October - The new Rain & Fog season

As we work our way through this month of October getting closer to the Halloween celebration it is a time where we start a new raining season (Oct.1). That is the official day of the new 12 month period, it is the same in Colorado where we moved from but there it starts the official "snow" season. This also marks the time of year where we have our most foggy months of October and November.

Anyway as the temperature starts to finally cool down more with highs in the low 60's the ground and water temperature are finally starting to give up the heat. With the Willamette river running right through Salem it provides some great fog in the morning! Also anywhere that there is still good day heating of the ground and the moisture in the air we get all kinds of pockets of ground fog. So far I have never seen it so thick you could barely see the front of your car, usually get a good 100 yards or better most of the time for visibility.

Well, with this all said I was commuting into work via the bicycle and always carry a little point-and-shoot camera just in case. So going across the Center street bridge I stopped to shoot a few shots of the fog on the bridge. This one included is a shot looking northerly towards the Marion street bridge which in distance is about 100 yards away! I was sitting directly over the Willamette river so the fog was even better. You can not even see the cars on the bridge going West....just the shadow of the bridge in the fog. Just thought I would share with you something many, but not all go through this time of year.

Stay safe and Happy Halloween!

Tim

What Stories they might Tell?

Back in the last week of July and into the first few days of August I took a usual pilgrimage back East to Wyoming/Colorado to hook up with brothers and friends and do some backpacking. Although I sometimes bitch about the lack of map reading skills on some folks part I still have the best time out there. You don't hear phones, TV's, Cars, worthless people taking up oxygen and the list goes on. You get to see country (hopefully) that very few will ever see because they can not or will not venture to such places, and all the better for the rest of us that do.

But what I am really getting at is while I drive on the interstate highways and the US highways and state highways I along with many others pass by buildings, structures of time gone by. Maybe they are houses, mills or stores but now they sit still as the world moves on. At one time they served a purpose as a home, or a place to buy goods and now they are the home to mice and other little critters. Who lived there? Who worked there? Are some of the things I wonder as I drive by or sit and take a picture of them. Why? when? How did this place become no longer needed by anyone? Will it continually waste away or will eventually somebody or something tear it down or destroy it?

We as a country are just over 230 years young and think about the progression and transformation of our surroundings. Just over a 100 years ago folks were going by wagon in long trains working their way out to Oregon where my family and I now live. Did any of them travel along the same lines that my vehicle takes me along when I travel? Did they think that someday all that great open land they saw would someday be split, divided, fenced and taken for personal wealth, gain or independence? The herds of animals they must have seen roaming around and facing the world and peoples unknown to them must have been a tremendous rush. There were no interchanges, or rest areas along the road. Every step was a scenic byway to them and not a posted scenic byway by the state or federal DOT.

I am starting a new gallery on my website area dedicated to these things. I have not got any photos in there yet, but keep checking it and it will grow. Think about those things as we live our day to day lives. Is there really a hurry to find the end? I think you need to veer from the road, path now and then to continue the adventure. Don't loose sight of where you are going but don't be blinded by having to get there in a hurry. In this post there is a shot of a house in far western Wyoming near the Utah border and the othe is in central Oregon somewhere between Burns and Bend.


Thanks for reading.


Tim