Best Photos of 2018: Big Pictures

Lots of time outdoors this year. Sky, water, trees, sand are more of a living room to us than our, you know, living room. It's good to get out into places where there aren't any walls around you. 

Cheryl started the year with knee replacement surgery. Two weeks later, she walked her first mile on the new knee and never looked back. 

Okay, so yes, some of the place we went did have walls. They were still cool. 

How this lone tree managed to grow in by itself in Lake Mattamuskeet is kind of a mystery to me. There are a lot of islands on the lake, and trees in the water near the shore, but this has to be the loneliest tree ever. 

We were on a bridge on the Hillsborough Riverwalk and happened to look straight down to find this deer having a snack. 

This is the first year we've had mountain bikes and they let us go places our old bikes couldn't take us. But when I hit this "bridge" on the Eagle Spur trail I found out just how far my sense of adventure could take me. This far. No further. I turned back rather than trying to ride across or wade through slime. 

Here we didn't even have a bridge!

This is from the first snowstorm of the year, when Cheryl was still recovering from surgery. I think it's just the trees in my front yard.

We saw more dolphins this year than any other year I remember. Getting a good picture is almost impossible. If I'm on a kayak, I'm bobbing too much to hold the camera steady, and if I'm on the beach even with my maximum zoom all I get are small bumps in the water. Still, this one isn't bad.