When I’m on a trail and I’m not headed to a specific site, and the surroundings aren’t yielding much in the way of photos I need to decide whether to continue. My response to myself is, “You got something better to do?” Actually yes, I could usually go to a different trail and see what it has to offer. But the truth is that I always continued on. I’ve mentioned multiple times how much I enjoy the experience of hiking in the forest. So the reality is that no, there’s absolutely nothing better that I could have been doing.
Today, however, is a driving day. I’m back in California. I didn’t have a long way to go to get to this night's motel. I was planning on two stops, but I decided against leaving my car full of stuff sitting while I hiked to Mossbrae Falls. I suppose that maybe I should have checked the site to see how it looked. I just didn’t have a good feeling about it this morning, so I decided that I would only stop at Lithia Park. Now I did leave my car sitting there for hours, but it’s a heavily used site. That’s no guarantee that a vehicle won’t be broken into, but I felt as though that was safer than an out of the way spot.
I left my tripod in my car since the sun was out. As soon as I saw Ashland Creek, I had to go right back and retrieve the tripod. There was marvelous reflected light in the water. I don’t feel as though the creek would have been a compelling subject with my normally preferred overcast. But today’s conditions offered many spots where I felt would produce some nice photos. I spent several hours strolling along the creek. After all, it’s not as though I had anything better to do.