TBT--Niagara Falls Water Lily

How I spent my summer vacation--with nowhere else to go, I managed to get a lot of biz stuff done in a week, including queuing up some blog posts. Check back monthly for a Throwback Thursday feature!

Today's feature harkens back to June 2010 when I visited Souther Ontario for the first time. Mom and I stayed in London for a week while I went to a conference and visited Niagara Falls and Niagara-On-The-Lake on one of the free days.

We couldn't fly all that way without seeing Niagara Falls! It was so overcast, even for June, but that didn't stop the natural beauty of these water lilies from showing through the gloom.

New photos on Flickr

Back in August, my husband and I made our first ever trip to Saskatchewan. It's just three hours to the border from Calgary, but it felt like a long, long drive due to tall the wide open spaces. We had booked the trip in February and then wondered if we should still go in the midst of wildfire smoke and a horrible heat wave. But, I felt if we didn't go now, we would never make the trip to see our friends who left the big city for small town life in Shaunavon. Shaunavon is a charming little town that's actually the first big city you hit. It has all the essentials and lots of touristy spots like East End and Gull Lake are within a half hour driving distance. Due to the heat, nothing went quite as planned. I picked that weekend because there was a horse show in town, but for the life of us, we could not find the rodeo grounds. "Just a few miles out of town," we were told but we couldn't even find it on Google Maps. We enjoyed dinner at the boutique Harvest Eatery, enjoyed ice cream at the Frosty Treat and trekked out to East End to see Scotty the T-Rex. I still have more photos to share - stay tuned!

An Old Favourite!

Yeeesh, sometimes I forget this blog exists :-D Preparation for Christmas craft sales has kept me busy, plus I bought Adobe Lightroom last month. It's given my older photos a lot of new life and easy to use, plus it's surprisingly inexpensive - $149 for the perpetual licence.

 Here's one picture from our trip to California that I felt really lucky to capture because the line up was crazy. Don't go to Disneyland on a Saturday, folks! You can buy this image on cards and stickers from Zazzle.

Nanaimo, BC

My suitcase was barely unpacked from California when Mom and I were off to Nanaimo. Every year a group I belong to has its annual conference in a different Canadian city. Nanaimo is a small little city on Vancouver Island. Unfortunately, I was unusually rainy, cloudy and icy cold, even at the beginning of June. Maybe it was a blessing because I didn’t do a lot of picture taking. I'm still sorting out California! Here's one to get started at least. Nanaimo is a harbour city. The actual airport is 20km outside of town, so if you're brave, you can take a seaplane and be there a lot faster :)
Harbour, Nanaimo, British Columbia, a photo by Calzephyr on Flickr.

Somewhere New, Somewhere Blue

I'm back near an ocean! Will tell you all about it soon.

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San Francisco Cable Cars

It's amazing how you can know something without really knowing anything, and I sure learned a lot about San Francisco's cable cars on our trip. We had no idea that the cars needed to be manually rotated on a turntable whenever it reached a terminus. We couldn't pass up the chance to ride a piece of history and neither could dozens of other people. I hoped we could ride the red one...but four cars went by before we could hop on. They come in blue, white, burgandy and tan as well as red. You can catch them at any point in the city, but we got on at Hyde Pier, which is close to Fisherman's Wharf and other touristy areas. It took about 45 minutes in line to get on a cable car.

San Francisco Cable Car, a photo by Calzephyr on Flickr.

It was crazy fun! The cars travel about 9 MPH and make a lot of noise. Years ago San Francisco thought about even getting rid of them. I learned about their neat history and saw the cables on action at the Cable Car Museum where admission is free. It's also pretty loud, as that's where the cables are turning endlessly for most of the day. If there is one fact you must truly know, it's that the cars are not trolleys, because they do not use an overhead line. It's $6 to ride the cable cars one way; get a one day pass for $14 and hop on, hop off to your heart's delight!

San Francisco Cable Car, a photo by Calzephyr on Flickr.

Life's A Beach...

Especially in Venice Beach. My husband and I took off on an impulsive two week long trip to several points in California. It was a great time and you can bet I took my camera!

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