lindsay echo photography

 On July 13th I brought home my very own Teacup Yorkshire Terrier! His name is Russel and he is a very sweet and smart little puppy. He turned 3 months old on July 25th!

Needless to say, I’ve been spending all my time with him, taking him for walks, playing outside, teaching him his boundaries and teaching him basic manners. He picks everything up very quickly and will do anything for a treat.

I’ve been reading Cesar Millan’s “How to Raise the Perfect Dog - From Puppyhood and Beyond” and watching alot of “The Dog Whisperer” to help me learn how to train Russel properly and easily, and so far it’s all working really well! It’s such common sense, yet people hardly think of it on their own.

Anyways, here are a few photos of Russel. :)

June 7, 2010

We have made it to Yosemite National Park!! We arrived here yesterday and spent the day driving around and taking photos of the beautiful landscape that is Yosemite Valley. The campgrounds here are insanely busy (we had to drive an hour from the park to find a campsite) and this park is like the Disneyland of National Parks – incredibly busy. Therefore, we will be spending only the day here and then heading north to Lover’s Leap, which is just south of Lake Tahoe and has free camping and will hopefully be somewhat less busy.

Now, we haven’t written any entries for quite some time… Let’s try and remember what we have been up to:

We left Utah in search of the Grand Canyon in Arizona and spent one night there. We did the tourist thing and walked some trails, took a bunch of photos and visited the gift shops. Once we were finished there we headed to Nevada in search of Red Rock Canyon. We made it to the campground and experienced 50+mph winds the first night, and had to sleep in the car as there was no way that the tent was going to stay on the ground with being held down only by rocks (gravel pads make pegging impossible). The wind was pretty traumatic and went on for most of the next day and finally died down enough so that we could go and climb something.

We spent about 10 days in Red Rock Canyon and met some ladies from Oregon, whom we shared a campsite with in order to cut the costs of camping for all of us. They had a little a-frame camping trailer so we spent quite a bit of time in there, as quite a few of the nights were pretty windy. We will be visiting them again in Oregon and they are going to take us to some nice climbing spots and let us stay and use their shower!! Exciting.

After we parted ways with Vegas we headed south-west to Joshua Tree National Park in California. I have to say that J-Tree was the most beautiful desert park that we have visited! The trees are so neat looking and there are tons and tons of hills and climbing areas made up of stacked granite boulders. It really is a sight to see! We met a couple from England at the campground and shared a campsite with them for the few days that we were there. The weather was extremely warm during the day so we had to climb in the evenings in most areas. The days started getting hotter and hotter so we decided to make our way north towards San Francisco to escape the blistering heat of the desert.

Route 1 was the highway that took us along the coast of California and allowed us to finally see and feel the ocean. The humidity was such a relief after spending nearly a month in the dry, hot desert. We stopped in Malibu and sat on the beach for a while, enjoying the sights and weather, watching surfers on the small waves, and watching dolphins (!!!) surfacing in the distance, intrigued by the surfers.

From Malibu we headed north to Santa Barbara, where we again stopped at the beach to enjoy the ocean and play along the water’s edge, trying to avoid getting our shoes wet and failing miserably. The next few stops we made were along the coast and then we finally found a campground to stay at that was just minutes from a beautiful beach in Marina, California. We spent a few hours at the beach, walking up and down the sand and running away from the waves but still getting soaked by the water.

Soon we found ourselves northbound again through the interior of California and on our way to San Francisco. We drove across the Goldengate Bridge, parked on the other side and walked halfway across, then back to the car, all while taking a bunch of photos, of course. We stopped for sushi at “Sushi Hana” and had the best sushi of our lives there. Driving through San Francisco was amazing! All the small little houses and apartments on top of every business was really cool to see – I definitely would like to spend some more time there under different circumstances and check out all that the city has to offer.

We spent the night on the side of a road a couple nights ago, and found ourselves covered in spider webs. We also found a couple spiders in the car and thought we had gotten rid of them all, but we were very mistaken. Yesterday evening we were driving and I felt something crawling on me so we pulled over and found 2 more spiders. Once we made it to camp we found ANOTHER spider. I hope they are all gone because I can’t handle having spiders everywhere!! They aren’t small ones either!!!!!!! YUCK.

So now we are sitting in the car, waiting for the stores to open in Yosemite Valley so that we can wander around and check everything out before we make our way north again. I am super excited to edit my photos from here as the sights are incredible and extremely photogenic. We are also going to check out the Ansel Adams gallery in the village and see what that’s all about and I am also going to buy a Yosemite sticker to add to the collection on my laptop lid.

June 14, 2010

After leaving Yosemite, we made our way to the South Lake Tahoe area to climb at a place called “Lover’s Leap”. We have been here for a week now and the weather and people here have been great! We managed to meet up again with the English couple that we met in Joshua Tree and made new friends with two guys from Britain! We’ve been sharing a campsite with Stu and Charlie nearly all week and it’s really helped keep the cost down and it’s great to have the company as they are pretty funny to talk to.

Our time in the U.S. is starting to run short as it’s nearly the middle of the month again! We will be heading back to Alberta in July for a wedding, and then we will be in Squamish at some point during the summer, with any luck. We still need to hit two places in Oregon before we go home, though. I am looking forward to sleeping in a normal bed and having a shower on a regular basis! I also can’t wait to see my parents and our friends again! We have made some great friends on our journey though and now have hook-ups in Britain, Colorado, Idaho, Chile, California and Oregon. That will make it much easier to travel! I would love to go to the UK and check out Scotland as well. Hopefully we can make a trip there and stay with Stu and Charlie – it would be a fun time!

I’ve only been out of school for a month and a half and I really miss it! Luckily I have been keeping busy with some web work while on holidays to keep my brain working so that I don’t forget everything that I learned last year in school. I sure can’t wait to go back and learn tons of new things and then be finished the program and ready to do all kinds of work!!

Other than that, not much has been going on. We are just climbing and bouldering with our UK friends and having a good time camping and relaxing with a fire every night!

June 17, 2010

Tomorrow we leave Lover’s Leap in search of new destinations in Oregon! Our time in California has been great, but we have nearly two weeks left and need to make our way back to Canada!

We might be visiting some friends in Portalnd, then we will be climbing at Trout Creek, which looks really crazy! It’s tons of crack climbs but the rock is formed in columns and looks quite interesting. Hopefully I will get out and do some climbing, as I haven’t really been in the mood for it since I started working on a project for work. Now that my work is hopefully done, I can get my head back into climbing!

I am super excited to get back home and see our friends and family! It will be nice to see everyone again and have some more fun this summer! I am definitely ready to sleep in a normal bed and have showers on a regular basis. It’s been a great time in the US and I’ve taken some amazing photos, which I plan to get printed on canvas and put on my walls (if I ever find a place to live).

For now you can enjoy some of the sights from the last couple weeks.

May 8, 2010
Wow! We have finally landed in Utah. The heat is amazing and the views are beautiful. We will be here for at least 2 weeks.

We woke up in Idaho to a couple inches of wet snow on the ground. Our plan was to hang out in Idaho for the day and check out their climbing gym, but the snow made us change our minds. We packed up and left Idaho in search of warmer, dryer weather. On the night of May 6^th, at around 10pm we rolled into camp at Indian Creek, Utah. We nearly got lost and had to look at a few maps of the area in order to figure out where we were. Turns out we missed the turns for all of the campgrounds, which wasn’t hard to do as the signs are all really small and made of wood – not so reflective in the dark. We were tired and our patience was wearing thin, but like every other blip in our adventure, it all worked out and we pitched the tent for the night and finally got some much-needed sleep.

P.S. Free camping in Indian Creek is awesome.

We woke to the most amazing thing we have seen this entire trip so far – the sun! We were both so incredibly relieved that we had finally reached warm weather because if we had wanted snow, we would have stayed in Edmonton!

After we had finished our breakfast (scrambled eggs – yum!) we walked over to greet our campsite neighbours. We learned their names were Scott, Jim Donini (Colorado), Dick (Montana), Jeannie (Montana), John (Britain), Sebastian (Chile), Ixchel (Mexico), Carlyle (Alberta), Laura (Colorado), Tim (Colorado), Josh (Montana) and Amy (Montana). Jim is 67 and has so much climbing experience under his belt. He did the first 5.12 in Yosemite BEFORE cams were invented. It took 5 years for the next successful attempt at that route, as cams had been invented and everyone else needed them to climb this route – how insane! He has done an incredible amount of climbs and is currently on the cover of Alpinist 30. He’s a pretty famous guy apparently!

So these people decided to take us under their wing and show us the ways of Indian Creek crack climbing. We spent the whole day yesterday in the hot sun and under the blue sky at Supercrack Buttress. I only managed to get in one climb due to my shoes being far too tight for crack climbing, but it was amazing! I had never climbed crack before so the whole experience was very new to me. I started to catch on quickly and was hand-jamming and working my way up the crack in no time, but not without a ton of effort and a few takes. My forearms were exploding with pain from the strenuous action of hand jamming and pulling myself up the crack, but I finally made it to the top and it was so satisfying! This place is so amazing and I can’t wait to get on some more climbs, though I might have to go and purchase a pair of shoes that aren’t so tight so that I can actually climb! Sport climbing shoes are NOT okay for crack climbing – my toes were in so much pain that I couldn’t even make my way up a second route at the end of the day.

Brendon got in quite a few climbs and did really well for having such little experience climbing cracks. He had climbed in Skaha a few weeks ago and says that the crack here is so different as there is no face features on the rock and it’s all about jamming your hands and feet into that crack. I got some shots of him climbing and will be going through all my photos in a bit as I have filled up 2 of my 4 memory cards already.

So, due to being in the sun all day yesterday, I managed to get sunburnt. I forgot my hat and my sunglasses in the car and didn’t realize it was going to be such amazingly hot weather – not too sure what I was thinking on that one. My nose, cheeks, forearms, chest and back of my neck are quite red and sore. Luckily I was smart enough to bring the aloe vera gel along as it will help my burn heal much faster than without it. I also brought sunscreen which I will be applying vigorously from here on out!

I decided to spend the day at camp while Brendon goes climbing with our new friends. I have so many awesome photos to edit and I don’t want to get too behind on it – plus I am really sore and sunburnt from yesterday so I figured it would be a good idea to just relax and hang out at camp and maybe do some exploring and take some more photos.

May 13, 2010
Wow! How the time flies by when you’re on vacation and enjoying adventures in new and exciting places. Let’s see, what have we been up to…

Yesterday we went climbing at Wall Street crag, just outside of Moab. It was really fun and we will be going back there in a few days. I top roped 2 climbs successfully and lead one route on my own (it was a super easy slab route – I love slab). The weather was a bit overcast but still decently warm and we got rained on a little bit but it wasn’t enough to kick us off of the wall. There is a super fun 5.8 lie-back crack that I really want to do again – it’s my new favourite route so far.

The last couple days before that we took the day off and hung out around Moab the one day, talking to locals in the climbing shops and getting new shoes for climbing crack (tight face climbing shoes are hell to climb crack in, holy macaroni). The second day we took off we went to Arches National Park and explored around there and took a bunch of photos. I am seriously behind on editing photos because it’s impossible to see my laptop screen during the day and at night we get back to camp, eat supper, see how our neighbours’ days were and then go to bed! 

Tomorrow we are heading back to Supercrack Buttress to do a couple of climbs there. It’s hard for us to climb most of the routes here at Indian Creek because the cracks require a ton of the same size cams in order to safely protect the climber if they happen to fall. Brendon only has 1 of most cams and a couple doubles which he bought off another climber and at the store in town. However, Wall Street is more versatile on the size of gear demanded and so we will be spending some more time there checking things out and climbing our little hearts out.

Today we spent the day at Canyonlands National Park in the Needles District. We went on a few short hikes and checked a bunch of stuff out, and I took some photos of course. Our first hike went down an offroading sand road that went on forever. We decided to turn around after quite some time walking because the clouds were looking threatening and flash floods are not uncommon there, but we didn’t see any rain which was nice.

When we got back to camp we found an ant colony pretty close to where we set up camp, so we gave them some sugar and a piece of pasta and watched them all running around. Some were gathering food and some were trying to dig a new entrance to their home; it was really interesting and fun to watch them all scurrying around and working hard.

So right now we are just relaxing while the sun slowly creeps behind the red-rock walls that surround us in this beautiful and diverse area. We have the creek to our right and the sun to our left right now and it’s pretty relaxing and a great end to an awesome day. We will be here for another week (or more depending on what else we need to climb and explore – there’s tons of stuff to see and do around here!) and then will head down to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon! I’m super excited to see it and we may do some hikes in the canyon to keep ourselves busy there for a couple of days.

I promise I will post photos with this entry! We don’t have internet (or any services) at the campsite so when we move camp closer to town in a few days I will add a bunch of the photos that I have edited to this entry – there is alot!

May 14, 2010
We are currently sitting in the car, listening to raindrops on the roof and thunder in the distance. While we were climbing at Supercrack Buttress a storm decided to blow in so we zoomed off back to camp and made supper while it was still dry.

Here are a few things that we have learned so far about camping in the desert:

• There is sand everywhere. In our tent, sleeping bags, hair, ears, car, food and mouths.
• Having a 4-season tent, which we do not have here, is mandatory. Sand flies through mesh quite nicely and leaves a nice thick layer of sand on everything.
• Parking the tent behind a group of shrubs is a great way to keep the sand out of the tent.
• Ants are fun to feed water-logged cupcakes.
• The weather forecast is always wrong.
• Dead, squashed snakes on the road are still terrifying at first glance.
• Ham rings are still good after not being refrigerated for 2 weeks.
• Water is life.
• If it says “keep refrigerated” it is only a recommendation and not necessarily needed.
• Lizards are everywhere and don’t mind our company as long as we keep some distance.
• You must earn the right to own a camper-van. Van envy is quite prominent in these parts.
• Porta-potties fill up very quickly and are not emptied often.

Everything here in the desert has been quite a learning curve for us (between camping, climbing and hiking), but we are adjusting pretty well, I must say. I’m starting to get used to the sand that has invaded our lives and the constant dry skin/sunburn that I have been experiencing (oh and don’t forget the funny and strange tan lines on my arms and hands, too!).

Tomorrow we are going on a 18km (round trip) hike in Canyonlands National Park. We are going to hike to where the Colorado River meets and Green River and we will be 1000ft above the rivers, so it should be a great view. I’m pretty excited to go on a long hike because it’s great exercise and I’ve had a very off-day climbing today!!

May 16, 2010
It’s another beautiful day in Utah! The sun is shining and the sky is clear without a cloud in sight. Our hike yesterday went really well and took us 5.5 hours round trip, with a 20 minute break at Confluence Overlook. The view was amazing and seeing the two different coloured rivers come together was quite a sight! I’ve never seen anything like that before and I’m glad we did the long hike up there to see it.

The weather was really nice yesterday and we both have a case of backpack-tan/sunburn, but it was worth it. The trail went up and down through small canyons, across desert meadows and across the tops of large, smooth rocky areas. We saw tons of little lizards along the way and ran into a little garter snake as well! He was pretty cute and just cruised up the rocks in front of us, trying to get away and hide.

Last night was our final night at Indian Creek as we are going to be spending the next few days camping around Moab and climbing at Wall Street, Ice Cream Parlour and possibly heading into Colorado to climb Independence Tower, just outside the Utah border.

We are currently on our way to Moab to shower and do some laundry and basically take a nice relaxing day off to find a new campsite and get ourselves cleaned up – HORRAY! We will finally be able to get access to the internet and post these entries and some photos too!

Hmm so Brendon just hit a bird with the car… Apparently there were feathers everywhere so we had to pull over and sure enough he found a bird in the grill of the car. After a few attempts at prying the bird out, he finally got it, only to realize that the head was still lodged in there and not willing to budge. Brendon had to push the head into the car and now he can see it, but can’t get it out. We’re hoping it will fall out and now Brendon is being paranoid and saying he can smell “bird” in the car. Well, there goes our appetites for a while.

Here is an incredible amount of photos (none from the last few days, yet). They are all mixed up and out of order, though.

Greetings from Idaho!! We are currently sitting in the tent in Idaho Falls, where we will spend the night, then continue on to UTAH tomorrow, with any luck! The last few days have been totally wicked, and here’s what we have been up to:

We spent the first few days of our trip visiting my family and visiting friends. From there, we started to head south-west to cross the US border to officially kick off our U.S. 2010 Road Trip.

Our first night was spent just outside of Eureka, Montana, where we found what seemed to be a free campground. There was no place to put money and nobody else around, so we set up camp and stayed in Montana for the night. It was chilly, but not as chilly as I remember May Long Weekend last year in Banff! I didn’t even have to wear my coat to bed – now that’s a huge deal for me. Anyways, back on topic! We spent all day driving after our free camping night and landed ourselves in another campground in southern Montana, just outside Yellowstone National Park. We made a few stops at Rest Areas to eat supper and breakfast and I have to say, the rest areas in Montana are really freaking nice. They all had picnic tables which were perfect for us to stop and eat at.

Oh. Montana is kinda funny. There are little tiny shacks everywhere that sell Espresso – like in every town. There is also a “Lucky Lil’s” casino in every town (big or small) and a “Subway” restaurant in every town as well. We also saw alot of “So-and-So for Sheriff” and “So-and-So for Commissioner” signs on the side of the roads – it was pretty entertaining.

Today we spent the day in Yellowstone National Park and I have to say that it is such an amazing place to see! We took TONS of photos and I can’t wait to go through and process them and show everyone where we were! The views are amazing there and there are so many geysers and hot springs that it really is a photographer’s wet dream. I went through almost 6gb of memory taking photos today so I must say that yes, it was in fact a great day. The majority of the park was closed due to the roads not being open yet, but the areas that we did get to see were pretty amazing. We entered through the North Entrance and drove south and stopped everywhere we could on the way to Old Faithful. After we had seen Old Faithful (which went off just as we go there – perfect timing or what?), we headed back North, then west into Montana and then Idaho very shortly after.

It snowed almost all day today in Yellowstone, but that didn’t stop us from seeing everything that we could. I am really happy with the shots that I got and can’t wait to see them on the computer. We did a lot of walking today and it felt good! We haven’t done much other than sit in the car for hours on end so it was nice to get out and walk around Yellowstone. I would love to go back to Yellowstone in the summer, as there was a ton of steam coming from many of the hot springs due to the colder air. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to even see Grand Prismatic Spring because there was so much steam coming off of it. It’s one of the biggest and most colourful springs in Yellowstone and I was so looking forward to seeing it, but I hope to get back there again sometime to see the whole park in all its glory.

The landscape here in Idaho is very similar to around Edmonton and Calgary – pretty flat with the mountains in the distance. At least we outran the snow and it looks like warmer weather is in our sights for tonight at least. We will be heading to Utah tomorrow to spend a while there climbing and exploring.

Remember: Adventure is Out There!!

Sooo this passed Easter weekend was pretty awesome… Rock climbing on Good Friday and scrambling on Saturday. The scramble took about 6 hours from car to summit, then back to the car. It was windy as heck but the view was so worth it

This was Brendon and my second summit together! He has done more but this is only my second time! Gotta get into better shape so I’m not sore for so many days after these long hikes up mountains! :)

Our summer will consist of TONS of photo updates just like this, so keep posted!!

A few weeks ago Brendon and I set up a flash and our cameras to shoot some water drops. They turned out pretty neat and I am excited to shoot them again sometime! We need to refine our setup to get the correct angle/colors on our water. Brendon also shot some smoke trails that turned out sooo incredibly well! My little photographer is growing up so fast!! ;)

Our inspiration for the water drops and smoke trails came from Gavin Hoey which we found on YouTube. He has some really helpful stuff and his 15-minute challenges are something that we want to try once summer hits!

 Well, here are the photos!! :)

Well, I found this fotojournal thing through a friend, and I like it much more than Wordpress, so here I am! This blog will be about my photos, school stuff and eventually our road trip this summer (which will contain a million photos, of course).

So I made some cupcakes for my Birthday party last week, and of course decided to take some photos of them. I colored some of them blue, pink and swirly blue/red and topped them off with some fluffy icing and some sprinkles. They were taaaasty!