I drove to Enchanted Rock today. It’s been quite sometime since I went there previously. It was a beautiful day out. We arrived at around 8:30 in the morning. And unfortunately people started arriving in droves. Including big groups of very loud people. I had wanted to enjoy a peaceful climb. But it was not meant to be. I guess that, for the next time, I need to camp there overnight and climb it at first light.

My next door neighbor was game to come along. And we posed for this picture at around 1/4th of the way up. There was a handy rock to set the camera on. Unfortunately, the facial recognition count-down feature did not work. But the standard 10-second count-down did.

As we were climbing, three old propeller-driven aircraft used the rock as a way-point and performed a turn for us.

With three cloud trails forming a \ | /, I centered the picture on a bloom from some sort of yucca plant.

When I got to the top, I saw some beautiful islands of grass, moss, and cactus. They were very zen-like in a sea of pink granite.

I thought I was hallucinating that there was a dark streak in the sky. So I took a picture of it. At least the camera shared my hallucination.

I tried a vertical panorama of a tree today and learned some things. Even turning the white balance to a specific setting, and turning the automatic focusing off, I still ran into problems. My dynamic range was blown in the last picture on the top. This caused the tree itself to go almost black. So when I tried to recover the bark, the picture turned very grainy and noisy.

So, for the next time, I will take a set of multiple exposures for each position in the range. And the aperture will be fixed so that the depth of field will not be compromised.

Okay, I would have liked to have gotten the compass-rose points into the picture. But I missed a couple of pictures towards my feet. Sigh. Data lost is never recovered.

I went swimming today in Barton Springs. It was quite an experience! First of all it is really cold. You would think 68 degree water would not be that bad. After all, I wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts in that weather. But it took me a while to acclimate to it.

The next odd thing is there are plants living in this pool just below the surface. So when you swim, you are brushing against them and swimming through them. The pool is also quite deep so there is no standing around to rest.

It was certainly fun. I should try it in Winter when it is freezing out. I bet it would feel quite warm…

They cut down the climbing vine again. Which should be no big deal. It seems to grow back in a year. Its a really fast growing vine.

It left an interesting pattern on the wall….

The architect poorly designed these buildings at work. The Bradford Pear trees were placed too close to the buildings. They don’t get enough light. And the high winds knock them down. And they never get replaced!

It seems that two were taken down recently. Too bad they wont let it grow back…