Official Web Site
These photos are from my hike of the Trail of Cedars, an easy stroll through the woods that hooks up with the highly-recommended Avalanche Lake Trail around the halfway point.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
These photos are from our drives along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, including hikes of Hawksbill Summit Trail and Bearfence Viewpoint Trail. Along the latter trail we missed the turn for the easier hike and ended up doing a difficult rock scramble though crevices and steep climbs. I’m sure the rock scramble on this trail is not a problem for experienced hikers, but for us it was a bit harrowing, especially since we were concerned about losing daylight before we made our way back down to the car.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
These photos are from three different lookout points in Bryce Canyon National Park. The first few were taken at Piracy and Fairview Points as the sun finally peeked through the clouds toward the end of a dreary day. The majority of the remaining photos were taken on the following sunny day at various spots along the Inspiration Point trail.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
These photos are from my two visits to Old Faithful to watch the famous geyser erupt on its reliable schedule. I took shots at various stages of eruption and the final one has a nice rainbow alongside the geyser plume. The birds in some of the photos were actually very large, which helps put the size of the eruption in perspective.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
As we prepared to depart Letchworth State Park for Watkins Glen, we noticed that Niagara Falls was only 90 minutes northwest of Letchworth, so we decided to take a detour since we wouldn’t be able to check in to our Watkins Glen hotel until later in the day anyway. We had stayed on the Canadian side of the falls for our one-year anniversary back in 2002 but had never visited the American side, so this seemed like a worthy day trip—and it was.
The American Falls may appear less impressive from the Canadian side when you’re standing over the magnificent Horseshoe Falls, but looks are deceiving. When you’re standing above the American Falls or hiking up the side of them, you realize just how incredibly powerful they are. The American side also allows you to walk along and across the upper Niagara River and gaze upon the rapids as the river approaches its perpetual rendezvous with a cliff. Unfortunately, we could not get close to the Horseshoe Falls because they were doing construction, but we had seen plenty of them in Canada, so it wasn’t a huge disappointment.
Here are a few photos from our visit. As always, no photo or video can do justice to any major waterfall, and this is especially true of Niagara Falls—you really need to be there in person to feel the power of hundreds of thousands of gallons per second thundering over the edge and crashing to the river below in order to understand what an amazing natural wonder this place truly is. Both the American and Canadian sides are more than worthy of a visit.
This is another set of photos from my ride along the California coast, courtesy of my cousin Tim, who picked me up in San Francisco to show me some of the beauty of southern California. This batch includes visits to a foggy beach, a lighthouse, and the city of Monterey. There’s also a rare photo of me (posing with my cousin in front of a restaurant that bears our family name—no relation, though).
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
On one of Seattle’s infamous rainy days I decided to engage in some indoor activities, including an elevator ride to the Sky View Observatory of Columbia Center, the tallest building in Washington. The observation deck offers great views of the city through clean glass, and it’s easy to get good shots with very little glass reflection.
The Columbia Center also features a snack and drink bar, so you can grab a glass of wine and enjoy the scenery from one of the window-side tables. Many people actually prefer the views here to the ones at the Space Needle. For one thing, the Columbia Center is taller and much less crowded, and for another, you can’t take a photo of the Space Needle if you’re inside of it. 🙂
Here are some of the photos I shot during my time up there. Click on any image to open a gallery.
These photos are from my hike of the Three Falls Trail on the eastern side of Glacier National Park last September. It could actually be called the Dozen Falls Trail if you count all the pretty cascades I passed along the way. First was Baring Falls, followed by St. Mary Falls, and then a long uphill climb to majestic Virginia Falls, to which photos cannot do justice.
I connected to this trail, a portion of which is part of the multi-state Continental Divide Trail, from the Sun Point Nature trail. On my way back, I considered diverting to the Saint Mary Falls trailhead and taking a shuttle back to my car at the Sun Point parking area, but chose instead to hike back the way I came, continuing up the short trail to Sun Point before heading back to my car, which amounted to about 6-7 miles worth of hiking that day.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
This movie compiles all of the videos I shot during my trip to Glacier National Park, Montana and Seattle, Washington in September of 2019. One correction: the photo captioned as Victoria Falls is actually Virginia Falls, not sure how I made that mistake given that all the photos I shot were captioned properly.
This collection features photos of underground pools in Luray Caverns. Most of them were shot at the main Mirror Pool, where the water is so still that it produces a perfect reflection, resulting in imagery reminiscent of landscapes you might see in a science fiction film.
Click on any photo to open a gallery.
Michael Rappa 