Bonneville

One of my favorite places in the world. The Bonneville Salt Flats is about as far from anything as you can get. The black line in the picture is about nine miles long. It's a guide for the cars that race at the salt flats, sometimes attaining speeds of 450 miles an hour. The mountain on the horizon is 13 miles away.

Sarah on the Mountain

I love this picture. This is my daughter Sarah on her wedding day. She's standing at the top of a mountain that's the highest point in Benton County, Oregon. In the background, in the distance, you can see the fields of the Willamette Valley.

Sunset

You just can't beat a sunset for sheer overwhelming beauty.

Stonehenge

Perhaps no structure in the world is as storied and mysterious as Stonehenge. It's not really that large, but it is an imposing structure nonetheless. I wanted to capture the sense of mystery that surrounds it, so after I took the picture, I polarized it and added the "wind" feature. I wanted to give the sense of the dark secrets that Stonehenge holds, and also that it was gradually being eroded.

Lighthouses

What is it about lighthouses? We are fascinated by them, and we preserve them, though they have no use anymore as instruments of navigation. Maybe it's the old hymn, "Let the lower lights keep burning; send a message o'er the wave; some poor drowning, struggling seaman; you may rescue, you may save."

This lighthouse is on the Oregon coast, toward the north. It was a Sunday, and there was nobody there but me and the gulls.

Ninemile

In the central part of Utah is a canyon that's been called the "longest art gallery in the world." It's Nine Mile Canyon, and it's much more than nine miles long. If you go, take a truck or a car you don't care much about, 'cause it's dirt road.

It's a canyon full of Anasazi and Fremont petroglyphs. They're right there, by the road, where you can see them from your car or hike twenty or thirty yards up to them.

They are mysterious, eerie, beautiful, and fragile. So, if you go, step lightly. Here are some photos of the petroglyphs.

Book Review Time

I'm currently in the middle of a book entitled, "Or Perish in the Attempt." The title kind of gives the flavor of the work. It's a history of the medical aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition, what health problems they encountered, what medicines they had, what happened to the people. The title of the book is kind of a breathless gasp of admiration for the men, which I share, but it's a little melodramatic for me.
I mean, I'm enjoying the book tremendously, because of all the things I'm learning, but it is a clumsy, uneven book. The author will stop in the middle of the narrative to give a lecture on the history of malaria. Sometimes the tone is ponderous, sometimes it's flippant, and there doesn't seem to be any reason why the author chooses the particular tone he uses.
Still and all, I'm learning a lot about the discovery expedition, which reinforces my belief that the Lewis and Clark expedition was America's greatest adventure to date.