This snowplant is from Mariposa Grove.

I believe this is North Dome.

Another waterfall visible from the trail to Vernal Falls. This one was not labeled however, so I don't know it's name.

Yes it's just a squirrel, but I rarely can get this close to even a squirrel anywhere else.

This is Illilouette Falls which is visible from the trail up to Vernal Falls.

On the trail up to Vernal Falls.

I didn't get a great picture of this, but I liked the dark and light stripes on the cliff here.

This is my last picture from the photo walk. A cool picture of Yosemite Falls falling through the frame of some trees. I chose this as one of the pictures I blew up to poster size to remind me of this trip. The large size is spectacular. If anyone is interested in finding a good place to a picture poster sized, I used www.elcocolor.com for a great price and amazing results.

The sunlight is finally starting to hit the falls, making for an interesting picture with just a small lit patch of water.

A beautiful view of both the upper and lower Yosemite Falls. This is also from the photo walk and also too early with most of the falls in shadow.

This is another picture from the photo walk. The framing of Yosemite Falls with the trees is really cool. The one thing I don't like is that the falls are in a shadow. The photo tour guide even made a point about getting the falls when it's highlighted by the sun, which made me wonder why they planned the walk when they did especially given that the falls were in full sunlight maybe a half hour after this shot was taken.

It's not a bear, but I am a biologist so I have to include any wildlife I captured while on vacation.

On our second day at Yosemite, I went on a morning photo walk sponsored by the Ansel Adams Museum. I'm glad I did it as it took us some places I wouldn't have found on my own. This shot features the back side of El Capitan with a hint of it's reflection in the wetland in the foreground. We were told a few weeks prior to this the water was a little higher and the grass lower so that the reflection was much more pronounced.

This is upper Yosemite Falls. This was during our first day in the park and we happened to be there just as the falls were beginning to be covered in shadow. It made for a good picture with the lower part of the falls in shadow and the rest still in sun.

A closeup of Bridal Veil Falls.

This is looking out from tunnel view at Yosemite National Park, the most photogenic place I have ever been. The bulk of my vacation pictures were taken here and there will be many pictures of waterfalls and rock faces over the coming weeks. All the major elements of Yosemite can be seen here, Half Dome, Bridal Veil Falls, and El Capitan. I loved my time in the park and hope to go back some day.

These are the foothills of the Sierra mountains. I really liked the the look with the golden grasslands populated by sparse green trees.

This western sagebrush lizard posed for me on a rock overlooking some of the high peaks in Kings Canyon National Park.

As we were driving out of Sequoia, we briefly passed through Kings Canyon National Park. This is a view of the mountains framed by some pine trees.

More big trees along the road out of Sequoia National Park.

More sequoia trees.

No Sequoia National Park album would be complete without General Sherman, the largest tree on Earth.

Despite it's color, I think this is a black bear. It was one of 4 bears we saw while out west and probably the closest I've ever been to one.

I'm using my daughter in this picture to serve as a good reference for these large trees.

A different perspective on a Giant Sequoia.

This is my first Giant Sequoia tree. It's difficult to have references that provide the right scale, the trees around this giant are normal sized trees though they don't look it.

A rock outcropping on the road up the the Giant forest at Sequoia National Park.

This is the first picture from Sequoia National Park. Obviously a big difference from the others, with lots of trees and even some snow.

More Joshua trees.

One of the cool things about driving around out west is how dramatically the vegetation changes as you change elevation. This picture was taken somewhere between Death Valley and Sequoia National Parks. Unlike the bare rocks we saw in Death Valley, this landscape is covered with Joshua trees.

I liked all the different lines created by the canyon in this picture. The reddish tones in the rocks along the top of the ridge also makes the scene interesting.

This isn't necessarily the best picture, but I thought it was cool that there was a small area of sand dunes near the mountains.

This is looking back over one of the valleys to the south and west of Death Valley. The sun was getting lower in the sky and I liked the way it lit the different colored rocks on the face of this mountain.

This panorama turned out pretty good, at least in terms of stitching the pictures together and not being able to see where that occurred. The picture gives you a full view of the Mesquite Flats area.

Another picture of the sand dunes, with an interesting ripple pattern on a slope and some mountains in the background.

The sand at Mesquite Dunes actually has two colors, light and dark. These make some interesting patterns in the sand, which I attempted to capture here.

This picture does a decent job of capturing the ripples in the sand on one of the dunes.

These are the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes and Death Valley and was one of my top objectives for photographing on this trip. I tried to keep pushing back our arrival at the dunes as late as I could to get the late day light and the shadows that it would produce. Unfortunately we had somewhere to be that was another 4 hrs away, so I had to settle for about 4 pm sunlight. They were still cool though and as a word of advice to anyone else wanting to photograph the sand dunes in summer: Don't wear sandals - the sand was extremely hot.

This will be my last picture of the Artists Drive area at Death Valley National Park. I liked the greenish rocks visible in this hillside.

This is yet another view from Artists Drive. I really like this picture because it captures a lot of features from Death Valley: The dark colorful rocks from Artists Pallet in the foreground, the salt deposits from the dried up lake, an alluvial fan coming out of the canyon and some interesting rock layer patterns on the mountains in the distance.

More colorful rock formations from Artists Drive.

A view from Artists Drive looking back towards Badwater Basin.

More colorful rock formations visible from Artists Drive.

This is the Artist's Drive or Artist's Palette area in Death Valley. Noted for many different colors of rock caused by the oxidation of different metals in the rock. Normally when I take landscape pictures, I try to frame the picture so that all human made structures are excluded. I really liked the depth this road into the distance provided in this picture. I read something about this in a photography magazine, something about parallel lines, but can't remember why they're supposed to be good, but it does seem to work in this picture.

This is one of the panoramas I took at Death Valley of the dry lake-bed at Badwater Basin. Panoramas seem like they should be easy, but as this picture demonstrates, I have yet to get it right. I try to set the exposure and shutter speed the same, but it rarely works out perfectly. And in this case, it looks like the mountain in the distance is tilted. Still, I like the vastness that only a panoramic can portray of this area.

I wanted to capture an image that would convey the heat in Death Valley. This one is the one that comes closest to that. I'm not sure what the small bumps are in the distance, but they do seem to an an almost mirage-like effect to the picture.

This is Badwater Basin in Death Valley, the lowest elevation in the Western hemisphere - 282 feet below sea level.

This picture offers a little bit better view of Manley Beacon as well as the darker rocks to the right that didn't make it into the other picture. It offers an interesting contrast, at least for me. I will also mention that all of these pictures from Zabriskie Point were taken during the harsh afternoon sun, highlighting the drawback of trying to fit in so many sights in a short time. From what I've read about Zabriskie Point, the best light for taking pictures is during the morning, unfortunately that was not possible for me on this trip.

This picture is also from Zabriskie Point, further to the right than the last previous couple of shots. This picture also features Manley Beacon the marble colored rock on the right side of the picture. I also like this wide angle shot because it shows the gray dry stream bed along with different colored rocks and the dry lake bed in the distance.

This is a little different perspective of the same landscape at Zabriskie Point. Obviously it's zoomed in, but in doing so, some of the bad lighting (glare) is cut back from the other shot and the color of the rock seems to stand out a little better.