Thought I’d alert all my Rich’s Rambles followers to my new Instagram photo blog. I have been posting about 1 image a day with a bit of text and hashtags. Have a look-see. Here’s a screenshot of the last few images I posted.
Enjoy,
Rich
Category Archives: travel
Tucson Rambles
This past March we spent a week in Tucson to get some vitamin D sunshine! And it was J’s first trip to the desert, ever! We went on a couple of hikes, went to the amazing Kartchner Caverns, went to a desert botanical garden and bistro, Tohono Chul, and just hung out drinking tea at The Scented Leaf, where I picked up some nice green tea to take home.
Unfortunately, they don’t let you take pictures at Kartchner Caverns except on certain days and then you have to pay a lot of $$ so I don’t have anything to show you from our walk in the caves there but we did go to a great Mexican restaurant for lunch in a town close by. We asked the Cavern staff where to go and the woman said “Lucky for you that I’m a total foodie and you have to go to this hole in the wall place, Mi Casa Restaurant, in Benson. So we went and were not disappointed. It’s literally a Mom and Pop place; she cooks, he waits the tables. The food was great and we were satiated and happy.
We also “lounged” through an evening at Gates Pass to watch the sunset. Again, just perfect. I have lots of great shots from the trip; here’s just some of my favourites. Hope you enjoy. (Hint: click on a photo to see the full size image)
Panoramas
Cacti and other flowers
Keep on Rambling,
Rich
Finding my niche: The BIG Picture
I’ve always wondered just where I “fit” photographically. There are so many superb picture takers and image makers out there. And I have been inspired by all of them.
Recently, I realized what I really like to shoot. First and foremost, I’m a landscape photographer. I love shooting macros too, but taking pictures of people, NOT! I can do it, just doesn’t churn my butter, as they say.
After many years of shooting landscapes, I realized what I really liked doing, and was pretty good at, was putting together panoramas. I seem to have an eye for just what needs to be in there to make it both a big picture and still retain all the elements that make a photo interesting.
So, expect to see lots of panoramas of places I have been. And I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Here’s a couple from our trip to Quadra Island this past July.
Click on them to get the BIG picture 🙂
Till next time,
Rich
Left Coast and Redwoods – Finale
After a lovely night’s rest and breakfast at our BnB in Brookings, we headed down to the Harris Beach State Park there and spent some time just walking around. Here’s a few photos from the park.
After getting our fill of the the wonderful ocean scenery and basically having the park to ourselves, we headed back out on the highway to our next stop, Pistol River State Scenic Viewpoint. From the map, it looked like it might be an interesting spot and lo and behold, when we got to it we were pleasantly surprised to see that it had dunes. Now this might not seem like a big deal to a lot of people but J had never seen dunes before and she was ecstatic!! She’d always wanted to see dunes but somehow, had never had the good fortune to run across any on the beaches she had been to. So, of course, we wandered in amongst the dunes for a while and spent some time on the beach just enjoying watching waves.
Again, we were the only ones there! I guess there’s some benefits, especially to a landscape photographer like I am, to go off season in crappy weather. No one around to get in the way of the scenery except my favourite model 🙂
Back in the car and up the road a piece to another pullout where I took this pic looking North.
Our next was for lunch at the Redfish in Port Orford.
Lovely lunch with some great views there too.
Having achieved a pleasant state of satiety, we meandered back to the car and headed on up the road again to what was our penultimate stop along the way, Cape Blanco State Park. Cape Blanco is the Westernmost point in Oregon and the contingual United States, and contains the Southernmost Lighthouse in Oregon. All fine reasons to stop there! What they don’t tell you about is the strength of the wind there! WhoooBoy….! J was afeared to leave the car. I got out and took a bunch of photos; hey that’s what I do, and I jumped straight up to land about foot back of where I launched myself from. There was a guy in a convertible with the top down and all the windows up just enjoying the views and eating a sandwich. Said he often comes to enjoy the scenery and wind.
From here we headed up to Bandon where we stopped at the renowned Face Rock Creamery to pick up some cheese and have a heavenly ice cream 🙂 We never actually visited the Face Rock but there’s lots of pics on the web of it.
From here, it was head up to Reedsport to pick up Rt 38 back to I-5. Rt 38 turned out to be a lovely road along the river and through the hills. Did I mention that we saw sheep in Oregon. And Elk. Lots of both!
Once we got to I-5, we headed up to Portland to stay with a friend of J’s that’s she’s known forever. Had a pizza dinner, conversation, crashed and were on the road again the next morning. Our last stop was a food court in the Alderwood Mall because I decided to get the pack after all!
And then back home. Boy, were we glad to be back home in our own bed that night. We had a great trip and loved all the crazy ups and downs and beautiful places and trees we saw but there’s nothing like coming home after a trip to your own bed! And on that note, I’ll say amen and leave you all in peace until I decide to write about something else.
Rich
Continuity
Many years ago, I somehow obtained an interesting African Violet plant. If I remember correctly, I got it while I was still an undergraduate student at SUNY ESF in the early 1970s. I was into house plants at the time and I was struck by this particular plant because unlike all the other African Violets I had seen, this one had leaves with wavy edges. So it made it into my plant collection.
My Mom was also taken with it so I gave her a couple of leaves which she rooted. Over the years, I remember seeing it from time to time when I would visit my parents but it eventually faded from my memory.
Fast forward to 2015. I’m helping my Mom clean out her house sometime after my Dad passed away and she points to an African Violet she has and says “Do you remember this African Violet that you gave me all those years ago” or something like that. “Well, this is the same plant” I was flabbergasted and elated at the same time.
“Really,” I said. “Oh, I have to have one again.” Now it has been years since I did much with house plants. Oh, I had the occasional one, and I had balcony plants on my condos and I have a great rubber tree plant that I’ve had for years but my partner, J, is into plants in a big way and I just knew she’d love it.
Well, I live in British Columbia, Canada and Mom lives in Greenville, North Carolina so we hatched a plan. The next time she came to visit family on the West Coast, she would bring a couple of leaves and I would get them back to my home in BC. And that’s what we did. We had a family wedding in Portland, Oregon and Mom brought a few leaves in her luggage. She had put them in a plastic ziploc bag wrapped in moist paper towels to keep them from drying out.
As we had driven down to Portland from Vancouver, BC, it was no problem to get the leaves back across the border and into our home.
I put them in water, they successfully rooted and I planted them in small pots. I gave one plant to one of our good friends who also loves plants and just waited for the other plants to grow. And grow they did.
A couple of days ago, we were in a dollar store and saw some great pots and I thought, perfect for the violets. Yesterday, I transplanted them and one of them had already started to flower. That was one of the things I also liked about these African Violets. They liked to flower over and over and over….
And so the circle is now completed and continues. I was able to subdivide the original plants from the 2 leaves into 4 new ones and will keep passing them along to family and friends.
Enjoy.
Bioblogging with Rich 