I visited Steptoe Butte in 2013 on my annual camping trip
with Bruce Gregory and Steve Johnson, and liked it enough to revisit with my
wife, Linda, this May. This post is
about 6 weeks late because I’ve been on another annual camping trip. Having fun gets in the way of timely posts.
The view from Steptoe Butte varies from month to month as
new crops are planted and others are harvested.
On this visit, we saw patterns created by combinations of bare ground
and growing crops. The air was quite
hazy, so these photos have been processed to increase clarity and contrast.
We stayed fairly late, so we were treated to some great
sidelight touching beautiful farms nestled in green valleys.
The Palouse region of Washington is a remarkable area of
gently rolling farmland. We enjoyed
photographing it from below (see previous posts) and Steptoe
Butte gave us an entirely different view from above. Large curvy fields became wonderful abstracts
when viewed from here.
Since we were shooting across the tops of the fields, the
best abstracts were usually fairly narrow, so I have cropped them. But this image had two complementary
abstracts that I think look pretty good together.
Sometimes I wonder if the farmers arrange their fields just for
the benefit of photographers. The view
of these curvy fields from Steptoe Butte is just phenomenal, and we thoroughly
enjoyed our visit to the Palouse.
However, I did have one complaint. Steptoe Butte is a state park, and whoever is
in charge of this place should be ashamed of the poor condition of the
park. We were there on the Memorial Day
weekend, so it was crowded, and the garbage cans were overflowing and the
restrooms unusable. There are potholes
big enough to swallow a Toyota. Come on,
Washington, you can do better than that.
Please note that my photos are copyrighted and must not be
used without my permission.
