The Smell of Burning / Thursday Evening Walk

There's a fire going on south of the city. It's behind the mountains to the east. It's been burning since yesterday. This morning I thought it was contained per only seeing slight smoky haze in the distance when driving down the freeway. Later in the afternoon I could see the fire was larger than yesterday. Above and to the west the sky was bright blue but you could smell the smoke in the air. In some ways it was pleasant due to reminding me of a burning fire at a campsite. It reminded me of when I went camping as a child up to Sequoia National Forest in California. Though it was a good memory I also worry now due to what this current fire is destroying and hoping no one gets injured (or worse).

Going for my walk this evening I could still smell the burning in the air. I knew taking great pictures of the mountains would not be possible since they were barely visible. I did my best and took other pictures which show a calm sunset.

Thursday Evening Walk

I almost did not go for a walk this evening. I know I should be doing this on a daily basis. I do need to get back into shape again. When I got home I sat myself into my office desk chair and began to sink down into it. Watched a couple of videos online and it almost got to the point to where I was going to say, "Oh well, I'll just go for a walk tomorrow. It's too late now." I did say "almost" because right before that moment my inner thoughts smacked my brain and told it, "No! Get off your butt and go out there!" Without hesitating I put on my shorts, grabbed my sneakers and grabbed my camera. I also want to try out the 24mm lens I received earlier this week.

When I got to the front of the garage I looked out to see if it was going to rain since it started to sprinkle as I got home from work. At this point the weather seemed fair. It's cloudy but no visible sign of water falling from the sky.

The goal is to walk close to two miles around our housing development. Since it was getting late I wasn't sure of going off road onto the dirt road. At this time of the day I expect the annoying little bugs to be buzzing around. I picked a new course and began my little adventure. A quarter of the way into the walk I came across a big fuzzy bee collecting pollen from a wild flowery plant. Since the camera had a fixed lens on it I couldn't zoom in so I tried to get as close as possible but at the same time I didn't want to get too close to where the bee would fly away. Unfortunately only one picture came out somewhat decent.

About half way through the walk I come up to a sidewalk with a wall running along next to it. Underneath the top edge there was this strange thing hanging from it. I have a feeling it's form some sort of insect where it's babies hatched from those holes and moved on. I've seen one similar to this the other day but never got a chance to get a closer look.

Moving along I then came across a beetle casually walking along the side of the wall. It seemed confused as it wasn't sure in which direction to go to and pretty much stayed in one spot. This guy was easy to photograph since it moved extremely slow.

Near the end of the walk I saw this plants and flowers on the corner of our development block. I had a feeling this would be a good spot to take some pictures of the flowers with the sun setting in the background. I feel it was an excellent choice. It's true of the saying, "Go with your gut." The one thing I forgot to do was mount a filter on the lens. Oh, well. Next time!

Another shot from Sunday's Storm

Went through the rest of the pictures from Sunday afternoon/evening's storm. Many of the pictures were identical. A lot were taken at an attempt to capture a flash of lightning. Aside from the lightning picture I think this one turned out well. There was more light since the sun's light wasn't completely gone just yet.

Sunday Evening Lightning

The sun was beginning to set this first Sunday of June. I was working at my desk when Gwen came in stating the clouds look great outside and if I was interested in going out for a quick walk. Cannot say no to her so we grabbed our cameras and walked out. The clouds were just as beautiful as they were yesterday when we took our mini adventure. Lightning was seen in the distance and we spent the next ten to twenty minutes trying to capture one. I've taken about four to five hundred shots when finally I got the tail end of one striking the Sandia Mountains. The sun already set by this time which is unfortunate since it the image produced a good amount of noise. Still very satisfactory. Very excited to post this picture and will go through the rest and post them later.

Afternoon / Evening Walk

Went out for an evening walk with Gwen after I came home from work. The week is almost over. It felt like it went by so quickly due to Memorial Day being on Monday. We each talked about how our day went and the other listened. The weather was nice. It wasn't too warm especially since the sun was on the horizon ready to set. The calm breeze did help keep the night time bugs from attacking us.

Same flower plant from the other day though it's a different flower. They're still alive and beautiful.

I don't think that storm back there will end up reaching us.

Morning walk on the last Saturday of May

We went out for walk this morning after coming back from running a couple of errands (though there are still more to do). We got our cameras and went out for a walk behind our housing development to see what else is new plus to get some exercise. Gwen wanted to break in her new hiking boots and I wanted to try out the recently acquired Canon Rebel T5 with the 55-250mm. It's been a week since I've last posted and I want to make this a more frequent thing.

We've never walked this far back. From a distance we thought it was just some graffiti but upon reaching it we saw it's decent.

Not from my yard but another house in the neighborhood. Beautiful pots.

Not the.... bee? (This thing was about the size of my thumb)