Our community band holiday concert is this Thursday. Yes, the day after tomorrow, and before Thanksgiving. It’s never happened like this before.
We’ve only had 4 weeks of rehearsals to prepare, but it’s Christmas music, much of it we’ve played before. It will be fine. In fact, it might just be the perfect way to kick the holiday season off!
So…if you’re in the area, and would enjoy some uplifting music to kick start your holiday season…come on over to the Clarkston High School this Thursday evening, 7:00 p.m. It’s free.
You can have your picture taken with the authentic Santa, and we’ll have cookies afterward too! I personally don’t think you can have a legitimate holiday season until you’ve heard “Christmas Festival” by Leroy Anderson live and in person.
And Santa himself will be directing “Sleigh Ride.” That alone should make you want to be there.
Happy Holidays, everybody! Christmas music, then Thanksgiving. It’s always good to mix things up. Keeps us on our toes!
Tonight I was sorting through the pictures from my drive home from Alabama. I liked so many of them I feel like I need to share some of them with you. So…here’s the end of my vacation, with it’s long drive home.
A neighbor’s dog stopping in for a little belly rub.
I spent my last evening at the lake sitting on the dock waiting for the sunset, and reminiscing about times in years past when we all spent time there together.
It wasn’t a great sunset, but the clouds in the water were cool.
I thought about Katie a lot too and how much she loved the lake house. She’d spent plenty of evenings out there on the dock with me waiting for the sun to set. I hope someday Penny will be able to do the same.
The moon was coming up as the sun was going down.
Then, in the morning, I set out for home just under 1,000 miles away. It was hard to leave.
Bye! See you next time!
I took a new way back to the freeway, a couple hours away, to avoid the traffic of Birmingham. Even though it was Saturday morning and the city traffic wouldn’t be that bad, I wanted to see if this new way might work.
White barn with fall color.
Plus it put me directly in farm country. And you know what that means.
Red barn very near the lake house.
Barns. It means barns.
I only got off the road once to pursue barns. I can’t remember for sure but it might have even been my second day of driving. Though I can’t promise I showed such restraint.
This was the barn that made me get off the freeway.
There were so many great barns in the area that I did a couple of big country blocks.
At one point I ended up in a tiny little town where I saw this interesting house. I only slowed slightly because I could feel the eyes of the residents following my car with it’s out of state plates.
In a little town maybe 2 or 3 blocks of houses total.
And then of course there was no entrance back to the freeway right there, so, darn, I had to do another country block.
Little or big, I love all barns.
And then up ahead I saw this.
Is this what I think it is?
What is that you say? Well, let me crop the image a bit more.
Oops, I think he saw me.
Yep. A bald eagle, in a dead tree right by the narrow dirt road I was on. I held my camera out the window. I knew if I tried to get out of the car he’d fly away.
Look lady, you’ve interrupted my lunch!
Which of course he did anyway. But oh my seeing the eagle made me smile!
And then I was back to looking for the freeway and noticing barns. Lots and lots of barns.
This one might need a little tender loving care.
And lots of beautiful fields too.
The sun kept peeping out from behind the clouds, causing stripes of light.
All complete with dramatic skies.
I was so lucky on this two day drive home. It rained, but not a lot, and the traffic wasn’t horrible. Driving on Saturday and Sunday helped.
Red is just so classic.
My favorite barn on the trip back? Why this one, of course.
So much drama!
I hope you enjoy it too and all the other barns I got to see on my drive around the block.
I don’t’ know when I’ll be able to go on another barn hunt, but that’s OK. I’m sure I can find cool stuff closer to home this winter.
The road calls.
Thanks for being out there to share my experiences with me!
Thank you, everybody for having patience with me as I traveled. Last year when I did this summary I was smart and built it as you linked your Walktobers to my post. This year, for some unknown reason, I just left it until the end.
Which is now.
If after you review this post you find I’ve missed your Walktober, just let me know and I’ll go find it and edit this right away. But I sincerely hope I haven’t missed anybody!
So without further ado, let’s get to walking!
First up is Ruth who walked in her local nature reserve. She described it as ‘being in a little bowl of nature.” Doesn’t that just make you want to visit it yourself? Lucky for all of us Ruth included several pictures so we can pretend we’re right there with her!
Next is the Widow Badass who was out and about with the celebrity schnauzer, Bowser. There’s nothing quite like a cute dog walking in brilliant fall leaves to make a person smile. We hope you’re smiling too as you read about their walk.
Speaking of dogs enjoying a fall walk here comes Monkey, a handsome sheltie, who likes to take his mom on walks whenever he can. I think he did a great job showing us around, don’t you?
And then there’s Barbara showing us beautiful sculptures glowing in the sun. Such a pretty place she shared with us, and very unique too! I’m sure once we read about her walk we’ll all wish we had a park near us just like it!
Debbie, who happens to be Monkey’s mom, took a walk on trails surrounding Lake Charleston in Illinois. My goodness, look at all the beautiful things she saw on her walk! I’m thinking we should not tell Monkey she went without him!
Well, I managed to insert Lisa’s post twice, and so far I can’t figure out how to remove the duplicate…so I’ll leave it in for now. Just scroll on by, people, just scroll on by.
Somewhere in the middle of all your walks I got my own in. It’s been so long now I can’t remember where I took you. So I guess you’ll have to read the post and find out!
Next we have Jo’s walk She takes us to Tavira in Portugal! The wonderful thing about our annual Walktobers is that you never know where you’ll end up! And Jo got to meet a fellow blogger there as well, which is always special.
From Portugal we move on to Canada with Dale, specifically over near Quebec, if I have done my sleuthing correctly. If not, maybe she will let us know ! Dale combines lots of beautiful fall colors with some sculpture as well on her walk about town.
Back in the United States Carin takes us on a walk around her neighborhood with her sheltie Levi. Penny has met Levi in person and she would like you all to know he’s a very good host!
Up next Linda takes us on a lovely walk around a pond in the Armand Bayou Nature Center near Houston Texas. It’s one of the largest urban wilderness preserve in the country, and we’re lucky to see some it right here through the magic of Walktobers!
And once again I have a duplicate post that I can’t delete. WordPress is giving me fits, but I decided to try and publish this as is versus spending even more time trying to fix it.
Hopefully you all enjoy each other’s walks, and that’s what this is all about! AND, if anybody knows how to delete links that I pasted twice into this please give me a hint on how I can clean this up!
I am already looking forward to Walktober 2025! I hope you are too! And thank you to everybody that participated in our October tradition. Thanks again for all your patience with me!
You might have noticed that mom is still missing. I’m kind of worried, even though daddy said it was all going to be just fine. But I’m also a bit miffed, cause mom has more beautiful pictures of me and she hasn’t posted them! So I guess I’ll have to do it myself.
Katie warned me there would be days like this.
So without further ado, here are the images from our second 4 season photo shoots! I think you will agree I am simply stunning.
Ahem.
November of 2023, where it all began:
Winter of 2024:
Spring of 2024:
Summer of 2024.
Fall of 2024! (My personal favorite.)
I hoped you liked my second set of 4 seasons images. Mom told me she had fun too, but NOBODY has as much fun as me!
Talk later,
Your professional model (who will be increasing her fees if she has to do all the work around here),
I’ve been down at the lake for a couple of days now, but for all you barn lovers I’ll do a short post from my second day of driving south.
I saw a promising area, with rolling hills and what seemed like a lot of barns somewhere in Kentucky off of I 65. I pulled off at the exit and turned onto what looked like a service drive to head back and look for the barns.
Even as turned I began to feel faint bits of recognition. It felt like I’d been down this road before.
Then I started thinking, ‘if the road curves sharply to the left and then goes up a hill I’ve definitely been here before.
And it did.
Even funnier is that I think this is the third time I’ve been down this road, each time on the way to Alabama, and each time enticed by beautiful barns visible from the freeway.
This year, not having a dog with me, I went further down the road and found some ‘new’ barns — structures I hadn’t seen before.
And as the sky darkened with an oncoming storm, I saw in the distance a white church spire that I had to go find. So I did.
I wandered around the cemetery a bit, and shot some barns off in the distance. Then I high tailed it back to the freeway for the rest of my trip home.
I’m going to try very very hard next time I’m driving down to Alabama not to be seduced by this road and it’s barns again. I think three times is plenty.
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.
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!
