Travel – Page 19 – A Darker View

Travel Utah in 1991

Between semesters at college I loved to hit the road. The usual destination was the great parks along the Utah and Arizona borders including Zion…

The Sentinel — The sandstone pinnacles of Zion National Park

Slickrock — A slickrock hillside in the back country of Zion National Park

Footprints in the Sand — Footprints down the face of a dune at Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park

Death in the Sand — A vertebra lies in the sands of Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park

Another pick from the slides I am busily digitizing. After basic training and tech school with the USAF and before deployment to England, I took a month’s leave. Much of this was spent visiting favorite places around Portland in the late fall of 1986…

Latourell Falls in the Columbia River Gorge

Downtown Portland — The transit mall in downtown Portland

The newly completed MAX line from Gresham stops in downtown Portland

Mt. Hood Sunset — Sunset lights Mt. Hood in pastel shades

Portland Skyline — The Portland skyline at night, at least as it appeared in 1986

A nightime view looking over downtown Portland from Council Crest

Oregon in 1985

More scanning, more memories. Taking these old photos out of the boxes has been fun. So many little treasures on celluloid. Photos of myself as a teenager, photos of the neighborhood I grew up in. There is so much of my life stowed away out of reach, converted to digital they live again…

Middle North Falls in Silver Falls State Park

Silver Creek flows through Silver Falls State Park

Mt. St. Helens in 1985 — The south face Mt. St. Helens a few years after the 1980 eruption with lahars in the foreground

Lahar — A lahar (mudflow) from the lahar viewpoint on Muddy River and forest road 83

The constellation Orion taken with a simple tracking platform and Ektachrome film

Sunset from Bull Mtn — Sunset as seen from from the front porch of my childhood home on Bull Mtn.

Snowy Sunrise Lane — Sunrise Lane covered in a fresh snowfall

Jerry's Barn — Jerry’s old barn across the street from my childhood home

Frost Horse — A horse stands in a frosty winter field

Sand Dollar — A sand dollar on a Pacific Northwest beach

Dune — Storm scattered sands covers beach grass

Little Ouse

As I scan slides I find little treasures like this one. A foggy morning on the Little Ouse river near Thetford, England, a place I called home for nearly three years. Yes, there is really a river named the Little Ouse!

Traveling through Switzerland

One of the first binders of slides I grabbed for digitizing happened to be a trip through Switzerland that I took in 1987 with my family.

I was living in England at the time with the USAF. My parents and brother joined me there. We then crossed the channel from Dover to Calais, changed trains in Paris, taking a high speed train to Lausanne. From there my brother and I bounced around with some Swiss bus and rail passes until we rejoined my parents in Zermatt.

It was a memorable trip, there is so much I can remember from thirty five years ago. Going through these old slides certainly brought back memories!

Dover Castle at Night — Dover Castle lit up at night

Paris Norde Train Station — Arriving at the Paris Norde train station from Calais

Eiffel Tower — The Eiffel tower over central Paris

The Lausanne Catherdral looms above the city

Herding Cattle — Herding cattle up a Swiss mountain highway

The Madonna del Sasso church above Locarno, Switzerland

The Train to Domodossola — A train navigates a mountain railway on the way to Domodossola, Italy

The Matterhorn as seen from near the top of the Gornergrat cable car

Strauss

Nordic Quest 2014

As is my habit, I have produced a video summary of this summer’s voyage in the Nordic Quest. Take a few of the best photos, a little video, a snippet of timelapse, a decent tune, and mix well…

Nordic Quest 2014 from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo

Having done this more than a few times now it is getting harder to be creative. Still there are always unique shots that come back from any voyage, such as the mother grizzly and cubs. There is also a sequence I had always wanted to try, a timelapse of the huge Alaskan tide change. This time I had a chance to shoot it, and had some success.

Nordic Voyage

Ten days on the boat out of Juneau, our annual family trip fishing in Alaska is complete. This summer it was an all family affair… My mother and father, my brother and his wife, and their grandson Andre. Add Deb and myself for a total of seven aboard the Nordic Quest for ten days of fishing and exploring. The plan was to head south of Juneau, down Stephen’s Passage for the Frederick Sound area.

First stop was Taku Harbor for the night with the following day spent attempting to fish salmon in Stephen’s Passage. A pretty day, but no fish. The only luck we had was a single crab in one of the pots left overnight in Taku.

On to Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier. The weather was not great for visiting the ice, but we did arrive at low tide, the best time to see calving. We were rewarded by the sight of several ice-falls as the water level fell and the face of the glacier crumbled.

An afternoon spend fishing Halibut was rewarding as well, plenty of fish landed along with one hundred pound specimen caught by Andre. A halibut that big can not be gaffed and simply lifted into the cooler. Instead I harpooned the fish off the swim deck. My first harpoon shot was a bit off, hitting low, a second was much better, right through the spine behind the gills. Good this too, the fish promptly broke the steel leader. Two harpoon lines attached insured this fish was headed for the freezer.

Continue reading “Nordic Voyage”

Category: Travel