Exit78 Photo of the Day #41

We first saw this beautiful Catholic church perched on a rock about nine miles south of Estes park on Colorado 7 in the early 1990s. On our 2011 trip, we stopped to get some pictures from the road.

Chapel on a Rock (St. Catherine of Siena Chapel), Allenspark, Colorado, September 16, 2011 (Pentax K10D)

St. Catherine of Siena Chapel is built on a large piece of granite that the Colorado highway department once planned to dynamite to widen and straighten the road. Located on the grounds of  Saint Malo Retreat, Conference, and Spiritual Center, which was badly damaged in a fire in November 2011, the chapel was completed in 1936, fulfilling a 20 year-old inspiration of Monsignor Joseph Bosetti that was based on the Biblical phrase “upon this rock I will build my church.”

Plans to rebuild the Retreat Center were thwarted when 2013 devastating floods and mudslides badly damaged the land and infrastructure needed for the restoration, though it left the chapel, built on that granite rock, undamaged. Current restoration and renovation plans will rebuild portions of the property with a new retreat center built elsewhere due to the unpredictable conditions of the land and the possibility of future sediment flows and mudslides. Improvements inside the St. Catherine of Siena Chapel have been completed.

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.

Exit78 Photo of the Day #40

The thermal features of Yellowstone are fascinating and deadly.

Black Pool, West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, August 4, 2010 (Pentax K10D)

Black Pool (Wikipedia) is a hot spring – temperature 72.9 °C (163.2 °F) – in the West Thumb Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

The pool was cool enough up until 1991 for dark orange-brown cyanobacteria to grow throughout the pool. When combined with the blue of the water, the pool appeared to be an exceptionally dark green to almost black, hence the name.

An exchange of function took place in 1991, shifting thermal energy to Black Pool and nearby Abyss Pool, causing them to heat up. Black Pool’s temperature became hot enough to kill all the cyanobacteria in the pool, turning the pool a rich teal blue color. The pool also had frequent boiling eruptions on August 15, 1991, doming the water to 3 feet and causing heavy runoff. Black Pool remains extremely hot, and is now one of Yellowstone’s most beautiful and intensely blue pools. The name of the pool remains “Black Pool.”

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.

Exit78 Photo of the Day #39

Four months from now, the air will be hot and heavy with humidity, the cicadas will be droning and the summer flowers will be in bloom.

Black-eyed Susan blossoms (Rudbeckia hirta) in the yard, west-central Arkansas, July 27, 2008 (Pentax K10D)

Rudbeckia hirta, commonly called black-eyed Susan, is a North American flowering plant in the sunflower family, native to Eastern and Central North America and naturalized in the Western part of the continent as well as in China. It has now been found in all 10 Canadian Provinces and all 48 of the states in the contiguous United States.

Rudbeckia hirta is one of a number of plants with the common name black-eyed Susan. Other common names for this plant include: brown-eyed Susan, brown betty, gloriosa daisy, golden Jerusalem, English bull’s eye, poor-land daisy, yellow daisy, and yellow ox-eye daisy.

The plant also is a traditional Native American medicinal herb in several tribal nations; believed in those cultures to be a remedy, among other things, for colds, flu, infection, swelling and (topically, by poultice) for snake bite (although not all parts of the plant are edible)

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.

Post-processing¹ #14

Navajo Loop Trail, Bryce Canyon National Park, October 7, 2015 (Apple iPhone panorama)

Navajo Loop Trail, the most popular trail in Bryce Canyon National Park, takes visitors down into the Bryce Amphitheater. Rated as a moderate trail, it drops steeply² from Sunset Point regardless of which direction the hiker takes. The last half of the 1.4 mile trail climbs back up to Sunset Point.

1. Image editing to enhance the photo closer to what the eye “saw.” Images in this series are selected within a day or so of being edited and are either posted at the time or scheduled for posting at a later date.
2. Online, you’ll find several different numbers for the elevation change for this hike. The park service page says 550 feet,  AllTrails has 521 feet, and Utah.com has 800 feet! Besides latitude and longitude, the GPS in my Pentax camera records the elevation for each photo.  From a photo taken at the top and another down in the amphitheater, I calculated 450 feet.

Exit78 Photo of the Day #38

During our 2009 eastern states trip, we camped near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

White Hall Tavern and Meriwether Lewis at Harper’s Ferry exhibit,  Potomac Street, Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, West Virginia, May 15, 2009 (Pentax K10D)

Harpers Ferry National Historic Park includes the historic town of Harpers Ferry, notable as a center of 19th-century industry and as the scene of John Brown’s abolitionist uprising. Consisting of almost 4,000 acres (16 km²), it includes the site of which Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature” after visiting the area in 1783. During the course of the American Civil War (1861–1865), Harpers Ferry exchanged hands at least eight times.

(Note: I actually revised Wikipedia from  “Consisting of almost 4,000 acres (16 km²), the landmarks the site on which Thomas Jefferson once said…” to the sentence used in the excerpt. This was the my second Wikipedia edit in two days.)

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.

Exit78 Photo of the Day #37

As the year progresses, winter weather is less and less likely.  While the winter was cold, some of it very cold, especially for Arkansas, we have escaped wintry precipitation except for one snowfall that barely covered the ground.  Still, we’re not totally out of the woods yet.

Then: Snow over Illinois Bayou arm of Lake Dardanelle, west-central Arkansas, February 4, 2011 (Pentax K-r )

Snow has fallen as late as early May in Arkansas.  In 2013, the state had its first ever occurrence of May snow when, on May 3rd, the combination of an intrusion of unseasonably cold air and a slow-moving storm system led to a historical snow across northern Arkansas, with 5 inches at Decatur and 1.5 inches in Fayetteville.  Prior to that, the latest occurrence of measurable snow was in northeast Arkansas, near the Missouri line, at Corning with 0.2 inch on April 24, 1910.

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.

Exit78 Photo of the Day #36

Karen’s workspace has certainly changed. In  this picture, she is sitting at a computer table reading something on her laptop. I assembled the table using a 30” by 40” pine table top and a set of four 28” table legs, which is just the right height for a computer table.

Her new sewing/cutting table is in the foreground on the left.  I found an adjustable height steel desk frame which I paired with a 30” by 60” pine table top. With the adjustable height feature, the table is multifunctional for whatever she is using it for.

Now: Computer time, laptop hidden behind sewing machine, March 17, 2018 (Apple iPhone 6s)

The back wall of the room is Karen’s design wall.  It was made wrapping Styrofoam residential sheathing with flannel fabric.  While she has two projects on the wall right now, sometimes she has more or, when working on a larger quilt, only one.

On the right side of the picture is Karen’s treasured hand crafted oak quilting frame.  It’s not a one of a kind as the craftsman who built it over 20 years ago had a shop in northern Arkansas not too far south of Branson, Missouri, where he sold a number of these frames. The frame was his own design and is no longer available as he passed away some years back. (Karen’s explanation on loading)

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.

Exit78 Photo of the Day #35

One of the most photogenic spots in the state with magnificent views of the Arkansas River Valley, there is beauty at Petit Jean State Park’s Stout’s Point, even in the fog. The point is a small unit of the park separate from the main part of the park and about 4 miles east of the visitor center.

Fall colors in fog, Stout’s Point, Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, November 18, 2007 (Pentax K10D)

Stout’s Point on Petit Jean Mountain – Waymarking.com

This is the eastern tip of Petit Jean Mountain which is a part of Petit Jean State Park. A public road takes you to the parking lot about 75 yards from the overlook. A board walk has been constructed to afford a good view of the Arkansas River Valley to the north and various mountains to the south. There are steps to exit the board walk and climb out on the rocks if you so desire. The elevation is approximately 1050 and the normal pool elevation of the river below is 286. At more than 750 feet above average terrain, Stout’s point affords a grand view.

This place has been a favorite of photographers for years. There are approximately 300 degrees of view of the valley below. For those who like to patch photographs together to make panoramas, this is an excellent place.

Nearby is the gravesite of Petit Jean (Adrienne Dumont). Be sure to visit the “Legend of Petit Jean” waymark and read his (her) story in the “Weird Story Locations” category.

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.

Exit78 Photo of the Day #34

Two hours from where we lived in Arco, Idaho, Copper Basin is a remote high mountain valley, with beautiful views of the surrounding Pioneer and White Knob mountain ranges. We visited several times, camping in Wildhorse campground once in the late 1970s. Our last drive through Copper Basin was in July 2010.

Copper Basin, viewed from Antelope Pass, Cherry Creek Valley Road, Idaho, July 25, 2010 (Pentax K10D, composite of three images using Autostitch)

While it is a beautiful setting, Copper Basin is not what it could be. Long  overgrazed by livestock, the basin should – and could – have more abundant wildlife as well as aspens, willows, sagebrush and other native vegetation. An initiative by the Western Watersheds Project, including legal action, seeks to protect and restore the Copper Basin public land by ending livestock grazing abuse.

Series notes:

• The photos in this series are (usually) randomly selected from a batch of photos specifically “curated” for Exit78 Photo of the Day.
• Each photo in this series is an “original work” – a copyright term – of Michael Goad.