8 Mile Lake

To get to 8 Mile Lake we just drove 8 miles past Leavenworth, WA on Icicle Creek Road. But we weren't there yet. It was another 3 miles on the dirt road to the trailhead. After loading up and hiking for 3.5 more miles we were disappointed with a tiny lake and one ugly campsite right in the middle of the trail. Then we realized we'd found "little 8 mile lake." I'd rather call it "fake 8 mile lake" instead. It was still another half mile before we finally dropped our packs and set up the tent at the real 8 Mile Lake.

The hike through the old burned out forest is actually quite nice because bushes have grown over a lot of the dead trees that are laying on the ground.

We saw some interesting flowers, birds, and the chubbiest chipmunks ever. I'm not sure what they eat up there but they've got plenty of it.

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I got to use my fabulous gorillapod for the blurry water shots. It's so perfect for backpacking! I also learned not to store lenses in my pockets because I nearly lost one to the river. I lost a tripod leg to a river near a place called "Troublesome" a couple years ago and that was really painful.

Shooting with a bright sky and dark shadowy forest is hard on the dynamic range. To get some of the sky and clouds back I underexposed enough to leave some minor details in the sky. In Lightroom I turned the recovery and fill light up pretty high, but the blue sky was still mostly washed out. I found that if I turned up the saturation in the blue channel and turned its luminance down quite a bit it all came back. I end up with bright clouds, a deep blue sky, and enough detail for everything else. Lightroom is cool. It makes web galleries too.

j