Oregon Waves and grass

More photos of the Oregon Coast from our trip to the Grand Canyon in 2006.

Orgeon Coast from 2006

Three more photos that I have processed from the RAW photos of our 2006 trip to the Grand Canyon, mentioned in my previous post.

I find that I have used: You are currently using 500 MB (48.83%) of your 1024 MB. of my space on this blog. To find out how much space you have used on your blogger go to the dashboard. At the bottom you will see Picasa Web Albums. When you click on that, if you go to the bottom of that page you will see how much space you have used. I am afraid to look at the rest of the stuff in there. :-}

I have my comments moderated. Recently I am getting the same old spam posting to the same day's post on my blog from 2 spam spewers. From what I am reading on the internet about these blog spammers, I am fortunate to only have 2 repeaters. I have to moderate them almost every day. Trying to report them to blogger is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. On the guestbook on my old old web page I can block any IP from future comments. The offending commentator just disappears, never to be heard from again. Now, this guestbook is not a highly recognizable place, as is blogspot. I wonder why it is so difficult to implement something like this on blogspot. Is there anyone out there who has written a script that we could add to our blogs to do this block/ban?

Some photos from 2006

A few of the photos from our March 2006 trip to the Grand Canyon, in our first Dodge Lodge (Camper van). I was using my old Canon Powershot A50 in the RAW mode to shoot these photos, so I am attempting to process them into jpegs. I will eventually load them to my old web page, and probably to my travel albums on the new site. Some of these might be a bit over done as I am playing with a cross process filter in photoshop. The RAW files are dismal.

I have made a double batch of shortbread - - tomorrow the christmas pudding, the feast to follow the next day.

Photo of a photo

This is a photo of a photograph at the Tillamook air museum. This is the construction of one of the hanger to house the dirigibles used in World War II. I took this photo of a photo that hangs in the museum, when we were on our trip to the Grand Canyon in 2006.

The trip of the horrible weather of 2009

These photos are primarily of the Melger Bridge that spans the Columbia River between Washington and Astoria, Oregon. We had some fierce weather on this 5 day trip. We drove down from Port Angeles to Astoria. We drove through a blizzard, torrential rain, fog, sleet. I was having fits. We get to Astoria in the dark. Dan fixes our pump in the camper van. It needed to be primed. It seems you need to take it apart to do this. We had dinner earlier at a seafood place. .. a few other unmentionable adventures on this day.
The next day, after a big breakfast, we stop at the Maritime Museum. Nice photo stop, but the weather is dismal. We all get jackets from the gift shop as they are having a sale. Now we look like quadruplets. We carry on to Camp 18.. a fantastic log restuarant with old logging machinery, carvings, and all kinds of unusual things to see. I have the best beef stew I have ever had at this place. After lunch we follow a narrow, winding, scenic road to Tillamook We visit the cheese factory. We find a campground, and go to dinner in their airstream, as they have to bring the dog along or it might disturb the campground.
Next day is Tillamook to Lincoln City, after seeing the Tillamook air museum. We try to see Munson falls but the road is blocked by a fallen tree and the weather is rainy. We stop at the 'artichoke lady's' shop to see some different stuff from the usual tourist trap stuff. I get a cute little teddy bear. We get to Lincoln City and have a roadside viewpoint discussion. My photos did NOT turn out! We decide to go to Devil's Lake State Park to camp. We get hooked up and all manage a quiet time for about an hour before we go out to dinner. Very windy. I have crab in avocado that is delicious, at Moe's. Pat helps them get their water heater running. Nice campsite.
Next day we head for McMinville in torrential rains. We see the Spruce Goose at the Evergreen museum. Again, my photos are not good at all. After lunch at the museum we head up the I5 to and through Portland. We arrive at Lacey, and after a big disappointment about allowing friends into the Airstream campground, we get set up there. The place is practically empty. To dinner at a Ruby Tuesdays and then back to sleep early as we are going to have an early start to get home the next day to catch our ferry at 2:00.
Up at 7:00 and on the road, with a later breakfast. To Cyrs and pick up Pat's car parts and to the ferry with time to spare. Finally home. What a trip!!

Some Ice

This is how the waterfall in my garden pond looked about 10 days ago. Since then the weather has warmed to above freezing and is just raining lightly.

We are just back from 6 days traveling in our camper van with Cyrs and Hagar in their airstream. We left the day of the big storm, of course. I was having fits driving down and by Shelton I was well ready to hole up in a hotel until this passed. But Dan insisted we drive through the storm and get further south where there was no more snow. . . which we did, despite my protests. We camped south of Astoria the first night. . . more with pictures later, maybe.

Mount Baker, Cormorants and more Jellyfish

Another photo of the jelly fish

Cormorants and the marina

Cormorants and Mount Baker

It was a bright sunny day about 3 pm when I was shooting these photos of Mount Baker from the Pier behind the Ocean aquarium at Sidney, yesterday. I did not get a good close up of the birds.

It did not get above freezing today. The hole in the ice of the tub on the deck that I made yesterday is of course frozen over. That ice appears to be about 4 - 5 inches thick. The waterfall on the pond has formed a sheet of ice in front of the waterfall and the water is running behind this 'window' of ice. About half of the pond is open because of the constantly running water. It is not too slippery out, as we are not getting rain or snow with this cold weather. Count your blessings! Some people are still having power outages... not sure why, as the winds are no longer blowing great gusts.

Ocean Discovery Center

We spent a very enjoyable 2 - 3 hours at the Shaw Ocean Discovery Center this afternoon. Fascinating creatures. There is such a great diversity of life in the ocean. The center is located at 9811 Seaport Place, Sidney, BC. It's a treat to have a look around Sidney, also. We went here after a scrumptious seafood chowder at Mary's cafe. This Cafe is out by the Airport and has a long history and photos to prove it. What a lovely day we had today, despite the coolish weather. We are so fortunate.

I now have two hummingbird feeders. One to put out in the morning while I bring the other in the thaw. The little birds are still around and feeding in this weather. I hope they have a warm place to spend the night.

More air plant

Over yesterday and today the Air plant grew another little bloom and the first one is dying. I measured it as you can see, the blooms are about 2 inches long.

We are having high gusts of wind and the lights are blinking a bit. Our power may go out. We have electrical heat and it is a bit chilly out. The weather forecast was calling for a bit of snow, but changed their minds.

The fantastic air plant

The whole plant

Stamens macro

Stamen macro close crop

Stamens, stigma and the stem holding the stigma and stamens on gold

Stigma on dark

Stigma macro

The stems or flower

This is a bromeliad, genus Tallandsia. This is the second time it has bloomed for me. I am shooting it mostly with the macro and super macro setting on my Canon S3 IS. The last photos are the first taken. As I progressed the plant would lose pollin and the photos get progressively more messy. At one point I had pollin all over the lens. That was yesterday.

Today, I spent most of the day hangin' out with Pat. Good mullagatawny and nan bread for lunch. An unforgetable experience at the 'no hands' car wash. I should have had the movie mode on for the wax phase. As you can see, it doesn't take much to amuse me.

Last evening we enjoyed dinner with Marlene and Art... thanks so much. Was good to see you and catch up on everything.

On the new site we can make our own slide show, now, and embed it into other sites. I will wait a day or two before I add it on my blog. There are probably a few more bugs for them to fix before it is ready. I understand we will have the ability to add music, also. This is so fun!

Learning new photo Editor

I have been learning how to work with a new photo editor called Virtual Studio. Its free and has some very interesting filters as well as most of the other adjustments in photoshop, as far as I can tell. I love the gamma adjustments, the heat adjustments and the filter for film adjustments. There is a lot more I need to learn. It has a few frames. One here... I don't know how to set the matt size... don't know a lot of stuff on it yet.

Yesterday, I raked more leaves and got most of the violets weeded out of the moss garden. Those violets have rather large root systems. No wonder they keep coming back... I haven't been getting all of the roots out.

I am going to load my travel photos to our new site. For the last few days I have been attempting to organize my galleries in that regard. The new photo editor is going to be a big help once I learn how to run it easily. I could not adjust this photo in photoshop quite as nicely as the Virtual Studio has done it. Well, there is a lot I don't know about either program, but this one is working well for me so far.

frames

This is an old favourite photo. In fact I have it as my desk top in black and white. I was playing with it in toning in photoshop. Then I took it to my old Paintshop Pro editer to try frames. I was also playing in a program called Virtual Studio on some other photos. The filters in the Virtual Studio are excellent. Thanks Ken and Stezzar for showing me the filters for Paintshop and the Virtual Studio.

On Friday we went out to dinner at the Wild Saffron Bistro - was delicious. I like the ambiance of that place. Then we went to see Gypsy at the McPherson Theatre. The play was excellent too. Very good actresses and actors. We had box seats which were quite comfortable with lots of leg room.

Today the Grey Cup is being played. This is the last game of the Canadian football season and it determines the champions of the football season. Its half time now and Saskatchewan is in the lead against Montreal.

hedge textures

Textures of the yew hedge, the boxwood hedge and the lichens on the plum tree caught my eye. Too bad about the twigs but I could not avoid them and don't think my photoshoping abilities are good enough to remove them without a trace.

I raked leaves, and Bill from next door mowed my bit of grass at the front, as well as picked up the leaves with the mower. The tree still has more leaves, for me to use as mulch. I dug out a few more violets from the moss garden. The ones that are still there sure do stick out like a sore thumb. I see the snowdrops have started to show leaves about 2 inches high already.

There was a thin sheet of ice on the water table this morning, so I guess it is winter even though not officially! My yellow chrysanthemum is still in bloom. It sits right by the window so is probably a few degrees warmer.

The water garden today

The water hawthorn is in bloom. This is zoomed into the digital zoom, so there is noise. Too bad about the evergreen needle caught in the leaves, but it gives you some idea of the size of the flower.

I was attempting to 'freeze' the water with long exposure in the TV mode. I really should have been in manual mode and setting both time and aperture. This is 1/6 sec at f 7.1. Using a tripod would help too.

There are at least two kinds of lichens on the plum tree.

The light came pouring down
One more for the sparkling waters series

Metrocascade has changed its format. I actually like it better this way. It makes the site into more of a news worthy read. I can still find gardening - where my blog appears, and other subjects as well. Good work, gentlemen -- it looks good.

I emptied 2 inches of water from the rain gauge today. The sun came out for a minute, but before I could jump into my boots and jacket, the sun was gone. I really do need to get more leaves off the grass again. The tree might have 1/3 of its leaves hanging on yet.

More Sparkling water

The sepia looking photo above is the original out of the camera of these sparkling water photos. I was shooting at the sun with the CS filter attached. The blue one has the wave in the corner. It is a different photo, but its original was kinda sepia, also. The sparkles are real. :-)