Cool old barn.

barn
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

While out Geocaching the other day, the light caught my eye and I snapped the image with my little point and shoot camera. It was getting ready to rain and I just love the dark sky in the background when the sun pokes out and lights up the foreground.

Geocache fun!

Well I finally got around to placing my first geocaches out. PigNewton and I headed out to the new "GeoPark , Cabin Creek Recreation Area" to place our caches. It took a lot longer than I thought. After finding the right spot, then we had to measure several sets of coordinates to make sure the readings were right on for the other geocachers. Of course we had to pick the hottest day of the year to do it.

After a hard days work we placed about 9 caches out. Two of them were too close to the other caches we had hid, so we came back on Sunday to fix our little mistake. Geocaches can't be any closer than .1 miles form each other. Oh, well you learn! It was a lot of fun putting out the new caches for everyone to find. You have to check out the one I put out called "You've Got Mail", it is real cool.

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Yankee Boy

Yankee Boy
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Another great wildflower shot from Yankee Boy Basin in Ouray, Colorado. It was a great day for flowers with very little wind and lots of compact flash cards to burn!
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flowers3

flowers3
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Some more wonderful wildflowers from Ouray, Colorado. What a great experience seeing this many wildflowers in the summer. You need to visit this place.
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wildflowers

wildflowers
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Ok, I only have a few images processed for your viewing enjoyment. More to come. This image is from Black Bear Road near Ouray, Colorado.
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me at Yankee Boy basin

me
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

The flowers are great here and so many different ones.

yankeeboy

yankeeboy
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

The girls posing in the rain.

Talia at yankee boy.

yankeeboy2
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Talia at Yankee Boy Basin in Ouray, Colorado just after a summer rain storm.

The rest of the story

All the jeeps were rented out in Ouray! Se we signed up on a 4 wheel drive tour to Yankee Boy Basin. The first part of the day was not as planned, but I have high hopes this will be better. Colorado West Jeep Tours picked us up at the hotel and we were off for the tour. Warren was our driver and he had a great attitude and sense of humor.

As we headed up the mountain the colors started to come out. The flowers were quite spectacular! Wow! The colors were very nice indeed. As we passed old mines and mine towns you got a sense of what it was like for those early miners trying to find their fortune. The rain started to come down and we put on our rain coats and continued up the mountain. The rain stopped after about 30 minutes, and the colors were so vibrant and rich. I love being in the mountains after a rain. We took a few more photos and it was time to head back to town. I will be back up there all day tomorrow with the other photographers from Arkansas. I’ll post some pics later.

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Roundhouse

Roundhouse
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

A cool round house we found in Trinidad, Co.

nightime

nightime
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Talia downtown Ouray at night.

I'll save you!

I'll save you!
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Giving Becky a helping hand.

Ouray, Colorado

7-21-05

Up early and drove up to a camp ground that overlooks the town. Great view, but not much in the way of photography. The town is in a valley and the sun does not hit the area till around 8:30, but it is a nice view. We photographed the town and then went down the road. We stopped and walked down a trail that lead to the base of a waterfall. We saw a mule deer on the trail and watched him for a while. Becky found a flower to photograph and we headed back to the car to go get a bite to eat for breakfast.

After an expensive breakfast, we headed out of town to one of the local mines near town. We thought our car would make it up the road to the mine, but the road got rough and we turned around while we still could and headed back to town to rent a Jeep. Back in town all the Jeep’s were rented out, so we are going on a Jeep tour later today. I’ll post again later to tell you how that went.

....to be continued

Day 2

7-20-05

Up early to get ready to head to the sand dunes. Had to hit Wal-Mart to get some last minute items before we travel. We left Alamosa around 7:30 am to head to the sand dunes and play in the sand. The temp was nice and cool, just perfect weather to play in the sand. There were several people out on the dunes, but not as many as I had seen in past trips. We brought along a boogie board to play in the sand with, but it was not as fun as we thought it would be. It was not as slick as it needed to be, so it did not glide through the sand as we were hoping. After about two hours of playing in the sand, the sand was getting very hot. We headed back to the car because the sand was burning our feet.

The road from the sand dunes is long a straight with not much to see. We did see some UFO road side park that some one set up in their backyard. Did not take any pics because we were in a hurry to get to our next destination, Ouray. We ran into some delays due to road construction, but it was not that bad. We stopped at Montrose for some more last minute stuff at Wal-Mart again! Oh well. On te way out of town I stopped at a RV campground to hit a geocache and it was a big one. This one had lots of travel bugs as well as good quality treasures inside. I’ll post a pic of the site.

Headed on down the road and stopped to take a few pics along the lake. About 30 miles from Ouray, we stopped at a state park to look for a geocache and to take a few pics of some flowers and an Indian teepee. No luck at the geocache, it was a 50 cal ammo box, but I could not find it. We headed down the road to get to our hotel and check in and see what was in town. Small town that reminded me a lot of Moab, Utah. Lots of gift shops and places to eat all around town.

After checking in we headed to town to get an extension cord for the laptop. The hotel only had one outlet, and it was about 15 feet away from the wobbly table in our room. The wireless internet works! That is a good thing. We hope to get up early tomorrow and see if we can find a place to photograph for the day.

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ouray

ouray
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Here is a view from the hotel we are staying at here in Ouray. A small town down in between the mountains. Ouray is Jeep and 4 wheel drive heaven here. Lots of trails to explore.

Me at the Sand Dunes NP.

Me at the Sand Dunes NP.
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Stike a pose at the sandunes. Meather was great and the sand is soo cool!

sanddunes

sanddunes
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Becky and Talia roll in the sand at the dunes. They were having a blast doing this.

Day one of Vacation

Day one of our vacation.

We were off and on the road at 10:00 pm last night. We originally planned to leave at midnight, but everyone was wired and ready to go, so out the door we went. As soon as every one was settled, I broke out the IPOD with my 1265 tunes on it and was ready to try out my new device that hooks to the IPOD and transmits to the radio. There are 4 stations to choose from and I found te one that worked and we were jamm’n.

We made great time and we were in OK city before I knew it. The girls were all out and asleep, so it was me and my IPOD for about 6 or 7 hours. Not much traffic, so we were able to make good time. At 6:00 am this morning is was getting very tired and it was time for Becky to drive for a while. I crawled in the back of the van and was asleep in minutes. Several hours later I woke up and we were headed out of Texas and going into New Mexico.

We were way ahead of schedule and decided that we would be in Raton by 11:00, so we canceled our hotel there and decided to get a hotel in Alamosa. While in route to Raton, I found Mountain View cache ad dropped off one of my travel bugs "babe te bat". Another hour down the road I grabbed another cache at the New Mexico State Police Station. There were some travel bugs as well as lots of stuff for kids to pick. I dropped off Pignewton’s two travel bugs "Poot te Poodle", and "Fuzzy the Bengal Kitten". Now these two travel bugs don’t get along and fought the whole way. Now maybe the police can watch them.

Up the road in Trinidad we grabbed a bite to eat as well as well as take some photos of some virtual cache’s I was needing. Found an old drive-in movie theater which was working a few years back, but is no longer in service. Took a few photos and found this cool round house and photographed it. Trinidad is a cool neat little town to visit and some neat old buildings to photograph. I wish I had more time to visit.

Made it to Alamosa and found a Super 8 Motel with wireless internet, wooohoo! This is what I look for when I travel. The staff here is great and my daughter is enjoying the pool. I hade to go to the lobby to get my wireless signal to work, but I am cool with it. Will upload some pics as soon as I get a chance.

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Ready for Colorado

I am so ready for a vacation! We will be meeting up with a few other photographers in Ouray, Colorado for some great photography. I will post pics daily as I can from the hotel we are staying at. They say we have internet, but not sure if it is ineach room or other location.

Will be doing some geocaching along the way as well as some photography along the way. Have some travel bugs to release in thewild this trip. Will update tomorrow.

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Geocaching!

Well if I did not have enough to do, I found another hobby. It's called Geocaching. You use a GPS and the information at geocaching.com to find the cache that people have hid. I started a few days ago and I am having a blast with it. My daughter thinks it is so cool and she is having a blast at finding these things. She is very good at it and maybe better than me! I found 4 my first day and found 4 more the next day. I found two travel bugs over the past few days. Travel bugs have unique numbers and you attach them to something and release them into a cache. Someone finds them and reports back the tracking number at the website and takes it along for the next journey. The website tracks it's travels.

So far three of my friends at work have joined in the hunt and I bet more in the future. Should be a lot of fun.

Found TB "Der-Travel-Alot" today and will send it on it's way in a few days. Picked up "Randy the Flashlight" from Pignewton yesterday and droped him off at another cache. Also picked up "Scorpio Church Key" at a local cache. Will send all these Travel Bugs on their way in a few days.

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Two Geeks!

geek 1
Originally uploaded by bmwrider.

Who could resist getting their pic made in front of the geek mobile at best buy! I love this car.

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New hard drives installed.

I have always used the plugin USB and Firewire drives from Lacie and work great. These external drives are a little pricey, but work great. I decided to install some western digital hard drives for my scratch disks for Photoshop. If you want to make Photoshop run at it's optimum, it needs it's own hard drive! If your scratch disk is the same as your data disk or the same volume as your programs, photshop is not working as best as it can.

This process was really easy to do and the hardest part was figuring out how to get the drive in the slot. After a bit of looking, there was a button to press that allowed the drive bay to swing out and the install was easy from that point. I do think I want to install some round IDE cables in my system to make it easier to use as well as to hel out the cooling.
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Skunk last night!

So I am off to bed early last night from a long day at the studio. Becky and Talia was watching TV and fell asleep on the couch. I heard the TV station go off the air and turned the TV off. The dogs were still out and I told Becky to put the dogs up. Well she decides to take them out to go pee. Now it's 1:30 in the morning andI hear Becky screaming at Patty to "leave it alone" and to find out there is a skunk on the porch. All four dogs get sprayed! What a night! Becky is blaming it all on me for waking her up. The whole house was stinking and Becky went to Wal-Mart to get some lemon juice and tomato juice to get the smell off the dogs.

So I am in the dog house right now! Guess I won't wake her up anymore, let the sleeping dogs sleep!

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New computer almost ready.

My new computer is almost ready for the studio. Photoshop installed, iTunes installed, almost ready, hey you have to have your music! I bought another hard drive to install on the computer to use as a scratch disk for Photoshop. Having a dedicated scratch disk is important for good performance in Photoshop. Life is so busy, I need to slow down and enjoy it!

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Love the new computer.

I am liking the new computer so far. I hove only had a chance to load iTunes for my iPod. Will load up Photoshop next week and take it for a real spin. I am luv'in my new iPod. i have about 500 songs on it so far and a lot more to burn. It seems that most of my CD collection is from the 80's and that's OK with me. I like modern music, but just got bumed out when MTV stopped playing music a few years back. That was a real bad idea!

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New computer here!

My new Athlon 64 from Systemax is here and this baby flys! Boots up in about 10 seconds and I can't wait to try out Photoshop on it. I will probbly upgrade the ram in a few weeks, but it's working great right now. I just loaded my new ipod on it with itunes. I am not too crazy about itunes, I prefer my Music Match Jukebox. It better than iTunes, but I don't have a choice with my ipod. I love the ipod! What a cool toy! I have 400 songs uploaded so far and can't wait to put my entire CD collection on it! The ipod is so cool.
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New lens.

Just got a call from an old friend who wants to sell me his Canon 70-200 f/2.8L lens. It's not an IS lens, but at that price I can't turn it down. So after selling all my old lenses and camera's, I will end up with a new Athlon 64 computer, flat screen, and a new lens. Not bad if I say so myself. It will take me a while to get back up to where I was with lenses since I have switched to Canon.

Becky got her Fuji S3 in and we did some test shots yesterday. Colors are awesome! Fuji know how to make those digital camera's. I'll still stick to the Canon 1Ds and my 10D, but I will shoot the S3 if I have too!

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New Computer on the way.

Well, I was very close to buying a MAC and backed out at the last minute. I just ordered a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ system. While it's not the fastest system out there, it will sure smoke the one I am using. I will be testing it at home and getting it all tweeked in, before taking it to the studio. I am sure it will solve a lot of the issues I have been having with my present system. I plan to set uyp to RAID 0 drives on it and the data should fly with 1600 mhz system bus, the data should have no problem getting to where it needs to be. I'll upgrade it to 2 gigs of ram at the time i put in the RAID drives. I am looking forward to playing with the new system in a few days.
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Happy Ney Year!

Happy New Year to all! Did not do much on New Years Eve other than watch a movie with the family and drink a Fat Tire beer. Those are very good! Brewed in Colorado by the a micro brew in Ft. Collins Colorado and they are good. We will start the new year off by going on a hike to the Hawk's Bill Crag. We always do a hike on New Years day and it should be a fine one, with the temperature in the 60's and a 30% chance of rain it should be a good day. I'll post some pics when we get back.

I got my new KHS road bike in two days ago and I rode it to work yesterday. A sweet ride! I hope to do more biking this year with my goal to bike to work at least 4 days a week. I do a 22 mile round trip commute and you can see how I am doing with it on my Daily Commute blog here at blogger.
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