Leon Turnbull Photography

We arrived at Carlsbad in southern California pretty early in the afternoon. We checked into our hotel and told our excited kids we were going to Legoland the next day. Tara wanted to keep it a surprise from them as long as possible. So we drove all the way down south with them thinking we were going to see some waterfall. But you can’t keep things from Jadon too long. He is a heckuva little reading machine now. He spotted a sign on the road that said “Legoland” as we were pulling into Carlsbad. The surprise was over. He was as excited as fox in a henhouse. He had been begging us to go to Legoland for at least a year. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to go this year. But as things turned out, due to my job situation, we are no longer able to go to Canada this Christmas, so that opened up this chance to go to Legoland this month.

After check-in, we figured we could go to the beach and see the sunset. But I wasn’t really into seeing sunset on the beach this evening (crazy, I know). There didn’t seem to be many clouds in the sky (wrong), and I was more into bird watching this evening. So I dropped the wife and kids off at the beach, and I went to Batiquitos Lagoon to do some bird watching with my big lens. It was not too bad, I saw egrets, heron, and a hawk, plenty of ducks, and lots of little birds such as this one (which I believe, is a house finch). The problem with this particular lagoon is that the path does not follow the water edge very closely, so it was difficult to get any close-up shots of the bigger birds. But this little guy perched himself really close to where I was and I could get a nice shot of him and his pretty colors. There were also quite a lot of people walking on the path, which is something that should be expected, but I would have definitely preferred more solitude. Not one of them so much as said a single word (such as even a hello) to me. Is it because people are not as friendly in southern California? or is it because they just thought I was very weird walking around with a big camera and tripod? Probably the latter.

I took the family out to Cosumnes River Preserve to see some Sandhill Cranes. Every year at this time, they stop in this area for the winter on their migration journey. They are a treat to see, especially around sunset and sunrise.

We arrived a couple hours or so before sunset at the Preserve. Quite a few people about, but not much in the way of birds. We saw some ducks, geese, stilts, a falcon, and one crane. But they were all too far away to get any photos. The trouble with these preserves is they make the walking paths too far away from where the birds are. I guess that makes sense in a way. I know my own kids were a rather noisy and loud bunch as we walked along the path, and would’ve scared any birds nearby close to death. But unless you have a 1000mm lens, it is impossible to get any good photos of the birds. I only have a 400mm lens.

I was unsure exactly where the best location would be to see the Sandhill Cranes as they came in around sunset. I read about a couple different spots. We decided to get back in the car and go to one of them. We parked along the road, and again, we saw plenty of birds including cranes, but were still too far away. But I must have crossed some invisible line along the roadside, because some rude guy in a truck drove up and told me I was trespassing. Don’t you see the signs? Ummm, as I looked up and down the road as far as my eye can see, I saw absolutely zero signs. My eyesight may not be too great, but my wife has perfect eyesight and she didn’t see any signs either. And I was right along the road anyway, not even anywhere close to the birds. Thanks buddy. Anyway, we waited there until sunset but saw zero cranes flying into the area. It was extremely disappointing. We had driven all that way from Folsom and basically saw nothing.

We decided to go back to the main area of the Preserve. The sun was setting in the west and the sky was very colorful. As we waited there for awhile past sunset, we did see quite a few of the Sandhill Cranes flying in to the area. It turned out to be a pretty good show after all. But it was rather dark by this time for taking photos. And I was not very happy with any of my results. The best I could do was this one with the cranes silhouetted against the sunset sky.

I have been a bit absent recently. We surprised our kids last weekend by taking them to Legoland in southern California. We figured it would be the one and only chance we’d have to take them there before our oldest grew out of his interest in legos. Jadon has been begging us to go there for the past year. Both the kids really loved it, and had so much fun. It is quite a neat place to go. The lego structures they have built there are quite amazing, I wish I could build stuff like that. Jadon is much better at that kind of thing then his old man. There are much less crowds there too, than at Disneyland. That is something I really like. But I hate driving down south and especially through LA. There is always a huge bottleneck trying to drive through there. So on the way back, I had a great idea. We should start driving at 4AM to beat the traffic through LA (Legoland is about an hour or so south of LA). My wife totally revolted at that idea, however. We left at 8AM instead. But amazingly, there were no slowdowns driving through LA. It was truly a miracle. My wife said she was praying, specifically she said she prayed for “light traffic so my husband would not be a bear”. ha ha. Well, it sure worked.

This is another photo from my recent outing up to Grouse Lake with my friend, Rob. We arrived at the lake in time to enjoy the sun rising above the mountains. I love trying to get this sunstar effect in my photos every so often, it is pretty cool. To get this effect, I stopped my aperture down to f/20. The ice on the lake was pretty neat as well. But not thick enough to walk on or skate on. I didn’t try. But Rob did find some chunks of ice to throw across the lake. He’s just a kid at heart.

Well, I was trying to think of a good hike and place to go for sunrise. I had not been up in the Wright’s Lake area before, and thought it would be a good possibility. I talked my friend Rob into getting up at some ungodly hour and going along with me. Fortunately, he likes photography as well. We drove up to Wright’s Lake in the dark, and found snow on the road as we got closer to the lake. I was a bit surprised by this. I was hoping there would be snow on the mountain peaks, but I was not expecting snow on the road. This road is in-passable in the winter, but at this time of the year it was still ok. It did put us a bit behind schedule. I was still hoping we could hike up to Grouse Lake by sunrise. But I totally underestimated this hike. There was quite a bit of snow on the trail, which makes hiking quite a bit more difficult. It was not enough to need snowshoes, but it sure got our hiking boots soaking wet. It was also rather difficult to even see the trail at all, especially when it is dark. A bigger problem was that my GPS refused to work in the cold weather. Nice. Fortunately, there was another hiker who had gone up there before us, probably the day before. We followed in his footsteps, which made the hiking quite a bit easier. Nonetheless, we managed to lose the trail at least once, and ended up way off the trail, scrambling up a steep hill in snow that was quite deeper than you might think. We eventually found our way back to the main trail, but by this time it was already way past sunrise. Not only that but I could see that our destination, Grouse Lake, involved much more of an ascent than I anticipated. We were going to be arriving at Grouse Lake probably an hour or more after sunrise. Oh well. We still wanted to continue on up to the lake anyway. It would be a good hike, if nothing else.

When we finally arrived up at Grouse Lake, however, we were in for a really nice treat. The lighting was still very good, and the sun had not yet risen above the surrounding mountains. I told Rob that God must’ve stopped the sun for us, like he did for Joshua. Well not exactly, but it was a blessing, and I was quite surprised. I had mistakenly thought that the sun would hit Grouse Lake very early and from a different angle. But we had plenty of time to take some nice photographs before the sun finally got high enough above the mountains. The lake was lightly frozen over, which also made for a very beautiful setting. It was a fabulous morning in the Sierra Nevada.

Here’s yet another one from back in September at the Columbia River Gorge. This is the not too often visited Lancaster Falls. This photogenic section of the falls is about 20 ft. high, but it really is a huge waterfall. You just can’t see the upper sections of this waterfall unless you do a lot of fanagling and bushwhacking. I was battling with some little girls here as I was taking my photo. They were trying their darndest to get in front of me in my picture and play in the waterfall. Their parents were trying to keep them out of the way, but one of them did bang into my tripod. Ah well, I can’t blame them. It’s a beautiful waterfall.