After the transaction was completed, the seller gently scolded Lesa, with a sweet smile, and said "You could have had three times as many for the same price."
This shot was taken on the approach to Barker Dam. The 1.3 mile loop trail features Joshua trees and lots of interesting rock formations.
Before and after visiting Rano Raraku we spent a couple of hours happily wandering the site.
Here, for some unknown reason, Lesa felt compelled to provide a sense of scale, in this case, using one of the fallen moai.
For some additional information about ahus and moai, see this PBS page.
These rondavels, available for overnight guests, survived the fire that destroyed much of the lodge in July of the following year. Thankfully no one was hurt in the overnight blaze and the lodge has been rebuilt and reopened late last year.
This photo, along with many others posted on this blog, is available for sale at CanStockPhoto, Dreamstime, and fotolia.
Oftentimes while I'm doing that, Lesa and Barb are scouring the shores of Lake Simcoe in search of beach glass. Here's some of their bounty from a recent outing:
In the right of the photo you can see the Queen's Battery with the cannons aimed at the entrance to the harbour.
For another shot from this trip, see my Northern gannet in flight.
Sailing aboard Wind Chaser, a Beneteau 311, is always a pleasure. However, this year in particular, with gale force winds, was made to order for me. To avoid being overpowered, we sailed with a jib (fore sail) only. Even with that, we had the rails under for most of the afternoon!
On the way back to the marina I noticed a boat that just didn't look quite right.
As it turned out, a couple had spent about eight hours on a rental sailboat powering straight into a head wind and heavy seas all the way across Lake Ontario from Henderson Harbor on the New York side. I guess the wind was so strong that the furled jib was absolutely shredded!
I heard later that it was kind of a first date, and as soon as they docked, the lady aboard simply stepped off the boat and never looked back.
On our drive to the Jacob Lake Inn at dusk, we were watchful for deer, however at one point I was surprised to hear Lesa yell "COW". Apparently bovines are allowed to roam freely in that part of Arizona and are a real danger – a half dozen or so were just a few feet off the side the road as we passed them. Who knew!
That evening we overheard a couple in the restaurant who arrived after dark and travelling by motorcycle talk about how scary it was with so many deer on the road.
Just for fun, here's a scan of one of my grandmother's slides, taken I'm guessing in the late 50's at the North Rim.
Among other sites we visited that day, including Bran Castle, we toured the ruins of Râșnov Citadel.
Just for fun, here's how the photo looked before I removed what I considered to be the extraneous people and paths and fiddled with it in Lightroom.
There are several routes from Puerto Natales, but our gas guzzling Ford "Ecosport" necessitated that we take the shortest and roughest one. We had been unable to obtain Argentinian Pesos in Chile or Canada, so when we stopped for gas in Esperanza, the poor attendant actually crossed himself when we were finally able to settle the bill by paying in U.S. cash.
Our decision to travel by train as much as possible on this trip turned out to be, by and large, a good one.
The regional trains in Hungary are inexpensive, on time and reasonably comfortable, but not especially modern by North American standards.
The EuroCity (EC) trains winding their way through Eastern Europe, although faster, do tend to fall behind schedule as we discovered waiting for EC trains in Slovakia and Romania.
Then there is the challenge of using the online sites, such as MAV-START, the Hungarian site, to pre-book tickets. I'm still waiting to see if they will refund me about $400 CAD from two failed attempts to book a sleeper car from Budapest to Sighisoara, Romania.
We made our way back across the Vltava river to Mala Strana (Little Quarter) and found a great spot for a break near our hotel before heading out for an early dinner at the U Fleků micro-brew pub.
The most exciting part of our evening game drive was when two white rhinos, who didn't take kindly to being startled as they came out of the bush, charged our jeep. We had an experienced driver who thankfully was able to back down a dirt road in the dark slightly faster than the rhinos could run.
Taking the ferries on the Chao Phraya is a fun and efficient way to travel to many of the temples and other sights in Bangkok.
Here's a short video clip taken on the river on the same day.
On our last stop in Romania, it absolutely poured both days in Bucharest. Not to mention that the entire experience totally creeped us out – from what we presumed was the mafia boss doing business in the restaurant in our hotel, to the cabby who couldn’t make change for the equivalent of a fiver, to the hotel room door that wasn’t locked when we returned after having carefully made sure we had locked it on the way out.
Thankfully on the second night we found a wonderful nearby wine shop. The proprietor spent a good 45 minutes discussing which wine would go best with the bread and cheese we had picked up for dinner.
The day we drove to the park was apparently the first in several weeks that it wasn't raining there. We found out later however, that the wind was howling at about 100 km/hour!
When I was researching the trip I read that some poor bugger had his luggage dropped into the lake while crossing the bridge to the hosteria – my guess is that it was simply blown out the staff member's hands.
We had such a great time Friday night at Andy's, that we went back Saturday night to see the Mike Frost Project.
On Sunday we happened upon these two in Lincoln Park.
I have tried several times to photograph the moon over Lake Ontario and for this shot, I braved the late night, early August bugs.
Special thanks to Lightroom® for helping to bring out the detail.
This time, as usual, we started on the Manhattan side and an hour or so later were wandering about in DUMBO (down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass).
These children walked up from the small village below to find out what was going on and to visit their friends, all AIDs orphans, at the foster home.
Construction of the road that leads to Most Slovenského národného povstania resulted in the destruction of most of the Jewish quarter and a large part of the old town.
This is the companion shot to the March 18 Photo of the Day of Bratislava Castle on the other side of the Danube.
When I first started to use Lightroom® watermarks, I saved each edited preset and ended up with a mess of unnecessary presets cluttering up the list.
Here’s how to revise an existing watermark preset during the export process:1. From the Library or Develop module, choose File, Export and then either select a preset from the list on the left, or complete the Export Location, File Naming, File Settings, and other settings as required.
2. In the Watermarking section, check Watermark: and then from the drop-down list, select the preset with the watermark you want to use.
3. From the same drop-down, at the bottom of the list choose Edit Watermarks….
The Watermark Editor appears, e.g.,
(In this example I am using a graphic, but you can revise text watermark presets the same way.)
4. Make whatever changes you need to for the Text Options and Watermark Effects.
For example, here I have changed the Anchor position and reduced the size, i.e.,
At this point, if you click Save, you are prompted for the name of a new preset.
(This is how I got in trouble and ended up with lots of duplicate watermark presets.)
5. Instead, click the drop-down beside the watermark title at the top-left, then at the bottom of the list choose Update preset “{preset name}” and click Done.
6. Back on the Export window click Export.
When you include a watermark preset in an export preset, for example the one I use for Photo of the Day posts, this little trick really can save a lot of time.
Happy Exporting!
Our guide, Mr. Sok, always made sure to take us to the best places for photo ops.
P.S. If you missed it the day I published it, here's a link to my Afternoon on Tonlé Sap photo.
November 13, 2008 – day 2 in Argentina. After a hairy drive yesterday from Puerto Natales, today is one of our few sunny days in Patagonia.
From our base in El Calafate, the park is only about two hours by car. While we were there we were fortunate enough to watch as large pieces of the glacier calved into Lago Argentino. The boat tour at the end of the visit provided fantastic views of the face of the glacier.
November 3, 2008 – day 5 in Chile. After renting bicycles yesterday and getting a bit lost and sunburned, today we joined a group tour to visit some of the most important historical sites.
This quarry is where most of the nearly 900 moai of Rapa Nui were carved before being transported to an ahu (platform) elsewhere on the island. Some of those that are still here are incomplete and partially buried. How the moai were transported remains a mystery.
September 23, 2013 – day 7 (our last) in Hungary. We spent a good part of the afternoon marveling at the beauty of this magnificent basilica.
There is still so much yet to see in Hungary, particularly in Budapest – We may just have to go back.
