Lunar Eclipse

I can't believe it. For nearly the past week we have had relatively clear skies, and the smoke is rather tolerable. In fact, last night I was able to stand outside on the back deck and take pictures of the lunar eclipse. It was not an especially warm night - 45 degrees - but it was nice enough to stand outside from 3:30 to 5:00 with a light coat and snap some photos of the moon. The photos aren't anything to brag about, but good enough to share. I ended up taking over 150 pictures, and only a handful ended up being worthy.I woke up at 3:30 after falling FINALLY falling asleep around 12:45. I was excited to see the eclipse and the thought to snapping a few pictures was keeping my mind rolling with ideas. When I finished snapping pictures around 5:00 I tried to fall back asleep, but I was too excited to find out how the pictures turned out. I think it must have been close to 6:00 before I finally fell back asleep, and then I woke up with Laura at 7:30.

Over the weekend we did some major hiking in the Bitterroot mountains. This wasn't a long hike, it was more of a matter of the amount of elevation we gained in the short amount of distance. From the parking spot at 6,000 feet we hiked up to 9,000 feet in under 2.5 miles. To put that into perspective that would be an average of 1 foot up for every 4.5 foot forward. However, the view was well worth it, and we will that the aches and pains for the seclusion and view anytime. We didn't actually climb St. Josephs Peak, from the approach we took it was nearly impossible. We followed the left side of the frame and found the geocache at the left side of the frame - right where that big cliff is!
Here we are sitting at 9,000 feet and pretending like we are warm. The wind was blowing pretty steadily and that made the temperature right around 50. As we hiked back towards the valley we spotted a smoke plume from the Sawmill Gulch fire burning southwest of Missoula. It's quite a view from a mile above the valley!I've been working on getting a lot of panoramic pictures put together from our hiking trips - I might dedicate a blog entry in the near future to all the panoramic pictures I've created. That about does it for me today - after that hike and the long night I am pretty slow getting anywhere today, but it's all well worth it. Until again

-=Nolan=-