Last Thursday my husband and I flew to Washington DC to do some Truck Safety work. We flew home yesterday and today, on this first day of the Federal Government shutdown, I was driving to northern Michigan.
As I drove I pondered all that is going on, and how it will affect regular people who are just trying to move forward in their lives, whatever that means to them.
And I wished we could go back to the days depicted on the back of a menu in a DC restaurant where we dined last Thursday evening.
I just don’t think it’s possible for me to travel cross country and not stop for a barn photo opportunity.
Even if it’s a drive I’ve made many times before there always seems to be something that looks pretty enough to warrent a detour from the freeway.
The question is, always, is there an exit nearby and can I find my way back to that beautiful barn without spending too much time searching?
And, once I get back there, will there be a place that’s safe for me to stop and snap a quick shot?
In reality I see many amazing farms while traveling on big interstates and they’re often not possible to find again. Usually there are miles and miles of interstate before the next exit, and no obvious roads back to what I saw.
But I remember them, and they make me smile, so even though I don’t get to keep them forever in my files, I get to enjoy them for a brief moment.
And that counts for someting too.
***Don’t forget to be thinking about where you’d like to take us on your version of our annual Walktober! Take a walk, or ride a bike, or hop, skip or run and take a few pictures to share with us. Post about it and link your post to my Official Walktober post (which I haven’t written yet but I will very soon!) and at the end of October, or maybe in early November, I’ll put them all together in one giant post for everyone to enjoy.***
My sister and I spent four nights camping somewhere not here, but not where we thought we’d be either.
It worked out well, and I have, of course, many photos to share of this place not here.
But Penny is demanding time with her mom so I’m off to do that. Which, I suppose, warrents a post too.
So much to do, so little time.
Well it’s been a minute since I last posted, leaving you wondering what I saw on my drive home from Alabama a month ago. That’s because I took a few days this week to camp in northern Michigan, so I’ve been away again.
Of course that means I have MORE photos to sort through. But let me finish up my trip south first.
There’s this farm that I’ve noticed on several previous trips down and back, a stately home and a couple barns, very near the freeway. But I usually see it out of the corner of my eye just after the freeway exit and I’ve never tried to find it before.
Until this last trip north.
It’s a stunning home, and I took several images from a couple different locations on the road. If I had to guess I’d say it was built in the late 1800’s? Or early 1900’s. What do you think?
Then, trying to find my way back to the freeway I did a big country block and came across a home that looks to be from the same era. I actually had to drive further, find somewhere to turn around and go back for it.
I couldn’t leave without it!
Back on the road it wasn’t long before I saw the perfect barn and once again had to get off the freeway and find a service drive that led me back to it.
It was the only real ‘barn’ image I took on the trip north. I figured it was time to get home and one barn was enough. I should really stop dilly-dallying. After all how many barn pictures does one photographer need?
But, then again, is any number ever truly enough?
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.
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.
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.
Then, in the morning, I set out for home just under 1,000 miles away. It was hard to leave.
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.
Plus it put me directly in farm country. And you know what that means.
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.
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.
And then of course there was no entrance back to the freeway right there, so, darn, I had to do another country block.
And then up ahead I saw this.
What is that you say? Well, let me crop the image a bit more.
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.
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.
And lots of beautiful fields too.
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.
My favorite barn on the trip back? Why this one, of course.
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.
Thanks for being out there to share my experiences with me!
Terri over at Second Wind Leisure Perspectives has challenged us to post about all things yellow. This works out perfectly for me because I’m just home from four days spent camping in Canada, where one thing became very obvious — some time in the last century building beautiful homes out of yellow brick was a thing.
We were driving up highway 21 through small towns along the eastern coast of Lake Huron and every town had a lot of yellow brick houses. They were all beautiful, big or small.
Some were out in the country.
Many were along shady streets in town.
The town of Kincardine had so many of these beauties along one street that we just had to park and walk a few blocks admiring the houses and their gardens.
I’ve traveled in Canada a few times and have always noticed how beautiful their gardens are. On this street almost every house had flowers in full bloom from the front porch to the street.
I’ve got lots to show you from our four day camping/bagpiping/starry night trip, but I still have lots of images to sort through.
Bur I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to show you yellow from a Canadian point of view. I hope you enjoyed seeing these beautiful homes.
If you ever get a chance to drive up the eastern shore of Lake Huron you’ll find the same thing we did; friendly, happy people, cute little towns and stunning landscapes.
I’ll show you more soon.
So what does a person do all day while waiting for true dark to arrive? Besides nap that is.
Well, on the one day the skies were clear while I was in the UP I wandered the Manistique waterfront looking for other things to photograph while impatiently urging the sun to hurry up and sink.
The mouth of the Manistique River was being dredged so I watched that for awhile. It was sort of interesting, but you can only watch so many piles of mud being moved before you have to move on.
I couldn’t resist walking out on the causeway leading to the shiny red lighthouse. It was such a pretty day.
I spent quite a bit of time out there waiting for the sun to go down. And watching the light glint off the water.
A couple of guys were fishing but they hid behind the lighthouse for me to get some shots.
But as the sun lowered I came back into shore.
The evening light makes everything so pretty.
And then, slowly, slowly, the sun sank and the blue hour began.
Earlier in the day I had scoped out a place to set up, hoping that the Milky Way would be near the lighthouse from my vantage point. The compass said it should be. But I knew I only had one night so I hoped I wasn’t wrong.
I waited impatiently. It takes forever for the night to get truly dark. And then….a few stars decide to turn on their lights.
I still couldn’t tell exactly where the Milky Way was going to shine…but the stars made me smile anyway. And then….finally, finally, there it was. It was pretty darn amazing. I don’t know why the beach wasn’t full of people just staring.
I stayed out there a long time. A lot of it not shooting, just standing there, in the moment.
Because, really, how many shots can you take of the same lighthouse with the Milky Way? Well, as it turns out…several dozen. You see, the dark sky requires that you have a high ISO and a wide open aperture and that causes grainy shots.
But you can stack them. Did you know that? There’s software that will lay your photos, one on top of the other, and match up your stars and eliminate anything different. And that clears up a lot of the grainy noise. Huh. So I was taking 7 shots of each shot, in preparation for stacking. But I learned, just this week, I should have taken 10 to 15 shots to stack.
Ah well.
So, anyway, these are single images, no stacking here, just a little editing to bring out the whites and sometimes to lift the shadows.
I still have so much to learn…so many technical things that I can do to make the images more clear, more beautiful. But the Milky Way season here in Michigan is almost over. There will be one more chance in October, just a few nights, and then I’ll have to be patient until 2023.
Yea right. I can hardly handle waiting for the sun to set in a single evening. How am I going to get through months of no Milky Way?
It’s gonna be tough.
Let’s see…last you knew I was hanging out in Mackinaw City waiting for it to stop raining so I could continue on over the bridge to my next adventure.
Yep, I was feeling pretty good. Almost kinda certain that I had gotten some decent Milky Way shots at my last location. Of course I didn’t really know, but was feeling good about it.
And I was so excited to be heading to a new (to me) location to find more dark skies. I had a campsite booked for three nights at Fayette State Park which is located at the bottom of the “Garden Peninsula,” a piece of land jutting down into Lake Michigan from the southern edge of the UP. Should be perfect, right?
Well…wrong. When I arrived at the park about 4 p.m. and drove to my site I found a very small site (not necessarily a deal breaker) that was entirely sloped, about the size of 2 cars, and totally a mud pit.
I sat there in the drizzle for the amount of time it took me to say”H*LL NO,” and then I drove the long 14 miles back up to civilization where I sat beside the road and searched the internet for a cheap hotel.
Along the way, down and back up, I did note that the Garden Peninsula itself was beautiful. With lots of barns and windmills and such.
So that made it a bit easier when I had to drive back down there again to formally check out of the campground that I never camped in so that I could get a refund for the other two nights.
A sixty dollar refund was worth the drive too. I should have just checked out the evening before when I decided not to stay but I was so freaked out by the campground I just ran.
I made reservations at another state park, Indian Lake, which pretty close to the town of Manistique. It was a much nicer place, with larger camp sites and grass. It wasn’t full my first night so I had a distant view of the lake, though the second night someone camped behind me. Still, I had plenty of room.
And it was only three miles away from the lighthouse where I spent a lot of hours waiting for a sunset and hoping for a chance at a decent Milky Way image.
Did I get that image? Well, as usually this post is getting too long, and I still have lots of images to edit. So I guess you’ll have to wait and see.
I just had another 2 hour lesson from my Milky Way teacher and I now know more about what I don’t know. I guess I need to get out there for another practice session!
Oh darn.
Here it is already a week since we drove home from our UP adventure and I still have more to show you. Maybe I should stop talking and just let you look.
On our third and last day in the UP we got headed west toward Grand Marais where I assured my friend we’d find more stones.
But along the way we drove up to Deer Park, north of Newberry, and then along Lake Superior’s coast and stopped at a delightful little beach with the prettiest stones!
I don’t think I found any flat white ones, but my friend found quite a few beautiful souvenirs.
And we left a souvenir for someone else to find too.
And then we headed over to Grand Marais.
Many people searching this beach are looking for agates. I wouldn’t know an agate from a rubber duck, so I just looked for flat white stones to paint. I didn’t find many of those either.
But the weather was beautiful with big fluffs of white clouds dressing up the sky and we had a great time wandering.
We didn’t stay long, we were hungry and still had miles to go to get to Munising, our next stop. But we left a painted treasure for someone to find before we left.
It’s kind of a long way to go for a sandwich, but we enjoyed the glimpses of Lake Superior that we found along the way. We were hoping to stop at a couple of waterfalls in Munising before heading back to Whitefish Point for the sunset.
We ate at Subway, noting exotic, but filling. And of course we stopped for a visit with Munising’s Bigfoot, where we left another treasure.
The traffic was terrible in Munising, backed up for miles coming into town from 3 directions. We decided to nix the idea of getting in line to get out to one of the waterfalls, and headed to one that was on the way out of town, Wagner Falls.
There’s a short mostly flat boardwalk back to the falls, and we were lucky that there weren’t many people stopping for a visit.
We took a few pictures…
…and then hid our treasure and were on our way back toward Whitefish Point.
We had a long drive to get there before sunset, but we arrived early enough to appreciate the golden light on all the driftwood, and the clouds streaking the sky. This could turn out to be a stunning sunset!
We wandered the beach, noticing how pretty everything was in the evening light…
… and how the beach moves and changes every day.
We found a couple of places to hide more treasure and then waited for the sun to settle down and set.
Most people left the beach once the sun was below the horizon, but we were out there for the long haul (and to find Yooper Lights) so we waited in the cooling air to see what would happen next.
And we were rewarded by intense color and beautiful shapes. It just kept getting better until it finally died into grey. The sun was done for the day, but we weren’t.
After the sun was down we looked for Yooper Lights (stones that glow in inferred light) along with a few other late night stone addicts.
Though we didn’t find any that night, the night before, on a cold windy evening, we witnessed a young boy and his dad find a stone that glowed. The boy was soooo excited, jumping up and down in the cold Superior waves. We got him and his dad to show us what the stone looked like, and in the midst of the conversation the boy turned and looked at us, his eyes wide and said:
“I really wish I was wearing long pants!”
We roared in laughter, in all the excitement he’d been running in and out of the water of the coldest lake around without a care. Until he stopped to talk to us.
And that’s kind of the way our whole trip was. We didn’t always find what we set out to see, the perfect rock, the perfect view, the perfect sunset.
But the excitement of the whole experience kept us motivated to continue the adventure regardless. And though there were moments we wished we were wearing long pants, on the whole, it was a perfect summer trip. Mosquitoes and all.
And just think, there are all those treasures out there just waiting to be found.
No, I’ve never seen them in person. Well. I might have seen a tiny bit of some once, but I’m not sure.
I’ve been watching all the great Northern Light images popping up on Facebook. Many are being shot in northern Michigan, often very near where I used to live a lifetime ago. Sometimes I can tell exactly where the photographer was standing because I’ve stood there myself.
Now days I live far away from the northern reaches of the Upper Peninsulia which would be my first choice of viewing locations. It’s just not practical to jump in the car when conditions are right and drive ten hours on the off chance the dancing lights appear.
But I’m sure, sooner or later, I’ll be in the right place at the right time. In fact I was, kind of, a couple years ago.
These are photos from 2019 when we were in the UP in the fall and northern lights were predicted. Not only predicted among local northern light buffs, but also on national news networks. Everyone knew there should be lights that night.
Which is why we found ourselves on a beach looking out at Lake Superior along with a few thousand of our closest friends, all of whom were enjoying bonfires producing smoke obscuring the sky.
Yep. That’s the closest I ever got to seeing the Northern Lights.
It was a crazy night, and though I was facinated by the others on the beach, mostly Michigan Tech students, we couldn’t see much of anything out over the water. I didn’t even look at these images when we finally made it home from our adventures. We’d seen so many other wonderful things that trip I never thought about these shots at all.
But I have to say…maybe, just maybe I did see some Northern Lights that night. In spite of myself.
Note: These aren’t great images, but to see them at all you’ll probably need to be in a dark room and looking at something larger than your phone.
Change Is Hard 