Or - Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Plane, Eagle
That pretty much says it all. I really wanted to just stay on the couch and watch football today but, unfortunately, I could see the blue sky outside the window and it kept calling my name..."Fat Boy!! Hey, you. Yeah you...Not too many of these left, Tubby, better get it while you can..." How could I stay in??
We (and by we I mean Carol) packed up a lunch and got organized for another picnic at our park. And as I was taking out the chest and the radio...the essentials...we saw Sam across the street working in his front yard.
We've got a lot of extra tomatoes...more than we can eat so Carol went back in and boxed up a couple and then went over and gave them to Sam.
There she is, saying good-bye. I wanted to include this because it helps to show a little of the neighborhood. I wanted to start showing the area where we live rather than just the flowers, birds and such. So, there's part of the street right across from us.
And from that neighborhood to this one. The Trailer Park Marina. I know they charge over $2000 a month for that apartment you see on the left, just above the Boat Shelter. I imagine, because of the proximity to the lake, that each of the spots for these trailers must cost about twice as much as normal. Easily. But it is full. Always full.
We set up our picnic spot and began to enjoy the fine weather. It was a lot cooler here than it was over at our place. The wind coming off the water cools down, a lot. Good thing we keep a couple jackets in the Mini. You can see the wind was blowing pretty good, too. Look at Carol's scarf.
A long view, looking southeast towards Mt. Rainier, of the airfield and our park. We started out in the sun today rather than the shade as we have before. By the time we left, we were back in the shade.
It was a day for Mt. Rainier pictures.
We always get visitors when we picnic and this man came up with his dog, a big, loopy, goofy Lab and asked if we minded if he took the dog off the leash. A Lab? No problemo, we'd prefer he be off the leash so that we could get him to come to us and get a petting.
If I were ever to get another dog, I'd get a Lab. They are the sweetest-natured, lovable, big goofs in the canine world. He came over, gave us a perfunctory sniff and then went off to better adventures.
I had settled into my easy chair and was reading when I glanced up and saw this guy sailing across the lake just in front of us. Thank goodness I had my camera out and was able to grab it, point it and shoot it. I was hoping I'd get him in the picture and, doggone it, miracles do happen.
I got him and what's neat is that he's tilted enough that I can see his face under his out-stretched wing. This is, BTW, an example of extreme cropping. He was little more than a large dot in the original picture.
Still shooting blind, as it were, I got this shot. I had several shots of the empty blue sky, too. This one ain't great but it shows him as he is heading to the Eagle Tree.
What, you might ask, is the Eagle Tree?
Good question, Bucko. I'm glad you asked.
It's the one tree where we've seen Eagles at. They've always been in this tree and no where else. I've mentioned it before but there it is, the Eagle Tree...the tall one in the center. The eagles, and we saw two of them today, always sit on the right-hand side of the tree up towards the top.
This is shot with what could be called a normal lens. In photography, a normal lens is a lens that reproduces a field of view that generally looks "natural" to a human observer under normal viewing conditions, as compared with lenses with longer or short focal lengths which produce an expanded or contracted field of view that distorts the perspective when viewed form a normal viewing distance.
Got that? Good. I wanted you to understand that we're not all that close to the Eagle Tree.
That is all.
So, steadying my arms against the fence, I tried to get a picture of the eagle in the tree and, fortunately, got this one.
Number One - Look at those talons!! Good grief!!
Number Two - Look at his beak!! Good grief times two!!
After the excitement of seeing the Eagle, I'm sitting there trying to get into my book again and I hear a rumble coming from behind me. I figure it's another plane taking off and casually turn to look at it and, POW, here comes a seaplane in over the landing strip of the air field.
He's coming in low for a water landing in the lake (Duh!!) and so, since I get almost as excited about seaplanes landing and taking off as I do about seeing an eagle, I grabbed up the camera and started shooting.
I'm rather pleased with myself as I only put in one picture of the seaplane landing. Oh, I had plenty, believe me. But, no, only one.
You're welcome.
Such excitement!!
Whew!! I had to take a moment and compose myself.
Not Carol. She's always on the look-out for something new or avian and, sure enough, Ol' Eagle-Eye (Haha, get it? Eagle? Eagle-Eye?) spotted this little guy and a couple of his friends pecking on the ground by the fence.
Carol hasn't told me the kind of bird this is yet. She will. She's good that way. I'm lazy that way.
But he and his cohorts were busy scratching away and then he hopped up on the concrete support for the fence and I got this picture.
Not bad.
The Trailer Park Marina.
Seriously, how many trailer parks can say they're ALSO a marina?
Not many, Skippy, not many at all.
As I wandered, enjoying the breeze and the light and the park I always look down now. And I spied this fuzzy fellow. Some kind of dandelion but I don't know anything beyond that.
The sun was setting and the shadows were getting long and we couldn't resist playing with them a bit. If we had thought we could get the other couple to join us, we would have done a Charley's Angels tableau. How cool would that have been, eh?
So we made up some silly poses for our shadows.
And this one...
...Awwwwww...
So I got the bright idea I'd like to get some shots of planes taking off with Mt. Rainer in the background.
You can see Rainier...on the left of the tree just a bit off-center.
Most of the time the planes start grabbing air so fast that they're too high to include in the picture with Mt. Rainier.
But then there's always an exception, isn't there.
Here's mine. He obligingly flew low enough to be in the frame and to also allow me a bit of room to zoom in on him.
Pow!!
That's what I was thinking about. Now to keep working on it.
Lakeside Selfie!!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you knew it was coming. Problem was, the sun was so straight in at an angle that it blew out everything it touched...including my ruggedly handsome face and whimsical hair.
Well, we'd had our fun and gotten our pictures and seen our eagles and gotten our selfie so it was time to go.
Not home but over to the main entrance to the airfield. I've been wanting to get a picture of the sign at the front entrance for some time now.
And so I did.
There it is, nicely landscaped with Clayton Scott looking over it all.
And so I went all artsy-fartsy trying to get a PostCard Worthy picture of the statue. Ain't happening.
But I tried...oh, how I tried.
And while I was there, and this has been the third or fourth time I've shot pictures of this statue, I noticed something I had not seen before. There, right on the very top of the pole was this...The DisneyLand Rocket to the Moon!!
I mean, Marty the Martian would feel right at home with this thing!! But it does, it reminds me of the Rocket Ship they had at Disney in the 50s and early 60s over in TomorrowLand.
Right!?!?!
Here's a pic of the Rocket to the Moon Ride.
They do look alike, don't they!?!
Here's a backlit study where you can see the entire statue with the rocket ship at the top.
There was way good light out there this evening.
And because they'd gone to so much trouble to landscape the entrance so nicely I had, just had, to take some pictures of the flowers.
When I got back and loaded this up, I found I had a hitch-hiker.
See him? There in the lower left!?!
What a slug.
We got another hitch-hiker on this one.
Can you find him?
It's a May Fly just below center on the flower petal.
I know, craziness, right!?!
And I got this beauty. Lookin' good, Carol Anne.
Carol had called me over because she had spotted this...oddity.
It's a seaplane painted like a...Bengal Tiger?
I'm pretty sure that's what it is suppose to be. It is the most unusual paint job I've ever seen on a plane...and that includes Alaska Air, too.
Because we were at the south end of the air field, we were where they begin their take-offs so I was able to get one shortly after he left the ground.
Heading north.
So it was a good day. I noticed, looking through this blog, that a lot of it deals with things in the air. I guess that's what you get when you picnic by an air field all the time. And also, it's interesting, seeing all the comings and goings and, especially, the wildlife around the lake and the strip.
We haven't been bored yet.
And so it was a good thing. I'd have rather watched some college ball...until I got there and saw all there was to see. It was a good break. Right now I'm watching Oregon and Washington State battling it out...Oregon has a wee bit of a lead in the fourth quarter.
And NMSU lost to UNM. But it wasn't a blow-out. The Mighty Aggies of New Mexico State only lost by three points, 38-35.
That's a plus!!
So, yeah, it is all good.
Life is good.
Hooah!!
No comments:
Post a Comment