Travelin' intheflow. (Part 1) *serious dial-up warning*

[intheflow]

Well, I've been a travelin' fool for about the past month. I've been from Mississippi to Massachusetts to Western Colorado to Mississippi to Florida to the Smokey Mountains and back to Denver. Naturally I took a million photos and cannot make up my mind which ones I like best, so I'll be posting a few threads over the next few days chronicling my journeys.

Western Massachusetts

Went home to Western Mass to watch my son graduate from college. You all saw a couple of the photos from that event in my "help me choose my people pic" post, but here are a couple more.

Ted Kennedy was the keynote speaker at the graduation. Sad to say, his address sounded like it had been recycled from material he'd used at the last 30 years of graduations he has no doubt attended. :(


This is my son kissing his very pretty, very smart girlfriend. When he saw this photo, he made an involuntary "yumm" sound. :rofl:


It rained like crazy while we were out there. Went to a place that floods most every spring, up in South Hadley, and I wasn't disappointed. Although it's not so bad in this shot, I'm sure it's very bad by now.


A little later my son and I took a walk through Forest Park in Springfield. The dogwoods were in bloom, and the overcast skies made for muted lighting and vivid greens.


Western Colorado

I could only stay a few days with my son because I had a preaching gig in Durango, Colorado the following weekend. Since volunteering on the Gulf Coast doesn't pay doodly-squat, I was obliged to keep the job. We drove by Treasure Falls on the way out there.



Luckily, a family in the church let us use their cottage on the bank of a river for four days! :wow:


Bonus! I got to practice my running water photography.


Double Bonus! There were wildflowers on the banks!


Triple bonus! There were hummingbirds on the porch!


Day 3 in Durango we drove a wee bit further west to Mesa Verde National Park. It was a beautiful day to visit the park. The cliff dwellings are spectacular, but every site has been so thoroughly photographed, and from the same remote locations, most of the shots I took looked like mass-market postcards. :eyes: I thought this one looked slightly different, though.

BTW, we had just hiked on the flat top rock before I took this shot. I had no idea I was standing above a dwelling.

Mesa Verde had some very bad wild fires in August 2000; over 5200 acres burned. You can see some of the burn area above this cliff house.


The burned trees made for some funky views.


We had to hike to find these hieroglyphics.


We saw many critters in the park, including several (deer, turkey, snakes, weird kamikaze birds) who successfully evaded my camera. But this little lizard obligingly posed for me.


As did this wild horse.


The next day we had to drive back to Denver so we could catch a plane back to Mississippi. It's a six-hour drive, but usedtobesick and I drove an additional two hours out of our way to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
To tell the truth, it looked a lot closer than it was and we got sucked in!


How big are the Great Sand Dunes? See those two little blips on the dunes on the left, and that blip in the upper right park of the dune? Those are people.


We've been in drought in Colorado for awhile now. usedtobesick had been here before, years ago, and kept telling me about the deep river we'd have to wade through that was between the parking lot and the dunes. Here's what the river looked like this year. :(


One of the weird things about the dunes is that the are abutted on one side by desert plains and on the other side by piney, rocky mountains.


After our short visit to the dunes, we had to return to Denver to get ready to return South to drive my car home now my volunteer stint is done. I'll post the next installment of my road show in the next day or two. :hi:

[Ms. Toad]

1. Love the running water shot! n/t

[Blue_In_AK]

2. Beautiful as usual, InTheFlow...

[usedtobesick]

3. I was there and I still forget how beautiful and fun the trip was

this are really great. Can't wait for part 2...

[Whoa_Nelly]

4. You are an inspiration to me!

...to take more photos, try harder to get the interesting shots, and more.

I just took a 3-week road trip, and have some photos, mostly from Santa Fe, NM. Will get busy editing and hopefully post later this week.


Love the photos! :hi:

[intheflow]

5. Be careful what you wish for.

My computer's memory capacity has decreased by 20% since I got the digital last Christmas. If you take lots of pictures, be prepared to buy lots of cds to back them up on! :rofl:

Thanks, W_N. I'm looking forward to your Santa Fe shots. I've never been able to take very good photos there. I think the glaring desert sun thrawts my efforts. :)

[NashVegas]

6. Thanks For Posting

Love the Mesa Verde and sand dunes shots. I heart Western Mass, too.

[intheflow]

7. And I heart Batboy!

:loveya:

:rofl:



What I'm not laughing about is your tagline. Speaking of Western Mass, my best friend grew up literally next door to the Monsanto plant in Springfield, MA. She's 39 and can't hold down a job due to her compromised immune system. She's sick all the time, has lupus and crones. I'm sure it was from playing in the dirt around her home. :(

[CC]

8. Hi ITF, great photos

and damn wish we had side tripped to the dunes when we were out there. Another one to grumble at Terry about. We were 150 miles from the Grand Canyon and didn't go, haven't forgiving him that one yet. BTW if you notice an more activity on your photobucket account blame my mom. I sent her all 3 links to your Gulf Coast series and she also thought they were great. She who never forwards anything forwarded them to everybody. She and I had a long conversation on how you should submit all 3 series to magazines. Those pictures with your words are still the best coverage I have seen on what is really going on down there.

[intheflow]

11. No worries on the Photobucket account.

I upgraded to be a paying customer when my first Katrina thread got 5000 hits. :P

[TahitiNut]

9. "yummm"

I second that. :silly:

[babylonsister]

10. Gorgeous, itf! I want to go walking in Forest Park,

and I want to spend a week in that cottage!

[intheflow]

12. WE wanted to spend a week in that cottage.

Actully, we wanted the family to adopt us.

They had 800 acres, bought in the 1950's for the ridiculously low price of $100 an acre. :wow:
They built the cabin as a honeymoon retreat for their daughter, and planted the grass (amidst dense pine forest) so she could have her wedding on site. :wow:
I shot the photo from the picnic pavillion, which they built so they could have church picnics there. :wow:

It was far and away the nicest cabin I've ever had the good fortune to stay in.