Hunting for Fall Color (day 3)

My last day in Lee Vining started with a quick trip to the Exxon gas for a large coffee to go. From there I headed up north of the Mono museum where I hoped to catch some morning wildlife on the lake.  It was quite cold.  While the sand pipers shuffled around for their breakfast I sipped my warm coffee. The morning light had a beautiful golden glow to it.

 

I loved the subtle play of soft primary colors in the above shot. Blue, red and yellow. My coffee was gone about the time the sun rose so it was time to head back up to the Lundy beaver ponds and see how they looked in the morning.

The water was like glass with hardly a ripple. The sun was casting shadows from one mountainside to other as can be seen in the above pic. Not an easy shot to catch with the contrasts of light and shadow so I had to meld to separate exposures to get what I saw.

If you're really lucky you may come across a California pond turtle catching some early morning rays. If not then you bring your own and carefully place him where you want. As models go turtles are fairly cheap and rarely complain.

When I came over here the focus was fall color. But the shots I enjoyed finding the most where the reflective ones and had me reflecting on just how lucky I was to be there at that time.

 One thing I hadn't done yet was drive up to the end of the dirt road and hike up to the falls. I had heard it was a bit dicey on one area of the switch backs so having heard that you'd think I'd of paid closer attention to foot placement that the views. But the views were hard to take you eye away from and sure enough on my way back down the trail from the upper view of the falls I fell, tripod camera and all.  Stepped on a lose rock on a steep down hill switch back and landed on my butt. Fortunately there was a bush near by so I tossed my tripod and camera in it hoping it would fair better that me.

What saved my ass literally was the fact that it had heated up considerably during the climb there so I had wrapped my heavy winter coat around my butt. It was a bit embarrassing as there were some hikers climbing up the trail below me who all heard me fall. I suppose I got some fall color on my butt from that.

Met some wonderful people along my excursions and have to say it is quite beautiful over there. I will definitely be back. Easy to see why people Fall in Love with it.