PLEASE DO NOT USE MY IMAGES WITHOUT EXPRESSED WRITTEN PERMISSION.
Hello! It feels like I’ve been MIA for awhile. We were in the Chicago Region for my Son’s wedding and extended our stay a few days to do a little sightseeing and birding.
They had both a professional wedding photographer and videographer for the day. Here’s one image of Big Baby Boy and the Dark Haired Beauty just after the wedding. May I present the Newlyweds!
#1 Grandson was the Ringbearer and what a handsome and stylish lad he was.
The whole wedding party were handsome and beautiful, and we’re so happy to been able to travel to be a part of their Big Day.
The following day I spent the morning birding around the Orland Park area. It’s a lovely area with lots of ponds, wetlands, and green!
I have to give a huge shout out and thank you to Pat from the Thorn Creek Audubon Society I reached out to them before the trip and he was very generous telling me about a few places to go to do some birding. I picked up a couple of bird lifers, and a dragonfly which I’ll share first. While waiting for one of the reserves to open He-Man and I stopped by a little fishing pond where I spied this beauty.
I think this is an Erythemis simplicicollis- Eastern Pondhawk. Don’t you love that color green and it’s common name? I do!
Photograph
The evening we got home I started feeling pretty achy and stuffed up, and the next day I tested positive for Covid and the following day He-Man did too. Sigh. Today I am finally feeling like I’m getting over it. I’m still weak and tire easily but I woke up feeling more like myself than I have in a week!
I hope this finds you all well and having a great week!
Dragonfly- Fuji X-T-3| Fuji 100-400mm| PS CC 23.4.1
Have you heard of or been to the Flatirons outside of Boulder, CO? I had never heard of them before, but I ran across an article or review of them while researching “things to do in and around Denver”. The hikes sounded interesting and pretty so we added this destination to our itinerary.
It was just over an hours drive from our hotel so we got up early had breakfast at the hotel then headed out for Chautauqua Park in Boulder, CO. That’s where we’d find the Flatirons. They’re rock formations that back in the 1900’s were know as the Chautauqua Slabs, and later they were called the Crags… Wikipedia.
They do resemble clothes irons. They’re numbered 1 through 5. The big one in front is number 1.
The Flatirons
Upon arriving and reading the trail map we discovered a big sign notifying hikers that the trail we hoped to hike was closed for repairs, so Plan B. We hiked up this trail in the image above and caught the Bluebell-Baird trail which made a nice loop and a great stretch the legs hike.
Ready? Let’s go I’ll show some of what I saw along the way.
The wide open space soon changed to a dense forest.
Bluebell-Baird Trail
There were still some wildflowers in bloom. I think this is Narrow Goldenrod, but I’m not positive. Any one know for sure? I apologize for the missed focus. My iPhone and I weren’t having a good moment with focus. 😂
Narrow Goldenrod ?
We walked around a bend in the trail and on both sides of the trail were cairns! I can’t recall seeing so many in one place before!
Cairns, cairns, cairns!
There are so many! More than fit in my frame. The park had fenced off both sides of this area but, if you know me and rocks…you just know what happened next. Shhh! Don’t tell anybody, but I had to, HAD TO add a rock to a cairn. This one.
Added one rock on top. Cairn Bluebell-Baird Trail Chautauqua Park
Then before we knew it we out in the open again. Here’s a little view of Boulder, CO.
It’s all downhill from here. Before we finish up let’s take a look behind us shall we?
I’d like to go back to this park one day and hike the trail that was closed. From here we headed to Estes Park the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. More on that in a future post.
A really neat feature about the iPhone is it will take images if there are enough of them in a timeframe and create a montage of them in video format. I love this feature.
It created a video of some of the images I made while in London over the Holiday break.
I apologize in advance for the tilted horizons. A videographer I am not, but I hope you enjoy the sights around London, Windsor, and museums.
It feels like an age since I last posted. If you follow me on Instagram you know that I was in London for most of the Christmas Holiday. That’s why I wasn’t posting or commenting on your posts.
On New Year’s Day, we have a family tradition of eating Hot Dogs, sausage, and sauerkraut for luck. I skip the Hot Dogs, as I don’t care for them, but sausage is good! I made it a mission to find a place to eat our traditional meal on New Years Day. I employed Yelp to aid me in finding a good place.
I thought a German place would do the job and found Herman Ze German in the Soho district. I created a Hot- link for you so you can see their menu. See what I did there? 😜It was wonderful! We all had their Chili Brats which is a beef brat, we had fries and a really good German beer the man taking our order recommended. It was Augustiner Munchen Helles bier. It was so good. Unfortunately, we can’t get this particular beer here in the States. Did I take any photos of my food? NO! I forget to do that all the time, but I did take a picture of the beer label so I could look for it here at home but, I haven’t uploaded it, so on the image score for that meal- Total Fail!
After having our “good luck” meal we headed toward our hotel on foot. We did a lot of walking while in London.
While walking through the Soho we stumbled across Chinatown where I did snap this image. Oh, look there’s a crane for Dan, and Lanterns for Joey! 😀
We’re home, and I’ve still got to get the Christmas decorations down and put away and catch up on all the laundry. I hope your New Year is off to a great start!
A friend came up to meet me for a meet-up over the week-end and after a long day of hiking, and elevation gain she spent the night in our guest room. We both were a bit wiped out after 8 miles of hiking and several hundred feet of elevation gain so, we stuck closer to my area rather than go hiking again on Sunday. I’m still suffering from elevation sickness when going up, and so was she. I hope this isn’t going to be an issue for my whole life!
My left hip was really achy too and has been for a year or more. Anna, my friend suggested P/T for it. That got me thinking about stretching so I dug out my Yoga book and Monday I added 4 stretches to my morning routine that I have left out for a couple of years. After 3 days of incorporating the hip stretches my hip feels so much better! I love yoga stretches!
Anyway, I digress. One of the things she wanted to do was see the area so we did a photo walk of downtown Carson City’s Civic Center. Carson City is the closest “biggish” town to me now.
Thankfully, Carson City has kept some of its old west charms and St Charles Hotel/The Fox BrewPub is a Historic building located across the street from the Capitol Building that is one of those charming buildings that has been preserved and is still in use today. Carson City is the Capitol of Nevada for those out of the country who may not know that.
For the History Buffs, I gleaned some information about the Hotel/BrewPub from Carsonpedia. I’ve linked their page below.
“The hotel was originally built as two separate buildings. The northern, three-story, section was started on April 1, 1862, and was named the St. Charles Hotel. Construction on the southern two-story building started one month later, and it opened as the Muller Hotel. The builders were George W. Remington and Albert Muller, and they partnered with Dan Plitt who owned a bakery on the corner where the hotel was to be built. The hotel was first advertised in the October 2, 1862 edition of the Silver Age newspaper. It was called “the most desirable and commodious first-class house in Carson,” and “the pleasantest resort in Carson and where everything kept by the bar is the best quality.” ~http://carsonpedia.com/St._Charles_Hotel
Isn’t it interesting that no one of those who were invested in or partnered in the venture was named Charles? Who was Charles? I want to know. Was it a neutral name that all could agree to so no one was bigger or more acknowledged than the other?
The Hotel has had some successful years and quite a few failed years and has had 8 name changes since its construction in 1862 and a few owners.
I love how literate the people were back then. No one says commodious anymore and it’s a terrific and descriptive word.
It is said that Mark Twain likely had a drink there since he lived in Carson City for a spell. I wonder if that was after his friends saved him from a pistol duel that he was challenged to in Virginia City where he lived for a couple of years? It’s said his closest friends knew he was a really bad shot and wanted him to live and continue writing, so they helped him get of town in the dead of night to avoid the duel. I’ll have to research that. I do know that he and his brother traveled by an Overland Coach to Carson City from St Joseph, Mo. in 1861 for $150.00! That was a princely sum in those days! I’m gobsmacked that they paid so much then! Are you? He wrote about his journey to Carson City in his book Roughing It. I bought it and have been slowing reading it. It’s really good! FYI. There’s a really great Mark Twain Impersonator in Virginia City. One day I hope to find him alone without some modern person speaking to him to get a photo of him. He’s really great, but there’s been a modern person speaking with him both times I’ve come across him, and I waited, and waited, and waited, Good Lord these people can talk! I have given up both times and moved on after 5 minutes. I just don’t have the patience to wait that long for a “people” shot. I’ll wait hours for a landscape or night sky shot, but not a people shot. My heart just isn’t in it. Hat Tip to those who will wait for that shot! You are amazing!
I digress again! History has so many twists and turns that I tend to get caught up in one or another and go off on tangents for awhile. I eventually come back to the point but…I love history. That probably should have been my major, but it wasn’t. It was my son’s though ( Big Baby Boy)…so the beat goes on. 😀 I’m talking way too much, aren’t I…
Today in 2019 it is the Historic St. Charles Hotel/Fox BrewPub
The door is small from this angle, but I loved the whole building with its red bricks, door, white trim, and balcony. I didn’t get closer for a close up of the door and now that I’m typing this up I thought, ” DOH! We should have had lunch there!” We didn’t. We went to a new to me but a new favorite of mine called Jimmy Johns. I love their Tuna on Thick Wheat Bread. Do you have a Jimmy Johns where you live? We didn’t in Silicon Valley. I need to snap a photo of the sandwich too! I’m usually so hungry by the time I get to the restaurant or deli that I inhale my meal and forget to get a photo of it. Sigh…I’m not a good foodie photog.
I think if the topic fit I should have written this for Stream of Consciousness Saturday cause I’m digressing all over the place, but… it’s not. So, a little bitty view of a red door on very cool Historic building with a whole lot of verbiage is what I’m bringing today to Thursday Doors.
This is part of Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors. If you have a door or two to share head on over to his blog and join in the fun or just head over and see the doors others have shared from all over the world. Just follow his directions at the end of his Thursday door post.
CarNikon D810| Nikkor 24-120mm| Lexar Digital Film| PS CC 20
I had a fun week-end with my good friend Theresa shooting stars, and Alpine Glow on Mt. Shasta and Mt. Shastina.
We arrived at Lake Shastina Friday afternoon and hiked 250ft up a rocky, loose soiled fire road to do some scouting and look for a good composition of Mt Shasta/Shastina for sunset.
There were too many tall trees up there blocking the view, and the wind had kicked up a bit wrecking the reflection of the Volcano in the lake so we hiked back down the road to a spot we liked. On the way down my right foot slipped on a patch of loose, and rocky dirt and down I went knee first. My lower leg landed with my boot/foot outward and my inner shin hit a rock when it landed. I swore. A lot.
I knew it wasn’t broken, and I could put some weight on it so I limped down to the chosen spot. T suggested we leave for the motel and get ice and rest for the rest of the night. No! I wanted to get the shot! I applied RICE when we got back to our motel and got up ready to shoot on Saturday.
I wouldn’t be hiking, but we had a very full day of flowers, waterfalls, an old lumber town, star trails, and we ended our Saturday photographing the Milky Way. I made this image just before midnight.
I was so happy to be under so many stars again! I’m thankful for the time I spent hanging out with T, not breaking my leg/knee, for a husband who “gets” me, and has always supported me, my hobbies, and dreams even when they aren’t his dreams or hobbies, and I’m thankful for seeing this beautiful place again. I’m ready to go back! 🙂
I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Nikon D801| Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G @f/2.8| 20s| ISO 3200| Hoodman Digital Film| PS CC 2017
Circadianreflections Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.