Today’s Theme

I’ve been sorting through the drive-by photos taken on Sunday, trying to find themes to use in blogposts.  Yesterday’s was the moon and today’s is religious buildings. 

Shooting toward the sun resulted in this silhouette of a church steeple…

I finally was able to get a clear shot of New Melleray Abbey…

Across the road from the Abbey is this church…

 

And, I happened to spy this country church off in the distance as we sped along… 

The area we were in is mostly Catholic, so I’m sure that’s what these churches are.  In our area many rural churches are Lutheran.  It all depends on who the early settlers were.

Hunter’s Moon

On our way home Sunday we made a turn to the north and the almost full Hunter’s Moon suddenly entered the background of photo opportunities… 

My husband was driving.  There was another passenger in the front with him which left me shooting photos to my heart’s content from the back seat.  This next scene reminds me of staring out the window at the shadow of our moving car when I was a kid…

Next is a rare sight nowadays---corn being harvested on the ear.  The farmer is using a New Idea Uni-System, which is what my husband used to use.  It was versatile machine---there were heads for chopping corn or harvesting it on the ear or as shelled corn… 

Here’s a cow having supper in a field of harvested cornstalks…

And lastly, here’s the shot I took right before taking the first photo in this post which was as we crossed a railroad track.  Those old glass insulators on the poles are another rare sight.

Barn Charm

Late Sunday afternoon we were on our way home from a visit to meet our new grandson.  The waning sunlight offered good opportunity for taking photos of subjects such as barns.  I like the color and clouds in the background sky of this scene, too.

Thanks for stopping by! 

CLICK HERE to go to Bluff Area Daily blog for this week’s Barn Charm.

Mississippi River

Here’s a few more photos taken near Lansing, Iowa, a little over a week ago on a very beautiful afternoon.  This first one is a zoomed shot taken from the shoreline of the Mighty Mississippi…

These next two were taken from up on Mt. Hosmer.  In this one, I was trying to zoom in on that group of yellow-gold trees over on the Wisconsin side…

And, this next view looks southeast across the backwaters and main channel.  Not long before taking these photos we had been driving on the highway that runs along the base of the bluffs over there on the Wisconsin side.  We saw many nice views of the river from over there, too, but didn’t stop for any picture-taking.

The valleys that reach inland from the river are called coulees.  Years ago in a high school English class, we read Main-Travelled Roads, a book of short stories by Hamlin Garland that took place in the coulees of southwest Wisconsin. 

Leaves on Screen

Here it is almost the end of October and I have so many photos from this month that haven’t yet been used on the blog.  Such as these two from a couple weeks ago.  It was a windy day and some leaves were pasted against the porch screen…

This second shot focused in reverse, but I still liked it…

We are pretty happy around here right now.  We have a new grandson, born yesterday!  I’m looking forward to seeing him in the near future.

Weekly Top Shot

This photo is very flawed, but I liked the colors in it.  I was trying to capture the spectacular reds and oranges of the sumac on the bluff below Mt. Hosmer park at Lansing, Iowa, last weekend.  I couldn’t get a shot that didn’t have those branches in the foreground, though. 

CLICK HERE to go to The View From Right Here for…

Skywatch

Taken last Saturday from the overlook at Pikes Peak State Park near McGregor, Iowa…

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CLICK HERE to go to Skywatch Friday to see photos from around the world.

Apples

The reason we went over to Wisconsin on Saturday was to go to an apple orchard near the town of Gays Mills.  There have been orchards in that area for many years.  When I was a kid, our family went there every fall.  We’d enjoy the free cider samples and then munch on apples, donuts, and cheese on the way home.           

Golden Delicious apples have always been one of my favorites.  I don’t care much for the ones sold in grocery stores, but the fresh ones right from the orchard are really good.  Same with the Red Delicious.  This year I bought some Jonagold, which is a mix of Jonathan and Golden Delicious, and they are very good, too.  The sign shows which apple varieties are currently on sale.  I think we missed the Honeycrisps---I was hoping to get some of those.  They had Honeycrisp cider, though, and it was delicious!

More Pikes Peak

After you park your car and start walking toward the overlooks at Pikes Peak State Park south of McGregor, Iowa, this is the sight that greets you.  When I was a kid I thought that distant view seen through the trees was the most amazing thing in the world!

Do you remember the explorers Marquette and Joliet from your grade school Social Studies classes?  Here’s some historical info about them…

This next photo shows the Wisconsin River meeting the Mississippi.  Over on that hill in the distance is a Wisconsin state park called Wyalusing.  It has an overlook of the river, too, and I hope to take pictures over there someday.

Pikes Peak

We stopped at Pikes Peak near McGregor, Iowa, last Saturday, too.  In the early afternoon light the colors were beautiful! 

These first two shots look north toward the Mississippi River bridge between Marquette, Iowa, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.  The one above was taken with the 70-200mm lens and the one below with the 18-55mm lens.

The oak trees and sumac were gorgeous…

 

There is double-decked overlook there.  My 2-1/2 year-old granddaughter had great fun running around all over the place.  She moves so fast!

 

The next post will have more photos from Pikes Peak, looking in the other direction.

Mt. Hosmer Overlook

Another stop we made on Saturday was at the Mt. Hosmer city park in Lansing, Iowa, which is situated high on a hill above the Mississippi River…    

The above photo looks in a southeasterly direction and the one below straight east over to the hills of Wisconsin…

I was surprised at how colorful the sumac still was.  The bluff below the park overlook was absolutely beautiful…

 

We had been in Wisconsin before arriving in Lansing.  As we crossed the bridge, I asked my daughter to take some photos.  (Difficult though it was, I didn’t take any shots from behind the wheel that day.)  Mt. Hosmer is at the top of the hill in the far right of this next photo…

Barn Charm

On Saturday, my daughter, granddaughter, and I went on a drive.  One of the places we stopped at was the Montauk historic site near Clermont.  I blogged about it a few weeks ago when my husband and I visited there.  This time I thought to take a picture of the barn located there…

Thanks for stopping by! 

CLICK HERE to go to Bluff Area Daily for this week’s Barn Charm.

Cross-Country Meet

Yesterday afternoon I attended my niece’s district cross-country meet.  It was held on the grounds of a school.  There was a flower garden in front and I couldn’t pass up taking a picture of these asters in their autumn glory…

In the next photo you can see the cross-country runners.  The course for girls is approximately 2-1/2 miles long and for the boys it is longer.  My own kids participated in cross-country, and I came to love the meets, one reason being that the spectators can get good exercise, too, hustling back and forth across the course to cheer the runners on.  It beats the heck out of sitting on bleachers, in my opinion!     

Also in the photo above is the plant where our milk gets trucked to.  From there it is transported in bigger trucks to another facility to be processed for sale as fluid milk.

Skywatch

The sky was so pretty last evening!  This shot is completely SOOC…

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CLICK HERE to visit Skywatch Friday to see photos from around the world.

Tiling

There’s tiling going on in a nearby field today…

Next is a closer look at the tiling machine.  It digs a trench and threads in the tubular plastic tile…

On the right in this next photo is the spool which holds the roll of tile…

 

If only there was sound with this next photo.  The tiling machine rumbles and roars as it works to pull the trencher through the ground…

Tile is put into the ground for drainage purposes.  I remember watching a tiling machine lay clay tile on our farm when I was a kid.  What a noise it made!  We still have a few clay tiles sitting on a junk pile…

I used to put them around tomato plants in the spring.

Drive-by Landscapes

I keep telling myself to quit keeping the blurry drive-by shots, but its just too much fun to crop out some of the sky and see how the landscapes then look.

The fuzzy-focused scenes resemble paintings, I think.

And, I like the varied graphics of the farm fields.  This one has had some fall tillage done already:

Guess I’ll keep on keeping these shots.

Drive-by Trees

There was still much autumn color to see on my recent drive:

This next shot was taken along the grounds of the monastery:

There were many oaks displaying their burnished fall beauty:

And, here’s a field full of trees that made a good photo op: