Pancake Rocks Trail

From a hike last July, here are some photos of the trail to Pancake rocks on the western side of Pikes Peak. This trail goes up to approximately 11,000 feet elevation (3,350 meters), passing through evergreen forests and glades of aspen.

This is one of my favorite hikes, but it's a fairly long round-trip (over 6 miles) and over an hour's drive from the house, so I don't do it that often. But it makes for a couple of great Scenic Sunday posts when I do! Check back for more photos from this hike soon, including the famous rocks for which the trail is named. (And yes, little Socks hiked the whole way with me!)

Many thanks to Elettra for honoring me with the Reliable Blog award!
 

Moon Behind Palm Tree

I just got back from a nice warm place (the Palm Springs area), so here's a shot of last week's full moon behind a palm tree for Skywatch Friday.

This was a hard shot to get handheld with my Nikon D40X, which isn't a great camera for low-light photography (and it's old so it's starting to develop too many hot pixels). It's occasions like this that make me wish I had a D7000, which is much better at capturing images like this. But I'll work with what I've got!

Air Force Academy Chapel (Inside)

Continuing with last week's Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel photos, here's the inside.

 Looking through the windows you can see the nearby mountains.

And this is for the great Our World Tuesday meme.

Hawaii Lava Tube

Here's the last of my scenic scanned photos from our 1997 trip to Hawaii (taken from a print from a point-and-shoot film camera). It's a lava tube; in an old eruption, lava flowed out of this tube.

You can get a sense of its size by the people dimly visible on the left railing just before it's completely dark. And yes, we walked into the tube, and it was a very unique experience on many levels.

Please visit the new Vintage Weekly meme, which is picking up where Sunday Scans left off. I'll certainly be a regular participant there!

Vancouver Harbor Area

Here are the last of my photos from the Vancouver harbor area, a real variety of shots without any unifying theme. First, here's a seaplane landing...

...some tall buildings...

...and a couple of handheld night shots.

And that's my Scenic Sunday entry for the week.

This is my 500th blog post. When I started, I never imagined I would go this long or get over 200 followers. Thanks for all the encouragement!

Bare Trees, Blue Sky

For Skywatch Friday, here are a couple of recent shots of bare trees against our beautiful blue winter skies.

Air Force Academy Chapel

If you were wondering what Saturday's photo was, it's the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel, one of the most recognizable buildings in Colorado when fully shown.

Here's a view looking up the steps.

I liked the regularity of the lines in this shot looking up the side with an ultra-wide-angle lens.

Here's another shot of the famous roofline.

And finally, I liked the pattern of shadows the spires were casting on the plaza in the early-morning sunlight.

This post is for Tina's PicStory theme of C (Cadet Chapel), and for Our World Tuesday. Next week we'll go inside the chapel.