Heather Lake Hike pt. 4 Mt. Pilchuck

Heather lake is right at the base of Mount Pilchuck.  Here are some pictures of Mount Pilchuck. 

Heather Lake Hike Pt. 3 Reflections

At the top of the hike there is a lake (named Heather Lake, oddly enough) and it wasn't a great day for reflection photos, since it was frozen over, but it wasn't too bad.

Heather Lake Hike Pt. 2 Greenery

On our hike there was lots of green. It was kinda dark and hard to take pictures with the kit lens, but I think there are some good ones.

Straight from the Lord of the Rings

Heather Lake Hike Pt. 1. Running water

This past Saturday we went on a hike to Heather lake with my in-laws.  It was a good short hike.   Read more about the hike here.
My mom really likes taking pictures of water falls.  I'm pretty sure she has just as many pictures of waterfalls as she does her kids.  I kinda have a little bit of that in me, and on our hike to Heather Lake, there were multiple times we crossed a running creek, and sometimes it was even falling a little bit, here are some pictures of that. 
To take pictures where the water is blurry and smooth looking, the shutter has to be open for a little while (1/5 of a second or longer), so it was good that we took my new mono-pod so that we could make that happen. 

Beautiful Sunset

Tonight we had a gorgeous sunset, here are some pictures from it.  All photos were taken with canon 100mm Macro Lens. They are kinda in reverse order, that's why the last one doesn't have as much color, it was taken earlier in the sunset.

Portrait Fun

Deb and I went back to the place we went a few weeks ago and took some more portraits of her.  Hope you enjoy.  The lighting in some of the early ones was so great, just as the sun was setting.  These were all taken with the 70-200mm F4L lens.

Sunrise

On Wednesday this week, we had a great sunrise, here are some of the shots I took that morning.

Full Moon

Last night was a full moon and so I took my camera out and got a few shots of it.  They aren't as close as I would want, because I am not currently borrowing the 70-200mm lens, so I only had my 50mm. 

Market's Top Picks

This is an interesting read from the Wall Street Journal.  Basically showing that the top 10 picks for 2010 as made in January 2010 gained 24%, while the S&P gained 13%.  But The top 10 sell/don't buy stocks, gained 32% (having invest $1000 in each pick, same with the top 10).

I recently read the article above about how the top 10 picks from last year performed worse than the bottom 10 stocks(the ‘must sells’, or don’t buy), as recommended by so called “experts.”  Not only did they under perform, they got destroyed by the bottom 10 stocks.   Essentially, they don’t have much better advice than anyone else.  

I’ve mentioned before that I like to read comments in on articles, just to get a feeling for what other people that read the article are saying.  I don’t remember if someone did it in this article, but in lots of stock articles there is someone that says something to the effect of “Stocks are just for the big guys, not for the little guy anymore.”  I just have to laugh at him.  In no other time in our history has the little guy had so much information, and such cheap trades.   It used to be that you would get recommendations from your broker and he would take a commission from your sale (1/2% or more).  So if you would invest $10,000, he would take .5% buying the stock and .5% when you sold.  Which equals $100 total in this case ($50 in and $50 out) and that’s if you didn’t make any money, if the stock doubled he would get .5% of that ($100 on $20000 for a total of $150).  Now you can find many sites online that let you trade for a flat rate of under $10 going in and less than $10 selling.  You save either $80 or $130.  More money for you, and less for the ‘big man.’

Now let’s talk about information.  It used to be that only brokers and firms had information on the day to day work of the stock and you would have to call them to get information about a certain stock.  Now, I can sit down and look up everything the Price/earning ratio, the 1m, 3m, 1y, 5y stock price graphs, almost everything is just a few clicks away.  The middle man has been cut out.  However, because the middle man has been cut out a lot of the times, there is no one to give personal recommendations for stocks.  So, I have had to go out and learn how to pick good ones. Sometimes I win, sometimes I don’t.  But on the whole I did a lot better last year in stocks than I did on interest in my savings account.  Today we live in the information age, too bad for some that they will miss out on it because they think that information is only for the ‘big guys.’

Wind Surfing

Went down to a local beach today and saw some guys out there wind surfing. This guy got a ton of air, although the camera had a hard time picking it up.  His sail, kite thing was out of the view finder, the one in these pictures is from the second guy.

Edmonds Marsh

This weekend Deb and I quickly visited the Edmonds Marsh. Bet you didn't know it was there.  It is a 22 Acre Saltwater/freshwater marsh.  Throughout the year many different birds come and visit. Anyway, the first two pictures are really good. The Cattails weren't so prevalent until the humans started developing around the marsh and made it all freshwater for a while (that is where the cattails grow best).  You can read more about this place here. 

What we are reading...

We just started a new book series on "So whats the difference?" by Fritz Ridenour.  The book looks at world religions and other belief's people have in our society and how they compare to Biblical Christianity.  We are only one chapter in, but I think it is going to be a great book, with lots of insight on the thoughts and belief's of others.  I think that being able to talk with others about faith with knowledge of where they stand is quite important, and this book should lay a great foundation for that.

How do you travel?