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Thirsty Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving

Rambler: Terry Drink in Hand: Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz Wine Cube (a.k.a., a "wine juice box")

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I'm sure you're wondering why I (correction, we) are drinking a "wine juice box". Well, if you weren't, you are now. This year we decided to do Thanksgiving differently. Instead of the grilled smoked cajun turkey, sweet potato goodness, and cranberries to die for, we opted for a non-turkey dinner (at least maybe) trip to the Eastern Sierras in hopes of capturing views that let you appreciate the awe and the beauty of nature. We'll see if we can get something, but to hold you over, here's a couple of sunrise shots of the Hoover Wilderness trip. Eat an extra plate of goodness for us!

Thirsty Thursday: It Rains in Portland

Rambler: BethDrink at Hand: Ventana Pinot Noir

Thirsty Thursday is here again! Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. Tonight I'll share some photos from a recent trip to Portland.

This fall I decided to be ambitious and get myself one of those MBA thingies. I signed up for the Portland State online MBA program. This program requires the online MBA'ers to participate in an on-campus residency weekend each quarter, so once a quarter I have to go to Portland. When we were here in August for orientation I fell in love with Portland...it was warm and sunny and green and just plain beautiful.

Then I came back at the end of October. It rained. A lot. The whole time. I finally squeezed a little bit of free time out of the busy weekend on the final day of the residency weekend and wanted to go wander with camera...but it was pouring down rain. I went anyway. I got soaked. Luckily my camera has a rain cover.

Here's what I came away with. I can tell I've been busy with school. My skills are rusty. But its always nice to have the opportunity to go wander around without any distractions, just me and my camera.

All in all, it wasn't so bad. I didn't melt. Portland is still a cool city, even in the rain.

Get out there and wander in the rain (or sunshine if you're lucky) this weekend!

Thirsty Thursday: Colorful Colorado

Rambler: BethDrink at Hand: Fat Tire Snow Day

Thirsty Thursday here again! Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. A few weeks ago I found myself in Ft Collins, Colorado. I love any visit to Colorado, but there is something magically about October days in Colorado. The light is oh-so-nice, the aspens are glowing, and the skies are fabulous.

On my way to the hotel from the airport, I noticed that the sky was starting to look nice, and with a little time to kill, I decided to find a place to take a few photos. I didn't have time to get anywhere especially scenic, so I settled for an open field just south of the CSU campus. I didn't have a tripod, but luckily this field had some strategically placed boulders that worked just fine. After a day of travel following a stressful week of work and school, an unexpected late afternoon photo shoot is incredibly therapeutic.

Get out there and find your own therapeutic sunset this weekend!

Thirsty Thursday: Dinner Date

Rambler: BethDrink at Hand: Deschutes Jubilation Ale...on a brown ale kick

Hey Welliver Photography fans, thanks for joining us for another Thirsty Thursday...time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. Today is a special day here at Welliver Photography. We've been married for 10 years! I really can't believe that its been that long, but its all been pretty awesome so far!

In honor of the day, I figured I'd share some photos of us on a date. Well, sort of a date. When we were in Portland back in August I had my camera along at dinner. Highly recommend the Irving Street Kitchen. Cool place, good food, nice light, cute boy. Pretty much perfect.

Thanks for 10 amazing years T. Here's to 100 more.

Thirsty Thursday: Car Show

Rambler: Terry
Drink in Hand: 2009 Ventana Pinot Noir

A good friend of mine asked me to wander around Monterey and shoot with him recently. Fortunately, wandering aimlessly around any city with a camera in hand is one of my specialities. Go figure. They don't teach you that kind of stuff in school. Anyways, we were lucky enough to immediately walk into a car show. Now, if you know me, you know I'm not a "car guy". I'm more of a "car-as-a-utility-vehicle-to-get-you-from-point-a-to-point-b guy" (and yes that was hyphenated). Don't get me wrong, cars at car shows are pretty cool, but I usually have difficulty getting a keeper photograph of them. There's something about the reflections or the lighting or the misting raindrops or the who-knows-what that throws me off. Perhaps, it's because I'm not a "car guy". I'll go with that. Regardless, aimlessly wandering around a car show was a challenge extended and one that was accepted. Now, I'm not sure if any of these shots are good enough for anything. In fact, most leave a lot to the imagination. I found myself mostly trying to capture shapes and lines instead of the entire car itself. Hope you like them!

Thirsty Thursday: Soberanes Cove

Rambler: BethDrink at Hand: Ancient Peaks Cabernet Sauvignon...pretty good for a cab

Another Thirsty Thursday here again! Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. I was actually all set to write about my love of October and fall colors and whine about how I never make time in October to go photography aspens and other trees. Instead, I found ocean photos, so that's what you get tonight!

Soberanes Cove is one of our favorite places to go shoot along the Big Sur coast. Maybe because its not too far south, or maybe its because we always forget exactly where it is and which turnout off of Highway 1 to use, or maybe its because of the little rock scramble involved to get down to the Bowling Balls...its always an adventure. These images are from a few years back. Yet, my eyes never tire of looking at such beautiful scenery.

Soberanes Cove is located in Garrapata State Beach a few miles south of Carmel on Highway 1. Even if you don't find the cove, the scenery around there is spectacular. Get out there and find your own little ocean cove this weekend!

Thirsty Thursday: Snowy Hike

Rambler: Terry Drink in Hand: 2010 Montoya Pinot Noir (surprisingly good)

I think this weekend is going to be cold, so I figured I should post a bit of cold weather. These shots are from May of this year in sunny California. Most of my pictures from this short hike were of Massey, but here's a few without her.

Thirsty Thursday: Beauty is all around us

Rambler: Terry Drink in Hand: 2007 Le Mistral (quite possible one of the best red wines around)

What can I say this week. . . it's been a rough week. We both seem a bit overly busy and can make progress on the little things that are supposed to be easy and quick but it seems like the bigger (maybe more important) things seem to elude us (me). Perhaps both of us have stretched ourselves a bit too thin, or maybe we need to manage time better. Most of these issues are at work, but keeping them separate from everything else is always tough. A delicate balance of work and real life. To complicate things, we also have a dear friend fighting perhaps her final battle with cancer. Through all the noise this week, our hearts and hopes are with her and her family. Sometimes it feels like you want to lock yourself away from the world and wait for it (whatever it is) to pass. Thinking about these things makes me appreciate the little things a little bit more. The music you listen to while driving to work, the feeling you get from a good run or workout, the good food and drink you share with friends (the tomatoes, the wine, the fish, the ice cream...), the dog that always makes you smile, the falling asleep next to that one person you always fall asleep next to. I think I could probably keep going, but for this short post, it's the walking around a city (Portland, OR) with a camera finding the things that most people just pass by. So, instead of locking yourself away from it all, go find those average things and take them in. Take it all in. Time is against all of us. Go enjoy.

Thirsty Thursday: Veggies

Rambler: Terry Drink in Hand: 2010 Montoya Pinot Noir

Not a lot to say this week. It was suppose to be a regular week, but all I can seem to do is think about wandering around Portland. Here's a few shots from the Portland farmer's market...which I wandered around for about three hours while I was there. The produce was awesome!

Thirsty Thursday: Ft Ord Stroll

Rambler: BethDrink at Hand: 2005 Mission Trail Vineyards Friar's Reserve Garnacha (local Monterey County wine at its best!)

Thirsty Thursday here again! Time to pour something yummy (we certainly did) and make those weekend plans. This week I recap a backyard adventure.

A few weeks back I ran the Salinas Valley half-marathon. After turning in a personal worst 1/2 marathon time, I decided that Sunday needed to be a recovery day. Unfortunately, Massey doesn't understand recovery days, so she still needed to go out for an activity. We are pretty spoiled to have the seemingly endless trails of Ft Ord Public Lands less than 5 minutes away, so its not too much effort to get the dog out for some quality exercise. Since I wasn't running, I grabbed the camera, slapped on the 180mm macro lens, and off we went!

Terry and I shoot most often with zoom lenses as they give us the most versatility when we are out and about. The only prime lens we own is the 180mm macro, but I wish we had a few more...I love the crispy sharp images and distinctive depth of field that you can only get with a prime. One of these days...

Get out and find your own adventure in your backyard this weekend!

Thirsty Thursday: Not Too Shabby

Rambler: BethDrink at Hand: 2004 Parrot Ranch Cab Sav

Welcome back for another edition of Thirsty Thursday...time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. Last weekend was a pretty good one here at Welliver Photography, mainly because we weren't so much "here" as we were "out there" -- the best way to spend a long holiday weekend!

Saturday morning we parked Ellie near Saddlebag Lake and the three of us headed out into the Twenty Lakes Basin in the Hoover Wilderness. The hike to our camping spot was pretty quick and easy, leaving us most of 3 days to explore the endless alpine lakes in this High Sierra basin. Beautiful, glacier-fed lakes nestled beneath 12,000 peaks.

Exploring Shamrock Lake. The middle of the glacier-fed Conness Lakes, roughly 11,000' up. There was one more up above this lake! Requisite glowing tent photo (forgive me, its my first one!). North Peak in the background.

Roughly 3 days and 27 miles later, we had sufficiently explored Twenty Lakes Basin and give it two thumbs up. Over the top beautiful, though I think the 10,000' altitude certainly wore us out by the end!

If you want to visit the Twenty Lakes Basin yourself (and you should!), you can find the trailhead at Saddlebag Lake, 2 miles north of Highway 120 / Tioga Pass (the dirt road to Saddlebag Lake roughly 4 miles from the east gate to Yosemite National Park). There is a shuttle boat that will take you across Saddlebag Lake and drop you very close to the first of many lakes in the basin without having to do more than a half mile of hiking. Get out there and check it out!

Thirsty Thursday: Pfeiffer

Rambler: Terry Drink in Hand: Hahn Meritage 2010

It's been a long week and it is only Thursday. One more busy day to go. I don't know about you all out there but work has been crazy busy. I get in at about 7AM and it's 100mph until I just give up at the end of the day. I've also seemed to have brought some of the work home this week...crazy. Anyways, the three day weekend is most welcome. Tonight's shots are from last weekend...a weekend we were supposed to go backpacking but couldn't because work got in the way...so instead we just went down south (all the way to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park) for several hours. The lighting wasn't fantastic and the sunset didn't happen but I think we got a few.

Thirsty Thursday: Point Lobos Sunrise

Rambler: Beth

Drink at Hand: 2010 Hahn Meritage

Good evening and welcome to another Thirsty Thursday...time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. This week I dug into the archives and found some photos I needed to edit.

When I first moved back to California from Lousyana, I had nothing to do but ride my bike and take photos. One morning I found myself at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve on the south edge of Carmel for sunrise. It wasn't the best sunrise morning, but Point Lobos is beautiful in pretty much any light. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

If you find yourself in Carmel, you should definitely visit Point Lobos. Wherever you are this weekend, get out there and find a sunrise.

Thirsty Thursday: Desolation Wilderness Trip

Rambler: Beth

Drink at Hand: Ancient Peaks Rose

Hey Welliver Photography fans! Thanks for tuning in for another Thirsty Thursday...time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans. This week I'll give you a little recap of our recent backpacking trip to Waca Lake and Lake Aloha in the Desolation Wilderness.

Desolation Wilderness is in the Lake Tahoe area and is one of the most heavily visited wilderness areas in the country. Therefore, getting a wilderness permit for this area is a challenge. We wanted to go to Lake Aloha, but that's super easy trek destination, so the permits were sold out for that zone. I figured, hey, the Team Welliver is a hardy bunch, so the three of us could handle a little cross-country travel to a zone that still had overnight permits available. After much topo map studying, I was sure that a roughly 2-mile off-trail, cross-country over a saddle point that was only 1 contour interval on the map to a beautiful alpine lake would be easy peasy lemon squeezy for us. So on a warm Friday afternoon we left the Echo Lake parking lot for Waca Lake.

What's that? You've never heard of Waca Lake? Yeah, turns out most people haven't. Why is that? Because its ridiculously difficult to get there. The first 6 miles of the trail (yes, trail) were easy, straightforward, no big deal. Then we left the trail to begin our 2 miles of exhausting scrambling up and down granite boulders with our packs on. Not as easy as it looked on the topo map. But we made it and the lake was pretty and we collapsed into our tent. The next morning had a nicely colored, albeit cloudless, sky. One of these trips we'll get some clouds! We decided to pack up camp and head back toward Lake Aloha in order to cut off a little bit of distance and pain for hike back to the car on day 3. We originally planned to spend most of Day 2 exploring the numerous lakes and playing around with a little bouldering. Unfortunately, little Miss Massey and her delicate little paws had a rough time on the abrasive granite on Day 1, so once we made it back to Lake Aloha for Day 2, we took it easy. Terry didn't seem to mind either. The final sunrise at Lake Aloha wasn't too bad either. Get out there and find your own backcountry adventure this weekend!

Thirsty Thursday: Swiss Mountains

Rambler: Terry
Drink in Hand: Liquid Crack (aka, 2007 Scheid Chardonnay)

Just a little post tonight from the Switzerland trip. I've been working on the images for what seems like forever, but I'm close to calling the project complete (about 20 or so photos left to edit). But enough shop talk, on to the pictures. The story isn't exciting or thrilling but the snow covered mountains are gorgeous. The trip to the top is a long train ride on the Junfraujoch line through a mountain. The views on the ride are also fantastic and of course the views at the top are simply awesome. Hopefully, these shots give you a glimpse of what it was actually like to be up there on the "Top of Europe." If you've read some of our previous posts, you know that we have been doing a bit of backpacking lately. Thus, I have to comment on one of the shots and say, that we are not to the point that the skier with the backpack on...we're not ready for that...we're semi-fair-weather backpackers. And besides, the Mas would need to learn how to ski...and I'm not sure if she's ready for that. Enjoy the shots and enjoy your weekend.

Thirsty Thursday: On the Trail

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: Yogi Ginger Tea...wine taper for a little race I'm running this weekend.

Thirsty Thursday here again. Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans! A few weeks back we went backpacking in the Desolation Wilderness. It was a tough journey as we decided to do roughly 2 miles of cross country travel to reach our final destination. I'll put it this way...hiking on established trails in the Sierra is fairly straightforward; backpacking over granite slabs with 42 lbs on my back, not so easy.

On the second day of our trip, we found our way back to some trails. I think I have a thing for singletrack. I spend more time hiking on singletrack these days than swooping along on a mountain bike, but I still love a tidy little dirt line cut neatly through a wildflower-choked meadow, snaking lazily through a deep forest, meandering around an alpine lake.

Get out there and find your own singletrack this weekend!

Thirsty Thursday: Summer in Iowa

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: 2010 Ancient Peaks Renegade

Thirsty Thursday is here again! Time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans! We spent last week in Iowa. It was an unexpected trip home but its always good to see the family.

You might remember a few of these scenes from this post shortly after Christmas. The seasonal shift of landscapes in the Midwest is certainly something I miss...the 100+ degree temperatures I do not.

Get out there and find a landscape you like this weekend!

Thirsty Thursday: Ahhh, Lucerne

Rambler: Terry
Drink in Hand: 2011 Ancient Peaks Sauvignon Blanc

Just a few images tonight from our Switzerland trip. Unfortunately, we were only in Lucerne for a night. All that really needs to be said about Lucerne is, "Ahhh, Lucerne." There's something about the atmosphere of the city that just puts you in a relaxed mood. Perhaps it is the architecture of the place or maybe it's the chocolate shops filled with yummy Swiss goodies. I tend to think it's related to the relaxed cafes near the water and the people. Life seemed slower here than elsewhere. I suppose it could be that places you visit seem more relaxed than the places you've lived, but I hope that's not true of Lucerne. I wish we could have spent more time here, sitting next to the river, people watching, chatting, and sipping cappuccino goodness.

Thirsty Thursday: Choose Your Own Adventure

Rambler: Beth
Drink at Hand: Ancient Peaks Winery Renegade (two thumbs up for this yummy red blend)

It Thirsty Thursday once again...time to pour something yummy and make those weekend plans! Some weeks just make you look forward to those weekend adventures even more. The weekends when you get to choose your own adventure for the day. Head off on a trail and see what happens (and hope it doesn't snow!).

A short and sweet post tonight as we plot our adventure plan for the weekend. Time to pick a trail and see where it leads. Hope you get out there and find your own adventure this weekend, too!