And now for something completely different.
Back in January, Betsy and I traveled up to Mammoth Lakes to visit our good friends and previous La Vida Couple, Pam and Julian (wedding post | engagement post). When we started to map out our route, we realized that we were drawing a direct line through Bishop, CA. It took us about a microsecond to realize that our great pal (and extraordinary artist) Shawn Reeder lives there. We have had the pleasure of hanging our with Shawn on several occasions during photography events such as PartnerCon and WPPI, but we have always wanted to spend more time with him away from all the craziness. We stayed a few nights with him up in Bishop, and what a blast that was! By the way, you simply MUST watch one of his outstanding time-lapse videos (video of still photography, all stitched together and set to music). Flying High is definitely one of our favorites, as it showcases Shawn’s unbelievable skills in photographing Yosemite and the Ancient Bristlecones (which I’ll get to later).
Neither of us had been to Yosemite before, and who better to lead us through the vast beauty than Mr. Reeder. We brought our DSLR’s, but we both felt more inspired to create some beautiful images with our iPhones, rather than lug around the Nikons {although we LOVE them!} every second on vacation. Here are a few images from my iPhone (Betsy’s will come in a later post).
Shawn was such an amazing host! He cooked us dinner/breakfasts, he brought us out to Tenaya Lake (which was completely frozen with no snow on the surface…something that is extremely rare at that time of year). We went and hiked up Pothole Dome for some cool views, and even visited Olmsted Point that overlooks Tenaya Valley, Cloud’s Rest and Half Dome.
Shawn also directed us up to the Ancient Bristlecone Forest, a smallish forest of trees that are literally 4500 years old (!). Again, at this time of year, it is very rare for that pass to be open to drive through. And at 11,000 feet, the views were absolutely astonishing. The Bristlecones themselves were so cool to walk through…something that old and still living has such an ephemeral feeling, almost as though you could feel the wisdom of the forest.
After we spent some quality time with our friend Shawn, Betsy and I drove on up to Mammoth to visit Pam and Julian for a few days. And although there was not a lot of snow to be had, we had a blast driving around the June Lakes Loop (more frozen lakes to walk out on), heading up to Mono Lake (a very large saline lake, not unlike the Salton Sea), and heading out to some cool local bars and restaurants with our hosts once they returned home from work. Good times!
All in all, we had such a great time getting out of the city and into the beautiful surroundings of the High Sierras. One final story from this amazing getaway was the isolated natural hot springs tub that Pam and Julian led us to. It’s is a small rock tub out the middle of absolute nowhere, fed by a nearby hot spring. There was actually a valve that you could turn to feed more hot water into the tub when is cools off. What was really awesome is that there was a scrub brush there as well, and the locals take it upon themselves to occasionally drain the pool, scrub it down, and fill it back up again, so the tub was totally clean and an absolute joy to soak in for a few hours (you can see a picture of it in the second grouping of images, lower right corner).
Just looking again at our iphone collection here, we can’t wait to visit our friends in the Sierras again!
by Jeff
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