Dream machine

So it’s not really a machine, but kind of.

My “end of working for 2 years selling real estate” gift to myself was to upgrade my camera to one I’ve been wanting for quite a while now.  And it seemed like it was perfect timing with the arrival of Jamison.  I finally got the 5D Mark iii and I LOVE it!

Before we had Abbie, we decided to jump into the world of dSLR’s and go the Canon XSi.  I think we got an 18-55mm and a 75-300mm with it.  I think I used the 75-300mm like 5 times.  Eventually we added the 50mm 1.8 to it.  We learned a ton with that camera and captured Abbie’s first few years of life with it.  I loved it.

Around when Ben was born, we upgraded our camera to the 60D.  It was a pretty big step up from the XSi, but looking back, I wish I’d just gone to a full frame then, instead of holding out.  We also got the 18-135mm lens with the camera.  While I owned that camera I got my first L series lens, the 24-105mm, and we also got our first off camera flash – the 430.

So it seems only natural that I’d upgrade once again after we had baby #3.  I’ve been ready for a full frame camera for quite a while.  The 60D is great, but it’s low-light capability is terrible.  Trying to get decent shots of the kids inside, even when they’re fairly still, was next to impossible.  I’d have to bump up the ISO a ton, and then the shots had a bunch of noise in them, which was annoying.  But it’s not every day you have $2500 to spend on a camera, so I held off for quite a while.  I made a deal with Mark that when I sold our house and we made a decent profit, I would upgrade my camera.  Well I did sell our house and we got a full priced offer, so I saved us over $10k by selling it myself – hence me getting new camera gear.  I debated long and hard about getting a 6D vs the 5dmiii, and it would have saved me around $1200, but in the end, I decided to go with what I’ve wanted for a while.  The 6D is a great camera, but I plan on keeping this camera for a long time (even if we do have another kiddo in the next few years) and I wanted the best of what was offered currently, and that’s the 5dmiii.  It has a better focusing system in it and it’s just built better than the 6D, so I thought I’d better get the most sturdy camera I can find considering how I plan on taking this all over the place.

I figured, while I’m at it with upgrade my gear, I might as well get one of my dream lenses as well.  So I majorly splurged and got the 70-200 ii 2.8.  I figured since I had the 24-105 I already had the wide angle end covered and wanted to get more zoom, so I opted for the 70-200.  It’s my 2nd L series lens and I love it, even if it does weigh more than my newborn.  It’s a huge lens and not your every day walk around lens, but it’ll be great once the kids get into sports and shooting things at longer distances.  I someday want to get the 24-70 to go with this lens, and then maybe an 85mm, and possibly a wide angle, but for now the 3 lenses I have are pretty good.

 

I did sell a few of my lenses – the 18-135 and the 75-300.  But now I have 4 cameras – my very first SLR – not digital – Rebel, the 60D, the G1X m11, and the 5dmiii.  I’m not sure I’ll sell the 60D any time soon.  I think I might just keep it as my back up camera for now.  I need to start carrying around the G1X more as it’s a great little camera, but my diaper bag is already heavy enough.  I took a bunch of pictures at Disneyland with it last September, and I don’t think I’ve even gotten around to posting any of those yet.  I am so far behind on getting stuff on this blog.  It stresses me out.  I’ve taken a bunch with the new camera too, but at this rate it’ll be next year before I post any of them..  Ugh!

In the meantime, just trust my word.  This is an amazing camera!

Jerome, Arizona

Jerome is a small town located in the Black Hills of Yavapai County not too far from Sedona.  We actually saw it in the distance when we were visiting Tuzigoot and decided to go check it out, and I’m so glad we did.  It’s a really neat town and it REALLY reminded me of a western version of my hometown of Galena, IL.  It had a historic main street, just like Galena and is mainly on a hill, just like Galena, although Jerome is much smaller than Galena is.  It was mainly a mining town back in the 1920’s and was home to more than 1000 people back then, but has less than 500 people living there now.

We decided to go check out the ghost town, and it was a lot of fun!  I recently read an article about it and it said that if you’re traveling with a photographer, expect them to disappear until their camera runs out of memory, and that is very much true.  I could have spent HOURS in this place taking photos of all of the neat things Don Robertson (the owner) had laying around.

The ghost town is actually a suburb of Jerome, called Haynes, and it was originated by Haynes Copper Company in 1890, when they were searching for copper that is known to be in the area.  They missed the copper but they did find gold.

This school house was moved from Flagstaff to here, but Don built many of the buildings on the property himself.  He says he only collects rare things, but since I’m not well versed in old cars, I have no clue if these are true or not.  I really want my dad to go see all of this stuff because he would know about these old cars.

Mark was in pig heaven when we encountered this trailer full of alligator juniper wood.  It was even better that it was fairly cheap.  We already had 6 people and all of our junk in the car, but we managed to fit a few pieces of this stuff in between everyone and everything else and Mark was a happy camper.  And I was happy because he now knows how I feel when I go into a fabric shop.  He could have stayed in this little shack for a good hour inspecting all the wood, and that’s exactly how I feel when I get into fabric shops.  I’m glad he has a hobby that he likes.

Here’s the old entrance to the mine and they even have a place where you can pan for gold (for $10 I think, maybe $5).  They had a bunch of goats you can feed also, and chickens, and their donkey also.

There was just neat stuff all over this place and we spent a few hours wandering around it and looking at everything, although I feel like we didn’t really get to see everything because there’s just so much to look at!  (Dad, most of these pictures are for you!)

I didn’t even get a chance to go into these buildings, but I’m sure there was lots of cool stuff to look at!

I can’t remember what the thing on the left is below, but the thing on the right is a 1914 sawmill that they still use every day to cut lumber orders of the juniper.  It was running a little when we got there but by the time we got up to this section of the property they weren’t running it.  Luckily, we ran into Don while we were there and he started it up for us and showed us how this one worked, and the one below that he built from a submarine engine.  Both were pretty darn neat to see, even if they were loud.  Ben wasn’t a huge fan of the noise.

We had fun petting the donkey and he was even braying for us a little bit, which is hilarious to hear.  I kinda want a donkey.  They’re adorable.  Almost as cute as my kid.

I decided not to carry my camera with me around Jerome when we visited the town, but it was really need to see.  Such old buildings and you can almost feel the history surround you.  If you want to read more about the history of Jerome, you can go HERE.  In short, it was named after a New York lawyer who financed the United Verde Copper Company, that mined hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 19th century.  Today it’s a really artsy town with lots of chic little restaurants and art galleries.  Again, reminds me a lot of Galena.  I’m excited to go back again.

If you’re every in the Phoenix, Sedona, Prescott area in Arizona, I would HIGHLY encourage you to check out Jerome and the  Gold King Mine ghost town.  It is one of my favorite places we’ve visited so far in AZ!!

Sedona in the fall

After Montezuma’s Castle we headed up to Sedona for a few days.  My parents were kind enough to let us use their travel club time share in Sedona and it was really nice.  I love Sedona anyway, but going there in the fall made it that much better.  The fall colors were beautiful against the red rocks!

We went on the Devil’s Bridge hike first.  I remember trying to do part of this hike a few years ago with the weinas, and we didn’t get very far.  (The weinas aren’t built for hiking, exactly..)  Driving to the trail head made me a bit nervous more than once as these “roads” are meant for off-roading vehicles only.  This time I got out to make sure we’d clear the rocks we were going over, which we did just fine, but I also saw one of the wheels of the Volvo come off the ground about a foot…

The hike to Devil’s Bridge was mostly uphill on the way there, usually a gradual incline, until the end where it got pretty darn steep, and made me pretty darn nervous.  Ben walked for part of the way, but he tends to like to take his time and stop and look at just about everything on the way, so we eventually put him on Mark’s back so it didn’t take us 3 weeks to get to the bridge.

I, as usual, had fun playing with my camera.  Plus, it’s a good excuse to stop occasionally to take pictures of things.  And in Sedona, there is LOTS to take pictures of.

Sedona is known for it’s vortex’s and it is said that the twisted juniper trees are a sign of the presence of a vortex.  I’m not sure I believe that’s true but they are pretty cool to look at.

Towards the end of the Devil’s Bridge trail, it got REALLY steep.  The parts below actually had stairs on them, which was nice, but further up the trail, it was essentially rock climbing, which is scary with a 4 year old and someone carrying a 2 year old.  However, Abbie did REALLY well climbing by herself and keeping up with the rest of us.  Mark and I were really careful with the kids and the really steep inclines/declines, but it still made me nervous.

We finally made it up to Devil’s Bridge and the view was beautiful.  A few people from other groups walked out onto the bridge and we took their pictures for them, and I talked to an older guy who was using a nice camera about his camera.  He had recently gotten the 6D and was using the same lens I was.  Someday I’ll upgrade to a full frame.

I had fun taking pictures of all the trees along the trails.  The bark of some of them were really neat and I thought they made interesting pictures.

I thought that these plants (trees?) were really neat because of the red bark on them, but I have no clue what they are.  Does anyone else know?

We found a cool view to take a few pictures on.  Below is a perfect example of why I like to remain behind the lens instead of in front of it…  =S

The girls were seeing if they could feel the energy from a vortex by the tree… Crazies!

I LOVE the picture of Mark jumping off the rocks with Ben on his back.  Ben’s face is one of pure joy, as it usually is when Mark is around.  I wish you could all have heard his laugh.  And Abbie found a snake skin and was showing it to Ben.

After this hike we made our way to Faye Canyon Trail for another hike to another natural stone bridge.  The views on the way were beautiful!

Abbie did another fantastic job of holding her own on the hike.  The last part of this trail up to the bridge was really steep and she walked it all by herself!  We were sure we were going to end up carrying her, but she was a little trooper!

The views from the top were really pretty, but it was really hard to get a decent picture of the bridge since it was so close.  There were old Indian dwellings almost right under the bridge and I thought it was neat that they used the huge rock overhang to shelter them a little more.  

This is where I got a bit nervous on this hike.  Mark carried Abbie down the steepest part of the trail, and I was envisioning him slipping and all three of them rolling down the rather steep hill…  Yikes!  But luckily he’s about as sure footed as a mule, so he was fine.  And then we let Benji down to burn off some energy on the flat terrain on the way back to the car.

After that hike, we drove the long way back to Sedona so we could see more of the area.  I’m not sure I’d ever get tired of taking pictures in Sedona.  It’s just a beautiful area.  I’ll let these photos speak for themselves.