Welcome to the Park Avenue Photo Friday diary and open thread. Each Friday, people are encouraged to join us in sharing their pictures of the national parks, state parks and other major parks. Usually we also vote on which park will be the subject of our next Things to Know Before You Come column of travel advice and tips on visiting the parks, but next weeks was already voted on as Park Avenue was on a little bit of a hiatus.
Our Weekly Diaries
Follow us each week with our other three weekly diaries. Each Tuesday at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT we have our Things to Know Before You Come column, looking at hints and tips for visiting a park you choose each week in this open thread. Our previous columns have covered:
Next week's column will be on Redwood National and State Parks in Northern California, but we'll return to voting on what park will be the subject of future column at next week's open thread.
On Thursdays at 11:30am ET/8:30am PT we release our weekly user contributed park feature. Our past features have been
- Jackson Hole National Monument
- Fort McHenry National Monument & Historic Shrine
- Capitol Reef National Park
- Petrified Forest National Park
- Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks
- Dry Tortugas National Park
- Wind Cave National Park & Jewel Cave Natl Monument
- Death Valley National Park
- Zion National Park
- Saguaro National Park
- Everglades National Park
- Rocky Mountain National Park
On Saturdays, we release our newest series of features, Our State Parks, looking at, you guessed it, state parks. The series is just getting its feet off the ground. Here are the parks looked at so far:
- Golden Gate Canyon State Park, Colorado
- Ricketts Glen State Park, Pennsylvania
- Itasca State Park, Mississippi
- Ona State Park, Oregon
If you are interested in writing a feature about a park, please volunteer at our sign up form and as your window approaches, you'll be contacted (a few weeks before) to finalize your date. Actually I'm looking for volunteers to take June 10th and June 17th (ie less than three weeks notice) since I didn't get around to scheduling them while I was away on vacation. If we don't get a volunteer for June 10th, you'll get to hear about my vacation/photo expedition to Great Sand Dunes National Park & preserve in Colorado. (I take it with this group though that seeing and hearing about your friend's vacation pictures is not something to be dreaded.)
Additionally, if any of you are interested in writing other pieces about the parks or park related topics (eg. the CCC, History of the National Park Service, Biographical sketches of park related people, the science behind a park or parks, a look at native American cultures whose ruins are protected as parks, etc) feel free to submit those features. Just ask for an invite as a contributor and we'll get you set up. I think it'd be nice if we branch out into more than just our three regular features.
And without further ado, some previews of some of my images from my trip to Colorado....
Pictures
It was pretty overcast most of the time I was at Great Sand Dunes, with clouds parked over the dunes most of the time, with only some bits of blue sky towards the horizon at times. This is a look towards the dunes across the creek bed of a creek that hasn't yet made its way down from the mountains to flow past the dune field.
Another shot from the creek bed area. Just to give you a sense of scale here, those little, itsy, bitsy specs on the far left near the dunes...are people. The ridge of dunes you are looking at is about 600 feet tall.
You get clouds and rain, you can get a rainbow!
A pronghorn antelope forages in the grasslands to the south of the dune field
A perspective shot capturing some of the wind generated ridges in the sane of the creek bed. And it was a bit windy while I was there: 30-40 mph with gusts of 50+. Thank goodness I had brought my heavy tripod in addition to the carbon fiber one I usually hike with.
And Medano Creek makes its appearance. The creek is late this year working its way down, but I hiked a little up the creek bed to the point where it ended to catch this look at it. The creek advanced several hundred feet through its sandy bed in the three days I was there.
Some deer have breakfast in a grassy area between the dune field and the mountains.
The clouds also dropped snow! A fresh dusting in the mountains. I tiny bit of it that fell on the dunes stuck and you had a few snow capped dunes for a few hours one evening.
And finally, After I left the Park and went north to Manitou Springs, I met up with our own Phoenix Rising for a sunrise shoot in the Garden of the Gods. The clouds weren't cooperative, but I did get this shout before the clouds obscured the rest of the golden hour light hitting the rock:
The line on the rock is the shadow cast by the flat top hill Les and I were standing on. The red rocks are called the kissing camels and that snow capped mountain between them is Pike's Peak.