My week in the south at my parents’ house started out with a great walk up Smith Mountain to climb the local fire tower.
Many of you have seen the fire tower in pictures before. I wish you all could come with me and experience the view from the top. This trip I was lucky to have the company of fellow blogger Mike from MLCreations to climb with me.
The mountain trail was it’s usual beautiful self, and the climb up the tower was it’s usual long way. We had a nice breeze and a great view at the top. It’s always worth the climb.
On the way back to the car we explored the fire road that runs around the base of the mountain. By the time we got back to the car we were ready for lunch on the deck, complete with a yummy pound cake provided by Mike. All in all, a lovely day with very nice company.
Since then the house has been filed with family, coming and going, busy, busy, busy, but not too busy to enjoy how beautiful the lake is.
Morning reflections and evening sunsets have slowed us down and made us more observant. That’s a good thing and exactly what spending time at this cabin is designed to accomplish.
I’m just lucky I got to come down. Every time I’m here I vow to come back soon, to not let so much time go between visits, but somehow I turn around and months, sometimes years, have gone by.
This time I’m going to try harder to be back before another year slips away.
Funny how I used to get a happy little skip in my heart when I cleared the last set of hills while driving down to Alabama to visit my parents. And funny how today, as I cleared that last set of hills I felt a melancholy skip instead.
I arrived just before dark. Tomorrow, with sunshine, the space will feel happier.
I guess that’s normal.
It’s hard now, to come visit with the house empty but waiting patiently. It’s equally hard to leave after being here a few days. The memories smooth out and it just feels good to be here.
The crepe myrtle is in bloom. Made me smile.
But that first walk into the empty house….well…that’s hard. Every time.
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.
Much angst in the city.
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.
Round and round and round we go.
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.***
On my way down Lookout Mountain I saw this. Of course I had to turn around and spend some time in awe.
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.
I came across these three trees that called to me.
Of course that means I have MORE photos to sort through. But let me finish up my trip south first.
Isn’t this an amazing home?
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.
While trying to get back to the farm I saw this field of soy beans. I liked the lines of it.
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?
As you can see it was a dark and stormy day.
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.
Which way should I go?
I couldn’t leave without it!
The “city” version of the same house.
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 just needs a little TLC.
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?
I always want to see what’s around the next curve.
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!
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.
So what does a person do all day while waiting for true dark to arrive? Besides nap that is.
Working on the river.
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.
If you zoom in you might be able to read about the lighthouse.
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.
Scoop after scoop of muck was dug up from the river bottom and poured into the barge.
I couldn’t resist walking out on the causeway leading to the shiny red lighthouse. It was such a pretty day.
A wide cement walkway made the trip out there easy to navigate.
I spent quite a bit of time out there waiting for the sun to go down. And watching the light glint off the water.
It’s not a long walk on a pretty day.
A couple of guys were fishing but they hid behind the lighthouse for me to get some shots.
All metal, it can withstand some nasty weather. But none was forecast while I was there.
But as the sun lowered I came back into shore.
The flowers glowed, loosestrife, an invasive, and goldenrod.
The evening light makes everything so pretty.
The last bit of light before the magic begins.
And then, slowly, slowly, the sun sank and the blue hour began.
Let’s take a walk down this boardwalk.
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.
The beginning of blue hour on the beach.
I waited impatiently. It takes forever for the night to get truly dark. And then….a few stars decide to turn on their lights.
Here we go…
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.
Take a moment and just look.
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.
Beautiful without the lighthouse too.
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.
Many of my images had these streaks. I never saw it when I was on the beach, but some people say this light in the sky is the Sky-Link satellites.Zoom in and see what you think.
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.
Just to show you, we are never alone, the sky is full of stuff flying around.
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?
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.
It was such a beautiful night.
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.
The other end of the Milky Way.
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.
Out of focus because I was speeding away.
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.
Where do I go now?
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 barn being renovated.
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.
Mama cow wants me to move along.
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.
Much better. Grass and a view.
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.
Not much of a sunset….but there was the anticipation of stars.
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!
Change Is Hard 