Look, Shiny Shiny Sun Making Water Shiny Shiny!

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Photo #498: Lens FlareLocation Taken: Near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
Time Taken: June 2010

My brain no words tonight, so time to pull out pretty photo.

This sort of photo is tough to talk about anyway. What are you going to say anyway, “Look, water! I think it’s wet water, too! And look, a hill! It’s kinda hill shaped!”

Very large amounts of lens flare here too. Not silly Photoshop filter or anything like that, just light flaring off the edge of the camera lens. Quite normal, really. Except for amount, that more than usual.

  

I am a Fool for Fool’s Gold, I guess

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Photo #497: Fool's GoldLocation Taken: A Stone Store in Banff, Alberta
Time Taken: June 2010

You know, I think I prefer Fool’s Gold over real gold.

I mean, gold has a definite luster, is highly workable, and doesn’t tarnish, all of which have contributed to its very high esteem and value, but there’s just something about pyrite that appeals to me.

Maybe it’s the color. I don’t actually care for gold’s distinctive yellow color that much. But the duller hint of yellow-grey found in pyrite makes it seem a little otherworldly, something that I highly prize.

Perhaps it’s the crystal structure as well, with the magnificent mix of all sorts of cubes and similar shapes, of all sorts of sizes. It creates a fractal-like pattern, also something I love. Rather than the usual smoothly worked surface of gold, pyrite creations tend to show the patterns it formed with, bringing the magic of the earth to us.

And, well, I like the underdog. I’ve got a strong contrary streak that makes me automatically dislike the most popular things more than I would otherwise. Not to mention the popular stuff, well, gets a lot of attention. There’s little sense of discovery when dealing with them, unlike the ignored items, especially things that gained a nickname because they fooled people into thinking they were their more popular cousin.

Of course, one of the other things I like about Pyrite is that it’s a lot cheaper than gold. I could buy a large pyrite sphere for less than $100. I can’t even find any mention of spheres of solid gold, much less figure out exactly how much one would cost. But for comparison, Pyrite sells for less than a dollar per ounce, while gold is currently about $1320 per ounce. That’s a wee bit of difference, don’t you think?

  

The Fascinating Hills of Central Idaho

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Photo #496: Shimmering HillsLocation Taken: Central Idaho, on the Snake River Plain
Time Taken: June 2010

There’s something utterly spectacular about these mountains lining the north side of the Snake River plain, the large flat area in central Idaho.

It’s not the size or the shape, both fairly standard, but the color. There’s no trees or anything else to obstruct your view of the way the land is shaped, creating a smooth surface, and the local grasses vary smoothly from red-brown to green. This creates an almost-shimmering gradient pattern that catches the eye in its simplistic complexity. Add it a touch of dramatic lighting from a low sun, and well, it can distract you even from the lava field you’re passing through.

Yes, lava field. You see that darker rock on both sides of the road? That’s part of a large lava flow that happened about 12,000 years ago. It came from the volcanic site called Craters of the Moon National Monument, a fantastic place to visit if you like volcanoes. This particular flow happened to cross the main road we took into the park, or to be more exact, the road crossed the flow.

But even with my joy at seeing a lava flow for the first time, these mountains still kept attracting my attention. I had never seen mountains that smooth or that particular color before. And even though the very next day I saw the much more famous Grand Tetons, these obscure hills in Idaho stick in my memory much stronger.  And unlike the Grand Tetons, I want to return to these hills to see them once again.

  

Kakabeka, such a fun word to say!

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Photo #495: Kakabeka FallsLocation Taken: Just West of Thunder Bay, Ontario
Time Taken: June 2010

This, my friends, is Kakabeka Falls!

It’s a pretty large waterfall on a river feeding into the western side of Lake Superior. And um, look at all that water falling!

Admittedly, between the mist from the falls, the rain, and the quickly fading light, my camera wasn’t too happy taking a clear photo. This was the clearest of twenty or so attempts. And the rain caused other problems too. We’d been planning on camping at the campground right by the falls, but well, setting up a tent in the rain is not at all a good idea. Water gets trapped, mildew starts to grow, the tent starts to deteriorate, and so on. Plus even the best tent doesn’t have perfect waterproofing, and most of the focus is put into protecting from water from above, not below…

So while we stopped at the falls, we didn’t stay long, for we still had to find a hotel to spend the night. And this being sparsely populated western Ontario, it took a while. I think we went some 30 miles or more before we finally found a tiny roadside hotel. That might have been the one that was having problems with their water and handed us a bunch of water bottles for our use when we checked in…

Oh, and according to a brief mention in an interesting documentary I watched the other day, called Mysteries of the Great Lakes, right below these falls are where a group of lake sturgeon spawn! They’re kinda like salmon in that way, except they’re a more ancient species, not to mention smart enough to reserve enough energy to make it back to the lake just fine after the spawning run. Oh, and don’t get fooled by the title of that documentary. It’s not really about Great Lake Mysteries at all, and more about the wildlife, mostly the sturgeon. But it’s still an interesting watch, and also where I heard about the Agawa Bay pictographs I mentioned a few days ago.

But yeah, falls. Yay, waterfalls. There’s probably a great view from that bridge, too. I think that was the route to the campground, so we didn’t go on it. So sad.

  

Old Faithful, so, well, old and faithful.

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Photo #494: Faithful Old FaithfulLocation Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012

*yawn*

Oh, what’s that? Eh, it’s just Old Faithful erupting. No big deal.

I mean, it’s just the world’s most famous geyser, right?

There’s something oddly disappointing in seeing something famous for yourself. It’s been talked up by so many people that your brain insists it must be something special, but you also know enough about it that it’s not at all surprising or unusual when you actually do see it. I mean, I’ve seen photos of Old Faithful before, and got a good idea of how large it is and all that. Plus it’s a reliable geyser so it was “Hey, look, it’s erupting right on schedule. Nifty.” But the combination of expecting something special and getting exactly what you knew was there leads to a sense that it didn’t live up to expectation.

I suppose that’s why I prefer visiting the small, lesser known, places rather than the big name ones. At least at those, I only have a vague idea of what’s in store, not a fully accurate mental panorama of the place. There’s still room for exploration and discovery, the things that really make the world special.