July 1

2011 Oregon Trip

Friday, July 1

Today dawned clear as predicted. I woke up before the alarm went off and peeked outside to see blue sky just as the sun was coming up. Carol decided to enjoy sunrise from the comfort of a nice, warm bed, so I was on my own. When I drove down to the parking lot by the dam, all I could see was clouds and fog. No problem. I was sure it would burn off in a few minutes...No such luck. Fortunately, I had several fishermen and lots of salamanders to keep me entertained. Everyone was catching fish. Most were small, but one very large rainbow trout is going to be someone's dinner tonight.

While I was waiting for the sun to burn through, I kept hearing what I thought was an osprey high in the pine trees hidden by the fog. I strained to see it every time it called, but I could never pinpoint its position. I was walking around trying to stay warm when I looked up and saw what appeared to be a white head at the top of a pine tree. It looked like a bald eagle, but I didn't really think that was possible. I put on my longest lens (why do I only have wide-angle lenses when I see the best wildlife) and started walking toward the blob in the fog. Just as I neared the tree, it flew off. It was a bald eagle. As I was talking to another photographer, I noticed the bald eagle had returned to another tree by the lake.

Finally, at about 7:15 the fog started to lift, and I could start shooting the reflection of Mt. Hood in Trillium Lake. By 7:26, all the clouds and fog were gone, and I was shooting a plain blue sky.

The bald eagle seemed content to watch all the happenings from the top of a lofty pine. I really wanted to photograph the eagle, but I had to get back to the motorhome and start working at 8:00. If I had another 30 minutes, I could have returned to the motorhome, got my long lens, and photographed the eagle. Not today. I'll have to settle for the image from my 105mm lens. Can you find the eagle sitting on the branch in front of Mt. Hood?

Right after work, we returned to the lake. We didn't have morning light, but we had amazing cumulus clouds to enhance the scene. There was absolutely no breeze and the lake was like a mirror. The only thing missing was an eagle fishing. We discovered the next day, that we missed the eagle fishing by only a couple hours.

As we were walking back to the Explorer, we saw a little girl feeding a duck family. Too cute!


After the Fog Lifted	Little Girl and Ducks

After photographing at Trillium Lake, we drove to Lost Lake. Now, that I had my Trillium shot, I just needed the Lost Lake at sunset shot. We decided against taking the more scenic LoLo Pass to Lost Lake because of our tight schedule. That will have to wait for another year. We took the easy route on the east side of Mt. Hood.

We finally found the road to Lost Lake. We had to take the campground road and pay an entrance fee to even get to Lost Lake. We hiked down the trail that circles the lake and scouted out places to photograph when the light improved. Then, we drove back to check out the Lost Lake Store. This area may be very good for fishing, but the facilities are badly lacking.

We returned to the Lost Lake Trail for sunset. This morning, there were too many clouds when I arrived at Trillium Lake. At Lost Lake there weren't any clouds, and sunset passed without doing much to the scene. We didn't even get good reflections. We'll have to try Lost Lake again on another trip.