My recent road trip took me to some AMAZING places in the western states, and this is a collection of odds and ends from that trip, places I stopped but didn't shoot enough to warrant a gallery unto itself. I spent a couple days in Olympic National Parks Hoh Rain Forest and along the coastline, a sunset at Death Valley on the sand dunes with the mercury at 122, a new personal high temperature, the sublime beauty of Burney Falls, my first trip to Washington's North Cascades National Park, and sunflower fields from North Dakota. And for many of these stops, smoke was an issue, not only from the California fires, but from the Oregon and Washington fires that broke out while I was there! I got to Crater Lake National Park midday under clear skies, but by 5pm smoke started flowing into the area and by 6 I could no longer see the other side of the lake. So much for my sunset photo plans! I headed towards Proxy Falls in Oregon, but was stopped by trees that had fallen and blocked the road. The next morning I discovered that the road several miles from Proxy had been closed due to fires, and if not for the fallen tree, I might have been much closer to the fires than I'd have liked!!!! Driving across the mountains in Oregon that next morning, the roads north and south of the road I was on were both closed due to the fires, and when I got to Salem mid-morning, the sky was so thick with smoke that the sun was completely blocked and it was midnight dark at 10am. Scary, and my heart goes out to those who were impacted!!!