Mr. & Mrs. Link

You can make your own here.

Growing up in Montana where the Second Amendment is holy script, hunting is a way of life and you’re regraded suspiciously if you don’t own a gun, perhaps it’s sad that it took more than 30 years to fire a shotgun.

In my defense though, the only kind of hunting I’ve ever done is big game (deer, elk, antelope) and most of my target shooting was either to site my .270 or shooting various hand guns and pistols for fun. I’d learned all about shotguns in Hunters’ Safety courses, but never had occasion to shoot one.

Until my friend Brian invited Andy and I out to the Prince Georges Gun Club to shoot trap. We rented guns, bought a box of target ammo and spent a good hour shouting “Pull” into noise-activated speakers to launch clay pigeons. I was actually rather proud of myself – I guess all that practice with Duck Hunt paid off, and I did pretty well.

Way back in 2007, when Tiffany and I were training for our Granite Peak adventure, our friend Adam suggested the C&O Canal as a good, local hike. By design, the towpath (which was used by mules and horses to pull cargo up the canal itself) is very flat. But there are also three “Billy Goat Trails” near Great Falls which provide a little more challenge and even a rock scramble or two.

Recently, our friend Adam invited us to join him and his son CJ on a return visit to Great Falls. With the kid in tow, the towpath seemed most appropriate and the rock scrambles a little more hazardous than was justified. But it was an absolutely beautiful Sunday stroll amidst changing leaves and crisp, cool air.

And Adam let me try my hand at still more portraiture!

The famous Maryland Renaissance Festival is always fun. Nerds in costumes, bustiers that defy gravity, beer, meat on a stick and medieval-themed entertainment; what’s not to love. Unfortunately, Tiffany was on call again and couldn’t go. But our friend Steve got us a great deal on tickets, so off I went.

The RenFen is fun, and it’s a photographer’s paradise: Vivid colors, interesting people doing interesting things. So this year, given my pursuit of photographic experience, I decided to embrace the opportunity to push comfort levels. Specifically, shooting strangers in public places. This has been one of my goals for the year, and one that I’ve been hesitant to push.

But here, among paid performers and people who dress up, I found no shortage of people willing to let me take their pictures. In fact, of the several people I asked, only one reacted strangely. More often, they loved to pose and even gave me email addresses to send them photos. That made the Maryland Renaissance Festival a personal Rubicon.

Of course, there was the Jester (best photo from October). He was the first guy I asked to shoot; he was out trying to recruit people to his show. He posed for several shots; this was the best.

Then there was ‘Gandalf” who was watching a show with me. He was just a regular guy, and it took me a glass of delicious October Ale to summon the courage to ask him to take his picture. He asked to see the shot, liked it, and I was off to the races!

This guy looked big an mean, but he was actually really nice and (probably) gentle. His fiance asked me to email her the pictures and was very grateful for the shots.

Yep, still creepy even in context.

And then there was this fairy girl. By the time I got to her, I was on a role. I asked her if I could take her picture, she said I could, but seemed sort of weirded out. That made me feel weird, too. So I took off as soon as I got the picture. Which, in matter of fact, made it weird. Oh well.

It was a great experience and really broke the ice for the portrait-style photography I really got into in November. Look through the pictures – there are plenty of shots of the usual friends in there too. Had a great time – hopefully next year Tiff can come!

Assateague Island is a bureaucrat’s dream.  Part national park, part state park across two different states with all sorts of new rules and regulations that vary depending on which side of an arbitrary fence you are on.  But it’s also a place where you can camp a hundred yards from the beach with wild horses.  Which is really cool.

It has been on the bucket list for a long time.  Tiff and I actually had a reservation for early this year, but the weather went nasty and we decided not to go.  So when some friends invited us to join them for a weekend, I had to take the offer, despite the fact that Tiffany was stuck on-call for her Medicine Rotation and couldn’t make it.  Medicine is one of the toughest rotations – in her write-up, Tiffany neglected to say how many activities she had to forgo for work.  She doesn’t complain about it – she never does.  But I sure miss her when she’s not there!

Once Brian and I finally found the campsite (after accidentally going to the Federal Park instead of one of the state ones), we had a great time. We red-cupped the beach for several hours as the sun slowly set, then grilled dogs and burgers for dinner. Brian and I had been in charge of firewood and as we drove in we passed a guy who was selling it off the side of the road. We went a bit nuts and filled the entire RAV4 with firewood. So we had plenty of firewood for the night.

Which was good because it got very windy – and very cold. It’s almost a blessing that Tiffany couldn’t make it because she’s not cut from Montana stock and she’s more sensitive to the lower end of the temperature spectrum. Eventually, we turned in, but the wind got even more intense.

My tent survived the night – although from inside it seems like to blow over at any minute. Several other tents didn’t fair as well. Kelly’s tent blew over with her inside. And hers wasn’t the only one.

And the next morning, true to form, the wild horses rolled through camp. They weren’t shy, and one suspects, they weren’t hungry either.

I’ve gotten pretty far behind in posting, so we’re going to have to go back in time here.  All the way back to early September when Tiff and I joined some Capitol Hill Tubing Society friends Andy and Brian on an overnight camping trip to the George Washington National Forest.

The initial plan was a full loop that I found in Backpacker Magazine.  But we got a late start and dramatically underestimated the distance of the hike.  Worse, where we assume that we would be able to fill water bottles on the hike, the majority of it was along ridge-lines where there weren’t water options.

So instead of doing the loop, we knocked out the vertical on the trip and set camp at the summit of Meneka Peak.

Since it was just the one night, we packed in steaks and potatoes and had a delicious dinner around the campfire and relaxed.

It’s rare to camp on an actual summit.  Usually, you camp in a protected nook or valley where the ground slopes upward around you.  Camping on a summit is a strange feeling – the ground falls away from you in every direction, so you feel a bit like melted butter on top of a pancake – like you’re going to slide right off the side of the mountain.  It was  a bit disconcerting – both Tiffany and I kept waking up all night with a strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right.  Of course, everything was fine but things just felt weird.  I’ve camped all my life, but I’ve never had quite this feeling of vertigo.

Final point, despite all of the camping and hiking Tiff and I have done over the past years, this was the first backpacking trip we’ve done on the East Coast.  All our overnight trips have been in the Rockies and all our camping out East has been from the car.

Back when we hatched this trip, the plan was for the whole family to run the Seeley Lake Challenge sprint triathlon together.  That’s a 600 yard swim, 10 mile bike ride and 3 mile run.  It generally takes between 1 and 2 hours.  But Tiffany got swamped with work and I had some respiratory adjusting to do with the introduction of a dander machine (i.e. cat) in the house so our training regime never got off the ground.

But Ruth, well, she’d been training for this all summer and despite the rest of the family bowing out, she decided to go for it.  Which is awesome.  At the last minute, Rachel decided to join her (at this point, no one knew Rachel couldn’t swim…).

Why is Rachel making that face?  Because… she can’t swim!

On your marks…

Get set…

GO!

Ruth makes good time in the swim (but loses a little time drying off, changing clothes, curling her hair, putting on makeup before she starts her bike ride).  But Rachel is nowhere to be found.  We suspect that she may have drowned.  Finally… she dog paddle out of the water to where Ruth is still getting dressed:

Ruth has some fans… and it’s off on the bikes!

and then running…

And then the final stretch to the finish!

And then we all celebrated.

Oh, yeah.  The event organizer saw me with my camera and gave me her contact info.  I became the “official” photographer for the event.  She even paid me $1.  My first dollar as a photographer!

During our adventure on Glacier National Park’s Highline Trail, we saw some amazing sights in still life.  But I think it’s the wild life that we saw that will be the most memorable.

As we drove from Flathead to the trail head at the top of the Going to the Sun Highway, Rachel regaled us with a dramatic reading of an account of Glacier National Park’s famous “Night of the Grizzlies.”  The story, which has become foundational Montana lore, relates the tale of two fatal grizzly bear attacks in the same night, August 13, 1967.  One such attack involved a mother and her two cubs, just a few hundred yards from the Granite Park Chalet.

We were hiking on August 12.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Bear with me.

Right off the bat, we saw the GNP staples.  A mountain sheep and a mountain goat within 100 feet of each other and only about 5-minutes into the hike.  I’m still suspicious that they were animatronic, placed there before the sun comes up by enterprising tour guides hoping for fat tips from obese RV tourists.

As we hiked, countless ground squirrels crossed the trail all around us.  Living in Glacier, they had developed no fear whatsoever of people (and probably come to associate us with food), so they came very, very close.  Then, as I was looking down a valley, I heard Tiffany squeal.

That’s Tiff’s Universal Furry Animal Face™ and she’s making it because a marmut had crested a large rock to role into the lunch spot of some fellow hikers.  The marmut was very brave… as you can see from the pictures, Tiffany was not.  When I later asked her why she had been so trepidatious to feed a furry friend from her hand, she explained that the marmut was a wild animal.  Probably smart.

After our close encounter with rodent kind, we set off again, and an hour later, were shocked by another – larger – sample of GNP wildlife.  Equally brave, this four-point mule dear marched past the trail at a distance of about 50 yards.  I followed him backward for a short distance, when he came across a steep drop framed by trees.  I couldn’t have picked a better location if I was creating a digital deer with CGI!  At which point, Muley posed.  Literally posed.  For 5 minutes, he stood there until I actually got bored taking pictures (!) and just stopped for a minute to appreciate the situation.

So there we were, euphoric from our wildlife encounters to that point, not thinking about the story we’d heard about that fateful August in 1967 when the Grizzlies reasserted their dominance.  As we walked, another hiker hurried toward us on the trail.  He warned that there was a mother grizzly bear and her two cubs just around the next bend.

I had never seen a grizzly bear i the wild.  I’ve seen black bears (surprisingly, not in Montana, but in Virginia).  But never a grizzly bear.  And just around the corner – and a mere half mile from the site of the 1967 attacks – we saw them.  Just like the that fateful night, a mother and her two cubs… no more than 250 yards away…

As we watched (and we watched for a long time), the bears walked along the ridge parallel to the trail.  The closed the distance slowly until they were 200 yards away, between the Highline Trail that we were on and the Grinnell Glacier Trail.  But the two trails merged, and the further they bears moved, the closer they got to the Grinnell Trail.  All of the sudden, a man and his two young children rounded a bend and came to within a stone’s throw from the foraging bears.  Finally, as we waved them off, they saw the bears and slowly backed away.

Eventually, the bears began to mosey back toward us.  As it was about to rain, and everyone was hungry, we decided it was time to go.  By the time we left, the bears were withing 100 yards away… and they had noticed us…

We were only in Glacier National Park for about 12 hours, but it felt like we’d been there a week.  I can’t wait to go back!  More pics below:

From the extreme southwest of Montana, we spend a day in the extreme northwest for some world-class hiking on Glacier National Park’s Highline Trail.  Glacier includes some of the most incredible hikes in the world, and the 12-mile Highline Trail is near the top of the class.  The first seven miles take you from Logan Pass (the pinnacle of the Going to the Sun Highway), across the ridges to the Granite Park Chalet.  The hike entails only 600 feet up and down (the net change in altitude between the start and finish is only 14 feet), so it’s pretty easy, but it cuts through some amazing country.

It’s pretty evident from the photos above, that the weather on our hike was overcast and chilly.  Initially, this was disappointing for me as I was hoping for the grand vistas of Glacier National Park, but in retrospect is was a blessing for three reasons.  First, by all rights, the Highline Trail in August should have been packed with people.  Sure, it’s a long hike, but it’s an easy one that attracts people from around the world.  But the weather kept the crowds away; we still saw people, but not too many.  Second, the cooler temperatures brought out wildlife – and we saw a lot.  Third, while the cliche blue-sky landscapes on this trail are a dime a dozen, the low clouds gave me an opportunity to shoot something unique.  The photos are downright spooky at times, but they capture the temperamental personality of Mother Nature.  It was stunning.

After a little more than seven miles, you reach the Granite Park Chalet – one of two surviving stone lodges that were built in the park 70 years ago when visitors rode a train to East Glacier and then rode from stop to stop on horseback through the park.  We arrived at the Chalet just after the sky made good on its ongoing threat of rain.  By the time we walked through the door, we were drenched.

After lunch at the chalet, we realized that we had 4 more miles to go (this time, descending 2,400 feet ) to “The Loop” on the Going to the Sun Highway.  We also realized that we were behind schedule (after all the photo and wildlife stops).  As we’d left the trailhead, Travis had noted that the last shuttle from the Loop to Logan Pass where we’d parked the car was at 6:15 pM, so we had to haul tail to get there.  So we set off down the trail setting a brisk pace until it became clear that someone was going to have to run.  Rachel and Travis took off – barely making the last shuttle of the day.  And as we descended, the sun finally came out for a few minutes.

Okay, now, I realize that I’ve made several references to wildlife.  And posted no pictures.  Bear with me (pun intended)… I’ll post that in a second post shortly.

*These photos aren’t necessarily in strict chronological order

After a few days in The Big Hole, we loaded up the cars and drove north to the lake house on Flathead Lake, just outside of Polson.  This is a staple of the annual return to Montana, although this year the early August weather wasn’t as cooperative.  Cold temperatures hampered by overcast skies and a lot of rain made summer clothes a tough sell and a steady wind across the lake made water-sports difficult.  But the lake is the lake and we had a great time!

Tiffany cooks blueberry pancakes with real blueberries.  As with most cooking, she is very interested in ratios, resulting in the hand-placement of each and every blueberry on the pancake.

Behold, a spaghetti cheeseburger!  It was as delicious as it looked!

When we got the the lake, we met up with Rachel’s boyfriend Travis.  As a teacher, he hasn’t been able to make our previous family events because they happened too late in August after his classes start, but this time things worked out.  Travis showed up at the door after spending a summer of adventure, hiking, camping, hitch-hiking.  He had a beard.  Which he then gradually reduced over a day or two:

The full “Mountain Man” look on the first night.

Travis sporting what I like to call “The X-Games” beard.  EXTREEME!

The “Redneck” or “Budweiser” was short-lived.  It was very elusive to capture on film, and shortly after this image was captured, it was lost forever.

And, of course, we had some fun on the boat too – even though it was cold.

It was beautiful.