Posts Tagged ‘images’
Photo Review
There were so many highlights of our weekend at the lake over the last three days that I am simply going to fill today’s post with some of the images depicting different moments from our adventures.
We were out visiting artistic retail shops in quaint Cable, WI, on Friday and decided to make the short drive further on to see the abandoned resort, Telemark Lodge.
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Peeking in the windows, we noticed head-height smudges on the glass that showed we weren’t the first ones to do this exploring.The facility had been through multiple bankruptcies and left abandoned for years. It looked like someone chained the doors and just walked away, leaving everything as it was.
It was intriguing to see the level of incidental decay of portions of the roof and fascia, the hazardous looking green of residual water in the pool, and the weeds growing through every crack in the concrete walkways.
We got out onto the lake, where the view back toward the empty beach looked like a resort with beach chairs prepared for the day ahead. A walk down the driveway provided a chance to glimpse the juvenile bald eagles perching on branches beyond their nest.
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Flight can’t be far off for these two.
On Saturday afternoon, we got out on the lake for a short happy-hour cruise.
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It was a fine weekend for boating. Back on land at dinner time, the Wilkuses provided pork chops for the grilling.
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Feasting is a regular opportunity with Cyndie’s family. Barb and Mike fit right in.
After dinner we gathered with company around the fire to enjoy the sounds of a wedding reception a few properties down the shoreline from us.
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Unfortunately, the sound didn’t travel our direction, and we barely heard a note.
Not to worry. We put on our own music and lingered long around the mesmerizing visual of burning wood.
It was a picture-postcard perfect summer weekend at the lake with friends and family that I’m hoping will linger in my mind for many days, despite returning to the responsibilities of day-job and home chores.
Home life is what makes going to the lake that much more special!
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Incremental Headway
Baby steps.
With visual progress toward our goal of getting our hay-field cut underway, we are experiencing a noticeable easing of stress carried in our bodies and on our minds. I wish it were enough to offset the ongoing feelings of dread over the bizarre happenings lately with the leader of our country bashing our allies and being overly friendly with despots.
Our Homeland Security touts the mantra that if we see something, we should say something. Um, we are all seeing it, and plenty of people are saying something. Why can’t anyone stop this ongoing governmental train wreck underway?
I try to compartmentalize, in order to carry on with my immediate world of influence without being entirely distracted by the national despondency, but I’m not fooling many people with my feeble attempts.
Seeing the three measly cut rows of our field being baled was a sweet minor victory for us. It looks so much better than the weedy field it was becoming.
Then we walked back up to the house and I spotted this:
The siding is sagging on our bird house.
I kind of like the look. It gives it added character.
But, in that moment, it felt like the teeter-totter of our experiences had just flipped from hopeful to gloomy in way too short a time.
Really? Even the bird house is falling apart?
I blame it on the sorry state of our government.
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Hay’s In
This year we accomplished our goal in three days. The hay is in. I’m ready for winter.
On the left side of that image, in the front you can see remaining bales from last year. Behind it are the new grass bales just stacked. On the right are the new bales we stacked on Sunday and Monday, from a second source. Those bales have a rougher mixture of stemmed grasses, which our horses showed strong interest for last year.
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Working early in the morning yesterday presented a nice change to throwing bales at the end of the day. Stacking to the top of the shed however, ended up being just as hot and sweaty as doing it in the late afternoon on the two previous days.
We hadn’t opened the chicken door on the coop yet, so Delilah was able to hang out with us while we worked. When the chickens are roaming about, we don’t leave Delilah unsupervised, as she has a history of breaking her leash to reach the irresistible teasers.
If our full attention isn’t directly on her, she has a tendency to violate her restraining order.
We collect all the sweepings that fall from the bales to provide the horses a taste test of the menu they will be served for the next year.
I’m told there were no complaints.
That means a lot to us after the year our horses resolutely refused to eat bales we bought from a third source.
Imagine how it feels to have food we offer rejected after the strenuous effort to transport and stack a season’s worth in the high heat and humidity of summer.
Today, we are breathing a sigh of relief over having the hardest part of this chore behind us for another year.
Now, how long ’til it starts to snow?
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Aqueous Abstractions
I’ve collected a backlog of full-frame images presenting varying states of water recently, starting a few weeks ago during my bike trip, up through this past weekend at the lake. I present them today in the order they were captured.
I hope you can linger long enough to maximize the mesmerizing effect of the abstract aqueous distractions.
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Brief Treat
Just before sunset last night, we let the horses have a few minutes to graze on the mowed arena space. They were thrilled with the opportunity.
It is so precious for us to see them grazing on the grass outside their paddock. Be it ever so brief, it provided a compound reward.
The chickens seemed pretty excited over the activity and came running to join in the fun.
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Do they look like they are getting bigger? They are.
After we returned to the paddock, I crouched down to visit with the chickens, but it was Hunter and Cayenne who moved in to love me up.
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Apparently, they wanted to offer me a brief treat of my very own.
Love, gratefully accepted.
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Trip Photos
The 2018 Tour of Minnesota is in the books. It is not unreasonable to say that everyone who participated had as many unique experiences as we did shared ones. We all come to this ride from different perspectives. There is a wide mix of experience. Some have never ridden a multi-day tip before, and some haven’t ever ridden with a large group.
Many riders on the Tour of Minnesota have done this ride together for decades. My perspective about this ride comes from having done it around twenty times, but is limited to having no other multi-day group ride to which I can compare.
I figured out this year that we could use negatives to describe it thusly: The Tour of MN is not TRAM, not BAM, not RAGBRAI, etc. It also occurred to me that we could flaunt the ride as an eco-friendly vacation, in that, we (most of us) park our cars for a week and human-power our way around the state.
At the end of the ride, participants are invited to submit up to three photos from the week for a contest. I picked three from my collection, but quickly realized there were many other shots deserving attention, so I am tossing them out for you to judge.
I hope they help you imagine what my week was like…
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I am always amazed by the visual of our onslaught of bicycles showing up in unexpected locations where riders seek out any-and-every vertical surface to support our machines while we pause to eat.
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This image of Steve is one of my submissions to the contest. I doubt it’s chances in the judging, since it reveals one of the sloppy, wet realities of needing to reach destinations, regardless the weather.
The reflection on the new wet pavement was too irresistible to pass up. I pulled out my camera, despite the odds it would get splattered by the rooster tail spray shooting up off his tires.
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The covered bridge on the Lake Wobegon trail at Holdingford, MN was a real treat.
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I love the expression spontaneously captured by my reach-around snap of the riders behind me on this stretch of road.
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The Penn Cycle “ambulance” was manned by staff new to our ride this year, and they said they had a good enough time to want to return again next year.
I’m pretty sure we appreciated them even more than they did us.
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Relative Something 