Earthquake Hype

For those of you who were wondering, yes I was in Gardiner when the 4.8 magnitude earthquake occurred on March 30 at 6:34 am.  I was at work, and I didn't even notice the it.  Gardiner is about 20 miles north of the epicenter of the quake.

I did have the fortune of having two men who worked for the USGS staying at the hotel I work at during this event.  They were monitoring equipment in Yellowstone Park and were intrigued by the swarm of earthquakes (there were seven that morning), but were not in the least concerned.  It was great being able to glean from their knowledge on geology.

Having lived in this part of the country for many years, earthquakes are normal.  I haven't felt any of them so far, but I've seen their effects.  A few years ago, a piece of equipment tipped over in my yard from a small earthquake near West Yellowstone.  That earthquake was insignificant, even to memory; it seems like it was a three-point-something on the Richter scale.

Earthquakes are important for Yellowstone National Park's plumbing.  If Yellowstone didn't get earthquakes, we wouldn't have Old Faithful.  If you think I'm kidding, just look it up!

Many people have been worried and terrified that this was precedent of our super volcano's eruption.  Most of this came from a video that claimed that bison were "running for their lives" out of the park.  Consequently, the idea that animals were fleeing the park became viral on the Internet.  One friend of mine even reported that someone asked her on the phone where she worked if people were evacuating.

Lies—all lies.

The truth of the matter was that those bison in the video were running into the park, and they were certainly not running for their lives.  When bison really run, they go about 45 mph.  That's much faster than the video showed.  The video footage was during the daytime, but the earthquake was around or before dawn.

Animals have been coming out of the park lately, but they haven't gone very far.  They're following the food.  Yellowstone Park is still covered in snow, and Gardiner is just starting to see green grass.

Unfortunately we live in a climate of fear.  People want to to be afraid of something, whether it's a volcanic eruption, or fear of political outcomes, or something else.  When any sort of news comes to light that validates their fears (whether true or false), people run with it.

We should take the attitude of these bison in this video.  I took this video in my yard the same day as the earthquake.  They're certainly not worried.

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?" (Luke 12:25 NIV)

Adam's "Spring" Visit

I've had a quiet winter, so I was glad to hear that Adam was going to visit me March 22-25. When he got here, I had to work, so all of our time together was generally in the afternoon and evening.  While I was at work, he would play his PlayStation.  Even though our schedules didn't quite match up, we had a good time.  It was great being able to talk and spend time with him.

We went to Yellowstone National Park on March 23.  Even though it's spring elsewhere in the United States, it's still pretty cold inside the world's first national park.  In Gardiner most of the snow had melted off, but not so in Yellowstone!  There was still about a foot of snow on the ground in most places near Mammoth, and as we got closer to Cooke City, the snow just got deeper.  This isn't anything unusual, but we did get a little more snow than average.

While we visited the park, we carefully walked on the boardwalks, which had about 14-16 inches of packed snow on them.  Volunteers were in the process of chipping away the snow from the boardwalk at the time.

Minerva Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs

After walking around the terraces at Mammoth, we drove to Lamar Valley up to Soda Butte.  It was such a pretty evening.  We didn't really see any animals, just a herd of wolf watchers.  With most of the snow being in the park, buffalo, elk, and deer have moved to lower ground where the grass is bare.

Soda Butte

Hellroaring Mountain

Since Adam was going to leave early in the morning on the 25th, we said our goodbyes the previous night.  Adam's a close friend, and I miss his company.

Me and my buddy

Editing Old Photos

I consider myself very fortunate to have photo albums that belong to my family.  I enjoy walking through the past and sorting out how things used to be.  I find myself browsing Google Earth trying to find locations to businesses that no longer exist, searching for family information at Ancestry.com, and talking with family about their knowledge of things past.  This particular project was no different.

This project involved a fairly random photo album created by my great grandpa George.  This album is dated 1955, and has photos of Yellowstone National Park, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, and Washington DC.

Working on this project takes quite a bit of time.  There were 379 photos in the album.  I had to remove them from the original album, scan them at 600 dpi (anything higher didn't give these photos any better resolution), and then put them in a new archival photo album.  That part took only a few hours, but the rest is what took me so long to finish.  Over the next two years in my spare time, I added keyword tags and captions, changed the creation dates, and then edited them.

To tag these photos, I used Adobe Lightroom 3.  It allows me to have thousands of keywords without having to type them or remember which ones I've used previously.  One disadvantage of Adobe Photoshop Elements is that Elements bogs down if there are too many photos in your catalog or if you have too many tags.  One nice advantage to keyword tagging photos with Lightroom is that if you decide to rename the keyword tag in the future, it updates all the photos using that keyword.  I like that! (y)

I used a variety of keyword tags, and here's where you can tell I'm a geek.  I tagged photos for the people I knew in them.  They were mostly my relatives, so there were only a few people I didn't know anyway.  As well, I tagged the photos for their locations.  Not only did I use political boundaries like states and cities to define an image, but I would also tag them with locations that were visible in the photo.  Many of these places don't exist today, but that doesn't mean someone isn't searching for it somewhere on the Internet!  I tagged animals that were in the photos, and if I couldn't make a positive identification, I tagged it with something as scientifically close as possible.  If I couldn't tell what kind of goose was in the photo, I would tag it with the order for geese, ducks, and swans—Anseriformes—for example.  If these tags weren't enough, I tagged them for thematic material such as hydrothermal features (like hot springs in Yellowstone) and cars.  I'm not up on my old cars so I didn't try to identify them!  I also tagged the photos with some personally identifying information for our family's use.

On the photo illustration below, I used several tags: 1955-00-00 George & Eloise's Trip to Yellowstone, Colorado, Craig, Family Archives, George's Album 01, Lariat Motel, and United States of America.

Lightroom 3 is a little clunky when it comes to changing the date on an image, but it works.  I changed the photos' dates from their scan date and time to the actual date of the photo.  So In the photo illustration below, I changed its date from 12/26/2011 7:49:08 PM to 9/3/1955 12:00:00 AM.

The editing process is fairly extensive.

This is the original scan.

First I straighten the photo.

Next, I crop it so that the white borders don't show.

Then, I adjust the lighting.  Since I'm using Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, I auto-adjust the lighting levels, adjust the shadows and highlights, and adjust the brightness and contrast.

After that, I filter out the dust and scratches and heal the photo using the various tools in Elements.  My goal is to make these photos look as much like the original scene as possible so I try to avoid filler.

Lastly, I sharpen the image to have better defined lines.

Once I was done organizing and editing the photos, I uploaded them to my Google+ account via Picassa 3.  Are you ready to see the finished product!?  Here it is: George's Album 1955.

Invasion of the Behemoth Beasts

Last week, I had several bison stay in my yard for a few days.  Being about five miles from the North Entrance to Yellowstone Park, this isn't a terribly unusual event for me, but since so many of my friends don't have the opportunity to see these things, I consider myself fortunate to be able to encounter these great animals on their trek outside the park.

The issue of the bison exiting Yellowstone is contentious.  People have almost come to blows in public meetings out here.  Many people want to allow the bison to leave the park, especially during the winter, so that they can find food and because they preceded the people who are now on the land.  Others believe that the bison pose a threat to their cattle (via brucellosis) and their property.  Both sides have valid points of view and I stand somewhere in the middle.  I don't mind letting the bison range out here, but property damage is a huge concern since insurance and the government will not reimburse anyone.

Regarding brucellosis, I think that the elk pose a greater danger to the ranchers' cattle than the bison since the bison are so closely managed.  It's interesting that the brucellosis in elk seems to be quietly ignored while bison take the headlines.

One of the ways that bison are managed at this time of year is by hunting them when they leave the park.  I don't have a problem with hunting the animals since it is well-managed, and bison are a good food source for those who hunt it, like the Nez Perce Indians among others.

In any case, I enjoy seeing these great animals, also mistakenly called buffalo, roam my yard.  From February 5-7, 4 and sometimes 5 bulls hung out and munched my grass.  Here are a few photos and a video compilation of my visitors:

The January Still

For the most part this month, I've kept a low profile.  I'm in the process of saving money for various projects and plans, and the easiest way to not spend money is to never leave the house.  I've spent a lot of my free time lately watching movies and TV.  To be honest, I'm a bit anxious to be doing something, but at the same time, I realize I have to just wait.

We had quite a bit of snow in December, and I was unable to drive up and down my driveway.  I finally had to have someone plow the driveway, and it was just in time, too.  Soon afterward, the snow started melting and turning everyone's driveways into ice.

My uncle and aunt Tim and Anita have come to the house a couple weekends this month so that they can do some work around the house and move much of the stuff that's been on the property for ages.  They installed a new toilet in the garage bathroom and have emptied out the crawl space underneath the house.  I've had to work while they were doing most of the work, but honestly, I've had to do this a couple times myself, and I'm not that interested in doing it again.  There's still a lot of other work going to be done around the house before they're finished.

Last Thursday, I decided to go out to the Gardiner Airport where a large herd of cow and calf elk had been grazing for awhile.  I took a lot of photos, but I liked this one the most:

I finally went to Bozeman on January 17.  I got a haircut from my friend Des at Paradise Impressions in Livingston, and then hung out with one of my friends in Bozeman.  We met at Starbucks and talked for awhile, and then went to see American Hustle at the mall.  Afterward, we got something to eat, and then I had to do a few errands before going home.