Cultural, People, Travel

Hands

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I’ve been doing some house cleaning in Lightroom recently. This has included, among other things, work on keywords. In doing so I have come up with my next series of posts! I know, it’s been a while.

This series will be based on a keyword or two that begins to identify an image for me when I need to locate it in my files. Whether I need it for a notecard, wall hanging, or whatever, it’s important to be able to locate the image I need among the 145 plus thousand images filed neatly (and sometimes not so neatly) away on my hard drive.

This week’s keyword is…hands. Below you will find a few images and the story behind the image. Here we go, in no particular order.

Last September I had the great pleasure of being a photo guide with Arizona Highways Photo Scapes in Chama, New Mexico. They have a small gauge steam engine that runs out of there, similar to the famous Silverton, CO train. These hands belong to a train worker I spotted at our lunch stop. He was sitting and chatting with fellow workers, on break before taking us back to Chama.

 

I was doing a family portrait session in Flagstaff one day. Mom/Grandma arrived adorned with this beautiful jewelry. Before we got started I asked her to pose for a quick shot.

 

I was visiting my sister and her family in Florida a few years ago shortly after her youngest was born.  We did a family shoot and came up with this idea.

 

One of my favorite high school senior photo sessions produced this beautiful image.

 

Kids stayed entertained with chalk at a chess tournament when I was coaching and photographing the game at Killip years ago. I walked by and this child didn’t want their picture taken so I photographed the raised hands instead. Thanks, kid! lol

 

Walking up Antelope Canyon from Lake Powell we came across someone’s muddy hand prints on the sandstone.

 

It’s a long story but these are the hands of my brother’s grandfather working on his tractor on his farm in Nebraska.

 

In 2018 my wife and I flew to Nepal to hike to Everest Base Camp. These hands belong to a local we came across along the way.

 

More mud art I found on a tree in Sedona!

Architecture, buildings, Historic Buildings, Places to Shoot, Summer, Travel, Urbanscape

Washington D.C. ~ Buildings

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For me, Washington D.C. is all about the buildings. In my world of keywording,  buildings also include monuments, bridges, and memorials. Steeped in history, full of stories, iconic, architecture, and design all catch my eye. I couldn’t get enough. Here they are, in no particular order.

The Library of Congress was NOT what I pictured it to be. From what we saw it was much more a museum than a library. Apparently, it is the official research library that serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country and is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages. Who knew?

We stumbled across this building on our way to a March for our Lives rally. Excluding the White House, the Lockkeeper’s House is the oldest building on the National Mall, built in 1837.

The building dates to a period when this area was a  wharf and was the location of a section of the Washington City Canal, which connected the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Here, an eastward extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal met the Potomac River and the Washington City Canal at a canal lock.

The 350-square-foot house served the canal lock keeper, who collected tolls, recorded commerce, maintained the canal, and managed traffic.

The Vietnam Memorial was powerful. The names on the Wall, originally numbering 57,939 when it was dedicated in 1982, are listed in the chronological order of the casualty dates. It’s interesting how short the wall is from the early days of the war and startling how tall it gets in the middle. Additional names have since been added and as of May 2018, there were 58,320 names. The number of names on the wall is different from the official number of U.S. Vietnam War deaths, which is 58,220 as of May 2018.

Mount Vernon was a beautiful way to spend an afternoon. The main building was under renovation so we wandered the grounds. It became less beautiful as we entered the slave quarters and realized how many people were owned to make these grounds a working farm back in the day. The above image is a room of the restored slave quarters.

The plantation is on the banks of the Potomac River in Fairfax County, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C.

The Washington family acquired land in the area in 1674. Around 1734, the family embarked on an expansion of its estate that continued under George Washington, who began leasing the estate in 1754 before becoming its sole owner in 1761.

In 1858, the house’s historical importance was recognized and it was saved from ruin by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association; this philanthropic organization acquired it together with part of the Washington property estate. Escaping the damage suffered by many plantation houses during the American Civil War, Mount Vernon was restored.

Mount Vernon was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is still owned and maintained in trust by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and is open every day of the year. Allowing the public to see the estate is not an innovation, but part of an over 200-year-old tradition started by George Washington himself. In 1794 he wrote: “I have no objection to any sober or orderly person’s gratifying their curiosity in viewing the buildings, Gardens, &ca. about Mount Vernon.”

This is an image of the lower floor of a round barn found on the property. It was invented to have hay laid out on the above floor, have horses walk on it, and ground it up to have it fall through to the bottom floor and be swept up and used. It was cutting-edge technology back then.

The Capital is located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall. Though no longer at the geographic center of the federal district, the Capitol forms the origin point for the district’s street-numbering system and the district’s four quadrants.

Central sections of the present building were completed in 1800. These were partly destroyed in the 1814 burning of Washington, then were fully restored within five years. The building was later enlarged by extending the wings for the chambers for the bicameral legislature, the House of Representatives in the south wing, and the Senate in the north wing. The massive dome was completed around 1866 just after the American Civil War.

The Supreme Court Building also referred to as “The Marble Palace,” serves as the official workplace of the Chief Justice of the United States and the eight Associate Justices of the Supreme Court. It is located in the block immediately east of the United States Capitol and north of the Library of Congress. On May 4, 1987, the Supreme Court Building was designated a National Historic Landmark.

The proposal for a separate building for the Supreme Court was suggested in 1912 by President William Howard Taft, who became Chief Justice in 1921. In 1929, Taft successfully argued for the creation of the new building but did not live to see it built. Physical construction began in 1932 and was officially completed in 1935 under the guidance of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Taft’s successor.

I don’t remember what this building is but we got out of the car, I looked up and saw this…so I SHOT it.

Beautiful architecture was everywhere, be it churches, office buildings, or homes, it was everywhere.

Walking from one place to another, outside of the National Mall, we would come across random buildings like the Embassy of Kazakstan.

The National Education Association.

The National Geographic Society.

An iPhone picture of the White House. Some days you could get right up to the gate and some days not. Today was a good day.

The Washington Monument’s construction began in 1848 and was halted for a period of 23 years, from 1854 to 1877 due to a lack of funds, a struggle for control over the Washington National Monument Society, and the American Civil War. It was built to commemorate George Washington, once commander-in-chief of the Continental Army (1775–1784) in the American Revolutionary War and the first President of the United States (1789–1797). Located almost due east of the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial, the monument, made of marble, granite, and bluestone gneiss, is both the world’s tallest predominantly stone structure and the world’s tallest obelisk at 555 feet 5+1⁄8 inches (169.294 m) tall, according to the National Park Service (measured 1884). It is the tallest monumental column in the world if all are measured above their pedestrian entrances.  The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1848; the first stone was laid atop the unfinished stump on August 7, 1880; the capstone was set on December 6, 1884; the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885; and officially opened October 9, 1888.

We never did secure tickets to go up in it. Next time.

The World War II Memorial was stunning. But this plaque was possibly the most important part of the memorial. It is the Freedom Wall. It explains the price of freedom in very real terms. The wall holds 4,048 gold stars you can see behind the sign to the left. Each star represents one hundred American service personnel who died or remain missing in the war. The 405,399 Americans dead and missing from World War II are second only to the loss of more than 620,000 Americans during our Civil War.  And THAT only includes our country. And only service members. Let that sink in for a minute.

This is a super cute little bridge along the waterway of the Jefferson Memorial whose pillars you can see below.

I found this quote on the Southeast wall to be very pertinent to today’s politics: “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” I have more to say but I’ll stop there. 😉

 

The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in May 1922. It has always been a major tourist attraction and since the 1930s has sometimes been a symbolic center focused on race relations.

The memorial has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on August 28, 1963, during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The memorial is open to the public 24 hours a day, and more than 7 million people visit it annually.

Even the Metro station is kinda cool inside.

We went to a Washington Nationals Major League Baseball game with our friends. I even ate a hot dog.

The Smithsonian Institution is legendary. I learned this at an exhibit: “The Smithsonian Institution started with a gift from an 18th-century English scientist named James Smithson who left his fortune to the United States, a country he had never seen. This exhibition looks at the history of the Smithsonian, focusing on its research, museums, and public programs in art, culture, history, and science and the role of the American public in the Smithsonian museums and research.

The Smithsonian is a partnership between its specialist staff and the American people. ”

Walking around old Alexandria we ran into some old buildings.

I’m not sure what this building is but we emerged from the underground Metro to this. Stunning.

This is the National Portrait Gallery which is full of, you guessed it, portraits! Among other art pieces.

We didn’t go into Chinatown but found one of the entrances to it near the portrait gallery. Again, next time.

Here’s Ellen at Union Station, on our way to find the Amtrak train that will take us to New York City.

I hope you enjoyed the small sampling of the buildings we encountered on the D.C. portion of our June adventure.

Until next week, Happy Shooting!!

Animals, Flowers, Nature, Summer, Travel

Washington D.C. ~ Nature

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We arrived home on May 20th from our 50-day camper adventure only to turn around and fly to Washington D.C. on June 8th.

I will begin this blog series where I left off with the last one…Nature. Editing this set of images for this post was WAY more manageable than the previous one. I only had nine days to sort through, not 50!

Let us begin with our airplane journey across the U.S. It was clear skies until we flew into Dallas, Texas where we encountered severe thunderstorms. In fact, we found out we were one of the last planes to fly out of DFW that afternoon due to the storms. Whew! Once we got above the clouds though, it was beautiful.

Our first day in the D.C. area found us on the banks of the Potomac hunting for prehistoric shark teeth.

It was amazing how many we found. It makes one wonder how many are out there because this is a popular activity in the area and most folks find plenty.

While looking for shark teeth down the beach I found this little guy. Definitely a highlight.

Following the morning at the river and a parking lot, and a tailgate picnic our friends dropped us off at Mt. Vernon, home of George Washington. There will be plenty of pictures later in the Buildings blog but I just wanted to point out how cool it was to touch a tree planted by our first president.

In walking along the National Mall and encountering several ponds and lakes, many with duck families merrily swimming about, we learned that the way the ponds were built is a death trap for little ducklings. They can’t get out as they can’t yet fly. So, volunteers, in their infinite wisdom, came up with duck ramps to help the littles get in and out of the water. Brilliant, right?

D.C. is certainly not at a loss of places to photograph flowers. They are everywhere, especially in June. The orange Lillies above are in front of the Smithsonian building while the white rose rests against the Vietnam Memorial.

We stayed on base with our friends and Jake, the family dog, at Fort Belvoir. We had a good soaking one evening.

One day we went to the U.S. Botanic Garden. It is on the grounds of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The Botanic Garden is supervised by Congress through the Architect of the Capitol, who is responsible for maintaining the grounds of the United States Capitol. The gardens are open every day of the year, and is the oldest continually-operating botanic garden in the United States.

The Conservatory is housed in a Lord & Burnham greenhouse and is divided into separate rooms, each simulating a different habitat. The habitats include The Garden Court, Rare and Endangered Plants, Plant Exploration, Orchid House, Medicinal Plants, Desert, Hawaii, Garden Primeval, Plant Adaptation, Jungle (this is the largest of the rooms, and includes a second-story catwalk so that the jungle canopy may be observed from both below and above), Children’s Garden, and Southern Exposure (courtyard), on the south side of the building, which is surrounded by glass walls, receiving more warmth. It features many plants from the Southeast and Southwest, which would not be able to live in the colder District of Columbia climate if not for the microclimate).

Needless to say, we kept getting lost.

The Washington D.C. area is beautiful. We spent most of our time going to museums and seeing historic buildings. The vegetation in the area is SO different from the desert southwest, so GREEN.

Next week I’ll show you some buildings. Buildings is a HUGE keyword on this trip. Lots of buildings.

Until then, happy shooting!

 

Animals, Flowers, keywording, Nature, Outdoors, Travel

Nature along the Way

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Well. Congratulations. You’ve made it to the end of this nine-week set of blogs about our epic 50-day trip around the eastern united states.

I have saved the best for last. You have traveled with me through eight of the nine preset keywords I use for quick tagging images in Lightroom. The final one is…!! (Drumroll please) NATURE!! It’s a monster one because as you can imagine it includes a LOT.

The preset keywords that fit under the Nature umbrella are as follows: plants, animals, weather, water, landscape, trail, rocks, beach, and park. I’m not married to these nine but that’s what I have so far. I then go to say…animals and further tag them with the following: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fish, wild, and domestic. I only have eight here because I couldn’t think of a ninth.

This section goes like this: Nature>Plants>Flowers. Once the color words are attached to the image I can then add location, species if I know it, the number of petals, etc.

On this dandelion, I might add the words design, seeds, and stem.

The subcategories I’ve chosen under the Plants umbrella are as follows: flowers, wildflowers, trees, fungi, garden, leaves, green, succulent, and fruit. I literally edited this list while writing this blog. I replaced bark with fungi.

Trees are another one of my favorite subjects. These two images would be tagged with “roots”. I don’t yet have a tree subset as I can’t come up with enough keywords to make it worth the space. The above image would also include water.

I may be coming up with the tree subset as I write this. I could add bark, trunk, texture, moss, design, roots, forest, orchard…Hmm, I have eight.

I don’t consider myself a landscape photographer but I would categorize these two images as landscapes. Landscapes show up as a keyword under nature but that’s it, I don’t currently have a listing of landscapes. I suppose if one DID shoot a lot of landscapes they would be:  Desert, Plain, Wetland, Mountain, Coast, Lakes, Rivers, Forest, and Grassland.

Fungi!!

Now on to animals. It’s a big one. Let’s begin with domestic vs. wild. I don’t have this yet either but one could subcategorize domestic into dog, cat, fish, bird, working, horse, mule, pig, and cow.

This horse was working the streets of New Orleans.

When we stopped to see Ellen’s sister in Mississippi, this guy was in a pen on the property.

This beautiful bird was at my cousin’s home in North Carolina and the dinosaurs below were at my brother’s home in Denver.

My cousin owns four mules and this donkey on six acres outside of Chapel Hill.

These little cuties were escorted across the street, IN the crosswalk mind you, by their Canada Geese parents in Gatlinburg, TN.

I got to watch this handsome fellow eat some Blue Heron spaghetti at our camp in Mississippi.

This Carolina Wren was feeding her babies nestled in a home camera cover at our friend’s house in Weaverville, NC.

I happened to have my long lens with me on a short hike at our camp in Tennessee when this beauty took off from a tree.

South Llano River State Park outside of Junction, TX was AMAZING in the animal department. We spent a lot of time hanging out with armadillos AND I got to watch this mama and her three babies do squirrel activities.

Not sure whose teeth these are but it’s tagged under animals.

We saw a few turtles along the way which is always a treat. These guys were on a log in a swampy area of a park we walked in near Asheville, NC.

We found this fellow on my cousin’s porch in Hillsborough, NC.

My little green friend kept me company while I used the restroom at our camp in Louisiana.

Some of the bees from our beekeeping experience in St. Paul, NE.

Catching flying insects requires a bit of patience and a lot of pixels to delete later.

Water is another of my favorite places to hang out. I’m usually playing in, on, or around it and love finding patterns in its movement. This image fits under Nature>Water>clear, stream, pattern.

There you have it, our 50-day April 1st-May 20th epic adventure has come to a close in my blog world. Thanks for coming along and enjoying our adventure. It was certainly a joy to revisit all that we did.

June found us in Washington D.C. and New York City so STAY TUNED!!

Happy Shooting!

Art, Cultural, keywording, Music, People, Places to Shoot, Travel

Music we enjoyed

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Music and people, people and music. You can’t have one without the other. It was tricky separating these two keywords as they are somewhat interchangeable.

Our first full-on musical encounter was in Progreso, Mexico when through the market came a family band. It looked like mom, dad, and three boys. Dad was on clarinet, the two older boys were on drums, the youngest had the donation cup and mom followed along, keeping an eye on her brood. They were really quite good but gone before I could get my camera out after our donation to take a decent picture. The sad part? The boys were working and not in school. We were there in April.

Our main musical encounter was, you guessed it, New Orleans! We were there for their first French Quarter Jazz Festival since Covid.

There were plenty of solo guitar players, some with donation tins and some not.

Definitely some well-worn guitars.

This guy had his karaoke music playing and was singing his heart out for a buck.

And some were just playing for themselves.

Then the parade began and the jazz bands came marching down Bourbon Street.

You can almost hear the music while looking at these images.

The Navy even sent some musicians. The fellow below was FULL of personality. Imagine if THIS is how we went to war and we wound up making music together instead of death and destruction. If only…

On a street corner, we ran into this quintet playing some interesting instruments. There was a standup base and a washboard among the crew.

Raw talent if you ask me, riding a bike with this big drum.

I’m not sure who this is but a painting was made of her and she was selling CDs. She was an amazing clarinet player with a small band on a street corner in NOLA.

We ran into Mai-Mai (My-My?) near some statues in Armstrong Park. He was just hanging out on the park bench, chatting with people and playing his guitar. We listened and talked with him for a while. Such a sweet man.

Dollywood had some great Bluegrass bands playing as well. The South definitely did not disappoint in the music department.

Family, People, Travel, Uncategorized

People along the way

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We are surrounded by beautiful souls in our lives and on this trip, we got to visit some of our favorites and meet some new ones along the way.

I have known Eddie and Michelle for a LONG time. I met Michelle when she came to work at Killip Elementary School in Flagstaff in maybe 2000? Two years later I got a cancelation for a Grand Canyon River Trip and they joined us. Later that fall, in October 2002, Ellen and I got married and we fashioned our wedding after theirs from the previous year. So, our anniversary is one year and one week later than this sweet couple.

This is a spray paint artist we watched in Progreso, Mexico. He was quite good and I STILL can’t figure out how anyone paints anything worth hanging with spray paint. What talent.

We spent most of our time in Houston with my cousin David. Our fathers were brothers, both now deceased. Bong, his husband as of March 26th, could join us on occasion as he was still teaching school when we were there. Dave is retired so we played, a LOT. Looking forward to more time in Houston.

On one of our bayou bike rides in Houston, we came across a wall of murals on the back walls of a strip mall.  This guy came out of one of the doors and we asked if he was one of the artists and he said YES! What are the odds?

A creepy little guy selling clothing in Galveston.

This guy had caught a yellowfin tuna and wanted someone at the fish market to filet it for him but they had already closed for the afternoon so he had to walk his poor tuna back to his boat, dragging its nose along the dock, to filet it himself.

We fund several folks on the South Padre Island Beach searching for treasures.

This is the beautiful couple now living in ellen’s childhood home in Harlingen, Tiffany, and Rudy. They were gracious hosts, let us wander into each room, and even sent us off with a Texas treat bag.

This guy was fishing off the end of the pier at Fountainebleau State Park on Lake Ponchatrain. He caught s small ray of some sort.

This is our very knowledgeable Voodoo Museum guide who took us all around New Orleans and had great stories. And this beautiful voodoo queen ran the cash register in the museum.

This is the artist who makes the mardi gras masks. They are exquisite.

Back at camp, we were approached by Erin who invited us back to her pad to meet Andy. They own the only Four Wheel Camper in the south! Ok, probably not but it’s the only other one we saw once we left Arizona. It’s an early 1990s Granby on a ’73 Ford 100. They live in it full time and travel in between Amazon warehouse jobs. Quite the interesting couple.

I first saw this colorful character coming from behind us, walking down a side street toward the parade. Once she was in front of all the bands she came alive and began dancing along with the music as she made her way down the avenue.

Only in New Orleans…

We stopped to visit ellen’s sister Ruth who happened to be staying with her son and daughter-in-law in Poplar, Mississippi.

THIS was an interesting conversation. We stopped in this coffee shop in Houston, MS looking for help in finding the road and house Ellen and her family lived in 1969-70ish. Ellen mentioned the high school where she was a freshman and this lady lowered her voice and said, in a soft southern accent, that the old high school had burned down in 1973 under suspicious circumstances. When we asked what happened she lowered her voice, even more, looked around, and said that was the year they elected their first Black homecoming queen. Yikes!

We drove from Mississippi to Dollywood then on to Weaverville just outside of Ashville, NC for a day to visit our old neighbors from Flagstaff, Trish and Paul. They were wonderful hosts and gave us the lay of the land and Paul’s signature egg muffins for breakfast.

From Ashville, it wasn’t far to Hillsborough and cousin Wendy and her two charming children. We stayed three days, saw some beautiful country, hung out with amazing people, and talked to our granddaughter on the lid of a trash container.

Then it was the big drive to Ohio! We stayed there for six days and had some wonderful family time.

Evonne and Akacia showed us their favorite places.

Rob spends a lot of time on his craft as a tattoo artist.

Chelsea joined us for Mother’s Day morning coffee.

Rob got to join us on a sunny day downtown.

We went to Evonne’s place of work on our way out of town at the end of the week. They all love her there.

We met these two lovely folks at Sugar Bottom Campground outside of Iowa City. We hope to run into them again in our adventures.

We spent two days at the family farm in Nebraska where we extracted honey from bee boxes with this amazing lady, Becky Puncochar, my half-brother’s Aunt. We also learned about and got to ride a folding bike which we have incorporated into our camping rig, and got to wander down by the Platt River with Jonathan who came to visit from Denver for the weekend. It was a busy two days.

Our final stop was Denver where we got to walk the niece and nephew to school.

Hang out with Chelsea in Idaho Springs and hot tub.

Have dinner with the Prow family.  I taught with Laura at Killip in Flagstaff some years ago. Timothy is a master plumber and Nate hales from Ethiopia. We love this framily.

We had days mostly to ourselves as Chelsea took the week off but got sick and spent time sleeping, everyone else was either at work or school.

Except for this guy, he seemed to be the neighborhood watch guy. Creepy.

People, it’s what travel is really all about. And if they live in cool places? it’s a bonus.

Historic Buildings, Travel

Signs along the way

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Signs is another one of my main keyword themes. Many of these images have more than one main theme. For example, below is the back of one of only two Four Wheel Campers we came across in our travels. It also got tagged under Transportation.

I photograph a lot of signs in my travels, particularly the informational ones, to help remind me about all the information we ingest on our adventures.  They become a reference tool. And some are just fun, or interesting, or curious, or a cool design.

This denotes the location where day floaters can exit the South Llano River near our campground. This image will also show up under Nature. Nature is a HUGE category that I will discuss in September.

This would show up around town in South Padre Island.

Also on South Padre Island, at the end of the island near the sand dunes was this sign. Ya just don’t see this in Flagstaff. This is another example of the second tag of Nature.

I have more T-shirts than I could ever need so when I see a clever saying on one I SHOOT it!

This shop door was also in Progresso and was also tagged under Art.

In Houston, I learned about bayous. There are miles and miles of mostly cement trails along the bayous of Houston which apparently are NOT rivers and not quite swamps. By definition, its a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area, and may refer to an extremely slow-moving stream or river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), a marshy lake or wetland, or a creek whose current reverses daily due to tides, and which contains brackish water highly conducive to fish life and plankton.

This sign would be more humorous if it wasn’t posted in Texas and in a country ripe with gun violence.

We love cemeteries. This is the sign above the one in Port Isabel.

This is in the KOA Holiday Campground in Galveston Definitely not our jam.

This beach was within walking distance of our KOA Galveston campground, which made it worth it. The beaches in Texas are low, flat and hard packed, perfect for driving and camping on.

This is another image that is also tagged under Buildings. You probably can’t read it but the story of the Galveston Orphans Home was pretty interesting.

That’s one old newspaper!

These plaques were posted on many buildings we came across in Galveston. The 1900 Galveston hurricane was the deadliest natural disaster in United States history and the fifth-deadliest Atlantic hurricane, only behind Hurricane Mitch overall.

This is info I shot off the menu at Katie’s Seafood Restaurant in Galveston.

Talk about random. Grocery Store was not quite accurate. It was more of a convenience/sporting goods store.

More alligator signs. This one was in the pond near Lake Ponchatrain at our camp in Louisiana. Yet another reason to sleep in a camper!

These tiled signs were all over New Orleans and I found them interesting.

Lots of new information in the Voodoo Museum.

Another fascinating sign with historical information that we came across on our Voodoo Museum Tour. In colonial times, Congo Square was an open-air market where blacks—both enslaved and free—met on “free Sundays” to take part in sacred African rituals, talk, trade, and perform traditional songs and dance, helping lay the foundations for what would later become jazz.

I found this sign to be a bit ironic as this church faces the square where a lot of activity happens during festivals.

I thought this was a great way to offer business cards on the outside of your door.

These two signs are also tagged under Buildings. I was struck by the date on the sign above. Below is to remind me that Colorado does in fact have a style of pizza. Who knew?

Colorado-style pizza – also known as a “Colorado mountain pie” – doesn’t get a whole lot of attention outside of the Rocky Mountain region. Colorado pizzas are thick-crust pies that come with a ludicrous amount of toppings.

The crust of a Colorado mountain pie is also unique in that it is made with honey and braided on the outside. The braid is there to hold the mountain of toppings from spilling out of the pie and locals tend to dunk it in honey at the end of their meal. You read that right – the Colorado mountain pie is both dinner and dessert.

So there you have it, a sample of some of the signs we encountered on our trip. Again, it is often very helpful in recalling detailed information about areas we visit.

Until next week, Happy Shooting!!

Places to Shoot, Travel

Excursions or…a busy, busy trip

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Excursions is a new main theme that began as Urban. I was looking for a catch-all keyword I could use for random images but as it turns out, almost all of the images fit under other main themes. I then decided I needed to tag all of the little adventures we had along the way including museums, beaches, bike rides, cemeteries, city visits, etc. To be clear, the keyword Urban has evolved into Excursions. We’ll have to see how I like it and how useful it is.

This image is an example of one picture needing at least three main theme tags; people, nature, and excursions.

Portal was a busy two days and three nights. Our excursions included visiting the little town, following Michelle around on her daily house-sitting tour, a quick driving tour of the area including Rodeo, NM, and some campgrounds in the Chiricahua national monument, and a couple of short hikes, one to this watering hole and another to a beautiful vista in the monument.

The Harlingen area was a remarkably busy four days and five nights given that we were only supposed to be there two nights and one day.

These little babies, maybe baby Jesus? were found in a store in Mexico. They were initially tagged as People, though that’s a stretch, and Art, another stretch. This is an example of an image not fitting in any of the initial main theme tags very well but they were seen on our excursion into Mexico.

Heading into Mexico we crossed the famed Rio Grande River. Here is a border patrol truck driving the river frontage road. I have no idea how far this road goes or how many desperate people they encounter each day. The river is smaller than I had imagined.

The tags for the above image are Transportation, Nature, Excursions.

In the Harlingen area, we had several errands we ran. Here’s ellen at the post office mailing a package to her sister in Bellingham, WA. We also got the truck windows tinted, tried to get help fixing the outdoor shower leak, discovered some items we needed and did a Walmart run, went grocery shopping, saw a movie, hit a mall, and the like.

South Padre Island was a big day. Being only an hour away it was easy enough to get to but we actually spent a good chunk of time in Port Isabel, the town on this side of the bridge connecting the two.

The sand dunes on SPI are tagged People, Nature, Excursions.

The cemetery in Port Isabel is very close to this hotel. We walked over from the lighthouse where we could see it from the top. This picture is a classic example of needing a catch-all tag like Excursions. I guess it could also fit under Buildings.

This image is tagged People, Buildings, Excursions as it is the stairway up to the top of the lighthouse.

This is Ellen in her childhood home in Harlingen. Finding this home was the reason for our deep south Texas detour. It was such a wonderful experience. The owners were lovely and let us in to visit. Ellen told lots of stories of her adventures with her siblings in this house.

We had three full days in Houston with cousin David and that was a very busy time as well. We did two bike rides on bayou trails. One of the rides went past a bat colony. We could see any bats but found evidence of them in their scat on the ground. It didn’t smell very good.

We also went to Houston Post, a renovated U.S. Postal facility that has the largest urban park on top of a building in the country. Inside are restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues. It’s still being developed but it is in Houston’s theater district downtown which is second in size only to Broadway in New York City.

This is in downtown Houston where you can walk down to the bayou. It is said you can kayak in these waters although we did not see anyone in them.

We spent an afternoon at Rice University. An hour and a half was spent at a lecture cousin Dave had signed up for. He’s my idol in the area of not letting your brain atrophy.

We also attended this fascinating museum. The museum is home to “the country’s largest collection of funeral service artifacts and features renowned exhibits on one of man’s oldest cultural customs,” according to its website. For its hallmark exhibit, Celebrating the Lives and Deaths of the Popes, the museum collaborated with the Vatican to highlight the ceremonies surrounding papal funerals. As of October 2020, the museum has a presidential exhibit, including Abraham Lincoln’s death mask.

Displays go back in time as far as Ancient Egyptian funerary practices and include items like hearses and unusual coffins. It also devotes space for a Presidential Funeral Gallery. Among other items, it has the original $99.25 funeral bill for George Washington.

And the interactive exhibit on Frieda Kahlo.

On the way to Galveston, we hit the Johnson Space Center. Named after Lyndon B. Johnson, the Johnson Space Center is NASA’s center where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It consists of a complex of 100 buildings constructed on 1,620 acres in the Clear Lake Area of Houston, which acquired the official nickname “Space City” in 1967. The center is home to NASA’s astronaut corps and is responsible for training astronauts from both the US and its international partners. It houses the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, which has provided the flight control function for every NASA human spaceflight since Gemini 4. It is popularly known by its radio call signs “Mission Control” and “Houston”.

We had two excursions in Galveston, the town itself where we spent the day, and a walk to the beach from camp.

These electrical lines remind me of some I photographed in Kathmandu. During the 19th century, Galveston became a major U.S. commercial center and one of the largest ports in the United States. It was, for a time, Texas’ largest city, known as the “Queen City of the Gulf”. It was devastated by the unexpected Galveston Hurricane of 1900, whose effects included massive flooding and a storm surge that nearly wiped out the town. The natural disaster on the exposed barrier island is still ranked today as the deadliest in United States history, with an estimated death toll of between 6,000 to 12,000 people. The city subsequently reemerged during the Prohibition era of 1919–1933 as a leading tourist hub and a center of illegal gambling, nicknamed the Free State of Galveston until this era ended in the 1950s with subsequent other economic and social development.

Our last morning was a foggy one.

Then it was on to New Orleans. We really only had two excursions in three days, the plantation museum and NOLA itself. New Orleans was a gold mine for photography and within the city, we had what seemed like a million little excursions. We hit restaurants, museums, parades, shops, and we people watched to name a few.

These two critters were taking in the festival parade. They could use a good brushing, don’t ya think?

This critter was at our Cajun Restaurant where we ate after the morning at the plantation.

These big round containers had something to do with raising and processing sugar. The slave quarters are in the background.

We went to a Mardi Gras mask store where the owner/artist makes leather masks. They were exquisite .

Again with the Voodoo Museum. There was so much fascinating information in there.

By chance Ellen’s sister Ruth was in Poplar, Mississippi visiting her son and grandchildren when we were passing through so we stopped in. This is her son’s place and Ruth’s bedroom when she visits.

Our visit to Houston, MS was brief. We had planned two nights at Davis Lake Campground and one whole day in this small town of 5,000. The city hall is beautiful and I have no doubt this lunch counter saw some action during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Another Houston excursion included finding Ellen’s grandfather’s grave. We found it largely on Ellen’s memory of where she used to visit when she lived there. It overlooked the high school, which mysteriously burned down in 1973 after electing its first Black homecoming queen.

We allowed ourselves one day to visit Dollywood. These two images are from there. We also rode the steam train which was pretty cool. But we weren’t loving the theme park so we headed to Gatlinburg in the afternoon.

The town of Gatlinburg wasn’t our jam either. It was kind of a cross between The Strip in Las Vegas and Main Street at Disneyland. Buy, buy, buy, and fake, overdone building facades. We DID have some delicious fudge though and a good meal at a restaurant with a Hopi Radio sticker on its window.

What saved the day was the sky bridge experience. We took a ski lift to the top of a hill and walked on suspension bridges between other hilltops and had pretty great views. It turns out Smokey Mountain National Park is the most visited national park with 11 million visitors a year.

From Tennessee, we headed to Weaverville, NC, just outside of Ashville to visit some old neighbors who had moved there a few years ago. It was a delightful time, we had lunch at the country club, drove around Ashville and got the tour, and stopped at this park for a wander. It was beautiful with turtles and lots of birds.

In Hillsborough, NC we stayed three days to visit my beautiful cousin Wendy and her two lovely children. We had many outings with them including lots of thrifting. Wendy could rival Chelsea, our daughter, in the thrifting department.

We also hit up UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University and their gardens,  chapel, and downtown Hillsborough, and just hung around her property which is full of chickens, mules, ducks, geese, and at least one snake.

Five states later we are in Cincinnati for a week! Following a day in the ER with Akacia she rallied and we thrifted.

We tried to go to the shark girl museum but had lunch instead.

Ellen and I hiked Embshoff Woods.

We also walked around Eden Park and saw great views of the city.

We found this beautiful pond at Spring Grove Cemetery. Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum is a nonprofit rural cemetery and arboretum in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is the third largest cemetery in the United States and is recognized as a US National Historic Landmark.

On the Purple People Bridge, one can stand in two states at once. Not quite as impressive as the Four Corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico but fun nonetheless. It connects Cincinnati and Newport, Kentucky. And locks are always fun to shoot.

After Cincinnati, we stopped in Iowa for two nights. from there we hit the Amana Colonies for a morning of walking and photographing. the stores were fun. There was an entire store devoted to just Christmas ornaments and decorations. Baskets of taffy are always fun.

Once we made it to Nebraska after our harrowing experience in near tornado weather we got up the next morning and my brother Jonathan took us to the Platt River. He felt a need to wade across and check out the other bank. It is a shallow slow-moving river that occasionally floods. He showed us signs of severe erosion where parcels of farmland are being swallowed up by the river.

That afternoon went to a local cemetery where my birthfather is buried as well as several members of Jonathan’s family. They have been on this farm for over 100 years. The next day we donned beekeeping suits and helped with some bee boxes. Later that day we helped extract honey and bottle it. SO cool!

On to Denver and our excursions there. Chelsea took us to Idaho Springs on I-70 outside of Denver for a day of hot rubbing in some natural hot springs. It was a delightful day. We finished with some Colorado Style Pizza and a quick look in an outdoor clothing thrift shop.

In Denver, we stayed with my brother Jonathan and his wife and two kids and visited our good friends the Prows (who had this sign hanging in their home). Of course, both of these images could be tagged under Art or Signs, or both!

We ran errands at the mall, walked the Santa Fe Arts District, walked the kids to school, and generally hung out with family. We bugged out a couple of days ahead of schedule to miss the snowstorm heading our way with over a foot of snow predicted.

I feel like we were twice as busy as this blog shows but it was a nice mixture of busy and chilling at campgrounds and with family.

Thanks for letting me revisit our amazing adventure. I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I am writing it! Until next time,

Happy shooting!

 

 

Food, keywording, Travel

Food along the Way

2 Comments

Food was a definite “thing” on this trip. Before this journey, we were dialed in with three-four night campouts either in a tent, a rooftop tent, or canoe camping and we had it DOWN.

This experience was going to be entirely different. We now had a refrigerator that kept things cold and a tiny freezer that actually kept things frozen. It was amazing not having to manage a cooler and ice all the time. At home, we create a menu each week (thank you Mo Landrith!) and shop for those items only. This system creates very little food waste. On this trip, we had to figure out camper meals, meals with our peeps, and meals in restaurants as we went sightseeing during the day. We had to figure out what to bring that wouldn’t go bad but what was also easy to cook as we settled on just two saucepans and a frying pan.

Discovering that the freezer actually kept things frozen was life-changing. Also, at home, our routine is to basically skip breakfast Monday – Friday, have a blended salad smoothie for lunch, and a mostly meatless dinner. When we travel, making the daily juice is not happening so we came up with cold oatmeal with berries, nuts, dried fruit, and non-dairy milk. It’s our new, warm weather favorite.

For dinner, we found out we could store four one-pound bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer. With leftovers, it gives us eight meals when we add brown minute rice and a can of beans, and maybe an egg on top or some non-dairy cheese. Other than that we often had tortillas, hummus, and veggie roll-ups until we ran out of tortillas and literally couldn’t find any east of Texas.

Here’s our little stove at work warming up the beans and vegetables while cooking the rice for ten minutes. It became our favorite camp dinner. We tried to substitute quinoa but didn’t love it.

We found this on the beach of Padre Island. We took it with us and opened it with a hammer at camp in Walasco. It was good and we didn’t get sick. We were a little nervous about eating it as we had NO idea how long it had been out to sea.

We ate out, a LOT. Here we picked up some nuts from a street vendor in Progresso, Sonora.

We had our first Philipino food with Dave and Bong in Houston, Texas.

We had fish n chips and DELICIOUS mac and cheese at Katie’s Seafood in Galveston. That wasn’t necessarily new but it had been a LONG time since we’d had it.

In Louisiana things got interesting. It was recommended we eat at this grocery and deli by our Voodoo Museum tour guide in New Orleans . He wasn’t wrong. We got the gumbo and it was delicious. We ate it outside on the sidewalk, sitting against the building.

Near the Whitney Plantation, we found this cajun market and restaurant. It had alligator heads all over the place and we ordered the catfish PO-boy and shrimp gumbo. Other people ordered a platterful of very red crawfish. We skipped that delicacy.

At Dollywood, we ordered what amounted to be a $12 cup of rice with a little sausage and chicken thrown in so it sounded better on the menu. It was cooked in this giant wok. In Gatlinburg, we tried the chili cheese fries and were not disappointed. I believe they cost as much as the cup of rice.

In Weaverville, we ordered  Mo’s barbecue ribs, cornbread, and mac & cheese. Yum.

In Hillsborough, we found a food truck and got some tacos.

Our friends and old neighbors,  Trish Paul in Weaverville, put this delicious spread out for us one morning,

Cousin Colby impressed us with his chef skills in making these smashed potatoes to go with our roasted chicken, Ceasar salad, and garlic-me bread.

Granddaughter Akacia fed us one evening from a Hello Fresh box. It was a nice combo of burger and fries.

At the farm in Nebraska, Aunt Becky showed us how to extract honey from bee boxes. It was so interesting and delicious.

We got to bring home over 12 pounds of the stuff plus some honeycomb to chew on.

The grocery stores along the way were also an interesting experience. Once we hit the South we saw things not normally seen in our stores in Flagstaff.

I’m not sure what it’s all used for but I’m pretty sure if offered, I’d give it a try.

I hadn’t seen white asparagus before.

The food tour has come to a close. It was fun eating different local cuisine. We decided not to eat Mexican food once we left Texas but succumbed and DID have good tacos out of the food truck in North Carolina.

Next week I’m going to share some of our excursions. It’s a keyword change from my original list of nine. Excursions replaces Urban. As I said, keywording is a work in progress.

Happy shooting!

 

transportation, Travel, Uncategorized

Transportation along the way

3 Comments

Transportation is another subject I really enjoy photographing. The lines and forms of old cars, the character of bicycles, the stories of old trains, etc. In the world of keywording, this is one of my main themes. Once I’ve assigned an image with the keyword transportation I can then call up all of the transportation images and add more such as bikes, trains, cars, airplanes, coyote hawk, trucks, ships, boats, and tractors. Those are the nine subsets I’m currently happy with.

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This old car was parked in front of the Portal general store.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

This horse trailer sits on the property our friend Michelle looks after in Portal. April was a nice time to be there for the wildflowers.

Lumix GX8, 7-14mm

The space shuttle attached to a 747 at Johnson Space Center. Pretty cool.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

They have a parking lot in Galveston for the cruise ships.  Right in the middle of town. A parking lot.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

Aaahh, the mighty Mississippi in New Orleans. A coast guard cutter heading upriver as it passes a container ship heading south and out into the Gulf.

 

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

A funny little vehicle in New Orleans, perfect for the super narrow streets. It reminds me of the cleverly designed golf carts I saw on Catalina Island years ago.

Lumix GX8, 14-150mm

This bike was also main themed under art. Duh.

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THIS image was also main themed under people AND music. We were listening to a performer play. I never did see how successful he was at riding and carrying such a large drum.

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In Houston, MS one can pull up behind a tractor in regular rush hour traffic.

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In Tennessee, at Henry Horton State Park we went for a walk on the recommendation of a fellow camper and found these old abandoned vehicles.

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From the Purple People Bridge that connects Ohio and Kentucky, we spied this tug pushing a barge up the Ohio River.

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We found this boat on a walking trail around the lake at Winton Woods Campground outside of Cincinnati.

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We found this old cart outside a building in the Amana Colony in Iowa. The below is used on the family farm in Nebraska to get around and haul bee boxes to the garage for honey extraction.

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Next week we’ll explore some of the different foods we came across on our journey.

Happy shooting!

Life's Adventures…