Monday, July 16, 2007

Father's Footsteps

I recently went on vacation to Redmond, OR for a family reunion. While there, we did many lovely things, such as travel back in time to the wild west on the Crooked River Dinner Train where we witnessed a murder, and then solved it! We also spent a day at Smith Rock. My dad grew up not far from this massive set of monoliths, so it was cool to get to see my dad's old digs. When he was a kid, there were only the trails he and his brothers made to get to the places they liked to play, so I was quite literally following in his footsteps. While there, I got to lug around my camera (with tripod this time!) and took these pictures.


Smith Rock is world renowned as a place of excellent rock climbing. (I do mean world renowned - when I was in England several years ago, I saw a poster advertising Smith Rock in my hotel) I saw this couple way up there and took this shot.
Then I zoomed in for this one - for no real reason beyond showing off my 150mm zoom.

It wasn't until I got home and put the picture on my computer that I realized that the person way up there, on the side of the mountain, nay, the cliff, was wearing flip-flops!

I liked this grouping of rocks - zoomed out, they looked like little bumps, close up, the massive boulders that they are.


This one looks like pieces of . . . well . . . I don't know. I just like them. I don't have any clever metaphors for you right now. Maybe you can decide what they look like and let me know.
I took many more pictures, but I don't have time to put them up today, so stay tuned!

5 comments:

DMo said...

I asked my youngest what that bottom picture looked like to him. He said, "I don't know," [pause] "They look like puppets...but their rocks."

For me that rock on the furthest right looks like an owl-beaver or some type of animal--like one you would see carved in a totem pole: you can see eyes and a nose on the top round part and then the rock on its left, tilting slightly away from the head and body looks like its beaver tail.

I'm impressed with the zoom on your camera. Is the close up of the guy a software crop-zoom or is that an even closer zoom with the camera. The camera does a good job of capturing the detail. It looks like the camera has a pretty solid optical zoom, since it didn't have the grainy or fuzy/cartoony look that digital zoom has.

Its cool that you were able to roam where your dad grew up playing. Its probably a little depressing for him to see how his sacred private playground became popular. In my experience its usually exciting, but somewhat anitclimactic to visit a place that holds a lot of great memories for you. The memories are treasures that immortalize the feelings and experiences you had in that place. The images of how it was are permanently framed in your mind, and then you see what has become of it over time and how people have treated it. But at the same time it creates new happy memories as you relive those experiences with those you care about and have been wanting to 'show it off' to for the longest time.... Alright, I got derailed reminiscing a little bit there, sorry.

Anonymous said...

I think they look like chicken fingers!! :) It's a yummy picture!

Anonymous said...

Would you please join me in shortening the name flip flops to flips? Puh-lease?!

Anonymous said...

lol. Flip flops! Wonder what that guy was thinkin when he woke up that morning... :)

J-Dog said...

FLIP-FLOPS??????????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!