Travel

Cathy and Dorothy on Singing Beach

After our morning outing to Essex, we returned to Gordon and picked up Dorothy after her last class. It had been wet all morning but not it was raining lightly and the fog was a bit more dense (or the clouds were closer to the ground, which I guess comes to the same thing). From the school we went to Singing Beach. If you think a beach is only beautiful on a sunny day, then either you’ve never been there on a day like this or we’ll have to agree to disagree. I had to keep my camera in the lee of my body to keep it reasonably dry but I took quite a few pictures, including this one of Cathy and Dorothy walking away into the mist.

Lobster Cove

From Singing Beach we went to Lobster Cove, a quiet little place with no provision for parking but again, beautiful in the mist. This panorama was made from six shots taken with my 100mm lens, vertically oriented. Lobster Cove is a quiet little place and there are houses on both sides but especially on a day like this, it’s a peaceful retreat from the world. Every now and then larger waves would hit the opening at just the right angle to roll in to the beach and there were sea birds about but otherwise, it was just the noise of the wind and the distant sound of waves on rocks further out.

Apple Orchard

I’ve already posted two pictures from our brief trip to Pennsylvania today, although both of them were taken in Maryland on the way home. I showed this picture to Dorothy and she agreed that it was worth posting, so here’s the third picture from today. This one was taken before the two church pictures so I’m posting them in the wrong order, but that’s life (“that’s what all the people say”).

We cut our Christmas trees at a place called Shower’s Tree Farm (http://www.showerstreefarm.com/). In addition to a fairly large field of Christmas trees, they have apples, which isn’t surprising in this part of the state (the home of Musselman’s (now part of Knouse Foods) and the National Apple Museum. The trees were all bare but some of them had quite a few apples on the ground around them and that, obviously, is what this picture features.

Dilapidated Church

As mentioned in the previous post, we went to Pennsylvania to cut Christmas trees today. After a brief (but less brief and more eventful than expected) visit to the farm, we went to a local tree farm to cut a few trees. For quite a few years we’ve gone to a farm in Cashtown, west of Gettysburg. It’s nice to go to the same place year after year but we received word from them that they were not going to be open this season. We don’t know if that’s a permanent closing or if it’s for this year only. In any case, they recommended another farm that’s actually closer, so we went there.

We had lunch at the Ott House in Emmitsburg, as we’ve done for about four years (prior to that we’d go somewhere different every year). Mom had seen a piece in the newspaper about a church that was in bad enough shape that it couldn’t really be repaired but that is old and historic enough that it shouldn’t be torn down. Of course, if it isn’t repaired, it will come down eventually under its own weight. Anyway, we decided to try to find it and (as you’ve probably guessed by now) we did. The sun was behind the church, which made lighting difficult, and again, there were power lines to contend with, but I’m pretty happy with this shot.

Elias Evangelical Lutheran Church

We drove up to Pennsylvania today with some other family members to get Christmas trees. For a while dad was planting trees at the farm every few years and we’d often cut trees from among those but new trees haven’t been planted for at least ten and probably closer to 20 years so all of those are much too big to be of any use. Still, we go there as a sort of tradition, knowing we’ll only stay a short while. Some years we have had snow and a few years there was enough that we had to part at the entrance and then walk in. The last few years have been clear and mild. Today it was cold but there was no snow. There was a thin layer of ice on the pond and it was making the most amazing pinging noise as the sun heated it slightly. At first we were sure it was a bird making that noise but it was the ice.

We cut our trees at a local tree farm and then drove down to Emmitsburg for lunch. I took a little time to take some pictures of Elias Evangelical Lutheran Church on North Avenue, a block from Main Street, where we parked. The trick here was to get a picture without telephone and power lines crossing in front of the church.

Live Oak Allee, Brookgreen Gardens

Cathy, mom, and I went to Brookgreen Gardens today, driving the 75 minutes from Ocean Isle Beach and getting there at about 10:00. I’ve got three past posts with pictures from Brookgreen on the blog, two in 2013 and one in 2012 (Brookgreen Gardens, Thursday, August 02, 2012, Brookgreen Gardens, Thursday, August 01, 2013, and Brookgreen Critters, Thursday, August 01, 2013). Between the gardens, a lunch in the restaurant, and a visit to the small zoo, we spent about five hours there. Not long enough to see everything but it was a great visit. It was hot and very humid but not as swelteringly hot as it’s been some years. I took nearly 400 photographs today and I’ve got three to show you. This year I decided not to include any of the wonderful art work, there are simply too many nice sculptures from which to choose.

Carolina Anole (Anolis carolinensis)

The first picture is of the Live Oak Allee, which forms the center of the garden leading up to the former location of the house. These trees are said to be over 300 years old and I have no reason to doubt that, as they are quite large. The branches are covered with resurrection ferns and there is the ubiquitous Spanish moss all over. Under them are beds filled with Caladiums. This image is an HDR image made from three different exposures and I liked the muted colors in this nearly monochrome image. I have mixed feelings about HDR images but I have to admit, they produce some extraordinary results. My camera has an autobracketing feature that lets me take three images in quick succession with three different exposures (and I can control the amount of difference between them). Sometimes I would prefer five images, but maybe that wouldn’t really help much. I usually take them without the benefit of a tripod and I’m sure they would turn out better if I didn’t have to hand hold them.

Wet Wings

The second image is a Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) posing on bright red Coleus leaves. I found the contrast between the green of the lizard and the red of the leaves to be wonderful. We saw quite a few of these little lizards as well as huge eastern lubber grasshoppers (Romalea microptera). In the zoo we saw black-crowned night herons (Nycticorax nycticorax, including one which caught an anole), white ibis (Eudocimus albus), American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis), bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and in both areas, lots of dragonflies. That brings us to the final picture, a dragonfly with water droplets on its wings. I think the tiny droplets have a jewel-like quality, although this isn’t one of the jewelwings (genus Calopteryx).

Ocean Isle Beach

We arrived at Ocean Isle Beach at about 11:15 last night. We stopped for our family reunion and were there for a much-too-short three and a half hours. After that we had an uneventful drive the rest of the way down. We unpacked, made a quick trip to the supermarket for some groceries, and then went to bed, tired but happy to be here. This is what greeted us when we woke up this morning. Sea oats (Uniola paniculata) growing on the dunes with the waves crashing beyond. Naturally there were more people on the beach a little later in the day, but each morning I enjoy looking out at the mostly deserted beach with waves coming in, never stopping, as they have done for centuries.

Battleground National Cemetery

Because our church meets at 4:00 p.m. we don’t have anything planned in the morning. This morning we went to church at Grace Meridian Hill at the corner of Monroe and 13th Streets N.W. in the District. On the way home we stopped at Battleground National Cemetery on Georgia Avenue (which is also US 29) between Van Buren Street and Whittier Place. It was established shortly after the Battle of Fort Stevens, in the summer of 1864 and is one of the United State’s smallest national cemeteries with the graves of 41 Union soldiers who died in the the Battle of Fort Stevens (there were a total of over 900 killed or wounded in the battle from both sides).

Delaware Water Gap

As I’ll illustrate tomorrow and the next day, Cathy and I went on a little ‘family history safari’ (Cathy’s words). She has ancestors and various relations who lived in the Stroudsburg and Scranton areas of northeastern Pennsylvania. She had some places she wanted to visit, including a few cemeteries, and so we took a couple days off work and this morning we headed up to Stroudsburg. We decided to do a little sightseeing, as well, so today we drove to the Delaware Water Gap, just a few minutes outside Stroudsburg. This is where the Delaware River cuts through the Appalachian Mountains and it’s a pretty spot on the river, if you ignore the roar of traffic from Interstate 80, that also takes this path (and I can’t say that I blame the highway folks from doing that, it makes a lot of sense). This picture was taken from the New Jersey side of the river, looking downstream with Pennsylvania on the far bank.

Reagan National Airport

We don’t have any particularly big or exciting travel plans for the summer but we do have a few things going on. The first of them is a visit from Cathy’s brother and two of her nieces (her sister’s daughters). David and Maggie left yesterday and are driving here, arriving late this evening. Laura was flying and was coming into Reagan National Airport (DCA) at about ten minutes till eleven. Cathy and I drove to National to pick her up.

When traffic is bad (which is not all that uncommon) then National is a real pain to get into. When traffic is normal or light (which, truth be told, is most of the time) it’s actually quite a nice airport to deal with. While Terminal A, which is the original terminal, is somewhat small and cramped, Terminals B and C are quite large and airy. This is the central terminal of this refurbished airport, and has a high, vaulted ceiling, shown here behind a large American flag, from the far south end of the terminal, where we met Laura. We’ve been looking forward to this visit and it’s finally here.