Fort Washington State Park on a Perfect Autumn Day

Last Sunday, I took advantage of a perfect autumn day and made my way to Fort Washington State Park, which is just outside Philadelphia.  After passing by the park for a long time, I figured it was time to venture in and explore with my camera, and the weather last Sunday provided me that opportunity.  Since I had a few extra hours that day, I made my way in.

I parked near the bird watching platform and picked up one of the pocket sized park maps that are always provided at state parks.  The first thing I looked for was a trail along the Wissahickon Creek, which turned out to be easy to find by just following the map and find the creek.  I also liked the fact that it was macadam trail, which made it easier on my beat up sneakers.  While walking along, I got a few pictures of the wooded area surrounding the creek, two of which I posted here.  The other I took near the bird watching platform. 

I still need to explore more of the park, and get more shots, so I plan on heading back soon.  But for right now, I’ll just share what I was able to capture last Sunday.

A Few Spring Pictures

These pictures I posted here go about one to two months back, when the spring foliage was near its peak.  I took the first two along the Delaware River in Bristol, Pa., where I have gone and taken pictures frequently in the past.  I took these two pictures from two spots near each other on the walkway, pointing the camera in two different directions and playing with different color temperatures in Picasa.

I took the next shots at my workplace in Newtown, Pa., another favorite spot where I have taken and posted several pictures.  Although my position there is temporary, it has lasted for well over a year now, and I have been fortunate enough to watch the vegetation change through all four seasons.  Eight million Americans were displaced from their jobs in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, and I was one of them.  I have struggled with periods of unemployment since then, so I am grateful to have been at the same place long enough to watch the foliage change through all four seasons.  And most importantly, I like the work itself.

Memorial Day Parade and the Gateway to Summer 2013

The annual Memorial Day parade is generally the same every year, but it does only come once a year.  It’s also a kind of reunion day, since we live right on the parade route, and attract all the friends and relatives to our place for the parade and the backyard barbecue afterward.  All up and down our street, all the grown children come back and bring their children along.  It gives everyone something to look forward to, especially the kids.  And, of course, it kicks off the summer season.

This year, our parade caught the attention of Fox News, which dispatched a crew to the scene to cover it.  Our town holds some kind of record for the Memorial Day Parade, I think for consecutive years.  Of course, there were some years where bad weather forced the cancellation of the parade, but it has been running for a long time.  As far as I know, there has at least been a parade scheduled every year.  I didn’t notice any Fox reporters or equipment where I was at, except for a blimp which passed overhead.  It bore a likeness of SpongeBob on the side, or maybe it was supposed to be a smiling fish.  I have the photo posted here, which I took through the telephone wires above me.  I don’t know if that blimp belonged to Fox News, since I don’t think Nickelodeon is owned by Fox.  I did do a quick check on YouTube, but didn’t find any uploads of the Fox News feature.  I suppose it only lasted about a minute, with some quick snippets of a few bands and floats.  If there was anything in the parade I wanted to see featured, I would likely have missed it if I blinked my eye.

I included a few shots of some bands, including the Avalon String Band, which I believe is based in Center City or South Philadelphia and is probably a regular in the annual Mummer’s Parade on New Year’s Day.  There was also a bagpipe band, which I think was the Loch Ranoch Bagpipe Band, based somewhere in Upper Bucks County.  They make it every year.  By the time the emergency vehicles rolled by toward the end of the parade, I was out of power for the camera.  I had two sets of cheap dollar store batteries to use for this event, and I went through both of them before the parade ended, and saved what power I had left from the batteries to upload the photos.

Other than the emergency vehicles, I missed getting pictures of the Action Karate students, who stopped right in front of our house to give us a demonstration.  But as the parade was winding down, I was going back and forth between the front lawn and the backyard, where my brother was on the grill.  He has a way of timing his cooking so the first hot dogs are ready for the kids just as the tail end of the parade passes our house.  Everything then moved to the back.  The hours went by, and after everyone was gone, there was the cleaning.  Next morning, it was back to work and back to normal, except that summer had now unofficially begun.  There will be more things to look forward to, and more pictures to take.

After Sandy's Visit

Like many people, I was left housebound last Monday by Hurricane Sandy.  By Tuesday morning, the conditions had improved enough to walk around my neighborhood and survey the damage, although for me, like most people, there would be no work.  As I made my way around on foot, I saw pretty much what I had expected.  There were several fallen trees, and limbs were strewn everywhere.  One tree in particular fell across an alley that I usually walked through, and it was lying between two houses on either side of the alley.  It looks like it barely missed the house across the way from the property it formerly stood on.

In one way, however, we were fortunate.  Through it all, we never lost power, although our lights dimmed a few times.   We still had lights and heat, the important things, although our cable and internet service were knocked out for about a day.  Many of my neighbors were not so fortunate.  As soon as I walked out the door, the air was filled with the sound of generators humming.  The 7-11 and the shopping center nearby were also without power, and apparently much of the refrigerated and frozen food in stock had to be discarded.  One of the traffic signals nearby was out, with only portable stop signs to direct traffic. 

Walking past the golf course at the Middletown Country Club, I saw the downed tree that appears in this photo.  Fortunately, this tree was fairly small, and was nowhere near any property it could damage other than the ground.  It certainly wasn’t in anyone’s way, since no would be out golfing on that day.  But there may be more storms like this coming, and I’m hearing it may be the new normal.  Scientists are saying that global warming has changed the weather dynamics for good now, and we will be seeing more of this in the future.  I don’t know what kind of evidence is provided.  I haven’t really researched it.  I hope it’s not true, of course, but I do know there will be more storms from time to time, as there always were, along with the flooding and down trees they bring with them.  

A Day at the Grange Fair

Sheep

Sleeping Pigs

Alpacas

Tractor display

On this particular morning in mid-August, I woke up without any plans for the day, but that changed when I got a text from my brother.  He was going to the annual Middletown Grange Fair with his wife and son, and invited me to come along.  Farm animals are not plentiful in my area, so I jumped at the chance to go with them.  There actually was a time during my childhood when most of the area north of my home was farmland, but that changed with the development boom that hit in the 70s and 80s. Over a fairly short period of time, the acres of cornstalks and pumpkin patches that defined the countryside were transformed into housing developments and shopping centers.  Narrow country roads were widened, and bypasses were soon built to handle the volumes of new daily traffic that soon followed.  Small patches of farmland remained, but the rural to suburban metamorphosis was pulled off fairly quickly.  That is one of the reasons why I was quick to grab my camera go with them.

The grange fair is usually held during the third week of August, in Wrightstown, Pa. and is similar to what I imagine the old county and state fairs were (and still are) like.  Once there, we moved quickly through the covered pavilions that served as temporary homes for the animals on display.  The first thing I noticed approaching the stalls was the noise.  I heard plenty of farm animals, such as cows mooing and roosters crowing.  Although I am quite familiar with those sounds, I only know them from hearing recordings and watching television.  I rarely ever come close enough to these animals to hear them live.  I heard them all, except for the pigs, which were all sleeping.  One other thing I noticed about the animals, especially about the pigs, was the smell.  That is something no audio or video recording could convey. Being around pigs would take some getting used to for me, and building a tolerance to their odor would take a while.  I also got to see the alpacas that were on display there.  I guess some farmers around here find use for these Andean camels, unless they came from a petting zoo.

We didn’t stay there too long, since my little nephew was starting to get antsy.  I would have liked to have stayed around to see a few more things, such as the pig races that were about to begin when we left.  But overall I’m glad simply to have made my way there, and that I brought my camera with me.  I guess if I could define the fair in a nutshell, I would say it’s a celebration of all things rural, and a reminder of the historical roots of this area.  And it is good to celebrate our rural heritage as it fades further back in the rearview mirror.

The Abbreviated Trip to Long Beach Island

This year I knew my annual trip to LBI would be different, since I don’t have PTO benefits where I work, and I had already taken some hours off here and there for my ongoing dental work.  I didn’t usually spend more than a few nights at the shore anyway, but even if I did spend the whole week there, it would be a small sacrifice when it comes to working.  This year’s trip to LBI was a day trip, which I didn’t mind.  I was glad to make the journey to the island, and I had taken day trips there before.

And as I wrote previously, I like the ride to and from the island almost as much as I like spending time at LBI itself.  Once I get past the Burlington and Mt. Holly areas in New Jersey, the rest of the trip is mostly woodlands.  After I get past the Four Mile Circle near Pemberton, the landscape becomes dominated by the famous Atlantic Pygmy Pines that this area of New Jersey is famous for.  It’s not a particularly long stretch, maybe 15-20 miles between the circle and Manahawkin, where route 72 meets the Garden State Parkway, and where the large development known as Ocean Acres is located.  As I make my way through Manahawkin, the road is once again surrounded by the houses and shopping centers that I am familiar with.

This year as I was approaching Manahawkin I noticed something different about the landscape.  It seemed that many of the pine and oak trees were bare and dying.  It may have been the result of the forest fires that are part of the nature cycle there, but to me the trees didn’t look burnt.  It looked to me like the trees were dying a natural death, like there was some kind of disease that had infested them.  I’m not a scientist and I don’t know much about these things, however.  I guess I’ll look up what happened, and see if I could find anything. 

Once I got to the island, I only visited a few places.  There are a lot of places I try to see every time I visit LBI, but this year my time was limited, and I just hit a few spots around Beach Haven, where we stay.  Of course, I wanted to see the ocean, which I captured in the above photo.  If I remember right, it was around 5 or 6 in the evening.  I had taken pictures from that spot before, around that same time in the late afternoon/early evening, but something looked different about the sky this time.  I guess it was the arrangement of the clouds hanging over the ocean.

After having dinner, it was time to leave and head back home.  I wanted to get at least most of the way home before darkness fell, but I was way behind.  The sun was setting behind the tree line across the bay as I was making my way up the main boulevard toward route 72 in Ship Bottom, which carries the only bridge connection to the mainland.  It was getting darker as I made my way through the Pine Barrens, and night had fallen by the time I reached the Four Mile Circle.  By the time I crossed the Burlington Bristol Bridge to Bucks County and got home, it was getting late.

Looking Back to Winter

Although we didn’t see much snow in my area this winter, the first snowfall actually came to us early, in October.  I thought that might have been a sign indicating that we were approaching a long, cold, and snowy winter, but it didn’t happen that way.  We only got a few light snowfalls, and none that I can remember accumulated more than two inches.  One of those rare occasions came in early February, and I was able to get out with my camera and capture it.  It happened overnight, and by rush hour, the sky was clear.  However, the snow was still on the ground, and I wanted to get out and take some pictures before the morning sun melted it all off.  I had a small window of opportunity to get out and make it happen, since I didn’t know if we would get another snowfall this season.

Snow may be difficult to drive through, but it has a way of making everything look nice.  Here, the light snowfall was just perfect for me.  I got out to the park without any real trouble, and most of the snow was still there.  In the meadow, it looks like the snow had already melted off of the trees in the distance.  In the wooded area, the sun had not gotten to the vegetation yet, so the snow cover was still on.  The snow on the cattails and reeds created something that resembled frosted mini-wheats. 

Now we are a week past Memorial Day, and the unofficial summer season is now on.  There are plenty of things I’ll look forward to doing during the next three months.  I’ll look forward to the fall, too, when the time comes.  But now, for no particular reason, I just wanted to post these pictures and take a look back at this past winter.  There are some things I like about the winter, as well, when that season comes around.