There's having a well planned, well laid-out trip. And then there's the two of us. Heeding the call of the open road, we left home this morning on a 10-day trip. Destination? Somewhere west of Mississippi..........New Mexico, we intend to.....Arizona, if time allows......Utah, if weather cooperates........We celebrate our second wedding anniversary tomorrow on road and that's just the way we wanted it :) Wish you all a very happy holiday season....Stay safe and warm :)
I stepped out this morning with a promise to myself to find color in my ice-d surroundings. Little did I know that I will chance upon more than I bargained for (in a positive way, of course) :) I am having one beautiful weekend here....wish you the same :)
"The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around ................." S T Coleridge
We woke up to an entire landscape encased in ice this morning........I swear I could feel my heart do cartwheels of joy :) This shot was hastily taken before leaving for work. I am so hoping that the ice doesn't melt completely till tomorrow when I'll have all the time in the world to capture it on my camera............Keeping my fingers crossed for a (n)ice weekend here ;D
In the absence of any color around moi, I felt like painting my blog in summer colors today, to help ward off the wintry chill (read: I haven't touched my camera in two weeks now).............."Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories" - from An Affair to Remember.
"There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons --
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes --
......................
......................
When it comes, the Landscape listens --
Shadows -- hold their breath --
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death --" Emily Dickinson
Yet another un-inspired week.......yet again I had to dig into the archives.
The summer that went by was a special one. I went wild trying to catch all the wildflowers around moi, some of which never made it to the blog. These musk thistles have been begging to be flaunted here. The transformation of green-with-red-edges core into satin smooth pink fibers is so pretty that I simply refuse to use words like weeds, invasive or noxious species for them.
We leave tomorrow for a li'l road trip up north.....hoping to get away from all that's "invasive" and "noxious" around us :)
Harleys make a comeback here, albeit a little differently this time!;D I am wiped from the "being-pushed-around-in-every-direction" week that it has been for moi and I am glad it will be over soon. No time to go out and click, no new images to share so I had to dig into my archives. These images from the Harley Davidson Museum and the gift shop are for my husband who just retired (very, very reluctantly) his motorcycle for the winters and is currently in denial ;DDD Have a great weekend! :)
Fall colors are not passé yet, are they??? Indulge moi for a little more time till I get done with the colors of a season that had me and my camera truly, deeply, madly EUPHORIC........remember, we moved here from Florida where "autumn" is a foreign term!!!! :)
Did having the blues ever feel so good! ;D
My favorite color: I don't think I have ever met a blue that I did not like. This one makes me sing :)
"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live." - Lin Yutang
Today, the weather was fair though the breeze hinted at the chill of days to come and we made the best of that extra one hour we gained: we spent it doing (what we love the most)........nothing :)
The sunsets here may be no match for the brilliant coastal sunsets we were used to while living in Florida but they are beautiful nevertheless. Anyway, what's not to like about sunsets. I love yellow-gold-sienna ones as much as this soft-delicate-blushing sunset we witnessed on a blustery evening last weekend. With all the winds blowing over the weekend, I am surprised that there are any leaves left on the trees. But some of the resilient ones are still putting up a show....and I am not done with them......not yet! :)
"Autumn -the year's last, loveliest smile." - William Cullen Bryant
I love change of seasons. I had been missing it for too long.... but when gold and crimson maple leaves cartwheel in the air and cluster around my feet, along the sidewalks, in the doorways of houses, on our cars........I tell myself I will part with the other three in a jiffy, if only it could be autumn around moi year long!!!!!!
They must be the luckiest people in the world to have that happy, colorful driveway all to themselves. Yes, it's a private driveway and yes, I envy the owners.
About 85% of the buildings in the city of Galena are on National Register of Historic Places. Brick buildings are always a welcome sight and Main Street had ample of well-preserved ones.........
It's back to grey skies today here but this weekend was too beautiful to spend it indoors. So we decided to drive a coupla hours north, along the Mississippi river to Galena. Its cluster of rolling hills and farms looked like a patchwork quilt and reminded me of Z's Villigen.
The dying light lends its amber glow to the leaves, just before the sun calls it a day...................... and needless to add, I can't think beyond red, yellow and orange these days :)
As mornings get crisper and the landscape around moi transforms into a vivid palette, I feel like painting my blog in rich autumn hues. The colorful denizens of Harley Davidson museum will have to wait.............:)
In a continued attempt to establish "street-cred" with my husband and his kinds, here are the more colorful members of the Harley family that were on display at the museum. The fact that he got me an uber-cool new lens (55-200mm) before he dragged me to the museum isn't lost on me either. And honestly by the time I was done shooting these images, I was smitten too :)
The museum had a Tank Wall that had 100 tank designs displayed in chronological order, chosen to reflect the time periods in which they were crafted. I love the unabashed mix of colors here :)
Wisconsin means different things to us (Arka and I). While I can never get enough of its farm scene (it's the Dairy state after all and also the largest cranberry producer in the country, in case you didn't know ;D), Arka loves the energy of university town Madison and Milwaukee to my "gearhead" husband is synonymous with Harleys. He has grown up on WW II movies so we had to pay our homage to the recently opened Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, which we finally did last weekend. I had no idea that I'd enjoy the visit as much as I did.........I could not get enough of the old heritage models and ended up with a gazillion images to share ..... I don't think you'll see the end of Harley series here for a long time :)
The mood here in Central Illinois, right now is golden :) Soy fields are all sunshine.......the whole agrarian landscape is radiant with their confident splash of yellow :) And with all those smilies that I am using as punctuation marks in this post, you can see that their positive energy is not lost upon me....these bright hues in yellows, greens and reds (of barns and buildings) feed my color-fetish. Have a beautiful SUN-day :)
This weekend was short and swift, like every weekend :( As Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes often moans "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want". We did find some time to do some nothings, though (if not all). Sunday was spent at a local vineyard. It was a beautiful day and I am glad we chose to spend it outdoors :)
Next day we went kayaking to the caves: a seven-mile trip that I won't forget ever. Those caves were quite a sight up, close, and personal. You paddle in one of these crayon-bright kayaks (we chose red) through an infinite blue and then chase the echo of your own voice inside the caves :) We even spotted a family of birds that had made the caves their home (no, we did not encounter any bats ;D) Waves crashing inside the caves make you realize how relentlessly they have been working like chisels over centuries to create these masterpieces. Since we made back to the shore without incident, I regret not taking my precious Nikon on water :(
And yes we found a feathered-friend, once back in the town :)
These sea caves which undercut the shoreline at Devil's Island were the highlight of our trip. The waves and shifting ice have chiseled and sculpted these sandstone cliffs over millions of years to form red apertures of myriad shapes and sizes. And I found my lighthouse too (remember, I collect them!!!!) :)
He, like us, was a tourist paying his homage to the group of 22 islands in Lake Superior (Apostle Islands). They (he and his family) were visiting from Europe while we came from the neighboring state. They could barely speak English while that's the only foreign language we speak. But we bonded. Sometimes, the love for exploration proves stronger than the gulf of different cultures and languages :)
While this fellow li'l traveler was absorbed in his own world as we sailed to the sea caves, approachable only by water.
Thank you, Sandeepa!!! :)
Thank you, Mark!!! :)
Thank you, JoAnn!!! :)
Thank you, JoAnn!!! :)
Thank u, Catherine !!! :)
