July/August 2021 Trip – Northern Wisconsin, Pictured Rocks and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshores

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Northern Wisconsin

Spray Falls - Pictured
Rocks National Lakeshore

My family lives in northern Wisconsin, part of our trip is to see them.  We haven’t seen my sister and her husband since the start of the pandemic.  We had a trip planned last year but nobody felt comfortable given the virus conditions in 2020.

Once in WI we stop for cheese.  We enjoy Henning’s Cheese.  They specialize in cheddar, having many flavors.  We also pick up a few packages of cheese curds.  They are not a favorite of mine but my mom and Nicida love them.  Several bags of cheeses curds disappeared during our brief visit to northern WI.

Houston - WI - SD - CO trip Sept, 2018, part 2

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This is the second part of our trip.  You can go to the start by going to the Thursday Sept 27, 2018 posting.

We enjoy the next several days at my mom’s house visiting, cooking, going out to eat and touring the area.  The fall colors are just coming in so the occasional red, yellow or orange covered tree is a treat.  Each night as we walk through and around town we spot several deer; some of them bounding off at their first sight of us, others watching from a safe distance.

Houston - WI - SD - CO trip Sept 2018, part 1

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Our three week trip is here.  This has been on our calendar for the past few months.  Even with that in mind it still snuck up on us.  The initial route; go to northern WI to visit family, dashing west to SD to see the Badlands, Mount Rushmore and Wind Cave NP then home.  About three weeks prior to the trip Nicida asked me if we could visit WI by way of Houston to visit her family and her 102 year old relative leaving for CA in the near future.  I could not say no.

This trip will be split into three postings.

Road trip part 2, Sept 2017

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Instead of making the usual quick dash back to NM I am making a circle route by way of MN, SD, WY, and CO.  This is a reconnaissance trip.  I don’t have as much time as I would like to spend at each of my destinations.  Instead I am beginning my list of places to visit when I am out of a job - by choice.

Road trip - Sept 2017

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Road to a campsite

I’m celebrating the holidays early this year.  The past two years I’ve celebrated Thanksgiving with family in Northern WI.  I do not like flying, I like driving, so I drive.  The drive takes two long days.  If I fly, it takes one long day with all the waiting in an airport and other stuff necessary to fly.  My aggravation factor is lower when driving so it is worth the extra travel day to me.

Leaving on Labor Day weekend is asking for mobs of people on the road and camping so I held off until Sunday so I would have only one day of campsite searching.

Northern Wisconsin, March 10, 2017

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My rental car’s thermometer says it’s 10°.  I let the car warm up before taking off on my photo expedition.  Thankfully the car has heated seats, but they seem to take way too long to warm my butt.  Warm air will not pour out of the vents for another 10 minutes.  I’m still going.

My extra layer of clothing and the ‘heavy NM winter jacket’ barely keeps me warm, don’t ask about wind.  But I’m still going

Northern Wisconsin, November 17-26, 2016

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My trip to northern Wisconsin starts in the 70’s (temperature, not the year).  20 degree temperatures are forecast for my destination but even this forecast is better than last year’s dodging of snow, ice and rain.

Family lives north of the frozen tundra, Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Many years ago I gave up on visiting family for Christmas, especially when one weather forecast was for overnight snow flurries; I woke the next morning to 6” of snow flurries on my car.  I don’t look forward to the joys of snow shoveling.  After living in NM for the last 30+ years my once a year shoveling duties are sufficient.

Bayfield, WI

I spent an afternoon in Bayfield walking around, seeing the town and looking for a sweatshirt for Sue.  Bayfield is small, around 600 people live here year round...

Apostle Islands

This is one of those places I never made it to when I lived in WI.  It was too far to go, besides I lived next to Lake Michigan what’s the big deal?...

Shooting for the moon

I love the moon.  When I realized it was full this week I headed outside, dodging bats (flying ones) so they wouldn't fly in the door as I went out, to try and get a shot of the moon.

I swear I set the camera to a night setting, Mark.  Obviously that was not right, because...well.... look at my pic.  I don't really know what I was expecting to see, but I was hoping for more than a white blob in a sea of black.

When I saw what my effort had produced, I was disappointed, but not willing to brave going out the door again, and instead just whined to myself.

 I am happy with these other 2 pics though.  I like the colors of the flower petals and leaves looking up from the ground.

I need to further explore this view of things...

Sooo Mark, what's wrong with my moon?

Tell A Story

I hang around a lot of different photographer’s blogs and the main message I take away from each of them is to tell a story with your photos.  Layne Kennedy in particular says to tell your story in three photographs.

Northern Wisconsin

I’ve been away for a while but my plan has worked, at least once.  My plan was to have Pam start adding a few postings to the blog so it wouldn’t be so bad if I took a long time between postings.  She started this blog several years ago and has at least temporarily given up on her beading and other hobbies and has picked up a camera.  I convinced her to contribute some of her own images to this blog.  You can see some of her favorite shots on an earlier post.  I am the one she says inspires her, I don’t know about that, I just want her to enjoy her new found hobby.  While I was up in WI I went over the camera with her explaining what the different settings do.  Even though I have a digital camera myself I had to actually read the instructions for some of the settings so I understood what they do.