Vacation Picture - show us where have you been

[admin]

The humming bird shot is great. That must have been taken with a very high shutter speed.

[AnotherJohnson]

According to the data from the original shot

Canon EOS 5DS R
EF300mm f4LIS USM
7 MP • 3228 × 2151 • 2.7 MB
IS02000
300mm 0ev f11
Adjust
JPEG
1/2000s

So 1/2000th of a second. It was hand held at f/11 and the camera was set at iso 2000. The lens was 300 mm with an optical image stabilization capability.

At that house my wife had a red and purple Salvia garden (one of their natural flower preferences) off the front porch. The birds were shy, so we generally observed them from front windows open onto the garden.

I decided to use an ambush approach to the shot. Before they were feeding, I got into position merging myself with a porch pillar to provide stability, and with drab clothing. With camera ready, I waited for one to approach a cluster of blooms. This fellow cooperated.

Their colors change depending on how the sunlight hits them.

If you’ve ever watched them feed, the males are as aggressive as African Cichlids in an aquarium. They buzz each other, collide with each other, and generally defend the food source for their own harem’s use.

[admin]

My wife is very into gardening and we have a lot of flowers in the summer time. Many humming birds come by. We love them. Amazing creatures.

Here is our backyard patio area showing some of her plants.

[AnotherJohnson]

The spider shot was taken on the back porch. On a tripod with a macro lens. That female had set up there, and I photographed her as she matured for about two months.

The deer under the snow covered cedars were there one morning to shelter from an unusual snow storm. That was in the backyard.

The double rainbow was across the road from the front porch.

Athena is at the Parthenon in Centennial Park in Nashville. I also have a series of photographs of that statue “in the white,” before it was painted.

The city scape of “The Batman Building” is from a fairly high floor of the Omni Hotel in Nashville.

The Cream City sign is across from the Depot in Cookeville, TN. It gets illuminated occasionally. I caught it that night.

The snake was one of a pair who had grown fat on a diet of small rodents, birds, and mammals over several seasons. They were invaluable in the control of voles.

[AnotherJohnson]

My wife is very into gardening and we have a lot of flowers in the summer time. Many humming birds come by. We love them. Amazing creatures.

Here is our backyard patio area showing some of her plants.

Very pretty. In NH you have a pretty well defined and reliable climate zone. Here, not so much. Most winters are mild and so many plants that thrive above 20F thrive. But in the occasional year (like this one) where you have five days in a row of single digits or worse, much gets bitten hard. We lost quite a bit here at the new house. But my wife will get back to it as Spring begins soon.

[Big Dog RJ]

Nice pics AJ, just saw these now. Fantastic!

I've got a few from my daily travels but nothing quite like that. The usual roo's running around our hill sides in country VIC, Red King parrot and one baby Wombat crossing the road right in front of me! Silly dingbat nearly got run over.

The wifey & kiddo returned from Paris last week. No special shots other than the Eiffel tower. I told her to go and listen to those French ribbon panels, called Diptyque with the Jadis monoblocks but she said I was looney!

Hey! Would be great if we all met somewhere. Perhaps at Roberto's place in Costa Rica or you chaps head down unda, I'll roll the red carpet! Heading to the US would be a great trip down memory lane, especially for me. Chicago was my home for 8yrs. Certainly been a while since I left in 98.

Here are the pics btw, beautiful creatures.
Cheers, RJ

[AnotherJohnson]

Is that a wombat?

Love them both. Don’t let Wilson see the parrot or there will be another upgrade color called passionate parrot red.

[Wildcat]

Heading to the US would be a great trip down memory lane, especially for me. Chicago was my home for 8yrs. Certainly been a while since I left in 98.

Chicago has probably changed somewhat over the past 25 years, although downtown is still mostly unchanged except for some newer structures here and there. My last time through downtown Chicago was last year in June, when I made the five hour drive to Music Direct to trade in my old turntable and pick up the new one.

What has really shocked me is the growth out west. I last visited Denver and Colorado Springs around 1988, and didn't get back there until 2006. Then, in 2017 and except for The Dark Years of COVID, at least once a year since then. In 2006 the E470 toll road was mostly desolate, located on the fringe of Denver. Now there are clusters of houses upon houses, condos upon condos, etc. Colorado Springs was, as a friend described it to me a couple years ago, a "sleepy little hamlet" south of Denver. Now the two have almost blended together into one metro area. Same with Salt Lake City and Provo--the change from 1987 to 2017 was similarly shocking. I also don't remember Phoenix being that large either (last visit, 1987, with 2017 being the most recent).

I'm close by those areas at the moment, actually...I'll post photos once I'm back at the room later.

[Big Dog RJ]

Is that a wombat?

Love them both. Don’t let Wilson see the parrot or there will be another upgrade color called passionate parrot red.

Yes, that's in fact a baby Wombat, the fella was crossing the road right in front of my truck. The mum had already crossed... and was waiting for the silly bugger to get over but he wasn't budging, rather just stared at the lights. It was only when I got off the vehicle that he slowly wobbled along. This is just a kiddo, probably the size of a football. It's hard to tell from the photo and it was pitch black. The mum on the other hand, was nearly the size of mini Cooper! Solid mama! I also stopped at a fair distance as well, so as not to startle the both of them.

The Red King Parrot is interesting. This one's a male, it's the male that has the full red crest. Whereas, the female doesn't have the red crest, just green. This was perched on top of a customer's flower pot, so I was just a nose length away! Absolutely beautiful bird, amazing colours and just stunning when they fly. On that same day, I also fed a big Kookaburra a piece of meat from my hand. That was a religious experience, nothing quite like it. Couldn't take the photo though because the chap who owned the house said it would scare it off. It was perched on the railings that were the perimeter of his pool, so basically looking for a bite.

Cheers, RJ

[AnotherJohnson]

Is that a wombat?

Yes, that's in fact a baby Wombat, the fella was crossing the road right in front of my truck.

The size is what threw me off. The motorcycle dealership I worked for 50+ years ago secured the contract to import the Hodaka brand of small dirt bikes. Their top model at the time was the “Combat Wombat.” T-Shirts were printed up to show off those tenacious and tough critters. That little fella’s got some growing ahead of him.

I seem to remember from childhood that the kookaburra is a bird known for the laughing sound it can make. Australia is home to many things we don’t see in NA.

Thanks for sharing.

4ACA649D-6DC6-4024-A09B-D16686F6CCB7.jpeg (31.66 KiB) Viewed 21868 times

[Wildcat]

Well, fellas, as long as nothing catastrophic happens, Monday I head west to the start of another Lemons Rally on Thursday. My usual path is to leave the Mitten State as early as possible and get to Lincoln, Nebraskey where I usually get dinner with a friend of mine. That's about 11+ hours of driving. Tuesday is just over a 7 hour drive to Boulder, where I'll be pestering the gang at PS Audio for a bit, before heading to dinner. Wednesday I need to get to Casper, WY (only a few hours away), as the rally starts there Thursday morning. It's a loop through Idaho, Montana, and back to Wyoming across four days. I might go back down to Montrose CO for the national park nearby (Black Canyon of the Gunnison), stop in Manitou on the way back, and I'm stopping in Salina KS to visit an engineer pal who works at some mastering studio around the area. I might skip the Montrose part of the trip, though, as I have too much going on back home.

I'd planned to visit Moab UT prior to the rally but I've seen videos--it's still somewhat muddy there. I'll go back later after things have dried up.

[AnotherJohnson]

Cool!

Good luck … make some lemonade

[Wildcat]

A few rally friends are going (which I've met on prior rallies) so it'll be fun!

There's nothing like bonding with rally mates when you're helping them peel rally stickers off of a rental car that's due at the airport in less than an hour, in 30° weather...

[admin]

Very nice. Have a great time but be safe! We'll need a picture of the car.

[Wildcat]

Plenty of pictures! I'm taking one of the daily drivers since I have to stop at a few places work-related and possibly haul home a few large items we've looked at getting from Colorado. I still have to troubleshoot the microphone issue with the head unit or, if I can't, swap head units between cars (they are the same Pioneer model). I won't have much of a livery this time out (unless I drag along the laptop and the vinyl cutter, and half a dozen rolls of vinyl), but will have a lot of scenery to post. I never get in this to win it, otherwise I'd have an older car held together with duct tape and baling wire, and/or painted/decorated in some unusual way.

I may do something with the oldest car in the driveway for the rally in early August, as it starts downtown here and I don't have to worry about 2,400 miles of travel to/from the rally.

We post all checkpoints on Instagram so the rallymaster can tabulate the points. My mess is posted here:
https://www.instagram.com/thehooptiegarage/. All the rally posts can be found with #LemonsRally #RockyMountainBreakdown . I've seen some of the cars that will be joining us already. Should be fun!

[admin]

Cool pictures. Such beautiful sites to see around the country.

[Wildcat]

We're circling from Casper WY to Idaho Falls ID, Missoula MT, Bozeman MT and back to Casper. I often post checkpoints from the road, but will sometimes catch up at night. Except for the last day, since the rallymaster has to tabulate all of our points and it's a lot of work to have a bunch of posts flooding in at the last minute.

At least three rally teams from other rallies are coming up who I already know. One couple I think is driving up from Florida in a car they just revived not too long ago, vs. getting rentals like in the last two. Another couple lives in Butte so this is in their backyard. And Jim from Arizona has been working on an old Mercedes that he's bringing up. A fourth team who drove a Suzuki Every (a 660cc kei van from Japan, right-hand drive) is also taking part in a different kei car this time.

[admin]

Just got back from a trip to Portugal. Absolutely beautiful country. Amazing nature, friendly people, great architecture and a rich history. This picture is from the Southern coast.

[Wildcat]

I'll have to drop in a couple of photos from recent road trips. We just got back from North Carolina (Wilmington area, with overnights in Winston-Salem to/from) on Saturday. We leave for Colorado on July 22--we're driving out, but my better half is flying home. I'm usually the luggage mule on these trips.

My youngest wants to go rockhounding out west, maybe in September. So we're looking at places we can explore. She has enough time saved up for a week off of work, so we may do a trip where she flies to/from and I drive out with the luggage and whatever else I need.

I enjoyed the rally but that may be my last one for the year. I'm not feeling the Rust Belt Ramble (which starts 20 minutes from my house), and really don't want to put out more $$ to do Boston and Bangor (Fall Failiage Rally). There is a rally starting in a day or two up in Alaska (the Alaska I-Threw-A-Rod Rally) but there was no way I could do that--it would be five or six days of driving to get there, the same to get back, and the rally is five days.

[Big Dog RJ]

G'day maties, hope all is well at your ends...

Apart from the usual high-end nonsense and all those wonderful tunes... thought I'd post this pic. Pops at 90! Still going strong, although no more Apogee Diva's nor Infinity's in the background...or the huge Thresholds...Just us.
He won't get another chance to fly long haul... so Aus is out. The trip in 2019 down unda was his last. Since then to and from Bangkok to spend time with my bro has been manageable but finds it difficult now. It's a slower pace...
I truly miss him and it was very hard to leave him back in cmb but I guess like pops would always say "we part to meet and we meet to part." Uh.

Cheers to our pops! And mum's, we owe them an awful lot!
Bless, RJ