Snap Away!

I haven't participated in P.J.'s photo blogging challenge in a couple of months, mainly because I don't like to force my photography, rather I like to let my photography happen and see if anything might fit the theme for that particular month. Needless to say, nothing in my photography in the last couple of months has really fit recent themes, but this month's theme was Snap Away! and I figured anything I took this month would probably work and I've got a few nice shots that I can write about. 

Hopefully, this will get me blogging again as it's been almost two months since I've written anything here too. Got into the doldrums with not being able to do much of anything and just didn't really feel like writing anything. I have a variety of subjects I still have in the back of my mind that I want to write about, most notably I'd like to finish up my 2017 road trip. When last we left our intrepid explorers, they were in Abilene, Kansas. But that's for another entry. This is for the photo blogging challenge.

So here we go.

Bobcat Fire

As anyone knows who follow the news at all, the west coast of the United States has pretty much been burning out of control. This shot, which was taken on September 9th, is looking over my garage. The Bobcat fire started on September 6th, so it was relatively new at the time I took that shot, but it just exploded over the past three weeks. As of this writing, it has burned 114,000+ acres and is now only 63% contained. And this is just one such fire in California, let alone the rest of the western states. If you click on the link and back out of the map a little bit, you can get an idea of what the fire situation is like in the western United States. It's brutal and we really have just started fire season now!

Mushrooms

Mushrooms don't seem to last very long in an urban area. People like to kick them over as soon as they come up. These particular mushrooms are actually creating a lopsided fairy ring. Unfortunately, the groundskeepers at our local park mow the grass on a regular basis, so the mushrooms don't last very long. The day after I took this shot, most had been kicked over, probably by kids, but they wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway because the grass was mown about two days later. Still it's interesting to see how the grass to the right, and inside the fairy ring, is slightly greener and always taller than the grass on the outside. I'm not sure if this is a product of the mushrooms providing extra nutrients to the soil or not, but I enjoy watching them pop up.

Watch where you walk

Last week, I went on an extended hike for the first time in awhile, due to the excessive heat we've been having here in California. We're having more right now, but this is sort of a "last gasp" of summer before it really gets cooler. Earlier, it was just damn hot, triple digit type of heat.

The reason for this shot, is more of a public service announcement more than anything. I've already posted this shot on Facebook for my friends and hiking buddies, but everyone should consider this shot. First, if you look closely, you will see that this is a baby rattler. How can you tell? First, there is little to no rattle, but it has a nice triangular shaped head, so I knew is was a rattler right away. Second, if you look at the footprints, you can see the snake is very small, compared to the footprints. Adults will get several feet in length. This one was no more than a foot long, just sunning itself in the middle of the trail.

When I hike, I usually scan several paces ahead of me, just in case I encounter something like this, so I was aware of it and stopped short. People not paying attention might have stepped right on this one. Once I got my shot, it decided that I was bigger than it was and it turned tail and headed back into the bushes and I made a wide berth around it on the other side of the trail. Thing to note is, not more than 100 yards (meters) to the right of this shot are residential houses. We live in their homes, so we should not be surprised if they show up in our back yards.

Embrace the shaggy

My last haircut was on February 12th. For those of you keeping track at home, that's 7 and a half months, for a guy who usually keeps his hair closely cropped, it's pretty much out of control at this point. I haven't felt comfortable going back to my barber to get it cut and so it continues to grow. This shot was taken on September 1st, so it's had another month to grow since then and it's almost as long as it was when I was in college, when it was "fashionable" to have long hair. I've been told to embrace the shaggy and I have done that, but my wife still likes a clean shave as opposed to a "Grizzly Adams" type of look, and so I still keep my face shaved for her sake.

I have had a beard from time to time, but the last time was the year before I retired. I shaved it off on the last day of school 2018 and haven't had one since. A co-worker said I reminded her of the movie character Benjamin Button, because it appeared that I was aging in reverse as I approached my retirement. Whatever works I guess. I wonder if it still looks like that however?

My better half

I took this photo when we were celebrating my youngest's birthday. My daughter ordered Ding Ding Dongs from a local bakery. We used to live right next door to the owners, so we're trying to support our friends and some local businesses at the came time. Cucamonga Cakery has a Facebook order form where you can order and then pick up on Saturdays, so if you live in our local area consider supporting a local business. Now after my shameless promotion, back to my better half.

She has become harder and harder to photograph over the years. I'm not sure what it is, but I used to be able to get, what I considered really good photos of her, but recently, I haven't, which is why I'm very pleased with this shot as it's one of the best photos I've taken of her in probably five years or so.

And there you have it. This is my five shots for P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for the month of September. Please stop by his site and check out how others interpreted the same theme. I hope you enjoyed my shots and I have to admit, I really enjoyed going through the shots I took this month to come up with five that I could really write stories about. Here's looking forward to writing more about more of my wanderings.

Abilene

This entry is another trip back in time to the 2017 road trip my youngest and I took that summer. After touring Harry Truman's library in Independence, MO, we crossed over into Kansa for a short trip to Abilene. Why Abilene? Well, we had some geocaching to do, plus some more history, since Abilene is where Dwight D. Eisenhower's Presidential Library is located. It's also the northern terminus for the Texas Cattle Trail. We learned that while finding a virtual geocache at the boulder that marked the terminus of the trail in the middle of town. After checking in to our motel, we just sat around as we were going to visit the library the next day. My youngest hung out in the room and I found some nearby geocaches and then we called it a night.

The next morning we drove south a couple of miles to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum and toured both his boyhood home and then later in the morning the library and museum dedicated to his presidency. Eisenhower's house was enjoyable, but unfortunately, due to safety standards we weren't able to go upstairs to visit the upper rooms as the foundation established originally didn't want to have to alter the house in any way. Fire codes would have necessitated adding an outside fire escape on the upper floor and that was out of the question, so no one was allowed upstairs. It was still interesting as to what we saw. The family bible was on display and it had the birth record of Eisenhower displayed.

Following our tour, we headed over to the museum to learn about the life of our 34th president. It should be noted that this museum was originally operated by the Friends of Eisenhower and so did not have any Government influence at first. Eventually, the National Archives and Records Administration took over the library. Because of its origins, the library had a certain slant and there didn't seem to be a balance approach to the coverage of Eisenhower. Everything we saw was hued in a way to put Eisenhower in a positive light, contrary to what we had seen the day before at the Truman museum. Truman's was operated by the National Archives from the get go and presented, in my opinion, a much more balanced approach to Truman.

I was very pleased with the amount of artifacts from Eisenhower's life, including the Emmy he won for his extensive use of television during his presidency (thus far, he's the only president to win an Emmy). We were able to see his cars, his military uniforms, his cadet hat from West Point, plus a golf card for a round of golf with Ben Hogan, Paul Helms and George Allen. Hogan won the round straight up, but when you calculate the handicaps in, the president actually won the round.

The only thing I found curious about the library in general was the almost total lack of any mention of his wife Mamie at the library. One room had some artifacts, but for the most part, it was almost as if she was just a footnote on his historical journey through life. Maybe that's the way it was, but the other presidential libraries I've toured, the First Ladies were definitely a part of the history. Mamie didn't seem to be much of an influence in his life at all.

Once we'd toured the museum proper, we then walked across the ground and paid our respects at the graves of the President and First Lady. From there, it was time to drive the length of Kansas, heading to the Mecca of all geocachers, the oldest active geocache in the world.

Letters

I seriously thought about not writing a blog for P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for this month. Those of you who follow this blog know that I enjoy photography and I didn't really want to post five photos of exactly the same thing (you'll understand when you get to my last photo here). So then I thought of a different way I could present the theme of Letters, without having to show a letter in each photo, and so you're getting an entry similar in style to how Sesame Street does it's letters, or how kindergarteners learn what kind of things begin with what kinds of letters. So here's my interpretation of the theme Letters for the month of July.

G is for Geocoins and Geocaching

Most of you know I like to geocache, but I haven't been getting out a lot during this pandemic. I like to geocache with others and that isn't really feasible at the moment, so I get out when I can, but I don't like caching nearly as much when I'm caching alone, and so I'm not caching as much.

I do, however, still enjoy talking about geocaching and participating in groups, such as the Facebook group, Worldwide Geocaching. That group  has weekly giveaways and these geocoins were offered as a giveaway about a month ago. I entered and my name was essentially pulled out of a hat and I ended up winning them. Since they have letters on them as well, I decided to use this as my initial photo for this essay.

C is for Comet

This past month, Comet Neowise (C/2020 F3) has been all the rage and I've been seeing some pretty spectacular photos of the comet on the internet. Sadly, because I live in an area (Southern California) that is heavily light polluted, I wasn't able to get really spectacular shots, but we did go out several times while the comet was closest to the Earth and I was able to get a couple of shots that I felt showed it and the tail. 

I'm usually not much in for filters on Instagram, but I decided to see if any of the filters there would enhance the shot enough that you could see the tail a little bit better. As it turned out, a couple of the filters did, so when I posted this shot to my Instagram account, the tail was much more visible than had I just posted the standard image I'd take that night.

Locating the comet was the toughest part of the shot. We used an app entitled Sky Guide, which allows you to search for particular things in the night sky and once we figured out approximately where the comet would be, I aimed the camera on a tripod up and took an initial shot. The comet was difficult to see with the naked eye, but the prolonged exposure of the camera allowed us to see the tail, even if we couldn't see it just standing there. From there on, it was taking different 30 second exposures until I felt I'd gotten a good enough image that I could post somewhere.

W is for Wall

A couple of weeks ago, at 4 o'clock in the morning, our wall separating our yard from our neighbor's yard fell over. Now we're in the process of getting a contractor to fix the wall. The wall was 60 years old, built to 1959 building codes and wouldn't have passed code today. Our contractor is going to repair the wall, including upgrading it so that it will meet builder's code for today. Once repaired, we won't have this nice hole between our two properties. At the least the part that was the retaining wall of the wall did was it was supposed to do. Only the part above the retaining wall fell, so that's a good thing.

H is for humor

I started to put this down as S is for Squirrel, but when I posted this on Instagram and Facebook, everyone said it looked exactly like the squirrel was fishing. Believe it or not, I hadn't really seen that aspect of the shot. I was more thrilled that I'd seen a native Gray Squirrel as opposed to the invasive Eastern Fox Squirrel that seems so prevalent in this area right now. Now that I look at the shot, it does look like this little guy is fishing. The only thing that would make this even better would have been if there had been a cobweb on the end of the little branch.

R is for Rocks

Since the pandemic started and we've been on shelter in place, I haven't taken many hikes, but I have done a lot of walking around the neighborhood. There have been several things that I've noticed that are not wildlife related and one of them have been these painted rocks.

Most of the rocks that I've noticed have a certain style to them indicating there's one particular local artist who is enjoying creating them and distributing them around throughout the neighborhood. Some of the rocks have disappeared, but many of them have stayed providing a bit of whimsy to people who walk by or encouragement in these trying times. I felt this one was rather appropriate in which to end this particular essay. Please stay safe dear readers.

And that does it for this month's photo blog. As stated above, I didn't want to post only rocks, so I chose to interpret it a different kind of way. I hope you enjoyed my interpretation of Letters. As always, please feel free to comment. I usually respond within a day and I promise I won't bite.

This is why we can't have nice things

Dear Whoever,

Thank you for wearing a mask at sometime during your trip to the park. But seriously? 

This mask has been lying in the grass for the better part of the last 24 hours. I know, because I walk in this park every single day since I can't go many other places. The photo also shows where it was in relationship to where the trash can is located. You couldn't walk the extra 40 feet or so to deposit your mask there? Apparently not.

OK, so let's now assume that it's one of your children's masks. You didn't notice that your child was missing a mask and go back and try to find it? 

Either way, it's just litter now, well not anymore since I was able to find a small stick, and pick up the mask through the loops with the stick. That added some extra steps to my walk today.

I will give you credit though. At least you were wearing a mask at some time during your visit to the park. It's amazing how many people haven't gotten that simple idea through their thick skulls yet. But, please pay more attention to your mask and your children's masks in the future. This is why we can't have nice things.

Sigh.

And to all of my other friends out there on social media platforms, please wear a mask when you're out in public. I'm getting really tired of this shit.

Happy Anniversary

5 years ago today, my oldest and only daughter tied the knot. I can't believe that five years have gone by already, because it just seems like yesterday, and yet here I am five years later reminiscing about the best party I hosted that year. And I can honestly say, that I didn't lose a daughter, but gained a son in the process.  He takes good care of her and we love him, just like we love her.

Happy Anniversary.  Looking forward to when we can celebrate in person again.

Paths

A very dear friend of mine gave me a tee-shirt when I retired last year. On it was the imprint of a boot print, but the print was actually words, which said, "Of all the paths in life you take, make sure some of them are dirt."

I've been trying to do that on a daily basis, not always successfully, but the park just north of my house has a nice walking path of dirt, so I count that, but I think I want to amend that phrase to include something about paths covered in flowers. The photo doesn't convey how orange this really is, but it literally is covered with orange petals from the tree at the right of the shot. 

If you can, walk on a flowered covered path sometime soon. It will make all the difference in the world.

Independence

This post title could mean a variety of things, but it is actually the name of the town we spent the night in on July 4th, 2017 on our 16 day road trip to Wisconsin and back. The timing couldn't have worked out more perfectly than it did. As noted in my last entry, we got into town late in the afternoon after driving across the state of Missouri. We had time to check into the motel, grab a bite to eat and then wander around a little bit watching different fireworks displays that were set up in different parts of town. It was a nice way to spend our 4th of July. 

We spent the better part of the next day touring the Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, which includes the home he and his wife spent most of their married life in when he wasn't in Washington D.C. We also toured the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. We knew time wasn't going to be a problem today since our next stop was not a very long drive into Kansas.

Our first stop was the visitors center of the Harry S. Truman NHS for information and tickets to tour his home. We walked through the small museum and then wandered over to the historic courthouse. On the back side of the courthouse, we spotted a marker indicating the beginning of the Oregon Trail. By the time we'd gathered in some of the history of the area, it was time for our tour of Truman's house, so we walked the four or five blocks over to the house and took the tour.

Truman's house was built by his wife's grandfather and he and Bess Truman lived there for their entire married life from 1919 until his death in 1972. This was the "summer White House" during the time he was President of the United States from 1945 until 1953 and where he retired to after serving as our commander in chief. Touring the home, you get a real feeling as to how much of a down to earth kind of guy Truman was, not a whole lot of presidential trappings, just an average guy living out the best way he could.

Following our tour of the house, we then walked back over to the visitors center. That's when I saw some fake news, but this was really fake news. The visitors center had an actual print of the famous Chicago Tribune newspaper headline from November 1948, when they famously predicted that Thomas Dewey would defeat Truman based upon phone samplings they'd taken over the past several days. I inquired as to whether this was genuine, or a printed up copy of the paper and was assured that it was genuine. I also learned that the newspaper will not print any copies of that particular newspaper, because it is wrong and they will not be a part of printing things that aren't truthful. The interesting thing about this is, that it literally is fake news, because it has been proven incorrect, unlike a lot of other news stories that are just called fake news because someone doesn't like the coverage. Faulty polling by the Tribune caused the error, they owned up to the error, didn't double down on their error and admitted they were wrong and later printed a retraction.

Following our visit to the visitors center, we then hopped back into the Jeep and drove over to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. The museum and library I found very refreshing and much different than the Lincoln Library that we'd visited a couple of days earlier. While Lincoln's Library was very high tech, I felt that it lacked a lot of memorabilia that one would expect from a presidential library.

The presidential library I've visited the most, mainly because it's the closest to where I live is Richard Nixon's library. Because Nixon's library was created through private funds and through organizations like "Friends of Nixon" I felt that there were many aspects of Nixon's life that got whitewashed in the telling, most notably, Watergate. You don't get that at the Truman library.

On the side of Truman's library is a quote by Harry Truman which reads, "The Truth is all I want for History." Truman felt that a presidential library should reflect the history of the time, the truth of the time, be it good or bad. There was an interactive exhibit regarding the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Visitors could weigh in with their opinion on whether it was right or wrong. Just wandering through the museum, I felt that the exhibits overall, gave a very balanced detail of his time as President and as a human being, complete with all the frailties that come with being human. It wasn't whitewashed at all.

The last place we visited after walking through the entire museum was the garden and then over to President Truman's gravesite which is on the grounds of the library. We paid our respects to a great man, then got back in the Jeep and headed west into Kansas.