As I was planning for this year’s alpine wildflower season when I ran into a couple pretty sweet images I hadn’t seen before, so curiously I read the caption.  As I usually do for trips such as this, I plan about a month ahead, and with the warmer temperatures I decided to plan a trip 2 weeks earlier than last year, which was 4 weeks earlier than the 2 years ago, and 6 weeks earlier than 3 years ago.  As I read the caption it hit me like a ton of bricks: “If you don’t visit Mt. Rainier this weekend, you will likely miss your chance to shoot wildflowers”.  The time stamp on the photo read 2 days prior, so it was for real.

Wow, so I guess I’m going to Mt. Rainier this weekend, so let me check the weather report… Nothing but blue skies.  Ugh!  I have plenty of images of Mt. Rainier with blue skies!  This leaves me with 1 option.  I’m going to Crater Lake!  Yes, that’s right.  I checked the weather report for several locations this weekend, and Crater Lake seemed like the only place where I’d find any clouds, so off I went!

To find the best composition I drove the entire loop.  My first visit here was on the same weekend 5 years ago, and the loop was closed because the snow hadn’t been cleared yet.  This time I would enjoy a fabulous drive around the rim, and with the cloud cover coming almost entirely from the south, this viewpoint seemed like a solid choice: 

While I sat here and lined up this shot, cloaked in maximum strength DEET, I was overwhelmed by mosquitoes.  They were seriously out of control, and apparently DEET just adds to the flavor.  I literally had to trigger the shutter, then run away to avoid the swarm!  When I got back my tripod and camera were covered!  It was like they knew I had to come back to my camera, and were waiting!

Once the show was over I went to check out Watchman Lookout, but before I really got started, I saw this, and had to take a few shots!

The view from Watchman is pretty nice, but wasn’t was I was looking for on this night, so I took it all in and went back to my car and made a bad decision… I opened up more than 1 door.  Immediately the swarm of mosquitoes strapped themselves in for a little car ride, so I finished packing up and drove around part of the rim with the windows open, inviting those who had entered to piss off.  That got rid of quite a few, but others felt it was more beneficial to stay the night and buzz at a high frequency in my ear while I tried to get a few hours of sleep.  In the morning I expressed my feelings to several of them, and I left an example on my dashboard of what happens to those whom feel compelled to reject my invitations!

I was excited to get out of my self-made mosquito trap, and take some picture near another nest!  I guess a few mosquito bites are a small price to pay for lighting this good, so drink up, I guess.  J