10-Miles with Dad

Ahh, it is so nice to be writing again! My brother has me up and running enough to post, but we still have to work out the widgets (ie: the side archives and categories) and I’ve put everything up until this past week in the archives up there at the top. I’ll eventually re-work my banner, but until then this is what I’ve got. I will also try and fix the font size and color; I already tried to change the visited link color but it hasn’t worked yet.

On Saturday, a day after my dad sat indoors while it poured the entire day and Chris and I had to work, we got outside to stretch our legs and hit Jonathan Dickinson State Park. I know, it seems like we go up there all the time, but we like it. Only this time we didn’t see any animals, just a ton of prints in the wet sand—coyotes, pigs, deer, raccoon, crawfish.

We had a freak two days of rain, heavy downpours and localized flooding. These trails were dry three weeks ago and were now puddled. Dad forgot to bring his hiking boots so he had to carefully traverse the sides of the trail.

We stopped at Kitching Creek for a break and I tried to snap some shots of Dad and while he was talking about how I should get the shine of his bald spot I noticed Chris in the background trying to take a photo, too.

The wind is hard on my ears—sensitive ears to just about any kind of cool wind. So, while I warmed up after some walking, the wind started bothering my ears. Which is why it seems odd to wear that buff in mild Florida, but that’s why.

We went to the old steam engine we found a few weeks ago to find that the area had been burned by a controlled burn. The place was scorched with burn marks up the sides of the pine trees and the palmettos ghostly with their charred trunks sticking up. I think I’ve read that the growth rate for these plants is 1′ per 25 years! So, if you see long trunks, know that those plants can be several centuries old!

A few weeks ago on Flickr I saw someone post a photo that they panned the camera with, creating a painting of sorts with the photo. It was so cool that I remembered it Saturday and tried it myself. I had to turn my f-stop up to I think 22 which was the highest it goes on for ISO 100 and that lens I had, then lowered it to a slow shutter speed to blur upon movement. I had to test it a few times before I learned a quickly flick up was all I needed.

I tried it again in the burn zone and it looks pretty awesome, I think!

Dad had me get a photo of him on the Florida Trail, or a section of it at least!

It was a great outing with a day that ended at a steak restaurant filling ourselves from the caloric deficit of the day and watching the Cowboys beat the Saints!