K Swanson's photostream  

Half Dome from Glacier point...in Winter! The road to Glacier Point hasn't been open in Jan for over 50 years (according to a ranger) so we took the opportunity to check it out! Beautiful blue sky day..not good for skiing, or agriculture or water..but undeniably nice.

Calaveras big trees state park (near Yosemite) has some fine examples of these spectacularly giant Sequoias. We were here in Jan 2012 during the unusually warm and dry weather. Since is was January, it probably helped to keep the crowds down a bit!

It's an unusually dry and warm Winter in Yosemite and the road is open all the way to Glacier point! (Jan 14, 2012) It would be nice to have a "normal" Winter but when I guess if you get lemons, you make lemonade!

On one hand, it's been an unusually dry Winter. Not much snow OR rain. Not much skiing or snowshoeing either. On the other hand, there have been some nice sunrises and sunsets, low angle sunlight during the day and not so much gray. These geese were flying around in the Snoqualmie valley one recent fairly clear morning. Those are the Cascades out there.

Shooting through a scratched and dirty Amtrak window at 80 MPH is usually pretty disappointing but I did grab a few images that I thought captured the feel of the Great Plains. I thought this one had a pretty interesting texture to the sky.