Wacky

Every time we go on a trip, Jason insists on taking a photograph of himself somewhere along the way. We've started dubbing these "wacky Jason shots," because there is no way to look serious when you're photographing yourself by blindly pointing a camera from arm's length. For example, here he is at St. Mary Falls in Glacier National Park, July 2004:

Of course, most of the time when we're out hiking there's not a soul around to take a picture of us together, which has led to the inception of "wacky Gretchen-and-Jason shots," like this one from Grinnell Glacier:

And this one from Goat Lick:

The worst thing about these is that at the time I had a camera with a cool lens that swiveled around so you could have it facing the same direction as the viewscreen, so that you could see yourself when lining up wacky shots. So I knew I looked this bad when I took the shots ... Also, I think the only piece of clothing in these photos that we don't still own is my red shirt in the bottom shot. I miss that shirt ...

And one final shot before I wrap up this week of reminiscing. This is probably my third-favorite shot of wildlife from the trip. It's a ground squirrel we saw near the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park.

It has always reminded me of this shot that I came across when I was writing about malaise (long story), and it makes me giggle every time.

photo from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_86m9RRCYv-EZT_cwJfPbR-aUHlNqShSzQvSocyGSLUNThYLZreGrpRDikV9z61h62SRaGlXHVcJzjUm2piiHPCpD4ylQXLowE3gLRTJVFhXFIRqmUBd3bhMpWJU5PZF3oj_j/s400/squirrel2.jpg

Anyhoo, thanks for playing along with me during this trip down memory lane. And who knows, maybe we'll do this again the next time the cats pee all over the toys in the basement and force us to clean up after them for three hours and reorganize the whole thing so that nothing absorbent is at ground level. After all, that's what brought the CD of old photos to the surface last Sunday, so maybe it will happen again.