Has anybody seen my mom? I can’t find her and she’s been missing for at least 3 days. Maybe more!
I’ve looked and looked in all her favorite places. You know, like in her bed, and on her sofa, and in her favorite chair and at the dinner table.
Maybe she’s lost in one of my parks! I’d drive over there to look but I don’t have a driver’s license!
I asked my dad, and he said not to worry, he says mom is fine, she’s just taking some “Penny-free time” for herself.
Penny-free?!?!?!
What the heck does that even mean?
Anyway dad said to tell you all not to worry, and that mom will get that Walktober collection post done as soon as she gets home. I figured you guys would want to know.
Meanwhile I’m going to sleep in her bed next to my dad every night. Maybe if I make her jealous she’ll come home to us.
I’m headed for a short visit with family down in Alabama. Which means I’m driving through farm land. Lots and lots of farm land. I’m beginning to think you could throw a dart at a map of the US Midwest and there’d be a great barn to photograph right there.
A rest stop floor.
Yep, everywhere I look I think, “I need to come back here, find a campground, and spend a couple days hunting barns.” Sort of like looking for places to shoot the Milky Way, but I’d get to be out with the camera in the daylight instead of tromping around in the dark.
Yesterday’s hotel carpet.
Just before I crossed from Michigan into Indiana I saw a barn out of the corner of my eye…and since there was an exit right there I took it.
These aren’t the barns I saw from the freeway, but they made me smile.
I never did find my way back to the barn that caught my attention, but I found this one.
Not the one I was looking for, but it is beautiful.
I thought it was beautiful, the white of the barn and the gold of the tree.
And, while going around the country block to find my way back to the freeway I found this one…
More a corn crib and a shed than a barn.
….and this one.
Used to match the tractor, I’m sure.
AND, my best find on that little side trip was this:
Just sitting in a field near the road.
I LOVE it. Old trucks rank right up there with old barns in my book.
And just so you can enjoy a little more fall color, this was at the last rest stop before I stopped for the night near Louisville KY.
There’s still lots of color down here.
Tomorrow I hope to get all the way to the lake. We’ll see. It will depend on whether I take any more barn hunting side trips.
What are the odds I make it all the way without straying?
A year or so ago Karma, over at Karma’s When I Feel Like It, suggested we work on getting 4 seasons of an image from a single location. That means it’s a year long project, one you have to be conscious of as the seasons change. It requires some planning.
I knew when I saw this location that I had found my spot. Penny agreed.
Our first visit to this part of Penny’s park was in November of 2023, so technically this image is late fall. Or early winter.
And then I waited for some snow to fly, and we went back. Snow made it officially winter, at least in my mind. Penny said snow makes everything more fun.
It wasn’t long until winter gave way to spring. Spring was so pretty over in Penny’s park.
And then it was full blown summer, hot and muggy, but still fun.
I could hardly wait for fall, and I wasn’t disappointed. Penny and I went over there more than once, it was so pretty.
I guess, that makes five seasons, but I just couldn’t leave that first image out. I hope you enjoyed this series….because Penny and I have another one to show you soon.
She’ll probably do the honors because she is, after all, the star of the show.
What should you do when a friend sends flowers out of the blue because you said you were stressing about a number of things, most of them out of your control?
And later in the week, after you’ve thanked her for the flowers she offers to come and help you do the fall cleanup in your gardens because the job seems so large and you just don’t have the energy to complete it alone.
Even though she has yardwork of her own.
What should you do? You thank her again, but that seems inadequate. And you can reassure her that you’ve (sort of) got the stuff you have control over figured out, and you’re going to try hard not to worry about the stuff you can’t fix.
But mostly, in honor of your friend, you should remind yourself that there are still really good people out there in the world, ready to drop their lives and hop on over to yours if you need help. And that you should probably ask for help more often.
And you should keep an eye open for someone else out there that might need help too, and emulate her friendship.
Thank you friend. You know who you are. I appreciate you very much.
There’s a lot going on in the world right now. Unrest across the globe, a different sort of unrest here at home in the US. Every evening I turn the news on with trepidation, afraid of what I will likely see and hear.
But once a week, on Tuesday night, I get to play music with a bunch of other folks in our local community band. It’s not always stress free. There’s the normal pressure to put together a quality concert, and finding time to practice at home so as not to waste the precious time we have together. And because I’m one of two band librarians there’s additional responsibility too.
But all of that worry and stress slides away when you’re actually making music at your concert. All the musicians show up dressed in concert black, the big, round sound we make together is beautiful, the audience is appreciative. Suddenly all that work becomes worthwhile.
Last night we kicked off our season with a combined concert. The community band played the first half, and the Stardusters dance band followed up, completing the evening.
It was a lot of fun.
Our audience wasn’t big, and I feel sad for those people that didn’t come out. They missed a wonderful evening of fun music and smiles. And donut holes and cider afterward.
To be honest the world could use more fun music and smiles. And I bet, if you’re anything like me, stressing over the state of world and national affairs, you could use some too. My advice is to google ‘fun stuff to do in my town’ and see what you can find. I bet there’s a community group putting together a play or a concert near you.
The holidays are coming, there’s almost certainly going to be live music galore. Make sure you don’t miss it. It’s good for the soul, it supports your local artists and musicians, and it’s definitely worth missing one evening of nightly news.
Where to go for my Walktober, where to go? It’s been weighing on my mind.
I’ve done so many, taken you to visit all my local favorites, some of them multiple times. You and I have walked in Detroit along the riverfront, and in my own backyard, and on the beach of Lake Michigan.
This year I wanted to take you somewhere we hadn’t been before, so how about Tawas State Park? It’s on the eastern side of Michigan, on Lake Huron and only about three hours from me. Plus it’s ‘up north’ so it’s just got to be beautiful by definition.
I decided to do a combination walk and drive for this annual Walktober post. That way you’ll get to see the most stuff from my 6 hour adventure.
I left on the spur of the moment, last Sunday afternoon, after I had attended a Fun Run rally competition with Penny. It was our first together and deserves a whole post to itself. Let’s just say after that experience I needed a good, long, pretty drive.
Without a puppy.
Initially the trees weren’t that colorful, mostly yellow, and I was concerned that I had missed the show. But as I got further north, and stopped at a little roadside park, I noticed things were looking a bit better.
And by the time I could actually see Lake Huron the color was starting to pop!
When I got into the park I noticed there were a lot of cars in the lot given it’s definitely off season. But as I climbed over the low dune to the beach I could see why.
The place was crawling with kite boarders!
I walked on the beach for a bit, braving the brisk wind and blowing sand, watching the kiteboarding folks skim over and above the waves.
That was fun, and made for some challenging photography, but I had planned on walking the birding path I’d heard about, up near the lighthouse. So I headed over that way.
The wind was so brisk that I doubted I’d see any birds, but I stubbornly headed up the path because that was why I had come!
It led me right up to the Lighthouse, which was pretty, but I wasn’t, for some reason, excited about exploring that.
I kept along the birding trail, never hearing or seeing a bird of any kind. In fact the trail was becoming quite boring. Then I spotted a narrow footpath heading back through the beach grass.
That was definitely more my style. The wind had played sculpture with the day’s footprints, and I liked how the lowering sun made the sand look, so I stopped for a moment to take a picture on my way back to the shore.
Coming off the dune and back onto the beach I saw there were even more kiteboarders riding the wind.
And I couldn’t help but notice how the sun made the water silver.
Up ahead of me was a little spit of land, poking out into Lake Huron. Last time, more than 15 years ago, when I’d been on this beach there had been many, longer spits of sand, but this year there was only this one that I could see.
If you stood at the base of it you could see the water being blown into shore from both sides. I thought the combination of waves, light and sand was just beautiful.
But what about the kiteboarders, you say? What were they doing as the wind kicked up higher and the sun began to descend?
Well, they were doing what kiteboarders do. They were racing back and forth across the water and leaping high above the waves.
It was sooo much fun to watch.
But after awhile I realized I needed to head home, even though I was having too much fun watching all the action. So I said goodbye to the lighthouse and Tawas State Park and got back on the road.
But wait! Is that the end of my Drive/Walktober? Is that all there was to see? Well of course not! There’s still that three hour drive through farmland on the way home. What do you think I’ll see?
Here’s a hint:
Well, this is getting long. Maybe you better take a break now, at intermission so to speak. Or get a coffee. At least stretch a little.
I’ll wait.
Welcome back to Part II of my 2024 Drive/Walktober. On US 23 the trees were glorious. So pretty I had to stop a few times and pull over to admire them.
And the folks that live here? I’m only a little jealous of the fact they live among all those beautiful trees while looking out the back of their house at Lake Huron!
Of course I had to turn off US 23 a few times because I saw pretty barns in the distance. In the fall sunlight they were even more beautiful than they’d be in the summer at noon.
And sometimes it was just the light on a field that caught my eye.
But to be honest it was mostly the barn.
Or sometimes an old house…
…or the sign at an abandoned speedway.
I turned around to get that image. I just couldn’t NOT!
I had to go around a few blocks to get back to this grain elevator too. Something about an old truck under the grain chute.
So that is the end of my Drive/Walktober. Almost. By the time I shot the old truck it was getting late. The sun was definitely on a quicker slant to the horizon. Plus I had to go to the bathroom. So I stopped at the Bay City rest area. And there, I found the most magical ending to my Walktober adventure.
I bet just about anything that this last image made you smile. It did me then and it does today. After all that driving and walking and shooting I found my image in a rest stop on the way home.
Isn’t that just the way it goes.
If you have a Walktober in mind, go out and take a few pictures (or a lot) and post your blog linking to the original post about Walktobers and I’ll gather them all in early November and share them all with everybody!
Not only have there been lots of colorful lights in our night skies, there’s also been a comet. Or so I’m told. It’s not the kind of comet that shines brightly in the sky, it’s more reticent than that. Less showy.
Hanging out on a country road waiting for dark.
Of course that makes it all the more alluring for night photographers, professional and armature alike. I went out on two successive nights to try to find the comet.
The moon came up as the sun went down.
The first night neighbors and I met on a dirt road outside of town with an unrestricted view to the west. It should have been perfect. But though we stood out there, eyes turned toward the sky, scanning back and forth for over an hour we didn’t see it. We did however figure out we needed a heavier coat, hat and gloves if we were ever to do this again.
Over processed image to show you how big the moon was that night, rising in the east.
Oh, it was there all right — plenty of people posted images from that night. But we didn’t see it. Perhaps it wasn’t dark enough where we stood. Perhaps those clouds hanging low on the horizon obscured our view. Perhaps the nearly full moon rising behind us as the sun set was to blame.
Or maybe it was all of that combined. Regardless, we headed home empty handed. And very cold.
Nope. No comet that night.
The next evening I met a fellow Milky Way student out at my favorite park, where we planned to show her daughter the birds that come down to eat out of people’s hands, and then head to a dark place along the lake to look for the comet.
Scouting potential comet viewing locations, I ran across some color.
Before we even headed out to look for the birds we got to see other flying things.
It was a beautiful evening for a flight.
I rarely head out to feed the birds in late evening, but we tried. She did get a few birds to come down from their sleepy roosts to get a bedtime snack, but not many.
A sleeping mourning dove. He declined to come down for a snack.
We didn’t see many birds that evening, but we did see other things flying.
What is this, anyway?
Though at first we weren’t quite sure what it was.
A perfect night for this.
Meanwhile, my friend’s daughter’s new best friend was a chipmunk who stuffed himself with seeds, ran off to deposit them some safe place for later and ran right back to get more seed multiple times. I think he has enough provisions to get him through the winter now.
Did I hear you have a snack for me?
As we were driving to our chosen comet viewing location we noticed the big orange moon was rising. I made a hard, quick right and we pulled in along a couple dozen other photographers, focused on the beautiful rising moon.
It was really much prettier than this.
You’ll have to take my word for it. It was bright orange and rising up above the trees, reflecting in the lake. I didn’t have my camera set up for a moon shot, it wasn’t on a tripod. As I was messing with all of that the moment passed, as it does so often in photography.
The moon was sooooo beautiful that night, even if we never found that comet I knew I’d still be happy.
As the sky turned red and then darkened we hurried to the spot we hoped would be perfect for comet viewing. A beach, deserted, gave us a perfect view of the night sky. But where was that comet?
Another sunset, another night of searching for the comet.
We had come armed with instructions from other, successful, comet photographers — descriptions of where it was in the sky, how many degrees from this star or that formation. We tried it all, pointing our cameras in all sorts of directions, hoping.
And then my friend’s 22 year old daughter, bored with the old folks and their expensive equipment, raised her phone to the sky, shot one image and said…”It’s right there.”
Do you see it? It’s right there!
And bingo. Knowing exactly where to shoot, even though we couldn’t see it, made all the difference. We couldn’t even see it in our images, unless we zoomed way in. So we might have gotten shots of it and not even known, would never have known, without the young women’s gift.
It’s long tail extended, flying right over our heads all this time.
So there you have it. The comet who’s name I can’t pronounce or even spell. The elusive, sneaky, fading comet who will be back to visit in a mere 80,000 years. Or is it 800,000?
Sunrise, sunset, the time slips away.
I’ll have those camera settings down by then. How about you?
Well, it’s that time of year again…time to dust off the ole walking shoes, grab your phone or your camera (or both!) and head out to find something interesting or boring, pretty or mundane, to share with all of us in the world.
What’s it like this October where you live?
We didn’t have a lot of color on my walk, but I found a little bit of it!
Interested bloggers want to know!
The most eager Walktober participant I know is our girl Penny, so I’m going to let her kick off this event. She’s so happy she’s darn near panting with joy. Or maybe she’s just drooling. Hard to tell. Anyway…here comes Penny!
Hi Hi HI HI HI HI!!!! It’s me, Penny!
This is me on my Walktober !
This will be the second Walktober of my entire life, cause I’m not even two years old yet! But I remember last year and it was so much fun I could hardly wait for October to come around again.
We hiked on trails like this for most of our walk, but also across grassy meadows too.
Mom says I shouldn’t wish my life away, and time is short no matter what we do. But I’m just a puppy and I try to get as much fun stuff smashed into every day as possible. Mom says I’m exhausting.
Whatever, Mom.
So anyway, Mom took me on a walk in one of mine and Katie’s parks and I thought I’d share it with you as my Walktober 2025.
We started out in Katie’s part of the park and walked up and down the hills. Mom always tells me about Katie when we walk there. I don’t mind, Katie seems like she was a pretty awesome girl and I love hearing about her adventures.
I was quite proud of myself for jumping up on this bank.
After we got up and down the last big hill we arrived at a meadow and Mom had me practice my recall on the mowed path.
I’d say my recall is pretty spectacular…a long as she has treats! HA!
I’m coming, Mom! Get that cheese ready!
Then we wandered through the meadow and back into the woods and over to my part of the park. Mom and I walk over on that section a lot, but we usually enter it from a different parking lot that is about 1/2 a mile north (as the crow flies, lots further if you take the trail) of where we parked this time.
Pretty in purple.
Mom and I wandered around and she took lots of pictures. Eventually we made it to my pond. It was really pretty.
My pond.
It was after we moved on from my pond that things started getting messed up.
I wanted to go back to the other parking lot (which was still about a mile away from where we were) like I was used to when we visit the pond, and Mom wanted to head back to the parking lot we were actually parked in (which was also about a mile in the other direction).
Mom had me stand near the one tree that had changed color. It’s another sassafras tree.
Mom had never gone back to that parking lot from our pond before, but she had a photo of the trail map (because she’s a smart mom) so she wasn’t worried. She studied the map and we walked on a brand new trail that she was sure would take us back to that meadow and eventually back to our car.
There were lots of trails to choose from.
But it was winding through the woods and didn’t feel like it was going in the right direction. And Mom couldn’t figure out exactly where we were on the trail map. It was getting hotter and she didn’t have that much water for me.
So she started getting worried.
How about we rest on this nice bench, mom?
Me? I wasn’t worried! I just kept sniffing and tugging Mom along. Why I even surprised a mouse! Or, if I’m honest, the mouse surprised me, cause Mom says I jumped about 3 feet straight up into the air when I found it!
What’s over here?
Anyway, after awhile Mom decided we needed to turn around and go back the way we had come. That meant we added another mile or so to our hike, because we had to go back to the pond and then back to the trail we had come on, then all the way back to the car!
At least there was shade in the woods!
I didn’t like turning around, but Mom said not to argue with her just this once please, so I decided to be good.
But Mom, we were going this way!
We made it back to the pond, and then back to the meadow and then back to the car eventually. Mom was hot and sweaty and crabby.
I think it’s this way, Mom.
I, however, was a happy girl! Another long Walktober in the books for your gal Penny!
Mom found some interesting leaves and light.
So here’s what you need to do…go do your own Walktober (but you don’t need to get lost) and take a few pictures. Remember you can walk in the woods or in a town, even in your own back yard! You can ride a bike, or take a car ride, or jog or skip or even ride a unicycle!
Just do what you do and then show us your world by writing a post on your blog.
We were lucky to see this monarch butterfly too!
Then link it up to this post and at the end of October my Mom will gather up all your links and put them in one giant post so everybody can visit everybody else’s walk!
Mom says if you need a little extra time, or have questions, just let her know.
We have been so lucky, up here in Michigan, (and sometimes all the way down to Georgia!) to be able to see the Northern Lights quite frequently this past summer and into fall.
May 2024, somewhere in Michigan farm country.
Of course even if the lights are dancing, the weather doesn’t always cooperate. Lots of evenings the skies are obstructed with clouds and you can only dream about what might be happening up there.
May 10, 2024.
And of course you have to actually go outside to a dark place to see them. And even then you mostly can’t see them with your naked eyes, you need your phone or a camera to get a better view.
Amazing color in May.
In May there was a huge aurora storm above us and I was lucky enough to take my sister and head north to see them. We ended up on a random dirt road in front of a farmer’s house shooting the amazing lights as they danced across the sky.
More of the May experience.
Last weekend there was some evidence that a big light storm would be arriving, but night after night nothing happened. Then Wednesday night, with clouds rolling in, people in my general area were starting to post pictures they’d taken from their own yards of colorful northern lights.
I leapt out of bed, and headed to my own back yard. There were clouds, but enough open spaces that I saw this.
October 6, from my yard looking over my neighbor’s house.
It wasn’t beautiful, no special location, the lights of my neighbor’s house spread across the image. But I saw them. I saw them in my own backyard without driving across the state.
I was thrilled.
I was especially thrilled because I took that shot with my phone, and had only just learned how to use my phone at night. My regular camera had been shipped back to Nikon as a trade-in for a new version of the Z series.
Thursday of last week my new camera arrived, and coincidently notices of potential northen lights grew louder and louder as the day went on.
I tried to learn all the differences between the new camera and what I was used to using. And when it got dark I went over to Katie’s park and set up near her pond.
I was hoping for color reflected in the pond…but a layer of invasive plants covered the surface of the water.
I was not disappointed. There was a definite pink tinge to the northern sky.
It wasn’t always bright, but it was pretty and surrounded the Big Dipper.
There were obnoxious lights in the parking lot, and I lowered my tripod as low as I could to minimize the light pollution.
But mostly I just watched the sky. As my eyes adjusted I could tell the lights were there, but I couldn’t see much. Sometimes I could see a few pillars of light.
Sometimes the colors obscured the stars.
And once I turned the camera over to the east a bit, because I thought maybe something was there. But looking on the back of the camera, I didn’t see anything interesting, so I turned it back to the pond.
See that green waving at me from over there on the right?
I was wrong. There were actually green waves over there, but I didn’t see them until I processed the images days later.
I was out there from 8 until shortly after 9. I wasn’t prepared with hand warmers, or a hat or gloves. You wouldn’t have thought you’d need them, but on this clear night as the moon came up behind me, the air chilled.
The lights began to fad. I didn’t realize the green was ramping up.
By 9 I was cold and my husband and I ambled back to the car under the fading colors that still filled the sky. I went to bed and dreamed about starry nights and dancing lights. In the morning I found out that Mother Nature has a sense of humor, because she put up a magnificent light show with curtains of color that started about 10. While I was sleeping.
Yep.
In order to really see the northern lights you need to prepare, take warm clothes, bring extra batteries, some snacks, a chair and your good camera and on top of all that, hope for clear skies.
When I got home I went out back and took a picture of the moon. Because it was beautiful too.
And if all that lines up…you’re gonna see a real show!
I’m not disappointed, I was so happy to be out there at all. I’m thrilled to have had the experience and to share it with my husband.
Right overhead, in May.
But I’m secretly hoping to get one more chance this season.
Change Is Hard 