okay... tweaked the hdr file a bit in photoshop.. it's got some decent preset filters for hdr's.  Doesn't look quite as washed out now.  It's rendering REALLY fast.  Nearly 400k s/s on my computer.. which would translate to about 1000k s/s on Brad's box..... It looks pretty nice.  Can't really tell about the jaggedy trees because there's only a partial of one tree in the scene.  Overall, it's looking fairly nice.  I'm sure I'll be doing better ones when my Vue skills and hdr-production skills improve.