Whenever we get out into nature, we are often surprised by something unexpected. Sometimes it can be as simple as sighting an unexpected animal, but other times it is something more dramatic. This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is Surprise, so we chose a few photos that remind us of how fascinating nature can be.

We were touring an old church fortress in Romania on an extremely cold day and took several photos of the hallways as we walked through the labyrinth of corridors. After we returned home and went through our pictures, we had several photos with ghostly images. We did not see any of the fog-like images while we were actually touring the church, but obviously our camera captured the frozen air even though it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. If you use your imagination, you can potentially even imagine it to be a ghost instead of a natural phenomena.

One of the things that we visited when we were in Chennai, India, was a location called Tiger Cave. It was unearthed after the horrible tsunami of 2004. To think that something so amazing can be uncovered from a violent act of nature is truly an interesting contradiction.

When we were in Iceland last February, we drove out along the coast, which was frozen and beautiful. Then, suddenly, the ground thawed and we were surrounded by lava rocks and there was not a flake of snow to be found.