July 10th - A Special Day

To celebrate Jim's birthday, Colin and I woke up by 5:15am and were on the road at 5:30am to try to get some decent sunrise photos at Patricia or Pyramid Lakes.  Wish Jim could have been here to see it with us.

Sunrise on Patricia Lake

I really liked the shape of this log on the shore of the lake so I thought I should get my wide angle lens closer to it and make it more of a focal point.  Colin did something similar with a fantastic photo he took of boulders in the foreground of a Moraine Lake a shot.  Hopefully he'll get that photo onto his website soon.

We heard loons on the lake as we watched the morning scene unfold.  Imagine the call of the loon as you look at this photo and you can tell that this was a special morning to be up early. We also heard white-throated sparrows (one of the few calls I know actually) so Colin got my iPhone and used the iBird application to call back to them.  There were also ravens and warblers and hawks and ducks.  I was just content to stand there and take it all in with no one else around (except for Colin who was going on and on about how cool iBird was!!!).  We also used it to call white-crowned sparrows on a previous trip into Kootenay NP.  What a great application!!!!

As we drove toward Pyramid Lake to see what was going on there, we saw two deer leaping from the roadway into a magical aspen grove.  It immediately made me think of our imminent move to Colorado.  I can't wait to see shimmering yellow aspens on a crisp fall morning.

Just look at this perfect forest:

Here's a wall of aspens:

Here is the wary deer: