This post is a little late, but last weekend I surprised Jamie with a trip to Lava Hot Springs in Idaho. We went with no plans except to enjoy not being home, soaking in some warm water, and walking around town for a minute.
I had never stayed at this hotel, but it turned out to be pretty nice. I wish it would have had a hot tub in the room, a better bed, and less expensive restaurant but it was in the perfect location and the breakfast was pretty good (I had milk and French toast. Jamie had something else that I don’t remember.
I had hoped to take more pictures, but it felt too basic to take pictures around there. Maybe our next trip up to Pocatello, I can snag a bunch of pictures.
We only stayed one night. When we got in and settled, we gave into the hunger and sought a place to eat. I brought my camera and left my tripod at home because that is a lot to bring into a restaurant. All of these night shots were taken handheld and at around 3400 ISO. High ISO numbers like that create “noise” in digital images. Back in the film days if you went above 400 you were probably going to see some pretty noticeable grain in your image. As the technology of cameras continue to get better and better the ISO ratings have skyrocketed. I could always set my camera to take pictures like a cell phone and select “Auto” (I “hate” that setting with a passion).
One of the issues with taking images with the camera set to anything except “Auto” is that you will make a mistake. I made my mistake right off the bat by leaving my f-stop closed up a little bit (Smaller numbers = bigger opening). I think my first couple images were taken with the f-stop set somewhere around 9.5 or 11. Once I opened it up to 2.4 things got much easier. Taking night images without a tripod is a method I am trying to get better at.
The next morning, we went for another short walk to see what there was to see and snag a cup of coffee. It was windy, chilly, and sunny. I left my sunglasses in my car back in Ogden, so it was squint city for me.
Finally, some people watching, and a dog named Harley. While we were relaxing and sipping our coffee, I saw a couple ladies walking out of the hot pools entrance dressed in animal onesies. Low and behold, there was an entire family coming out with animal onesies on! Before that however, we ran across a little dog named Harley. She wasn’t in the mood for the paparazzi, so I had to sneak a picture, get a quick nose bonk, and away she went.
We’ve got a few more pictures that are on Instagram form our phones. I’m just too lazy to add them to the server for the web site.
Hopefully we can take another impromptu vacation this summer. I would love to make it out to Washington or Oregon for a Spint Car race (High Limit). I paid a lot of bills with this year’s tax return, so the big trips might have to wait until summer 2025 (if we still have a country without travel restrictions – looking at you “Spray tan Don”).