2008 Lunar Eclipse

Frankly, I'm surprised I could coax the camera to actually focus in the -4 degree temperatures (I'm not going to even bother looking up what the windchill might have been). I'm still learning how to do the low light pics and this was DEFINITELY that but for all the difficulties, it's not a bad picture.

Canal Park Visit

Believe it or not, also in 2000 (it seems it was a very busy year) and again in 2002, I got to spend a bit of time in Canal Park in Duluth Harbor. It's really a great place to hang out and you might agree that the scenery is pretty amazing. On the first occasion, my hotel was RIGHT on the beach so I got to take advantage the ocean views at dawn and dusk. I had to admit that I might have taken too many pictures but .. it was so pretty and makes for a nice progression!!!









but the Point has some great scenery even during the day







and I took this one while on a walk on the beach boardwalk



and since it's a harbor, you wouldn't believe the size of the ore boats that come in. They make for quite a sight.



and since you have that lighthouse for reference, this should give you an idea of the immensity of this ship



now that you have seen the size of the ships coming into harbor, just imagine the lift bridge that is required to allow ships of that size through!!



the group I was with was lucky enough to get an evening ride up with the bridge (something not allowed to standard tourists)



but it also allows a pretty spectacular view of the city



considering that I haven't been up to Canal Park since 2002, I might just have to go for a visit up there again sometime soon.

Another Stroll Down Memory Lane - to the Midwest

In 2000, I took a roadtrip vacation with one of my best friends to Colorado. It was a FANTASTIC vacation and we got to see a lot gorgeous countryside. So, I grabbed several of them in the scanning I was doing earlier and here's what I pulled out - lots of that trip isn't here but we'll just call it a representative sample..

Part of the trip we spent in the Colorado Springs area in an extremely adorable little victorian hotel. The reason we were in the area was to go white water rafting down the Arkansas River near Cańon City.

yeah, that's her and I on the left side of the boat. It was a BLAST - I would totally do it again.


Of course, one of the cool things about going rafting in the Cańon City area is that the Royal Gorge spans the Arkansas River right near there:


of course, one of the really neat things about standing on the edge of a cliff taking pictures of a bridge is that if you stop and look down at the river below you, you can get really cool shots like this!

I really really love this picture and one of these days it will be one that I have up on the wall in my livingroom like the others I posted.

Of course, as with every trip I take, there was hiking. Happily, Jeanette and I didn't seem to have any problem with hiking in the altitude at all. But there is a place in Colorado Springs called Seven Falls - you should see it. I don't have a picture of it in it's entirety because the little camera at the time just didn't have that capability. But it's a waterfall that comes down the mountain and is broken up into 7 different sections. The scenic area has a series of staircases that go all the way up to the top. If you want to check it out, go to sevenfalls.com It's really beautiful but it's quite the hike. Here's a pic DOWN the stairs once we got to the top:


of course, that's not really the end of the hike. Turns out, at the top is a trail up to Inspiration Point which overlooks the valley containing Colorado Springs. Basically, you just follow this creek:


and it there are gorgeous little waterfalls the whole way up like this one:


Sadly, the pics I DON'T have are the ones Jeanette and I took on rocks of Inspiration Point when we got to the top. I think she has them though so I should find out and add them to the collection at some point.

One of the other places we visited was called Cave of the Winds. I love caves so this was a pretty cool trip even though it's very touristy. Still, the caverns were HUGE and there were so many gorgeous things in there. But I did figure out that it's hard to get pictures with a little 35mm point&shoot in a dark cave:

A lot of them turned out like this


and for a little reference - this is about 3-4 stories high


and even the walls can look cool


One of the coolest visual images of the trip started with this:

It's a pic of a stormfront on the eastern horizon that I took from the parking lot after we had dinner at Perkins. Little did we know that it would make for a very spectacular electrical storm covering the horizon that we followed the whole night driving home across Kansas. We finally caught up with it just before dawn, drove THROUGH it for about half an hour and just came out on the other side as the sun was coming up. It was cool to see the sunrise in splendor with lightening flashing right next to it. I wish I had THAT on film.

I gotta tell you, we were gone less than a week and I don't know how we managed to squeeze in all the stuff we did - we were in Denver for the first couple days and we also went horseback riding in the Garden of the Gods by Pike's Peak. I have pictures from that too but I haven't gotten around to scanning any of them in yet

Some New OLD Stuff

So I finally decided to start making use of my scanner to get some of my pictures online from back in the day before a digital camera. Yeah, I have a LOT of old pictures and stuff that I would love to share with people but it will take years to get it all scanned in. But I started with one very long evening scanning in a variety of things and some of my favorites from various outtings (about 50 pictures). I'll try to break them up a little bit into something that makes a little sense... at least to me.

My first group are special to me for a couple reasons but for anyone who has been in my house, they will familiar. Many years ago, I pulled together some of my favorite pictures from over the years and gave them to my brother. Paul was working in the developing world at the time and did his magic to blow them up, crop, edit and mount them for me so that I could frame and hang them in my livingroom.

The first two pictures are from the back yard of a cabin in Montana where a group of us stayed during a ski trip.





Then I have a pic that I took from my grandmother's back yard in Cowell, Arkansas.



Right in the center over my TV is the first landscape picture I ever took. I was 13 years old and on a camping trip with my family in UP Michigan on the shore of Lake Superior playing with my dad's 35 mm for the first time. I didn't have the horizon quite straight and was just discovering what low light does to a shutter but I got a great useable picture anyway. The photog bug had officially bitten. With a bit of cropping and straightening, my bro turned it into a magnificent pic to hang...



the last two were taken from opposite sides of a lake at the 4H Camp I stayed at while working in Atlanta, Georgia for the '96 Summer Olympics.





I will post a few more old things when the muse strikes me.