I cannot believe it took me this many years to find this spot in Portland, Oregon! A friend and I decided we are going to try and hike all of Wildwood trail in Forest Park this year and set out this last Sunday to start. We began our hike at the Audobon Society of Portland and walked up to Pittock Mansion where we were able to view downtown Portland and Mount Hood at the same time, it was a beautiful site!
Wow, I can’t believe it! I got another set of three ready to post again this week. These are photos I took almost a year ago that I have many more to edit, and have been meaning to get around to for, well almost a year, ha ha ha.
A friend and I took a hike during flower season last spring at a place called Tom McCall Preserve. I did not realize how steep this hike is when we started out. I had gone to this place with my Mom and my kids a while back, but we stayed on a very flat trail. My friend was totally unprepared to go on such a difficult incline I suspect. However this is a hike that has more than enough breathtaking views to give you a break every step if you wanted to stop that often.
Starting out you are able to look out over the Columbia Gorge and a field of flowers. As you progress up the hill you start to see Mount Adams (I think) peeking up from the North. It soon is completely visible with the gorge situated in view as well.
Along the way you see Indian Paint brush, as well as flowers in purple, yellow, white, and greens. There are butterflies and birds. Plenty to feast your eyes on.
As you make a sudden turn around the bend nearing the vista we stopped at is the definite climax of the hike, where all of a sudden Mount Hood pops up to the West. Bam, seriously I made a huge gasp when I saw it.
Of course it was windy as heck once we made the plateau looking out over Mount Hood (it is the Gorge) so because we did not prepare well for our hike we did not stay an extraordinarily long time. It was a hike well worth it.
The days I was in Maine are beginning to blend together, but I think these are all photos from the third day of the visit. My family and I embarked on a boat ride around Bar Harbor and a neighboring island, which is where I took this first set of photos. Some of the summer houses, or cottages, were really beautiful to admire, they all have a great view of the harbor from their windows that is for sure!
This second set of photos was taken on the Rockefeller land on Bar Harbor. From what I was told, the Rockefeller family has been very generous with the land, allowing the public to hike in large portions of it. I hope if I ever have such large expanses of land I will be as willing to allow strangers onto it.
I hope you enjoyed. One more Maine post to go…the rest of the Sunset photos!
I took these pictures on my recent trip to Maine. I went with my family who travels there yearly to catch the last days of fall travel in Bar Harbor. This year the National Parks were closed due to the non-functional National government so we got to experience things differently this year, or so I am told. It was my first trip and I had four days of camping, short hikes, and eating. It is a very strange thing to not have my kids along on a trip and not be in charge of organization or planning a day. It made me feel a bit like a kid again.
The views were beautiful and the weather was amazing. On this day we may or may not have walked on a closed forest road to get to a little beach my family calls pebble beach or stone beach, but they were not sure that was the real name. This beach is covered in rocks that get tumbled by the ocean and are very smooth. They feel great, and the sound of the waves washing over them and rolling back out to see is very relaxing. On the walk out to the beach we happened upon a beautiful bald eagle overlooking the ocean.
I am also fitting this post into the weekly photo challenge which is ONE, well there was one bald eagle, one stone, and one pear pictured in the photos for this post. I hope you enjoy them. 🙂
This week the Portland Tree was lit so on Wednesday I decided I would go take a photograph of it for this challenge, however it was completely surrounded by a beer garden…great for beer drinkers (which I am not) bad for me 😦 It was also bitterly cold so instead of making my friend wait around with me while I got a photograph of a tree surrounded by beer garden tents, I took about two photos and decided to call it good…well not good, but you get the idea. So I will share that photo with you, but I also want to share a preview of my Maine photos with a Sunset photograph that I captured the first night in Maine.
It just so happens that it actually took a little convincing to get my family to venture to the water to watch this sunset, but I insisted that the clouds looked like they were very promising for a good sunset. They were skeptical that we would make it in time to see the sunset, but we did! So here you go….
The amazing and always beautiful Watkins Glen situated in upstate New York right off of picturesque Seneca Lake, was one of the places I really wanted to visit again while visiting my relatives in New York. I have gone on this hike several times in my life but up until now all of them had been as a youth.
My Grandparents graciously took me to Watkins Glen but decided they only wanted to hike to the first set of long steep stairs. I made it all the way to the top of the last set of very long steep stairs and spent much of the hike alternating between jogging the trail and stopping to take photos.
If you ever have the chance to be in the area I highly recommend this hike, it is adorned with waterfalls that twist and turn in the path of the narrow steep cliffs of slate.
Now that I have photographed Watkins Glen once, I would really like to go back and do it again at another time of day, and with a tripod. 🙂
As usually I am a little behind the curve in getting my photo challenge posts up. I did have the chance to take photos that I felt fit this category really well due to copious amounts of fog in our area recently. It really makes the morning feel much different when you wake up and can not even see across the street, but it is beautiful.
Have a great weekend!
 
 
 
 
These are all photos I took during my trip to New York that I recently returned from. My Grandparents live on Seneca Lake, which is one of the finger lakes. They have a small sail boat that they still sail, at least when they have another person to ride with them.
I also visited Corning, New York where my other Grandmother lives, which is where the photo of the bridge was taken.
That’s all for now, but I still have a few more photos from New York and a few I want to share from Maine!
For this photo challenge I chose a photo that is of a fort on the South coast of Washington at Cape Disappointment. While this is a photo of one of the protective areas of the fort it is also a photo of the natural setting the encases the fort. While I could have focused on the exterior of the fort I was not interested in the plainness it presents even though it offers the best view of what it actually is. I much prefer this more unusual view of the interior and what a solder might have seen if they had been holed up inside.
This week the WordPress weekly photo challenge was sea. During our summer camping trip we drove to the Washington Coast, to Cape Disappointment and were able to spend a couple days exploring the area, including going to the beach as viewing the sea.
We also explored some trails in the area, taking us through an old fort up to a light house, and also a hike through magnificent forest growth with huge plants such as ferns. There were a few large trees we stopped at including one “Magic Tree House” my kids found and played in. After about 20 minutes of pretend play in the tree we looked up only to see a nest of wasps! Yikes.
Also recently I answered some questions and have some photographs on another blog you can view that blog post here: 5+5×5 by Four Deer Oak.
Mediation is a topic I find interesting because it is both an overused, and underused tool. It, like many other things, is a tool that people can use to help them resolve their divorce or custody case. Let’s talk first though about what mediation is, and how it can help end a divorce case. Oregon Divorce… Read More
Emilia Brasier Photography 