So yesterday I visited the Botanical Gardens in Bellevue.  In hindsight this was a silly day to go as it was over 95 degrees outside.  I also very cleverly chose not to put on any sun screen and I have one of those bodies that burns really easily.  So like I said, dumb idea.  The gardens themselves cover 53 acres in the middle of Bellevue city and contain cultivated gardens, restored woodlands and natural wetlands.

As it was really hot I kept away from the open gardens with all the flower beds, I suspect that the direct sunlight would have been pretty harsh in the pictures and wouldn’t have looked good (it very rarely does) so I kept to the woodland trails.

As I was walking around I saw a sign for the new “Ravine Experience”.  I had no idea what this was but as I was walking under huge firs and cedars I figured it was safe to check it out.  The trail took me down a number of hills and I won’t lie, I was dreading the walk back to the car as it was going to be up some pretty big hills.  And remember I’m walking with a pretty heavy camera bag and a tripod.

Along the way I passed a few other hikers who said hello, but pretty much the gardens were empty.  Eventually I found out what the “Ravine Experience” was.

The gardens had added a really cool suspension bridge over a ravine.  The bridge was 150 feet long and about 5 feet wide.  The ravine was around 100 feet deep so you are relatively high up.  Of course once I reached the bridge I grabbed the camera and got ready to take some pictures, and then the masses arrived, family after family appearing from nowhere started crossing the bridge and the whole thing was swinging.  I don’t mind that really as you have to have patience for this hobby, but then a couple stopped on the bridge, looked at me and just decided to make me wait 10 minutes!

Eventually everyone left and I had the area to myself.  I took a number of different shots, some of the whole bridge, some from the front getting everything in, some from the side getting a different perspective and they all looked nice.  But my favorites were shots like the one I’m posting below.  For this one I focused on one of the suspension cables and selected a very narrow depth of field so a majority of the bridge fell out of focus.

I loved this look when I got home, it’s kind of different but you know what you’re looking at.  I’m sure I’ll post others of the bridge in the future so this was definitely worth the walk and heat, although I was a total mess when I got back to the car, fortunately I have no picture of that!

Carter saw Abi on the trampoline yesterday and got all jealous, so today he did a straddle jump too.