Sometimes it's good to wake up before Noon - PART 2!

It's been awhile since I bothered to take the time to show off some pictures. So there's going to be a few thrown up here.....

A few weeks ago, before work, I was driving around with the camera and made a stop at Mount Holly Cemetery downtown. It's a neat place, if you like old-timey cemeteries...the cemetery is old, and has lots of really old markers and statues. It's a popular place with people wanting to take moody black and white pictures of old cemetery stuff:

I was mostly looking to contrast the old statues and markers with the skyline in the background:

And now onto something a bit less depressing...On one weekend I went down to Emerald Park, where this a bit of a hidden-away waterfall that I went to once but didn't get to explore fully...

It's a neat area, especially because not too many people know these waterfalls are there. Of course that has it downside. It was rainy, so all the rocks and leaves were wet. I was imagining myself slipping and breaking a leg or two and getting stuck out there somehow. But luckily nothing happened, and it was quite scenic:

After that I hiked up onto the trail that goes around the bluffs at Emerald Park. It was foggy up there, so much you could hardly see anything from any of the views there. But I did manage to see this guy:

I guess this is a hawk, it was sitting off of the trail next to the bluff, trying to eat some squirrel. I was really surprised because I didn't see it at first, and it didn't fly away when I walked by or walked back over to it. It even didn't fly away when I set up the tripod and changed lenses, though it did glare at me a few times:

I tried to get a bit closer and it finally got tired of me and flew off, taking its squirrel lunch with it...oh well.

Then one day last week it was really foggy. I was lazy and didn't get out to take pictures, which I really regretted. But that night I was driving home over the I-430, which usually provides a decent view of the Big Dam Bridge and its new lights, but couldn't hardly see anything. Keeping one eye on the road (of course, safety first!), I tried to see something but the fog had completely covered the view. So I rushed home and got the camera and sped over to the bridge. It was indeed really foggy. So much that even at the bridge you could hardly see it all. Here is a picture:

And then last Sunday I went up to Petit Jean Mountain. I hadn't really planned on it, but for some odd reason I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. Around 7:00 I decided to give up and make something of the morning. So I packed up the camera gear and headed up to Petit Jean. It was worth being awake, because there was a bit off fog hanging around and all the waterfalls were running high after all the rain we've had...

And these were taken along the trail down to Cedar Falls:

And these were taken along Cedar Creek...

And then I finally made it to the falls. They were really running, and there was still a bit of fog hanging around...

Around that time the sun finally broke through the fog - and other people were showing up there. So I decided to head on back up the hill. It was a nice morning, where waking up at 5:30 actually worked out!