12.12.2015 – This Summer’s Algonquin Park Trip

I am definitely a little late getting these photos up on this blog. But, as the proverbial ‘they’ say, better late than never, right? This past August my daughter, her best friend, and her best friend’s dad, and I took our annual ‘pilgrimage’ to Algonquin Park in Ontario Canada. It’s always a highlight of the summer and I don’t think the season would feel right without getting up there at least once! For the first time we went to the very northern most part of the part and put-in on Kiosk Lake. We stayed our first night there on a really nice island site. The weather was spectacular the first day. The second day we paddled south over several portages and lakes and stayed two nights on Club Lake at the site of the abandoned Ritchie Brother’s Lumber Mill. The remnants of the camp and the equipment were to be found all over the campsite. It was very cool to explore. The weather wasn’t great the rest of the trip, so I didn’t get as many photos as I would have liked, but there are a handful! Here is what we saw while we were there…

A Special Tree – 07.03.2011

I definitely have an affinity for shooting cool looking trees. Especially ones that seem to stand alone in the middle of open land. Something about them appeals to my senses.

This tree, however, has a somewhat more interesting story. We were at North Park in Pittsburgh for a horse show a few weeks ago and early in the day I saw this tree and decided that when we had time later, I would take some photos of it. When the time came, and I took a closer look at this tree something somewhat odd showed itself. The tree was, at one time, some variety of apple tree. However, when I got up close to it (thankfully not TOO close), I found that it had been nearly completely overtaken by poison ivy. Every leaf that you see in this image is poison ivy. The main vine running up the tree was HUGE. It was no wonder then that the park maintenance crews have left the grass growing long underneath it! 🙂

Regardless of its obvious danger, it still made for a beautiful scene, and I’m always glad when an image also has a story behind it!