June 22 and 23: Visiting Dana

We visited with our friends Dana and Kathy at their home for two days. We had a great time and enjoyed their hospitality. The first evening we were treated to a boat ride on Elk Lake, where their home is located. While on the lake we spotted this merganzer with two of her babies riding on her back.

Ron enjoyed the ride.

The next day we were guided on a visit to a number of interesting photo sites by our hostess, a woman of great grace, as is clearly seen below:

June 10 to 22: Elderhostel

We both really enjoyed the 12-day Elderhostel at Leelanau, near Glen Arbor, Michigan, focusing on landscape and macro photography in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Our leaders Doug Moore and Dan Hayes really kept us marching along with early morning field trips some days (we got up at 4:30 a.m. and had breakfast in the field). Other days we enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in to 6:30 with the field trip starting after breakfast. In any event we were back in time for lunch. In the afternoons we processed our images and recovered from our early risings. In the evenings we showed seven of our images in our group critiques which were very interesting for us all. For the finale on the last Thursday we showed our twenty best and also enjoyed viewing the painting of the watercolor group that met at the same time.

Here are Joyce's twenty:

And here are Ron's twenty:

June 4 through 9: Going to Glen Arbor

The next few days we were mostly traveling to get to our Elderhostel on time. That didn't mean, however, that we didn't have time for some fun! Monday night we were in Chattanooga, Tuesday and Wednesday at Cumberland Falls, Thursday and Friday we were in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and Saturday we spent the night in Roscommon, Michigan.

We visited Cumberland Falls twice during our stay there. It is called the Niagara of the South.

On the way to and from the falls we observed an interesting farm building.

And this picturesque scene with hay in the field:

In Roscommon we visited the Neil Armstrong Space Museum. Here we have Ron in a mock-up of a space capsule:

Joyce was going a little crazy trapped in her space suit:

June 1 to 3: Callaway Gardens

We spent three nights in Pine Mountain, Georgia, so that we could visit Callaway Gardens. We visited both days that we were in town. Our favorite areas were the Day Butterfly Center and the Horticultural Center. Here are some butterflies images: