I'll say it early in this, this trip is one of a few I regret. If I could do it over I'd not do it, or at least do it differently. I should have taken the early sign and went with that. The trip "hinged" on the first book royalties check, which was to be shipped at the end of September. My conservative guess on that was it would be 1-2k, possibly $500 or over $2k. I wanted to see Bear Tooth pass, and that was to close mid-October. A huge snow storm was about to happen, which would be nice to see while there, and something I'd have to beat to be able to see Bear Tooth pass. As the 8th approached I waited and waited on that check to show, so I could tell if I should even go or not. Day before it still had not shown. So I e-mailed them, so I'd at least know the amount before leaving. I wake up on the morning I was to leave and have my reply. The reply was, there was no check, we wound up with a negative balance. Doh! Evidently the up front money to do the book had to be covered with the royalty amounts before we saw any royalties. I thought they were completely separate and we were just getting that much to do the book, then royalties. So for the trip, this bit of info stung a little. I never listen to "signs" and instead do things I shouldn't(like go on a trip I now couldn't afford). So I turned off the computer and went out the door, thinking, this is dumb you can't afford to do this. First good news was the $2.99 gas I filled up with in Sioux City. I planned the trip at 20 mpg with an average of $3.50 gas. Even at that, I figured gas would cost around $500 for the trip. This good news was short-lived. I head west out of Sioux Falls and run into the front and strong nw winds. The driver's side door felt like it wanted to open as the wind blew over. I was like, this is not going to help me with gas mileage in this Blazer. It didn't! I start running low on gas mid-way across SD. I try to get to Murdo as I thought it was larger so it would have in town stations with cheaper gas. I get there as the low fuel light comes on. I could almost watch the fuel gauge move with those winds pushing on me. The cheapest gas I find there was $3.55. Bastards. I then stupidly figure my mileage on that tank. Less than 16 mpg. This meant the parts in the wind were likely less than 14. Not the added money news I needed. This trip was plum full of issues.   In the above is the Big Horns west of Buffalo WY. It was really cold up on the pass, at 9600 feet. Interesting seeing snow again.

I'm now heading down towards Ten Sleep. This area is very cool.

Looking west from the same spot as above.

Above is photo trip screw up 1 of many. I messed around in the Big Horns just long enough to put me in the worst spot for sunset photography, at the "right" time. For all the good parts of the sunset I'm down in this freaking valley going north, not being able to see west to the mountains or east to them. Then there's Greybull and Basin to slow me down even more. I was going nuts not getting the view I wanted. I mostly wanted to see the Big Horns to my east at sunset. But as I went north a closer hill blocked them out. I get to the north side of that hill at Greybull and have to turn west. I fly west just trying to get up higher to at least see the mountains to the west with the colors. I get the last few moments before it was all gone. I thought to myself, well, I just blew the hell out of this very cool area at sunset. I did. A person could fill pages with this sunset and that area, from one shoot, if they were at all in position to shoot it. I just had to laugh as I drove north and saw it unfolding from down low. I get into Cody WY after dark and get my room at the super 8 there. I unload all the images, browse a bit online and head to bed. My plan was to wake 2.5 hours before sunrise and get up to Bear Tooth pass for sunrise. Didn't quite work out that way.

It's well before sunrise and I'm about to drive down this cool switchback area on Chief Joseph Scenic highway. It was pretty amazing up there. This short little road(on the map anyway) took a lot longer than I thought it would. I opted to screw around here till sunrise. There just wasn't much of a sunrise thanks to clouds.

Not sure why, but I had no idea this cool area would be between me and Bear Tooth pass. It was a nice welcome to the Rockies. Down at the bottom there was this huge gorge with a river at the bottom. I ran around on that bridge and the area shooting around, but really, I don't have much to show for it! The story of my trip, or at least one of them. I do not yet understand fully how so many of my images are soft. The only thing I did different was use Live View a lot to make sure the focus was as good as it could be. Seems damn ironic at this point. You can use live view and see the picture on the 3 inch LCD then zoom in 10 times. So it's like having a picture 30 inches wide to focus on compared to the view finder. The thing I noticed a lot was the focus line being inside the infinity marker quite a bit. I thought it was just the cold changing that. Now I don't know what the deal was, but it's very obvious the focus was not right far more than it was right. It annoys the crap out of me. I should have stuck to the way I did it before, at least with the wide angle shots needing to be focused at infinity. Live view should not be able to be off with that. But the one thing I thought about later was it's refresh rate. I noticed how long it sometimes takes to update the lightness and histogram display when you change exposure settings...especially when cold. The only thing I can think of, is that when I was using live view zoomed in for perfect focus, is I wasn't giving it enough time to show me the results of my change, and therefor being NOT focused each time I thought I was. The screen just hadn't changed yet. There's no other answer for my wide angle shots to be so damn soft at full size so frequently on this trip. It sure ain't from movement when shooting at 10mm in non-dark situations. Most times I used the 100-400 I used the tripod and Live View(since live view has the mirror locked up to work). But hell if they are sharp. The only new thing I used a lot of this trip was live view for focusing. It just makes me want to bang my head on so many of these. I've never had this much softness issues in the last 6 years. I look at them all and think to myself, what the hell were you doing! Granted, many of them were with the 100-400L, which can be a bastard to get focused just right. But still.

Anyway, heading up Bear Tooth Pass now. This was a peak near Cooke City MT. Like everything from the trip, it's really soft. Sized down and sharpened it hides the fact a little, but it will always show even then.

Snow showers falling over mountains to the south.

The lighting was pretty amazing in this setup, with virga type snow showers falling on peaks...letting some light through.

I had looked this thing over on Google Earth so many times before coming here it's not funny. I thought the crazy switchback part was the part going down into MT to Red Lodge. I never took that down, but am pretty sure the side coming up from WY had far far more of them. It was constant 180 degree + turns up to here. Nothing with sharp cliffs really, but just a crapload of steep corners on and on and on. They all had these 15 foot(or more) wooden sticks for plow markers. This area down to Red Lodge and over would see the biggest snows from this storm...49 inches. It was like another world up there, one with no people. It's about 11,000 feet right here. It's just an unforgiving climate heading into winter. And here I was, all geared up to shoot a bunch of screwed up, out of focus shots of the thing. Not just that, but ready to be a puss and fly the hell down at the first sign of snow. I hate regrets! And this trip provided a years worth.

This edge I'm at required a bit of running, something I'd done a lot of up to this point in the trip. Something that will soon come back to haunt me. I turned to look back up to the car and was like, crap, I went that far down hill? I love high places and wish I was back there now. This road won't be open until mid-May now though. I bet it rules on a windy day there.

Still up on Bear Tooth Pass. These zoomed in ones were especially not sharp! Aaarrrrggghhh. I'm such an idiot. I was even freezing my ass off spending extra time with Live View to make sure the focus was right. At large sizes these images are useless. And they look like crap sized down and re-sharpened. As much as I come to completely hate this trip, the shear crapiness of my photography of scenes like this, makes me want to go right back and do it over the right way. If I had the money I would. But then again, I was making it a big point to do it right at the time!

I could tell the areas of snow over the mountains to the south were working this way. I didn't know how fast it would get how bad. What was immediately scary was doing that drive back down with snow covered roads. Not scary from falling off a big cliff, as there were few by the road to do so, but scary as in the time it would take to try and crawl down the sick amount of steep twisting corners.

I was back up to near the pass, ready to make the drive down in a hurry if needed, when a wall of snow hit. You can barely see it in this 10mm shot on the top left side. The thing just flew over the mountain tops and covered the road in white in no time. Yikes! So I flew down the mountain. Even when I ran out of falling snow, I didn't stop. The lack of other people made it quite spooky, and the fact it was going to close till May with this snow storm. Even this above image is super soft full size. That's so damn pathetic to me, because getting sharp images with that 10-22 is so easy. Just put the focus line on or just left of the infinity line. Live view kept saying it needed to be inside more, to the right of the line. I don't get how live view can be wrong, and it probably can't, but I noticed the area it was saying it needed to be, and chalking that up to the lens being so cold. I guess going that route made me think I didn't need to actually check things on the LCD after the fact.

The mountains near Cooke City again, now up in some clouds. Cooke City, gas gouging city of the US apparently. I get into town and decide to fill up. What is the cheapest in this town? $4.30. That's right, four dollars and 30 cents. This town marked more than just expensive gas. I ran out of cell service not far out of Cody early in the day and did not have it back yet. There was zero right in town here. There was also no radio at all. These two lacking things would continue into the park. So anyway, I stick a CD into the CD player. It won't play it. That's fine, I'll put in another I say to myself. But no, no I won't, because it won't eject the one I put in there! How nice this was, static for noise the majority of the time there. The other thing that kicked in right about now was muscle cramping. One of my toes started to pull upwards in my shoe. Oh no. Those are a true pain in the ass if you ever get them. Guess that is what I get for running around and drinking nothing but coke. This would grow into severe cramping over this and the next day. Wearing a bunch of heavy clothes in the cold and tugging around the camera gear made it all the worse. The bag with the camera and lenses is like wearing a very heavy backpack with too many books. That or like putting a bowling ball or so on your shoulders everywhere you go.   Continue to Page 2