While flying back from Washington State to Dallas a couple months ago, our plane went right by Mount Ranier. I whipped out my Canon 5D Mark II and snapped a whole bunch of photos of the magnificent landmark, and I thought I would share them with you guys in case anyone wanted to use one for a desktop wallpaper or whatever. I hadn’t posted these photos when I posted 101 Photos from Seattle, Washington, so here you go!

I currently have the one you see here to the right set as my wallpaper and I love it. For those of you who don’t know, Mount Ranier is a volcano and it’s the tallest mountain on the west coast. The US National Parks has a Web site on Mount Ranier so you can learn more if you are so inclined to visit.

Thank you Wikipedia for the following description:

Mount Rainier is an active stratovolcano (also known as a composite volcano) in Pierce County, Washington, located 54 miles (87 km) southeast of Seattle. It towers over the Cascade Range as the most prominent mountain in the contiguous United States and Cascade Volcanic Arc at 14,411 feet (4,392 m).

The mountain and the surrounding area are protected within Mount Rainier National Park. With 26 major glaciers and 35 square miles (91 km2) of permanent snowfields and glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states. The summit is topped by two volcanic craters, each over 1,000 feet (300 m) in diameter with the larger east crater overlapping the west crater. Geothermal heat from the volcano keeps areas of both crater rims free of snow and ice, and has formed the world’s largest volcanic glacier cave network within the ice-filled craters. A small crater lake about 130 by 30 feet (40 m × 9.1 m) in size and 16 feet (5 m) deep, the highest in North America with a surface elevation of 14,203 feet (4,329 m), occupies the lowest portion of the west crater below more than 100 feet (30 m) of ice and is accessible only via the caves.

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I’m in Washington State for the next few days in Bellevue, the home of Microsoft, for the Microsoft Hosting Summit. This is an invitation only event for executives in the hosting industry, so it’s pretty much a whose who from around the globe.

As usual, I’m pretty tied up at events like this, but I used my free time today to run to downtown Seattle and try and do a little sightseeing and photography. So, to be a little more clear, that pretty much means that I went to do photography.

For those of you who don’t know this about me, I really experience a place by photographing it. I find that when I’m looking for a photo, I tend to see a lot more detail in everything around me. This can drive other people around me insane sometimes because I’m perfectly happy staying in one spot a lot longer than they are. But when I’m all by myself, this doesn’t tend to be a problem.
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Thanks to Peggy for sending me this video of a stunt pulled off by Improv Everywhere, whose slogan is “we cause scenes”. The setup is that 207 people all walking through Grand Central Station in New York all freeze in place at the exact same second, and hold still for a full 5 minutes.

Most interestingly, it’s inspired people in 28 other cities in 13 countries to stage their own freeze mission. Thousands people worldwide in places like Romania, Poland, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand have come together to make time stop for five short minutes. Below is a roundup of all of the videos of the various global freeze events.
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