Observations and a rant....
We've been on vacation this week and have been wandering the Upper Peninsula. We ended up driving to the Porcupine Mountains and back, and there was plenty of time to think.
There are way too many abandoned buildings along the way. I always wonder, especially when I see a house in the middle of nowhere, what it was like when they were built. What did the people dream about and what did they want for them and their children? It gets kind of depressing at times.
We ended up seeing three eagles along the way. One pair which we saw on two separate days, had a mature bird and an immature bird. This one we saw on the way home. All 3 birds were seen while we were driving and of course the lens I should have used was in the trunk. This is a crop out of a bigger photo.
Crows in the Upper Peninsula seem bigger than the ones in the lower half of the state. There are also a lot of them.
We don't camp on vacations, we stay in hotels. A seemingly ubiquitous component of the provided breakfast is waffle machines. There are batter dispensers with directions on usage posted on the side. There is the waffle iron that requires you to pour in the batter and turn it over to start the timer. If you don't turn the iron, the thing starts beeping. Not a soft unassuming beep, but a loud obnoxious beep. Why is it that people who don't read directions, stand there and stare at the iron when it beeps for minutes? Don't they realize that something is wrong? It is really annoying at 7 am when all you want is coffee and a chance to collect your thoughts.
I could easily spend a month or more just traveling along M28 down the center of the UP. There are so many photographic possibilities to be had that it was hard not to stop in every small town, tourist trap, waterfall and whatever.
We spent most of our vacation driving to, staring at, and sitting alongside water. Usually water that was flowing somehow, whether it was going over a waterfall, flowing along a river or lapping up to shore. What is there about flowing water that fascinates humankind so much?
I was really getting frustrated with the limited dynamic range of digital cameras. There were so many instances of being someplace, usually the woods, where I couldn't capture the delicate range of light in the shadowed parts along with the direct sunlight filtering through the leaves. At times I wished I had brought along my film camera and color film. I know I can spend time in Photoshop to get around those limitations, but I wish the camera companies would stop the megapixel race and work on other improvements.
Ok, there is more than a single rant, one more. On the way up, we stopped at a Burger King in L'Anse for a cup of coffee. They only charged me 40 cents for it and I just thought it was on sale. That was until I got out and looked at the receipt. The cashier had charged me the senior price. I should have gone back and hit her with my cane...
Just kidding.
Really.
There are way too many abandoned buildings along the way. I always wonder, especially when I see a house in the middle of nowhere, what it was like when they were built. What did the people dream about and what did they want for them and their children? It gets kind of depressing at times.
We ended up seeing three eagles along the way. One pair which we saw on two separate days, had a mature bird and an immature bird. This one we saw on the way home. All 3 birds were seen while we were driving and of course the lens I should have used was in the trunk. This is a crop out of a bigger photo.
Crows in the Upper Peninsula seem bigger than the ones in the lower half of the state. There are also a lot of them.
We don't camp on vacations, we stay in hotels. A seemingly ubiquitous component of the provided breakfast is waffle machines. There are batter dispensers with directions on usage posted on the side. There is the waffle iron that requires you to pour in the batter and turn it over to start the timer. If you don't turn the iron, the thing starts beeping. Not a soft unassuming beep, but a loud obnoxious beep. Why is it that people who don't read directions, stand there and stare at the iron when it beeps for minutes? Don't they realize that something is wrong? It is really annoying at 7 am when all you want is coffee and a chance to collect your thoughts.
I could easily spend a month or more just traveling along M28 down the center of the UP. There are so many photographic possibilities to be had that it was hard not to stop in every small town, tourist trap, waterfall and whatever.
We spent most of our vacation driving to, staring at, and sitting alongside water. Usually water that was flowing somehow, whether it was going over a waterfall, flowing along a river or lapping up to shore. What is there about flowing water that fascinates humankind so much?
I was really getting frustrated with the limited dynamic range of digital cameras. There were so many instances of being someplace, usually the woods, where I couldn't capture the delicate range of light in the shadowed parts along with the direct sunlight filtering through the leaves. At times I wished I had brought along my film camera and color film. I know I can spend time in Photoshop to get around those limitations, but I wish the camera companies would stop the megapixel race and work on other improvements.
Ok, there is more than a single rant, one more. On the way up, we stopped at a Burger King in L'Anse for a cup of coffee. They only charged me 40 cents for it and I just thought it was on sale. That was until I got out and looked at the receipt. The cashier had charged me the senior price. I should have gone back and hit her with my cane...
Just kidding.
Really.
Comments
I didn't realize you were using a cane now... geez, are ya feeling alright?
(i'm kidding too)