Wednesday, May 15, 2019

The tripod I use for my spotting scope finally died yesterday. It's a heavy steel tripod with a push-button type operation to extend and retract the legs. One of the legs will not retract. This has happened before and, after taking it apart at home, I was able to fix it, but parts had broken and it didn't extend automatically any more. You had to pull it out. Now it won't go back in.

So, after more than 20 years of service, I decided it's time to replace it. They make a new version of this same tripod, so today I drove to Bozeman to see if any camera stores had one. No good. Nobody has it, so I'll have to order it when I get home. I have another tripod I can use until then. It's not as well suited for this job - it's a lot lighter, so it's not as steady and it has a bigger mounting plate that interferes with the gear head - but it works.

In the meantime, I saw this moose early before I left: