nature: May 2009 Archives

Sometimes, things don't go as planned, but everything turns out OK in the end. Be flexible, 'wing' it. And enjoy the ride.

I had hoped to spend the holiday weekend near Sandusky, Ohio, home of Cedar Point and dozens of roller coasters. Sandusky and the Lake Erie Islands is an area loaded with photographs just begging to be taken. With batteries charged, lenses clean, I was anticipating an entire day of searching for The Perfect Picture on the islands.

Before that, I wanted to visit one of my favorite people, a good friend's daughter, Davette Schlett. We don't talk or write as often as I'd like.

Crashed a birthday party for one of her sons, ate pizza and cake, renewed old friendships and was happy to see her big, beautiful smile. She and her family-- including her father Greg-- are doing well. That part of the trip went perfectly.

Next was Pelee Island, the largest island in Lake Erie, and just a stone's throw into Canada.

Couldn't catch a ferry to the island and return the same day from Sandusky, so I had to drive around Lake Erie to Kingsville, Ontario, where I could catch the ferry Jiimaan in the morning and return late Sunday. From there, I'd drive to Buffalo and back to York in time for work on Tuesday.

So I had all day Sunday to bike and explore the island, nine miles by three miles. The southern part of the island drew my attention for its conservation areas, savannas, woods and wetlands. Fish Point, on the southwestern tip of Pelee Island, is a 110-hectare provincial nature reserve. Or that was the plan. Imagine the images...

Pelee is known for its large numbers of migrating birds. But most have traveled through by now, and flowers were the stars of the show. Unless you count the mosquitoes, who seemed intent on carrying me away piece by piece. The pictures were just OK, and I'll return to Pelee another time.

But returning on the Jiimaan, I met Wendy and her dog. Wendy was watching five young boys, and between checking on them and watering the dog, she told me the stories of growing up on Pelee. She told me of going to school (seven students), exploring every inch of the island, and buying groceries four months in advance (winter's thick ice kept supply boats away). It must have been wonderful. Or at least, very interesting.

The boys were exhausted by the time the Jiimaan reached the Kingsville docks. But none of them showed it quite like the dog. She had a very very long day.

The original plan wasn't to drive that many miles. But the weekend was a gem, and the best picture of the weekend was of an exhausted dog on the ferry. It reminded me of a long and happy holiday.

A friend of mine and former YDR reporter is taking her first big trip of the American and Canadian West, and is amazed at how beautiful it all is. She's seeing mountains, canyons, cornfields, lakes and forests that she might have assumed were across an ocean. After traveling the world, she is enjoying the sights that I was lucky enough to know as a young boy.

Now, that's that not bragging exactly, because I've not seen the Pyramids or China as she has. But our family traveled by car every summer, jamming an old Pontiac station wagon full of tents, tarps and ice chests.Behind it, we're dragging a one wheel trailer with a home-made (and brilliant) space-saver pup tent on top, where my brother and I slept.

Since then, I've continued Mom and Dad's dreams. I'll have seen all but one of the Canadian provinces by summer's end (not Nunavut), and all but Hawaii (and probably never will. You can't drive there.). When I was only 16, I had seen all but one state of the 48. I added Mississippi soon after.

Many people have seen more of the world, but I consider myself fortunate that we saw the back roads of Iowa, the nature trails of Maine and New Mexico and the super highways of LA. We didn't fly. As we crawled past, we saw every lightpost, telelphone pole and rest area between here and the Pacific Coast.

We were big on history and science, because you could see alot of both for free. It's been a family joke that we've seen every free museum, and hiked every free wooded path in the country.

We took plenty of short cuts. Many didn't get us where we wanted to go, but we often found something else much better. One of my favorite sayings-- If it doesn't matter where you are, you're not lost.

And because of that, it's still a game finding birds and animals on a walk. Or remembering details of a museum in Stewart River, Yukon , or the Billy the Kid museum in Fort Sunmer, New Mexico.

We explored ghost towns of the old west, where cities and people thrived, usually because of gold or silver, but were abandoned once the mines played out. I still enjoy searching out the towns, but have expanded to the east, where coal mining towns (Pennsylvania and West Virginia) or old shipping towns of New England have long ago ceased, or now are just 'ghosts' of their old selves.

This picture is from Animas Forks, up an old dirt road in the San Juan Mountains. Beyond being interesting historically, ghost towns are often in very remote, very serene locations, giving even people with no love of history a place to enjoy. Many are more than 100 years old and are literally falling apart. Unfortunately, antique collectors scour the grounds and buildings for trinkets, leaving little to discover for those who follow.

As the towns revert back to nature, the animals return, the forest begins to overtake the land, and it's beautiful once more.
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For more travel information, check out Jen Vogelsong's blog. A facsinating list of the world's best 100 best places to stand awaits.

Amy Gable lives here now, but it will always be Carol Gable's house to me. Carol, a very capable former Daily Record and Gazette and Daily reporter, lived in her Stewartstown house until she died in 1998.

Her father, Joseph Gable, a noted botanist, rhododendron hybridizer and author raised Carol and her brother here, and planted some of his botanical gems in his yard and woods behind the home, trying to grow a rhododendron hardy enough to survive cold winters.

Today, Carol's grand niece Amy lives here, and the house is being fixed up, the yard thinned of overgrowth and dead trees, and most of the rhodos and azaleas have been saved. Landscaping is even more beautiful than a few years ago. Amy owns about 70 acres of land, some of which is still forested, populated with colorful plants from her great grandfather. A loop path leads visitors through the woods, back into Amy's backyard and between the picturesque barns, which are next on the list of renovations.

There are places charging admission that aren't nearly as pretty as Amy's backyard.

It's quite a backyard. And in the corner is a rhododendron named for Carol Gable. It's fitting that it's a beauty, because Carol was a very special lady.

On the way to a weekend Mother's Day dinner visit in Buffalo and some cruising in Ontario, this front lawn near Batavia, NY, caught my eye. This sea of blue belongs to a gentleman named Dennis, who doesn't cut his lawn in the spring until the forget-me-nots die off. Thanks for that.

Sprinkled in with the blues were dots of yellow dandelions. Now, Dennis is trying to rid his yard of the golden pests, but they provided a nice contrast to the blue waves (it was very, very windy).

Remember, contrast isn't just black and white, big or small, but shades of colors, times of day, fancy and plain, beautiful and ugly, etc.

With wildlife, sometimes a photographer doesn't have a lot of choice in the background. Like this cardinal, it landed on the branch and I was stuck where I was, as well as stuck with the background.

I was looking to merge the pink dogwood and the brilliance of the cardinal, but because of his landing spot, all I got was a dogwood branch growing out of his head. A longer depth of field would have made it worse, and the lens was already wide open, giving me as little depth of field as possible.

Any suggestions on how to make this work? OK, aside from sitting for a day and a half waiting for him to land two inches to the left or right...

It's the weekend, and time for do-it-yourselfers to get into their projects. I've seen small cars with 12 foot-long boards sticking out of all the windows as they left the hardware store. It reminded me of this wren trying to get this branch into his house for its nest.

Shot with a 500 mm mirror lens.