Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: chain

(+8 insets) (cool at full size!) (Please scroll down to "Today's Image" for photo info) Back to a Favorite Park! From Harris Beach State Park, we drove up the coast for 2.5 hours and landed in William Tugman State Park, hooray! It was so nice to be back at this lovely place again. Our stay would only be for seven days but we'd be back in a couple of months for another five days, so we were very content. Also, there's a big difference if you've been to a place before. Fewer days is acceptable because you've already become familiar with it. I wrote about our stay here back in April with two different posts which you'll see as inset pictures. Please take a look for more pictures and some fun stories about our trip! I'm also posting a picture of our trip map so you can see where we went! Current News: We Got Our Moderna Boosters! We've been keeping an eye on vaccinations with the hopes we could get our boosters soon. We got our first shot in April--just two days after becoming available--and the follow-up in May. Just like before, the boosters were first granted to those in most need. But unlike the months it took to wait for our initial shots, it was only a couple of weeks before the gates were lowered for everyone to get their boosters. We'd wondered about that because Moderna was a bit behind the others for getting the go-ahead but in the end it was no problem! Instead of making an appointment, we decided to go to our local fairgrounds where they have a drive-through clinic. We imagined it would be a 20-minute affair…drive up, get our shots, wait for 15 minutes to make sure we didn't explode, and then off to continue our day. We're such silly rabbits! There was quite a long line when we pulled into the queue, and it moved very slowly. We spent over an hour slowly creeping forward in line but it went by quickly. The folks there prepared everyone beforehand by handing us forms to fill out and checked identification, etc. And of course we had our phones with us to amuse ourselves with on the internet. Before we knew it, we pulled up to the clinic and got our shots…YAY! What a relief. It's no guarantee, of course. Plenty of you here have confirmed this with your stories of getting Covid despite full vaccination. But it does make a difference, and even if one is unfortunate enough to get the virus anyway, the symptoms will usually be much milder. With this new variant we were bouncing up and down with our desire to get our booster. Since the numbers of infected began rising again, we reverted to our most careful habits of masking up and disinfecting. It's such a bummer though, and I'll admit that I'm feeling a lot of anxiety about the future. I have a difficult time refraining from my mental chess games but there isn't anything more we can do so I'm Today's Picture There is a gate into William Tugman State Park which I've never seen closed, but every single time I've walked past it, I wanted to take pictures with my macro lens. You can see why…what's not to love about a rusty, dangling chain, padlock, and the edge of a fence with an interesting gate closure?! I was so happy when I finally got out there with my camera. The moody images were such fun to mull over! Today's Insets Insets 1 and 2 are clickable and will bring you to the posts I added back in April when we began our trip. You'll find more images and lots of information about our stay! Inset 3 is our trip map so you can see where we went! Inset 4: There's a beautiful grassy meadow which looks out onto Eel Lake with a path that leads through it from the campground down to the dock, boat launch, and to the trails that I love so much. Walking through the meadow, there are always American Robins there, hunting for tasty tidbits and I love to watch them as they charge around and stop to turn their heads and listen for movement to jump on! Inset 5: I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a perfect family of geese and goslings! I was lucky enough to get bunches of pictures and this is one of them! (there are others if you click on the first inset picture) Inset 6: While I was watching the robins one day, I spotted this couple walking their old Great Dane across the meadow. They were so sweet. I would later encounter the fellow and his dog on the short nature trail and pointed out some mushrooms to him, something that totally enchanted him! :) Inset 7: Have you ever seen shelf fungus that looked like this? The shapes are so interesting! Inset 8: I am always fascinated by the dew that you can find on fungus, and learned that it's an excretion that happens with the fluctuation of temperature from evening to morning! Thank You For Stopping By! I hope you guys are all getting your boosters too. Please stay safe and don't take chances--the consequences are unthinkable! I hold all of you close to my heart and we've had some tragedies in our community and some other close calls too. Let's do what we can to keep this virus at a distance! Explored on 12/03/21; highest placement #1.

(+ 9 insets) Trip Talk: No candid people photography this trip! We chose to just enjoy wandering around... When I thought about visiting Victoria, I hoped to work on my skills of candid people pictures. However, I have to be in the right mood for this sort of sneaky photography and as it turned out, I just didn't feel like it. Any time a camera is aimed in the direction of a person (even if the camera is down low and obscured), there's potential to be glared at or even aggressively approached. Steve and I just wanted to walk around without thinking about anything but enjoying the sights. It would turn out that during the entire trip, I never did feel like working on people-oriented street photography. Funny how it works out like that sometimes. A shame because I really do enjoy how these turn out but I'll have plenty of opportunities in the future. We love the modern, clean streets of Victoria and we also appreciated that most of the city's "must-see" destinations are all within a reasonable walking distance—it worked out to be about 5-7 miles to get from downtown to the harbor and then to the far side and back again. You also couldn't have asked for better weather. It was a lovely, sunny and warm day with the perfect breeze. Steve and I were so happy! Today's Pictures My main picture today celebrates Happy Fence Friday! This substantial metal post and rusty chain are doing their job to hold back the throngs of visitors to Victoria's beautiful harbor district. The boat you see is the MS Coho , an enormous passenger and vehicle-carrying ferry which travels back and forth between Victoria and Port Angeles, Washington (the boat we took from Anacortes to Sidney, north Victoria was the 1981 MS Chelan .) Steve and I were surprised to see that when this ferry left dock, it backed up a very long way so that it could tuck its back end into another wide channel and then turn around. We were both totally fascinated at the speed it went backwards and also how quickly it was able to turn around and head out. The rest of my second Victoria presentation includes more harbor images and some of the fun things I saw as we enjoyed this lovely day! Inset 1: The MS Coho, built and put into service in 1959, is shown here backing up in preparation to turn around and head back to Port Angeles, Washington. This ship typically makes the two-hour trip twice each way every day! Inset 2: As Steve and headed out to the water's edge at the Victoria harbor, I found this wonderful mural that shows a very similar scene to my main image the other day! Inset 3: I saw this mural on the side of a building near the harbor and did my best to get a good picture. I only noticed later that Robert Wyland himself had painted it in 1987, one of dozens of his "Whaling Walls" found around the world. (You can see Wyland's signature on the lower left of the mural) Inset 4: I just loved the awesome design of this artistic, creative bench! Inset 5: At one point we walked through a park where we found a shady bench to have a seat (not the one shown in Inset 5!). There we looked out on the bay and saw this pretty view. Inset 6: Seated at the park bench, we saw a group of Canada Geese floating through colorful reflections on the water. Inset 7: We also saw this huge orange tour boat, complete with tourists adorned in matching life jackets! Inset 8: On our walk we visited Victoria's wharf and I couldn't help taking a picture of the wonderful sign that welcomed everyone passing by. Inset 9: This gentleman was very busy selling his day's catch of crabs. We were surprised at the fair price (going rate: $25 per crab)--we figured they'd be offered at a ripoff for tourists. Pam, have you ever been on a big ferry like the one here? I am in total awe of these monster ships and it was just incredible to have our truck and RV on one, with so much room for dozens of other vehicles. Another thing that's fascinating is that even underway, there is very little motion detectable. Of course this would change if there was a storm but for the most part you hardly knew the boat was moving along at quite a fast clip! Well, I hope you are having a good day...my thoughts are with you! *BIG HUGS* from southern Oregon...oh, and I apologize for not including a note to you in my last post! I was in such a hurry to get the presentation together that it slipped my mind! UGH! :P Explored on 9/21/19; highest placement #8.