Snow on the Mountains

After what has been called the worst storm in the past 100 years we finally started to see the sun on Saturday and temperatures have slowly been warming up.  Sunday Lori and I took a drive down the  Apache Trail out to Tortilla Flats to get some shots of the snow up on the mountains.  After a few days of miserable weather we were not the only ones with a bad case of "shack wacky".  The roads were packed with people out for a drive.  
We managed to find a few views that weren't cluttered with tourists and their cars.   These pictures  were made by shooting a series of 5 bracketed shots and then running it through my HDR program, Aurora.  It was also my first opportunity to use my new lens and it will be a learning experience shooting as wide as 16mm.  Its easy to get the toes of my boots in the picture if not careful.  

Our initial plan was to drive to the mountains in the distance.
They are much further away than we at first thought. 

In both of these shots I had to take numerous pictures in
order to get one without a car on the road or on the bridge. 

This bridge, like many on the Apache Trail, is only wide enough for one vehicle.
Takes a lot of cooperation so everybody gets across.

Monday was another hiking day for me and Tuesday we joined Larry and Penny to see a Spring Training baseball game.   Larry and Penny are from Calgary and we met them last year when they were our neighbours in the park.    

We went to Sloan Park in Mesa which is the home field of the Chicago Cubs and they were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks.  It was a great afternoon but I firmly believe that there are two sports that need to examine the length of their games.  Golf and Baseball.  Golf really only needs to be 12 holes and Baseball should shut it down after 6 or 7 innings.  After 2 innings 9 runs had been scored and we had seen 5 different pitchers.  After that it was scoreless and in order to beat the traffic we left after singing "Take me out to the Ballgame".   The 7th Inning Stretch for those not familiar with baseball traditions.   Between very expensive Cubs t-shirts, $9.00 beer and $12.00 hamburgers the $25. tickets were the bargain of the day.  I think we dropped about $400 and I don't even want to think about what that is in Cdn$.  

Wednesday we headed out on a hike/photo shoot with JC who runs the photography club in the park.   Thursday I am heading off for another Photo Shoot to a Greek Orthodox Monastery followed in the evening by a Canada Party in the ballroom.  Hopefully on Friday or on the weekend I'll have a chance to edit some of the 200 pictures I took today plus the hundred or more I will be taking tomorrow.  Thank goodness for digital as I could never have done this with film.  

Till then.