I just got back from a few days in northern Indiana, where my mother lives. These photos were all taken in her neighborhood…a totally different sort of scenery than I see here in Arizona. There are a lot of trees in her ‘hood, lush landscapes, and ducks enjoying the little pond.
That’s not her house but this one has a lovely setting.
I had no wifi there so I’m behind on reading other blogs. The weather was lovely but I’m glad to be back to urbanity.
I like the darkness of the woods. And I saw fireflies again for the first time in many years…rabbits and squirrels, too, which we just don’t see in central Phoenix.
Here’s some more of the wooded shots I took in a slideshow.
Mornings at Blackwater
For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.
What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.
So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.
~Mary Oliver
Filed under: Arizona, Music | Tags: Arizona, imagine, Music, Photoshop, Travels, vacation
One of the original U.S. Highways, Route 66 was established on November 11, 1926—with road signs erected the following year. The highway, which became one of the most famous roads in America, originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, before ending at Los Angeles, covering a total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km).
It was officially removed from the United States Highway System on June 27, 1985 after it had been decided the route was no longer relevant and had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System. Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name Historic Route 66, which is returning to official maps and Google Maps (Wikipedia).
Maybe this 1937 Terraplane traveled on The Mother Road, its most enduring nickname, during its glory days.
And doesn’t this Vette make you want to hit the open road and have a few adventures?
It’s summer, the time for roadtrips…
I’m ready, let’s go…
As is always the case when I’m in Sedona, I can’t whittle my photos down to a manageable size for the blog. Some of them are taken a mere few feet apart but every view when you are in Sedona is amazing and majestic, and it’s just impossible to narrow them down too much. I selected only 21 but that seems like too much to make you look through so I’ve inserted them in a slideshow at the end of this post, if you want to take a look, and just highlighted a few of them individually. Again, they look much better enlarged.
Bell Rock
We drove through Sedona on our way back from Munds Park a few days ago, to avoid as much of the traffic as possible on I-17. It didn’t work that well, we should have detoured a little longer, but at least we got to experience the beauty of Sedona once again.
Cathedral Rock
We were on the Mystic Trail, named, no doubt, for all the vortices in the area.
Even though I’ve lived in Arizona for 38 years and have been to Sedona countless times, I am always awed when I see it again. The other thing that I know about Sedona but conveniently always sort of forget is that it’s basically as hot as Phoenix in the summer. You can’t really go to Sedona to cool off even though it’s higher in elevation~the temperature difference is about 5 degrees, at best, and when it’s 115 in Phoenix, 110 doesn’t feel that much better. So my frequent dream of a simple multi-million dollar summer home there will probably never come to pass.
Courthouse Butte
Chapel of the Holy Cross in the distance
Storm’s a brewin’
See my shots of Sedona last summer here and here.
Bye, Sedona, hope to see you again very soon…(shot through the windshield)
This is Munds Park, AZ (about 20 miles south of Flagstaff). We were there this past weekend because Tony’s band played at a private party there. The altitude is 6,590 feet so we got a 24 hour break from the over 100 degree temps of summertime Phoenix. It was about 20 degrees cooler than it was in Phoenix.
Munds Park is surrounded by Coconino National Forest and you can walk through a little gate right into forest land down the street from where the party was.
Wikipedia states the population of Munds Park as 631, but I don’t know if that includes all the Phoenix people who have cabins and second homes up there because it seems like there were almost that many people at the party.
Someday I’ll be a big tree, too…
The sad thing is the long drought we are in has taken its toll on the forest. The Ponderosa Pines are dry and scraggly. The earth has big cracks in it.
We need some rain!
I don’t know what this turquoise-colored thing is; maybe it’s just something as unglamorous as a bead someone dropped at some point. Or maybe it’s a perfectly round chunk of turquoise or the seed of an exotic plant or the egg of a mysterious alien…
And I have to show you two more pictures. This is Maddy, our friends Larry and Iris’ dog, who also went to the party. She’s all set for a hike in the forest.
And this is Karma, the party-thrower Mike’s dog. She loves parties and knows how to work a crowd.
Filed under: Arizona, Art, Blogging, Cats, Home, Phoenix, Photography | Tags: Arizona, Art, Blogging, Butterflies, Cats, Downtown Phoenix, Flora, Global Community, Holidays, Home, Hummingbirds, imagine, Lalo Cota, Learning, Murals, Phoenix, Photoblogging, Photography, Photoshop, Resorts, Sedona, Travels, vacation
Hope your shiny new year is off to a great start! I wasn’t planning to do a 2011 year review but it seems like a good idea to take stock now and then and look back but, mostly, it’s an excuse to use photos I already have since I’m running low right now. So, in no chronological order, here are some of the highlights of my blogging year (some coincide a little with my personal year).
In April, after 17 years together, Tony and I got married.
We had a little wedding but a big party.
I made the invitations for the party.
We went on a staycation at the Hermosa Inn in Paradise Valley.
I did some “imaginary vacation” photos around town in the heat of summer when I couldn’t think of anything to photograph. The first place, El Maya, was torn down a couple of weeks after I photographed it. Oh, and I learned how to do rounded corners and played with textures a lot more in 2011.
A few weeks later I did another local imaginary vacation in the sweltering heat.
We did a day trip to Sedona, I took a lot of photos, and got 2 blog posts out of them. It’s really hard to take bad photos in Sedona. One of those posts was Freshly Pressed on WordPress!
2011 was the year that I FINALLY got some good butterfly shots! Some Giant Swallowtails:
Some Skippers:
And a Variegated Fritillary:
As if that weren’t enough, 2011 gave me some good hummingbird shots, on two different occasions, something I had also never gotten before.
I continued shooting murals in downtown Phoenix, something I’ve done for 2.5 years now.
I got all enthused about another downtown Phoenix project, the Valley of the Sunflowers, and will post some new shots in a few days.
I took a lot of photos of our 3 indoor cats as well as our numerous outdoor cats. Sadly, 3 of our outdoor cats died in 2011, including WB, our faithful friend for many years (as well as Snowy and Isabella).
My hibiscus plant was the subject of a few posts. It almost croaked last winter through a few frosts even though it was covered. It recovered and thrived through the spring and early summer. Again it got very sickly looking during the intense summer heat, and now it is once again thriving…
I learned how to do animated gifs, providing myself hours of fun!
I got hooked on my old 50mm f/1.8 lens from my old Nikon film camera and have to shoot manually when I use it on my DSLR which is fun. I like the looks of the photos with it, too.
We grew a giant basil plant from seed and it provided a lot of seasoning for us until quite recently when it died. We’ll be doing that again as soon as it gets warmer. They flourish in heat and sun, which we have plenty of here.
I took a zillion rose photos, some got texture added to them, some didn’t.
We took another train ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad with Tony’s sister and her husband when they were out visiting in November. The railroad asked for permission to use a couple of my photos, this one in particular, and in return sent us two first-class passes for another trip (and a photo credit, of course). Someone else has asked for permission to use another photo from that same train ride and it will also result in a photo credit and some goods that I may mention at a later date.
Some photos I liked, just because.
And a lot of my photos were just taken around my yard and neighborhood.
So that about sums it up for 2011 on this blog. Thank you to all of you who read it and I really enjoy reading yours, too, and seeing your photos of your lives. Photoblogging is one of my favorite pastimes as I’m sure it is for most of you, too. I hope we all have a fun, productive, creative 2012 blogging experience.
