Greetings,
 

Palouse notes

One of my favorite locations in the Palouse may now be off limits to photographers. Tom Hennigar’s collection of old trucks and restored gas station has long been a prime destination for photographers and photo workshop groups. But on my latest visit (June 2017) there were barriers and angry looking signs stating "NO TRESPASSING, NO PHOTOS."

From what I was able to piece together, a photo workshop group showed up at 6 a.m. one morning and may have even gone into the Hennigar's front yard. I heard rumor that other disrespect was shown to Tom's property at that time, perhaps even climbing on equipment. I don't know the whole story. But having met Tom, and knowing how proud he is of his collection and how generous he was about allowing people to come out to see and photograph his collection (he even had a guestbook for people to sign), the offense given must have been egregious. (Read a story about Tom here.)

Hopefully Tom will once again allow folks to visit and photograph is collection. But I won’t blame him if he doesn’t.

I've been hearing other stories of trespassing photographers and it's becoming an issue with the local farmers and land owners. If you do visit the Palouse, be sure to show the respect you would expect from others visiting your neighborhood.

Tony Sweet has written more about the increase of this kind of behavior here.

Oh, and I have a post over on my blog about my recent visits to the Palouse. Take a look at the pictures here.

Crossroads opening

Auroras!

Next year’s workshops

I’ve got a tentative schedule of workshops up on my Workshops site now. I may be adding more.

So far, here’s what I’m thinking of:

• April: Columbia River Gorge waterfalls
• May: Olympic National Park, Forks, WA. Forests and coast.
• June: Palouse
• July: Olympic National Park 2 1/2 day? Covering the high country, wildflowers, lavender in Sequim
• August: Crossroads Sitka (probably)
• August: Mt. Rainier?
• Early September: Auroras in the Northwest Territories
• Late September: Iceland
• Late October, early November: Zion

Just a big toad

No, just a big toad.

A couple of weekends ago we had the hottest two days of the year, into the 90s! And our air conditioner was out. I had ordered and received a new fan motor to fix it, but the problem with that was the fan has been on that motor shaft for 20 years and was rust-welded to it. So I had to order a fan as well. It showed up the day after the hottest day of the year.

But the air conditioner works again and I’m a happy camper. Not only because I’m now comfortable, but because, once again, I’ve proven my maleness by fixin’ somethin’.

And buildin’ stuff. Now that the back yard is looking good, it’s time to fix things up in the front. The ground under the amazing gate I built in the amazing fence I built slopes, so I needed to level things up. To that end I built a little wall so I could add some dirt for leveling and to also contain a garden area. There’s just no end to my male cleverness. (Actually, and don’t tell Tracy I told you this, I had another plan for that area and Tracy didn’t like it and she was right – DON’T TELL HER—and wanted this wall instead. So I built it this way and everything is better because of it.)