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Backpack designed by 横前俊也, carried by a cute little penguin.
#origami #origamiart art #cute #bag #penguin #woolfelt
Fifty photos in the order that I took them on my Necklace Valley hike are in this album: www.flickr.com/photos/jlcummins_photography/sets/72157656...
I spent 3 days (July 22-25) backpacking in Necklace Valley which is located near Skykomish Washington in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The trail begins on an old railroad grade for the first 1.5 miles, on a flat bench that meanders through second growth timber. Along the trail you see large cedar stumps with springboard notches chopped in the huge trunks. The trail follows the banks of the East Fork Foss River for about 3 miles in mixed forest. There are a few huge cedar trees along the trail and after several miles a large meadow is visible through the trees. Then, at 5 miles, you will reach the end of the relativity flat trail where it crosses the river. Between 4 and 5 mile marks there are several nice campsite close to the river. Once over the river, the trail heads up through a large boulder field. Now, you will begin a steep upward climb, over 2,400 feet in 2.7 miles to the first lake. At 6.8 miles is a nice footbridge, with a memorial marker, dedicated to the memory of Michael Nesby, originally built in 1973 by the Trailblazers in his honor. From the bridge, it is another mile of steep uphill over terrain with lots of high stepping over, and around large boulders, mud, and tree roots. You reach the first of the Necklace Valley lakes at 7.7 miles (Jade Lake). You soon will come to a log shelter built in the 1950's by the Trail Blazer's, a Seattle based club that volunteers to stock fish in high mountain lakes. The shelter is in disrepair. The trail continues through the Necklace Valley, a string of small meadows between the lakes stretches all the way to the far end of Opal Lake at 9 miles. At about the 10 miles mark on a social trail that splits, one way to La Bohn Lakes, and the other to Tank Lakes is the last camp in the valley. That is where I camped for 2 nights. The boot track up to La Bohn is a climbers route to Mt. Hinman. I hike to La Bohn, the 2 Tank Lakes, and Foehn Lake. During the 3 days I hiked about 30 miles (48.2 km) and gained and lost roughly 5,700 feet (1,737 meters) elevation. Great trip! IMG_6622
This backpack made it through many adventures. I loved it. It came with my first laptop back in 2003 in Berkeley California. The Lemons Are Yellow sticker was salvaged and is on my current backpack. Here it lies dead in Stowe Vermont.
I’ve been wanting to take a city break in summer, rather than in the cold months for a while, so rather than heading for the Lake District for a week of toil on the fells when Jayne could get a week off, we took off from Liverpool for Paris. Flight times were nice and sociable but it meant we were on the M62 car park at a busy time in both directions – it’s a shambles! I’ve stopped over in Paris a dozen times – on my way to cycling in the Etape du Tour in the Alps or Pyrenees – and had a few nights out there. Come to think about it and we’ve spent the day on the Champs Elysees watching the final day of the Tour de France with Mark Cavendish winning. We hadn’t been for a holiday there though and it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision. Six nights gave us five and a half days to explore Paris on foot. I had a good selection of (heavy) kit with me, not wanting to make the usual mistake of leaving something behind and regretting it. In the end I carried the kit in my backpack – an ordinary rucksack – to keep the weight down, for 103 miles, all recorded on the cycling Garmin – and took 3500 photos. The little Garmin is light and will do about 15 hours, it expired towards the end of a couple of 16 hour days but I had the info I wanted by then. This also keeps the phone battery free for research and route finding – I managed to flatten that once though.
What can I say – Paris was fantastic! The weather varied from OK to fantastic, windy for a few days, the dreaded grey white dullness for a while but I couldn’t complain really. We were out around 8.30 in shorts and tee shirt, which I would swap for a vest when it warmed up, hitting 30 degrees at times, we stayed out until around midnight most nights. It was a pretty full on trip. The security at some destinations could have been a problem as there is a bag size limit to save room in the lifts etc. I found the French to be very pragmatic about it, a bag search was a cursory glance, accepting that I was lugging camera gear, not bombs around, and they weren’t going to stop a paying customer from passing because his bag was a bit over size.
We didn’t have a plan, as usual we made it up as we went along, a loose itinerary for the day would always end up changing owing to discoveries along the way. Many times we would visit something a few times, weighing the crowds and light etc. up and deciding to come back later. I waited patiently to go up the Eiffel Tower, we arrived on Tuesday and finally went up on Friday evening. It was a late decision but the weather was good, the light was good and importantly I reckoned that we would get a sunset. Previous evenings the sun had just slid behind distant westerly clouds without any golden glory. It was a good choice. We went up the steps at 7.30 pm, short queue and cheaper – and just to say that we had. The steps are at an easy angle and were nowhere near as bad as expected, even with the heavy pack. We stayed up there, on a mad and busy Friday night, until 11.30, the light changed a lot and once we had stayed a couple of hours we decided to wait for the lights to come on. This was a downside to travelling at this time of year, to do any night photography we had to stay out late as it was light until 10.30. The Eiffel Tower is incredible and very well run, they are quite efficient at moving people around it from level to level. It was still buzzing at midnight with thousands of people around. The sunset on Saturday was probably better but we spent the evening around the base of the Tower, watching the light change, people watching and soaking the party atmosphere up.
Some days our first destination was five miles away, this is a lot of road junctions in a city, the roads in Paris are wide so you generally have to wait for the green man to cross. This made progress steady but when you are on holiday it doesn’t matter too much. Needless to say we walked through some dodgy places, with graffiti on anything that stays still long enough. We were ultra-cautious with our belongings having heard the pickpocket horror stories. At every Café/bar stop the bags were clipped to the table leg out of sight and never left alone. I carried the camera in my hand all day and everywhere I went, I only popped it in my bag to eat. I would guess that there were easier people to rob than us, some people were openly careless with phones and wallets.
We didn’t enter the big attractions, it was too nice to be in a museum or church and quite a few have a photography ban. These bans make me laugh, they are totally ignored by many ( Japanese particularly) people. Having travelled around the world to see something, no one is going to stop them getting their selfies. Selfies? Everywhere people pointed their cameras at their own face, walking around videoing – their self! I do like to have a few photos of us for posterity but these people are self-obsessed.
Paris has obviously got a problem with homeless (mostly) migrants. Walk a distance along the River Seine and you will find tented villages, there is a powerful smell of urine in every corner, with the no alcohol restrictions ignored, empty cans and bottles stacked around the bins as evidence. There are families, woman living on mattresses with as many as four small children, on the main boulevards. They beg by day and at midnight they are all huddled asleep on the pavement. The men in the tents seem to be selling plastic Eiffel Tower models to the tourists or bottled water – even bottles of wine. Love locks and selfy sticks were also top sellers. There must be millions of locks fastened to railings around the city, mostly brass, so removing them will be self-funding as brass is £2.20 a kilo.
As for the sights we saw, well if it was on the map we tried to walk to it. We crossed the Periphique ring road to get to the outer reaches of Paris. La Defense – the financial area with dozens of modern office blocks – was impressive, and still expanding. The Bois de Boulogne park, with the horse racing track and the Louis Vuitton Centre was part of a 20 mile loop that day. Another day saw us in the north east. We had the dome of the Sacre Couer to ourselves, with thousands of tourists wandering below us oblivious of the entrance and ticket office under the church. Again the light was fantastic for us. We read that Pere Lachaise Cemetery or Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise was one of the most visited destinations, a five mile walk but we went. It is massive, you need a map, but for me one massive tomb is much the same as another, it does have highlights but we didn’t stay long. Fortunately we were now closer to the Canal St Martin which would lead us to Parc de la Villette. This was a Sunday and everywhere was both buzzing and chilled at the same time. Where ever we went people were sat watching the world go by, socializing and picnicking, soaking the sun up. As ever I wanted to go up on the roof of anything I could as I love taking cityscapes. Most of these were expensive compared with many places we’ve been to before but up we went. The Tour Montparnasse, a single tower block with 59 floors, 690 foot high and extremely fast lifts has incredible views although it was a touch hazy on our ascent. The Arc de Triomphe was just up the road from our hotel, we went up it within hours of arriving, well worth the visit.
At the time of writing I have no idea how many images will make the cut but it will be a lot. If I have ten subtly different shots of something, I find it hard to consign nine to the dark depths of my hard drive never to be seen again – and I’m not very good at ruthless selection – so if the photo is OK it will get uploaded. My view is that it’s my photostream, I like to be able to browse my own work at my leisure at a later date, it’s more or less free and stats tell me these images will get looked at. I’m not aiming for single stunning shots, more of a comprehensive overview of an interesting place, presented to the best of my current capabilities. I am my own biggest critic, another reason for looking at my older stuff is to critique it and look to improve on previous mistakes. I do get regular requests from both individuals and organisations to use images and I’m obliging unless someone is taking the piss. I’m not bothered about work being published (with my permission) but it is reassuringly nice to be asked. The manipulation of Flickr favourites and views through adding thousands of contacts doesn’t interest me and I do sometimes question the whole point of the Flickr exercise. I do like having access to my own back catalogue though and it gives family and friends the chance to read about the trip and view the photos at their leisure so for the time being I’m sticking with it. I do have over 15 million views at the moment which is a far cry from showing a few people an album, let’s face it, there’s an oversupply of images, many of them superb but all being devalued by the sheer quantity available.
Don’t think that it was all walking and photography, we had a great break and spent plenty of time in pavement bistros having a glass of wine and people watching. I can certainly understand why Paris is top of the travellers list of destinations.
The "Women Backpacking Together" Meetup met at the Caribou Lake Trailhead in the Caribou Wilderness in the middle of the night... around midnight. Lorrie and I were there around 7:30pm so after we put up our tent and built a fire, we warded off the bears by making a lot of noise. Four plus hours! We were up around 9am and out on the trail around 11am. Got to our camp at North Divide Lake around 3:30pm and set in for a cold night. Snow all around but we found a nice meadow to camp in.
The "Women Backpacking Together" Meetup met at the Caribou Lake Trailhead in the Caribou Wilderness in the middle of the night... around midnight. Lorrie and I were there around 7:30pm so after we put up our tent and built a fire, we warded off the bears by making a lot of noise. Four plus hours! We were up around 9am and out on the trail around 11am. Got to our camp at North Divide Lake around 3:30pm and set in for a cold night. Snow all around but we found a nice meadow to camp in.