July 1, 2010.

Preparation for the coming week-end and weeks-away vacation is nearly complete. As planned, during the work week I ate only half of the peanut butter crackers I purchased for the long hike this week-end. That leaves half for the hike itself. Light and packed with calories, they are perfect for the approximately 9 miles round trip.

Rocky Mountain National Park is a wonderful area and I am lucky to live so close to it. Plenty of mountains (rocky, of course) make for a lot of photo opportunities and that is what this hike is about. There will be a lot of people in the park this week-end for the Fourth of July which means I probably won't need to bring the bear spray. RMNP has about 30 bear across its many square miles, says the park service. There are probably mountain lion too but I have never seen one. The area I will be hiking is pretty high in elevation, around 9 thousand feet, so UV is a factor. There will be sunblock on hand.

The last thing to be done before getting "on the road" is sleep. Getting up at 3 a.m. to meet a friend at a mall parking lot at 4 a.m. so we can travel to the park in time for some morning shots may sound great to some (right?), but if sunrise was at 9 am, that would be fine with me. A photographer is a slave to the light, when it beckons, you go, or you miss the shot. It's about 2 hours to the park, so leaving at 4, we will be 30 minutes past sunrise upon arrival. By the time we get onto the trail the sun should be just clearing the mountains to the east, casting a nice light in the valleys. And let's not forget the 30% chance of thunderstorms! The original hike planned would have taken us to elevations above the timber line. That makes me and my friend the lightning rod of choice. After reading about one of the original settlers in the park who was killed by a lightning strike, I decided not to tempt fate.

The second last thing to be done, which will be done the night before, is to clean lenses and camera, vacuum the back-pack and perform a check of the camera settings to ensure ISO, focus selection, metering, and various other modes are ready to go. Who wants to do this at 3 am? Hard to believe anyone could look forward to all this, but I am!

Thanks of the Day: while walking my dog around 6 pm, I looked to the east and the sun illuminated a cloudburst about 10 to 20 miles away. I can only guess, but although it was subtle and faint, the rainbow thus created must have been a mile wide. Probably the biggest rainbow I have or ever will see.