You have some pretty awesome shots here Ken. With your permission, I would like to play with the grader shot and see if I can work on the background a bit.
That was a hand held shot that I was trying to compose without annoying power lines and the asphalt road.
Here is another attempt.
Now this shot was my very first attempt at bracketing. I placed the camera on top of a post for stability and with rapid fire and AE bracketing set, I took 2 shots at different exposures and over layed them in the camera. Is this the same as HDR?