Famous Julian Pie Company... great freshly baked apple pies and hot apple cider (really... juice)
We got there moments before two tour buses showed up... barely beat the crowd
Boysenberry apple pie... yum!
All you need is some warm pie... and ICE CREAM! (not included in this shot but I did have some with my second slice)
I was facinated by the trees around the pie company. Thought the white tree contrasted nicely with the red building.
Nearby pastures where cows graze...
We came here looking for a beautiful scenery of hte lake... yeah, you see that tiny patch of water near the mountain? That lake...
That's the Salton Sea off in the distance...
I love how the tree looks like it's glowing...
View over looking the visitor center area
Close up of a cactus using wide angle lens... taken in natural light.
This is one of my favorite pictures, I love the color of the cactus (taken with the flash).
Baby humming bird in its nest in the middle of the bush, it was actually really hard to spot.
This is also one of the better pictures from the day. I like the contrast in colors, the clouds, and the super wide angle perspective from close to the ground. An on-camera flash was also used to fill in the shadow area of the palm tree (not sure if I was close enough to make a difference).
This is definitely my favorite of the day. Shot directly into the sun light so I had to speed up the shutter speed all the way to 1/1000 (to get the sky to a deep dark blue and not bleach out the clouds). Then I had to open the aperture up to get more light from the flash (note I had to use high sync flash as well). All this thanks to Strobist seminar!
I had to get down to the ground to get this shot... there were red (fire?) ants crawling all around me... Again I had to use a flash to really light up the cactus in the foreground and I like the resulting effect.
Same shot with the sprinklers removed
Macro shot of a cactus
All sorts of cactus at the visitor center
I love the cloud pattern in this shot... I love how they are all parallel and all aligned with the frame.
Same shot, landscape orientation... I think I like the feel of depth in the previous shot a lot more.
Lots and lots of cacti along the road... we were hoping to see some cactus flowers but no such luck... Just cacti as far as the eye can see... kind of weird feeling really.
Becareful to not step on the cactus balls on the ground... they really pierce into your shoes and are impossible to pull out!
Close up of a cactus with the macro lens
More cactus closeups.
There were tons of ants near by....
FInally! Flowers!
We waited around till sun down trying to catch a beautiful desert sunset.
Ray, our human GPS and tour guide.
That's one thorny branch...
Finally, sunset!
I got lucky with the sun right behind this tree... stopped down to get the star effect with the sun.
The sunset ended up being very disappointing... clouds were too thick...
