19 Comments
This post is in: Albatrossity, On The Road, Photo Blogging
Wow, this itinerary has us all over the map. Africa on Monday with Albatrossity, Death Valley with BillinGlendaleCA on Tuesday, then on to the Alps with BigJimSlade for the rest of the week. Gosh, when you guys plan these trips, does no one think of the time zones???
Back to Africa again this week, with some fine waterbirds and some boneheaded bliss!
Here’s the bliss. Red-billed Oxpecker (Buphagus erythrorynchus) doing a splendid job removing ectoparasites from the ear of a Cape Buffalo. Win-win! Click here for larger image.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Ngorongoro Crater 3Post + Comments (19)
by WaterGirl| 12 Comments
This post is in: Hiking in the Alps, On The Road, Photo Blogging
Continuing on to Schynige Platte. We weren’t exactly sure when the last cog train down was, so we booked it through some beautiful terrain. It would’ve been nice to take our time a bit more, but sometimes the end of a long hike can get to be a slog, so having something to push for helped in a way.
by WaterGirl| 16 Comments
This post is in: Hiking in the Alps, On The Road, Photo Blogging
I couldn’t help a selfie here, leaving Bachalpsee, with a window to Wetterhorn. Embiggen
by WaterGirl| 18 Comments
This post is in: Hiking in the Alps, On The Road, Photo Blogging
A longish, but super wonderful hike from First (pronounced feersht), to Bachalpsee (that’s a lake), to Faulhorn (a high point with dramatic views), and ending up at Schynige Platte (pronounced Schynige Platte ;-) ), which is serviced by a cog train bringing you back down to the valley near Interlaken, where we could take the regular train back to Grindelwald.
We were going to do a different hike (which we did the next day), but after waiting for a bus for 30 minutes, we realized we totally misread the schedule and it only comes every hour and we had almost another 30 minutes to wait. But about 20 yards away (for that whole 30 minutes) was the gondola up to First, so we improvised, called an audible, and jumped right on the gondola.
This is the First Cliff Walk, to give tourists a rush by walking over emptiness. We didn’t bother, but it probably would’ve been at least kinda fun. We just headed straight out. Embiggen