Photography – Retirementally Challenged

Looking Back on 2024

Another trip around the sun and here we are on the last day of 2024. Even though I haven’t made New Years resolutions in years and even coming up with a Word of the Year seems like too much pressure, it’s always fun to think about the possibilities in the year ahead.

But, before I turn to the first page of my brand new paper (yes, paper) calendar for 2025, I thought I’d spend a moment looking back on the year that will soon be over.

Travel

2024 was the year of Road Trips for us. An airplane gets you from Point A to Point B faster, but you miss so many interesting sights and memorable moments when you are in the air.

In the spring, we spent about five weeks traveling from the west coast of California to the east coast of North Carolina and back, visiting friends and family along the way.

We headed in a different direction at the end of July, driving north through California, Oregon, and Washington before crossing the border into Canada. Just like on our spring trip, this 6-week adventure included many interesting stops along the way as well as meetups with friends and family.

In October, we took a much shorter road trip up to Los Angeles to see family and explore the area. Our hotel was located downtown where there is a fascinating mixture of old and new, historical and modern, and decay and renewal.

Blogger Meetups

The year began with a lunch date with Terri (the first blogger I ever met in person, back in 2016) and a new-to-me blogger, Cheryl.

At the beginning of our spring road trip, we spent a couple of days in Tucson, Arizona, visiting Kathy and Thom. We saw them again in June, when they hosted us at their mountain cabin, and then again on our summer road trip to Canada.

And, speaking of our trip to Canada, it was Bloggerpalooza on Vancouver Island, where Donna, Deb, and Judith (who no longer blogs) demonstrated why Canadians get their reputation for being so welcoming and nice. We had a wonderful time hiking, chatting, attending concerts, chatting, exploring, hanging out, and chatting.

Ups

There were lots of ups in 2024, including having a backyard view of a few satellite launches, which provided quite a show as they streamed across the sky.

… and Downs

Three friends – a previous work colleague, a neighbor, and a friend that I had lost touch with – passed away in 2024. All were close to me in age. A sad reminder of the frailty of life.

Looking Ahead

We have a few travel possibilities for 2025. One is booked, the other two are in the preliminary planning stages. Our 2025 calendar already has several events, gatherings, and celebrations noted and I look forward to what the year will bring.

Thank you for following my blog, reading, and commenting. I wish all of you a happy and healthy 2025 full of grand adventures.

You can see more end-of-year wrap-ups by visiting Terri’s blog, Second Wind Leisure Perspective. It’s not too late to add your own!

Reuniting With Blogging Friends

I’ve been very lucky to have had the opportunity to meet multiple fellow bloggers – 14 at last count – over the years. Each get together has been enjoyable and uplifting and has reinforced my theory that we are pretty much what you see on our blogs.

A few of these bloggers have turned into dear friends who we’ve traveled to visit several times since our first meeting. They have also made it a point to visit us whenever they get close to our hometown.

Recently, my husband and I made our third trip to beautiful Vancouver Island, Canada, to reunite with several of these dear friends… and one very adorable bloggy doggy.

Our first visit to the Island in 2019:

In 2021, we crossed the U.S. / Canadian border on the day the Covid restrictions were lifted so we could meet again:

2021 meetup with bloggers and our all-male fan club.

This summer, my husband and I spent a leisurely week and a half driving north through California, Oregon, and Washington before taking a ferry to Vancouver Island. Along the way, we reunited with family, friends (including a couple we first met during our travels to Spain last year), and saw some beautiful scenery.

While on Vancouver Island we enjoyed fun times and fabulous weather but, most of all, we were embraced in the warm welcome of dear friends.

Enjoying lunch with Kathy (Smart Living 365), Donna (Retirement Reflections), and Deb (The Widow Badass)… I don’t believe the subject of blogging even came up.

Donna, Deb, bloggy doggy Bowser, and me.

Please check out Terri’s Sunday Stills post and follow the links to see how others have interpreted her theme for this week: Reunited.

Although we neglected to get a picture of our first meetup, Terri was the first blogger I met in person back in 2015. We’ve made it a point to *reunite* whenever we find ourselves nearby.

UFO* in the Night Sky #WordlessWednesday

For a moment, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 satellite out of Vandenberg SFB, CA, looked like it was headed for the Moon.

There’s Something Fishy Going On #WordlessWednesday #SundayStills

For Hugh’s Wordless Wednesday.

For Terri’s Sunday Stills.

Buzzing around Bisbee

In a recent Thursday Doors post, I highlighted our visit to the Arizona mining town of Jerome. We had been there a couple of times before and we enjoyed another opportunity to poke about the quirky community perched on the side of a hill.

In south-eastern Arizona – almost to the border of Mexico – is another fun and funky old mining town called Bisbee. Over a period of almost 100 years, Bisbee produced around 8 billion pounds of copper. Silver, gold, lead, zinc and manganese were also mined in significant quantities. Similar to Jerome, after the mining interests pulled out (the last operation ceased in 1974), artists and hippies started moving in, attracted by the inexpensive real estate and wide-open scenery.

As a wanna-be artist and hippie at heart, I love these types of communities. At home and on our travels, we see too many big box behemoths, interchangeable chains, and soulless strip malls. It’s nice to visit a place that values out-of-the-ordinary and one-of-a-kind. Bisbee had been on my want-to-see list for a while, so I was happy to finally make it there.

It’s pretty easy to get around Bisbee on foot, as long as you don’t mind a few hills. Most of the shops, restaurants, and art galleries can be found along the main street so once we parked our car, it didn’t move until the next afternoon when we left town. Our hotel was in an old building (all buildings in Bisbee are old) but it was the nicest room we stayed in during our 2 ½ week road trip.

Between the historical buildings, street murals, galleries, and colorful town folks, there was a lot to see and photograph in Bisbee, including a few doors… in fact one of Bisbee’s slogans is Be Inspired. (I also saw a bumper sticker that read “Bisbee… like Mayberry on acid” but I’m going with Be Inspired).

A garage owned by someone who worships motorcycles, I guess.

Bisbee’s Cochise County Courthouse is a prime example of the Southwest regional variation of the Art Deco style.

A beautifully patinaed gate and stairs leading to an artist’s home, no doubt.

Bisbee is known for its Art Cars and we were happy to spot one close to our hotel. Nearby Douglas, Arizona has a entire museum dedicated to this artform.

This faux painting of a staircase was behind an actual door in an art gallery.

After many years of hearing about Bisbee’s rich history and thriving art scene, I was thrilled to finally see it for myself. It really is Bee-utiful!

Please check out Dan’s blog to see some more Thursday Doors… and maybe link a few of your own.

Roaming in Jerome

My husband and I had been looking forward to taking a road trip to Arizona to see friends and sightsee. Since the summer temperatures can get rather brutal, we put off our trip until November, when things cool down quite a bit. As a bonus, we got to experience an extra ten days of Daylight Saving Time, since most of Arizona doesn’t practice the crazy twice-a-year clock dance.

One of our favorite Arizona destinations is Jerome, an old mining town perched on a hillside at an elevation of about 5,200 feet. The 2-hour drive from Phoenix features winding roads and twisting hairpin turns which makes it a destination for motorcyclists – not our mode of travel but it looked like it could be fun.

In the 1920s Jerome was home to one of the world’s most lucrative copper mines but plummeting prices in the 1950s led to its downturn. Fortunately, in the 1960s, the town experienced a renaissance when hippies and artists – attracted by the open vistas and cheap real estate – moved in and began to open shops, galleries, and restaurants.

We love to wander the hilly streets, peruse the shops, and take in the views that stretch across the Verde Valley to Sedona’s red rocks and distant San Francisco mountains. In 1976, Jerome was designated a National Historic Landmark District so you won’t find a gas station or a Walmart there, just a funky blend of fine art and steam punk, saloons and restaurants, old hippies and older buildings… and ghosts (although we didn’t see any of those while there).

The setting sun lighting up the distant hills.

Jerome can also be an avid picture-taker’s paradise and I found a lot that captured my attention.

I was taking a picture of this:

A mysterious gate to nowhere, locked with a lion’s head padlock.

When a man stepping out of his truck said that I might be interested in taking a picture of the doors located behind a locked gate:

The owner of the building is a big fan of Greek mythology and snakes.

It turns out that man was the artist and craftsman of both that door and this one:

The artist talking to my husband about his work.

He invited us into his woodshop and treated us to a personal tour of the historic building it is located in.

Our hotel once served as Jerome’s hospital from the 1920s thru the 1950s:

Unfortunately, the Asylum Restaurant was closed the day we were there… but I hear it is crazy good.

The original Otis elevator still services all five levels of the hotel.

Some more openings around Jerome that caught my attention:

At first it appeared there wasn’t anything behind the gate…

Who knows what these old doors used to open into… a bordello perhaps.

I hope you enjoyed a short tour of Jerome, Arizona. It’s definitely worth a stop if you are in the area.

Please check out Dan’s blog to see some more Thursday Doors… and maybe link a few of your own.

The Textures of Life

When I saw the theme for Terri’s Sunday Stills photo challenge this week, I knew that I wanted to participate. Textures are among my favorite things to photograph. While others are capturing a sweeping landscape, I’m often focused on the peeling bark of a tree or a vine climbing up a weathered wall.

Textures, of course, are everywhere. Whether smooth or rough, puffy or flat, texture is the tactile quality of the surface of an object. We all know the comfort of a soft blanket and the coarseness of sandpaper but even if we can’t actually touch the object with our hands, we can often imagine what our fingers would feel if they could.

I had a hard time deciding which images to share for this challenge. Just like textures are everywhere in our world, they are everywhere in the two-dimensional world of photography. My final choices fell into one of two categories: close-ups of textures found in nature and contrasting textures.

To see all the images, click through all four slide shows.

Natural Textures

Contrasting Textures

(The last picture of the red door was taken by my husband in Oaxaca. All others are mine.)

Head on over to Second Wind Leisure Perspectives to see more interpretations of Texture and link images of your own.

Stepping Out In Santa Barbara

Last week, my husband and I drove a couple of hundred miles up the California coast to the seaside city of Santa Barbara. We were looking forward to spending a few days exploring the area and celebrating our 20^th wedding anniversary. Other than having booked a B&B for three nights and making dinner reservations for our anniversary, we had no specific plans… just like we like it.

Santa Barbara is very walkable and, once we parked our car at the Inn, it sat there until we headed home. Just about everywhere we walked, the city’s beautiful architecture – ubiquitous red-tile clay roofs, whitewashed walls, ornamental iron work, and colorful tiles – reminded us of our recent trip to Spain. Although Santa Barbara’s Spanish roots can be traced back to 1542, it was after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake reduced much of the city to rubble in 1925, that Santa Barbara was mostly rebuilt in a unified Spanish Colonial Revival style.

(To see the pictures of beautiful Santa Barbara, make sure you scroll through each slideshow.)

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse is one of the most beautiful public buildings I’ve ever seen. Completed in 1929, the courthouse features elaborate hand-painted murals, wrought-iron chandeliers, and a clock tower that offers panoramic views of the city, bookmarked by the nearby mountains and ocean.

A more modern twist to the city’s architecture was introduced by Jeff Shelton, a local architect whose buildings playfully reinterpret the traditional Spanish Colonial design style. Lucky for us, he created a self-guided walking tour that took us by eight of his most noteworthy buildings, all located in a 10-block area of the downtown core.

Cheers to 20 years!

Now, head on over to No Facilities to see Dan’s Thursday Doors and links to others.

Orange you glad it’s almost fall?

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself… but, with this week’s Sunday Stills theme being orange/gold, the advent of fall comes to mind.

Although we don’t get the volume of spectacular autumn leaves here in Southern California, we do see changes here and there as one season morphs into the next.

I’m not sure what type of tree this is, but it puts on quite a show every autumn.

Our neighbor’s huge Liquid Amber tree is a stunner as its leaves turn orange and gold.

And, what we lack in deciduous trees, we more than make up in succulents, native plants, and glorious flowers that give us color year-round.

Many types of Cycads are becoming extinct in the wild. Fortunately, they are fairly common in drought-tolerant Southern California landscapes.

Cycads thrived in the Mesozoic era (65 to 230 million years ago). They were believed to be a main food source for herbivorous dinosaurs.

The orange blooms of the Aloe arborescens contrasts against the bright blue sky.

It’s easy to see why Euphorbia tirucalli is also called ‘Sticks on Fire’.

A golden bee harvesting pollen from an orange and yellow sunflower.

Fall is also the beginning of sunset season as wind patterns and the sun’s angle combine to create spectacular orange, pink and purple displays among the clouds. I’m looking forward to filling my camera with pictures of Mother Nature’s glorious artwork.

Category: Photography