Nothing like a visit to the most beautiful part of the United States, the northwest, to improve one’s state of mind. IRC friends from New Jersey, Utah and Oregon met for several days of beachcoming, crater viewing and get-together fun. I’d love to go back and relive those days, not only for the beauty and fun of it all, but because one of us has gone to the great divide and others are no longer together. But for all the sadness, the memories are priceless and forever.

Link back to Weekly Photo Challenge: State of Mind

You’re welcome to visit my Barns! Barns! Barns! photostream in flickr where you can register for free and upload your own photos of old barns, farm houses and other farm-related items. There are currently 349 members and 2,100 photographs and growing. If you love barns, you’ll love this website!

Over 40 years had past since the last time I had visited Crater Lake National Park. No hand-feeding of chipmunks on this trip, but plenty of hand-rubbing, as it was plenty cold. Still, the drive was beautiful and the lake was stunning.

Contemplation was the order of business during this post-sunset scenario at a place I can’t even remember where. It was still cold.

And this was the sunset that greeted us at this unknown place.

A brief stopover at Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park resulted in plenty of greenery. There were some mighty tall timber that day on our way to the Pacific Ocean.

I was trying to get a shot of the waves breaking over this rock aways off shore when this darn flock of birds got in the way and ruined the whole thing. You can imagine how upset I was. The funny and sad part about it—I was. LOL Now I look at it and think to myself—wow! How cool.

The western United States has its own version of the Twin Towers in the twin volcanoes of Mt. Shasta, northern California. Fortunately, these twin towers are still there. I’d hate to think what would result if these two blew their tops.

This photograph didn’t appear in the local newspaper, but one like it did, along with an article talking about our IRC get-together. What a time it was. It will always be remembered. I actually like this one better.

Here is a little piece of Smithfield Reservoir north of Kansas City, Missouri. I wanted to do this in black and white, which is something I don’t normally do, because color just didn’t do it for me. I beefed up the contrast 100 percent and cropped out the extraneous part of the photograph that I originally thought more highly of. I believe I sharpened it just a bit also. I hope you enjoy it.

Smithfield Reservoir, north of Kansas City, Missouri

What’s beneath my feet?

The sand,

The water,

The flowers,

The things that crawl and fly.

However, the one thing you never want

Beneath your feet

Are people.

 

Link back to Weekly Photo Challenge: Beneath Your Feet

You’re welcome to visit my Barns! Barns! Barns! photostream in flickr where you can register for free and upload your own photos of old barns, farm houses and other related items.

Grand River, near Gallatin, Missouri

B-21 Lake, near Osborn, Missouri

Woods near Gallatin, Missouri

I don't know why, but every time I look at this, I think of Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy. Some may be too young to know who he was, but the team of Laurel and Hardy was among the most popular of Hollywood icons of their time.

Stan Laurel Stump by Cris Coleman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

These branches as fingers seem to be crying out, "Help! I'm drowning!" Well, okay, maybe that is a bit of a stretch. What's your caption?

Finger Branches by Cris Coleman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

One of favorite things to photograph is reflections in water. I don't know why. Perhaps it's the symmetry. I just know it looks cool. Maybe that's enough of a reason.

Reflections by Cris Coleman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

I was in a mood to just go driving one day this last summer and decided to drop by Pony Express Lake and see what I could see. It’s amazing to me that whenever there’s water, there’s picture-taking possibilities. I know, there’s picture-taking possibilities everywhere you go, but I just happen to like water for some reason. It’s so expressive.