Category Archives: Travel

Stanley Park Totem Poles

The native heritage is strong in the Pacific Northwest.  Stanley Park has an area at Brockton Point that displays a variety of totem poles.  I am not sure of the age of these poles but they are kept in good condition and look great.  I understand many are replicas as the originals have been sent for preservation but others are more recent additions to the park.  Getting pictures of them is slightly tricky.  Something tall and thin does not necessarily make for a dynamic picture.  Instead, I focused on some of the details of the poles rather than the whole thing although getting a view of how many of them there were did seem to make sense.

Aside from the poles, there are portals to the park that welcome the visitors.  These caught my eye quite a bit but seemed to get less attention from the other visitors.  I guess the totem poles are iconic and so are likely to get the most interest.  Supposedly this area is the most visited tourist attraction in British Columbia.  I certainly have no reason to doubt that given how many people were there while we were.

Lime Kiln State Park

B11I8501.jpgFurther up the coast from Grandma’s Cove was Lime Kiln State Park.  The area used to be a hive of lime production – hence the name of the park – but now the focus was on the lovely shoreline and the great views.  The inclusion of a lighthouse certainly did nothing to harm the view.  There were also the remains of a fortification of some sort on a headland which we had seen from further away when traveling towards to the park up the coast road.

B11I8489.jpgThe lighthouse provided a base for a volunteer group that was tracking the wildlife in the area.  They had some signs identifying which whales had been seen in the area and when.  We did not time our visit there well to see the whales although we did catch some later in the day further up the coast.  The volunteers had binoculars to lend out to visitors if they needed them but, with no whales to be seen, we didn’t require them this time.

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Grandma’s Cove

B11I8462.jpgTake a walk from Americas Camp on San Juan Island and you are quickly down by the water.  One of the trails leads to a lovely little bay called Grandma’s Cove.  I don’t know who Grandma was or even whose grandma she was.  Why the cove was hers is a mystery to me too.  However, she obviously had pretty good taste because it is an idyllic spot.  Almost no one was there when I visited.  Unfortunately, a couple of guys were down on the beach and were interested in making art in the sand.  This disrupted my vision of the shots a touch but, when you are somewhere so lovely, it is hard to be upset about anything for long.

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Friday Harbor

AE7I9618-Pano.jpgDespite spending quite a few days in Friday Harbor, I didn’t actually take many pictures of the town itself.  However, when arriving and departing, we had a better view of the town laid out around the harbor.  The waterfront is prime real estate and, as you come in on the ferry, you get to see some very nice places on the island in the middle of the harbor.  The area surrounding the harbor is more accessible for development and so there are a lot of places that are considerably closer together that the really pricey places.

IMG_4190.jpgOur hotel was a little up the hill and so had a nice view across the harbor.  The construction activity below us means a slight distraction from the picturesque ideal but it really was a fantastic spot to hang out for a drink in the evening or for breakfast first thing (or as close to first thing as we could manage while on vacation!).

Big Boat in Anacortes

IMG_4184.jpgWe took a ferry from Anacortes as part of our vacation.  We had some time in hand so stopped for lunch in the town and then took a wander around afterwards.  The center of town is right near the shipyards and they seemed to be pretty busy.  What particularly caught my eye was this huge boat that appeared to have undergone a process to stretch it and add some new structure.  Seeing something this size sitting up on the ground is impressive when you are level with the bottom of the hull!

Port Townsend Aero Museum

B11I8252.jpgYou know your wife is special when, while on vacation and discussing what to do, she points out an aviation museum that you could visit.  Not only that, but when you say she can drop you and pick you up later, she says she would be happy to look around with you.  What a star!  During our trip to the northwest, Nancy suggested the Port Townsend Aero Museum.  I wasn’t even aware of it but I was willing to take a look.  To be honest, our schedule did not include a lot of spare time but we had an hour or too to look around.

B11I8188.jpgThe museum is a really nicely laid out establishment.  The hangar in which everything is kept is a really nice building and the exhibits are laid out well with some on the floor and others suspended from the roof.  The way everything is put together is really good.  There is space around each plane and the signs explaining what everything was were well put together.

B11I8171.jpgThe planes are all in excellent condition and some are still airworthy.  (My only minor gripe was that they all had a museum logo sticker on them which was not ideal from a photo point of view but this is hardly something to focus on.)  The aircraft are all vintage types.  Most are piston powered but there are some gliders too.

B11I8157.jpgThis proved to be a great surprise on the trip (including that Nancy enjoyed it so much)!  I’m not sure how many visitors they get (it was quiet when we were there but we were on a day when I wouldn’t have expected many visitors competing for space.  I hope the business is sustainable because it is a great little museum.

Port Townsend

B11I8274.jpgThe great thing about old towns is that they have interesting buildings.  (They sometimes have interesting people too but that is a separate issue.)  Port Townsend was a funky little town to look around.  As a port, it has been around for a while and obviously was quite a thriving location.  The grand design features of the buildings show that there was plenty of cash around when they were built.  If you head up the hill you come to the town hall which is pretty impressive itself so the town has obviously been a center of things for a while.

B11I8296.jpgIn the heart of the town, the buildings are of a similar style but are showing their individuality.  Getting shots of them is a little inhibited by the excessive number of power lines that are strung along the streets.  It would be nice to not have those there but nothing much I can do about that.  I imagine plenty of people wouldn’t notice them but they are the sort of thing that really catches my eye.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it.  You might not have noticed them but now I have said something, they will be conspicuous to you too!

B11I8264.jpgThere seemed to be plenty of activity in Port Townsend.  Lots of shops and restaurants with plenty of variety so I assume that the area is going to be okay.  Having lots going on means that a cool town center is likely to survive and thrive.  That is good news.

Carmel Day Trip

B11I6880.jpgCarmel is close enough to us to be a nice day trip.  We have been there a few times in the past.  Previous vacations have taken us there and it is an easy add-on when going to Monterey or enjoying 17 Mile Drive.  This was the first time in a while we went just to enjoy Carmel itself.  Most of the time we were wandering around the shops or finding something good to eat.  It was not a photo trip per se but I did have the camera with me so here are some shots of buildings that caught my interest while we were there.

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Crescent Lake

B11I7854.jpgThe drive to the rain forest from Port Angeles took us alongside Crescent Lake.  I suspect I don’t need to tell you roughly what shape the lake is but, if you don’t know, check it out on a map!  It was a pretty overcast morning when we drove by but this provided some soft lighting on the surrounding hills and also gave some interesting clouds to sit in some of the valleys and near the hill tops.

B11I7827.jpgThere were plenty of pull off locations along the road that skirts the south side of the lake.  It appears that the north side is pretty inaccessible by vehicle when looking at the maps of the area.  Only when you get to the west end of the lake do you start to see properties on the other side so I guess the road access up there does not go too far.  The water in the lake was very calm and the whole thing had a very ethereal feel about it.

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Trying to Remove the Traffic on the Bridge

The suspension bridge at Lions Gate in Stanley Park, Vancouver is a magnet for photographers.  I was only passing through but, as we watched the traffic moving across the bridge, I was thinking about how to get a shot that didn’t have cars on it.  The traffic was steady so there was not way I would get a clear moment.  Indeed, while we were there, they changed the lights and reversed the center lane based on the traffic demand.

I didn’t have a tripod but I did decide to experiment with an alternative technique.  This is best done using a tripod and a lot of exposures but I figured I would go with shots that were pretty closely aligned and about half a dozen shots.  This didn’t work perfectly but it didn’t go too badly.  When you get back to the computer, you open up Photoshop.  Click on File and Statistics and a dialog opens up.  Select all of the files and change the option at the top to Median and check Align Images.  Then send it on its way.

Lions Gate.jpgIf the shots are good and there are enough, the algorithm will look at each shot and see the changing items – cars in this case – as the oddities.  It will see what is consistent in each shot and get rid of the odd stuff.  If you have it right, the cars will vanish.  In this case, there were some overlaps and not enough shots but it still did a reasonable job.