
Three reef fish, from top to bottom, an Ember Parrotfish, Yellow Tang, and Flowery Flounder.

Three reef fish, from top to bottom, an Ember Parrotfish, Yellow Tang, and Flowery Flounder.

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Favorite Vacation Spots.’ See more responses here.
I thought I’d go with a couple of old photos from a vacation I took many, many years ago to Switzerland. I really enjoyed Switzerland because the scenery was wonderful, the trails were well marked and maintained, and good chocolate was plentiful.
The top photo shows the Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau Mountains in the Alps. The bottom one shows some hairy yob atop the Mettelhorn, near Zermatt, with the Matterhorn in the background.

This second photo amuses me because I rarely take selfies, and back then a selfie involved finding a stable spot to place the camera, activating the timer, and scurrying back to, hopefully, get in the shot. Then, as now, it was a struggle because I’ve never remembered how to find the timer and set it, on any camera I’ve ever had!


Near the end of a recent swim, I saw this smallish Green Turtle. It was cruising along in shallow water near the ladder I was aiming for. It disappeared into the rocks, but I hung around hoping for another sight of it, and was rewarded when it came back out and swan past me before returning to the shelter of the rocks. I didn’t follow since I don’t have a shell to protect me from the bumps the turtle was undoubtedly encountering.

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Scary Animal of the Month.’ See more responses here. I’ve dipped into the archives for this one, which is mostly water shots. What else did you think I meant by the headline? Captions on the photos as usual.



And finally, for all you arachnophobes, a lovely Cane Spider.


Having not seen any dolphins in ages, this past weekend I had my second encounter in the last two weeks. In this instance, the pod of at least 50 Spinner Dolphins went zipping on by, but any encounter is better than none!


This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Colors of Lava and Black.’ See more responses here. I thought a collection of colorful lava fit the bill. These were taken on two of the trails in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the Kau Desert Trail and the Puna Coast Trail.







Finally, some red lava erupting from Kilauea volcano. I posted a few days ago (here) about the pressurized situation at the volcano when I visited last week. This is a screen shot from one of the live webcams at Kilauea (here). This most recent eruption began a little after three yesterday morning and ended around 6 hours later. I missed it by a week!


A pair of Bluespine Unicornfishes cruise through clear waters off the Kohala coast.

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Stairs/Steps.’ See more responses here. Captions on the photos as usual.





