Whitewater adventure...

A few weekends ago we ventured down to Great Falls National Park (like 10 min from our house!) to check out the falls after the recent rains. It's always fun to see what they look like after a significant moisture event because this river is the catch basin for just about all the water that falls in our area. The Potomac is fed by thousands of small streams and tributaries in our local area and then flows on down to our nations capital and on out to the ocean.

Great Falls is the site of a major fall line which creates one amazing set of water falls. On this day there were two or three groups of kayakers trying their hand at some of the chutes. This is the first day we've actually seen guys trying the falls! Most hop out at the top and walk it around and then proceed to surf the wake at the bottom of the falls.

These two guys are part of a party that was trying to help another boater out after his kayak capsized and went over the falls alone along with his paddle which was then stuck under one of the falls.

The man above was working his way across the wash to set up to tow the wayward kayak back to his owner. We're still not sure what he did as the paddle that he would have needed was stuck in the washing machine water at the base of one of the other chutes. We watched them try to lasso it for about 40 min and then finally gave up and went home. I wonder if they ever got it out?!

Buggin out...

So, every year we get a few Cicadas that emerge from the ground and make a racket each evening.  This year we seemed to have more than in the past but certainly the likes of what folks here saw about 4 years ago.  Anywho, Mark managed to catch this guy coming out of his shell.  Rather freaky if I do say so myself..

As it started to emerge the wings were these crumpled little stubs on the back of it's body.  Within 30 min or so they'd unfolded to the neon attachments below!

Celebration...

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of photographing the rehearsal dinner of a friend at Lancaster's Press Room restaurant.  The lighting was tricky because of off colored ceilings but we made the best of it.  I've included two general pictures below. 

A little development...

So, I've been a bit lax in the blogging here but for good reason....there's been a bit of development at Kloepping Photography.  I think the photo below gives it away!

That's right, there's another little photographer on the way.  The pic above was during a backpacking trip when I was 18 weeks along (i'm almost 24 weeks now).  We needed to get away for a bit and decided that with the upcoming life change now's the time to do our last backpack trip for a while.  We headed out to the Yosemite backcountry for two nights and three days of disconnected bliss!!

We hiked up Lyle canyon to Ireland Lake and spent the evening.  We then hiked cross country over to Fletcher lake and the Voglesang area for our second night.  The image below is over Fletcher peak and lake just as the sun was setting.  It was an amazing evening and an even more amazing trip.