I thought I’d better at least post one photo from our Caribbean trip so I remember we went, haha! This is one of two mountainous volcanic spires on the island of Saint Lucia. The two together are called The Pitons. We hiked through a forest and up some steep terrain to get this shot!
We cruised around the Caribbean for our Christmas holiday. We visited Puerto Rico, Saint Maarten, Saint Lucia, Barbados, Martinique, and Saint Kitts & Nevis. It was hot and humid, even in December, but so fun!
Have a terrific day and I hope you do or learn something NEW today!
Read all books by a certain author (I think my best shot at doing this is reading all of Susan Meissner’s books).
Travel challenges:
I already have my travel challenges ongoing. Visiting 100 waterfalls and all of the National Parks. We’ll be doing quite a bit of traveling this year, so I’m sure it will be easy to add to these lists, but here are a few marked for this year:
Visit Acadia NP, New River Gorge NP, Indiana Dunes NP, Cuyahoga Valley NP, Shenandoah NP and Gateway Arch NP.
And of course, visiting Iguazu Falls is happening this year. Yay!
Physical challenges:
Do another (or multiple) 30-day steps challenge (might be easy as we’re hiking to waterfalls!).
Do a 30-day yoga challenge
Ride on 20 (NEW-to-you) bike trails.
And lastly, what am I into???
Junk journals and art journals! I LOVE looking on Pinterest at creative art journals and watching videos about making junk journals. I’ve got one of each started (one art journal and one junk journal). My plan is for the junk journal to be vintage looking and I’ll be answering questions from a book my son gave me a few years ago called, “Tell me your story, MOM”. The art journal will be more vibrant and I will do some decoupage, watercolor, digital art, and other types of art. I created all of the images in this post with AI (Midjourney). I will use the image above as a focal point in one of my collages. That might seem like cheating, but anything goes in my journals, haha!
That’s it for my 2025 plans. My interests might change next week and I might be into something totally NEW and different! I’ll let you know. Maybe sometime I should do a blogging challenge and try to update this site a bit more regularly, haha! Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic day and that you get to learn or do something NEW today! Take care!
I learned something NEW today and thought I’d share. I was listening to Kim Klassen‘s podcast today and she mentioned her Cosmos cluster. I had never heard of the Cosmos site. I understand it’s similar to Pinterest where you can put images on boards called Clusters. I went there because she said she posted the quote below there (which I thought was excellent!). The quote was too long to add to my fall aspen tree photo, so I found another quote on her page that was fitting and which all photographers should strive to do: “Take notice of what light does – to everything”.
Anyway, below is the quote I was originally trying to find on Kim’s cluster. I love it. It’s so true!
“Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Fantasizing about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.
Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.
The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.” (Source)
What do you think? I know there’s usually some necessary prep work for “the thing”, but overall, I think this quote is spot-on. I hope you have a fantastic day and that you get to learn or do something NEW today!
I love the start of a NEW week, a NEW month or a NEW year! How about you? As Gretchen Rubin says, the calendar can be a catalyst. She even created a Calendar of Catalysts (link here if you’re interested).
I thought I’d blog about my goals for November. That will keep me accountable, right!?! I always try to challenge myself in a few different areas such as physical, spiritual, intellectual, social, emotional, financial, etc. So, here are my 3 November challenges:
Just this morning, I learned about the Action For Happiness site from Deb’s World blog. I thought this would be awesome, because as you know, I LOVE trying NEW things! Here’s their November Calendar. I’ll report back at the end of the month on how I did!
I’d better go and start getting some steps in! Take care and have a lovely day. I hope you get to learn or do something NEW today!
I promised to post a few more photos of the beautiful scenery we saw while visiting Glacier National Park. We thought if we visited after Labor Day, there would be fewer people. Well….if that was fewer people, I’d hate to go in peak season!!! Wowza, that’s a popular place! Maybe everyone had the same idea as we did?!?
A trip isn’t successful without shooting some tree art:
Our next trip isn’t until December. Can I survive??? :o)
Have a terrific day and I hope you do or learn something NEW today!
It’s update time! I get to cross Glacier National Park off our National Parks bucket list and add multiple waterfalls to my 100 Waterfalls Bucket List.
We visited Glacier National Park last week. We were thrilled to see the northern lights while we were there! We had a terrific time hiking and biking, eating huckleberry pie, huckleberry ice cream and huckleberry bear claw pastries! The weather in the 60s was perfect hiking weather. It was an excellent week!
I officially added 3 waterfalls to my waterfall bucket list, but we saw multiple random waterfalls. For instance, while driving on Going to the Sun Road, we saw water pouring over rocks several times.
Here’s my official three:
Baring Falls:
St Mary Falls (someone needs to remove that random log that obstructs the view, right! :o):
And here’s Virginia Falls:
I’ll post more photos of the beautiful scenery of Glacier National Park in the next few days.
Here’s the updated NP list. 26 down, 37 to go!
LIST OF US NATIONAL PARKS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER (63 total)
Acadia National Park {done}
Arches National Park {done}
Badlands National Park
Big Bend National Park
Biscayne National Park {done}
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park {done}
Bryce Canyon National Park {done}
Canyonlands National Park {done}
Capitol Reef National Park {done}
Carlsbad Caverns National Park
Channel Islands National Park
Congaree National Park
Crater Lake National Park
Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park {done}
Denali National Park and Preserve
Dry Tortugas National Park
Everglades National Park {done}
Gates of the Arctic National Park
Gateway Arch National Park
Glacier National Park {done}
Glacier Bay National Park
Grand Canyon National Park {done}
Grand Teton National Park {done}
Great Basin National Park {done}
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
Great Smoky Mountains National Park {done}
Guadalupe Mountains National Park
Haleakala National Park
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park {done}
Hot Springs National Park
Indiana Dunes National Park
Isle Royale National Park
Joshua Tree National Park {done}
Katmai National Park and Preserve
Kenai Fjords National Park
Kings Canyon National Park {done}
Kobuk Valley National Park
Lake Clark National Park
Lassen Volcanic National Park {done}
Mammoth Cave National Park
Mesa Verde National Park {done}
Mount Rainier National Park
National Park of American Samoa
New River Gorge National Park
North Cascades National Park
Olympic National Park
Petrified Forest National Park
Pinnacles National Park
Redwood National Park {done}
Rocky Mountain National Park {done}
Saguaro National Park {done}
Sequoia National Park {done}
Shenandoah National Park
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Virgin Islands National Park
Voyageurs National Park
White Sands National Park
Wind Cave National Park
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
Yellowstone National Park {done}
Yosemite National Park {done}
Zion National Park {done}
Have a great day! I hope you do or learn something NEW today!
Happy Monday! It’s high time I posted (cuz it’s been over a month!) Yikes! I remember thinking if I paid for WordPress instead of having ads on my site, that would lead me to post regularly…to make it “worth” it! How’s that working for me?? I clearly need to be more intentional!
Nevertheless, here I am, and here’s some miscellany to share:
We had a family get-together and rode ATVs to this beautiful waterfall. So I’ll update my 100 Waterfall Bucket List!
Speaking of waterfalls…my ultimate bucket list waterfall to see is Iguazu Falls, and it WILL happen! We’ve booked our trip for early next year! I’m SO excited. Here are some Google images of Iguazu Falls:
Even more exciting is that I’m finally a Grandma! Yay! I haven’t asked permission to post any photos, so that will have to wait.
Here’s what I’ve been reading lately. And when I say “reading” I mean mostly listening to (on commutes to work)! My yearly GoodReads challenge is 75 books and I’m on track to reach that challenge. I’ve read some really good books this year. I’ve never really wanted to read everything from any particular author before, but I’ve decided I’ll read all of Susan Meissner’s books. Wish me luck…there are about 30. If I get tired of them, I’ll abandon that idea! :o)
That’s probably enough miscellany for now. The other stuff is too boring to share (the depressing process of getting decking bids…why is trex decking SO expensive?!) Travel planning is fun, but it’s hard to wait…I just wanna GO GO GO! The fires are making air quality not great. But I’m loving the beautiful summer flowers everywhere! I think I’ll go for a bike ride and enjoy the lovely yards in my area.
Have a great day! I hope you do or learn something NEW today!
Happy Tuesday! When I saw this week’s Monochrome Madness theme, I knew I’d have to post this photo of this lonely road we recently traveled on. It was a hazy morning…you can barely see the mountain in the background. Just to the left of this road was this scene:
I’m here (again) to update my national parks bucket list. It seems like I’ve only been posting about this bucket list lately! Oh well, I’ll try to post about other NEW stuff soon. We visited Great Basin National Park recently. Who knew we’d be hiking through snow in June!?! Not a ton of snow, but still…
I loved hiking to these alpine lakes, enjoying the tree art, and touring Lehman Caves.
I hope you all have a terrific day and do or learn something NEW today!
LIST OF US NATIONAL PARKS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER (63 total)
A few weeks ago, we traveled to Colorado and hiked to a few waterfalls. So, I’m updating my 100 Waterfall Bucket List. I’m up to 58. Lesson learned though: Don’t go in May if you want to hike to more waterfalls, because there’s still too much snow. Many of the trails were closed. Bummer!
The photo above is Cascade Falls in Ouray, Colorado. Below is Box Cañon Falls, in Ouray.
Over the mountain from Ouray is Telluride, Colorado. That’s where we planned to do more hiking, but at least we could see Bridal Veil Falls from afar.
We enjoyed these dramatic clouds while we traveled to our son and DIL’s graduation.
That’s it for today’s photo dump. :o)
I hope you have a terrific day and do or learn something NEW!
