Colorful Sheds, Color my Life!

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Location Taken: Trout River, Newfoundland
Time Taken: July 2012

One of the odd features all over Newfoundland is the colorful buildings.  Heck, St. John’s is so packed with colorful row houses that you can buy “Jellybean Row” souveniers even all the way on the other side of the island.

Which, actually, is where this photo was taken.

Trout River is a small fishing town right by Gros Morne National Park on the western coast.  There’s actually a lot of small towns in amongst the park, in chunks cut out of the park border.  They were there first, after all, and they do provide a good place for visitors to shop and get food.  Both of which we did here.

There’s a small general store right by the beach, Hans’ Confectionary.  Didn’t have too much of the sweets and pastries I think of when I hear “Confectionary”, but they were well stocked with just about everything else that could fit.  Groceries, lottery tickets, beer, gloves, hardware, lightbulbs, bedsheets, just about everything you’d truly need in life.  All packed into a 15’x50′ (or so) building.  It was awesome!

Dinner was awesome too, at the aptly named Seaside Restaurant.  The fish was so fresh I suspect it came off the boat I saw sailing in as we ordered.  And my goodness, does freshness make a difference for fish!  I tend not to care for cooked fish since it’s flavorless to me (except for a few species like catfish), but the small bits I snitched off of the other people’s meal were delicious.  Me, I’d ordered the shrimp, which were marvelous.

And we got a great view of these colorful little sheds on the far side of the harbor too.  Plus we got to watch the bands of clouds roll in and out, and even got a bit of a lovely sunset.

…You know, that’s probably why they can have such colorful siding on their buildings.  Most places, the sun bleaches the color to pastel before long.  It’s such a strong problem that you can’t even easily buy colorful siding.  But well, Newfoundland isn’t exactly known for sun.  It’s more along the lines of cloudy and rainy.

No wonder I want to move there.  Interesting buildings AND my kind of weather!

  

Lots of happy people, waiting to get happier.

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Location Taken: Maryland Renaissance Festival, Crownsville, MD
Time Taken: October 2010

I got the expected call that I’m rehired for working at the Renn Fest again. So let’s pull out a photo from the one time I took my camera in to work!

Well, this isn’t IN the Renn Fest. It’s just outside it. This is the front gate, and the large crowd of people gathered around it, waiting for the festivities to begin.

I get to the Renn Fest about 10-15 minutes before they open at 10 AM. Other people have to get there hours earlier to set up, but since I’m working for the well-organized food people, and I’m on a cart to boot, all I need to do is check in, grab my till and the ices, and head on out. Takes less than 5 minutes, and I’m in place before the cannon sounds.

Yes, the cannon. They fire cannons to mark the beginning and end of the day. It’s actually rather nifty to watch. Which I frequently do, since one of the places they set up the end-day cannons is by the Royal Stage, right by my cart. It’s especially nifty at the end of the season, when it’s dark by the time we close, since the people guarding the cannon bring lanterns, and the flash of the blank going off is nice and dramatic.

It’s no wonder hundreds of people come even before the gates open. Many of these people are dressed up in full garb, and likely will stay the whole day, watching the shows, buying nifty things, or just spending the whole day singing along with various groups at the White Hart Tavern. Others just have a few hours, and are the type for whom 10 in the morning isn’t early. And if you get there early, parking’s easy. You’ll get a nice close spot, and if you have to leave in a few hours, you’ll get out just fine.

Mind you, that’s not always the case. I’ve been stuck for over an hour waiting for people to leave on the busiest days. Well, the busiest days when the main parking lot is over filled because we employees had to park there too. We’ve got our own parking lot, but it’s prone to flooding so they have to close it when it’s rained too much the night before. It was one of those days when I took this picture, actually, since that’s the only time I walk in past the front gate. There’s a faster way through the employee-only areas from the employee lot. Though it does involve walking past the elephant tent, and the stinky piles of elephant droppings…

  

Fireweed, glowing brightly in the morning light.

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Location Taken: Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, CA
Time Taken: July 2012

There’s a very lovely flower that shows up all across Newfoundland, called Fireweed.

Well, I suppose not all across Newfoundland. But it was in a very large amount of the area I saw. That’s because it grows best in disturbed ground, such as on the sides of roads and especially where forest fires go through.

There are about 170 fires in Newfoundland and Labrador yearly, most of which are caused by human error rather than lightning (there are actually very few thunderstorms on Newfoundland, since the climate there is a bit too cold for the high temperature differential needed to get the clouds building). Most are rather tiny, and the forest fire fighters are well trained and do prescribed burns to clear out underbrush so the forests don’t go out of control.

Still, they do have some fires, and the fireweed loves it.

Actually, I saw a forest fire while I was in Newfoundland. It was a small one, but it was right off the Trans-Canada Highway right near Grand Falls-Windsor, one of the largest towns on the island. There were people parked on both sides of the road, watching the fire be fought.

The highlight was the plane. It’s one of those fire-fighting planes you see on the news, with the capacity and space to carry a large tank of water to dump on the fire. As we drove past, the plane came out of the east, swooped down, released a large splash of water, and then flew right over the road and our car! It was really nifty.

The fire was pretty much under control at that point, too.

I bet there will be a glorious crop of fireweed in that burned field next year.

  

On the Art of Not Getting Lost

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Location Taken: Baltimore, Maryland
Time Taken: May 2012

I take very odd photos of cities. Street corners, stoplights, highways, stuff like that.

Maybe it’d be easier if I actually stopped in the cities rather than just drive through them…

Nah, couldn’t be.

This particular photo was somewhere in Baltimore, as my family worked our way from the south side of the city to the north via small city streets. It was Memorial Day weekend, and the highways were packed.

You see, my Mom has a thing about traffic jams. She hates them. With a passion. Enough that she’d rather get off at the first opportunity and jump onto the small roads that aren’t packed full. Even if we’ve never been on them before, even if they end up taking twice as long as just sitting through the jam would have.

It can be a real adventure in navigation.

We don’t have a GPS, you see.

We don’t need one, really. We have a stack of maps instead. And my Mom, my Dad, and I are really good at not getting lost. We can learn a route just by traveling it once, and can memorize a route on a map within seconds. I’m the best of the three, since both my art skills and my training in geography and geology apply just fine to the art of not getting lost. I have quite literally been called a “Living GPS” before, with the added benefit of being smart enough to say “this way isn’t right, let’s not drive into that swamp”.

A lot of my ability comes from spot memorization. I’m constantly paying attention to the world around me, and I can memorize an area and store it in long term memory very easily. Some of that comes from my art training, some of it from natural talents I built my art skills off of. I’ve gotten to the point where I can recognize a building I’ve passed by maybe three times before – from a completely different angle than I’ve ever seen it before. And it sticks, too. I could, at this very moment, hop in a car and go visit my sister without ever having to look at a map – and she lives in Seattle, some two thousand miles plus from where I am. And she’s moved since the last time I visited, too. But I looked up where she lives now, so I’m good.

I keep forgetting that people can get lost. It’s just one of those things very alien to my nature. To me, knowing where you are at all times is natural, like knowing that that person with those physical characteristics and that personality is your mother. It just boggles my mind that people pay so very little attention to their surroundings that they can’t even back-trace where they’ve been.

Admittedly, I am used to other people getting lost. You may notice my sister didn’t make the list of people who share my ability to not get lost. She doesn’t pay as much attention, and while she is good at navigation and is better at not getting lost than the average person, she still does get lost on occasion. Usually that’s when she pulls out her phone and calls home, asking me to help her get un-lost. And I do, quicker and easier than any of her local friends could. Despite living thousands of miles away and having only spent about two weeks at most in the state she lives in.

It’s one of my strongest natural abilities. Now if only it was one I could make a living on. But GPS has made it less important, so well, I can’t. Ah well.

  

Did you know tiny dark clouds are normal clouds in the shadow of other clouds?

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Location Taken: Saskatchewan, Canada
Time Taken: June 2010

I love cloud watching. Especially storm watching. So many beautiful shapes and dynamic lighting conditions. Well, except when there are too many clouds and it’s kinda gray all over.

I also don’t like when there aren’t any clouds. Blue skies are boring.

Give me a dynamic skyscape any day, with layers and tall clouds and dark clouds.