Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park is a great place to visit and a superb place to photograph. If you have not been there it is good to know there are basically two sides of the park, Westside and Eastside. On the west side you will find Avalanche Gorge, pictured above, and Lake Mc Donald. Connecting the west and east sides is the Going to the Sun Highway. It is only open once the snow is cleared and this year, 2023, there is no telling when that will be. In a normal winter it is usually opened by the last week in June.

At the top of the pass there is a visitor center and a large parking lot. There are also trails that leave this area going in a variety of directions. The highline trail is a great one and I got this image early in the morning looking back toward the south as the sun was rising. Bear Grass is shown in the foreground, a lucky find as it does not stay around long.

If the Going to the Sun road is closed you can still get the east side by driving around the park to the south. It is well worth the effort as there are several great places to visit on this side and has more photographic opportunities that the west side. The image above was taken at Two Medicine as the sun was rising. I particularly liked the colorful rocks underwater in the foreground.

If you are lucky enough to be here when there is a dark sky (no moon) you can find some decent Milky Way shots. This is looking over Lake Mc Donald from the north east shore. The lights are from the Lake Mc Donald Lodge.

If you are planing to go to Glacier be advised that getting permission to drive the Going to the Sun Highway is not easy. Be sure to check with the park service - if you can get through to them, or check with any of the lodges within the park. When I go this year I will be staying in Apgar and the lodging includes a daytime pass to use the road. But be sure to check before you go.

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Aurora Borealis - May 10, 2024, Last Installment.

On Friday afternoon, May 10, 2024, Jan and I were getting coffee in a very small somewhat crowded coffee shop in downtown Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We overheard people talking about the Northern Lights showing up that night. And thus began one of the most exciting nights of photography in my life. If you have read my three previous blog posts you have seen some of the spectacular color displays we were able to capture. In these images I have included some foreground information to put the color displays in perspective. The picture above was taken to the northeast of the Trumpeter property where they house the pygmy goats and alpacas. Looking to the northwest you can see the moon low on the horizon. The building shown here has an additional suite that is separate from the main B&B house.. This image is looking due east showin the stable for the animals. Another view to the east showing the building with the separate ...

The Aurora Borealis, May 10, 2024

This last May, my wife, Jan, and I were on vacation in the San Juan Islands, WA. We were there for a week staying at the Trumpeter Inn, a B&B on San Juan Island. Mid way through our stay we heard there was to be a Northern Lights display and that we would likely be able to see it since we were at a latitude just north of Victoria, BC. The excitement was immediate. The conditions were just right as the sky was cloudless and the moon was in its crescent phase and would be low on the horizon (and therefore not overly bright) during the expected good viewing time between 10 pm and 2 am. The image above was taken that night and is what I was expecting to see, a green Aurora. Little did we know what was to come! Early on the was the first hint that something special was about to happen as color in addition to green began to show. I found this very exciting as I had seen green auroras before but never one with the purple/blue colors an...

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