Photography 2

Looked at that road on the map and I've been on it a couple of times. It leads up to a logging road called the 2000. If you start from town and take a different road (not the gravel place road), travel 25 miles to the 2000 road, it goes a handful of places including a city 28 miles away or even connects to an east/west highway that's 45 miles from town...... It also connects to interstate 5 if you don't mind a 5 hour ride that could be done in an hour by taking the highway like most people do.
This area was where I got the bug for my backwood travel adventures when I got my driver's license.
Once you drive 20 miles on a mountainous gravel logging road and end up coming out somewhere else..... AKA "civilization"....you learn that all roads go somewhere and you have to check every single one of them to see if they dead end or not. Ahhh, I miss those days.
Before the coast highway (US 101), one of these roads was how you traveled to get to my town. Coming down the cliff blasted out next to a tall waterfall, you traveled across a trestle, then drove another 10 miles to board a barge or boat and floated another 12 miles in tidewater into town.
Life was different back then.
........did you ask a question?

highup said:

Life was different back then.

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Let’s go back to back then That would be a good movie title.

I'm all for that. Neighbor was a scout leader. They had 5 boys.
Godmother and father lived across the street. He was a longshoreman. They hate a tiny lot along the river 20 miles from here. As little kids we tried catching minnows with kitchen strainers and tipped over rocks to catch crawdads. As we got older, the older kids who could drive took us up "the river" fishing. Discovering the logging roads became a never ending adventure. First locally, then a neighbor who drove a log truck asked if I'd ever been from Powers (tiny logging town 50 miles away)
to Gold beach (it's back on the coast). Here straight down the coast to Gold Beach is 75 miles. Here> to Powers> to Gold Beach on the back roads is probably 120 miles.
Any how, I drove that back road once and found a new haunt to explore. That's where hippy on a rock came from. That entire area is not remotely close to our local geography. Locally, it's lots of fir and alder trees,b slippery rocks and moss.
Towards Powers, you are on a different geologic plate with rocks instead of dirt, much higher elevations, totally different trees and weather. There too, many hundreds of miles of logging roads. These roads also go from the coast highway 101, inland to interstate 5, the main interstate from Mexico to Canada.

There at 1,000 and 1,500+ foot elevations I discovered clam and mussel fossils.... The ocean was either up there..... or much more likely, "up there" rose slowly up and out of the ocean up to its current location.
There are also some hiking trails up there but it's rare to see other cars or people. I feel pretty lucky being here in the same city where I've spent my entire life. Lots of solitude and not too far away.... We do have a Walmart superstore for social gatherings and entertainment ( men in leotards, piercing recipients and goth costumes). We got it all.

I messed with my phones photo editing program tonight after taking a couple photos at my nephews place tonight. He's got a couple dogs and 3 cats. This one's young and frisky.... It's got a pretty cool temperament.
I erased the table and background and it looks like carpet now. Then came some contrast, white point and black point tweaks, sharpening, cropping and a dash of vignette.
I'm not sure if these could be enlarged much, but I might give an 8X10 a shot just to find out.
Pretty impressive for only a few minutes work.

It's been so cold and windy lately that there hasn't been much opportunity to get outdoors. I've been trying to go to indoor places to get some exercise and practice in.
Our city has an historical landmark called the Embassy Theater that was built in 1926. It's an amazingly beautiful piece of architecture. This year it celebrated the 40th annual Festival of Trees. It's a huge charity event that raises a lot of money for those in need. Some of my shots from that event...

They had record attendance... It was actually busier when we came through the lobby below it was totally elbow to elbow.

Due to the crowded close quarters, this was one of the few trees I could nearly get a complee shot of.

The ornamentation on some of these trees is unreal...

This was one of my favorite trees this year. I just loved the Edison lights on it. It was sponsored by a local lighting company...

This tree is sponsored by the Embassy Theater itself and its theme is the history of the Embassy...

The Fort Wayne Art Guild had a tree and the ornaments were all hand painted and created by the members of the guild...

Another of the hand painted ornaments...

Of course ya gotta have Santa!

Just loved all the red on this tree. The bear was hand made...

My picture doesn't do this one justice. These were done as Magi. Unfortunately, I couldn't get into a good position to get all three of them framed correctly. I cut off part of Gaspar's head. But, I felt it would have been bad to knock over an old lady in a wheelchair to get a better shot!

Of course I found a bird to get a picture of...

Beautiful pictures CFR you rule wether inside or out.

DarisMulkin said:

Beautiful pictures CFR you rule wether inside or out.

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Thanks so much Daris!

Friday evening, I was left to my own devices. So, I decided to go to our local botanical conservatory. It was $1 night, and they had an exhibition called "Gnome for the Holidays". More on that in a moment. This lovely Bird of Paradise flower jumped right out at me...

This lovely little red flower against the green background just made some beautiful Christmas colors...

Now, getting back to the gnomes. I don't know who created these little exhibits, but they were amazingly detailed...