Salmon pink sunset

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! :)

Exuberant :)

"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.

Main Street, Galena

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.........

Weekend Getaway

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.

Amber and red

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 :)

Mellow Deep

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.............:)

"Motorcycle Diaries"

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 :)

And the ride begins........

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 :)

Fields of sunshine..........

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 :)