Fall Colors in Wisconsin

It's that time of year again. The bright yellows are everywhere, the shimmering orange and every so often those brilliant reds that demarcate the season. Now where was it so obvious as on my recent trip to Wisconsin! Just look at the way the colors combine together to give one chills down one's spine!

Luckily there is another show going on to take a look at while one is stopped for seasonal road work. The leaves were at their peak of color as I drove home from my Film and History conference.

 

I stopped at a rest stop that promised a scenic overlook. It was a location famous in the past for its abundance of passenger pigeons.

The sign promised an overlook, but it turned out not to be obvious where exactly that was. Then I noticed a little trail that led up a hill and through the woods. There were some absolutely gorgeous spots along the way.

 

I followed the path and it kept curving and leading upwards.

Some of the colors were as rich as I saw the whole trip.

 

 

Eventually the path led to a board walk, but it still continued upward.

And on I climbed

 

Luckily the journey is as important as the goal. When I arrived at the top, I discovered that the trees had grown up around the look out and so it was hard to tell there was an overlook. By standing on a bench on my toe tips and zooming the lens between two of the overgrown trees, I was able to snap this picture.

The roadside had even more beautiful colors.

 

Going around a curve you could look off in the distance and see colors across the huge panorama.

It was pretty amazing!

Even so, what made my heart skip a beat wasn't the colorful trees...

It was the capitol building in St. Paul that meant I was getting close to home!

Events of the Week

Here are a few mostly random photos. Here is the state of the knitting. (The back is coming along - I'm close to adding on stitches again at the neck for the other half of the back (and front).)

Aimee got spayed. I'm so sad. She'll never have puppies. She looked sweet and quiet like this for about two hours and even though she is supposed to be strictly quiet and not jump around, she has been rambunctious and happy ever since. (You'd never know she had half her insides ripped out!)

We had a huge storm today and lost half of a tree that came down in our back yard. The photo doesn't really give the real sense of the  destruction, but it missed our house and everything else, so we are happy.

Coloring ChrisB's Roots

Some time back (June 2nd actually) Chris B issued a challenge to her readers in general and me in particular and because I had just gotten back from our trip to Texas, I had somehow missed the throwing of the gauntlet. Under most circumstances, this would be a good thing - but under any circumstances it smacks (haha) of rudeness to be addressed and refuse a polite answer, SO after a gentle nudge I am doing the gentle(wo)manly thing and responding.

The challenge is as follows:

Take Chris B's picture of this fallen tree and turn it to an even more spectacular image using photoshop elements or whatever.

Here is the image (It is slightly truncated because her image was too large for my dial up modem to capture. You can see the original image and challenge HERE ).





I'll warn you, this one is harder than it looks because of the complexity of the image. I will post a couple of weak attempts today and then there will be Fun Monday and then I will turn my efforts to this more seriously during the course of the week.

Failure Number 1:



And here is Failure Number 2




The difficulty I see with this image is that it needs a stronger focal point - so I am going to have to cogitate on this a bit (Hear that, Mindy?) and will get back to the physical after a bit of the cerebral. I'm sure at least a couple of my readers will be willing to give this a try!!