layla | New England pictures, part 2

Old stone wall -- we saw lots of them, some abandoned and overgrown, others (like this one) evidently still in use.

We passed a lot of old Industrial Revolution factories and mills along the mountain rivers.

Coastal Maine is pretty much everything that coastal Maine is supposed to be ... and the rain had finally stopped!

Sister on the rocks! With the tide coming in, we thought it might be a good idea to take turns climbing around on the rocks while the other person stayed behind as a spotter and potential lifeguard...

Probably half the pictures I took were of the Maine coast. We hiked around Portland Head for a while (which is where these pictures were taken), then drove up to Freeport and found some wildlife reserves where we hiked and hiked and hiked some more.

We didn't really get enough of Maine, but we were running out of time so then we headed up straight north through Maine and right into Quebec.

This was so utterly bizarre as a business concept that I had to take a picture of it. The fact that it's in Quebec just adds to the strangeness. As far as I could tell it was just an ordinary cafe, though. (It's in the town of Joliette, north of Montreal, if you want to go check it out for yourself.)

I didn't get any pictures at all of Quebec City itself because I was trying not to die in its rush-hour traffic and tiny winding streets. I really want to go back and explore it someday, because it has one of the most lovely downtowns that I've ever seen in a North American city, but not in a car and not at 5 p.m.

Wetlands in Ontario along the St. Lawrence River.

Boat on the St. Lawrence River -- we ate lunch at a bar & grill that was right on the water, and this was taken from the dock attached to the restaurant.

I know it's terribly American of me, but the quote marks around "liberate" on this sign in Ontario totally cracked me up, especially considering that I'd just a few days prior been in Boston and been talking about the American Revolution there.

One more picture of the river. Notice the pattern here ... I take tons of pictures of rivers and trees, but towns and people seem to completely evade my lens.

And that's it! I ought to take some pictures of fall around here too -- the colors are in full swing and it's quite lovely outside.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Boat on the St. Lawrence River --

Giant crayons, blasted free from the color mines are shipped around the globe so that children may have their favorites for coloring book fun!

They are rather odd-looking things, aren't they?

Were you on the St. Lawrence Seaway at any point in your travels? When those huge ships enter the locks they're well below ground level, so all you see are the antennas and maybe the top of the superstructure poking over the top of the bank. But as they start raising the water level, it looks like an apartment building is slowly growing out of the ground! Then you start seeing the rest of the ship, moving in a direction (up!) that ships don't usually move...it's pretty impressive.

We saw a sign along the highway pointing to the locks, but we didn't actually see them. Sounds freaky thought! We were impressed enough by the phenomenally high bridges that you have to cross to get back to the U.S. side...

This last March I got to see the Miraflores locks in the Panama Canal Zone and it was certainly awesome... in the full meaning of the word...

The rest of Panama was impressive but I guess I'm enough of an engineering geek that I was mightily entertained when the speaker described the huge working gates of the locks as being the originals from when the canal was first built and still there because of the "miracle of maintenance"

Lovely pictures! I always love seeing new places

Thanks! :)

Maine! Cliffs! Sea! Now I wanna go there too~! Such beautiful pictures of beautiful places. (Though the restaurant makes me boggle. A lot.)

The restaurant made us boggle, too. I really can't figure out if it's some kind of licensed thing, or ... no, it just really doesn't make sense any way you look at it. *g*

Wonderful! I haven't really been to New England. I must go (and back to Quebec someday).

Thanks! It's very pretty -- though next time I'll have to go when the fall colors are out.

More lovely pix... you've certainly got enough for a very slick calendar if you were so inclined... from the rocky ocean side crags to the bucolic stone walls with leafy color (that field stone stuff? I'm living on a hill of it and I'm learning to be quite proficient at dry stacking... yay me)

The pix of the old factory and the lighthouse are favorites... I guess I have a thing about lighthouses... couldn't all be phallic? you think?? ;)

Thank you again! I really like composing shots ... unfortunately my digital camera doesn't take very good pictures (they're often over-exposed or blurry) but my manual camera is a) ancient and b) too big to tote around with me on vacations. I oughta pull it out and play with it sometime soon; I always enjoy doing that.

I've tried to make stone walls in the past, and it always ended in tragedy and woe. However, after seeing the New England rock, I now suspect that part of the reason is because our rocks are round rather than flat. I imagine that rock walls work much better with flat rocks.

Actually, I hate my digital camera... I understand that some don't seem to have the lag time that mine does when you depress the shutter release... but maybe I have to trade that off for the anti-shake option... I dunno... but I too really miss my old SLR... and I can't afford the digital SLR's... and since I'm so much older now, maybe I don't *really* need one... feh! doesn't matter, I *want* one anyway!!

I also miss the dark room (I was always a fan of B&W) but the digital photo manipulation programs do an okay job... I guess... I also miss being able to mess with depth of field and haven't figured out how to get my digital to let me mess with the aperture and shutter speed...

Re: your stone/fence building, yeah, flat rocks work WAY better :) especially if you're not gonna use mortar... (I wish I knew how to attach a pic to LJ so I could show you some fine work a friend of mine did)

I love the convenience of my digital camera, but I really loathe a lot of things about it -- the lag before and after taking the picture, the amount of post-processing it does on the image and lack of manual controls which makes it almost impossible to take good night or sky pictures. Still, convenience makes up for a lot in my world *g* especially when I just want to do quick family snapshots or carry around a camera that I can stick in my pocket. The manual one still comes out when I want to play with long releases or composing really nice shots, though.

Some very lovely photos, it looks like you had a good time despite the rain.

I take tons of pictures of rivers and trees, but towns and people seem to completely evade my lens.

LOL! My husband and I tend to take lots of photos of places and things and not so many of people - in fact, I have to remind myself to take photos of him to show family and friends when I get back - and vice versa too!!

And towns have to be interesting or old to interest me - though I do like to photograph picturesque little villages... or the occasional bizarre building or two!

LOL ... my husband and I used to joke that we have no photographic evidence that we were ever married, since we both like to take pictures of clouds and rocks and old buildings, but very rarely end up with pictures of each other, let alone pictures of us together. If it weren't for the wedding pictures, we'd never be able to prove we actually know each other!

Glad you like the pictures! I'm with you ... I love picturesque old towns, but in general I prefer taking pictures of nature and old moss-covered ruins and things of that sort.

New England pictures, part 2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject