The sun blows it's goodnight kiss for the day to the mountain top at Mount Shasta in Northern California.  

The Shasta snow cover reflects the third consecutive year of dry winter in California. This past winter Shasta ski lifts were mostly closed, and the slopes were covered by as little as two to three inches of snow. 

Shasta Lake the largest reservoir in California stood at about 35 percent of storage capacity in Spring 2014 showing the cumulative effects of dry winters since 2012. 

Last Monday of May each year commemorates all those who died in military service for the United States.

Located close to Vancouver, Lynn Canyon Park is a great place to hang out, swim, and expose kids to nature through its extensive hiking trails passing through red cedar, douglas-fir, cottonwood, and western hemlock trees. Besides it has a neat suspension bridge.

This past week was pretty exciting, waiting till well into the night on Monday watching the first of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015. April and October are unique for 2014 since they have both lunar and solar eclipse in the same month. 

While capturing the different phases of the lunar eclipse was interesting in itself, I wanted to give balance to the picture by anchoring them to something that is more grounded on Planet Earth while still keeping the lighting in the scene honest to the time of the capture, which was past midnight in California.  So I took a picture of vehicle light trails fading into the night and combined pictures of various phases of the lunar eclipse into it.

Also known as the blood moon, the moon turned red during lunar eclipse due to the scattered light from all the sunsets and sunrises on earth that reflect onto the moon's surface since the Earth sits directly between the moon and the sun.

This red earthly color of the moon this month was timely given that Earth Day is just around the corner.  Since fear sells well, some folks may instead say that apocalypse is around the corner. 

I am sure I'll be waiting with my camera on September 28th, 2015 too.

Happy Earth Day every one.

This week I was in Las Vegas for a few days and took a late night stroll to capture some lights on the 'Strip'.  Here is one of the popular sites; the New York-New York Hotel and Casino. Took some time for me to get the lights, shades, trails and composition I wanted.

This replica statue is as genuine as they come. Even the US Postal Service was taken in.

In 2010 the Postal Service issued a “Forever” stamp depicting the photo of the Statue of Liberty from this Vegas replica and believed and claimed it was from the original Statue in New York Harbor, until a stamp collector exposed their mistake. This stamp continues to be in circulation.

A visit to Glen Canyon Dam in Page, Arizona few years back changed my pristine imagery of Colorado River flowing through the Grand Canyon.

It took some time to digest the fact that the river that helped create one of the greatest landscapes out there is human controlled from this (Glen Canyon) point on for the past 50+ years; with the United States Bureau of Reclamation determining how much of the river flows into the Grand Canyon and beyond, and how much stays behind in the man made Lake Powell reservoir that fills the Glen Canyon. 

It was interesting to read that from 2000 through 2009 inflow to Lake Powell was down by one-third and this is in line with climate change model predictions of a 14-22 percent decline in the flow of the river. That 14 percent adds up to half of California's annual water intake from Colorado river. Between 1999 and 2005, the Lake Powell reservoir lost two-thirds of its volume due to evaporation and seepage losses.

Water promises to be the blue gold of the future.

There is a beginning and there is an end. And there is a brighter light to look forward to at the end.

It's a good time of the year to take a pause from things that seem important to us; to remember the history of the Natives of this land; remind ourselves of our responsibility to respect and honor Planet Earth like they used to and to take care of the land for our kids and future generations to come so they can cherish it too in the road ahead.