Fall #1

A walk in the park

Reading in the park

The Bean!

Sitting in a place where you feel so small

A Street in Chicago

Chicago Teachers Strike

Pizza

A fine Chicago pizza joint - original corn meal crust with sauce on top!

Prarie Land

Duluth MN

hmmm.

not sure, but this could be ruby beach, wa

It only takes a few minutes for a picture to completely change

primitive loop arches national park

At the end of the road in Arches, there is a trail that you can take that has a primitive portion that breaks off to the side.  You end up climbing quite a bit of rock, but the hike was easily one of the top three that I have ever been on .

pretty thing

Early Meadow Rue

Esha Ness, Shetland

This is where we sat and had lunch.  While looking out into the ocean, we discovered a seal watching us.  He would pop under water for a little while and then pop back up somewhere else.  It took us a little while to realize that there were actually two seals.  They watched us the whole time. 

We also thought we saw a raft of otters - and we were really excited about our luck - but it turned out that it was just seaweed.  Brown seaweed that turns white when it is out of water and exposed to the sun.

Holyrood Park

Scotland again

Glass house and the Royal Botanical Gardens

Sea walk at Kirkcaldy

Kirkcaldy castle and boat

Scotland in Grave Markers

Too many cool, old gravestones to photograph.  Apparently, skull and crossbones were a pretty popular images on grave markers in the 18th century.  In Scotland, a church yard is called a kirkyard. 

Throughout Scotland, many of the kirkyards that we came across hadn't been used in a hundred years or more - like this one.  We were just walking along the beach and found this unused kirkyard with the old pastor's house in the corner.

This one shows how, over the years, the words get obscured by lichen that have been growing there for a really long time.

Occasionally, the facade has crumbled away leaving only snippets of dates or names.

Scotland - Day One

Multiple views of Edinburgh Castle.  Someone tells me the last one is pretty boilerplate, although I cannot say I have ever seen it before.

Scotland - Day One

We like to walk when we are in a new place.  It is the only way to get around that is slow enough to see everything there is to see... that and just try driving around Edinburgh ... I am SO glad I had a GPS (I can still hear: "Prepare to go over the roundabout...")!

This day was rainy - from what I hear - pretty typical. Beautiful old buildings and street closes like these two.  There is something pretty photogenic about about a space where you cannot get a car down.

.

Colorful Utah

And now for something completely different...

walking on the top of the world

Arches National Park

Watching You Watch Me

This is the primitive trail at the end of the road in Arches National Park.  It was a difficult trail for out of shape me... but absolutely stunning... If you go, go early in the spring.  Not too hot and no scorpions.

Grey Morning

There is just something about a grey winter morning that makes me want to take pictures.  The little color that is around in the winter is really accented by the grey sky and everything around it is muted.  Especially when covered in frost!

A Park in Ponce

Oak Tree Fungus

We found this fungus growing out from the middle of an oak tree at our cabin. I love how varied and intricate the fungus of the forest are.

NYC

NYC

Mass influx

Sandhill Cranes coming in to roost for the night.

Starting in mid March, about 500,000 Sandhill cranes arrive at the Platt River from Texas, New Mexico and Mexico.  They then spend the next month fattening up on waste corn (from the fields) and invertebrates (earthworms, snails and insect larvae) before the continue on to their nesting grounds.  It is truly an impressive sight to see so many birds acting as a single entity.  There can be as many as 12,000 in any half mile stretch of the river. They filter in during the evening to roost in the shallow areas of the river and then, if you are patient, you can watch the whole mass of them take off in the morning to head out to the fields.  Interestingly, 90% of their diet during this time comes from the waste corn in the fields.  Before there was the corn, the cranes ate starchy tubers from the surrounding wetlands, most of which no longer exist.  We must be careful how we change this environment in the future.