The Hour of Homecoming - Part Two

You can read Part One of this post here.

It was easy getting in the car, it was fairly easy to drive now that windows were scraped free of ice, the hard part was deciding where to go. The abandoned, rural farmsteads of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore that I always photographed where too far away to reach before the golden hour had come and gone.

I pulled out of the driveway, which way to go? I knew the way to the main road, but where might these other roads, roads that had their own ridge lines to follow, where did they lead? I knew I would be wasting precious golden hour time, but curiosity won out, and it's a peninsula, I wasn't going to get lost. Also, I had a whole week ahead of me, I didn't need to conquer everything in one day. All I needed to do was get one decent shot, and the pressure to create would be lifted.

Just as I suspected, all these random roads still led to the main road, and probably quicker than if I had taken my known way to it. Getting my bearings, I realized I wasn't more than fifteen minutes from the lighthouse that was at the northern tip of the peninsula. I never get to the lighthouse for golden hour, it is too far from where we usually stay, and to leave before dawn creates risk of a car/deer encounter, deer seem to be abundant on the peninsula.

So the lighthouse it was, and since it was still off-season, there wouldn't be any campers at the state park yet, meaning I would have the place to myself.  I had brought my tripod with me, just as I do on every trip north, but this time I was determined to actually take it out of the car. Self-portrait work can only be achieved with a tripod, and I was on a vacation of adventure and discovery.

Family collaborative vacation film - Day 2. Part of this was shot at the lighthouse in the evening...


Day Two - Leelanau Vacation from Sarah Huizenga on Vimeo.

End Note

This vacation has made me dig deeper into this place and my relationship to it. I have decided to take from my bookshelf an old e-course that I took in 2013 - A Sense of Place led by Kat Sloma. I have never completed the course, but I have all the materials. I am going to give it a try once again, maybe now is the right time...

I will be taking a short blog vacation. I need to put some time and energy into my website. Also the kitchen flooring will finally go in the end of this month, and I have some painting to finish before then, and there's fifteen yards of bark to spread outside...