Tag Archives: road

Cascade Creek Falls

Cascade Creek Falls
Cascade Creek Falls. Yosemite National Park, California. May 16, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Color photograph of Cascade Creek Falls along Big Oak Flat Road into Yosemite Valley, California.

It is hard to imagine a more accessible waterfall than this one. The road into the Valley (the highway 120 route) passes right over this creek, and this photograph was made from the bridge. (This spot is also among my earliest memories of Yosemite, from childhood trips to the park with my parents. This waterfall, cascading down from unseen heights above, suggested to me at that early age that there was something interesting beyond the road. Turns out that this suggestion was right, and I’ve spent some decades enjoying that something. :-)

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Waterfall on Cascade Creek


Waterfall on Cascade Creek. Yosemite National Park, California. May 16, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Waterfall on Cascade Creek along Big Oak Flat Road near Yosemite Valley. This is one of the most easily accessible waterfalls in Yosemite – it is just above a bridge on the road dropping into the Valley from Big Oak Flat and the creek passes right beneath the roadway.

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Bay Bridge and Treasure Island

Bay Bridge and Treasure Island

Bay Bridge and Treasure Island. San Francisco, California. May 9, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

This is one of my favorite morning views of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as it soars high above the Embarcadero on its way across San Francisco Bay towards Treasure Island and Oakland and points east.

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Titus Canyon

Titus Canyon

Titus Canyon. Death Valley National Park, California. April 3, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Black and white photograph of Titus Canyon, Death Valley National Park.

This was, to say the least, a difficult shot. Besides driving nearly 30 miles on dirt roads, there were photographic challenges, not the least of which is the extreme dynamic contrast between the very bright sky and the dark canyon walls. Needless to say, this photograph is the result of some significant post-processing work – but do click the image to view it larger.

The road through Titus Canyon is one of the most amazing features of any Western US National Park. (Shhh….) It begins on a rather typical high desert dirt road through sagebrush country but then ascends into the Amargosa range. Before long this narrow one-way track twists and turns up and down steep ridges past amazing rocky ridges and along the top of tremendous canyons – while not a true four-wheel drive road, it is not for the faint hearted. It then descends into Titus Canyon itself, and near the bottom it passes through an unbelievable slot canyon – in places barely wider than your car the canyon walls rise vertically for hundreds of feet above. (If you visit Titus Canyon, check with the park service first since road conditions are very rough and can change.)

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