
| The above will search Ashland Daily Photo. |
Next up, as you can see on the map of the Historic Columbia River Highway, was Shepperd’s Dell. Wiki says that these falls are difficult to photograph, but I beg to differ. A tripod would have been nice for several of my photos during the day, but at Shepperd’s Dell there was a great place to set my camera in order to open the shutter for a half second.
A beautiful highway to drive, it’s even better on a bike. In fact, the worst part of the Historic Columbia River Highway was the cars. I imagine it is lovely in any season, but with the leaves changing colors, late October was a great time of year to do this ride.
The first, of about eight or nine, waterfalls on our ride was Latourell Falls. I wasn’t able to include all of this waterfall’s 250 feet in the photo at 18mm from this vantage point and also include the stream the waterfall feeds. You can probably see about 180-200 feet of Latourell Falls in this picture. A wider angle lens would have been nice at times, but when you are riding a bike for 10 miles, carrying multiple lenses isn’t much of an option.
Today’s photo is from the same location as yesterday’s pic. At 200mm and with a bit of a crop you can see that the details of the valley below are just as gorgeous as the wide-angle view.
I have marked the location of this scene with an X on the map below.
Just to the north of this location is Rooster Rock State Park which is supposedly a nude beach. It wasn’t part of our tour. 😉
In late October we went to Portland for a couple nights. On the only whole day we had in Portland we took a Pedal Bike Tours bike ride called “Columbia River Gorge Tour” (mostly) down the Historic Columbia River Highway. While I took a few hundred photos along the way, I will spare you all but seven of those pictures over the coming week.
Our first stop on the tour was the Portland Women’s Forum, a state scenic viewpoint. However, today’s photo is from our second stop, the Crown Point Vista House.
Tenguska opened for the band I really went to see on Thursday night, Atriarch.

Atriarch's magic box - inside are the tools of distortion which can transport the careful listener into another realm

Brooks lights the ancient oak, filling the place with smoke before blackening his eyes with the ashes

Brooks on guitar and Maxamillion on drums -- the drums were the only instrument that sounded anything like "normal"
Atriarch put on an incredible show. I only hope it isn’t the last time I get to experience the atmosphere they are able to create with their live performance.
You can’t see him in these photos, but the Tenguska drummer, Garrison Mau, dedicated their performance to David Grubbs, his best friend.

Christmas Trees at U-Cut Christmas Tree Farm on the border of Phoenix and Medford, Oregon covered in hoarfrost
We cut down our Christmas tree this past Sunday. The temperature was 28 degrees in the early afternoon and the fog was rather thick. The trees were covered in fog freeze. Even after driving home to Ashland and letting the tree sit out in the sun for the rest of the day the tree was still covered in hoarfrost. We finally brought it in before dark and stood the tree up over a bunch of towels in our living room. It sounded like it was raining in our house for the next half hour as the fog freeze finally melted.