A Rosy Sunset in Chicago

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Location Taken: Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: February 2008

I found this photo while looking for a good sunset photo for yesterday, but decided this one crossed over my arbitrary quality line for my “Best” category.

Since my post-Thanksgiving plans involve lots of board games with the family, and Mom’s getting out Apples to Apples at this very second, I shall keep this short.

This is taken from the same place as the photo yesterday, but the zoom is different, so it shows more of the city.

Hmm… Which card is more “Friendly”? Custer’s Last Stand, Death Valley, Berlin in 1945, or Dark Alleys… Hmmm….

Dark Alleys, obviously! The people you find there really want to meet you! It’s perfect!

  

A Simple Chicago Sunset

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Location Taken: Chicago, Illinois
Time Taken: January 2008

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and I’m still in a bit of a food coma. So have a sunset photo!

It’s a rather nice one, too!

I took this while living on the 17th floor of a building on the north side of Chicago. It was high enough up that you could actually see the horizon above the buildings. Which makes for lovely panoramas.

Especially when you add in an interesting mix of clouds adding in some pretty serious contrast.

Anyway, I think it’s time for more pie. And maybe some leftover turkey. Ooo, or that delicious stuffing…

  

A Bird that will have YOU for Thanksgiving Dinner

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Location Taken: National Zoo, Washington DC
Time Taken: March 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, at least to all Americans reading this. But for you people in other countries, feel free to go get a large bird and eat it today anyway.

Just don’t try to get a cassowary for dinner. It’s more likely to kill you than get killed itself.

If you ever laughed at the concept of dinosaurs having feathers, think again. It’s not chickens or sparrows you should be thinking of, but birds like this cassowary. Just look at those talons, and those sleek black feathers, and that hard crest of bone protecting its head. Oh, and don’t forget that look in its eye that’s sizing you up for dinner.

That bright blue is just to warn you not to mess with it.

  

A Splash of Color Admist the Black Stones

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Location Taken: Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho
Time Taken: June 2010

Every so often, you come across something that just reminds you how tenacious, how persistent, how vivacious life is.

Like these pretty flowers, growing along the edge of an asphalt road.

In the middle of a volcanic wasteland.

You see those black pebbles on the part that’s not the road? That’s not stones that fell off the edge of the asphalt. It’s the terrain the road’s built on. Craters of the Moon National Monument is full of lava flows and splatter cones and above all, cinder cones.

Cinder cones are mountains of ash and pebbles of the volcanic rocks. Most of which are on the black side in color. The ground is filled with those black stones, rising and falling in the gentle hills of the quickly collapsing cones. It is as barren a wasteland as you could imagine.

And yet, in that most unlikely of places, right next to yet another things usually antithetical to life, a road, there is a strip of colorful flowers.

Perhaps they grow here because the rise of the road blocks the wind from blowing away the seeds. Or perhaps it collects water from the air, scarce in this harsh landscape.

Whatever the case, here they grow, and they will not let anything keep them from growing in this tiny oasis of life.

  

The Littlest Horses, not Ponies, Horses.

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Location Taken: Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, Canada
Time Taken: July 2012

One of the joys of travel is the unexpected. The unusual things and events that you just happen across while passing through an area. Mind you, one of the horrors of travel is also the unexpected, so take that with a grain of salt.

In this case, it was horses. Miniature horses.

We were taking a side road through some of the back-country of Nova Scotia, both to see the Bay of Fundy better and to avoid a toll road. It was a lovely drive, through hilly but cultivated lands, with the occasional town. One of those towns was Parrsboro, and that day they were hosting a Miniature Horse Show, put on by the Miniature Horse Association of Nova Scotia.

So we stopped on the side of the road and watched for a minute or five. It seemed to mostly be little horses hooked up to little wagons being driven around a dirt field. Really. I found an eight minute long video of this particular event. I think there was a judge, too.

I don’t really get the appeal, though the horses were certainly adorable. But then, unlike most girls, I never had a horse-crazy stage of my life. To me, they’re nifty and historically important, but not something I obsess over in the least. I’ve never even particularly wanted to learn to ride, and that’s even growing up in an area where it’s pretty easy to find inexpensive riding lessons (Maryland is solidly horse country.)

Of course, I’ve never understood the appeal of dog shows either, and I DID have a dog-crazy phase. I guess it’s more the “show off the pretty animal” thing I don’t get.

Still, there’s always something solidly adorable about a small version of a critter. So I guess looking at the adorable things isn’t all bad…