Left decatur around 8am. Arrived at hotel around 2PM. Lots of stops along the way.

After getting situated in the hotel, we went to the canyon. Half of the group hiked down into it and photographed a broken building as well as the views from the cliffs.

Then we hit Cadillac ranch which was crazy, and hilarious, and yet very cool. I might go back there tonight and try to light it up with strobes.

Then we had dinner with some Amarillo photographers. There were 19 of us in total. Met a really nice guy named mark. Got back to the hotel around 10:45 and crashed.

We’re meeting mark this morning at 8am in the canyon. He’s going to help us draw out some wild turkeys and some deer to photograph. Then around 10am we’re going to hit a trail Mark told us about instead of doing the guided tour like planned. Then we’re going to get a quick lunch then hit the lighthouse trail. Then we’ll do some driving around, then dinner, then maybe Cadillac ranch again.

All in all, a good day for yesterday and an awesome day planned for today.

Aside from the aforementioned broken lens, yesterday was awesome.

I photographed wild turkeys and even managed to get a tom to eat right out of my hand.

I saw lots of beautiful birds and even got to photograph them thanks to a kind soul from the amarillo photography society for lending me a nice long lens. I don’t think Jess is going to like him too much since he pretty much sold me on getting some even longer glass. We’ll see what the photos look like.

We made the 6 mile trek in to the lighthouse rock and back. It was beautiful we even managed to catch the moonrise on our way out which made for some great photos. I’m a bit sun-fried this morning since I didn’t wear any sunscreen, but it’s nothing too bad.

Most of the day, including the walk to the lighthouse rock, was spent a couple of amarillo area photographers including a 75ish year old man who could easily run circles around me both in hiking and in landscape photography. He even brought a fully restored corvair for us all to marvel at. What a great guy. I hope to keep in touch with him via email.

Here in a bit we’ll be heading out for Dallas with a planned stop at caprock canyon state park. I hear they have some beautiful trails there and I’m really looking forward to it.

Email, text messages and phone should all now work again, thanks to being out of the canyon. More later…

I’ve never watched C-SPAN this early in the morning but… Is this program for real? There’s a guy reading news articles directly out of various newspapers. The camera shows his hands holding the article he’s reading. The interesting passages are highlighted and he moves his pen across the page pointing at the words he’s reading.

Really? That’s a program? I’m in the wrong business.