2024 Southwest Trip - Days 1 & 2

Gallery (55 images): 2024 Southwest Trip - Days 1 & 2

This gallery has images from the first two days of photography during my first Southwestern US trip with my wife Emily in April of 2024. There are some days where I took no photos due to lots of driving, so in this case day 2 is not the next day, but the day after next. I published a "trip highlights" blog post in May of 2024 which details the route we took, and that can be seen here...

http://www.mikemander.com/2024/05/2024-southwest-trip-highlights.html

On this trip, Fujifilm Canada was kind enough to lend me a demo X-T5 body, so my X-Pro2 acted as a backup on the trip. It was fantastic having a camera with in-body image-stabilization (IBIS) especially for our tour of Alcatraz (next blog post!), and also having a 40 megapixel sensor for landscape detail was great as well. As of August of 2025, I now have my own 40MP, IBIS equipped Fujifilm camera, the very compact X-E5, which is a fantastic camera too. So after two years, I am now finally starting to post some daily trip galleries (like this one) with more detail about all the places we visited. Since Emily and I no longer live in BC (we moved to Ottawa, Ontario as I'm sure you've noticed, based on my recent blog posts), we are unfortunately no longer able to do any easy Southwest road trips. Working on images from previous trips will then be my way of experiencing and reliving the wonderful deserts of California, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, as well as the high deserts of Oregon, all of which I greatly miss already!

On this 2024 road trip, Emily and I drove through Washington and Oregon, basically non-stop, and the first place we took some time to explore was Stout Grove in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, situated in northern California. We didn't have as much time as we had hoped, which was my fault: I accidentally forgot to pack Emily's sun hat and we decided to detour to an REI for some shopping in southern Oregon. The detour and time spent at the REI was longer that we had anticipated, and since we had booked a hotel in San Francisco with the plan of staying there for three days, we only had limited time on the drive south. The second part of the gallery has shots from San Francisco...

On our first day there, we walked from our hotel near Chinatown to the very scenic Fisherman's Wharf area, and spent the day sightseeing, visiting a few places of interest. Photos 18 to 20 show the large number of sea lions that frequent the harbour, sunning themselves on the docks. We went up on a huge Ferris wheel with enclosed cabins (thankfully since there was a very cold wind that day) and photos 29 to 32 were from up high, although the city views are a touch blurry due to being shot through less than clean glass. Photo 28 shows the ferris wheel in the distance. Next was a weird and wonderful museum of antique mechanical "arcade" machines, The Musée Mécanique, shown in photos 35 through 43 in the gallery. We also walked to the famous Ghirardelli chocolate factory, photos 47 to 51, which was founded way back in 1852.

The last photo in the gallery shows the famous steep stretch of Lombard Street from below, said to be one of the crookedest streets in America with eight tight hairpin turns in only one block! You can see all the cars backed up and descending down the hill.

Read: All the blog postings from my 2024 Southwest Trip

2026 - Ottawa Winderlude & Chinatown

Gallery (40 images): 2026 - Ottawa Winterlude & Chinatown

In early February, Emily and I walked over to Confederation Park one evening to view the "Winterlude" festival ice sculpture displays. Many were lit with bright, coloured LED spotlights, however a few were dark, so Emily shone one of my flashlights at those to light up the ice while I took photos, like the Artemis 2 sculpture for example. These photos were all handheld, no tripod, and once again made me very glad I am now shooting a Fujifilm X-E5 with its effective in-body image-stabilization (IBIS), since that helped me keep my ISO down to 400 or less, despite it being fully dark out.

Then, in late February, Emily and I decided to go for a chilly 10km round-trip walk to Ottawa's Chinatown where we found a very nice cupcake bakery called Thimble Bakery, where I had a fantastic Black Forest cupcake! During our walk, we actually came across a real live working phone booth, photo 35 in the gallery. We also went as far as the outskirts of Ottawa's "Little Italy" district, which seems to border on Chinatown. Later that evening went for some excellent Chinese food in a local restaurant and then walked back home. 

Website is up on new servers...

My new server for www.sublimephoto.com has been up and running for a few days now, and I've gone through and fixed all the links to galleries and embedded images that were missing and not working on my blog pages. If you see any blank images, just hit reload and they should load. I see I started the blog in June of 2010, so getting close to 16 years already! I still need to go through all the galleries and links on my website, to be sure they are all working, but the vast majority (if not all) should be fine now.

Possible downtime...

I will be transitioning to a new domain host in the near future and in the interim, it could be that my image galleries will either load slowly, or possibly not at all. In addition, the headline images for the posts in this blog may also not show properly. My previous domain host was bought up twice, most recently by Network Solutions, and I suddenly received notification that a huge charge for a three year renewal was attempted to be charged to my credit card. I never received any notification of an upcoming bill, nor could I even see on their domain hosting page how much the renewal was for, for what term it was and what services were being renewed.

After a very frustrating few hours in a support chat, I was promised a reduced rate for a one year renewal, which was still substantially higher than I could get from a different domain host. After I grudgingly agreed to that charge, despite the fact that they refused to send me an email detailing the charge and the subsequent renewal price after the promised year, they charged my credit card. I then received the confirmation in the mail that said the charge was for only one month of renewal and not one year as promised - WTF! They apologized for the confusion but refused to do anything further about it, so I asked to be refunded. My website (www.sublimephoto.com) still works for now, and so do the galleries in this blog that are hosted on my site, but perhaps not for long...

So... I am now in the process of signing up with a different domain host and laboriously uploading all of my content again. What a massive pain since I have about 25GB worth of image galleries online. In any case, I absolutely DO NOT recommend Network Solutions as a domain host. Their account pages provide almost no detailed info and either the billing support person I spoke to was, at best, terribly incompetent or at worst, guilty of trying to scam me into paying for one month of service at the price of a promised year of service. What an annoying way to start a Sunday morning!

2025 Ottawa - Fall Colours

Gallery (65 images): 2025 Ottawa - Fall Colours

In late October, I had the opportunity to take some photos of early fall colours in and around Ottawa during two different excursions. The first was a weekend day trip to a pair of quaint little towns to the southwest of Ottawa, one Carleton Place and the other Almonte. The other time was on a walk to the Canadian Museum of History where Emily was attending a conference. While she was at the conference, even though it was somewhat overcast, I took the opportunity to wander about and take many shots of the fall colours in the area, and walked quite a ways along the north side of the Ottawa River from the museum.

Later in the day, it cleared up for a time, and I captured some nice shots from the Alexandra Bridge, including numerous stitched panoramic images as well, which I have included below.

2025 - Canadian Museum of History

Gallery (55 images): 2025 - Canadian Museum of History

On a beautiful early fall day, Emily, her friend Emma, and I walked across the Alexandra Bridge over the Ottawa River, to spend a day visiting the wonderful Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. It was the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and there were some special exhibits and movies being shown in honour of Indigenous peoples, in remembrance of the suffering many underwent during the horrifying time of residential schools in Canada, surely one of the worst blights on Canadian history.

The Canadian Museum of History is an absolutely beautiful building, with stacked floors exhibiting swooping organic curves and an interior that is just as fascinating with a huge variety of beautifully done exhibits. It was designed by an Indigenous architect, Douglas Cardinal and overlooks the Ottawa River, opposite Parliament Hill.

2025 - Ottawa Arrival

Gallery (30 images): 2025 - Ottawa Arrival

At the end of summer, I arrived in Ottawa to finally join my wife Emily there, after a long 4,500km, six day drive across Canada with my 94 year old dad. Emily had started work at the National Gallery of Canada in the conservation department earlier in the year. After a brief visit, my dad flew back home to the West Coast.

While my dad was here (yes, I can say that now!), we took the opportunity to visit the Canadian Heritage Garden on the grounds of Rideau Hall, where the Governor General of Canada resides. Our first visit was just a casual walk around the grounds and above you can see my dad and Emily taking a break. The next day we figured out where the rose garden was and went there so my dad could finally see where his own hybridized rose, Canadian White Star, was planted. There is a plaque mentioning his rose, and that can be seen up close in photo 6 in the gallery.

He was moved at finally seeing his rosed named on the plaque there, although unfortunately last winter was a rough one and many roses in the garden had died. Also, most roses were already bloomed out and the map showing the exact location of the roses was a bit vague too, so we couldn't tell for sure where his roses were actually planted. Hopefully early next summer when the roses are in bloom, I'll go there and be able to positively identify where his roses are.

Canadian White Star was also featured on a Canadian postage stamp included on a souvenir sheet of Canadian bred roses back in 2001, and the official first day cover can be seen on the homepage of my dad's website (hosted on my own) and on his site, there is also an article with the story of the origins of the stamp.

The last two shots in the gallery were much more recent, a filler to make a 30 image gallery. The last shot shows some nice fall colours in the distance and my next gallery, due to be up in the next week or so, will have many more recent photos with many colourful trees!

Ottawa - Early 2025

Gallery (55 images): Ottawa - Early 2025

At the end of January, I helped my wife Emily move to Ottawa, where she was starting a fantastic new job at the National Gallery of Canada's conservation department. It was bitterly cold and I didn't take too many photos, but the first ten in the gallery are from that time.

Then, during the week after Easter in late April, I visited her again. I took one day to wander the city while she was at work and took many shots. Sadly, the Parliament Buildings were undergoing a lot of work and there were many construction cranes, scaffolding and other building materials everywhere, interfering with my photos. The weather was beautiful and quite warm, but nothing was blooming yet. The trees were sadly still bare.

In September I will finally be joining her myself, and I am looking forward to some good weather and green trees to take more photos! For the foreseeable future, you won't be seeing any more new trips to the US Southwest deserts, rather I will be posting new galleries from our new life and travels in eastern Canada! Of course I am very behind with US trip image galleries too, so I will certainly be posting more of those as well. And, I still haven't finished all the galleries from our honeymoon in Hawaii either. Stay tuned!

Lastly, here are two stitched panoramas, one from the Rideau Street bridge overlooking the Rideau Canal, and the second from just north of the Parliament Buildings, a view where the Rideau Canal connects to the Ottawa River. You can see the Alexandra Bridge heading over to Quebec, and the National Gallery of Canada just right of centre. Click on the images to open a larger view in a new window or tab...

Hawaii 2023 - Chain of Craters Road

Gallery (40 images): Hawaii 2023 - Chain of Craters Road

Our first major excursion while staying near Hilo, was to head west and then drive the Chain of Craters Road to the south part of the island, as far as one can go.

The first shot in the gallery was of our vrbo booked stay, the "Peace of Paradise" as it's known. There were three huts, all connected by wooden walkways and surrounded by jungle.  There was a living room hut, a bedroom/bathroom hut and a kitchen hut. Apart from some dogs barking from the relatively close-by neighbours (who we never saw or heard), it was peaceful and relaxing stay. The accommodations were unique and made the second part of our honeymoon special! The jungle sounds at night were amazing... and loud! At first I thought they'd be disturbing, but they were surprisingly unobtrusive while sleeping, even relaxing somehow I thought.

There were so many geckos too, including one that decided it liked walking all over our ceiling inside our bedroom hut. It was a game in the morning after waking up; who would be first to spot our little green gecko friend! There will be a cellphone image gallery coming as the last blog posting from the trip and it will have more photos of the huts.

The remainder of the gallery has photos from our Chain of Craters sightseeing drive and hike. I took many photos of waves crashing against the rugged lava rock coastline. Once again, there wasn't all that much sun, although it did peek out a few times, like for the above headline photo.

Read: All the blog postings from my 2023 Hawaii Trip

Hawaii 2023 - Five Days

Gallery (20 images): Hawaii 2023 - Five Days

This next gallery has images from our next five days in Hawaii... well six days actually, but I didn't take any photos on one day. I didn't have that many opportunities to take photos, but they were nice relaxing days. The first set of images in the linked gallery are from the "Feast and Fire Luau" at the Kona Outrigger Resort. Sadly, during the amazing fire dancing segment, which I recall was definitely worth seeing, they did not allow any photography at all, not even with cell phones. The famous fire dancing segment was one reason we decided to go to that particular luau, and I had been looking forward to taking photos. Oh well. What is interesting is that I hardly remember any details about the fire dance segment, but maybe it was because I was so irritated at not being allowed to take photos? Regardless, it was very enjoyable overall and the food was excellent!

The next set of images was from the Waipi'o Vallery Lookout on the north coast of the Big Island. My father made his way down the steep trail with his rollator (a rolling walker), and although I had intended to push him back up in it, since it converts to a transport chair, the big ridges and washouts on the trail made it pretty much impossible to push. I was anticipating a long arduous journey back up, when a big burly young native Hawaiian man generously offered to assist. Between him pulling the front of the rollator over the bumps and washouts, and me pushing from the behind, we made quick work of the trail back up again. We thanked him profusely for the help and he was super friendly - a typical Hawaiian! That was one of the reasons my mom loved it so much in Hawaii; the friendly and welcoming nature of native Hawaiians is wonderful.

The next few images were taken from the balcony while Emily and I were having a nice brunch at the Papa Kona restaurant. Originally, when we were contemplating getting married in Hawaii, Papa Kona's was one place we were seriously considering. Lastly, there are a few views from our stay at the Kona Bali Kai, and the last shot was after we had driven to the east coast of the island for the last part of our stay at the wonderful "Peace of Paradise" cabins, south of Hilo; a photo of one of the many cute little geckos that shared our stay in the jungle.

Read: All the blog postings from my 2023 Hawaii Trip