The years 2014 and 2017 were especially prolific in terms of sheer photography power. I took literally hundreds if not thousands of photos during those two years. Those that I share here are a small smattering of what exists. Again, they are mine, please do not use without prior written permission. High-Resolution options are available. (I apologize for the formatting on the page. They never seem to look the same after rendering by the browser as they do in the editing software.)
2017 was the year that Clyde and I went ‘missing’. We were stuck on the north side of a mountain for three days and no one knew where we were. On the third day, Clyde walked 12 miles to get me help out. It is a LONG, LONG story. But, the reason we were out there was to get winter photos of an area (Umpqua Falls) because we had summer photos. The road was paved, and normally our car could plow through the snow because it was AWD. But, we were on a donut (we got a flat tire due to a pothole in the middle of nowhere.) Hence we got stuck in only 4-6 inches of snow. 100 feet away in either direction and the road was clear. We high centered on the snow, and we had a blanket we used for trying to get traction, we tried digging our way out, he tried sheer gasoline power, and put his foot down on the peddle. All to no avail. We’d seen folks coming the other direction so we got comfortable thinking that someone would eventually drive by. The day turned into night, and that first night it snowed, probably a foot. When daylight hit, and we opened our eyes, we knew we were in trouble. Up until this point, I had not been scared. But, now the worry began to sink in. We still hoped someone would come by. I started turning on the cell phone and our tablet (which had GPS built in) in an effort to try and ping satellites. I won’t go into much detail here, because I’m planning on actually writing the story out completely later on. But, it was truly a story of survival, and faith and as bad as it could have been (and it could have been very bad) – it turned out for us to be a good experience. We had nearly three full days of alone time, with no one stressing either of us out.
Of course, we got home to stress…with kids having been told we’d probably not come home alive. So, fighting over the only thing we owned being fought over, the house. The oldest letting the youngest two know they’d be paying her rent. (Excuse Me??!!) It sounded like a mess and changed my whole mindset in terms of how I think of my kids. But, the first thing we saw when we walked through the door was a tear-streaked face of a 17-year-old. The youngest had called the authorities, let friends and family know, and coordinated everything in terms of trying to get her parents home. Needless to say, things are fixed so that she will get the house. We got a very warm welcome, and I hope she slept much better that night.
The following photos were taken that first day before we got stuck in the snow (All photos were taken in the vicinity of Tiller, Oregon and Umpqua Falls in the Umpqua National Forest:
In 2017, I also did a “study” of an old GMC pick up and an old Chevy pick up. Both were in my neighbor’s yard, and photos were taken with permission. I took hundreds of pics, these are just a couple of each vehicle to give you an idea of what I did.
