Yosemite Horsetail Fire Fall

Horsetail fall is a seasonal waterfall in Yosemite with little flow in winter and onset of Spring. Also popularly known as Firefall owing to a natural phenomenon which occurs around mid of February when the sun is in a certain position and waterfall has a decent flow. The last rays of sun just before sunset illuminates the firefall giving it look of flowing molten lava.

The fall is on the east side of El Capitan, some people confuse it with the man made firefall in yosemite few decades back but that was different.

The fall is best seen and photographed from a small clearing close to the picnic area on the north road leading out of Yosemite Valley east of El Capitan. Leaving you with more detailed links on photographing this phenomenon.

http://www.michaelfrye.com/landscape-photography-blog/2012/01/26/the-best-time-to-photograph-horsetail-fall-revised/

This february the weather was perfect with hint of clouds and prefect shade of red from setting sun, but sigh there was no flow in the fall.

Adieu,
Divya

California Almond Fields

California is leading producer of almonds in US, and you can visually get a confirmation for that while travelling in and around famous California route 99.

We saw flowering Almond fields while returning from Yosemite to San Francisco through Merced. From a distance these flowers look like cherry blossom, but are quite different when held close. California almond fields are a great opportunity for infinity pics.

Adieu,

Divya

Pink sunset

As the summer approaches the color starts saturating with hues of pink, oranges and seldom violet at sunset. I love staring at these colors for hours.

This is a random shot taken last year  from my balcony. The sky could have not got any more pink I guess,

Adieu,
Divya

Alaska Byron Glacier Trail

After spending the day on a cruise at Prince William Sound we had enough light and time to finish the Byron Glacier trail, thanks to the sun which was still on our head at 8 PM. It felt weird to have your sunglasses on at 8-9 PM to avoid the strong sun glare.

Around 49 miles south of Anchorage turn onto Portage Valley Road and travel 6 miles to Boggs Visitor Center. Its very near to Portage Glacier boat dock.

The visitor center had closed by evening, so we pretty much had to rely on the road signs, since the internet too had gave up on us in Alaska. Bryon glacier is probably one of the easiest and comfortable trails to reach and experience a glacier(Also Matanuska Glacier).

The trail is flat and meanders through a fine stream gushing from the glacier. The trail just changes from shrubs to an open snow area. A little walk into the tails leads to a pile of rock debris. You have to carefully walk over the rocks to get nearer to the glacier.

Receding glacier, stone debris, water streams from the glacier make the perfect scenery.

I would definitely advise to be very cautious while walking on melting ice and also from falling rocks. While we were there, we saw a rock almost half the size of bus break from the mountain and roll half way down before getting stuck in a pile of snow.

Its a great moment to watch from a distance, but very scary if you are up on that snow and mountain.

Byron Glacier is a very pleasant and easy trail, not to be missed when in this area.

* Do coat yourself with mosquito repellent
* Plan out the Portage Glacier, we missed that.

And thats how we ended out first day in Alaska, high on ice, colors and the expectation just rose from the rest of our Alaska trip.

Adieu
Divya

Multnomah Falls & Wahkeena Falls

This would be the last post about the beautiful Columbia gorge. Certainly saved the best for the last. I splitted a days visit into 5 posts, since the place is so beautiful and posting just a couple of pictures would have been rude on my part.

Other posts from Oregon

• Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Oregon (Part I)
• Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Oregon (Part II)
• Oregon Coast Drive
• Shepperd's Dell & Bridal Veil Falls (Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area - Part 3)

The second last in the waterfall was Wahkeena falls. This humble waterfall gets shadowed by the mightier Multnomah falls, but in itself its a beautiful cascade of water with very easy walk from the parking area.

Multnomah falls is indeed the most photographed waterfall in Oregon. The fall drops in two steps for a total height of 620 feet. The bridge in the middle gives an enchanting look to the waterfall.

It was foggy day and hard to capture, and the below picture is no where near to explain how beautiful this fall is.

September 1995, a 400-ton boulder, loosened by erosion, fell 225 feet. If you see that large boulder in the below pic, its almost the size of a school bus. There is a 2.6 miles round trip trail with an elevation gain of 700 feet. Its a moderate and beautiful hike, I liked the way they have put milestones on the hike, giving you a sense of how much is still left.

The below pictures have been taken from the top of Multnomah falls. In my words its a three step fall if you consider 4 feet fall too, you know what I mean.

The trip to Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area is still incomplete, as we left a lot of other waterfalls unexplored and hikes untouched. We are going back for sure.

Adieu
Divya

Day Visit to Point Reyes National Seashore California

Point Reyes National Seashore is a prominent cape, just 30 miles north of Golden gate San Francisco. Famous for the beautiful lighthouse and extreme high winds, this is a popular day activity in bay area.

We visited this place on a lazy day, but seems our GPS was rather more lazy. We were misguided twice by google maps and Garmin, which is very rare. So make sure you have a handy map when headed for point reyes.

Before you hit on point reyes, there is this iconic abandoned boat which is probably more photographed than point reyes itself. We stopped here for a quick byte.

Cypress tree tunnel, KPH Radio Station is popular photography spot for tree tunnel, tree infinity pics. The Radio station was closed but we got a clear sunny day to click these trees.

According to records Point Reyes is the windiest place on pacific coast and second foggiest place on north american continent. We probably visited this spot on a calmer and more clear day though.

The waves were calm and the colors were great, but it was late to visit the lighthouse which closes by 4 PM.

The trail to lighthouse is beautiful and the lighthouse itself was colorful. The stairs to the lighthouse were locked but could get a good glimpse with that telephoto lens.

The day ended with some sporty Elks and purple wildflowers at Tule Elk preserve.

Point Reyes is a very scenic spot with abundant hiking opportunities. We kind of missed the hikes, since it took us so much time to locate it at the first place.

We will be going back for sure.

Adieu

Divya

Alaska Trip Day 1 - Prince William Sound Whittier

We spent beautiful 9 days last summer in Alaska. It was indeed the most beautiful place I have ever visited. Alaska trip will have around 9 posts, else I might just lose out on so many thing to talk about and share pictures.

It took a lot of research and planning to finalize this trip to come up with the perfect itinerary for us, in my opinion.

Day 1: We flew in Anchorage at midnight. The magic started on the plane itself, it was pitch dark in Seattle at 9:00 PM but as we approached Alaska the sky started getting some colors. We landed in quite late maybe 1:00AM, and the sky still had some hue of Orange. Picked up the car, checked in, pulled in the curtains and slept.

The day started at 8:00 with a bright sun and a beautiful drive to Prince William Sound in Whittier. The road from Anchorage to Whittier is through the beautiful TurnAgain Arm. We were already getting late for our Prince William Sound Cruise and since we knew we would be driving this arm another 5 more times, we did not stop. The scenery was breath taking.

First Click in Alaska, while waiting for Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel to open

The road to Whittier goes through Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel(Whittier tunnel), which opens every 15 minutes for opposite direction. On reaching WhittieriIt all started with the 26 glacier cruise,

On board Ship, the view was breathtaking

The cruise began and it started getting chillier. It was quite sometime before we reached a glacier, but there were several other receding glaciers at the distance, glistening like silver specks on the green mountains.

We saw a lot of wildlife from jellyfish, otters, killer whales but the most memorable was the breaching humpback whale, I shall share the video on youtube, it was indeed the highlight of the day. How often do you see a humpback breaching not once, not twice... just lost the count.

If the breaching whale was not enough, we saw some enormous and loud calving at the glaciers. We went closest to the Surprise glacier. These glaciers are humongous and make the sound of a loud rock falling and breaking into water,

The view from the ship was dreamy, as I had probably seen on LOTR(maybe) where you have hundreds of waterfall surrounding you, and I did not know when to click the picture, when to awe and when to start recollecting all my dreams.

Some other ways of travelling Alaska are either by train or cruise, but we chose to drive. It gave us the flexibility to stop where we wanted, do some trails and hikes late in evening.

Alaskan Rail, Whittier

None of these pictures can ever do justice to what I saw in Prince William Sound in person. I had hundred of pictures from this cruise. We also managed to do the Bryon glacier hike thanks to the prolonged daylight. More about those in later posts.

Adieu

Divya