The New Year Has Come! (The Silmaril Series)

Merry New Year! I hope you are simply having a wonderful holiday season. As I have stated before I have a tendency to think of Christmas time continuing until about the second weekend of January (or whenever Martin Luther King's birthday holiday is in the U.S.). So, I typically have what most would consider Christmas music in my mp3 player until then. Keep in mind I do not really listen to the popular Christmas music you hear on the radio during the season. I always enjoy taking walks at night listening to my music and seeing what houses are still decorated with lights. It gets less and less as the weeks go on, but I have seen some Christmas lights out until March before. 

Skipping back to my previous December 21, 2022 blog entry, I showed what happened back in May, 2022 when I hiked to Leavitt Lake. It was a strange weekend, but I was somewhat happy to get some sort of picture of the "winter-like" conditions there.

So, we went back about two months later near the end of July. This time the issue was there was a lot of smoke due to fires going on. Again, this was frustrating. I was a bit fortunate in a few ways:

So, as one should expect during the summer, all that winter snow and ice was gone. The only downside I had was a small amount of smoke haze I had to deal with here. You have to look really closely, but on the right side in the lake is tiny little boat. Some guy was fishing there. There were others camping around the lake with the 4WD vehicles which you need to have to drive into this area. For this blog entry and the one back on December 21st we hiked in on the dirt road. In the past, I have been driven in with 4WD trucks. I have to stress that or someone will get stuck in the middle of nowhere! Do not drive this road unless you have the proper vehicle! 

I did get the drone to clear the lake. This is looking back across the lake. I kept pushing the drone to see if I could get all that pond in the shot, but at the same time I did not want to crash into the side of the mountain as I kept going backwards. So, this is the best I could do. 

The smokey haze was much more apparent in the background. I moved the camera down to focus on the lake. The mountainside was very smokey so no need to show that. You can see some of it on the upper right side.

We did not spend much time at the lake. Just enough for me to fly there and back again. There is more hiking that can be done around the lake. We have talked about doing more, but I hope to do other things before coming back here in the future.

So with that said, we start the new year! I will have another "housekeeping" type of blog entry in the next week or two. I am preparing a video for it that is more for my video watchers than those who read the blog, but stay tuned here since it will prepare how I go about 2023.

Winter Is Coming! (The Silmaril Series)

 At least in the Northern Hemisphere! 

So, will be the last blog entry of the year. Please have a great Christmas and New Year! Note that many are coming down with illnesses of various types, including Covid still being around, so please protect yourselves and bulk up on your vitamins. 

So, one of the goals I had this year was to use my drone at Leavitt Lake. This is one of the shots I took:

The trick on this one is I took it during Memorial Day Weekend. I had just re-registered my drone, and the week before the weather forecasts were saying that there would be lots of wind in the Eastern Sierra that weekend. Exactly what I did not want to happen.

Sure enough when we got there it was all very windy. We decided to go up the HWY 108 anyways to see what it was like at Leavitt Lake. Turns out that morning was not too bad for wind, but as we kept going the cloud cover was lower as we kept going higher on the road. 

We parked off the road. Normally one takes a 4-wheel drive to Leavitt Lake, but the road was blocked due to winter conditions still existing, and we were just going to hike the road anyways. Off we went.

It took us about an hour to hike in. A few huge trees had fallen down over the winter so even if the road were open, no one was getting through with any vehicle. As we got closer to the lake the more snow we encountered. In fact, at a few points I was pretty much sunk in knee deep. 

At the lake I had already decided I was going to fly my drone quickly. Go up, get a few pictures, and get down. There was a slight drizzle of rain coming down, but not overwhelming. I took the drone up and flew over some of the lake. 

I flew it back and took the above picture. I was going to do a little more flying over the lake at a lower level, but then the rain started to kick in a little more. I would have liked to have taken a picture of the lake without all the cloud cover around and the sun out, but that was not in the cards on this day.

I ended up flying my drone a few more times that weekend with the wind really blowing. I was kind of fortunate I did not lose the drone, but I had waited many months to fly again. Looking back now I will probably never fly in any type of rainy conditions or that type of strong wind ever again. 

So that ends my flight with winter conditions at Leavitt Lake. There is more to this drone story at Leavitt Lake, but I am going to wait until the beginning of January to tell the rest of the story. 

Virginia Lakes (The Silmaril Series)

Happy 4th of July! It has been a while so I thought I would upload some drone pictures I took last year and a one from a few years ago.

This picture was taken a few years ago in August at Virginia Lakes. It is the biggest lake: Big Virginia. I felt kind of bad that day because I suggested to my friend we come here so he could fish, and I would use my drone. He ended up not getting any fish. He was fishing on the other side of this picture at the lake in this picture. I remember we both took off for home after that, and I have not seen him since. Lol!

I came back last October to take a few more pictures of the area. So the following is Big Virginia with some fall colors:

Basically, I rotated the drone to get the following pictures:

This is Little Virginia. You have to look closely or blow up the picture, but there are a bunch of people either in small boats or "rubber tubes" (?) fishing that smaller lake.

Looking toward the east is Trumbull Lake. I believe that Trumbull Lake Campground was closed so no one was fishing there. Btw, this is the lake many think Samuel Clemens fished and camped at according to Roughing It. He says they camped and fished under Castle Peak which is now called Dunderberg Peak. I am going to go out on a limb and say he was probably familiar with all of the lakes around that I am showing. They are so close to each other I would think there is a good chance his company could have fished all of them. They are all a short walking distance from each other.

Finally, to the west is Blue Lake. Some people hike to that lake to fish it, but I usually pass it heading along the hiking trail. I showed it back in November 2009 while hiking to Mt. Excelsior.

That covers the "new" content I wanted to share. I think I would be massively repeating myself and stating the obvious that we are living in a strange time. While I have some things I have done over the past few months I will share at some point I am not as motivated to do so right now. I had to force myself to make the time to do this blog entry. 

With inflation and gas prices right now I am not as excited to take off to do things. Everything feels like a lot more work to do at this point. There are a lot of goals I had for myself to get done this year, but I am not sure that is going to happen. If the typical fires start this summer, then that will probably cancel what I have in mind. 

In any case, I cannot predict the future, and will only find out what happens when it happens. Until that point I wish my readers well.

June Lake on June 1st (The Silmaril Series)

In a blog entry a few months ago I uploaded a picture of June Lake I took in the fall. I wanted a picture of that area during the fall season. I mentioned the issue there, and in another picture off the June Lake Loop, is during the fall season the sun is a lot lower in the southern direction as it moves east to west during the day. So, you are either not getting enough sunlight or you are taking pictures into the sunlight. 

I had the opportunity to go back to this area at the beginning of June. I thought I might as well do another drone shot here:

Obviously, there was a lot more light to work with in this picture. I was there roughly the same time of the day as the shot from October.

In a different direction, let me state a few things personally and how the next few months will probably go. From where I am at, it appears that we are getting near the end of lockdowns and issues with Covid. From the beginning I have been massively skeptical of what we are being told about this pandemic. It is kind of the way I feel about global warming. I do accept these things actually exist, but the stats, faulty projections, and responses to them are what put me into skeptical mode. I do not think we will find out the full story of this pandemic for a few years. 

In any case, it does appear things are opening up again and there will be more to do. In the short term, I want to visit as many places locally as possible. Some of the things I want to do are not things that will necessarily show up on the blog, but some will. This is just for my own sanity due to the last two years of my life.  However, in the long term I want to visit a few places out of state that I am currently researching.

So I will probably not have much for the next few months on here. That is pretty typical of how I have been in the past during the summer. Usually I am out somewhere working on some project to show on here during the fall/winter/spring anyways. I do have some completed projects from last year that I have postponed as well. 

Hopefully, you, your family and friends, can get out wherever you are at and start enjoying the real world again. It really is not healthy to be stuck indoors looking at videos screens all day. Turn off the cell phones, tablets, and computers! Get out there again!

Silver Lake (The Silmaril Series)

In the last blog I mentioned that taking pictures in a southern direction during the fall off the June Lake Loop you face a barely rising sun. I faced that here at Silver Lake.

 I tried to work with this drone shot in Photoshop, but I did not like the results of anything. So, I just kept this pretty close to what you see above.

I will continue this series at a later date. There is a project that I am working on that should be interesting, but I do not know how long it will take for me to get it done. I want to put most of my time and effort into that right now.

So, until then...see you later down the trail.

June Lake (The Silmaril Series)

Another drone shot I took in October of June Lake:

 The June Lake Loop is great for fall colors. However, one issue is the sun is a little lower in the southern direction at this time of year. So, it is either in the direction of the picture you want to take, or barely comes over the mountain side. In this case, the sun is not high enough to clear the lake so I ended up with some shadow on the left side of the picture. Had I come a few hours later that would change some, but I have been in areas that the later in the season you are the sun barely comes over the canyons.

North Lake (The Silmaril Series)

 This is a new type of series I will be presenting as time goes on. I have wanted to show some of my drone footage and photos. I have two drones. One is a Parrot Bebop 2 and a Parrot Anafi. The Anafi has great video footage, but I primarily got it for taking aerial pictures of some of my favorite spots. For now in this series I am going to just show pictures. 

Since the lockdown(s) I have been on a J.R.R. Tolkien kick. I have been reading a lot of his fiction. I decided to call this series name after my favorite book of his legendarium. With that said, here we go.

The following was taken in October at North Lake outside of Bishop, CA. I have been here before and talked about it in 2016. I wanted to go back and get a drone shot of the area. My first silmaril:

Not bad. It was close to 9am that morning. The sun has just come over the ridgeline enough so the shadow was not in the lake anymore. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to stick around a few hours to wait for more light in the area.

I also took pictures with my normal camera at the lake.

A lot of people were taking pictures in the area. A bunch of fisherman too. I waited a little longer for better light, but a guy on a small boat went out into the middle of the lake to fish. I had better light at the time and took some pictures, but I do not want to feature the guy on my blog. Lol!

That was kind of the theme for me this last fall season. There were a lot of good fall colors, but lots of fisherman would get in the way. Oh well, we all have to share in nature's goodness.