After a grueling week of exams I decided on a whim to "get the heck out of dodge" for the weekend. So I drove to my mom's house in Northern New Mexico on Friday and then Saturday we drove to Southern Colorado to visit my sister. We picked her up and headed out for a long drive in the mountains. The entire trip was a great opportunity to do some photographing!

I will start out with my favorite from the trip. On our way home from the mountain trip with my mom and sister, Jessica (my sister) spied an owl sitting on a high-line pole on the side of the road. We pulled over and I got a few shots of the owl on the pole and then he flew over to a barn nearby and I was able to get this picture:

And here is a close-up of the little guy!

Of course you can't go to Colorado and not get pictures of the mountains! The highest point on the big mountain in the middle is called Challenger Point (14,080 ft) and the peak to the right of that is Crestone Peak (14,294 ft) which is pictured from a different angle and closer below:

Crestone Peak (14,294 ft):

And I couldn't resist shooting this train as it passed by:

And last but not least! I stopped in Groom, TX for these last two shots of the largest cross in the Western hemisphere!

I hope you enjoyed these because I sure enjoyed shooting them!

I used light shining through a window to illuminate the flower from behind for this shot.

For Valentines Day my lovely fiance bought me a new lens for my camera. It's a fish-eye lens which allows me to take neat pictures like this one of her making a silly face at me in the kitchen (She requests that you disregard the mess.)

Two days ago we had some pretty crazy weather. Multiple storms passed through, three of which had tornado warnings associated. The second storm put down a tornado in Northwest Oklahoma City and Edmond that did some major damage (luckily only minor injuries to people.) But that's not where the story of that tornado starts. Oh no! It starts when I was watching Gary England on the television explain that the next tornado warning was located slightly south of I-40. I heard that and I knew the dogs needed to do their thing in the backyard and it wasn't even raining so I let them out the door (I live 5 miles north of I-40). Well, about 20 seconds later I begin to hear a sound that can only be described as the sound of a freight train. I suddenly realized I could be in trouble and the dogs too! So with hopes of saving the dogs, I ran outside and started yelling at them to come back in the house so we could take cover. Of course, they just looked at me like I was some lunatic yelling gibberish and kept sniffing around. As the freight train got louder and large pieces of hail started falling one of them figured it out and ran in the house. The other got pegged by a hailstone and ran to the far end of the yard and hunkered down. So I ran over there and tried to get her, but she ran from me because she thought she was in trouble. By this point it is hailing 1.5 inch sized stones and the freight train sound was so loud I had to scream as loud as I could for the dog to even hear me. I ran back inside hoping she would follow and eventually she figured out she was just going to have to make a run for it. As soon as her tail was inside I slammed the door shut and took a quarter second to evaluate the situation only to realize that the sound was getting quieter and the hail had almost stopped. Needless to say, that was probably the scariest event that has happened to me in a long time and it took a good 15 minutes for the adrenaline rush to subside. I feel extremely lucky to be writing this since the tornado that clearly went right over my head in the clouds later came down and did the previously mentioned damage just a few miles away.