WARNING: This is a very photo-intensive entry.

I forgot who had asked me to report on the Nikon D100, the camera I was trying out in Vail, but I can honestly say it really rocks. The only complaint I heard from other photographers was one guy who said it didn't auto-focus perfectly in low light in his controlled tests. I didn't have that problem when I was shooting indoors at night. And keep in mind that these guys are absolute perfectionists.

The color and controls are excellent. You can pretty much do anything with this camera. And it'll be even more versatile if you get the Nikon Capture software that will be sold for about $150 extra. That will let you alter RAW (NEF) files in your computer as if you'd made settings before you took the shot. For instance, say you took a bunch of shots outside in a flourescent White Balance setting; you can change that to a setting you'd prefer. I think you could even change the ISO equivalent, but I haven't tried that yet.

Enough about the camera. I want one. Back to my trip report...

I never thought I'd be so thankful to be back in humidityland. Colorado is beautiful, but it dries me out like you wouldn't believe, especially now when they're in such a drought. I was drinking water all day long and fighting back nosebleeds the whole time I was there.

Let's see if I can do this chronologically.

We had some scary, thunderstorm-inspired turbulence headed out of Atlanta�the worst I've ever flown through�and then convection current turbulence caused by the fires coming into Denver.

At the airport I met up with a guy named Ed who was on the same press junket. Ed was really nice, but his accent kept reminding me of the Asian guy in "Fargo" who has the obsessive crush on Frances McDormand. The fact that he was also Asian did not help me let go of that association. We had a nice two-hour trip into Vail. Gorgeous country.

We went right from check-in to the welcoming banquet where I had to drop into a group of men, most over 50 and from competing magazines. There were three other women in attendance for the whole shebang. One from Nikon and two from a PR firm. It was a big boy's club kind of atmosphere. The Nikon and PR folks were really, really nice.

So we had a bunch of banquet stations to choose from, none of which featured vegetables, and an open bar. I felt so sorry for the young girl they had stationed at the roast beef table. That poor chick just kept standing there, basically at attention forever. I went up to her after I'd finished my meal and expressed my sympathy and asked if she'd arranged the attractive bull-whip table decoration arrangement. No she hadn't, but I got a good smile out of her. She was still standing there, guarding the beef, when the bar closed. Then some hotel guy finally let her go.

The hotel (actually a "resort & spa") itself was beautiful. The decor was pretty dark�dark woods, dark wallpaper, dark carpet�all very masculine, but tasteful and attractive. From my window I could see Gore Creek (a runoff from Eagle River) about 25 yards away and Red and White Mountain.

In the morning they gave us an intro to the camera and then bussed us off to 4 Eagle ranch, where we got to take pictures of gunfight reenactors, horses, a bison, longhorn, cows, and anywhere we wanted to go on this 1880 homestead. It was great. They put on a rodeo demonstration for us with a stagecoach run, calf roping and barrel racing.

I used an 80-400mm lens (on loan) a lot around the ranch. That's how I got the good hawk shot. The camera bumped my auto ISO up to 1600 for some of my shots (to get enough light for the lens), which blew out the background a bit sometimes. On the other hand, it made things light enough to show faces under cowboy hats.

After the ranch, they gave us an hour and a half to clean up for our next dust coating and then took us on a Hummer tour up into the mountains. The Hum-Vees were tricked out with extra seats to easily fit eight passengers plus a driver.Grouse, I was thinking of you a lot during this trip. For your use, we first stopped at Blue Lake, which is at about 106�46' / 39�45' on Horse Mountain,

and then they took us a little higher where one of the Lakota River Guide folks had trucked up a camp stove, a long fold-out table, and a couple coolers. She had chicken breasts, rolls, potato salad, asparagus, cookies, and cobblers all ready for us. She'd made everything but the rolls and the cobbler. She said she might've done those too if she'd had more warning that she was going to have to cook for us.

There we took photos of the sunset and a storm coming in over the far-off range, which is further west than my map shows, so I don't know the name. If you look on the left, you'll see the lightning bolt I caught. It's the first one I've ever photographed.

Had to drop trou and hang my ass off the side of a mountain to relieve myself twice that evening. It's been a while since I've had to answer nature's call in a natural surrounding.

They gave us a choice of going back to the hotel after dinner, or going further up the mountain. I chose to stay and go further up. I'm so glad I did. The guide who was driving told us that they rate roads the way they rate rivers up there, and the higher roads were much more technical than the ones we'd been on so far. We actually bottomed the Hummer in one spot. The guide had a night-vision monocular, and that was really cool, especially when you looked at the night sky and saw ten times as many stars as you could see with the naked eye.

We followed a jackrabbit who just refused to get off the road for about a half mile, we scared up a nighthawk, and we had to slam on the breaks for a porcupine. We saw mule deer, and a 1,000-year-old juniper tree. We sort of raced the rain down the mountain on the way back. The driver said that the clay in the roadbed has petroleum content, so that when it rains, it gets very very slick and feels like it's trying to suck your vehicle off the mountain. We went down pretty fast. Jeff (my coworker who was also on the trip) and I got airborne in our seatbelts riding on the back bench seats a couple times. We lucked out and didn't hit any rain at all.

I'm going to post this now and work on the rest of the trip later. I've got some other correspondence to catch up with, including a note for a savory side dish who's coming to visit next weekend.

Tonight is steak dinner with the family. I can't wait. I did fairly well on my diet during the trip, and a nice hunk of steak is really going to hit the spot.