Tree and Boulders

@Betty: I think we spent about five hours on the trail. But, it took a lot longer than we planned due to the thunderstorm, the boulders, and the fact that we had to tread very carefully because the rocks were very slippery due to the rain. Add to that the amazing light that followed the storm which made me stop and take plenty of photographs (and Betsy Barron, you'll be proud to know that I didn't use my tripod even once on this hike; although, you won't change my mind on using it as often as possible). I couldn't hike with the camera out of the backpack because I was afraid of falling and damaging it. So, I stopped every few yards, took off the pack, removed the camera, shot a few frames, returned the camera to the pack, then repeated that process many times over two boulder-strewn miles. Ben finally remarked, "Dad, you're slowing us down". I finally had to call home from the summit to let my wife know that we would be very late for dinner and not to wait for us. We were having homemade manicotti and meatballs, so that thought kept us moving faster!

@Dan Creighton: I thought the same thing and initially processed this as a monochrome, but I didn't like the low contrast and it was too dark for my preference. Instead, I knocked down the saturation of the color image quite a bit.