Spring Explosion

The rivers are running!  The rivers are running!  It's been a long time coming this year, but the rivers are all open now and flowing freely on their way to Lake Superior.  It's a great time to head out and photograph the "rush" of spring.  This photograph was made last week at Gooseberry Falls State Park just north of Two Harbors, MN and shows the water exploding into the air just before it drops over the top of Lower Gooseberry Falls.  Gooseberry is one of the most enjoyable rivers to photograph because of the nice trails along both sides of the river which provide for infinite photo possibilities.  

Snowy Spring Rainbow at High Falls

The conditions for waterfall watching are at their prime!  Here was the scene yesterday at High Falls of the Pigeon River in Grand Portage State Park.  It was a sunny, blue sky day combined with nice clouds, snow and an awesome rainbow! 

Icy Cedars - Gooseberry Falls

Here is a shot from Gooseberry Falls State Park from earlier this week.  We visited the park on a morning after the overnight low got down into the 20's.  The river had already opened up and thanks to the combination of high water and cold temps many of the trees had a layer of ice on them.  It was a very beautiful morning at the park and I really enjoyed picking out close-up compositions with my 150-600 lens.  

Beautiful Blizzard

Here is a shot from earlier today, taken around 2:00 PM.  It had been snowing hard for about 20 hours at that point.  We got about a foot of new snow (depending on where you are in relation to Lake Superior) and it was the wet, heavy kind that knocks trees down and causes power outages.  While this snow is difficult to deal with this time of year, it certainly is beautiful when it's wet as it sticks to almost every inch of every tree in sight.  This photo was taken during one of the times when the snowfall rate was heaviest and the flakes were biggest.  The snow was blowing almost directly at me and I had to clean the front of my lens in between every shot.  Hopefully (keeping my fingers crossed!) this will be our last snow storm of the season, as spring is long overdue!

Lone Sentinel at Gooseberry Falls

This week Jessica and I made a day trip down to Gooseberry Falls State Park.  All of the north shore rivers have opened up nicely in the past week so we were feeling the urge to go waterfall watching.  Gooseberry is always a great place to visit but especially so when the water is high.  I shot a lot of video of the various waterfalls and took the usual complement of still photos as well.  This is probably my favorite shot of the day, due to its simplicity and the amount of fun I had making it.  I shot this from quite a distance away from the Middle Gooseberry Falls.  It was taken from one of the viewpoints above the river on the east bank.  It was made with my Tamron 150-600mm lens fully extended at 600mm.  There is this young tree standing like a lone sentinel in the face of all this powerful, rushing water and I loved the composition I was able to get with the telephoto lens.  The rivers should be running nicely for a while, so be sure to come up the shore and enjoy them in what is sure to be one of the best springs ever for the rivers!  

Spring Beaver Family

Just a short walk down the road from our house is a beautiful little lake that has a family of beaver residing on it.  Their lodge is right next to the road and each spring we enjoy watching them as the ice opens up on the lake.  Just a few days ago we noticed a small hole in the ice right next to the lodge.  They weren't coming out much at first, but now the hole in the ice is getting bigger and the beavers are very active around the hole each evening.  Yesterday we watched them for about half an hour in the evening.  They sure are a cute yet goofy creature and are a lot of fun to watch.  

Enough with the ice already!

I think even the Canada Geese are getting sick of the lingering winter conditions this year!  They seem anxious for the waters to open up as they hang out on the ice that has been floating around on Grand Portage Bay this past week.