Category Archives: Travel

My Friends the Eels

Nancy thinks I am nuts (probably for many reasons) but one of them is because I find eels fascinating. Most aquariums seem to have some eels on display and I love to look at them. Very often they are pretty reticent about coming out, preferring to stay in their crevices keeping an eye out for something tasty. However, at the aquarium in Newport, the eels were a lot more active.

They were either swimming about (including clattering in to each other) or they were in a hole but coming out of it regularly to see what was going on. I have never seen them so active. Needless to say, I got a bunch of pictures as well as trying some video of them. Not often that they are so mobile.

Yaquina Head Lighthouse

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Yaquina Head got two visits from us during our stay in Oregon. We were in Newport on one of our early days and headed up to see it. Shortly after paying to get in to the park, the rain started to come down. I did a quick recce of the place but rapidly became more interested in the interior of a warm car (which Nancy had wisely elected not to leave in the first place). The entry was good for a few days so, with better weather forecast for later in the week, we decided to come back.

The weather dutifully obeyed and improved and we returned on our next trip to Newport. When its not raining, things definitely take on a more appealing feel. We wandered up to the lighthouse and took a look around it and out to see where some gray whales were passing by, if a little distant and happy to stay below the surface most of the time.

From the headland, there were stairs down to the beach which, when the tide was out (as it was while we were there), revealed a lot of rocky tidepools. People were encouraged to explore the tidepools to see the wildlife that is within. You could go quite a way across them but, given the number of creatures that were clinging to the rock surfaces, I was a bit reluctant to go trampling across them. Instead, I maneuvered around on the edges where I could avoid crushing some poor creature.

Plenty of things were living in the pools. While the crustaceans were everywhere, I was particularly drawn to the anemones. The way in which they close up when out of the water, keep themselves damp internally and then open up once they are back under water is impressive. They are also so varied in their colors. They are quite the interesting creature.

Oregon Bridges

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The Pacific Coast Highway runs along the coast in Oregon and passes through some towns with big harbors. Rather than head inland around the harbors, the highway crosses the entrance to some of these harbors over bridges. The architecture of some of these bridges is pretty cool. They have a bit of a deco feel to them. Sadly, some of the details are best seen as you are driving over which limits the ability to get pictures.

Get a bit further away, though, and you can see the bridges and get some shots. Sunset on the bridge at Waldport made for a good view. The bridge at Newport was one we crossed a number of times. I only got to shoot it on the morning we drove home. A quick diversion down to the area near the brewery meant I could take a couple of pictures before getting on our way for the long drive home.

The Benefits of Lens Compression

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The stormy waves coming ashore in Yachats were providing some great splashes as they broke on the shore. They would crash into the rocks and send spray high into the air. If you were further along the shore and looked back at the people closer to the rocks, they would occasionally be silhouetted against the plume of spray. The cool thing about shooting this with a long lens is that it looks as if they are almost being overwhelmed by the waves. Get a bit closer and they are clearly a long way from the water and in no danger of getting wet (except for a bit of the mist if you are downwind of the impact point).

What Are These Stretches of Concrete

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I had a lot of time to look around while I was at Rainbow Canyon. As the day wore on and the sun came around, I started to have a clearer view to the south. In the morning, it had been quite foggy in that direction but that was burning off and I could see the above view. It looked a bit like there was a runway out there but it was so far away, I couldn’t be sure. When I got home, I looked on Google Maps. Sure enough, there are some long stretches of what looks like concrete but no indication of what there are. Do any of you know? The place is called Millspaugh if you want to look it up.

Hangar Structure Remnants

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Tillamook in Oregon is well known as a home of cheese production. It is also home to an airfield that was once a base for naval airship operations. Two massive hangars were built to house the huge airships in the days before they went out of favor as a patrol vehicle. One of them remains and is the home of a museum amongst other things. The other hangar is long gone. However, traces of it remain.

The structure of these large hangars was predominantly wood but there were some concrete elements. Each end of the hangar had huge rolling doors and the posts to support that system were large concrete structures. Meanwhile, the arches along the length of the hangar were rooted in concrete bases. While the wood from the hangar has been taken away, the concrete sections remain. Whether they were too difficult to remove or just not worth the cost, I don’t know. What I do know is that they are still there and other things have moved in to operate within their footprint, in this case a lumber yard.

I include a picture of the remaining hangar for reference so you can see where the various structural elements exist within the finished building in case it is not immediately apparent. When we first passed by this location on a trip about ten years ago, it took me some time to work out what these strange items were.

Rainbow Canyon Earns its Name in the Afternoon Light

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Many of the aviation people reading this will immediately know what Rainbow Canyon is. For the rest of you, it is a canyon in Death Valley. It is part of a low flying route used for military training and it is a popular spot for photographers to get shots of low flying jets either at eye level or below you in the canyon. Today it is not going to be pictures of the jets though. The canyon earned its name because there are many layers of rock in the walls that are of different colors.

I was there in winter so the sun angles never got too high. This avoided washing out the colors of the rocks quite effectively. Even so, as the day wore on, the angle of the sun certainly improved from the point of view of getting the color out of the rocks. There was plenty of time with nothing flying so I was able to enjoy the views around the canyon a lot.

One thing that you struggle to appreciate at a place like this is the scale. I read about the Spanish first arriving at the Grand Canyon and totally failing to appreciate the scale because there was nothing to give them a reference. Rainbow Canyon, while a lot smaller than the Grand Canyon (obviously), still is deceptive. The distance across felt very small until a jet flew through and you realized how far away it still was and it was not even close to the other side. A quick look on Google Maps with the scale showing makes you realize it is actually a long way across.

Thor’s Well

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The stretch of coastline in Oregon that we visited had plenty to do. We had to scratch a few of the things we had thought about in order to do other things given the time available. One of the things we didn’t get close to was Thor’s Well. This is a hole in the rocks along the shore where the water can rush up from underneath. You can get close to the hole but you have to be careful as this is the sort of thing that can overwhelm you if you are not careful.

We only got to watch this from the overlook along the highway. The surf was running in quite strongly while we were there and the tides combined with it to provide a fair bit of action at the well. Even so, from this distance, you didn’t get much of a sense of the power of the water. If we go back, I will take the trail down there to get a closer look.

The Start of a New Stadium

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NFL fans in a couple of cities are still mourning the loss of their teams to Los Angeles. With the Rams and the Chargers both now based in LA, a new stadium is being built to accommodate them. Meanwhile, they are playing in existing stadiums. The new stadium, when it is finished, will be one of the most extravagant designs and will be used for other tasks including the future Olympics. Right now, construction work is underway. I saw the work site from my plane as I came in to LAX but didn’t have the camera to hand. However, when flying above LAX in the helicopter, I was able to get some shots at a bit of a distance of the work in progress.

Night Waves

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After dinner one night in Yachats, I decided to go out and see what I could make of the waves crashing on the shore at night. A number of lights were trained on the shoreline from the local properties so it wasn’t too dark out there. Even so, it certainly wasn’t very light. Time to test the low light capabilities of the cameras. The fact I was going to get slow shutter speeds didn’t bother me particularly as I was interested to see the effects that I could get showing the motion of the waves.

Light levels were indeed better than I had anticipated and I was able to get a lot of shots that came out okay. There was a good element of luck involved too. Waves are horribly unpredictable. If you see something good, you can almost guarantee it won’t do it again and, even if it does, it will be ages before the next set of waves comes in and, even then, the big wave will break differently. Also, some of the shapes they make turn out to look good in the shot and others are just indistinct messes. Nothing to do but hang around for a long time and try and lot of different shots and see which ones work. This randomness is a little frustrating as you feel you should be able to do something to improve but, in this case, it is a case of being there.