These icy conditions are not good. We lost poser this morning but only for a couple of hours thankfully. I am worried it will happen again though. This is as least as bad if not worse than the ice storm we had several years ago. It has been kind of pretty though. I have been out taking photos every now and then or through the window.
As for today's image, I am going back to summer and warmer days and our trip to South Dakota. This is at the Black Hills Central Railroad. This is locomotive Number 7, a Prairie 2-6-2 type, that is used on days when the loads aren't so heavy due to the fact that it cannot pull as many cars. It sits out on static display when not in use which surprised me. I would have thought they would keep it under cover when not in use. It was nice to see it and I like the old time style of it.
So still dreary out and colder too. Temps are dropping as the week goes on so will feel more like the Holiday Season. This image today is from a cooler day in the summer when I was in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This is Bridal Veil Falls, one of 3 lovely waterfalls in the Spearfish Canyon area. The sky was overcast this day so I was able to do a long exposure image using a neutral density filter as well which helps to darken things to allow for longer images without overexposing.
Well, yesterday turned out to be quite the nice day. Hope today is as well though it is starting out windy. My image for today goes back to our trip to South Dakota and the Black Hills Central Railroad. We rode this train and then chased it on it's next trip to take photos. This is one of them as it crossed a small trestle on it's way to Keystone. The locomotive is a 2-6-6-2 Mallet type Tank locomotive and the only one in service anywhere. Quite a unique experience.
Welcome to Autumn here in the US! It will be winter before we know it. Sigh. I have been doing a lot of whining about the heat but I really don't want winter to come. Anyway, enough of that, on to the photo. So this is from my trip to South Dakota and the Black Hills. This is another of the waterfalls located in Spearfish Canyon and is called Roughlock Falls. It is located very close to Spearfish Falls, basically in walking distance. This falls was quite lovely with the main falls developing into two other branching falls. It was flowing quite nicely in July due to the rain the area had received. This is a one second exposure.
We're having a lovely weekend here in Kansas. I see that later in the week it is supposed to hit the 90s again. This image is from a lovely cool day in South Dakota while we were riding the Black Hills Central Railroad. The Hills were all covered in clouds and mist and looked quite lovely. It was a nice day for a train ride and eventually the mist lifted.
Had a cool lightning show last night and rain which cooled it down quite a bit. It's only 60 degrees at 9:30am today. Nice. Today's image goes back to South Dakota after we road the Black Hills Central Railroad and were then chasing it. I took this image as it was crossing trestle number 85 (I know that due to the tag on the trestle on the left side of it) on it's way back to Keystone, SD.
Ah what a lovely day today! So nice before we head back to the 90s on Saturday. This goes back to cool days in South Dakota. I took this image when we were driving through Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills. This is Spearfish Falls of which I had shared an earlier image from another view. Back in the early 1900s a Burlington Northern train used to go over the top of these falls until a flood washed the tracks out. I processed this image in B&W and shared that version over on G+ today. It can be checked out by clicking my photo in the About Me area on the right of this Blog.
Had some rain today, that was nice as things were really drying out and I didn't have time to water last night either. It also cooled off a bit so yay for that. This image is from a cool day in South Dakota after we had been to Sturgis and then went for a drive looking for waterfalls in the Black Hills. This is the first one we came to. This one is very appropriately named Bridal Veil Falls. I did a long exposure on it so made it appear even more veil like. It was flowing nicely due to the rain the area had been receiving lately.
Well, here we go, mid 90s again today. Yuck. Pretty soon I'll be complaining it's too cold. Sigh. Need to move where it's more even all year round. This image goes back to cool days in South Dakota and the 1880s Train or Black Hills Central Railroad. We were in the town of Keystone where you can either ride the train right back or take a later train and spend time in the town which is what we did. Before the locomotive heads back it needs to take on water which is what is happening in this photo. The wood tank however, is just for show pretty much. The guy on the other side of the locomotive is near a stand pipe with a hose where the majority of the water for the tank is coming from. At least they are trying to make it look authentic.
Well, I hope this is really our last day of 100F for a while. It's getting old. All you feel like doing is staying in the AC and hibernating. This is from cooler times in South Dakota. I even had a jacket with me though due to the exercise I never needed it. This was during our 20 mile ride on the Mickelson Trail, an old Burlington Northern Rail route. I was riding behind at the time while I snapped off this shot. It shows well the type of scenery we rode through. The stream was alongside us for most of the way. We rode through a lot of forested area and you can see some of the rocks of the Black Hills. A great place for a ride and very glad we did it.
While we were in South Dakota we went for a ride in the Black Hills on the historic Mickelson Trail. It's an approximately 109 mile hiking/biking trail on a former Burlington Northern railway that they stopped using in 1983. We did a 20 mile round trip starting at the Mystic Trail-head and rode 2 miles past the Rochford Trail-head because we wanted to ride through a 2nd tunnel. The 2 trail-heads we rode between were quite scenic and the whole route has 4 tunnels and many trestles and 1 waterfall which we got to see. The particular part we were on ran beside a creek most of the time. Parts of it were through rock cuts such as this one the hubster is going through when I took this image and you can kind of see how the Black Hills were named with the dark rock. It was great fun. The first 10 miles were the hardest because they were mostly all uphill but only a 4% grade at most. It was nice on the way back because it was mostly downhill. :-) We had a water bottle and camera equipment in our backpacks. I would love to do it again sometime and see more of the trail.
