If you could retire today, what would you do with your time? Have you a plan for when you no longer have to get up five days a week for work? How would you spend your day if you didn't have any other demands on your time? What would you do?
I've been thinking about this retirement thing lately and was wondering how others approach it. I know what I am doing in regards to being retired. Yet I wonder about the quality, the excitement of the years that, hopefully, lie ahead of me.
One thing is for certain, whatever my future holds for me, a camera of some kind will play a part in it. In some fashion I know there will be a camera around. Right now it plays a big part of my day-to-day living. It lets me interact on a very personal level with life around me. It gives me both reason and excuse for seeking out new adventures. And I expect it to do so for a long, long time...hopefully.
So, while you mull that over, let's get started on the first part of today's adventures...
Today started out as gray, cloudy, overcast and windy. All the adjectives that help to define a crappy start to a day. But, still, it was a day waiting to be lived and so, after some lounging and coffee in the morning. and finishing the blogs from the previous day's adventures, we headed out for a healthy, entertaining and informative walk.
We've pretty much trekked all over the neighborhood around our house and so I thought we'd motor on over to the Roads End State Park and take a walk up Roads End.
Roads End is exactly what the name implies...it is the end of the road in the north side of town. The road runs out on the side of The Dreaded Knoll, or Mount Death as I occasionally refer to it. It parallels the shoreline as it moves on up to the foot of The Dreaded Knoll. It's all strictly residential and a lot of that is rentals. They once had a restaurant near the State Park but when it burned down they denied the necessary permits required to rebuild preferring to keep all commercial businesses out of the area.
Interesting aside, we looked at a house up this way when we were scouting out the LCO area. It was on 69th Street and we nixed it because of the distance to the beach and the lack of any storage space.
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One of the things that I enjoy so much about my photography (Hahaha, I am still uncomfortable referring to myself as a photographer. I've tried to reason it out and the nearest term that I can come up with that doesn't stray too far from the truth is....Picture-Taker. I am an avid Picture-Taker), is that I can do it anywhere, at any time and I can take as many pictures as my heart desires.
In that regard, I am so doggone blessed....and lucky. I've mentioned it before that I don't miss, one whit, the bad old days when I had to find the money to buy a roll of film and then fret through each shot, making sure that whatever it was I was shooting was, in truth, film-worthy. When you only have 24 or 36 exposures, you tend to, at least I did, shepherd those precious shots and only use them for that shot you know will be a keeper. Hahaha, and then, after all that angst, you had to pay for the privilege of getting them printed so that you could actually see them...the final shots.
And you don't want to get me started on what most of those 'final shots' looked like.
So this new technology, this new way of taking pictures is a great boon for me. I can shoot as much as I want and never have to give it a second thought.
And that's my rant for this portion of the blog.
This blog is not about anything. It is a pictorial representation of what Carol and I did through this day. And, as you already know, it starts with a walk....up Roads End.
One of the things I like as we walk around is looking at the yards and houses in these neighborhoods. And I look for things that catch my eye....and recently it's been all the nautically themed decorations folks put about their homes. And of these, I have been struck by the number of different ways a lighthouse is presented. So, I've decided that one of my little bents will be collecting images of lighthouses...in all the many and varied ways in which they are used to decorate the house...or whatever.
Like this one being used to display the street number.
Fun Facts: Years ago, to help sailors determine their location, the Lighthouse Board (which was in charge of lighthouses from 1852-1910) issued an order to have each lighthouse painted in different colors and/or designs. Sounds logical.
But what about the night, you might ask? Good question. You can't see colors or patterns at night but you can see the lights. However, unless there was some way to make each light different you could have the same problem. Early on, they built multiple lights (that is, two or three together.) This was one way to help the sailors at sea determine their location, but it was very expensive.
Mounting a group of lights on a rotating framework made it possible to produce a special pattern of light for each lighthouse. The rotating lights made a lighthouse look like it was flashing its light on and off. The invention of the Fresnel lens in 1822 was probably the most important discovery in lighting technology. As well as enabling man to produce an unlimited number of flashing combinations, signatures to be used in identifying lights, it also intensified (brightened) the light so it could be seen at greater distances.
An example of these flashing combinations would be the lighthouse at Yaquina Head which has a signature that is two seconds on, two seconds off, two on, fourteen off, and then repeats.
And Oregon has nine lighthouses along its coast. And we've been to seven of them. Just two more to go.
I was fortunate to visit Ireland in 2013 and was struck by the doors in Dublin. They paint them in distinct and bright colors. Ever since, I've been partial to what I playfully refer to as an 'Irish' door. Like this one.
Oh, you can type in Irish Doors in Google and get an idea of what I'm talking about. Go ahead, I'll still be here when you get back.
See what I mean?
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And then there was this one.
Ah, it's fun, you know, gives me a small bit of direction when I'm out and about.
Here's a long view of Roads End looking back towards the State Park. I was mildly surprised by the amount of traffic on the road today. But it is summer and the Touristas are coming in now.
Hahaha, you know, it's kinda cool sometimes when I realize that all these folks are paying to come here and spend some time at the beach for their vacation....and I live here. yeah, it's a good feeling for me.
Ok, so you know I like taking pictures. And, you know I am on a Lighthouse tear right now. And, if you've friended me on FB or followed any of my blogs for any time, you know I am partial to taking pictures of flowers.
And today was no different. You know what real photographers say when the skies are overcast or cloudy, shoot down. And so I did. And I had me some fun, too.
Hahaha, I keep thinking of that line from The Big Bang Theory, where the comic book guy, Stuart, describes selling fantasy games to Sheldon and Leonard as being '...like shooting Nerds in a barrel.'
Well, shooting flowers is just like that. It's so doggone easy. Hahaha, Mother Nature and the scientists and engineers at Canon have done all the hard work for me. The toughest part I have in the whole process is carrying that heavy camera around.
Hahaha, life is tough for me.
And here's Roads End looking north up toward, well, the roads end. At The Dreaded Knoll. It was, despite the overcast skies, a good day for an amble.
And we got to see some interesting sights. Like this house.
At first I thought it was someone who had gone to Oregon University. You know, a Duck. Then my daughter, Michelle, wrote on the FB picture I posted that her first thought was that it was a John Deere house.
Hahaha, she was right when she said she thought she'd lived in the country far too long.
What the....!?! Another flower.
Who'da thunk!?!
We drove by the house we'd looked at during our search here in the LCO and, once I'd turned around, we spotted this beauty grazing in the yard on the side of the house.
Hahaha, what a treat!! And it reminded me that just yesterday, we stopped on The 101 to allow a doe and a fawn to cross the highway. What a kick that was!!
So we have deer coming to our bird feeders and now we're seeing them in the neighborhoods.
And another, What the....!?!
Go figure, it's a lighthouse....in a window....of a house.
This house, specifically. Sorta stands out, don't it!?! They do like themselves some lighthouses round these here parts.
OK, it was an interesting pattern. Hahaha, deal with it.
As we were nearing the end of the Roads End. Looking back, it's a long and winding road. With plenty to see.
We drove around a bit before we went back home and while we were up near the edge of The Dreaded Knoll, we saw a deer scamper across the dirt road we were on and disappear into the forest. Then, as we wandered through the back streets of the neighborhood, we saw another one. That made three that we saw during our walk and our drive.
Carol thought this one might be pregnant.
And when we got back, I got a bit bored and grabbed my small camera and went out shooting for the heck of it.
Y'Know, when you look at them real close, you can see some beauty in these lowly dandelions. These weeds can be beautiful at times.
See?
Then I got all artsy-fartsy with Carol's seashells. Hahaha, modern technology, you push a couple buttons and you can take close-ups that always frustrated me when I was shooting with my old SLR.
More of Carol's seashells. Hahaha, I don't have to travel too far to find something interesting to shoot. Again, I love this modern technology. I can shoot wherever and whatever I want....as long as I want.
I'm lovin' it!!
And some of her starfish. She got these from her sister who had them for her classes when she taught elementary school.
No worries about how many shots I have left on the roll anymore. I'm a shooting machine. If I ever got the least bit serious about this, I'd have so much stuff to work with just in my own house.
After a good dinner and a fun movie, The First Wive's Club, we decided to take a walk. We've been on a number of walks lately but none on the beach in a while now.
So we grabbed a bag for whatever Carol could find on the beach and we took off. You can see from this picture that the conditions were still a bit rugged...even though it wasn't too cold and the wind wasn't blowing that bad.
And today was the first time I've seen horses riding on this beach. There's several places that rent horse for riding on the beach, but they operate farther south of here. I wanted to get a shot of these guys for my son and daughter who like riding horses on the beach.
Even though the weather down along the coast was bad, there were plenty of folks out. And, surprisingly, there wasn't much debris left over from last nights festivities. There was some, to be sure, but it was pretty much cleaned up this morning.
And the vacationers were out. We're not used to seeing that many people on our beach. Hahaha, we're not all that warm and fuzzy with them.
If it isn't one floating aquatic organism, then it's another.
When we first got here, the beaches were foul with the washed up remains of Velella Velella, or By-the-Wind-Sailors. These blue jellyfish got caught in the wrong current and were swept ashore to die by what seemed like the millions.
Now were getting a ton of Moon Jellyfish washing up on our beaches.
I think it's La Nina causing all the problems, pushing these little guys up onto the beach. Fortunately, they aren't poisonous.
We were just ambling on down the beach and I was shooting whatever. I liked the idea of a line of houses set against the blue sky.
Hey, it has possibilities.
And the ocean with the sun getting low in the western sky.
We made it to the beach rocks past the SurfTides. By this time my feet were hurting and my full bladder was making itself known so it was time to turn back.
The little things.
And another outline against the sky. These homes are all set up on the bluff overlooking the beach.
There it is. That's the SurfTides Motel on the right, the large structure. Then, a bit less than a half mile down is Beach Access 42, were we live.
And there she is, searching for treasures against the waves of the ocean.
And so there it is. Is this any way to spend a retirement? Who knows. I sure don't. I do know that I'm enjoying the heck out of it. It's been two years now and it hasn't gotten a bit old yet.
I also know it'd be a heckuvfa lot different if I didn't have my cameras it'd be a much different story. It's nice to share these adventures and to have so many opportunities. Bottom line is, I've just got to reach out and grab the fun as it goes by. And I'm trying.
Plus, I'm learning. Everyday. That's fun, too.
And so life goes on.
And, life is good.
Hooah!!
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