We took it easy this morning and J fixed us a big breakfast of omelets, potatoes, and OJ. I had my regular coffee and J had her usual tea. It was nice to relax over breakfast while looking out at the spectacular fall colors. After I did the dishes, I processed three images for the blog then worked up a blog entry.

I had lunch around 12:30 then cleaned my camera filters. I also got my 77mm polarizer unstuck from the 58mm-to-77mm step-up-ring by heating the step-up-ring on the warm stove top to help it expand faster than the filter and then using my filter wrenches. It was good to get the polarizer off so I can use it on my other lenses again! Then I took pictures of some items to eBay. We left in the Jeep around 3:15.

We headed towards, then along, the Mirror Lake Highway, UT-150, that runs through the Uinta Mountains east of Kamas. We stopped to photograph some yellow aspens among the evergreens (left). We didn't see any maples, and after a while the road climbed too high for the aspens too. We stopped to check out Provo Falls, and decided to come back later in the day. We went by several small lakes, all surrounded by evergreens, then went over Bald Mountain Pass at 10,715 ft (3266m), the highest point on a paved road in Utah. We stopped at Mirror Lake around 5:25. It's also surrounded by evergreens, and there are some nice mountains in the distance that would be nice if there were interesting clouds in the sky. However, we had a clear blue sky and didn't photograph.
We went back to Provo Falls on the Provo River and spent the evening photographing the falls and mainly the cascades between the three sets of falls. My favorite images were of just the cascades, and my favorite image (below left) is rather unusual because it's taken while looking slightly downstream. Most cascades look best when photographed looking upstream, but I love the way the cascade, and the line of rock under the water, leads your eye into the frame. Before I could take the picture, I had to remove an old dried sock from a rock on the far shore. There weren't any good places to cross the river, but downstream someone had put some rocks in the river so I could rock hop most of the way across, but then I had to take two steps in the water that was deep enough to get my socks wet. :( Oh well, it was worth it to get a clean setting for the image. Right before I stopped photographing because it was after sunset and getting dark, I took another of my favorite images (below right). It was dark enough that I didn't need any additional neutral density to get a long exposure. The white circular blob is from an area of circulating water, and the exposure is probably too long to understand what's going on without a little help. I thoroughly enjoyed photographing the cascades, and had more fun doing so than photographing any of the fall color recently.


I started to set up my MSR WhisperLite backpacking stove (similar to this) to make dinner around 7:35. As I started to boil the water for the Mountain House dehydrated meal, I noticed a puddle on the ground (the parking lot) between the pump on the fuel bottle and the stove itself. That was odd, and I became quite worried when the puddle started to spread. Next thing I knew, the puddle caught on fire — it was white gas (aka "Coleman Fuel")! I turned off the fuel flow by reaching into the flames and then took the pot of hot water off the stove. The flames spread to the seal between the pump and the fuel bottle, and I became quite worried that the fuel bottle might explode if it got hot enough. Because I had set up the stove right next to the Jeep to make cooking easier, I quickly moved the Jeep to the far end of the parking lot, then moved all of the cooking items that weren't on fire over near the Jeep, then both J and I took cover behind the concrete (?) wall of the pit toilet. We were the only people there, so no one else got to watch the spectacle. I realized that I had only heated one cup of water instead of the two required, so I added a cup of cold water to the meal so it wouldn't be crunchy. After a while, the fire died down and eventually went out, and we ate dinner in the Jeep of the warm Mountain House Chicken Teriyaki With Rice. I was sad that my MSR WhisperLite backpacking stove was history. I had had many good meals using it: Isle Royal National Park in Lake Superior, Wonder Lake in Denali National Park four different years, the Pawnee National Grassland on an early date with J, and most recently on the edge of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. After cleaning up the dishes, I went to pick up the remains of my MSR WhisperLite backpacking stove. The plastic pump had been reduced to a small blob of plastic at the lip of the fuel bottle, and the fuel bottle was completely covered with soot. The stove was pretty much intact, but the fitting at the pump didn't quite look right and the wind shield had melted! I put everything in a plastic bag to contain the remains until we could dispose of them. In hind sight, the fuel bottle might have been salvageable.

We returned to the RV around 9:30 and I was quite happy to take off my boots and wet socks!. I downloaded the images I took then downselected them in Capture One (C1) before going to bed.