Foiled by love...again.

2010-04-19

Today I got up at 5:30 am to photograph the sunrise at the Itasca lake. I arrived at the shore and immediately saw the beautiful reflections of the treeline and sky in the mirror like surface of the placid waters of the lake. Hot dog!

Bad time to get a morning shot.

Anxiously, I started setting up my tripod and filters and mounting the camera. Then, while aiming and composing, I noticed that mirror like effect was gone, the water surface was rippled. What? Wind? I can not feel any wind. I waited a few minutes, and the mirror effect came back. I hunched over the camera to compose again and....more ripples. This time I started to scan the surface and I zeroed in on two geese doing what I suspect was a mating ritual that involved chasing each other across the lake walking and flapping on the water. I waited and waited, but the love dance went long, until the good light was gone.
I thought about getting my telephoto to get some shots of the lover birds, but they were just far enough to ruin the scene, and to be out of the telephoto reach.

Better luck this time

Later in the day we hiked the Deer Lake trail and had lunch at the Deer Lake Campground.
There we found the first signs of ticks in the area. Let me rephrase that: The signs of a mother !#~*^ tick infested area. With just moments of sitting near a grassy area we found 15 ticks! Some on our pants, some on our backpacks, some on the truck seats, some on the trailer floor...and the cake: One in Vicky's hair....yewww gross!

Tick!

We took full advantage of the fact that our campground was absolutely deserted, and stripped out of our clothes and started to pick each other like monkeys. Ah! The wonders of winter camping.

Here we are posing inside a cabin not knowing that we are getting loaded with ticks