Beautiful Girl!

 

Back to the Creek ... to the Meadow ... to the Big Lake

 

This is not the beginning.

Deciding which photo to put at the top of this post gave me pause. Finally I decided against chronological order for the opening image, because this view of Lake Michigan, with sun breaking through the clouds and creating a shining path across the water, seemed the most striking of my images. But Shalda Creek crossing Bohemian Road was really the beginning -- or the beginning of our (Sunny's and my) arrival at my chosen destination after I woke from a dreadful nightmare and needed the creek, the meadow, and the lake.

Shalda Creek coming from its road crossing...

...and continuing to Lake Michigan.

Queen Anne's-lace against out-of-focus running water was a contender for top image.

Sun filtered through trees this morning on Lake Michigan Road.

Is it one tree or two? Either way, bonded for life....

The old road through the meadow --

Reindeer moss, a lichen, thrives on poor soil and pure air.

Northern Michigan wants to be forest again

Sunny leads the way along the fading two-track.

A clearing in the distance catches the sun.

A glimpse of Shell Lake --

Muddy, narrow old access to Shell Lake --

Back on beautiful Lake Michigan Road, we are greeted by the sun.

Don't you love signs like this?

Do you see Sunny Juliet's ear?

There is the whole dog!

Bigger waves than we saw the last time --

She had to think it over....

We retreated briefly to consider our options.

But she decided to be a brave girl!

The excitement made her frisky! She did a balance beam act!

She really did walk the log its full length. She is a natural athlete and has the balance of youth. 

We were both wet and sandy and windblown and happy. Taking a morning vacation was a very good idea! The only thing that would have made it better would have been not being leash-bound -- but leash is the rule at the Lakeshore.

On the way home, coming back down to ordinary time and life, I stopped for a moment by the pond on Alpers Road, a spot David and I almost never drove by without stopping, and told Sunny once more how much her daddy and I loved that place.

Who Is That Ghost Dog?

 

In HDR mode, three exposures are taken in rapid succession and then stacked to make one densely saturated image. In the shot above, Sunny Juliet was trotting along so quickly that her image looks to me like (except for the missing tail) the ghost of old Nikki. Below is SJ looking more like herself. 

Morning dew looks so otherworldly, ethereal. Leaves that have lost their chlorophyll, on the other hand, will not be as rare in a few weeks as they still are this morning.

Apples, Jiggles, and More

 

Almost all the photos in this post were shot in HDR Art Bold mode. I wanted to do two things: (1) catch the last sunlight coming over the hill from the west and also (2) see if I could intentionally produce the jiggle that everyone liked so much in my Queen Anne's-lace photograph. The apples are on these two trees:

I had a happy accidental discovery. It wasn't easy to jiggle intentionally and get exactly the effect I wanted (either I jiggled the camera too much or not enough), but Tuesday was a very windy evening, so patiently waiting for a strong gust of wind to do the jiggling work paid off, in my opinion, though the effect is subtle. Look to leaf edges.... Okay, I need to keep experimenting with this.

I decided to try letting the wind blow my little grey-headed coneflowers for the camera. First (below), are the flowers in their full height, without the wind. After that are a couple windy shots taken closer in. 

(Not HDR)

Below is garden phlox --

There are no jiggles in. my photographs of the orange chair. The wind wasn't strong enough, and my attempts at intentional jiggling did not come off. But the color in HDR mode still pops, especially in that low, early evening light.

And I'm throwing in this photo of Sunny Juliet just because ... she's so cute!

It isn't always easy to get a desired camera effect, but I will keep working with these ideas and see if I can make progress.

A Mountain Day to Remember

 

It was my friend's birthday. To make the day special, she wanted us to hike in the Chiricahuas with Sunny. I was apprehensive. If we hiked a trail where Sunny would need to be on a leash (the first option under consideration), I foresaw misery for all three of us. So under a revised plan, we went to a remote area where the puppy could run free.

The first big excitement was a sighting of a coatimundi! You may have to click on the photo to enlarge it and then zoom in, but the coati is pretty much in the middle of the shot. My friend said this is a good viewing distance for coati, because they have very big claws, and we would not want the puppy to tangle with one.

Little One didn't usually get this far ahead of us, and she was good about coming back when called. She was also pretty good -- except for one time -- about staying away from the edges when warned, and the time she wasn't careful she managed to scramble back up again.

It was glorious to be among giant trees, walking in their shade. It was heavenly to hear the wind soughing in the soft-needled branches of Ponderosa pines. From the road end forward, the old roadbed, abandoned and eroded by rains, was as boulder-strewn and rocky as a creek bed. And there by its side was an apple tree in bloom, perhaps planted years ago when there was a Methodist church camp on the site.

Other plants were blossoming, also. Chokecherry I recognized, but the flowering shrub (one I'd also seen the day I crossed the mountains alone over Onion Saddle) is one whose name I don't know.

Trees, trees, trees! As a long-time Midwesterner (albeit one born on the Great Plains), I find my heart swelling whenever I encounter large trees in the desert. The mountains, of course, are the place to find trees. Besides the pines, there were alligator juniper and Arizona sycamores galore.

And then, oh then! Running water! This, not the old roadbed, was the creek, and there was a flowing trickle through the rocks. Sunny loved it! Wish I had a video clip of her running back and forth, splashing like a little kid in a rain puddle!

But what were those strange, blobby, dark green bits of -- plant life? A question to pursue....

Besides trees and water, of course, there were mountain views.

And all manner of fascinating rocks close at hand to examine at our leisure. Would I really be a geologist in another life? Could I be a cowgirl and a geologist?

And what treasure did Sunny Juliet find? Yes, it was! A deer leg! She trotted proudly back to show it to us but wisely decided (yes, on her own) to leave it for some other lucky animal to discover.

We were almost back to the car when Sunny threatened to go on strike. No, we told her, no one is going to carry you. You can sleep in the car!

Oh, all right! (She must have sensed that the hike was near its end.)

The important thing is that my puppy did not ruin the day. Far from it. Her joy increased ours in that heavenly setting, and we will take her again to hike other forgotten mountain roads, because we saw a couple that looked very inviting. Although those hikes may have to wait until next winter.