First time I've been here in 10 years. Scenery is jaw-dropping, something you can't get over. The moonscapes of decades ago have been softened with an almost shocking but beautiful growth of greenery. Forests are sprouting up all over the place. Driving in, I saw a herd of elk that my car scared into the woods when I was close to my destination. But as always, it is the strong contrast in brilliant colors partaken by the rocks and sand that is most stunning. I fear you'd have to be highly knowledgeable in physics and geology to understand them all and how they come to be so sharply delineated after the chaos of the 300 mile an hour winds of the May 18, 1980 volcanic eruption. I suspect that the specific gravity of the various minerals has something to do with it, as they get separated out and deposited by the maelstrom.

Hiking time: a leisurely 490 minutes and 6.16 seconds, or 8 hours and 10 minutes. Five miles one way, ten miles round trip. Not much climbing, only about 1,000 feet total, so I was never fatigued, even though some short stretches were maddeningly steep and and cursed by treacherously loose gravel, and I had to carefully pick my way downhill at an excruciatingly slow pace, which was tricky and strenuous.

My hike started out at 8:30 AM in a complete whiteout. I wasn't bummed about that because the weather forecast said the fog would lift by 10:00 AM. That was a little optimistic: the fog didn't lift to reveal distant landscapes until about 11:00 AM. I was then at the end of a long, scary traverse next to cliff edges on the Boundary Trail that signs attempt to ward off the inexperienced or out of shape. Then the scene opened up into glorious and dazzling, otherworldly vistas. But one thing about whiteout lighting: I didn't have to worry about shooting at a high level ISO that produces noise: plenty of light from the white sky, and then when the fog cleared of course, everything was in sunlight (except for scattered cloud shadows).

Took the trekking poles (of course) which means no tripod and all hand-held shots. The jaw-dropping scenery drew an ungodly number of photos out of me: 359, of which 213 made the cut, and every stinkin' one of these masterpieces is worth serious study, so let that be a lesson to any slackers out there.

This is probably the most number of individual photographs I ever took on one charge of a camera battery. This is only possible by turning the camera off after every burst of images taken. When using the tripod in the past, I left the camera on all the time and I was lucky to get 250 shots before running a battery dry.