Tag Archives: photography

a NEW photo challenge entry and other miscellany

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Happy Friday! It’s been a while since I joined in on a photo challenge. So, when I saw this week’s #362 Sports, Sporting Events, and Fun Games challenge at Wandering Dawgs, I thought of a fun event we recently attended and wanted to join the challenge. This baseball game was played at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The players dressed up in vintage baseball uniforms and played with rules from 1867. That means NO baseball mitts (they weren’t invented yet), and many other slight variations from current baseball rules. It was a lot of fun!

And other miscellaneous NEW experiences:

Thanks to reading Travel Means Life, I was “in the know” when we saw several Quilt Gardens in Indiana.

Then, in Genesee County, New York, spotting quilt blocks on barns, houses, or sheds etc. is a thing! There is even a website about it {HERE}. Are there any other quilt related I-Spy-type hunts that I don’t know about??? :o)

And lastly, I thought I’d list the random museums we’ve visited in the last few weeks….just so you know that we do more than hike to waterfalls and visit national parks, haha!

We’ve visited:

Jell-O museum! (Did you know there’s such a place?!?)

The Corning Glass Museum

The Safe Haven Holocaust Museum

The Detroit Art Museum

The world’s largest Christmas store! (Bronner’s)

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Town of Stafford’s Historical Museum

The George Eastman Museum and House Tour

I think that’s enough for now. I gotta go research more NEW things to do, see, or learn about! Have a great day!

another NEW update to my waterfalls bucket list

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Happy Monday! Boy oh boy, if you want to visit waterfalls, the Finger Lakes Region of New York is where to go! We hiked to different waterfalls nearly every day last week! I’ve added 12 NEW waterfalls to my 100 Waterfalls Bucket List! Only 20 to go until 100!

To be clear, I’m not counting some we attempted to see. Some were duds – hardly any water at all (it is August, after all. Namely Aunt Sarah’s Falls, Hector Falls, and Shequaga Falls were the duds :o). But most were fantastic! Here are a few photos.

The top photo is Rainbow Falls at Watkins Glen State Park in New York. The best part of that hike is that you can see many little falls on your hike (something like 19 in a span of 2 miles), like these little ones:

Ithaca Falls near Cornell University was a good one:

A favorite is the Middle Falls at Letchwork State Park in New York:

Although the Upper Falls at Letchworth were great too!

The hike up Stony Brook Creek in Stony Brook State Park was a nice (and a good workout!). It is a well-maintained trail with rock or wooden steps placed at the steep areas. I Googled how many steps there were. Here’s what my friend Google told me: “Stony Brook State Park has approximately 800 stairs, though a specific count is difficult as trails are a mix of stone, wooden, and dirt steps. The trails, particularly the Gorge Trail and West Rim Trail, are known for their many steps, with the West Rim Trail’s section sometimes called the “thousand steps”. We hiked up the gorge trail and came back on the West Rim trail. Here’s a photo from one of the Stony Brook trail waterfalls:

I hope you have a great week and get to do or learn something NEW!

visiting NEW botanical gardens

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We’ve been visiting several NEW (to us) botanical gardens on our travels. I can’t help myself from snapping photo after photo of the lovely blooms or foliage! And if they have a butterfly or bumble bee on them – extra bonus!

This tree in the Cornell Botanical Gardens caught our eye. The tree had a rectangle cut out of it with a wind chime inserted in the trunk, but it was still growing! We asked a gardner about it, and she said a few years ago, they had to cut down the tree, because it was a safety risk, but this year, it is obviously sprouting new growth! If you saw my “New thursday thought” post from yesterday, this tree would also apply…where new growth appears, so does hope!

Here is a link to an article about cutting the tree and inserting the wind chime {Link HERE}. You’ll see the photo of the tree looks vastly different!

I have many more photos of blooms, but they might have to be uploaded another day.

I hope you get to do or learn something NEW today!

more NEW bucket list updates

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Happy Monday! In my book, it’s a pretty great week when I can mark off items from two different bucket lists. Today I’m updating my National Parks bucket list and my 100 Waterfalls bucket list! Woohoo!

Recently, we visited Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. What a unique national park! It’s basically in the middle of some towns and very close to a large city – Cleveland, Ohio. It was made a national park because the beauty of the area was being threatened by development. We rode our bikes on the Erie-Ohio tow path, then made our way to this awesome waterfall. I’ve wanted to go here ever since Nancy at Two Trails One Road recommended it! It did not disappoint! Thanks, Nancy! We rode further on the tow path and saw this awesome bridge. I believe it’s called Station Road Bridge:

After lunch, we hiked to Blue Hen Falls. However, after visiting Brandywine Falls, these falls were a bit underwhelming (especially after a semi-difficult hike), but hey, any waterfall is worth it in my opinion! I’m thinking perhaps there might be more water in the spring rather than the hot days of August!

On the drive back to our campground, we stopped in the cute little town of Chagrin Falls. We bought an ice cream cone and enjoyed their falls right in their downtown.

Toward the end of the week, we hiked the short distance to Minnehaha Falls and Cascade Falls in Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park. The Minnehaha Falls has a glass bridge that you can walk over the large gorge that the waterfall flows through. Again, I’m thinking there would likely be more water in the springtime than there was in August. But I’m counting them both toward my 100 waterfalls!

So, the bucket list stats are at 29 out of 63 national parks and 68 out of 100 waterfalls. We’re getting there. Being retired will likely speed up the progress!

Have a great day! I hope you learn or do something NEW today!

a few NEW lighthouse photos

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Happy Thursday! In honor of National Lighthouse Day, I thought I’d post a few photos of lighthouses that I’ve seen in the last two weeks – and update my Lighthouse List.

The top two photos are of the William Livingstone lighthouse on Belle Isle, Michigan.

And this one is the Milliken State Park Lighthouse, which is close by – just across the Detroit River from Belle Isle.

I’m not sure I’ll count these as “visited” because I was so far away. But these are the Cleveland Harbor Main Entrance Lighthouse and the Cleveland Harbor East Breakwater Lighthouse – taken from across the harbor. Then again, maybe I’ll count them. I just learned they are privately owned, so you can’t visit them without permission. These photos will have to suffice.

Have a terrific day! I hope you get out and learn or do something NEW today!

a NEW National Park checked off my bucket list

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Happy Wednesday!

We recently visited our 28th (out of 63) National Park. We explored Indiana Dunes National Park. The weather was perfect. The crowds were small. Yay!

I’m not sure if drones are permitted at this national park (probably not), but there are some impressive photos posted online which were taken from above at some point. Here are a few of mine taken from ground-level. Maybe I should look into getting a drone, haha! (????)

35 more parks to go!

I hope you have a lovely day and learn or do something NEW today!

more NEW photos from South America

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Happy Wednesday!

Last week’s post was entirely dedicated to photos of Iguazu Falls, but we were blessed to experience more than just the falls. Here’s a few more NEW photos from our South America trip:

Above is the Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse in the Beagle Channel near Ushuaia, Argentina. I’ll have to add it to my list of lighthouses. (Does it count if we didn’t go into the lighthouse?…or even step foot on the island? As you see, the island was pretty crowded with cormorants and sea lions! Yep, I’m totally counting it!)

The photo above is Amalia Glacier and the photos below are glaciers that I don’t know the names of. We traveled through Glacier Alley to see these.

Here is a colony of Magellanic penguins. We watched the documentary March of the Penguins the night before this excursion (even though we knew we wouldn’t be seeing Emperor penguins). We learned so much. Penguins are amazing!

South America’s climate is so varied! We went from seeing glaciers with temps in the 30s to tropical forests with temps in the 90s with high humidity! On our way to the falls, our tour guide encouraged us to look for toucans but told us they were pretty rare and it’s like winning the lottery if we see one. Well, we saw three! Two in one tree and another in a different area. (Maybe the guide was exaggerating?? :o)

I gotta get me a better camera lens that can get me closer!!!

You know I love me a good list! I have a waterfall list, a national parks list, and a lighthouse list. Maybe I’d better start a bird watching list! Here’s a plush crested jay I could add to that list.

That’s about enough NEW photos for today. We’re busy planning our next NEW adventures. I hope you have a great day and are able to do or learn something NEW to you, today!

a couple of NEW quotes

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Happy Friday!

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!

NEW photos from Glacier National Park

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Happy Wednesday!

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!