We spent Memorial Day Weekend 2011 in the Hood River area thanks to an invite from friends. Each day we enjoyed a fantastic view of the Columbia River and even caught a glimpse of Mt. Adams on Saturday (bottom-left photo). If you want a view and be just a few blocks from downtown Hood River I highly recommend checking out the Riverdell Vacation Rental! Every day we walked from Riverdell to downtown whether to shop1 or feed ourselves (or both).

Surprisingly, I was in Aperture a bit tonight. I was migrating last month’s photos from my MacBook Pro to our iMac (probably time for another photo workflow post) when I randomly thought about a photo trip Denise and I took back in 2002. About 12-15 of us from the Intel Arizona Photography Club (or something like that) took a trip in Northern Arizona. In two days we shot at Painted Desert, Canyon de Chelly, Glen Canyon, Antelope Canyon, and Monument Valley.

Friday at 6:00 PM we decided to see if there were any rooms available at the Surfsand Resort in Cannon Beach. This was while we were still at Bryce’s swimming lessons. By 8:10 PM Denise was checking us into our room at the resort. Yeah, even with a 4 year old…we still got it! All photos and videos taken with an iPhone 4 or iPad 2. Video created with iMovie for the iPad.

Last weekend we took a little drive on the Historic Columbia River Highway which is just east of Portland (about 50 minutes from Forest Grove). It had been several years since we had been on it, which is an absolute shame. In less than four hours we can drive, hike, eat, and take photos of dozens of falls, bridges, trails, and other breathtaking views. How easy it is to take those things for granted.

I just returned from a six day trip to Costa Rica. Unfortunately it was for work so I did not have much free time. However, I did manage to set aside some time for photography. In the next week I will work on posting a gallery…though I should work on an Alaska gallery considering that trip was months ago. I did post several photos from Costa Rica on my photo blog though: http://blog.