A Single Drop

A single drop captivated my attention this week. As I walked out the door to go to work I noticed that it had sprinkled leaving everything damp. I went back inside and grabbed my camera for a few photos before work, well about 30 minutes worth to be honest. I went to work later than planned.

I walked out into the field just south of our home and saw drops of water hanging on a few branches. The morning was overcast from the rain but the sun kept trying to peek through the clouds never quite making a full appearance but creating some interesting views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I was heading back inside I loved the way the sun was hitting the butterfly plant pods. It is from the same family as the Milkweed plant. All the is left of it is the shell. All the seeds have flown away in the fall winds.

Have a great weekend!

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Weekly Photo Challenge:Fall

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This past week my husband and I spent the week driving home from Michigan. We were blessed to see most of the state adorned in beautiful fall colors. Part of our trip took us to Bond Falls, Michigan. It was tucked away in a beautiful hillside just waiting to be discovered. While we were there we were treated to sun showers off and on all afternoon as we explored.

We are home again and the colors are starting to peak where we live. I am home with a new love and appreciation for where we live.

 

Detroit Reflections and Investigating the Thumb

We are on the road again. My husband and I flew out of Mpls. on Tuesday afternoon for Milwaukee, WI with a destination of Flint, Michigan. We are once again combining business and pleasure. We decided to seek out some fall colors. He purchased two cars both in Michigan that we will drive back to Minnesota through a northern route of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

We had an hour lay over in Milwaukee around sunset. Loved our flight with Frontier except for the sales rep that sat two seats behind us and never stopped talking to a women also sitting behind us. I think he tried to impart all his wisdom in that one hour. It’s a good thing that our flight wasn’t any longer I fear he might have run out of knowledge to impart.

Before we left our Super 8 in Flint, Michigan this morning I had to take a picture of one of the oddest things I’ve seen in a motel.

I don’t know about you but the last place I want to talk on the phone is in the bathroom. There was another phone on the night stand in the room. I forgot to ask before we left if all the rooms had a phone in the bathroom or was it just our room.

We headed for downtown Detroit because neither of us had been there before. We found a great restaurant downtown The Sweetwater Tavern. They had excellent food and it reminded me a little of the Cheers bar from the tv show.

My favorite part of downtown was the reflections I saw on buildings of other buildings. Both looked like paintings on the other buildings.

This was my favorite of the two but both were fun to photograph.

We rode the People Mover around downtown before we left. It took about 15 minutes for a lap around the city above the street. Just 50 cents a piece to ride. What a bargain.

After we left Detroit we headed north up the east side of Michigan affectionately called the thumb of Michigan. We stopped at Port Sanilac, MI

After we left Port Sanilac we continued north to Harbor Beach, MI where we planned on finding a room to spend the night. We tried to find a hotel using the Magellan navigation system that we purchased in Detroit. We followed the directions and ended up on a dead-end street near this pier but no hotel.

 We didn’t find a hotel to stay in this town so we headed west to Bad Axe, MI which was where we planned on going in the morning to pick up our second car that we are driving home. We looked to see if there was a hotel in Bad Axe for the night. Our Magellan told us there was a Holiday Express in Bad Axe. We followed the directions which took us all the way through town and out-of-town, right off the main road out on a gravel road and proudly announced “You have arrived”.

I don’t think so, we were surrounded by corn fields. We turned around and went back into town and found out that everything in town was booked. Apparently there are a lot of construction workers erecting wind generators and have snatched up all the rooms. We asked at the Econolodge if there was a Holiday Express in town and they directed us to it.

I waited in the car while my husband went inside to see if they had any rooms. He was in there for a long time while the desk clerk called all over town for a room for us. There were none. He said “We have one more possibility.” Someone had a reservation but had not arrived yet. They tried to run their card for the room but could not get it to go through. They tried calling the phone number provided to confirm the card number for the reservation but could not reach the party. It was 9:30 already and they hadn’t checked in yet. They gave us their room.

I am thankful for the room but can’t help but wonder if someone will arrive later this evening to no room in a town with no vacancies.

Tomorrow the adventure continues north and west.

 

My Load is Lighter…over 400 magazines to be exact

I love magazines.  I love to read them cover to cover.  Some of my favorites are home improvement magazines, cooking magazines, and especially flying magazines.  I love to keep them and go back and look at the pictures for various home improvement projects that I thought some day I would like to do.  The problem was getting out of hand.  I bought those handy storage containers for storing magazines.  I thought if they were kept neatly it was okay to keep them all.  They were taking up space in closets and shelves in just about every room in my house and some in the attic and garage.

One of the websites I frequent often is a home management system called FLYlady.net.  Each month she has a goal to work on in your home to make it a more enjoyable place to live.  This month the goal is to get rid of paper clutter.  She says living in clutter robs you of your peace. 

One reference she made when she made this statement was that we all love to stay in a nice clean motel/hotel.  What is it about it that we like?  It is the fact that it is uncluttered.  That’s what I want in my home.  Uncluttered and peaceful.  I am not a hoarder like the new TV reality shows but I do have areas in my home that have been taken over by my magazines and fabric that I use for sewing. 

Tuesday morning my grandson Jack and I loaded up the truck of my car and drove to the local recycling center and dropped them off.  Oh how I was tempted when I saw the cover of several magazines and wanted to keep just this one copy or maybe two as I was putting them into the recycling bin.

Then I found myself looking at what others had put in for recycling and realized that their magazines were different from the ones I was bringing and started to pick them up and read.  I put them back and thought of my goal of a clean, peaceful, and uncluttered home.  Bringing magazines home with me did not fit into my goal.  It’s a good thing I had Jack to keep me moving. 

The next thing on my list as far as paper clutter is all of my household records.  I love office supplies so I have found ways to keep just about everything paper for our household.  If I go in my attic I could find a box that contains receipts for what I paid for fuel oil for our first home.  We haven’t lived there since 1992.  It would be interesting trivia to read but I don’t think I need them anymore. 

My goal is to work on paring down all this paper for 15 minutes a day.  That I can handle.  I’ve already begun to tackle the mail each day as it comes into the home.  I stand next to the paper shredder, recycling and trash and sort immediately.  With four adults in our home we get a lot of mail. 

I’m feeling better already about my home and the spaces that I have cleared of clutter.  Sorry Tyler that the magazines had to go,  I know your love of magazines,  but the peace is worth it.  I will always read magazines just not keep them as long as I have in the past and pass them along to others to share.

I’ll let you know of my progress at the end of the month.

 My new idea of an uncluttered, calm, and peaceful life!

 

A Good Tired

As I sit in my recliner writing this post, I am exhausted but its a good tired.  This morning I woke up with an anticipation for a day off from work and day filled with flying.  All week long I’ve been looking forward to a day of flying up north with my husband to see some fall colors.  I was not disappointed.

We arrived at the airport at 9:30 this morning and I pre-flighted the airplane, got my weather briefing, filed my flight plan and we were off. 

The original plan had been to fly from St. Cloud (STC) to Duluth (DLH) and then east to Madeline Island (4R5).  Last evening we looked over my plan and decided to change our route to St. Cloud to Superior, Wisconsin (SUW) and then east to Madeline Island and then back to St. Cloud.  The change in our route meant less time over the open water of Lake Superior and more over land but still along the lake for the view.

We arrived in Superior just in time for lunch and ate at the airport at the Upper Deck Restaurant.  While we were eating we watched other pilots landing and taxiing to the ramp just outside our restaurant window.  Very cool.  The food was very good and reasonable in price. 

The more we watched, the more we noticed the clouds moving in from the northwest.  The sky was starting to fill up with clouds.  According to the forecast they weren’t supposed to move in until much later in the day.  Decision time.  Do we proceed with our plans to go to Madeline Island or start heading back home?  I am a VFR pilot.  That means I have to be able to see the ground at all times when I am flying.  I don’t have an instrument rating which would allow me to fly in the clouds. 

I had my heart set on going to the island because we had gone there on our honeymoon and this was our first big flying trip but I wanted to be safe.  We have a lot of responsibilities and flying in bad conditions put others at risk they may have to search for you if something happens and you are unable to complete your flight as planned. 

We sat a little longer and discussed our options of  other places to visit and decided to work our way back home and enjoy the scenery along the way.  We would have to visit Madeline Island on another flight.  It was a wise choice as it turned out.  When we departed from Superior southwest to St. Cloud we were unable to climb to our desired altitude because the clouds were too low.  Not only were the clouds too low but we encountered a very bumpy ride.  We were buffeted by strong winds from the northwest. 

Here are some of the pictures I took along the way.  I still haven’t quite figured out how to take good pictures while flying but here goes.

I believe that it’s the Rum River cutting through the fall colored trees.

This was one of many gravel pits that we flew over on our trip to Superior Wisconsin.  It only makes sense with the amount of road construction you see in Minnesota and Wisconsin in the summer.  It looks like a big boy’s sandbox.

The picture to the left was taken as we departed south out of Superior, Wisconsin.  You can see the shadows of the clouds on the ground as we were flying and how low the cloud were.

I liked the mix of the rows of pine trees and fall colors in this picture.

It looks like this farmer had some artistic flair when he started harvesting his corn.

Milaca Airport

 Can you find the airport on this picture.  It is a favorite around here.  It is the Milaca Airport (18Y).  Its a grass strip.  Your only clue is that it is near the top of this photo.  It was one of the hardest airports for me to find the first time I visited there.

 

Fall Colors on the Water

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Rumpled, rustic aluminum canoe skims across the rain-dropped lake surface.

Arrived at the green lily pad carpeted bay silently in search of fall colors.

Insect eaten leaves of green, yellow, red and brown dress the surface.

Straw colored grasses wave in the wind dancing with the brown, sleek cattail in unison.

Majestic white lily sits like a crown upon a green pad.

Green popcorn-like pods line the stalk like a magic wand.

Silvery translucent leaves float barely below the surface decaying daily.

Dappled brown log floats below the water’s surface with a birch log nearby.

Floating grassy bog rocks in the gentle waves.

Fall is here.