Saturday, July 21, 2007

Seattle, WA, northern Idaho and Western MT

Last week we went for a few days to Glacier National Park; I'll post some pictures about it in the next few days, but for now I'll stick to the first part of our trip: Seattle, Washington state, northern Idaho and western Montana. Seattle is pretty far from Glacier NP, but direct flights into Montana on short notice are extremely expensive, so we had to do it this way.

It turned out to be a very good idea, because the city is very interesting, and so is the drive through Washington state, Idaho and the mountains of western Montana.

I took the first picture (below) by the ocean (actually Puget Sound) in Seattle; I didn't do any post-processing: the sky is as it was, and the street lamps are green because of the way the camera sees (I think) hot mercury vapors. Overall the effect is rather interesting.


The second picture is a lucky shot of some wild horses happily running on the crest of a hill near the Columbia river in Washington state. I just accentuated a bit the contrast of the thunderstorm clouds.


The third picture is an abandoned barn in Montana, along route 28, near the aptly named "Rattlesnake Gulch Road". I didn't see any rattlesnakes, but I bet there are many. This really is cowboy country!


Well, since you read this far, I'll let you in on a secret: the "wild horses" are not a lucky shot: they are steel sculptures that have been placed on top of the hill as a "Wild Horse Monument". They can be seen from a rest area just off I-90.