Back Roads: Idaho 93

Posted on by Annie

Heading north out of Stanley and on up to Montana, Highway 93 wanders through the mountains, following the path originally made by the Salmon River. There are lots of turnouts, both for people to let faster cars by (I’ll let even one car by me when I’m towing because it’s so much more enjoyable to go slow and not have a tailgater behind me) and for savoring the views. And amazing views they are! I’d forgotten how big things are in the west, and how wide open the sky even as the mountains rise up to meet it. This old…

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Taking a Wider View

Posted on by Annie

I haven’t bought a new camera lens in more than three years, but heading to the big open vistas of the West, I couldn’t resist. I stopped into a little camera store in Casper, Wyoming, that turned out to be a great little camera store. The manager worked with me to find a quality wide-angle lens and adapter for my Sony A7 that was in my price range (and well below what a straight Sony wide-angle would cost). I left the store excited to try it out. Here’s one of the first things I shot: Oxbow Bend in the Grand…

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Western Motels

Posted on by Annie

Once you get off the interstates and onto the backroads out west, the towns are smaller and farther apart. And each one has at least one motel, showing their age by the style of the signs out front and the rooms out back. The main street in Laramie, Wyoming had the motel above and the one below, within two blocks of each other. It would be hard to figure out which one to pick, but maybe the Gas Lite would have won because of the proximity to a restaurant, but the spelling of “Lite” kind of soured me on it….

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Gone, Three Years On

Posted on by Annie

Gone from cubicle-land. Gone from 24/7 emails. Gone from the long-haul flights, the endless meetings. Gone from all of that, three years ago today. This was me, on the ferry out of Seattle on August 19, 2016, after turning in my laptop, access badges (all four of them), and walking out the door of my last full-time job in high tech. Two years ago, I was on Cape Cod, nursing a broken hand back to health and enjoying daily sunsets on the water. Last year, I was in one of my happy places, paddling on the water in Tennessee and…

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