We took a lot of photos on our recent trip out West. None of us claim to be artists, but some of the photos turned out pretty good. I’ve assembled some of the better ones into chronological order and created a photo journal post out of them. Take a look. I hope you enjoy them. You can click the photos for a larger view of them.

I took this photo in Badlands National Park. It was 115 degrees at the time the photo was taken.

This is another photo of Badlands National Park. I liked the colors.

This is a pretty cool photo of Mount Rushmore. We hadn’t had any good sleep in approximately 40 hours when I took this photo. The disoriented feel to the photo was appropriate.

The cemetery at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.

The mass grave monument at Little Bighorn.

A view from the Beartooth Highway. The Beartooths had the most spectacular scenery of any place we saw, but none of the photos do it justice. I had trouble deciding on any that I thought worthy of the place.

My fiance, Jacqulyn, and I at a lookout along the Beartooth Highway. Not a great photo by most standards but it does give you an idea of the scale of the place.

This is a view from the other side of the Beartooth Highway once you start descending. I’m guessing this would be the Absaroka Range.

Jacqulyn fishing the upper Gibbon. We spent a pleasant afternoon here catching quite a few small brook trout. This was our first evening of fishing in the park. It was cool, windy and rainy. Quite a contrast from the 115 degree heat of the Badlands.

Jacqulyn and I prepare to fish the Yellowstone River on the second day of fishing on the trip. The Yellowstone is the most beautiful river I’ve ever seen, but unfortunately there weren’t many fish in the river this year. I found one rising fish during the entire day. I managed to draw a vicious strike from the fish, but missed the hookset. It looked to be an enormous trout. I love the river’s color.

Dewayne (aka Insane) fishing Yellowstone Lake. A rough storm was brewing over the mountains in the background which soon ran us off the lake with large hail and lightening. We caught no fish out of the lake, but it was a beautiful spot to fish.

Everyone seems to take beautiful shots of the Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. I thought if nothing else that this was a unique shot.

The cliffs of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone below Artist Point. Notice the spiraling pine tree at the lower right. The colors in the canyon are amazing. We had poor light for these photos. We did things right by getting out early, but the hail storms from the day before left the sky heavily overcast. Plus it was very cold this morning. We were all wearing what we would consider dead of winter clothing in Alabama.

Jacqulyn fishing Slough Creek. The picky trout of Slough proved rather difficult after the easy brook trout from a couple of days before. The scenery alone would be worth a whole day of fruitless casting, however.

My brother Jonathan (aka Drake) fishing the Lower Meadows of Slough Creek. These fish had seen quite a few flies this season and were pretty tough. However, Insane and I both managed to fool a Slough Creek fish or two. I landed mine (a fat 17 incher), but he either missed the hookset or got broke off on all of his.

Jacqulyn got this photo of me along Slough Creek at the Lower Meadows. You can see my future sister-in-law Gina (pronounced like Jenna) fishing in the background. Unfortunately, Gina was the only one not to catch a trout on the trip, but she did manage to hook a nice cutt throat. It broke her off pretty quickly.

Our lucky stretch of the Lamar River. We fished the Lamar during the afternoon and evening hours after fishing Slough Creek that morning, spending most of our time at this single long run. Fish rose the whole time we were there.

My largest cutt throat (I know it’s a hybrid, but I just call them all cutts) from the Lamar. Notice my 5 day beard. I was beginning to look like a mountain man. I had just lost a really large trout before landing this one. I would estimate the lost fish at 20 inches, but you know how fish tend to grow a little when you lose them. This one went right at 17 inches according to my handy tape measure.

Jacqulyn on the banks of the Lamar. Gina took this photo. Looks rather artistic, huh?

My good friend Ronald’s cutt throat from the Lamar. Ronald is an inexperienced fly fisher, but he managed to hook two other trout before landing this one. Good job Ron. This photo turned out nice with his orange shirt providing some contrast. If I had had my professional photographer’s hat on at the time, I would have used some fill flash and told him to take off his sunglasses. Oh well, I wasn’t thinking of taking a really cool photo at the time. My main concern was getting the fish back in the water alive. I always feel a little antsy around big trout when first encountered on a trip. After I got used to seeing them, and had good photo taking techniques on my mind, I wasn’t presented with any more good fish photo ops. That’s the way it goes I guess.

On the way back to camp from fishing the Lamar, I saw this tree and had to get a photo. I didn’t really do the view justice, but I like the photo any way.

Here’s a photo of a geyser erupting, at Biscuit Basin if I recall correctly. I think it was called Jewel Geyser. We went sight seeing during the morning hours of our last full day in the park. We stopped to see Old Faithful erupt, but I didn’t get any good photos. We were on the downwind side, and the steam blocked our view of the water spewing. I made up for it with this photo.

Colorful algae in the outlet stream of a hot spring. The colors around the thermal features of Yellowstone are amazing.

Red algae around Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in Yellowstone.

Large pool on the Lamar River where we spent our last evening of fishing in Yellowstone. It was a beautiful spot, and worthy as the last image I have of fishing in the park. If you look closely you can see Dewayne and Jonathan (Insane and Drake, respectively) fishing along the right bank.

A couple of images of the incredible Lamar Valley as we were on our way back to the vehicle. In the second image you can see the rainbow that stretched down from the sky as a storm passed over the upper valley. This was the last view we had of the valley before heading home. What a lasting impression!

As we drove back to camp after fishing the Lamar, we came upon this magnificent sunset from the side of Mount Washburn. It truly was the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen. Most of our photos turned out rather poor as we didn’t have a tripod handy. I find the first image interesting even though it’s too dark. The second image is a shot of the group. Ronald and Casey aren’t present since they headed back to camp early this day. From left to right you have Jonathan (Drake), Dewayne (Insane), Gina, Jacqulyn and myself.

Several photos of the Tetons as we drove through the park on the way home. The last is a group shot, this time including Ronald and Casey, at the famous Snake River Overlook.

Tags: Badlands, fly fishing, Photography, Tetons, Yellowstone

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 10:29 pm and is filed under Fly Fishing, Photography, Trip Reports. The author is Nathan Kennedy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.