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I HAD

Yes, I HAD.  Hiked Across Delaware!  15-ish miles!

This was a walk organized by the Wilmington Trail Club.  We met in Delaware City DE and were bussed to Chesapeake City MD and walked back to Delaware City along the C&D (Chesapeake and Delaware) canal, on the north side.  I did this with my friend Priscilla.

You can see the canal below:

It goes from the Delaware Bay to the Chesapeake Bay (or vice versa)

We began on the Ben Cardin (Senator in MD) Trail:

Most of the walk was right along the canal, and this entire trail is paved.  There aren’t a lot of ‘get on /get off’ spots so the path is used more by bicyclists than walkers.

The Ben Cardin Trail turns into the Michael N. Castle Trail when it passes into Delaware (previous governor of DE)

 Beautiful Trees

 Rest stop location

  Nice Pasture

The bridge in this photo is for trains.  The lattice-y part raises up when tall ships need to pass thru.  It’s raised up in this photo – but we saw a train go over the bridge earlier in our walk!

The Summit Bridge (DE Rt 896).  About 4 miles in. (Actually, now that I look at it, I think this is the Roth Bridge (see more below).  I guess I didn’t take photos of the Summit Bridge.   And, I didn’t take a lot of photos on the hike – we were trying to not let anybody pass us so I didn’t want to stop too much!

The Roth Bridge (DE Rt 1).  I think this was around 8.5 miles in.

The St. Georges Bridge, DE Rt 13 (you can also see it in the background of the Roth Bridge photo).  The Roth Bridge is now the main way people go when they are headed to lower Delaware, where there are a lot of beaches – St. Georges bridge used to be the way to go,.  The Roth Bridge isn’t all that old, and is named after William V. Roth Jr, who was a DE Senator.
By this point we had walked a little over 10 miles.  Our legs were aching and we wanted to be done!  We stopped here for lunch, so we able to sit down and get off our feet for a little bit.

A few miles later, we knew we were getting close now – we were heading away from the canal and into Delaware City.  This is about 13.5 miles in.

The African Union Church Cemetery – you can see it fenced in, in the background

Beautiful fall colors!

15-ish miles later, we made it back to Delaware City!

Our post-hike feast!  Smoked mussels, smoked shrimp, chips, popcorn, and, of course, WINE (both Red, and White)!

Until the next adventure …

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Day x Photos

I finished my Day 7 photos, actually going to Day 8 because I accidentally took a photo of myself – I’m not even sure how I did it!

Anyway, here they are:

DAY 1:  This was part of Longwood Gardens’ lantern exhibit

DAY 2:  I took this photo in Truckee when I was on my 27 day trip.  I thought it had good texture that would be enhanced by changing it to B&W

DAY 3:  One of those humungous groups of birds, flying overhead when I was out for a walk

DAY 4:  A bluebird house with a squirrel deterrent, at a local park.  I thought the tilted birdhouse looked a little ‘jaunty.’

DAY 5:  Longwood Gardens, on a meadow walk.  The clouds over Longwood always have an interesting shape

DAY 6:  Taken while I was waiting for help at the local AAA office – looking into travel insurance for my trip to Norway.  They were having a big sale so I scored an eyeglass fix-it kit, power converters and a car/home phone charger – all for $5!

DAY 7:  View from the beach house sun room

DAY 8:  I have no idea how I even took this photo, and didn’t even know I took it until much later in the day when I was looking at my photos folder on my phone!  I thought it was a funny shot and angle though.

I took some other photos at the beach – including them here for fun.  They are not B&W though!


I love this hotel – The Sands.  I think of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra every time I see it!

  Great Halloween House!  It’s a Bed and Breakfast Inn!  Would YOU stay there?

 Revelation Brewery


An unhappy deviled egg – Oh no Mr. Bill!


Found treasures at the local park.  There must have been a kiddie event – these were scattered all over the pavilion

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Downtime

While I’m home and not travelling or doing stuff to the house, I thought I would still try to stay creative.  So, I decided to go through some photos I’ve taken over the past few years and post them here.

For this post, today anyway, I’m just going to put one photo.  I’ll either add more to this post or add multiple photos in future posts.  I’ll see how I feel and how ambitious I am with my creativity.

This morning I actually was just trying to clean up some photos and I came across this one.  I don’t remember composing it this way specifically, but I think it’s cool how the guy’s bowed head is in between the arms of the 3 statues.  The name of the sculpture is ‘The Three Shades.’

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the shades, i.e. the souls of the damned, stand at the entrance to Hell, pointing to an unequivocal inscription, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. 

I think I need to drag out my Word Press ‘how to’ books to see how to add larger photos here.

Stay tuned!

UPDATE:  I decided to play with some editing stuff on some photos.  Here they are.  All of the photos have been cropped and enhanced in some way.


This is a lake in Oregon.  I believe I posted a photo of it before, but I cropped it and enhanced the image, trying to make it look like an old postcard.  This is from the return trip from Bend to Reno.


This one is also from the eclipse trip, but on the way from Reno to Bend.  Again, enhanced to look older.


This is from my trip to Tennessee.  This was in Virginia, down the street from that cyborg that I posted about earlier.


This is in Tennessee, on the lake near Chip’s family home.


This is from the hash we ran in Tempe.  Rotated, cropped, enhanced.  We had stopped so the other crazy people could build a human pyramid.  I was more interested in the fact that there was one shoe lying next to a trash can.  Where is the other shoe?  Somebody asked me if it looked like it was my size.  It did.  But, I didn’t want to put my foot into it.  I wonder why …

This has been fun.  I think I’ll try to be more timely with my editing from now on!  Hope you enjoy!

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A Comment from a Celebrity!

Wow!  I got my first comment from a celebrity!  L. Ron Hubbard!  I approved the comment so you should be able to see it!  It’s attached to the post I did on October 13!  He asked me about goat yoga – how did he know I got some info about that??

I’m thinking I should go visit him!  Maybe he’ll introduce me to Tom Cruise!!!

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Gettings Things Done

Been home a week now, and fidgety to get something done.  Not quite ready to go anywhere … yet – but, I am thinking about Falling Waters (Frank Lloyd Wright house) and/or Mount Rushmore maybe before the year is over.  Falling Waters would include a stop in Pittsburgh since I have only been through Pittsburgh, not TO Pittsburgh.

NOTE – this post is probably going to be relatively boring, but what the heck

So, wanting to get things done, I did a bit of looking around this week.  First off, I picked out new wallpaper for the first floor bathroom.  This bathroom originally had a drop ceiling (I didn’t really know why until I had it replaced with a drywall ceiling – the contractor had to add ‘sister joists’ because one of the pipes – I think the toilet – hung too low to attach a drywall ceiling to the existing joists).  So, I have to finish priming that drywall so I can paint the ceiling.  And while that was going on, I removed the existing wallpaper in that bathroom, which was really dated.  And I was going to just paint the walls, but they’re not in too good a shape, so, I decided to re-wallpaper the walls.  But, of course, I have to finish priming those too.  But anyway, I ordered the new wallpaper, it will be ‘in’ next week, and I am going to try to finish priming this week so I can get it hung when it comes in.  I picked out something somewhat neutral but I think it’s pretty cool.

So, today I put in the wallpaper order.  After stopping at the flooring store.  I went back to the place that installed my living room carpet – it is not a chain, and they did a great job, so I wanted to give them my business again.  Picked out a bathroom floor sample (replacing sheet vinyl with plank vinyl that has a wood look) and a bedroom carpet sample (bedroom carpet is original to the house – I can’t even tell you what color it is – not taupe, not tan, some color that has no name but was probably cheap – about time right?  House was built in 1986).  This new carpet is low pile but with a little bit of design ‘carved’ in.  Just need to figure out the right color.

I did all the square foot calculations multiplied by the $ per square foot – not too bad!  Hope I did them right!

So, I am excited to have a new bathroom floor and carpet, sometime soon!  I think I have picked out the colors!

All right.  I will stop boring you with these household things.  I’ll keep you posted as I finish ordering and the installs start.  Wallpaper will probably be first – that will be done by me.  Wish me luck!

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Man of my dreams and other weird stuff

I will update you on my most recent exploits in the next post, when I have time to sort through all of my photos.  I’m sitting in my hotel in Roanoke now, planning to visit the Taubman Museum of Art before I head home. UPDATE:  Unfortunately the Taubman Museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so I missed it.  Bummed!

But, last night, I had a dream.  I ‘met’ a man in my dream, but he has been in my dreams before.  He is an older, distinguished man, who seems to be pretty wealthy.  Our meetings are always by happenstance.  In the dream last night,  I as walking by his property, and apparently a wedding celebration had taken place, and there were some bright pink lingerie hanging on an iron gate at the entrance to the property (which was surrounded by stone walls).  I stopped to take a photo and the whole family came out, as they were getting ready to leave.  I got pulled into the tide of people and ended up talking to this man.  We talked about photo composition, and he invited me into his home, which also turned out to be his place of work.  There was somebody in there with a GIGANTIC cake – she was cutting it up but digging her hands deep into the cake (I hesitate to say wedding cake because if it was, it was probably the ugliest wedding cake I’ve ever seen!)

A couple of his clients showed up so he showed them to his office.  The office had glass doors but were sound proofed.  I started to ask him a question from outside the office but he told me (somehow he could press a button and talk so I could hear him) that he couldn’t hear me and to wait outside.

For some reason I had his jacket and needed to get it back to him.  When he was done in the office, he came back out to meet me, and had his assistant bring me a bunch of stuff.  I didn’t understand what it was (there was a small pile of different stuff) and his assistant told me it was for the dog.  I said I lost my dog a few years and ago and then the man told me they had an example of a eulogy I could read.

I thanked him.  And then the most God-awful siren blast woke me up, at 6:58am!  (this is after arriving at the hotel at 1:30am).  Ugh!  I guess I’ll have to wait for the next dream to see what happens.

In the meantime, I had another horoscope that seemed so spot on it was weird.  Over the weekend I met someone who thought I should speak at ‘Girls Inc’ and talk about women in technical careers.  And, I have been talking about how I need to let things happen instead of trying to make things happen.

Here it is – talk to you soon!

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A timely horoscope

Greetings!  I’m in the midst of planning my next roadtrip, to McMinnville TN.  I’ll write again once I find some fun stuff to post!  Here’s a teaser – I hope to make it to Dinosaur Kingdom in Natural Bridge, VA.

It’s a rainy day so I’ve been doing stuff around the house – I filled up two big bags with books to take to Goodwill, and threw some junk away.  Lots more to go through, but at least the room looks better now.

Anyway, here is my horoscope for today – earlier today I had been thinking to myself “you’re not doing much today,” so when I read it, it made me grin:

“It may feel as though you’re not doing much, but in reality it takes massive amounts of brainpower to sustain your current lifestyle and manner of being.  Thank your body and mind for keeping up with you.”

Pretty spot on if you ask me!

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In-between trips

I’m in the midst of planning my next trip – a road trip to McMinnville, TN.  On the way there, I plan to overnight in Roanoke, VA and visit the Taubman Museum of Art.  On the way back I’m thinking about overnighting in Natural Bridge, VA.  If I do the drive all in one day it’s over 10 hours, so I thought it would be good to break it up. Continue reading “In-between trips”