I knew that some of the locations in my plans would (or will) be very crowded. I had no idea that the Boulder River Trail was so popular. Maybe part of the problem is that today is Sunday. I have to confess that when I’m on vacation I don’t much care for weekends.

The weather forecast for today was mostly cloudy with tomorrow anticipated being partly cloudy. I wanted to be at this location on a cloudy day, but that wasn’t to be. The portion of the trail we hiked was mostly in the shade of the trees, but the sun was out, so I didn’t even bother to bushwhack down to Boulder Falls. I was fortunate enough to have some short cloudy moments at Feature Show Falls. The waterfall itself is tall and extremely cool to see in person. I didn’t really shoot the whole falls. I just concentrated on the low portion with the river and boulders as my foreground.

We only hiked a little bit farther on the trail. I spoke with someone who was returning. He said that there was another waterfall about the same distance upstream and that the trail continues to be somewhat high above the river. With the sun out, it didn’t make any sense for us to continue today. Our better option was a Sunday drive on the Mountain Loop Highway.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the east side of the loop. It starts out with some views of the Old Sauk River, which I liked, but we were soon in a tunnel of trees. I have absolutely no problem with that, but I figured that it might be nice to be able to see some peaks on a highway with this name.

Then my opinion completely changed. There is a portion of the road which has a lot of river access. And what a beautiful stretch it is. The water color is beautiful and there are a lot of rocks to give interest to the scene. We only took advantage of a couple of the spots. By this time of the day the sky had clouded up, which gave me perfect conditions. I set up my tripod and with the ND filter in this light with this scene could absolutely not see anything in either the viewfinder (obviously) or the LCD. Rain was just starting. My only option was to eyeball the camera and point it in what seemed might be a good composition and to focus by guessing my distance. I shot one picture and hurried back to the car. Unfortunately it’s a bit out of focus and heavily vignetted. I still like the photo, so that’s my picture of the day.

Most of the gravel portion of the Mountain Loop is in fantastic shape. The only bad portion is a small area just before the Barlow Pass. Those potholes are deep.

There are some good views of the South Fork Stilly on the south side of the loop. We were only scouting by this time because we decided that we need to either return during this trip or make a point of spending time here during a future year. I’m sure that I could literally plan a whole vacation in just this area.

Tomorrow’s forecast is still partly cloudy. I can only hope that the “bad” weather arrives ahead of schedule. One thing I know is that the weekend is over so those poor working stiffs will be toiling away while we’re enjoying God’s country.