Simplicity

Coming home from a great vacation is always hard. You just don't understand how on vacation you were content with three pairs of pants and five tops that you mixed and matched throughout the week. But when you get home and see your closet full of clothes you feel overwhelmed, and that you have nothing to wear. You long for that small pine armoire at the rental house that wasn't even a third full with your clothes. Or, at least that's what I long for.

I always come home from vacations, specifically, vacations from northern Michigan with a resolve to declutter and only keep things that bring me joy. Yes, I have read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy by Marie Kondo a few times.

Usually though, by the end of the first week home from vacation, that resolve has flown out the window. There are too many things on the daily to-do list and not enough time to do even half of them. With winter just around the corner here in Michigan, time seems shorter than ever. There is yard work to be completed before the snow flies, and some other big projects that need to be finished by the beginning of December.

Still, I am going to try to do some decluttering. One of the big projects is painting and organizing my soon-to-be reclaimed studio aka small spare bedroom. It has been apple green and lilac purple for 14 years, it needs to be simply white. Then, maybe I will use the room for more than storage.  Also, we are making Mallory's old bedroom into a guest room, so when she and Fin sleep over they don't have to sleep on a mattress on the floor. The good thing is, with both of these rooms, decluttering will happen because it has to.

Enough about the drudgery of being home. I will take you on a quick tour of the perfect autumn in Northern Michigan.

The weather certainly ran the gamut while we were there. We had temperatures in the upper 70's to daytime temps. of only 39 degrees. We had bright sun, fog, moody gray skies, and even some white snow/rain stuff.

We spent our mornings hiking. We revisited some favorite trails, and took a chance on a couple new-to-us ones. One of which has become my new favorite.

Usually lunch was at quaint local places.

Afternoons were spent at a couple wineries savoring a glass of wine and enjoying the view.

We only shot with the big cameras one morning because hiking in the woods is much easier with a pocket-size camera. Plus, Glen loves Instagram.  He has complete control when he shoots with his phone. Although, I end up in way more photos and stories that I would like.

It is so hard to leave this place. Maybe a pine armoire with three pairs of pants and five tops is a pretty good life.

The Hour of Homecoming

From the moment we came over the rise, on the roller coaster road that is M-109, in the heart of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, I knew I was home. Above us stretched a bright blue sky, on each side of us were sun-bleached sand dunes with tufts of beach grass sprouting from them, and ahead of us sat the most photogenic weathered white barn I had ever seen.  I wasn't a photographer then, just a snapshot taker. I didn't know anything about good light or bad light, composition, POV, the golden hour, ISO; it would be another fifteen years before those words would enter my vocabulary. I just knew I had to get out and take a picture with my pocket-size Fuji film camera.

I have lived in Michigan all my fifty years, never living farther than twenty miles from my childhood home. Somehow though,  I knew that this "up north" place, three hours from where I grew up, was where my heart lived. For twenty-five years I have been trying to figure out what it is about this place, why it captivates me so. With each return, I dig a little deeper into it and into myself.

Our family of three opinionated adults and one sassy golden retriever, just returned from a week of vacation in this place of homecoming.

Vacations tend to fall into one of two camps for me. Either they are vacations of adventure, where I have to figure the place out, consult maps, make wrong turns, get yelled at. Or they are vacations of discovery, where the place is already understood and instead I have time and space to explore who I am in it.

We tend to stay in the same small area every time we go up north, either nestled on the edge of a small lake, or the edge of a golf course. This time, our daughter, one of the opinionated adults, convinced us to try someplace new, father north than we usually stay, located in the middle of farm country, open fields on every side, a step out of our comfort zone. This put me farther from the places that I always photograph, favorite places, another step out of comfort.

Having learned the importance of the "golden hour", I was up before the sun every morning. The sassy golden retriever, hearing the creak of the wooden floorboards, joined me. I would put on my winter coat, my warm paisley rain boots, secure my headlamp to my head, and open the back door to the frozen landscape. We would crunch through the refrozen snow, climb the rise to the west of the house, and wander along the ridge line. He would pretend to track wild animals until he finally did his business. Then, we would turn back toward the warm glow of the house so he could eat and return to bed with my daughter. I would make tea in the white mug I had claimed for the week, write in my journal, then gather my camera gear that was waiting by the door, and head out into the predawn light to scrape the ice from the windows of my car.

To be continued...

Part Two of this will be next week. I have too much I want to say for one post, and too many photographs I want to share. Until then here is a short film of our first day of vacation, you can get a good sense of the farmhouse and area around it.


Leelanau - April 21, 2018 from Sarah Huizenga on Vimeo.

Happiest Place on Earth

Photo Credit: Mallory Huizenga

It has been 2-1/2 years since we took a family vacation. We have been planning a vacation to the happiest place on earth for the last six months. The reservations were all made, the flights books, all of it paid for in full. Then a week before we were due to leave my mother had emergency heart surgery, and thoughts of a week in the sun flew out the window.

My sister-in-law encouraged us to hold off on canceling our trip until we saw how mom was doing. We set a deadline of Wednesday, three days before we were due to leave, to make our final decision. Thanks to amazing surgeons, hospital staff, my mom's feisty demeanor, and the grace of God, my mom made fast and steady improvement. We knew she would still either be in the hospital or the rehab facility while we were gone, so my dad wouldn't be dealing with her on his own at home. So with my dad's insistence, and my brother and sister-in-law's blessing we flew out early Saturday morning for our family vacation to Walt Disney World.

The last time we were at Disney was October of 2009, Mallory was still in high school then, now she is 24 and has been out of college for over two years. In 2009 the economy was not great, The Great Recession in full swing, more families were doing staycations then traveling. In 2017 Disney was different and we were different.

The economy has recovered well in those eight years. We saw many large family groups (all with matching Disney t-shirts) in every park we went to. In 2009 we could get off a ride, wait 15 minutes and get back on again, in 2017 we could get off a ride and wait two hours to get back on again. Thank goodness for fast passes.

Also we had to navigate Disney as three adults, not two parents and a child. It had its challenges but by the end of the week we had found a good rhythm.

At the end of most trips we always reflect on favorite things and things we would do differently, so here are some of those reflections:

Favorite Things:

Resort - Port Orleans Riverside
Our budget-friendly All-Star Resort days are long behind us. Since then we have tried a few different resorts, all wonderful in their own way and this trip was no different. This time we stayed at Port Orleans - Riverside. As an early morning walker, I love a good walking path and this resort had a great one along the river. We don't spend a lot of time at the resort, so pools and restaurants are not a big concern. BUT... the very best thing about this resort was the mattress. I have struggled with back problems my whole adult life, and traveling and sleeping in hotels can be a challenge. But this mattress was out of this world, every morning I woke up feeling well rested and had not a single ache or pain, even after walking 10-13 miles for the day and standing on concrete. I am on the hunt for this mattress for my own bed.

Attractions
Our family favorite is still the Safari in Animal Kingdom, we probably saw the most animals we have ever seen this trip.

Glen and Mallory loved Avatar the new ride in Animal Kingdom, that was their favorite. I am proud of myself that I did the ride, but I will stick with Soarin' as the gentler favorite of a screen/movement ride.

Classic favorites are Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, and It's A Small World.

Restaurants
We are a family who loves food, so restaurants and restaurant experiences make a difference to us.
Favorite - Artist Pointe at Wilderness Lodge. Great attention to Mallory's lactose sensitivity, wonderful service and the food...
Second Favorite - Biergarten in Germany at Epcot. Again, great attention to Mallory's sensitivity, great buffet and the experience of sitting with other families at our table, always a delight.

Things to do different:

Resort - Next time we would probably stay at Wilderness Lodge and possibly rent a cabin on the water, and spend more time at the resort.

Restaurants - Next time we would plan our restaurants to coincide with the park we are at for the day, makes it easier to stay for fireworks. Or if we stayed at the cabin on the water, we could cook some of our own meals.

Cruise - We would also consider doing a Disney Cruise next time, if there were grandchildren on the trip, but that is a ways away yet ;)

Highly Recommend:
Our Disney Travel Planner Lisa Koedyker - lisa.imallearsvacations@gmail.com
Lisa lives in my town, so I had the pleasure of meeting her in person, but she can help you with your trip no matter where you live. I left a lot in Lisa's hands and she was awesome, including having to work with our family emergency. I can't thank Lisa enough for everything.

We will be taking another family vacation next year and have already started working on it, but this one will be closer to home. The plan is to rent a cottage on a lake up north for a week, a cottage that is dog friendly so then Findley can come too. 

Scene & Story - May 2017

You would never know that less than four years ago this man had never picked up a dSLR before. And the first time he did, it was to humor me, I had an extra camera (shocking I know!), and he probably was tired of trying to find benches to sit on at decaying insane asylums, and sitting in the car on country backroads while I shot old barns and abandoned farmhouses.

He has gotten quite good for someone who shoots on a very part-time basis, although after every outing he says, "I'm sure they all suck". We need to work on the confidence thing some more.

I love this man for being willing to join me in my hobby/passion and being willing to take a vacation to the east coast just so I can go to a photography conference. If he had his way, we would be going to Glacier National Park every year and climb mountains. I promise we will go again, but there is so much to see in this great big world, and I want to keep seeing it together and through our cameras.

An InLinkz Link-up

Michigan to Massachusetts - The Highlights Reel

I am always hesitant to share my vacation photos here. I don't want to be that friend that invites you over for wine and cheese, and then locks you in a room with a big-screen television and makes you watch 500 unedited vacation photos. I am fresh out of cheese but enjoy the wine, here's the highlights reel...

Favorite City/Town

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada
First day of vacation and we took the "shortcut" through Canada and Niagara Falls to get to our hotel in Rochester, New York. It was late lunchtime, we were hungry and ready to get out of the car for a while. I remembered my friend Kay telling me to stop in Niagara-on-the-Lake on our way through if we had time. We had time. We had lunch, walked to the lake, discovered the most beautiful cemetery full of flowering trees on the way back to town, and found a parking ticket on our car when we got back. Nonetheless, Glen and I both want to spend more time here, we will just make sure we pay for our parking first next time.

Best Don't Give Up

Watkins Glen, New York
My readers that have been with me for a while will remember a couple of years ago I went to Pennsylvania in the autumn to meet a blogging friend, Andrea, who lives in New Jersey. We were to spend a week photographing the fall colors in the Tioga State Forest area. We had a great half week until she slipped on some wet leaves, fell and broke her leg, going back to New Jersey much sooner than expected. You can read that post here. The day after she broke her leg we were suppose to take a day trip up to Watkins Glen, NY only a little over an hour from where we were staying, obviously we did not go. I stayed close to our rental cottage instead that day, a little afraid to now be on my own. But I had really wanted to go to Watkins Glen to explore the picturesque state park there. A year and a half later, mission accomplished. My husband and I had an extra travel day to explore the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, and Watkins Glen fit wonderfully into the plan. So glad I did not give up my desire to explore this destination.

Favorite Brewery

Rooster Fish Brewing - Watkins Glen, NY
We stumbled upon this brewery late morning on a Sunday, not busy, great variety of craft beer, and amazing window light.

Best Stumble Upon...

Norman Rockwell Museum - Stockbridge, MA
Our vacations tend to always have a theme, this year's theme was Stumble Upon...
I like to have my hotels booked for each night, but I am content to let the days take care of themselves, this does not always work well for my "need to know where he's going" husband, but truly this is often how the best places are found. Such is the case of the Norman Rockwell Museum. It was raining and we had time to kill before ending the day in Boston, so we began looking at the exit attraction signs in the Berkshire area of Massachusetts. I saw a sign for the museum and said to my husband that I would really like to go there, so we did. Best stumble upon ever!
I have always loved Mr. Rockwell's work, but knew very little about him. To see all his covers of the Saturday Evening Post framed and lining three walls of a room was mind blowing, to see the progression of his work, the themes in his work, his consistent color palette, made the artist in me pondering my own work.  We left the museum with four books, a new bookmark for me, and camera rolls full of photos.

Best Conquering Fear Moment

Figuring out the subway in Boston. We live in West Michigan, I drive my car anywhere I want to go. You do not want to drive your car in Boston, you want to walk or take public transportation. We were staying in Cambridge, so a little ways from the city center, we had to figure out the subway to get where we wanted to go. The subway intimidated me, but for that reason I was determined to conquer it. Thankfully our T station was only a five minute walk from our hotel, and my friend Karen gave me the stations we would need to get off at to go where we wanted to go. We only got on one wrong train, but quickly figured it out and got on the right one to get back to our hotel. Fear conquered!

Best Boston Moment

Meeting my blogging friend Karen for coffee in real life. Karen works in the city, and thankfully it worked in her schedule to take part of a morning and meet me for coffee. I love these kind of moments - meeting old friends for the first time!

Craziest Day

Cape Cod, MA
We left Boston and drove to the very end of Cape Cod because I wanted to say I had been to Cape Cod, wanted The Cape Cod National Seashore stamp in my National Park Passport book, wanted to see the ocean, and wanted a lobster roll. We drove through Massachusetts to Providence, Rhode Island during rush hour traffic looking for a brewery, which we found, but could not find a place to park. Shortly after leaving Providence our car shed the inner wheel well liner on the front passenger side while driving on the busy highway, which my husband had to go retrieve from the side of the highway. During all of this the temperatures ranged from 82 to 99 degrees for the day, all so I could say I have been to the Cape and Rhode Island. My poor husband!

Favorite Botanic Garden

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

Tower Hill Botanic Garden - Boylston, MA
We had a free day before the start of the photography conference I was going to in Southbridge, MA, so my husband Googled nearby attractions and came across Tower Hill Botanic Garden. He said, "We always have good luck at botanic gardens." Who is this man? Amazing bounty of color at this garden, even if it was 85 degrees. I would love to go back on an overcast and much cooler day.

Favorite Footwear

For the last decade, other than my running shoes, my go-to footwear on vacation has been my Chaco sandals. But the past couple of years I have had problems with the straps on hot humid days rubbing on the tops of my feet and giving me blisters. That doesn't make walking the next day enjoyable.
I was searching for something stylish and comfortable, two words that never seem to go together in the footwear world. For once the ads that pop into my feed on Facebook actually held something valuable - a link to these shoes - Taos Moc Star shoes. Perfect for wide feet, have amazing arch support and come in fun colors. Other than the two full days in Boston I wore these shoes all the time. They are the most fabulous shoes.

Favorite Restaurant

Cedar Street Grille - Sturbridge, MA

We ate a lot of places while on vacation, but this was the best. A wide variety of small plate options, each one we tried was awesome, but we highly recommend the lamb meatballs, cod sliders, mac and cheese with pulled bbq pork, although all the mac and cheeses sounded wonderful, and the grass fed beef sliders. Of course pair this with a bottle of local wine. We loved the place so much we returned for a second night. Recommend making reservations!

Favorite Wineries

Taylor Brooke Winery - Woodstock, CT

Give us a free afternoon on vacation and the first thing we will do is Google nearby breweries and wineries. It's not that we have to drink, it is because a winery or brewery done right is one of the best vacation experiences. By done right I mean we want you to take your time, tell us about your winery, tell us what wines are your award winners, and for me you get five stars if you have a wine dog. We will sample the maximum amount of samples and stay to enjoy a glass on the patio. Taylor Brooke got five stars.

Sharpe Hill Winery - Pomfret, CT

Sharpe Hill also gets five stars. A lovely garden setting and your wine samples are brought to you by sweet servers like Amanda. Amanda gets five stars just for putting up with my husband's questions, and being willing to pose for a picture for his new obsession - Instagram. The only thing this place was missing was the wine dog.

The End

Well the wine is gone and the film is coming to a close, so it's time to call it a day. Hope you enjoyed the highlights reel. There were so many stories on this trip, and stories make the best trips. 

Photography Conference

Alley in Southbridge, MA

The last time I attended a photography conference/workshop my daughter was a senior in high school. To put that in perspective, she has been out of college for two years now.

At that time I worked part-time in retail, I shot in automatic mode, had no inkling that I would soon begin this photography journey, and had no idea what a blog was. Still, I agreed to join a friend who did know something about photography for a workshop in a place I love - Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. I was hopeful that I would learn a few things, and that my friend would pull me aside and clue me in on all the things I didn't understand. It was a great workshop, early fall in northern Michigan, the weather was perfect and the light...that was where I began my love affair with light. But...I felt like I was underwater, the instructors were talking, I could see the bubbles coming out of their mouths, but the words were garbled, a language I could not understand.

Over the years I have taken MANY on-line courses on every aspect of photography. Slowly the language began to make sense, and what I didn't understand I watched video after video on, until I did understand. Still, I continued to stay away from in-person workshops and conferences, remembering that underwater feeling.

Kelli and me

That all changed early this spring when Kelli DeWaal of kjdewaal.com posted in a Facebook group that we are both a part of about a Creative Photography Conference she was going to be teaching at in May. The conference was being organized by Hazel Meredith of Meredith Images whose webinars I have watched on Topaz Lab products and love her style. I also knew this was a direction I wanted to take my photography, continuing to build on the painterly style I have started to develop. One little glitch, the conference was in Massachusetts, I live in Michigan, no small trip. I set about convincing my husband that we should take a vacation to the east coast in May. We would vacation for a week first and then I would attend the conference while he relaxed and read his book for a couple of days. It wasn't an easy sales pitch, but in the end I wore him down.

We had a great vacation prior to the conference, full of adventures and stories. It was the time alone we needed for our marriage, even after thirty years you still need this kind of alone time. I will share in future blog posts more from our vacation, but I thought I would start with the conference since it is fresh in my mind.

The conference was May 20-21, 2017 in Southbridge, MA at the Southbridge Hotel and Conference Center, a beautiful hotel that is set inside an historic eye glass factory. Spacious rooms, and great conference facilities.

I went with some expectations of what I wanted to learn, mostly to learn more about painterly processing using Topaz Labs and other software plug-in programs that work with Lightroom and Photoshop. I take pretty good pictures now, no longer operating in automatic mode. I understand the f/stop, shutter speed, ISO language, but the creative post-processing in Photoshop is still is a little garbled to me.

The first day of the conference all seven of the instructors presented for an hour. They are all extremely talented, and there was a nice variety of styles amongst them. It was like being at a buffet of fine restaurants, seeing every delicious morsel and then choosing the ones that smelled the most enticing.

The surprising thing to me was that the painterly post-processing in Photoshop with Topaz Labs wasn't the most delicious morsel at the buffet for me. Instead it was Kelli's presentation on the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, as she showed us the different apps she uses to create her image blended masterpieces. It was Michael & Suz Karchmer's presentation on iPhoneography, I loved this couple, they remind me of my husband and myself.  Gerri Jones' presentation was the closest to what I expected I wanted to learn, but it was her work with dog photographs and textures that made my heart flutter. I was expecting to learn textures and landscapes.

Photo Credit: Susan Karchmer - original before Snapseed

Susan Karchmer's edited photo in Snapseed with listing of steps

Day two of the conference we were able to select hour-long workshops with the individual instructors. I chose Kelli's Encaustic Wax class, she demonstrated her process and let us have a hand at applying the wax on a wood cradle board. I am going to need some practice. Then it was off to Gerri's Lensbaby Lens workshop, love my Lensbaby even more after that. Finishing with Michael & Suz's iPhone and Creative Apps class, an hour was too short. They demonstrated the Snapseed app for the hour, even though I use Snapseed on every iPhone photo I process, I still learned so much more, and it renewed my love of Snapseed.

Susan Karchmer's finished iPhone edited masterpiece

My edited version of Susan's photo from class - Snapseed and Stackables

I made a couple of new friends at the conference - Roberta and Dawn - if you two read this, please email me so we can stay in touch. I wish I had had my picture taken with them too.

The conference inspired me in so many ways: new ideas, renewed loves, new friends, surprises about where my creative heart really lies, at least at the moment.

The best part of the conference though, was that I am no longer underwater, I understood every word perfectly. I will not let seven years pass before I attend my next one. Actually it will only be a month. I have coerced my husband into joining me for a iPhone Photography workshop in Indiana at the end of June, and by join I mean he is taking it with me.

**A heartfelt thank you to Suz Karchmer for granting me permission to use her photographs in this post.

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Unexpected Destination

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

I have proclaimed in past blog posts that I am not one for doing much research ahead of time for road trips, and this continues to hold true. On our recent adventure to Indiana to photograph covered bridges, my research consisted of Googling Indiana Covered Bridges, which revealed this site with a map and listing of all the covered bridges in Indiana. I printed that first page of the site and then got my road atlas of the United States, I opened it to the Indiana page and looked for a bigger town near the main amount of covered bridges so I could find us a hotel. I found Crawfordsville, about a half hour from the start of the bridges, located a Holiday Inn Express there, and booked it. We have oodles of points to use from all my husband's traveling, so we were able to stay all three nights for free.

On Sunday, in route to our hotel, we stopped at an Indiana rest stop. I spied a fold out Indiana road map mixed in with all the tourist trap brochures, I thought it would be good to have that and easier to carry around than our big road atlas. I wanted to open it up and scour the surrounding land once we were back in the car, but due to life long car sickness issues, I figured it would be best to wait until we got to the hotel.

At the hotel, back from supper at the local "quaint" restaurant, I settled on the bed and spread out my map. I found where we were, found where the bridges started, and then studied other local attractions in the area. I was floored when I saw the words Turkey Run State Park right next to the first bridge I wanted to go to. Turkey Run State Park has been on my photography/travel bucket list forever. Any Midwest travel magazine I have ever read has listed Turkey Run State Park as a must see in the state of Indiana. Finally I could check it off my list.

The next morning at 8:00 a.m. we were at the Narrows Bridge, part of Turkey Run State Park to photograph the bridge at sunrise. Best bridge of the trip, and everything is better at the golden hour. After we were done at the bridge, I suggested we drive into the park and check it out. We wandered about a little, but knew that we needed more time than we had to do it justice, we had many more covered bridges to see that day.

Over supper that night at the less local, but with more quality controlled food, Cracker Barrel, we discussed what we wanted to do the next day. We both had had our fill of covered bridges, eventually they all start to look the same. I suggested that we go back to Turkey Run State Park in the morning and do some hiking. My husband went into research mode, looking for the most rugged trails we could do. You know the ones with ladders to climb to get out of the canyon, the ones with 140 steps, some of those "steps" being boulders to climb up and over, or navigate down. Visions of my trip to Pennsylvania last year and my friend Andrea falling and breaking her leg filled my head. I was looking for meandering trails that wound along Sugar Creek, flat trails with only a few wooden steps. But since my husband was being such a good sport about photographing bridges with me, I knew I had to do the rugged trails for him.

The only way to do anything without crowds of people in your pictures or in your way in general is to go early, so the next morning we were back at Turkey Run by 8:45 a.m., there were only two other cars in the parking lot when we pulled in.

To get to the hiking trails we had to cross this suspension bridge that spanned Sugar Creek. I knew then that whatever ruggedness I would have to endure it would be worth it to see the beauty of this place.

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

I did climb the ladders out of Bear Hollow, I did climb the 140 steps on the way to Boulder Canyon and climbed up and down boulders on the way to Falls Canyon. I did traverse little streams here and there throughout the canyons. I did not fall, but next time I will remember to pack my hiking poles, just in case. But even without the poles, I would do it all again because the views were incredible.

For the second half of our hike, we did take the meandering path along the creek that led to the Narrows Covered Bridge, and the Lusk Homesite, but it also led us across little streams and into another hollow with boulders to climb over, and rocks to squeeze through, even when you get what you want, you end up compromising.