A winter wonderland

Tomorrow I go for hernia surgery (outpatient) and it will put a serious damper on my skiing for a few weeks. I was going to get one last ski day in, but the temperatures were around 0 in Park City. I opted for a photography romp instead.

I pondered where I might find interesting things to shoot. I'm either good, lucky, or both. I headed down towards Heber City and the Jordanelle dam, hoping to snag some shots of fly fishermen in a winter scene. What a gorgeous discovery! The Weber River was running a bit warm, at least compared to the -10 degrees in Heber. That made for a lot of fog along the water, and frozen fog in all the trees.



Of course I can't shoot pictures without my talented assistant Jasper. He was in charge of scaring off all the ducks before I could get a picture.



Almost all of these pictures are some combination of river, ice, fog, and frosty trees, yet the variation from view to view was a treat.









There were interesting ice formations in the river, but the fog kept getting in the way.



Tried getting artsy with this one, but the long exposures simply gave the fog more time to wander around in the picture.



I guess at this point you may have noticed the lack of photos of fishermen. Well, -10 is a bit cold to fish, but I actually saw two of them. However, if you can imagine how tough and angry you must be with life to go fish in this weather, that was these two guys. They looked like they might eat my camera if I took a shot. I waved and trudged off.

From the dam I went for a drive along the reservoir, slamming on the brakes when I saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree. I admired him through binoculars before changing to a very long lens. They say "bird brain" as an insult meaning "stupid", but I know that damn eagle was watching me in the car. The moment I slowly, quietly opened the door, he flew off. I was a good 100-150 yards away.

On my way through Francis, Kamas, and Oakley, I saw little of photographic interest. In my last little town, Peoa, I saw this fenced in group of horses with a pretty red barn.



Horses? That's no horse. How did he get in there? At least they seem to get along.



Hey, those aren't horses either. Three bison, seven horses, and two llama/alpaca/sheep things. Quite the group.



A cold day to be handling a camera, but the serious cold makes for some nice scenery.

On to surgery tomorrow.