Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Michigan


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Walktober – Katie’s way

Katie here! Mama said that Miss Robin over at breezes at dawn is hosting Walktober again this year!

Mama said there were great clouds. Whatever mama.

She said I could participate if I wanted to, and I said…. “Well of course I want to participate mama! Have you ever known me to ignore a chance for a walk?”

Then I had to think about where I wanted to go. Mama said since it’s a Walktober I should go somewhere that showcases the beautiful colors we have around here in the fall.

This is a big mowed space next to the lake just perfect for a Walktober!

In the end I had to let mama choose because I was too excited to think straight. Plus I don’t have a drivers license.

We ended up going to one of my parks, the Holly Recreation Area, which is only about 15 minutes away from my house. Mama parked at the boat launch where there’s a big long earthen dam that is perfect for running. There wasn’t anyone out there so I got to explore and sniff as much as I wanted while mama took pictures of stuff not me.

Incoming sheltie! You better have a treat for me mama!

It was such a pretty day with a good breeze that made my fur fly. I love it when I look good. Which frankly is most of the time. I am, after all, a princess, and a princess is never seen in public if she’s not at her best.

Then mama said I needed to get to work to find pretty color. That was, after all, why we were out there. I figured she was in charge of pictures so it was her responsibility to find pretty stuff, but I ended up having to do it for her. So typical.

Here’s some color mama!

She thought the purple flowers I found were very pretty.

Pretty buds up close.

But she said they weren’t really the colors representative of fall in Michigan. She said I should look around and find something more appropriate. Mama is so demanding. So while she was busy taking pictures of not me I wandered over here.

Colorful enough for you mama?

I figured this would do the trick, and I was right. She got all excited and stuff, which sort of backfired on me cause she made me sit there for a long time while she tried different angles and settings. Then she wanted to do closeups too! Geeze mama!

These aren’t edible so I wasn’t interested.

She said I did good and she was headed back toward the car. Wait just a minute there mama! This was my Walktober and I wasn’t done walking! I marched right past the car and headed down a path the follows the edge of the lake.

Do you see me way down there?

Mama just shrugged her shoulders and followed along. She really didn’t have a choice cause I was not getting in that car! Then she got all interested in taking pictures of the lake.

They’re just lily pads mama!

She called this her Monet image. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but it kept her busy so I had more time to sniff.

The path took us over to the beach. Nobody was over there on a chilly October afternoon and mama said I needed to remember my responsibility to find you all some color. So I tried.

I’m pretty sure white is a color!

I figure flowers are nice, and asters bloom in the fall here in Michigan, so they count for a Walktober, right?

Then we took a path that winds through the woods, heading back to the boat ramp. And guess what? There was more color!

Hey mama look!

Mama likes being in the woods, so we spent a long time in there. I didn’t pressure her to hurry, and she didn’t ask me to move along either. That’s why we like taking walks together, we both understand the purpose of a walk.

Mama found this color all by herself. I was busy sniffing on the other side of the path.

I like being in the woods too, so I didn’t mind when she took a couple more pictures of me. Plus she had treats.

I’m feeling a bit small here, mama!

Mama said that I did a great job finding color to show you all. Plus I got to go on a walk, sniff the fresh air, let the wind show my fur off, and spend time with my mama. Win/win!

A splash of color hidden away in the woods.

I’ve been at camp so much this summer that mama and I haven’t had time to do many walks together. So I’m really grateful to Miss Robin for getting mama to take me out exploring. We didn’t have much in the way of traditional fall colors, not yet anyway, but we had a great time.

Not a lot of color, but very dramatic.

I hope you enjoyed my park as much as I did, but I don’t see how you could without being there. Maybe some day we can all get together and go on a walk. Meanwhile, Walktobers are a pretty cool way to stay connected!

Does this wooly bear mean a long or short winter?

Where will you take us on your Walktober? We can’t wait to see. Take a walk, write about it and link it to Robin’s Walktober post (or any of her posts) by Oct 19th. Robin will do a summery post on or about October 21st. She’ll even wait a few days if you need a bit more time.

Mama, as usual, is behind and hasn’t figured out where she’s going. I told her she’s not allowed to hijack my walk, she has to do one of her own.

Reflections after a great Walktober!

A princess can be generous, but she never gives away her Walktober.

Can we go check for color over there mama?


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Photo surprise

Early Saturday morning, just before the sun made it out of bed, I headed out to a park about a half hour away to meet other photography students and an instructor. We explored the Hawk Woods Nature Center, with it’s large pond and trails.

Then the sun began to push through the clouds.

It was cold, only 44F degrees (6.66C) and I hadn’t dressed warm enough. But I figured once we were moving, and in the woods, I’d be fine. I was wrong.

This park, on this particular day, challenged my belief that there’s always something to photograph. Though there were beautiful purple asters I wasn’t noticing much else in the way of fall color.

If you look closely there’s a bit of color, no matter where you are.

The pond was fringed with tall grasses, making it hard to appreciate. But I did notice this guy sitting across the way when I passed a break in the grass.

Hiding in the grasses.

But still, what else to shoot? The class stopped at a wildflower garden, but I wasn’t really into it, as I have the same flowers in my own yard. So I meandered away from the pond and into the woods.

This path looked interesting.

I am always most comfortable in the woods. Not much color in there, but still, it drew me in.

After a bit of time in the dark green woods I went back to where the group was still concentrating on the flowers. I moved on down the trail that circles the pond, looking for anything interesting.

The sun began to peek out and the grass began to glow.

Brown is a color, right?

If you make this bigger you’ll notice the intricate texture of this dried queen anne’s lace.

Down at the end of the pond I came across a couple fat warblers and a chickadee hopping about in a shrub. I didn’t have the right lens, and while I was changing lenses they flew away. But I was happy to see them.

Not peak color yet, but still pretty.

By now my fingers were freezing, and my broken little finger was aching, a combination of the cold and carrying the camera, so I decided to pack it in. I’m not writing this park off, I think if I had dressed better I’d have stayed and found more pretty things, and given it’s not so far away I will definitely go back.

On the way home I stopped and got a warm drink, trying to make my finger feel better. I stopped at a rest stop along the freeway, to toss the cup when I finished the drink, and as I was getting out of the car I noticed a flurry of activity in the crab apple trees lining the sidewalk.

Could it be my favorite birds? I heard the distinctive excited chirp. My camera already had the long lens attached and was sitting in the passenger seat. My fingers were no longer cold.

I grabbed the camera and crept up to the trees. AMAZING. There were adults…

Notice the yellow feathers at the end of his tail.

…and juveniles.

Notice the stripes on his breast.

I know people stopping at the rest stop thought I was insane as I was creeping around the trees with a big ole camera. But I ignored them, except when they slammed car doors and the birds rose up into the air as one. Then I scowled at the clueless drivers. (Not really, it’s a public rest stop after all.)

Three in this one shot!

There were so many! They’d fly from the trees near the bathroom over to the trees on the other side of the parking lot, and back again.

The trees were beautiful too.

I was having such a great time. And in a rest stop. But I actually squealed when I got home and looked at the images. Because I had captured this:

My favorite shot of the day.

So the point of this post is that there always is something interesting or beautiful or original, or fun to shoot. And you should always have your camera ready to go, because you’re never going to know what you’ll see when you keep your eyes open.

Years of sitting quietly in these woods.

Many thanks to Bob DiTommaso and his wife Juliann for hosting the meetup. If I hadn’t gone and wandered at the park I wouldn’t have stopped for a warm drink and to toss the cup and I never would have seen the cedar waxwings.

Plus I found some pretty things at the park too.

Hungry


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Weekly smile

Too much travel lately made me lose track of the weekly smile. It definitely wasn’t intentional, because I truly believe the world can use more smiles.

Just a little bit of pretty.

So today, when I remembered I hadn’t officially smiled in a couple weeks, I headed out to find you something to smile about.

I’d like some of these in my garden.

Sure I could have just given you the Canadian images, but those weren’t from this week. And even though looking at travel photos always makes me smile I figured I should find something new.

The place was abuzz.

Just about a mile up our country road is a corner filled with pyramid shaped goldenrod and dark purple asters. If I happen to go by when the sun is low I can’t help but be mesmerized.

There were tiny white asters too.

So I smiled a lot as I wandered in this little patch of pretty, even though my target for today’s smile was another place a few miles up the freeway.

A garden further up the road.

Yep, just a couple exits north of here is a swanky subdivision that I drove by yesterday on my way to buy birdseed.

A pretty fancy entrance.

I hadn’t been up there most of the summer, so I was amazed to see the entrance, full of huge canna lilies and tall dahlias heavy with blossoms.

Such amazing colors!

Somebody in this subdivision has a green thumb and a whole lot of money.

An end of summer burst of energy.

Still, it was stunning in an entirely different way than the little yellow and purple field near my home.

Every year, at the end of summer the annual gardens just glow. We could have a frost any time now, and all of this will be gone.

The tallest cannas I’ve ever seen.

So I was happy to capture a bit of it so that I can remember it during our long winter months.

I hope the colors made you smile too. What else made you smile this week? Write a post and link to Trent’s blog so we can all share smiles together!


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Michigan sights

I’m sifting through images from our recent road trip around Lake Superior.
There are so many places I didn’t show you, that didn’t happen to fit into the particular story I was sharing on the blog.

How about I show you a few of the pretty things we saw on the first part of the trip, in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan – I’ll show you Wisconsin, Minnesota and Canada soon!

There’s a town in the UP called Christmas. When I lived in the UP in the early 80s there wasn’t much in Christmas except a post office that was busy during the end of year holiday season as people wanted their cards postmarked from Christmas, Michigan.

Santa stands under stormy skies hawking his casino.

In August when we drove through Christmas on our way to somewhere else we were amazed to see that apparently Santa has sold out.

We stopped in Munising for a night. You saw the waterfalls we saw there, but you didn’t get to see the sunset over Munising Bay. It started out kind of slow.

Lots of clouds but not much color action.

I got bored with the clouds and started messing with camera settings, not paying attention to the sky. But a quacking duck flew by and I glanced up. And gasped, as the sun was touching the top of the hills across the bay.

Those hills are on fire!

Eventually the sun died and the sky turned pink. We didn’t leave until the sky was black.

It turned into a colorful evening after all.

And on another evening we watched the sun set over Lake Superior. It didn’t turn out to be much, but it was fun to watch people playing in the waves.

A warm summer day at the beach comes to an end.

There’s a ‘covered road’ near where I used to live. I’d forgotten all about it, but while we were exploring I saw a sign pointing the way, so we turned right and I’m so glad we did. I remember this being stunning in the fall.

Miles of tree lined road with sun filtering down.

When we came out the other side of the covered road my husband caught, out of the corner of his eye, a huge metal dam. Well of course we had to stop and explore.

Lots of metal angles made for photography fun.

And speaking of exploring, when I lived in Hancock I often passed the Quincy Mine buildings, abandoned and falling apart. Now they’ve been restored and the site offers tours.

I always thought this building was beautiful.

Of course we went.

This huge hoist has been sitting inside the building for more than a century.

I’m so glad we did, it was fascinating and nostalgic, all at the same time.

So much history here.

We were driving across the UP one morning when I noticed a commotion up ahead in the ditch. Several large birds lifted off as we approached, and I caught the spread of a huge white tail. They were all bald eagles!

They were just amazing.

They flew up into the trees there, and we turned around to see what was happening. While I was changing to the long lens most of them flew away. The light was bad, my settings, in my haste, were wrong, but I got a few shots, mostly bad, from which I could crop a few images.

He was looking at me, I swear!

And just before we left Michigan we stopped at Lake of the Clouds in the western part of the UP.

You can see the scale by the size of the people in the upper left part of this image.

This lake never fails to delight, no matter the season.

You can click on any of the images to make them larger and to see more detail. Of course on those eagle crops the detail is already lost, but I couldn’t help but share that experience regardless of the quality of the pictures.

Soon I’ll show you a little of Ashland Wisconsin and Duluth Minnesota and Thunder Bay Canada. And maybe more!

More history awaits.


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Hotel carpet recap

A family friend travels often for work and began posting what she called her “ugly hotel carpet” pictures a few years ago. I caught the bug and have posted on Facebook my version of ugly hotel carpets during some of my travels. This past two weeks several people mentioned that the carpet images might make a great collage.

So let’s see what WordPress will produce if I provide the images.


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Mesmerizing water and clouds

What is it about bodies of water and cloudy skies that makes me grab my camera? I don’t know, maybe you’re the same way. I don’t necessarily have to have both of them in the same shot to get excited…

Taken from a rest stop on our first day heading north.

…but when I do I just about swoon.

Along Lake Superior’s coast, day 2 of our trip.

And when the water is moving, well, that’s hard to resist too.

Wagner Falls near Munising, where I first figured out how to get that smooth water look.

Waterfalls are some of our favorite things, and there are several in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Some take a little walking to find…

The trail to Chapel Falls.

…but sometimes that’s a good thing.

About the best I could do was this obscured view.

Because sometimes the walk turns out to be more photogenic than the actual falls themselves.

Couldn’t walk past these ferns without grabbing a shot.

Some waterfalls are easy to find, and very full of tourists on a holiday weekend.

This is the image everyone gets from the boardwalk.

But if you wander a bit upstream you can find more interesting angles.

My favorite image of those I captured at Bond Falls on Sunday.

So many beautiful spots up here and I’m very behind sharing with you. There’s the Quincy Mine tour we did, and the sunset on the beach, and the one over Munising Bay, and the night we attempted to capture northern lights, and the town of Ashland in Wisconsin with amazing art, and now, tonight we’re in Duluth.

Utterly amazing.

I don’t know how I’m going to get caught up. Guess you’ll have to wait and see.

Oh, and there’s Santa selling out to the casinos too.


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Nancy’s photo challenge: Texture

My right hand is still in a splint making it difficult to type. So, even though I have lots of pretty water and sky photos to show you, I’ll wait until I can tell you more about where we are.

Queen Anne’s lace almost ready to bloom.

Meanwhile, on today’s adventures we ran across these examples of texture.

Tansy were blooming everywhere.

Hopefully I’ll have those clouds and sky shots ready for you soon. Or later. Depends on our travels and my hand. Today is 1 week since I fell, one more week to go until I see the doctor.

It could have been worse; I keep reminding myself of that.

More texture from today’s walk, the underside of a metal dam built in 1901.


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Junk can make you smile.

If you ever need a smile this is the place to go.

Called Lakenenland , we ran across it today while traveling on M28 from Munising to Marquette in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

It’s an artist’s personal sculpture garden, and reminds me a lot of the art compound we explored down in Georgia in the spring of 2018.

Here’s a slide show of a lot of the art you’ll see here. Some of it has his political opinions, some is whimsical, and some is just pretty.

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It’s about a half mile loop, you can walk or drive (or snowmobile in the winter!). We drove it and then parked and walked to take pictures.

There’s also a picnic area and a small stage where they have live music some evenings.

It’s all free, though you can leave donations.

The artist has definitely had some issues with the local zoning commission as evidenced by some signs.

But if you can deal with a couple of political points of view that might be different from your own you’ll probably enjoy this sculpture park as much as we did.

If you’re ever up this way, be sure to stop and check it out!


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Finally!

Katie here. You might have noticed a distinct lack of Katie-related posts on mama’s blog this summer.

Here I am at my park!

OK sure, she went to Norway, and then Washington DC and then she went camping, all without me.

Pretty in blue.

I guess she had a really busy summer and she didn’t have too much time to spend taking me to my parks. Oh, she says that the reason we haven’t gone to the park in forever is because it’s been really hot.

Mama said the light was magical.

Sure mama.

Though, to be honest, and I’m nothing if not honest, it has been pretty hot here. I haven’t wanted to go out and sit on my deck, or sit in my outside pen either. So she might have a point.

Invasive beauty.

Anyway…tonight mama told daddy that since it was cooler she was thinking about taking me to my park after supper. I didn’t get excited because I’m pretty deaf now and I didn’t hear her.

I had such a good time!

But daddy remembered, and later on in the evening he woke mama up from her nap in her big comfortable chair and asked why she wasn’t taking me to my park!

Goldenrod starting to bloom.

And mama said, let’s go Katie! I didn’t hear that either, but I saw her pack up my park bag and I got pretty excited. And boy! When we got to my park I was spinning circles!

Light shines through the grasses.

Mama said the evening light was pretty magical and she spent a lot of time taking pictures of stuff that was not me. I didn’t really mind, though I did have to take myself on my walk a good part of the time.

Giving mama the stinkeye because she’s lagging behind.

And I also remembered my contract with mama; one photo, one treat. So even when she wasn’t focused on me, when she lifted her head from the camera and looked at me I trotted right over to get my treat.

At first she laughed and said, “No silly, if you’re not the model you don’t get a treat.”

These are mama’s favorite trees.

Really mama? I’m not moving until you pay up. And eventually she understood. One picture, no matter what it was, one treat to me.

Can’t beat this kind of light!

The walk went a lot better after we understood each other.

Little sunflowers hiding in the dusky evening.

It was a wonderful walk through wonderful golden light. I even did a short little run for mama while she figured out how her new camera did multiple shots.

Coming in for treats mama!

I got five pieces of kibble for that one.

I trotted around my park like I owned it. Mama says I acted like I was a teenager again…and that made her very happy.

Pretty gold.

Between you and me I can’t wait for snow, but I don’t think mama is on board with that one, at least not yet.

A wide view.

Meanwhile I hope it stays cooler so mama and I can get out for more adventures. Though I might have to pay dad some sort of salary to keep waking her up. Cause she’s getting kinda old you know, and she needs her sleep.

Another good day at the park with my mama.

I think, though, if she gets out more she’ll act more like a teenager too.

And that would be a good thing for both of us.

That was fun mama!


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Nancy Merrill’s A photo a Week Challenge: Yellow

If this challenge were later in the year I’d have all sorts of yellow forests to share with you. But, given this is mid-August, I’ll just scour the backyard and see what I can come up with.

Of course there’s always these hungry guys.

You’re interrupting my lunch , lady!

And over in the zinnia garden there’s this moth…

A moth shows off his pretty colors while sitting on a yellow zinnia.

…and as I was focused on the moth, this butterfly showed up.

Never lighting on any particular flower for long it was hard to capture his image.

It’s also the Dream Cruise weekend here, where hundreds of vintage cars are driving up and down Woodward Avenue. There’s a bit of yellow over there too.

They don’t make cars like this anymore.

In fact, if I looked through my files there’s probably way more yellow then I imagine. But let’s just focus on the yellow of late summer.

It’s a special time of year.

Sunflowers in August flaunt their yellow.