There and back again...

How do you top a night with a once in a lifetime Aurora Borealis show? 

Go on a mini trip.

So with a little bit of sleep under my belt, I drove to Kenosha to visit my eldest son, wife, and of course Aurora...Rory!
They told me that we were going to go hiking on Saturday and use the drive to the Kettle Moraine State Park as Rory's nap time. 

First I had to get through a night at the hotel. I awoke very early since I dropped into bed very early. But I've always wanted to see the Harbor area along the Kenosha Lakefront early in the morning. I know I posted a quick cell shot on the last blog. 

But here was my efforts with a long exposure in blustery winds.

I've never done cityscapes before but thought it would be fun to get a shot of the Kenosha water plant and part of the harbor behind the hotel.

My intention was to walk along the Art Promenade and take shot from the end of it. But I didn't. The sun was changing the sky quickly and I was afraid that I'd miss the sky shot I wanted by walking to the end. I settled for a slightly different angle.

Next time I'll take the boardwalk to the light house that's in the distance also. So many opportunities! So little time!

Here is where I biffed the shot. I started a 13 second exposure and by accident moved the camera. The cause was a huge windgust. Why not? It ended up being a wildly crazy exposure.

On the way to Kettle Moraine, I got to sit in the back seat with Rory who played peek a boo with me in her car seat. She didn't do the normal peek a boo, but hid her eyes by turning her head and then popping back to look at me an laugh.

And it filled me up with so many wonderful feelings.

With the hike over, we headed back home. I should have napped with Rory in the back seat. I didn't.

I actually slept 'in' on Sunday morning until 5! I made some hotel coffee and packed up. I wanted to go to a more open spot on the lakefront. I went to Pennoyer Park and was surprised to see quite a few fisher people. The salmon run was on and the fisher folks were at the headwaters of the Pike River where the salmon were coming in.

Just as things were brightening up a father and young boy walked past me in the predawn and I could not resist the shot...

My weather app said that the lakefront had high waves and gale force winds predicted for the late afternoon. I regretted having to leave the lake. The wild winds and waves from Lake Michigan are something to see and appreciate.

I was cold, so I wrapped up with another shot or two and headed over to see the 'kids'.

Did I say how much I loved the Lakefront? Yes, I do!

We headed over to Petrified Spring Park, fondly known locally as Pets and took a nice long walk/hike.

The trees were absolutely at high color and gorgeous. River was was up from the storm we had on Saturday night but the skies were blue and it was a picture perfect day with many people out walking and others taking photographs.

There were salmon fisherfolk in the river and others watching on some of the bridges. The atmosphere of the park felt very festive.

We said our goodbyes in the parking lot and I headed west. I was happy to be heading home and sad to be heading home.

I'll miss these guys...

What a great mini trip this was. 

Mini - vacation

Me, before coffee, even if it is decaf. Yep, I feel very ogre-ish.

However, I slept well for being in a hotel and in a downtown location.

I was in bed by 8:30. No night life for me! 🤣, I did take a walk along the back side of the hotel. So many people were out either at parties on the Marina or fishing quietly along the rocky shoreline.

I was really tempted to grab my camera and take some pictures from the promenade by Harbor Park.

I decided that sleep was more tempting.

I struck gold at the BAM-- bricks and Minifigures store by scoring the purchase of a hard to find Ogre and some other minifigs.

The Ogre was the one next to the brewing coffee....

I even built a custom minifig. She is the blonde with the sword.

I got to have supper with Rory and Mom and Dad. 

No pics of Rory, we don't post them. However, I can say that she is as cute as a button and full of smiles. A...dor...able as all get out!

Saturday greeted me wayyyy too early. I woke at 3:30 and tried like heck to get back to sleep. Which never happened. However, I did get brave and walk out part of the way to the Art Promenade near Harbor Park.

The winds were fierce coming off the lake but I decided to try a 'long' exposure of the morning light anyway. This is a cell phone shot which didn't do the dawn sky any justice at all. The promenade is on the right and I was still on the street with this shot. 

I haven't taken anything off from my good camera yet because...well...

because I have been too busy! No time for anything but fun with Aurora...Rory, and mom and dad!

I mean, who can pass up the chance to have meals, play time, drive time, hike time, and more play time ....with this little charmer????

LOL...don't you just love faces hidden? That is okay. I don't mind. Mom and Dad have made the choice to not post her face and I totally get it. Too much media these days!

So there she is! Crawling and do all those great things little ones do!

This is just a quick synopsis of me on my mini vacation!

Hubby's supper delivered to him last night by Olive!!!
Morel mushrooms and Pepperoni Pizza.

What a great time I am having being ON my Own... on a mini vacation...

and enjoying such a great time with my wonderful son and his wife...

and even more fun enjoying Rory!

Best

Time

Ever

[yeah...and I even sort of learned a new game which I was too tired to comprehend last night]

I'll be back home tonight but don't hold your breath. I may have to recover from all of this fun!

Little me's big adventure...and the Aurora...

 

Hubby has coverage and meals all set up. He and Charlie get a break from me and I get a break from them. All the farm animals are taken care of. The weather looks good and I am so ready to go see my new little granddaughter and of course her folks.

I've decided to stay at a hotel near Lake Michigan and do a bit of shopping, walking, and seeing the sights of the town I used to live in years ago. 

The drive there will be casual. I'll listen to music and take a route so that I can visit a place called Paradise Springs again. I'll feel a bit like my life is untethered and free at least for a little while. That is about the nicest thing I can do for myself.

Last night I saw that we might be able to see an Aurora Borealis show. My neighbor -- who I share the driveway with asked if I was going to watch for it. She said she'd text me if she saw anything and I agreed to text her if I saw anything.

She did text me around 7:30 to say she saw faint pinks in the northern sky and it wasn't even dark yet!

I ran out and got this....

It was very faint to the naked eye but I was ecstatic! I set things up in our little valley and asked my neighbor if she wanted to come down and get the view of a bigger sky. She couldn't, the kids were in bed and hubby was at a meeting.

So I walked up to her place in the woods.
The show was still incredible.

When the skies did this....

I thought it would be fun to do a star trail. The Oly camera I use has a LiveComp setting which detects light movement and adds it to a composite as it happens.

I don't have to take 400 shots and then align them later. 

Each time the waves of color moved, the camera added that to the photo also.

What I ended up with after 25 minutes was wild...

👇

Airplanes and maybe some shooting stars passed overhead.

While the camera was doing its magic Cibyl and I stretched out on the gravel with our cell phones and took shots.

We even walked out to the road where she dropped into the ditch and laid back to view and shoot the sky.

Cellphone shots...

I mean, it was insane and we oohhheedddd and ahhhhhed and giggled like kids. 

Cibyl sent me a chart explaining the colors that we saw:

I took so many cellphone shots that it was crazy. They turned out okay.

But I enjoyed trying to nail something special with the Olympus.

Star Trails above her house when the sky turned red with green and yellow... the Aurora waves were so bright that they washed out the stars in the lower part of the photo.

It felt insane to see the skies turn red at night.

I commented that if it wasn't the Aurora...it would look like the end of the world...

It fluctuated and changed and seemed never ending.

Finally, we called it a night. Her hubby came home and the lights started to fade.

At least...

That is what I thought...

As I came down the driveway, my naked eyes saw something faint in the east...

still going on...

But I was tired and had miles to put on the next morning. So I thought I'd take a finishing shot over our house.

I was so pleased at what showed up.

Hiking for colors and distance...

Surprise ... 

Surprise...

I finally feel like I got my physical mojo back.

I don't want to brag, but heck, I'm going to anyway. 

I went back to my map my hike and also tallied up the miles I've hiked since June when I got a pretty plain smart Garmin watch.

Miles hiked this year? 698! I have not been tracking it each day or month. In fact, I figured with all the heat and humidity and BUGS we had this year, that my hiking would be pretty lame. I had two weeks that I did not walk or hike at all when I was sick.

So what am I doing with that Mojo? 

I'm moving again. If I can't go to the Reserve and hike, Charlie and I head out to the wilds next door. 600 acres of wild woods with old cattle trails that are now faint deer trails. If I can't find a trail, I wait and let the Trail Master find the easiest path.

We cross ravines, dry washes, and hike up and down steep hills.

OH Come ON Ma!

The fall colors are not always so prevelant inside the deep woods as many of the trees are fairly drab. Portions of the woods have been heavily logged for the really good trees. What is left in the understory are some pretty junk trees along with invasive barberry brush. 

Hint: If you walk here with me, wear heavy long pants so the barberry doesn't poke you so hard!

Photo of one of our hiking areas through barberry 'prickles'.
Charlie can find the deer path through this.

Hunting fall colors can be frustrating when you walk through a thick forest. Since we live in an area of steep hills and valleys...

Wonderful landscape views are rare here unless you can get on top of a bluff or you can stay on top of a ridge.

That has probably influenced my photography quite a bit.

It also means that I hike and hike miles to find a pretty shot or perhaps something very tiny to see. 

So what is the point of keeping track of how far I hike? Well, I don't know but it is fun to have a goal to reach.

Of course, I take Mini-me and Mini Charlie along. We love our outdoor time. The hikes in the forest next door will end in a few weeks when the gun hunters invade. 

But until then we will stack up the miles or as I call it...

time spent breathing air and chilling out.

Meanwhile, Charlie and I are going to see if we can reach a 1,000 miles by December 31st. 

Interests as a kid...

 

These shots were taken by my father in different years for different Science projects I'd been assigned in perhaps 6th and 7th grade? I don't exactly recall. However, by my 7th grade I can recall that I no longer needed glasses. The boy's ugly frames that I endured [I constantly broke girly frames as I was a tomboy] got put away for quite a few years.

The projects were leaf and tree identification and insect identification. My mom was all in on these projects. I'm not going to analyze it but without her help, I wouldn't have done half as well. On the leaf project, I recall getting an A. The comment below my grade was: Mrs. Rogers A+.

I fessed up that mom helped me. After all ironing leaves in wax and mounting them in an artistic way wasn't really my forte at that time.

The projects however were not lost totally on me even though I forgot all about them until my brother scanned these slides and sent them to us girls. My mom was an involved mom. There was no doubt that she was invested in us and our education. It was very serious business. Was it because her education was not that great? I won't know. Nor am I going to dwell on it. 

She however did teach us to be detail oriented. I wanted to label a leaf as Maple Leaf. Nope. It had to be the right description. Not just Maple. Sugar maple, Red Maple, Silver Maple, and so forth. We probably even typed in the Scientific name for each tree. Mom did the typing as she made less mistakes and didn't waste whiteout.

In a way, I wish the tree leaf project was still in existence. I think perhaps it would be fun to do this again. Collect leaves, photo them, ID them, and put it all on a photo page as my own private 'tree' book.

Back then, there was no Google Lens to discover what we'd seen. We'd collect, preserve, and look it up in a handbook. I still prefer to do things that way. Of course, my neighbor is a Forester and knows his trees, so if I really get stumped, I could ask for his help.

Years ago, I did a project like that with wildflowers and odd plants I'd come across while hiking within walking distance of our farm. It was a year long project and I used a handbook from the University of Wisconsin to ID wildflowers. The year was 2009 and Google Lens still didn't exist.

I found that this method of looking, taking photos and then looking through a book was for more educational than using an app. 

[Though it is fun to do, I think names stick with me better if I have to manually search and use my brain.]

So I shouldn't be surprised that I am following this path of interest. When you live a life with many hours of solitude, you start to take incredible interest in the things around you. 

Or...is it age? Why am I so intent on learning now and not earlier? More time? 

It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I enjoy it and it keeps me active.

The tree leaves below belong to a Slippery Elm [ Ulmus rubra ].
Oddly enough, the Box Elder bugs were gathered on this tree and not the Box Elder 10 feet away. I'm happy to discover that I can tell the Slippery Elm by its leaves and the feel of its leaves compared to the Ironwood which grows on the other side.

I still like learning. It is fun.

Duck Egg walk... & Charlie

 Sunday was very windy and a bit chilly in the morning for those used to 80 degree weather. It was in the 60's when Charlie and I went to Duck Egg. Really, I don't know why it is named that, but it is a county park with a huge dam that was built ages ago to deter flooding from the Springville Branch of the Bad Axe River.

In the 1950's this Bad Axe branch wiped out most of a small town called Newton in a flood with a mere 4" rainfall that came down hard.

I chose to walk through lower Duck Egg because it is easy to get out of the wind while in the steep valley. I decided to go early in the day to check out the leaves and the light. That first shot is from the trail looking up at the west ridge above the valley taken with my cellphone. The colors look pretty flat but the light wasn't that great.

It didn't matter, the air was crisp and Charlie was having a ball. 

He does love cool morning walks.

Thank goodness he went up on the foot bridge where I could stand on the ground and get a ground level shot of him. He has 3 inch front legs. Seriously, how can he hike like he does?

The vet said to keep him active and let him be a dog and not a couch potato. Charlie seriously loves his cuddly blanket and snoozing on the couch.

He also loves snoozing on a chair we have for him. In the morning when hubby and I are having coffee together, Charlie jumps up here and curls up. 

The walk was quite nice. Not as nice as the spring walks I take there to find bluebells and so many other wild flowers, but still very quiet and pleasing. The winds whistled above us on the trail.

We eventually made it to the pond and I was surprised to see whitecaps on it. The wind was gusting so hard there were waves on the valley pond.

On our way back to the car, we encountered a young man carrying a bucket, a fishing pole, and to my utter surprise, what looked like an AR-15. 

"Holy Crap," I said to him, "are the fish so huge out there that you have to shoot the suckers???"

He laughed and said, "No. I'm going to catch some fish and hunt squirrels on my way back." He smiled and nodded at us and continued on. They make AR-15 style rifles that are .22 caliber. But I've squirrel hunted a lot and you don't need an automatic to shoot them if you are going to eat them.

I carried a single action bolt kid sized .22 when I squirrel hunted. Generally you only get one shot to get the job done.

I shrugged and kept my thoughts to myself.

I was out to enjoy the scenery and the fresh air and that is what we did.

Colorful

The past few days have given us some spectacular morning and evening colors. The ones above were from a morning walk. The magic all happened as I walked back towards home. I'd hiked out to an area where I could see across the top of the ridge but the view was rather...um. Bleh.

When I got to the mailbox the skies lit up with those great crepuscular rays of morning light over the cornfield.

Another stunning evening sky gave us some amazing colors. 
Home sweet home ... colors in the sky above us.

The trees are rapidly changing colors. Getting a scenic shot is really quite hard in these woods and hills without travelling to the river or a bluff.

Green and Gold Hickory leaves:

Maple leaves along the driveway:

I'm hoping to get out to one of the county parks this afternoon.

Below is a photo of Jersey Valley which had an earthen dam to provide flood control and a man made lake which provided us with hiking, fishing, and kayaking, picnics, and swimming. The dam was destroyed in 2018 and apparently they will not replace it once again as it is too costly.

The County is working on rebuilding the trails that were also destroyed.

I do recall in years past that this was my go to spot at sunrise or late in the day. This is a photo from 2014 when the lake still had water.

I'm aching to get out and enjoy some fall beauty if it comes around. However. I'm okay with what Mother Nature will provide for us.