Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: Photography


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There’s more to camping than the sheltie-girl

The road to the campground.


If you listen to Katie you’d think that all camping adventures are about her, and I suppose in some respects they are. We don’t do things she doesn’t want to do, and on this last camping trip of the season she didn’t want to do very much, so we stuck close to camp.

Still, there were many beautiful things to show you.

The grass turned color depending on the light.

We made short forays into the deep old growth forests. The air felt cooler to me, but I guess a sheltie-girl’s heavy fur coat made it hot for her, even there, so we didn’t stay very long.

It’s cooler back here in the forest.

The ferns along the forest floor were mostly brown. I don’t know if it’s drought or they had an early frost. No one else seemed to know either. They were still pretty in brown, but I felt kind of sad that their summer was over.

Variations of brown.

Katie and I drove a few miles down the road to visit two lakes, formed when the glaciers slid over Michigan years ago, then melted.

Amazing color, even before the leaves really begin to turn.

The sky was an incredible blue and the lakes were perfectly still. I couldn’t stop shooting images. Katie was pretty patient about the whole thing.

Reflections in the still water were mesmerizing.

It would have been fun to kayak on either of these lakes, and I think you can rent kayaks from the park. But Katie said she wasn’t into boating so we didn’t check that out.

Lilly pads add some color too.

As Katie told you the last night we had a storm blow over, making the sky and even the air turn bright pink.

Pretty in pink.

It was pretty amazing, and the camera caught even more pink than our eyes could see. Everyone was out looking around in wonder.

I’m glad the weather cooperated last week and allowed Katie and me to get one more camping trip in this season. We’ve been so lucky this year; we didn’t get rained out on any of our adventures.

It might be a long winter, but we’re already planning where to camp next spring.

Sky in the water.


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So much to show you, so little time to share

Jefferson’s haven.


As you have probably surmised, we’ve been traveling. If you’re following along on Facebook you might even know where we are today. And of course you know me. There are photos. Lots and lots and lots of photos. Many were intended to be shared with you on this blog, intended to be a day by day account of the wonderful things we’ve seen and done on this extended vacation.

Washington’s haven.

But somehow that didn’t happen, and now I’m days, even weeks behind. We’ve been to Jefferson’s Monticello and Washington’s Mount Vernon. We’ve wandered among Washington DC’s monuments and explored a few forts and climbed a lighthouse and toured a submarine and strolled an Atlantic ocean beach and walked over three miles along the cliffs of Newport. Just yesterday we explored five golden age mansions and ended our day with another lighthouse.

He had a dream.

What should I share with you? I’ve sorted the mansion photos and I could just catch you all up by starting there, but that’s going to be a long blog and I might do better to put it together when I get home, when I have more time, faster internet, when I’m not packing the suitcase to head for the next adventure.

A light in the haze.

So I’ll leave you with just a taste of everything. And even then it was hard to choose which images to share. I picked them randomly from little thumbnails. Nothing is edited, they’re just the way the camera saw things. No time for messing around, we’re headed out this morning for somewhere new.

Stay tuned. I promise to show you a tiny bit of those mansions someday soon. If Katie allows it anyway.

Submarine history tour


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The gardens at Biltmore

When you visit Biltmore in Ashville NC, don’t forget to budget a lot of time to wander the gardens. They begin just down the hill from the house.

Make sure to visit the gardens down here!

There’s the original greenhouse structure that’s just chuck full of beautiful things. Inside it feels like you’re on a tropical island, or in a rain forest.

Make sure you venture inside here!

Here’s just a glimpse of the wonders you’ll find:

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And the gardens surrounding the greenhouse were stunning on the late summer day we visited. Blocks of color covered the grounds. It was so beautiful it was hard to know where to look first. Here’s some of it:

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And don’t forget the three water gardens. Just exquisite and in the end perhaps my favorite:

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I hope you all get to visit Biltmore sometime. I think the gardens would probably be pretty just about any time of year. There’s an azalea garden that would be stunning in the spring, and a huge rose garden that was past it’s prime when we were there, but would have been something a couple of weeks ago. And there’s always the mountains to marvel at, any time of year, but especially in the Fall when the leaves are turning.

So think about a trip to North Carolina and a stop at the Biltmore Estate. I don’t think you’ll leave disappointed.


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“I want your smile”

I think this morning, the Sunday morning after Charlottesville, we could all use a smile. Not to trivialize what happened there, what is happening in smaller and less splashy incidents all over our country, but to give our broken hearts a tiny bit of relief.

The sun always rises.

There’s this guy named Trent who writes a blog and weekly asks us to tell him what made us smile during the previous week. I haven’t followed him long, or even regularly, but I happened to read him this morning and knew that I wanted to share the things that made me smile this week.

I wasn’t on an adventure, not camping with Katie-girl, or off exploring by myself. I spent this week at home with the camera, just shooting regular stuff — the things we all see but rarely stop to really look at. Like things in my garden, during this end of summer time when the gardens always look their best even though they’re becoming a bit frayed around the edges.

A pop of color.

And it rained a lot this week, as happens on late summer afternoons. Gushing downpours that wash away the humidity for a bit.

It’s a monsoon!

I stood on my front porch and shot the rain hitting the driveway. Sometimes it seemed as though the drops were creating tiny little fireworks, as if they were celebrating summer.

Celabrate!

After the rain I took Katie-girl to her park. The temperature had dipped down into the high 60s (15.5c) cool enough for a sheltie to enjoy a summer walk. We were surprised mid-walk by another thunder storm.

The light before the storm.

The wind blew and the rain drove down in sheets. We got wet, though the camera was safe inside my pack. Katie and I both smiled.

And of course I’m totally smiling over the fact the orioles are still visiting my feeder. Sometimes they get confused as to which feeder, but they’re still visiting.

Wrong cafeteria, girl!

I expect them to leave for the season any time now. I’ll miss them all. This morning there were two males and at least four females all vying for the feeder. I think that signals that they’re getting ready to head out for their winter home.

Gotta get my share before all those girls come back!

And last night I went out into the backyard after midnight to look for meteorites. Here in Michigan it’s supposed to be the best time to see them, and I did see one which was amazing. And no, that’s not the it, that’s a plane. The meteorite was much much brighter. Still I thought this was a cool shot.

All kinds of light last night.

Our backyard is too full of light, mostly from the neighbors huge yellow light over his garage, to really get great pictures of the night sky, but I had fun messing around with the camera anyway.

Starry starry night…

So these are some of the things that made me smile this week. What about you? What did you smile about? Care to share? Just link to Trent’s blog, we all need another smile!

She always makes me smile!