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Sky shot number one taken early this month just before we left the Lake (in Oregon) for our cross-country trip:
And the second (from last week) on our first morning back home in Florida:
Both pictures are straight-out-of-the-camera and both skies are beautiful in their own way.
But it was warmer when I took the second one!
Taking part in SKYWATCH FRIDAY. Thanks to Yogi and the team.
Seen on Day 8 of a long long roadtrip.
By that time, we thought the sign might be talking about us.
More information here: Peculiar, Missouri
Taking part in SIGNS SIGNS with thanks to Lesley for hosting this fun meme!
Just more proof that crows could take over the world if they really wanted to.
"Wonder what that thing across the road is? Let's check it out. You go first."
"This looks interesting."
Cat: "I'm ignoring you."
"Hello, anybody home?"
(At this point, the crow gets tired of the game and flies up to a nearby tree.)
What just happened here anyway?
Caw Haw Haw Haw Haw!
Happy Halloween Week --- This post is Linked to WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY with thanks to Stewart and to CAMERA CRITTERS, with thanks to Misty.
Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam ....
And the deer and the antelope play ....
Where seldom was heard a discouraging word, and the skies were not ....
Well, actually there WERE a few clouds, but we didn't mind, because they were so beautiful!
All pictures from Custer State Park, South Dakota. In real time (as opposed to blogtime) we are at HOME at our Canal Cottage in Florida ... it looks very different from this stop on our roadtrip.
I'll link this to SCENIC WEEKENDS, MOSAIC MONDAY and to OUR WORLD TUESDAY (I hope. The computer is apparently having problems adjusting to Florida as we keep losing our wifi connection.) Thank you to all the hosts.
We're on the last few days of our cross-country roadtrip, but still catching up on summer pictures.
It's a cute bit of wordplay, because this little drive-up coffee stand is the closest one to the Fern Ridge Dam (the one that creates the reservoir we can see from our RV in the summer).
THIS POST IS LINKED TO: SIGNS SIGNS brought to us by Lesley. I've missed this meme while we've been roadtripping! Thank you.
In our real world, we are currently in Little Rock and heading south. I'm always behind on blogging when we're on the road, so this post is about where we were in the world last week.
The best state park anyplace for wildlife viewing and for scenery -- and one of our favorite places ever --has got to be Custer State Park in South Dakota. This is the third time we've visited this park and we've never been disappointed.
This time was especially fun because our son from Colorado drove up to meet us while we were staying in South Dakota, so we got to look around the park with him. (Bill said he saw so much more than usual since he didn't have to drive.)
It wasn't as cold in the park as it was in some of the surrounding Black Hills, but you could still see some snow. This bison had crystals in his fur. Last time we visited the park it was Springtime. It was fun to be there in a different season. (You can click the blue link there to see what it looked like in the spring.)
The buffalo/bison* were only one of several species of wildlife we saw at the Park and this is only part of the spectacular scenery. I will show more in future posts.
(*We noticed that some of the explanatory signs around the park used one word and some used another. Most people say buffalo, but bison is actually the correct word for this American animal.)
FOR OUR WORLD TUESDAY. Thank you to Lady Fi, Arija, Gattina, Sylvia, Sandy, and Jennifer, the wonderful bloggers who make up up the Our World hosting team.
We have always loved traveling in the Fall. Beautiful colors, crisp clear weather, fewer crowds than during the busy summer tourist season. But this year was different from past Autumn roadtrips. Just after I snapped the typical mid-west Fall picture above (near Billings Montana) it started to snow.
And it snowed almost the entire time as we drove to Rapid City South Dakota (about 350 miles). It made for pretty drive-by pictures and the roads were mostly bare, so it wasn't really a harrowing experience. But this wasn't even the middle of OCTOBER! Fall has barely started.
We weren't completely surprised by the early Winter. The week before we left Oregon, South Dakota had suffered through a devastating and unexpected blizzard. But the weather had warmed up (we thought) by the time we left for our roadtrip.
This snow, in the Black Hills village of Lead, fell during the night while we were staying in Rapid City. We were driving around the area with our son who came from Colorado to spend a couple of days with us. We had a great visit and I will have further posts next week -- there's a lot to see in this area of SD.
But snow is such a rarity for us, our early (and we hope only) wintery pictures get their own post.
SHARING WITH: Gemma's SCENIC WEEKENDS and Mary's MOSAIC MONDAY. Thank you to both hosts.
This is a flashback to our last week at Fern Ridge Shores. (We are just ending the first week of a cross-country roadtrip.)
Early October Skies at the Lake:
On this pretty afternoon, the Three Sisters mountain peaks were visible in the distance ... and the sun created a pink glow in the sky.
Other days early this month were more like the one pictured below.... a study in monochrome:
Autumn is always a mini-adventure at Fern Ridge Lake. You never know what each day will bring. But October is usually a pretty month.
We started our roadtrip a little earlier than we usually do and I have heard that the weather has been beautiful since we left. But I am going to keep imagining it as rainy and gray, so that I won't miss it too much!!
SHARING these changeable Oregon skies with SKYWATCH FRIDAY. Thanks to Yogi, Sylvia, and Sandy.
We're on a cross-country roadtrip heading (eventually, hopefully) to warm winter weather.
On Saturday, our first full day on the road, we drove a little over 400 miles from Boardman Oregon to Missoula Montana. It was a four-state day. That's a rare thing in the Western part of this country,
We breezed right through Washington .... including Clarkston, where we graduated from high school. To this point, the trip was the exact same one we made last month for my high school class reunion. (When we were in school over half a century ago, the annual re-painting of the "C" up on the hill was a big deal...it still looks pretty clear, so I guess that tradition is still alive.)
From Clarkston, we traveled East up the beautiful canyons of Idaho's Clearwater River and on along the Selway and Lochsa rivers toward Montana. It has been years since we traveled this scenic route last.
We're barely into the State here, but the sky is already living up to Montana's nickname "Big Sky Country."
Day One on the road was a beautiful start for our trip. We love traveling in the Fall (as long as we don't run into too much of the season that comes next).
This post is linked to OUR WORLD TUESDAY. Thank you to Lady Fi, Sylvia, and Sandy. Visit ... click the links!
Life is not quite this serene around our "pond" right now as we prepare to migrate South for the snowbird season.
So there will be a short blog-cation here as we work on the last-minute chores and emergencies that always seem to crop up at this point. (I'll still be reading everybody else's blogs this week... a blogger can't quit all at once!)
With luck, I'll be able to post some as we travel (we are driving this year) and Full-Time Life will definitely be back when we reach our Canal Cottage.
FOR OUR WORLD TUESDAY (thank you to Lady Fi and the Our World team) and for WILD BIRD WEDNESDAY (thank you Stewart).
Here are the last of the flowers from our visit to Shore Acres Gardens.
For TODAY'S FLOWERS with thanks to Denise.
And below for I HEART MACRO, thanks to Laura.
This one is a bit of a cheat for a macro shot, because obviously it is a crop of the picture above it... but I didn't notice the perfect center of this flower until I looked at the download. I think it looks like a picture made by a spin of a kaleidoscope.
The late September rains pretty much did in the flowers around here, so this will probably be my last flower post until we head south and I can add to my collection.
Thanks again to both hosts and to everyone for coming to see my "stolen" summer blossoms.
Here are some scenes from lovely Winchester Bay on our second visit of the season, the last week of September.
The first day of our visit, skies were blue and summer was still in full swing.
People found quiet banks for fishing, or they took their boats out in search of bigger fish -- or crab (of course that's why we were there). Restaurants and campgrounds were bustling and it felt like summer might last a while.
Then, the next day, the tail end of a typhoon dropped by and the rains came. But wasn't Summer was beautiful while it lasted!
The fishermen's memorial is a sad reminder that the seas are not always calm and peaceful. (We actually had to shorten our visit because of the high winds and driving rains...no fun to be camping in that kind of weather and especially no fun to be out in a boat.)
These are the good guys! We often see the US Coast Guard patrolling or doing practice runs -- by helicopter and by boat. As we got ready to head for home in the rain, some of our family watched the Coast Guard tow in a disabled pleasure boat. I bet those boaters were grateful.
FOR: Gemma's SCENIC WEEKENDS and Mary's MOSAIC MONDAY. Thank you!
Last month was the wettest September of recent record here in Lane County ... and most of that moisture fell during the last week of the month. Earlier there were quite a few days that were "partly sunny" as the weather report says. (It sounds so much more optimistic than 'partly pouring down rain'.)
Partly sunny was a good description for most of the month though ... we were able to go outside and play for a while every day without getting drenched.
But then that last week was just almost solid gray and rain -- all day every day.
Only on one day, early in the morning, did the sun peep through at all. And only for about an hour before it went behind the clouds and stayed there. At least it tried.
So I was all ready to whine about how I would have no more skies to post until we headed south -- because winter was here already and gray skies don't make good photos.
But this morning I woke up to bright blue sunshine and I happily take it all back.
Welcome to Autumn in Oregon!
Linked to SKYWATCH FRIDAY with thanks to Yogi, Sylvia, and Sandy.
You never know where you'll find good advice .... or funny signs.
This one was on the wall of a river-front restaurant in Clarkston (eastern Washington State).
And of course this post is linked to SIGNS SIGNS hosted by Lesley. Thank you!
NOTE: Thank you to all who ID'd the Black-Throated Gray Warbler in last week's post. I appreciate it so much. The birders on Wild Bird Wednesday are the best!
Dozens of California gulls were enjoying some down time at Winchester Bay last week.
It was a regular Seagull Spa.
It was actually a deep puddle near the boat wash area at the Winchester Bay ramp.