Yay! Now I have over 4 thousand images to go through. *snickers* Yeah, I'm trigger happy


Oooh, and while I was gone I hit 10k page views.

My sister and I are road tripping out to Miles City, Montana to meet some family members and take pictures of the old homestead in our efforts to gather as much family history as we can while the information is still out there. After that we'll go to Nashua, Iowa to take pictures of The Little Brown Church that my great, great, great grandfather helped build. But, since we're driving that far, we've decided we should definitely have some fun along the way! I am, naturally, interested in places to photograph, and my sister is interested in wildlife refuges, which happily coincides with my photography interests. Our trip goes through 15 states (not including CA), and will take us to some places I'm very much looking forward to visiting.

Our stops along the way currently include:
Jackson Hole National Elk Refuge, Wyoming
The Grand Tetons
Yellowstone
National Bison Range, Montana
Glacier National Park
Waterton National Park, Alberta (the Canada side of Glacier)
Bear Butte, South Dakota
Black Hills National Forest
Mount Rushmore
Badlands National Park
The Ingalls Wilder Homestead
Neal Smith NWR, Iowa
Squaw Creek NWR, Missouri
Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR, Colorado
Four Corners Monument
Havasu NWR


If any of you have "must see" advice anywhere we're going definitely let me know! I know very little about Glacier National Park and Black Hills National Forest, so any suggestions on where we should go there would be invaluable.

I hope we'll get some fall colors in The Grand Tetons. I'm also really looking forward to playing with some infrared shots. We'll see how that goes Hmm...I should get my camera cleaned!

(copied from Conundra's journal: [link])

A girl I knew very well in my younger years was diagnosed with bone cancer a few months ago.
Her name is Casey, and she's only nineteen years old. She's got courage and strength like you wouldn't believe, and she's a generally exemplary human being. She deserves the world, but deserve doesn't count for much in the grand scheme of things sometimes.
By the time they caught the tumor in her pelvis, it had progressed to the point where her leg required amputation.
Her amputation date is scheduled for mid-September.

We've fallen out of contact over the years, and there isn't much I can do to help her. But I can try to get the 1000+ people who watch me here on DA to chip in and help.

She recently entered the Body by Victoria contest, the reward for which is a trip to New York City and some serious pampering. She's at #2 in the standings now, and giving her something to look forward to after her amputation would mean so much.

Her entry caption reads:
"I don't love my cancer. But I love my body even though it's bald and can't sexily toy with its hair,
even though it has no eyebrows to arch, even though it will soon have only one leg and some people
will be disgusted by it. I love it because it's mine."

Please go here
[link]
and vote for Casey once a day. (to find her, click on "view and vote", then go to "most loved") Pass this on to your friends, your friend's friends (and if your friend's friend's have friends, pass it on to them, too) your family, your co-workers, your watchers, anyone and everyone you know through every internet channel you can. Casey's been dealt a nasty hand with this cancer; let's give her some solid, good proof that the universe, or at the very least the people in it, is capable of some good, too.
Edit: the person in #1 is a male internet personality. He's got over 16,000 votes. The contest ends on September 14, so there's still plenty of time. Let's make this happen.

To everyone who reads this entry, votes for her, and/or passes it on: thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.

The two fires threatening us are now 60% and 70% contained. The evacuation on our house has changed from mandatory to advised. Hopefully it'll keep up the way it's going. It'll be nice to have some more space for me, my sister, and the animals!

I've decided to put up my most favorited work as prints. No idea if anyone actually wants them, but I figured, why not?


And soon to come:

There's a mandatory evacuation for my Mom's house. After a bit of effort, my sister finally managed to get through the road blocks to try to get our animals out. Hopefully she'll be able to get the 4 cats and 2 dogs to safety. I'm not sure what she'll try to do with her fish, if anything. I have high hopes and best wishes for our firefighters, but cross your fingers, pray, do a rain dance, or whatever it is you believe will send a good outcome our way.

UPDATE
The dogs and cats and a few of the fish are safe. My sister's cats are not happy about being locked in my bathroom, but at least they're away from the fire and smoke. The fire has now burned over 1,000 acres and they lost the 25% containment they had on it when they pulled resources to deal with a new fire nearby. It isn't at our back door or anything, but any change of wind or other weather could put it there. The new fire started 2.4 miles away from the ranch where we keep our horses, in a completely residential area. It has one possible route that will not wipe out houses left and right, so hopefully if it goes anywhere, it will go that way. Again, the horses aren't in danger at the moment, but could be very quickly with some bad luck weather.

The wife of one of the firefighters killed in the LA Station fire is due to have a baby in 3 weeks. Please send your thoughts, prayers, and best wishes to the families of our fallen firefighters.