f8 and a coffee break....

Love at first sight… My wife... my kids…my grandkids and Gorman Falls (in that order)!

Gorman Falls. I’ve heard about it and I really have wanted to visit it many times over the years. Just never was able to get a 'rountoit'. Yeppers... I’ve seen the photos and read all of the articles about how it was such an incredibly beautiful spot in Texas but I just needed to see for myself especially now that I’ve relapsed…. I’m a “photojunkie” again... I'm hooked on photography and I need to take pictures...

Well now that I am getting older and wiser… okay older, I decided that there was no time like the present to find out for myself if everything that I’ve heard about the place really was true or just another marketing ploy to separate me from my hardly earned money.

So, since my beautiful wife and I were planning to head to Austin for the Statesman Cap 10K race (shameless plug for next years race) on Sunday April the 11^th, we… okay, I, decided that we might as well head on down to central Texas a day early and check out this place called Gorman Falls to see if it was worth a full weekend camping / photography trip at some point in the near future. We could only stay a few hours as we were due in Austin to pickup our race packets and spend some quality time with some not so distant relatives on Saturday.

I checked the internet and quickly booked us a room at a very nice motel in Copperas Cove for Friday night.

Note to readers… all two of you… Please check out my wife’s blog for details. She’s a much better story teller than I.

BTW – Our visit with the relatives was great (as always). We had a fantastic home cooked pasta meal and a great time catching up with everyone. Thank you Mary and Terry… Okay… ready for another shameless plug… “Miller’s Auto Supply, Jonestown, Texas for most, if not all of your automotive needs”.

4:30 AM on Saturday morning comes way too early if you ask me but the golden hour only comes around twice in a single day and I only had one chance this Saturday to see the Falls during that special time and I did not want to miss it.

We got dressed, stopped at the home of the Golden Arches for a quick breakfast and much needed coffee and headed west to Colorado Bend State park… home of Gorman Falls. With the help of my magnificent navigator… no, not a GPS…you see we do things the old fashion way… my wife reads the map, we found the park just about the time that the horizon was beginning to turn that indescribable color of orange, pink, purple and yellow or as I call it… “pinurpellow”. We found a great parking spot right next to a small patch of Texas Bluebonnets and an outhouse. I liked the Bluebonnets but my wife really liked the outhouse… know what I mean guys… after all it had been about an hour and a half since coffee at the arches so I really couldn’t blame her.

I don’t intend to bore you with all of the details about the rocky trail down to the Gorman Falls or how incredible that morning was… I’ll save that for next time. But I want to bore you with this… we fell in love with the place as soon as we saw “Gorman Falls” or as I now refer to it as “The Garden of Eden” in Texas. And we are going back for an extended camping / photography / hiking trip in the very NEAR future… I’ve already made the reservations.

Below are a few of the photos that I was able to grab in the couple of hours that we spent in awe of the falls.

For any of you folks that like the technical details…

Camera: Nikon D80 / MB-D80 / AF-S Nikkor 18-135mm 3.5-5.6

Tripod: Manfrotto ProMaster 1n Tripod / ProMaster Ball head

ISO: 100

F stop / Shutter Speed: f8 and a coffee break….

Rick Boales