On Vacation!

Written on June 26, 2008

Hello everyone! As some of you may know I’m off in Montana for a family vacation. We flew to Bozeman this past Saturday with no hitches. The kids were great on the plane. I found dealing with diabetes for the first time on a road trip not so horrible–my six year old was diagnosed just two weeks ago. From Bozeman we headed right on over to Butte to visit my parents. We have had lots of fun. Today we went to Gem Mountain (http://www.gemmtn.com/) to search for real sapphires from a mine. We found a few. The kids got so hungry, it took way longer than we thought it would, so we couldn’t stay to have them appraised so I can’t tell you how successful we were. I also got sun burned not realizing how fast the time flew. The kids had fun and were thrilled to see some snow on the mountains.

Tomorrow we head north to the Bison Range and Glacier Park north of Missoula. If I can get on wireless somewhere between now and when we get home I’ll try and post some more of our adventure. I don’t have the point and shoot downloaded yet to upload family shots.

Here are some shots I’ve taken the past few days. Montana is called Big Sky Country mostly I think because the sky is always so beautiful and the mountains give it a reference to how huge it is.

This is Butte. I took this with my little point and shoot.

One of my Dad’s friends took me out to go shooting on Monday. His name is Chuck and he also loves to shoot as well. It was nice shooting with someone who has patience and understands the photographers mind. Most non shooters don’t like to stand around while you geek out over some silly fence line and some sunshine or whatever it is we photographers get an inclination to shoot.

Here is a heard of Elk I saw on the way to a mountain top:

These next few shots I’m experimenting with recreating vintage style photographs. I really love the old photographs you come across in antique stores and such and would like to create some of my own vintage works.

Here are some sky shots I took with Chuck:

This one is probably my favorite from the whole night:

Special thanks to Chuck for being kind enough to drive me up the mountain to get these wonderful shots!