Bucket List - Greenfield Village

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

This may be the first and only time a sheep leads off a blog post, at least until we finally go to Ireland or I take the future grandchildren to a petting farm. And the best part, this isn't even my photograph. This was taken by my husband last weekend while we were on a date weekend.

We have been keeping up the date days that I gave Glen for Christmas last year: twelve date days - one per month, vacation days required. Unfortunately we missed one in August, due to his being away for a full week for work. So to make up for it we did a date weekend.

Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI has been on my bucket list forever and I can finally cross it off. In keeping with true Sarah fashion, I did very little research ahead of time. Just enough to know where it was in Dearborn and book us into a hotel within a five minute drive. My tag line on my blog isn't "Striving to find balance between intention and discovery" for no reason. I knew that Greenfield Village was vast, it was created by Henry Ford (Ford Motor Company) in 1929, so it was old, and that there would be plenty of stuff to photograph. I didn't need anything else.

When we arrived it was a bit chilly and overcast, perfect weather and light in my mind. After a visit to the Firestone Farm area to get those shutter fingers warmed up, I saw that the steam-powered train was in the station. Since we had purchased orange wrist bands to ride all the attractions, we were off to ride the train.

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

I love trains, and this is were America fails in travel. With trains you can see the country, move at a decent rate of speed and the best part for someone with a less than stellar back, I can get up and move around. This train only went around the park, so no need to stretch my back, but still an awesome ride and great views.

Since we were sitting in the back of the open air rail car, I took the opportunity to do some train "street" photography. Seemed less risky with nobody sitting behind us.

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

So much old building love...

Favorite building. Edison's Menlo Park Machine Shop...

Those high ceilings, white walls, wood floors and lots and lots of tall windows. Don't you think this would be the perfect creative studio? Plenty of room for all my friends.

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

We spent five hours at Greenfield Village and took many photos between the two of us. It was a great date day. The second day we spent at the Henry Ford Museum and took the Rouge Factory tour where they make Ford F150 trucks, that took us about six hours to do both. So if you plan on visiting make sure you have a good day or two for it, depending on what you want to do.

Dearborn Michigan Restaurant Recommendations

I always try to give you a few restaurant recommendations when we travel, because we love local restaurants with good food and good service. Glen is always in charge of the research of them.

Miller's Bar - Don't let the outside deter you. Most unique bar we have ever visited - no menus, only serve hamburgers with or without cheese, fries and onion rings, condiments are on the table. Bottled beer, no mixed drinks. No plates, wax paper for your plate. No bill, on the honor system, you tell the cashier what you had. Great service! We would definitely go back, great burgers.

Ford's Garage - It must have been the weekend of the burger. Our second night we went to Ford's Garage, part of a chain, but still seemed fitting for where we were. Plan on waiting at least an hour. We got there shortly after five and got seated a little after six. The service was great! The burgers were large and messy and yummy (they do serve more than burgers). The fries were fabulous! Beer choices were pretty vast.

If you only have time for one place though, I would pick Miller's hands down, much more unique experience and we got seated right away there.

Velvet 56 Love

Late last fall, I purchased the Lensbaby Velvet 56. Lensbaby was having a pre-Christmas sale on some of their lens. I have always been intrigued by them, but wasn't sure if I was ready to be that brave and different. The sale was too good to resist (Merry Christmas to me), so I clicked "purchase", and waited for my new lens to arrive.

The demo video that sold me on it, showed beautiful, shallow depth of field portraits of people, hmm... self portraits? My daughter? and of dogs...Findley?

As soon as it arrived via UPS, I sliced open the box and put it on my Canon 6D. Findley...where was Findley? What I wasn't prepared for, was the manual focusing, and I total skipped over the fact that I had to manually set the aperture. Let me say, manually focusing on an energetic puppy, well...the photo says it all.

I slid the Velvet 56 into an empty lens slot in my camera bag, and returned to my 35mm auto-focus lens. The Velvet 56 would stay in the camera bag until this month.

April, a new season, and new subjects to photograph. I dug the Velvet 56 out of the camera bag. I did not go looking for Findley, instead I went to the garden center.

I do get frustrated with not being able to do something well, but rarely do I give up, so I watched some Lensbaby videos and actually learned what to do with the Velvet 56, there was that bit about manually setting the aperture.

A successful outing at the garden center, and I was ready to try the Velvet 56 on a trip. I was tagging along with my husband on a business trip to my favorite part of northern Michigan. A good place to try the lens, on things I know and love, and have photographed many, many times. I was looking for a different approach to these places.

The Velvet 56 stayed on my camera the whole time we were gone. This time the 35mm stayed in the camera bag.

I still have more to learn, more videos to watch, and more practice is needed, but I love the look I am achieving. The Velvet 56 sees the world the way I do - one spot of sharp focus and blurry around the edges.

My husband and I are leaving for vacation in a couple of weeks. We are going through upstate New York, to Boston and to a photography conference in another part of Massachusetts. I have a feeling the Velvet 56 will be getting a lot of use.

Using the Telephoto

For our lesson this past week in the Flickr group that I am in, The Visual Workbench, based on the lessons in David duChemin's book The Visual Toolbox, we were challenged to put on our telephoto lens and go out and shoot. In particular we were suppose to work on using the telephoto lens to isolate our subject.

 I readily admit that I rarely use my telephoto lens, in fact the last time I remember having it on my camera was in North Dakota at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, two years ago.

So it was with a fair amount of grumbling that I screwed that 55-250 lens on my camera and set out for a photo walk around my town.

I quickly realized once I was walking the sidewalks, that I have grown short-sighted, seeing only the things that present themselves right in front of me. This happened because I tend to only shoot with my 17-55mm wide angle, or my 60mm macro lens.

I have forgotten how to look up.

I have forgotten how to look farther into the distance. 

I have forgotten how to see things differently. 

I have forgotten about the joy of discovering new/old things. 

This lesson has taught me many things, but most of all it has taught me to be open to trying things and to stop being so short-sighted. 

Check out one of my fellow group mate's blog about the same exercise and what she discovered.

5 Random Friday Finds

Find No. 1

I found a great use for an empty whisky bottle.

Find No. 2

I found my way up a lot of stairs. A great cardio workout. Twenty minutes of steps burns 200 calories.

Find No. 3

I found a friendly shadow.

Find No. 4

I found a sad dog who thought if he laid on my lap I wouldn't leave him to go out of town. Sorry Scout it didn't work but you got to play with your friend Trevor instead.

Find No. 5

Photo Credit: Glen Huizenga

I found a girl on the edge of an exciting new adventure.

Joining Nancy for Random 5 Friday
Joining Kim for Friday Finds

Curiosity Along the Roadside

When I was a child we took car vacations every year. My parents were not people of high monetary means, so we stayed at cheap motels and ate of lot of fast food. But the one thing I remember the most is always on the first day of vacation we ate a packed lunch at a roadside park.

Also every summer we spent a day in Ludington at the City Park and Beach. I remember these trips so fondly. The highlight of those days was a picnic lunch of Kentucky Fried Chicken, then an afternoon spent playing on the beach alongside Lake Michigan. 

In the early days of our marriage we also had little monetary means so I continued the tradition of packing a lunch on the first day of vacation and we would eat at a roadside park. These days we seek out local restaurants instead, as does most of the traveling population. 

When we travel I still get a nostalgic feeling when I see a roadside park and feel a little sad when I don't see any cars at them. Is the death of roadside parks imminent? 

Then last week Scout, our golden retriever, and I had an adventure day. Obviously I can't bring him into a restaurant with me and I am not a fan of leaving my dog in the car. So we sought out a roadside park. I had stopped at a Subway to pick up some lunch for me and I had his food packed in his travel bag.

I began thinking maybe the roadside park can be brought back by us, or at least we should take advantage of them while they still exist. Scout did great, quietly sitting by my side while I ate my lunch, this is the perfect solution for us.

This week we had another adventure day planned so I began looking for a roadside park on our route where we could enjoy lunch. There is actually a map you can print out of all the roadside parks in Michigan, they are more plentiful than I would have thought.

This got me curious about the history of roadside parks, so I did some research.

Herbert F. Larson started the idea of the roadside park. History records that the idea goes back to 1918 in the early days of auto touring. Larson was then a history-minded highway engineer just out of the University of Michigan School of Engineering. After school he returned to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to manage the highway department in Iron County.

The inspiration of the roadside park idea came from a disappointed Sunday outing to a nearby Wisconsin lake county for a picnic. In 1919 Northern Wisconsin lake resorts were growing rapidly. On that particular Sunday, Larson tried to have a cookout with a group of friends. Everywhere they went the property caretaker asked them to not have their picnic on the property and escorted them off the grounds.

Larson wrote:

"In Upper Michigan we could go where we 

chose with no one to bother us."

He did not want the nearby Upper Peninsula to suffer a similar loss of the much-loved past time of picnicking. This is where he was inspired with the idea of a wide right of way road spot as a roadside park. Larson's roadside park idea quickly spread all over the United States, they were in most states by the 1920's. His roadside park idea soon attracted large gatherings and became a trend-setting phenomenon.

A roadside park will generally be found in a rural setting. Of course back in the 1920's when these were created everywhere was rural. The roadside park with the use of picnic tables is the predecessor of the modern rest area/travel plaza. 

I love the fact that a guy from Michigan created these lovely pastimes.

Do you have memories of picnicking at a roadside park? I would love to hear.

*Historic information gathered from Wikipedia

Joining Kim for Friday Finds

5 Random Friday Finds

Find No. 1

I found a tranquil stream flowing into Lake Michigan.

Find No. 2

I found a husband willing to participate in my photography posing ideas. Also revealing the NEW Paisley Rain Boots. Thank you to Bogs for coming out with a new pattern this fall.

Find No. 3

We found a quaint, cozy place for lunch in Frankfort, MI. Awesome vintage tables and booths and great service.

Find No. 4

I found an iPhoneographer in the woods.

Find No. 5

I found my favorite historic farmhouse in the Autumn colors.

Joining Kim for Friday Finds

Senior Pictures and Memories

The golden summer months, the time of year every soon-to-be senior high school girl anxiously anticipates...Senior Pictures. Generally, soon-to-be senior boys do them because their mothers make them.

On a recent Saturday evening as Glen and I drove from our house into town for pizza, we passed two separate portrait sessions taking place in the field of wildflowers near our house.

Wildflower fields seem to be the latest trend, as I am seeing a lot of that setting on FaceBook, just as the urban look was big a couple of years ago. The beach continues to be a classic mainstay.

Seeing all this photo activity made me remember four years ago when is was Mallory's turn to go through this coming of age ritual. We chose to go a different route though. Instead of spending lots of money on a professional photographer with a wardrobe consultation, we did them ourselves.

I knew just enough about what I was doing with a camera to feel some what confident. Looking back though as always there is that "I wish I knew then what I know now" feeling. I choose to take that as a good sign, it means I have continued to learn and grow in my skills.  Back then I was still shooting in jpeg not RAW and I used iPhoto with the limited editing it offered, as opposed to Lightroom and the full gamut of editing possibilities.

Mallory had plenty of fashion sense, even if her favorite color at the time was gray. So the money spent on a wardrobe consultation could be used instead to buy a few new things.

We decided to take the money we would have spent on the whole professional experience and use it for a weekend get away location shoot. If you have read my blog for a while you probably can guess where we went...there is no where else but the Leelanau Peninsula.

We had a great girls weekend away, trying out different locations, even hiking a half mile with camera and tripod to an old historic farmstead that we had fallen in love with earlier in the spring. One of her favorite photos came from that session, although we couldn't use it for the yearbook photo since it was shot in landscape mode vs. portrait mode. It did make a lovely 8 X 10 for the wall and she used it for her open house invitations.

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying our favorite places for a little shopping and great local food.

The memories from this experience far outweigh anything we could have gotten from a professional photographer. Even now as I look back on these photos I remember the goofy faces, the silly words to coax a genuine smile, the moments of pure delight.

Now four years later and my girl is on the cusp of her senior, and final year, of college and I wonder how have these four years passed so quickly. It seems like we were just crying our eyes out as we sat on the black rocks of Presque Isle Park on the shores of Lake Superior preparing to leave our girl all on her own, eight hours away from home, for the very first time.

In a few weeks we leave her again after the final move-in day. There will still be tears, that is never going to change, once a mother always a mother. But I know that she will be fine, she has built a good life for herself there at school, and I know she is ready to finish up and move on to new life adventures.

**One little disclaimer - I have nothing against professional senior portraits, I have a couple of good friends that do wonderful work and would highly recommend them. For us though it was more about quality time and the experience than having the perfect pictures.

Photography and Historic Places

When I was in high school, the subject of History held no interest for me. I think that is because in the K-12 arena they can easily destroy any potential curiosity in the subject by making you memorize dates and events, all those boring facts. What they don't teach you in school are the stories. The stories are what makes history come alive.

One of the things I am most drawn to when I photograph are old buildings. Each has a history, each has a story waiting to be told.

I rarely do historical research ahead of an exploration of a place. I may have read something about it that peaked my interest to initially seek the place out, but that is the extent of my information gathering. I prefer to have my eye and mind wander about the place unhindered. It is only as I begin to load my photos on to the computer and start to see what pieces of history I have captured, then I start to delve into the history of the place.

That being said, something I have started to seek out in the last year are historical tours. I can tell right away if our tour guide is passionate about the subject they are talking about. We have been fortunate this year to experience two different tours where I could tell the tour guide has a deep love for the place and the history.

The first tour was with Joe at the Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City this past winter. You can read about that tour here and here. There will be a new installment of this tour coming in the near future from our latest tour which we did this summer.

The second tour was a ranger led walk of Glen Haven, MI with Ranger Marie of The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Our daughter is interning at Sleeping Bear this summer and she tipped us off to this ranger led walk when we were up there for vacation.

We met on a beautiful Sunday morning. The temperatures on the slightly cool side, but the sun was shining and the sky was that perfect summer blue.

The ranger led walks were just getting started for the summer season so still an undiscovered treasure to most tourists. Hence why my husband and I were the only non-park employed people on the tour.

Ranger Marie has done a great deal of research on the town of Glen Haven and has followed up on people's stories whenever she is able. It was so interesting to listen to her recount some of them. If you ever get up to the Sleeping Bear area I would highly recommend this ranger led walk.

The highlight of the tour was the opportunity to go inside the Sleeping Bear Inn. Glen and I have wandered around the outside with our cameras on a few occasions. The chance to explore the rooms inside gave me that fluttery feeling of photographic excitement.

A few quick facts. The Sleeping Bear House, as it was originally named, was built in 1857 in the small logging town of Glen Haven, located on the shores of Lake Michigan. The Inn was originally used as a Boarding House for lumberjacks, dock workers and sometimes for passengers from the steamships that docked in Sleeping Bear Bay. These passengers wishing to stay overnight or get a good hot meal.

Now that the basic facts have been stated, let's step inside the Inn...

We entered through the back door, walked past the old telephone...

and entered into the kitchen.

There was no electricity in the Inn so I was so happy for a bright sunny day and lots of big windows with natural light. I wouldn't mind working at this counter and looking out at Lake Michigan. 

Through the swinging doors and out into the large main room.

Love the vintage wallpaper.

The front porch. My favorite place. I am such a porch girl.

Some vintage signs. My favorite is this one though...

 Especially after I found a photo in the museum of the sign when it was in use.

Although you can tell the signs are not the same. Different lettering, but same wording.

Then up the stairs to the rooms.

Notice a difference between door Number 1 and door Number 10?

Room Number 1 was the Honeymoon Suite, any ideas now?

Each room had a sink in it, but the toilet was communal.

As we were leaving I noticed this bit of ephemera tacked to the wall on the front porch. Ranger Marie had no idea how long it has been there, but from the looks of the style of the phone numbers, quite a long time.

Just imagine all the stories this old Inn could tell. This is what I love about historic places.