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A landscape photographer's tour
Keith's travels in California and the Pacific Northwest - April-May 2007
Three years ago, Keith took his then fairly new Canon 1Ds on a driving tour round the Rockies in the USA. This photo-diary covers a driving trip up the coast from San Francisco in April/May 2007.
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Now I'm back I'll have a check through the pages and include links to any pictures I put in the Gallery, along with info that may be of help to people who come across these pages as part of their planning for driving tours of the California and Oregon coasts, looking for places to stay or sites to visit.
It's a great place for a vacation, or just a road trip up the Pacific coast to photograph some of the scenery. If you've any questions about the hotels/inns/motels where I stayed, then please do feel free to drop me a line.
There are other photo travel diaries covering trips to:
Washington and Oregon in September/October 2007 and Colorado in April/May 2006
One nice thing about travelling west from home, is that I suddenly find it easy to get up at 6am (8hrs behind UK here)
At the motel I'm at, there's no free breakfast, but there is a coffee machine in my room. Only slight problem is the coffee.
Often called "Roaster's Choice", one is left wondering just what life threatening choice the Roaster was facing at the time they produced it?
Fortunately, I just buy a bag of coffee and some filter papers when I get here...
Oh, and a tray of strawberrys that happened to fall into my basket when I was shopping last night --not seen, bag of choc chip cookies and carton of fruit juice (and a bag of carrots for 'healthy' snacks ;-)
- Once again, the little Sony point 'n' click produces a tolerable image (OK, after applying a PS adjustment curve)
The weather looks grey and overcast, but it's not raining!
Time (07:00) to hit the road...
Ready to leave the Mariah Country Inn, Ft. Bragg
It had rained a lot overnight, and shortly after I took the shot below, it started again...
Nice rolling surf
A bit further up the coast the sun came out
This first shot shows some details of the surf
Pulling back a bit
and with the 15mm (note again how keeping the horizon along the midline hides a lot of the distortion.
Still some low cloud in the hills...
and some more rain
One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was the number of cars parked along the coast road, with people in diving gear. It's abalone hunting/harvesting/wanton destruction season (depending on your POV) Each person is currently allowed 4 per day (24 total). It's supposed to be non-commercial, but I bet a fair few end up in restaurants in San Francisco ;-)
Here's where they were going...
A bit more cloud and black and white - the weather looks a bit more threatning :-)
After a while the road leaves the coast and heads into the trees.
The road climbs quite a distance into the coastal mountains.
Further on you reach the area where the redwoods grow...
The one below is called the Chandelier Tree - in the first shot it just looks a big tree
A very wide shot shows it more in context
It's 315 feet high and about 2400 years old, so what do they do - why, cut a hole through it to drive your car through
Meanwhile, this is the view from inside the tree...
They're all over the place, not as old, but just as tall
Highway 101 heads north, with lots more places to see big trees
Eventually I decided to stop off in Eureka
More of the older parts of town
Meanwhile a couple of boats were sailing by - don't know what this was about...
Of course it could be something connected with 'Earthday', which is a bit bigger over here (particularly this being California ;-)
- I see on the Earthday web site (I had to look it up...) there is a campaign to get rid of incandescant light bulbs. Not in parts of my house I spend much time in thank you - not until I can get energy saving bulbs with a decent CRI (colour rendition index) that can be dimmed, and don't take 30 seconds to reach full brightness if they are more than a few months old.
As you can see, the weather had improved somewhat.
This is the view from the beach the other side of where the boats were...
Tomorrow it's further north...
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