Summer Thunderstorm Over Fremont Winema National Forest
Thunder in the high desert mountains, photographing a meadow in the evening, camping in the rain.
Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
Link Summer Thunderstorm Over Fremont Winema National Forest
Website Billy Newman Photo https://billynewmanphoto.com/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/billynewmanphoto
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/billynewmanphotos/
Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billynewman/
About https://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work, or a podcast interview, please drop me an email. Drop Billy Newman an email here.
If you want to book a wedding photography package, or a family portrait session, please visit GoldenHourWedding.comor you can email the Golden Hour Wedding booking manager here.
If you want to look at my photography, my current portfolio is here.
If you want to purchase stock images by Billy Newman, my current Stock photo library is here.
If you want to learn more about the work Billy is doing as an Oregon outdoor travel guide, you can find resources on GoldenHourExperience.com.
If you want to listen to the Archeoastronomy research podcast created by Billy Newman, you can listen to the Night Sky Podcast here.
If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography: you can download Working With Film here. Yours free.
Want to hear from me more often?Subscribe to the Billy Newman Photo Podcast on Apple Podcasts here.
If you get value out of the photography content I produce, consider making a sustaining value for value financial contribution, Visit the Support Page here.
You can find my latest photo books all on Amazon here.
https://billynewmanphoto.com/feed/podcast/billynewmanphotopodcast
151 Billy Newman Photo podcast mixdown summer thunderstorm_1
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Be sure you guys are tuning in for the first week of August 2020. I’m out on a camping trip right now; I’m deep in the middle of the Fremont National Forest, where I’ve been driving around for a good part of the day. And it’s not; it’s not really high desert out here. I think it’s still mostly like smaller pine trees. And then I think just a little further east if I were to drive where you would start to drop into the area, that would be like the Great Basin, I think that area that was the Inland Sea back during the Pleistocene period before the end of the last ice age. And that’s where you get like on eastern Oregon and then out into Nevada to I think it’s like just a little east of Bend Oregon. And, and then south from there, into Nevada, and parts of Utah. I think it’s like a really big, like high desert area that I think was mostly created from like an inland sea or, you know, that’s, I think what they talked about the Great Basin area when you look on those, those maps, and it kinda has this, this far northern region that are up into the Chico mountains and pretty sure somewhere around there. But I think it’s a pretty cool being out here. I was able to find a, like an old or at least it’s on the map is like a forest service cabin, I don’t think it was really in use by the Forest Service’s it’s not like a base, or it’s not like a place where they have resources or tracks. It’s just like, an old, an old built homestead almost is what it looks like out here. And it’s got to, but I think it’s kind of semi-managed and sort of protected by the National Forest Service out here. The roads are pretty good to get into it. And then it opens up into a big meadow. It’s probably. I don’t know, six or seven acres or so. And then there’s like big fencing around it made out of the small, like log pines that they dropped. And then they’d put together these like a-frames and then stack together logs on that to make these big fences that kind of stretch around the property of the house, I guess to not have it, I don’t know, trampled or whatever by but whatever out here. I think when I was walking around, I saw that there’s there seems to be like some open range cattle that share the land out here. As I was walking around, I can see some signs of it. And then I could also see, and this is where I’m not really too good at. Following what I’m seeing, I’m not sure if it’s like, like mule deer that are out there. Or if it’s elk that are out there. I know the mule deer out here, but I’m not sure if what I was seeing was from an elk or knives seemed like it would be elk. But I’m not really sure. It’s kind of cool, though. It’s cool being out here in this area. I spent a good part of the day getting down here. I’ve been trying to make a camping trip of some sort each week here through the summer. And that’s really kind of been really only one of the few things that have been. I don’t know, stress-relieving anybody else stressed this year 2020. Man, what a good time. It’s an It’s been a long couple months, it seems like, and it seems like a lot of changes and a lot of shifts and stuff for a lot of people, myself included, and just kind of the way that things go and the way that you’re able to kind of plan for the future and the way you’re able to sort of deal and figure stuff out. And yeah, it’s been kind of depressing to just sort of change up, and really I think psychologically, the more draining thing is the the lack of assurance that it’s sorting out or that any of these milestones that are out there for what we’re dealing with are our stable milestones, you know, it seems like the kind of keep moving out further and further away from us. I remember back in early, what was it like mid-March, March 15, when we had the guidelines for America come out said we were going to be locked down for two weeks a 15 day period, we’re going to get a stimulus check. And then it could last it could last with an effect as long into July or August. I remember hearing in that port now we’re here in August. It seems like it’s still honestly seems like it’s like one of the longest periods. I mean, of course, it’s obvious what I’m saying now, but it’s just the longest period in history that I think anything like this has ever occurred in this kind of pattern. I mean, we’ve had other pandemics and stuff, but I think more What I’m talking about is like the social pressure that’s sort of coming along with them with this set of circumstances that we’ve seen over the last few months maybe it’s part of an election year. A lot of countries go through periods of turmoil before their election cycle process, but as it is, I think it’s just like a lot of lot of real factors that are uncomfortable. So part of what I’ve been trying to do since I have a pretty, a pretty small Well, how do I say yeah, it’s like a pretty easy set of things that I’m up to right now. And I’d really like to expand it; I’ve been kind of frustrated that there’s not really an opportunity to do a lot more stuff, you know, like any of the weddings I would have done this summer, they’re pretty much out. any of the other work stuff I would have done to make some money is sort of up in the air. And so a lot of the stuff that I’m doing is, is sort of alternative to that, which has been really interesting, it’s been fine. It’s not been that interesting, I guess, given just the amount of pressure that’s on everything, if it was just an open period, you know, everybody got to kind of relearn some things, and we knew what it was gonna end or we knew that it was a good thing that was happening, you know, I bet everybody would have been more creative. That’s sort of what I’d heard from a lot of folks are, you know, like, I listen to a lot of radio, a lot of podcasts and stuff. I listen to a lot of podcasts from the different comics that are out there, along with a few others but, but at the beginning of all this, we were talking about, oh, yeah, we’re gonna we’re gonna write a ton we’re gonna be we’re gonna come out of this with a whole new our material of jokes to write and then a couple months into a couple of weeks into it, they’re all saying I haven’t, I haven’t even flipped open a notebook, I haven’t written anything down, I haven’t done anything creative. And I think that’s sort of a sign of and hearing from a lot of people that are out to try and do something semi creative, or even just creatively wake up and make coffee and eggs, it’s like, it’s just a drag a lot of the time and there’s been a, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that’s kind of dragging people down, and in a number of ways. So I hope everybody that does end up listening to this is, is getting through it and understands that they’re not alone in the in all the stuff that’s going on. And it’s it’s just a It’s a unique year and a lot of ways. So hello, man, I hope it’s unique. It’s unique so far into my life. So I guess I can count my blessings on that. So I’m out here and what I’ve been trying to do to kind of sort out that stress and stuff is to try and get out and get to do some more outdoor travel and some camping stuff while I have the wide opportunity to especially through the summer. I mean, that’s one of the activities that’s not restricted. Is traveling around and camping. I think I talked about that on one of those podcasts in May when we were still in the lockdown coming up to our phase one reopening. And we rock kind of trying to figure out what can we do what can we not do? What do we do with this time now that we have you know what, we can’t go to work? You know, we kind of do some stuff in town, but it’s like you can only like take walks around your block so many times or take hikes at the park so many times. So I guess it’s I have the background in it. And since I’ve been doing it for a while, I’ve been trying to take advantage of getting out once a week for an overnight trip or a two night trip to go to new places in Oregon and really trying to do a lot of scouting stuff, which I’ve enjoyed to doing some scouting stuff through the summer has been pretty cool. Where I’m really trying to go through some of these backroads I’m trying to like Mark spots in the map where there’s good campsites, which I hadn’t really done before, you know, it was a lot of places I’ve driven a lot, a lot of roads I’ve been on. Especially, you know, I backcountry roads to Forest Service roads, BLM roads, and I know a lot of good dispersed camping areas. And really, I understand the context of how to find those areas so much better now that I’m older than when I was young. I mean, when I was young, and I go camping with my dad, you know, we’d go out to Eastern Oregon, we’d find some spots. And they had known about this spot, since you know, he was a kid and he was going over there and hunting camps and stuff with his grandpa. So it’s cool for me to get to go over to those same spots and get to check out that area and stuff. But I think there’s been or at least when I was a kid, I didn’t really understand that the land, like the public land rights that you have, and really how those are organized, like how public lands are organized and what you can do on him and then sort of how it operates. I didn’t really understand the difference between national forest land and BLM land or national Parkland and state Parkland or wilderness areas, National Wildlife Refuge areas, man, there’s just so many distinctions of different things and then also just private property. So I didn’t really have a clear recollection of those things. And really, a lot of time when it’s public land, you can go on it, but there’s some things you can’t do on it like I they maybe hunt in some circumstances, like a, like a national park, or I think you can’t discharge a firearm inside a national park. But for specifically permitted events, maybe probably national wildlife refuges. I think those hunting opportunities are limited. Also though, you can still do some things in those areas. I think you have to get permitted and you have to drop tag for that location, I think is what it is. But yeah, it’s kind of interesting, sort of learning about that learning how these things go, and also finally getting some maps that you can use that you can kind of trust better. While you’re in the backcountry. I think that’s something that’s really helped me kind of understand where I can go and what I can do and I don’t know I mean, we’ve had those map books you know, like that, that 50 page or 100 page book of Oregon and you know, every page is a 25 mile map of that area is always super useful as a kind of grid out everything and show you that you know the mile by mile marking and the topography of the area. The different Little roads and stuff that even those roads, those mapmakers still got things wrong. I remember to you know, back in like, was it 2004, I think we were out in an area in Southern Oregon near the Nevada border was a Druze reservoir somewhere South a Gearhart mountain. And I remember we were on some, some little, some little road, I don’t even know if it was if it was a national forest area, I think it was just in between private and public lands, as it kind of jumped back and forth. And those pretty remote areas, all of it is just remote, desert and forest and sagebrush and Juniper. But some of it goes into like ranch land, it’s more managed, and some of it cuts back into BLM land. So as little roads sort of meander through it. But I remember being out there and noticing that the map on the page was just totally different than the map or than the other real world ground truth of where the road went. And I saw Oh, wow, yeah, you can’t really trust the maps to show you the information that you want to see. When you need it. Other times to you know, you’ll see like, Oh, hey, like it shows there’s a road right here. Good deal, we’ll take that road. Well, you know, it shows it’s on the map. So you cut down there, you get on the road, and then it’s washed out like crazy. Or it’s super bumpy and like, and just terrible, right? And but it’s the same green roads, the same label, the same marking is the road next to it that was graded and, and aren’t was that paved, right? It’s grated gravel, they put more gravel down, I think is what I’m trying to say they’ve, they’ve made it an easier going road to drive on. But then you get those washboard sections out there. I don’t know if you guys have done that, where you’re driving around in the Forest Service roads and those gravel roads. And I think it’s a natural process of erosion that occurs that creates these waves in the material. You know, as I think as a rainwater comes down, it sort of naturally over time generates these, these little ripples. And that’s the washboard effect that you get when you’re driving. That’s also the thing that kind of keeps your car sideways when you’re, you’re going a little too fast on a gravel road. So I started doing today, I think I kicked it pretty hard side or not, you know, like, it’s pretty loose on the traction, and it was starting to tip sideways in my truck. And so I slowed down and threw it into four wheel drive after that, and was able to cruise around out here pretty freely. But yeah, I wanted to talk on this podcast about hanging out in the Fremont National Forest and I just got finished with a huge thunderstorm that came through. It just really finished raining a little ago. We kind of thing when I arrived to today at this Meadows still a few hours before sunset, so I walked around and kind of went along the perimeter of the meadow and then and then I noticed that you know, I mean it’s cloudy. It’s been kind of cloudy today. And there’s been thunderheads that have been building up over the location that I’ve been ever since I kind of came over the past the Cascades had been in like a pretty solid string of a thunderheads that have sort of coalesced into big mass over the Cascades. Some of it here over the Fremont National Forest river mountains these are that I’m in, and yeah, it seems like this section in Eastern Oregon was getting hit with a good Thunder a good summer August thunderstorm today, which was kind of fun to sit through and go through. It was cool. If I got rained on pretty hard early when I was driving over. I thought I’d get out here and be a little more free of it. But it seemed like that storm kind of drifted over this way. And it was sort of drifting north from here. And yeah, there’s a new system, but man, there’s just a bunch of lightning that was coming through and huge cracks of thunder. Just big, deep rumbles. I haven’t heard Thunder like that. And in years and years, probably, you know, where it just kind of stays and like, hangs and rolls for 10 seconds. 15 seconds, it seems like you know, you just really kind of like whoa, is Can it really still be just cracking and rumbling and rolling. And, and there was enough activity and if lightning activity that was going on where you’d hear thunder. I mean, it was almost like 45 minutes there where there was just a crack and a roll of thunder almost continuously like it was an it was pretty intense. It’s It’s It’s really, I think one of the more strong lightning storms I’ve been in a while. But that’s sort of how it goes out here. When you have these higher elevations. I think I’m floating around up in the 5100 feet or so above sea level. And so it just means I’m up in the mountains where these, these thunderstorms get started, you know, they get there. They get there. I think that’s where they’ll kind of coalesce over these big mountain tops and then float over in the hot weather. I don’t really understand the weather enough to say I know how a thunderstorm starts. It doesn’t start now. I’ve just gotten cold enough. I’m trying to throw a jacket on. And now you got to live through it. I’m really camping. It’s been good but I’m gonna be out here for two nights, I think is what I’m going to do. And then tomorrow, I’ll cruise out. And I’ll try and hit some of these Forest Service roads for a bit. drive around, do some exploring mark a couple spots on the map as a, as I’m cruising around. I think that’ll be, that’ll be a good time. But then I haven’t been out here before. I think I’ve heard of a couple of friends that have been out in this area that have done some. I think they did a couple scouting trips for a hunting trip that they’re going on in the fall. I think this is an area where we’re one of my friends goes, I think they try and draw a tag for not this area. I think it’s a drainage over from here. But I think I’ve heard about this area a couple times from people talking about it. So yeah, it’s cool, it’s cool spot it was out taking pictures earlier, taking some photographs, I’ve been working mostly, probably for almost a year and a half now. I’ve been working a lot with this 17 to 40 millimeter wide angle Canon lens. And it’s a pretty inexpensive lens, and you can get it for like 400 bucks, maybe a little less, if you’re lucky. And you get it on a sale time sometimes in the fall as we’re kind of ramping down toward for Thanksgiving, I think you can get some good deals on it. But that’s it’s sort of in the the $400 range. I think sometimes maybe it’s more around five or something, but I picked it up a couple years ago when I was starting to do some real estate photography or was working for Airbnb for a while where they had hired me as a photographer to go into these Airbnb plus listings, and get a new set of photographs, I was interested in kind of learning about how specific they wanted all this, this photographs and this this really specific art style and, and you know, format of it. And that was fine. It was interesting to do for a while. But, but what was cool is that I picked up that lens to get in and do that work. But really, after that, I’ve been appreciating how much I can do with that wide-angle lens. And then you know, 40 millimeters isn’t way different than 50 millimeters. It’s certainly different for the effects of portraits and stuff but when I’m out here doing landscape stuff, and I’m trying to take pictures of a lot of this stuff is kind of sketch photos to where I’m sort of going around and midday I’m taking some photos of some different things I want some cat photos and my track and my little cooler set up in the back here. And so all that’s been good. In addition to that the the Astrophotography stuff that I can do with it, it’s pretty cool because it drops to 17 millimeters. It’s an autofocus lens, it’s a sealed lens, it’s, it’s pretty, it’s it’s pretty good and most ways and I’ve really noticed over time that I’m not as absolute of a mandate for me to be shooting at a really wide open f stop you know, if I’m shooting at a wide-open aperture, almost all my photos early on were 1.8 or, or 2.0 or two eight or something. And I would do that really because I was trying to I was really trying to get because I didn’t have very many lenses I was really trying to get as much effect out of that bouquet out of that soft background as I could. So I was really trying to lean into that and get some photos with it, and I noticed with my camera and equipment at the time that it just it just looked better. They just did look better when it was at, you know f1 eight; I think I just had that nifty 50 Nikon 50 millimeter for the longest time that’s what I did. I did my early trips on and did a lot of my portfolio building stuff on that but I’ve got a different 50 millimeter lens with me now I’ve got it on my film camera in my bag right now which I need to take out too and I’m trying to finish a roll of acti film it’s been on there for a while and I’ve enjoyed shooting it it’s cool it’s and it’s a new Canon camera to me at least I got it used on kth and spent 35 bucks on it 10 bucks to ship it and it takes a weird battery to it’s one of those 90s film cameras it has this weird it almost looks like a battery pack. This it’s like two so I was almost like to double A’s if they were a little fatter but are bonded together in this little plastic pack and then you pop that in there and shoot for a little while I guess and it runs a meter okay so I’m I’m getting by with it but I’ve noticed the film cameras stuff it’s it’s fun to have an awesome film camera it’d be cool to have a Leica and all the lenses I wanted but a lot of the time with that you know the good lenses I have this this new or like canon l glass that I get to shoot through and for film photos and for the variety of images or the variety of lenses i have i can i can do telephoto I can do prime I can do really wide-angle all with the modern digital Canon lenses that have you know chips in them that read well that meter well that make contact with or send information back and forth or at least from the lens to the camera I think that works. That works in the autofocus stuff for the digital camera. This is this is autofocus. Yeah, it’s an autofocus digital camera. It’s sending information back. It’s working. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So it’s it’s cool. Like That’s something I didn’t really have available to me for a long time. You know, I think when I’ve probably on this podcast, if you go way back in the archives, I’m talking a lot about film with a Nikon f4. You know, I mean, that just had autofocus, I was the first camera like 88 to get autofocus period. So it’s cool to have that in a more flexible way now. But what I remember talking about the past that was that I had, like, limited options with glass all the time, I didn’t really always have the lenses that I would have preferred. And so I’ve kind of made a collection of that now with this canon stuff, I got a Canon camera. And so I can throw all those lenses on and have that same flexibility that I have with my digital set. But just with this, this film body that I get to shoot a roll through, so I kind of say the film stuff for when it’s a thing that I want. But what I’ve noticed, though, for a little while, is that I miss a lot of those moments, and I ended up just having the the norm, you know, the regular digital camera with me with a bunch of my other gear. When I’ve been going out, I’ve been trying to kind of just take the camera with me, and then I’ll leave the bigger bag back at the truck. So that I’m not really carrying as much stuff with me, I’ve also started carrying, like when I’m out here in the woods and stuff I’m carrying that binocular harness with me, which is kind of cool, you can get them in different sizes, but it’s sort of like if you imagine like a backpack, but what they do is they strap on to the front, so it’s right on your chest. And what you can do is fill is put like a pair of binoculars in there. So you can pull them out and then scatter around with your binoculars, do some glasses, and then pop them back into your into your harness and then kind of carry on with whatever you want to do. But if you leave that empty without the without the binoculars, if you have a smaller camera rig, probably like a mirrorless or a Sony camera, you know, like one of those Sony, a 6000s. Man, if you were a backpacker, and you had a Sony A 6000. And this, this front carry, like binocular pack, you’d be really sad that would be like all the camera bag that you’d need. In fact, really, if I’m thinking about ever doing some, like, over, you know, some longer backpacking travel, where I just have to pack everything in a way it’s gonna be something I’m more conscious of, than I think that’s really like the way to go is I’ve kind of been thinking about it a little bit, it’s like get to get a lighter camera, or I mean, it’d be great to like carry like a 360 camera, you know, if you’re going up somewhere, those are almost nothing as it is anyway but but if you carry like an SLR or something that you want to try and do some some more controlled photography was you had something like a, an A 6000 from Sony or an a seven, seven or three or whatever it is something that size with a lens attached to it, you know, that could fit in one of these binocular hearts is harnesses and carry kind of route on your front and then you see something you would take it, pop that open right on your chest, pull it right up to your eyes, got straps on it in the harness, pull it right up to your eyes ready to shoot, and you can take photos, or take photos, you know as quick as you want to. So it’s kind of a cool process. If you’re out hiking a lot for what I’m doing. I have my binocular harness, but it’s got binoculars in it. And I’ve been kind of going around trying to do some bird watching stuff while I’m out here in so cool Hawk was posted up who’s looking at me, that’s about all I’ve seen so far. So I coyote the other day. That was cool. I’ll talk about that later that but because I had those binoculars in there, and I’ve been kind of going out on these, these shorter hikes and stuff that I’ve been trying to go around and like, just kind of watch some stuff or watch land and kind of keep an eye out. But I just had the camera on my longer strap on my side with that 17 to 40 millimeter lens. And that’s where it’s really good. And it’s been a pretty flexible kit for me to go around and take a bunch of photographs with so it’s pretty easy, pretty lightweight to work with. And I can kind of move back and forth between those things strapped around my neck, you know, it’s not everything just hanging around my neck with a lanyard. It’s all kind of put somewhere or packed in somewhere. So that’s been kind of cool. But it was good going out and taking some photos tonight, I was trying to get some of the i didn’t i didn’t get anything lightning in the camera, the lightning stone kind of past as soon as it was getting really dark enough to do like a long exposure kind of thing where I could, I could sort of catch something, something spark and otherwise, you know, you got to you got to beat the lightning bolt with your shutter finger. And that’s a pretty tricky task to do. I think that’s how they do it. You know, when you get those, you get those like magazine photos back in the day of powerful lightning bolt striking. I don’t know the center of a road or something like that. It’s what they’d show, you know, some kind of power lightning bolt, but the way that they would do that stuff is I think, I think it was like it was dark out, you know, are pretty dark out. And so they’d set the camera up for just a cycle of long exposures. And then they would just kind of let it ride, you know, so they’d have a couple seconds to expose the image to whatever you know would work. And then they would just kind of have that rolling so that when when a bolt of lightning did strike, and it would be captured and you could go through that collection of captured or you know how I say that. When a lightning bolt would strike the ground, the cam I would have already been exposing for a photograph. Because it’s just cycling the shutter on a four second exposure, let’s say something like that. And so you know, it takes a four second exposure, stops, processes for a second, takes a four second exposure stops processes for a second. So I think that’s how they did some of that stuff where they, they kind of anticipate. Alright, it’s been a couple minutes, let’s take a frame now and then it’s just going to be an event in the future. So we don’t know if it’s going to happen or not, we’re going to wait for this event in the future when we boom, see a lightning bolt. And then that light then exposes the sensor or the film and the camera. And then you’re left with an image that has that lightning bolt represented in the frame when you’re shooting on a tripod or something like that with with like a short cycle, long exposure. And I thought that was pretty cool. But I didn’t really get a chance to get all that stuff set up before the storm kind of passed me by I did get a lot of cool handheld stuff that was that’s great if the thunderheads and stuff. And really unfortunately, just in the location that I’m at a lot of that and I guess maybe for the better. But that lightning storm didn’t pass right over my head, it was still a little ways away. So I could see the lightning bolts cracking through the trees can out in the distance more, a few they stretched across the sky pretty good too. It’s just a big old, you know, from from east to west. It was like a big old chunk of boulders crack all the way across the sky. It was cool. So I got photos of the thunderheads, the sunset, the the big field out here, it’s cool. It’s a nice area. But I was also thinking about some of the other stuff that I want to be doing tomorrow. So I’m out in the Fremont National Forest, I’m going to be heading, I think, maybe south from here, and I’m going to try and explore a couple of areas that are still open. Or I guess it’s all open publicly, this is like a pretty large contiguous section of national forest land here. And really, like that’s a big part of Oregon overall, right? It’s like 53%, public lands. It’s cool. Yeah, if you look at a map, you’ll see the cities and you’ll seem like the highways and stuff. But if you have the right map, it’ll show you where the BLM land is and where the different national forests are. And it’s cool, this whole area, the Northwest is just, there’s a lot of public land that you get to use. And there’s a lot of open area that you get to go to and, and yeah, now that I’ve got a good map of the outdoor off-road, roads and some of the terrain and stuff with some good notes, and I’m able to kind of move around and get out to a lot more places than I had before. So it’s been cool. The app that I’m using is the on x off road app; it’s, I think 2999 a year. And so pitch that out, picked up this app, and then you can download offline, these, these really detailed off road maps that are supposed to show you all the trails, you know, even just walking trails, all the roads, all of the like the pieces of information you’d need for kind of moving around in the backcountry and really as surprising as it is as remote as a lot of these places are people go here, you know, it’s it’s also public land is managed by the the forest department forest Forest Service. Yeah, I think a lot of this does managed by the Forest Service, the BLM stuffs managed by the BLM. And that’s why these roads are as good as they are or maintained. And that’s why I like when trees are down on these mountain roads, you know, someone has to go through at the beginning of the year and cut all those out, rip them out filling the potholes, all that sort of stuff. So all these areas are, are known about and you know, kind of managed in a pretty significant way. In fact, I think, more so to come in the future. I think they just announced yesterday or the day before that they’ve passed the great American outdoors Act, which I really don’t know the first thing about or, or what it does or doesn’t do or what it puts in or leaves out. But I think part of my understanding is that it’s supposed to change some of the funding mechanisms that go into supporting the the maintenance of these public lands that are out here across the country, but really significantly out here in the western states. So it’s, it’s pretty cool. I think, before that it was like, well, we should spend, you know, X amount of money, but there’s a more important place for that money to go. So it wasn’t like a guaranteed amount. Sort of what I understand, so if I understand it correctly, there’s like I think they’ve said $3 billion a year of mandated funding for projects. I think here in the backcountry, BLM land, Forest Service land and like national wildlife refuges and stuff so pretty cool, but yeah, I think that’s gonna, well, maybe we’ll see a change in that. I think it’s supposed to better fund the operations of BLM and forest service people as they’re going through. And trying to get these areas ready for, for the public to be using more regularly. So it’s cool. I think it’ll mean a lot over the next few years, or what maybe we’ll see how it, how it kind of transforms some of the way that these these areas are managed. I think maybe it’s more for mining, I probably shouldn’t even speculate. I’m not sure at all. But it’s pretty cool. I’m excited about being out here and doing some camping and stuff dealing with this thunderstorm. I think it’s one of those things whereby the morning, you know, it’s going to be or at least I was looking at the weather, it should be mostly cloudy, partly cloudy, mostly sunny tomorrow for a while. So I think that’s pretty cool. I’m excited to be hanging out, do some cabin stuff, do some podcasting. I’m in the back of my truck right now. Like I was saying it was rain in early after this thunderstorm. So I got that canopy on my truck. And I’m nice and dry, nice warm, kind of feels like I’m just inside somewhere. So it’s, it’s a cool cool rig, having the four wheel drive, having the canopy on the back, having your staff and your sleeping area. Just kind of set it back there. And I’m ready to go. So I’ve been having a good time being out here, and it’s been pretty good. Pretty good trip so far. I so appreciate you guys checking out this podcast from me. I’m gonna do a couple more podcasts while I’m out here on this camping trip. And I’ll I’ll try and try and set up a little backlog of them on my website. I think it’ll be a good idea. Now I kind of take the breaks and stuff. I’m sure no one no one keeps listening when it when it is there. But hey, if you listen to this and the podcast, shoot me an email time for the plugs. It’s Billy Newman photo.com. If you want to check out my website, see some of my photographs, check out more podcasts that I’ve done, or books that I’ve tried to put together which is maybe what I’m going to try and do out here to try and get some photographs for another good book. That Yeah, Billy Newman photo comm you can check me out there. That’s where all my focus is going these days write me an email, there’s a forum they actually want to get in touch with me. And always good to hear from people, I suppose. So thanks a lot for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. appreciate you listening back