Artwork In Nature, this morning there is a bit of humidity outdoors and on my way back from my early morning walk, the sun started to makes its way through the trees and light up all the different cob webs hanging in the forest next to the path.
I did not even notice them until the sun touched them all and boy there is lot of them. One would not want to walk in the forest on a cloudy day. Good thing there are paths everywhere to walk on.
Nonetheless, they are very artistically made by the small creatures of the woods.
Now this little guy may look like a spider, but it is actually a crab on the beach.
Still Off the Beaten Path, hello all. We just made it to the top of a mountain here and I checked my phone and there is internet service, so I made a quick post to let you know we are still off grid where we are camping.
1000’s of acres of land where hardly no one lives still exist. We will be leaving here this coming weekend and I look forward to catching up with you all. Have a great rest of your week.
Rocky Shoreline and Rainbow, I was photographing the sunrise on this day facing east and when I turned around to look at what was behind me I found a different kind of light. It was an off white hue and I actually did not even see the rainbow until I looked at the photo later.
I love that about photography, the little surprises you see in your own photos.
New Tree to Photograph, this is a new tree for me to photograph. They are Cyprus trees and are very easy to identify because of how they start growing and the base of the trunk.
It can reach 130 feet tall, developing prominent roots or “knees” above the ground. The bald cypress is usually found in swampy areas and along riverbanks. These locations provide the trees with the plentiful water they need to thrive and with the wet conditions necessary for reproduction.
All the little stumps you see are what they call knees.
In the wild, cypress trees play a very important role in soaking up floodwaters and preventing soil erosion. Environmentalist love them for their ability to trap pollutants. Frogs, toads, and salamanders prefer cypress swamps for breeding grounds. Wood ducks nest in hollow trunks and catfish spawn in submerged hollow logs, while bees, wood ducks, barrel owls and raptors nest in the treetops.
Bald cypresses are slow-growing trees that can live to be 600 years old.
The Road Less Travelled, Taking the road less travelled can lead you back to creation, back to where the Light shines on forever.
A few weeks ago I mentioned we are camping at a place where there might not be any internet. If you are reading this post we are at that spot. I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago. If I don’t answer any comments that is why and I will be back with you all in 12 days. I truly appreciate all the comments and love hearing from you. Thank you
Star Gazing in Dark Sky Areas, we have stopped in a little town that actually has some internet. So I am able to make a post of what I have been doing the last few nights. Most of you may know I like to be up early in the morning and I have mentioned I hardly ever see a sunset. (video below)
But, when you are in dark sky country, I have to make sure I have the energy to go outside at night so as not to miss seeing the beauty of the night skies.
This photo is the milky way over our camper. I love trying to photograph the milky way, my camera settings for these types of shots are. 15 sec ss, 17 mm lens, f 2.8, and Iso 6400. I find that Iso 6400 is a good start to bring out the most detail, it picks up more stars on this setting.
Next, I love to photograph stars and create star trails as in the photos below. The more photos you take the more trails you create when you stack your photos on top of each other.
This photo below has 38 photos stacked on top each other, which is not quite enough to make a complete circle. Each shot is with a 15 sec shutter speed.
This photo below has 109 photos stacked on top each other to create more of a circle.
This photo below is the milky way, but if you look to the right of the photo, you will see Elon Musk satellites passing by as well. The 9 lights in a row are satellites.
We are only in this little town for the weekend and we are heading back into darker sky country with no cell phone or internet for the next 11 days. So I will see you on the other side when we travel back out. Have a wonderful week.
Well, I did collect a few shells this time on the beaches and cleaned them and put them in a nice glass jar so I could see them any time. I had to look up information on how shells are even formed. Fascinating information, they are created by something called mollusks.
As mollusks live their daily lives in the sea, they take in salts and chemicals from the water around them.As they process these materials, they secrete calcium carbonate, which hardens on the outside of their bodies and begins to form a hard outer shell.
The drone happened to catch these big boys swimming around not far from the beach. Another amazing creature of the sea. These are called Cownose Sting Rays
This is what they look like from underneath, I just got this image off of the internet. They look like they are smiling.
Of course I have to put in a photo of my favorite bird down here, just because they are everywhere and so unique looking in their own rights.
We have moved on from Alabama, but I still have some photos from that area that I will be sharing. We are headed west and here are a couple of photo of what will be coming up after I get done posting Alabama photos.
We came across a huge flock of Ibis birds. This is a new one to my list. I am now up to 110 birds photographed.
This duck is a Northern Shoveler, he was pretty far away so I did not get a clean photo of it. But very colorful.
Thank you again for all of you who view my photos and leave comments. I really appreciate it. If I don’t reply in the next 2 weeks, please accept my apologies. There are obviously area’s in the states with no internet here, even in the twentieth century.
LCS 26 Mobile Alabama, The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a fast, agile, mission-focused platform designed to operate in near-shore environments, winning against 21st-century coastal threats. The LCS is capable of supporting forward presence, maritime security, sea control, and deterrence.
We drove down to the bay area in Mobile and found a spot right across from where they were building these massive ships for the Navy. Again continuing with my theme of engineering marvels this week.
They were actually building two of these ships when we were there.
This ship in the photo below was being built also, but I have no idea what it is. Can’t even imagine how they build something with so much technology. I have enough issues with my computer sometimes.
Living With Oil and Gas Platforms along the Gulf Coast. If you have ever been to Dauphin Island south of Alabama, you will see quite a few of these rigs out in the gulf. We went out on a ferry ride to cross the gulf and we went by one of these so I took a few photos.
So I had to look up some information on these, to learn more about them. Following are some quotes from an interview with Mr. Conklin who is an engineer and knows about these wells. I will put the link to the complete interview that was given in 2008 here.
Mr. CONKLIN: Well, what we operate with one portion of our company is what’s called a shore base. All those platforms that anybody sees offshore, everything they get that the people need out there, from spare motors, replacement valves to their groceries and their drinking water, comes to them by a vessel, a boat, and that boat has to go to some central location to pick everything up. Those are called shore bases,
Mr. CONKLIN: You’ve got two main kinds of what we call fixed platforms. You’ve got manned and unmanned. Your unmanneds typically could just be as small as a stem, just one pipe sticking out of the ground with nothing on it, and it can be serviced by a vessel that comes up to it as a ladder so a guy can get to the top and that would be about as small as they can get.
But your typical platform will have anywhere from three to six caisson legs driven into the ground, and it will be a large, steel superstructure supported on top, and it will look, to a lot of people, a lot like a drilling rig.
Mr. CONKLIN: The largest platform in our area is owned and operated by Exxon Mobil and they can have upwards of 45 people out at there at a time with a typical number probably in the thirties. The smallest has two.
CONAN: So what advice would you have for people in California or Florida or in North Carolina if they were given the power to make their decision by the Congress and decide whether to start offshore drilling?
Mr. MCGRATH: If they’re asking me, I would tell them, you do not want those contraptions off your shoreline. For matters of safety, for matters of health, aesthetics, of course, they are ugly. I mean, there are people on the island who’ve grown up with them and some of my neighbors say they’ve gotten used to them and they find kind of a comfort in them, but I’m thinking – and of course, I’ve only lived on the island for three years,
It is quite the controversy on whether to have these or not. On tomorrow post I will be showing you some Container ships that passed by these rigs and by us when we were on the ferry boat. Along with a video of both. I thought the Container ship I saw on the Gulf was huge, but after doing some research it isn’t even close to the largest container ship built.
The Night Sky, Hello all, I went outside last night and took this photo where we are camping now. This is the Milky Way over our camper in the middle of no where.
The internet service is poor to say the least. I don’t know how internet connection works, but for a few seconds every hour the internet pops on and I was able to send this post.
Alligator and Turtles, here at this small lake on Dauphin Island. There are lots of turtles who seem to not mind this alligator swimming right next to them. The folks that live here mention that there is just one alligator in this lake. I don’t know a lot about them, but maybe they are territorial so he wants the lake all to himself.
I placed a video below of this beautiful animal. We were standing on a dock above him and took these photos with a video on the one day he came out of hiding from the tall grass. It has been pretty cold here lately so he doesn’t come out unless it is warm outside.
Off the Grid for a Month, Hello all, todays post is an update on where we are at the moment. We are traveling west and will be camping in an area with very limited or no internet until mid March.
We will be camping at places that are like boon docking they call it. No water hookups or electricity at the camp sites. We will be breaking out the solar panels for sure. I scheduled post until mid March and hope you enjoy my photos. They are the last of my photos from the gulf coast.
I will interact with comments if internet allows and I just want to say thank you for all your compliments and comments that you write to me on this blog. I really appreciate it.
Todays photos are a little bit of what will be coming up after we get back on the grid.
Today we are traveling farther west, I scheduled this weeks post ahead of time because the campground we are going to said it does not have any internet available. So if you leave a comment and I don’t reply right away, that will be why. But I will get back to you when the internet is available again.
We have another spot coming up at the end of the month, that might not have internet either. Remember the days before internet, when we had to read the newspapers for news and I remember I would have to get the encyclopedia out to look up bird names and such. I do appreciate the convenience of the World Wide Web. 🙂
Bayou La Batre Boats originally known by the French name “Riviere d’Erbane,” the town was the first non-Indian settlement in what would become Mobile County, which at the time was in Spanish territory. It arose in 1786 on a 1,259-acre land grant from the Spanish government to French settler Joseph Bousage. oats
You can see the video for this post by clicking here; Bayou La Batre
After the French took control of the area and installed a series of cannons (known as a battery) at the site, the settlement became known as “Riviere la Batterie” and finally as Bayou La Batre.
The town became part of the Mississippi Territory of the United States in 1811 and by the 1830s boasted its own hotel. It became a popular vacation spot after the Civil War for its location on the water. In 1906, a hurricane devastated the town and destroyed its tourist industry.
By the mid-1920s, the town began an economic comeback centered on the seafood industry, which remains a mainstay of the local economy today, as is shipbuilding.
Another King will leave traveling North back into the Mountains of no name to be with His Father. He leaves with Duty, Purpose, Honor and Courage. For you see he wears many faces, a Soldier a father a King. And then, in the still of the night, when the Light is low in the heavens. Look up son, for I will call your name and you will return to Me. To stand with those who went before you. To rest in Me for eternity.
Peace be with you Mark, I will forever remember the day I found your post with the simple words that caught my eyes. The Rural Iowegian. 💕 There is no fear in the walls of faith.
I started reading Marks post (the Rural Iowegian), back in 2019. He struggled with cancer for 509 days and recently went home to be with our Father. May he rest in peace for evermore.
Looking Down at Us – Tranquility does exist. Off the beaten path, taking the road less traveled and returning to creation. That is us down there on the left side of the photo. Husband takes care of the photos from above as I photograph from below.
A way to show any one that happens to see these photos that the beauty of creation still exist.
I am the One who gave you hands to use your talents to create life around you.
Mountain or a Beach, a little fun with forced perspective photography. Sometimes you have to get down low to the ground and take your photos. It can give a new perspective on what you are looking at and lets the imagination think of a world that is beyond what is right in front of us.
When I see this photo it looks like a mountain range along a lake.
So this is what I imagine. I added a small person silhouette to give it my perspective. But picture him smaller and it will look like a mountain.
All it takes is One spoken word or written to change Ones world into a different perspective then what they have become used to. Or One spoken word or written to destroy Ones world.
This is what it looks like from above.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
The Real World is Hard and often draining on the mind and body. Human beings have been drawing on cave walls since the dawn of time to inspire themselves.
Human brains are wired to appreciate and be inspired by art. The right brain, for example, is stimulated deeply by art. Artworks inspire creative and innovative thinking; the right brain takes what it sees and expands upon it.
Staring into a picture of a forest, the right brain envisions walking through the forest, looking to the corners just beyond the frame to see animals and new vistas.
That is what I do when I look at artwork and photos and it inspires me to create art with my own photos. Like the top photo, I took that photo early one morning. There wasn’t any reflection but the water was calm. So I made a reflection to show you what I was picturing as I stood there on the beach watching this shrimp boat sitting still on the water.
Sometimes nature creates its own art work, like the photo below. I think the curve of the sand along the edge of the island is so unique. I walked this spot quite a few times and it only looked like this once. It changed everyday I was there.
A Southern Christmas at Bellingrath Gardens, a beautiful place to visit anytime of year. It is a historic home in Alabama where they have the most beautiful flower gardens all year long. In December they put up beautiful Christmas lights throughout their gardens in many different flower shapes and trees. Video below.
Merry Christmas and may we all have a wonderful season of love and giving. Have a Wonderful Weekend.
Through the Tunnel & Over the Bridge to New Adventures We Go 😉
Someday is Here
You know how some of us say; ” Someday I am going to go on that big trip”, or Someday I will do __________.
Well, the word someday usually means never. I heard that in a movie that the actor Tom Cruise is in. He said that line.
Someday is here and our journey continues. I look forward to sharing photos of God’s Country along the way. I wish you all a wonderful weekend. Try to never put off what you can do today until someday. Life is a gift,
Life is a gift and death is a homecoming to me. Our body’s are on loan to us just for a short time to enjoy the wonderful things He gives us. I did not grow up in a Christian family at all. A neighbor told me a little bit about it when I was 10 years old and I have been searching for the truth ever since.
He never meant for it to be a mystery; it is the gift of life. Finding my purpose has been the journey, the end will just be the beginning.
