I don’t know why I never published this back when I wrote it (in April of ’08) but here’s my writeup from the Ouachita Challenge weekend last spring.
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Last weekend, Joel and I went down to Arkansas: he to participate in the Ouachita Challenge and me to ride around the countryside and really put my new camera to the test. Considering the vast photoset I’ve uploaded to Flickr and the 2nd place singlespeed finish for the 80 mile ride for Joel, I think we both had a very good weekend.
It was overcast and kind of chilly early on in the day on Sunday. Here’s Joel layering up just before the start of the 80 miler. He recently got a plain black jersey for long races, and the pink PORK shirt for shorter races. He races under the Team Sexypants name.
Aaaand, they’re off. Joel’s shiny black-lycra butt is in the far right, next to the dark-purple pickup.
Once they were off and riding, I headed out on my own ride. I reprised part of last year’s jaunt, riding out Serendipity Ln. and back into town via River Rd. Last year I didn’t take River Rd. to its conclusion but this year I did, and ended up in one of the town’s cemeteries, where I took pictures of headstones with interesting names on them.
Where River Rd (to the left) splits off from Serendipity Ln.
A place on Serendipity Ln. where the trees were taken out to leave a clear path for the power lines.
A fallen-down shed with a pond in the background on River Rd.
There were some really great lichen on the bark of some trees. This one is particularly elaborate and worth viewing close< up. Lichen are pretty cool.
This is a different kind of lichen which is growing amidst a clump of moss.
More moss and lichen. Did I ever mention how much I love the macro capabilities of this camera? Because if I haven’t, I need to. You can get right up in the business of small plants and flowers and get a nice, clear image.
I need to practice more with this camera, though, because I still make serious bloopers like this, where the autofocus locked on to the stamen, rather than the blossom as a whole, so a few dabs of pollen are in sharp focus, while the blossom itself is all blurry. (and I am kind of bummed out)
At least this picture of the crabapple blossoms turned out okay.
The crabapple tree was around back of an abandoned house I checked out a little bit.
Same place, from the front, from the road.
I’m not quite sure what these flowers are, but they were in abundance at that house. If I had the time, inclination, and skill, I’d fix the color with Photoshop or similar, because while this camera doesn’t whack out on red as badly as my old camera did, it still kind doesn’t record strong reds as accurately as I’d like.
The enclosed back porch of that abandoned house was pretty much collapsed. I just shot this picture in through the back porch door to the actual back door. No, I did not try to enter and explore this house, because I’m not so much into trespassing and such.
There was a pretty cool old abandoned farm truck over by that house.
I reckon it was last driven in the 1970s.
Here’s a cardinal. You might want a closer look at the little fellow.
Here’s a canoe full of flowers. It’s an unfortunate thing that something happened to a skunk (or a skunk happened to somebody) somewhere very near the canoe, so one couldn’t actually smell the daffodils or tulips. In fact, it was rather a test of my fortitude to get all close to the canoe-of-flowers and take pictures, as this was a fairly stinky locale.
Nonetheless, here are some flowers!
I hope you enjoy.
I realize that I’m probably way more taken by the macro capabilities of my camera than you are. I apologise. Still….tulip pistils & stamens!
Canoes! (not full of flowers)
It had rained like all hell for a lot of the week before we got down there, and the Ouachita river was up really high. So were all the little creeks and marshes around there. Last year, the river was so low that I walked out to that sandbar out in what’s midstream in this picture. There was a strip of sand all the way across last year; this year it is all flowing water.
Such beautiful and clear pictures.
Thank you!
It is easy to get some nice shots when you have such great material to work with.
Great pics! The red thing might be Japonica? It’s awesome that it’s already spring where you are, I am still patiently waiting for flowers. 🙂
Sadly those pics are from a little over a year ago…I had written up this entry when we went to Ouachita last year, and apparently hit “save” instead of “publish.” WordPress can be a wee bit misleading to the brain-fried.