What a day! We drove from Birmingham, AL to Florida panhandle for 8-9 hours just looking at old places I used to live (Crestview, Niceville, Eglin AFB, Fort Walton Beach) and then some neat time at Navarre Beach. We crossed over from Florida back to Alabama and are spending the night north of Gulf Shores.

Pictures — Day Two

The Tennessee Magazine

Timothy did it! He won 1st Place in the Summer Vacation Shutterbug Contest in the Youth category for “The Tennessee Magazine”. We’ve been waiting and waiting to see how he did, and we finally got notified yesterday. The picture he won with was taken at the Williamson County Fair. I had showed him a few days before going to the fair the tripod for the camera and he got real interested in long exposures. He was taking pictures of the moon at night and glowsticks and cars with trailing lights and rivers and streams. The picture he won with was a long exposure of the carnival area of the fair and shows people blurred as they come and go. It was originally color but he simply saved it as black and white for effect. A special thanks goes out to Robin Conover and her staff and everyone at “The Tennessee Magazine” for their incredible work on the magazine and it’s photos! THANKS!

To the see the photo full size, go to the follow link at his flickr.com account.

Winning photo

Well, Fairview had it’s world famous Christmas parade Saturday. We had marching bands, JROTC, cheerleaders, clowns, muscle cars (boys and their toys), firetrucks, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, politicians, businesses, and horses. Who could ask for more? Timothy, my son, was in the Fairview Marching Band. The picture to the left is him as he marched by. I’ve included all the pictures on my flickr account. You can see the pictures here.

There are some advantages to living in the country — friends with farms. Sometimes, it’s nice to get away and just relax on the back porch, watch the chickens, and do absolutely nothing but sip on lemonade. Even getting on the tractor and mowing the field is a break. No serious thinking — just relaxing. That’s what we did for Labor Day. It was great. We had plenty of friends around and kids running everywhere. Oh, and let’s not forget the food — fried chicken, ham, steak, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, and everything else you can think of. I won’t even mention the dessert selection. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures. I only took one or two — the rest were taken by our son Timothy. He did a great job. Click pictures below to see them on flickr.com

Pictures

On a recent gem/fossil excursion with Mike Mangrum (Rock Hound extraordinaire), I came home with numerous and lovely examples of Tennessee gems and fossils. One of the neat items that Mike helped me find was a limestone geode. He had found numerous sizes throughout a very large cliff of limestone, but using my now keenly, trained eye, there before me was an object of gargantuan size (okay, it was only baseball sized!). As Mike expertly removed it from the limestone, I contemplated the incredible riches and beauty that lay inside this geode. We had tried to open some smaller specimens we had found, but weren’t impressed. I knew this one, however, was special. We decided not to break it open and take it to the Rock Hound Club meeting that Mike was now attending monthly and get their expert opinion. After many weeks of tortuous waiting, I shared my geode with the wise and wonderful experts at the table we were sitting at, and it turned out I did have something special — the rare, elusive “Leaverite”. Yes, that’s right — Leaverite. If you find one like it, “leave her right” where you found it. It was worth under $100 — way under!! Yes, my geode provided numerous seconds of entertainment. Anyway, my son Timothy and I decided to open the geode up and see what we had. He took a hammer and literally pounded away on the front porch trying to get a clean break. Finally, in all it’s glory, our geode was open and sharing her beauty for all to see. Here’s the flickr page with all the pictures of the geode:

Tennessee Limestone Geode

Enjoy!

My new tripod (AT-828) came in today. I gave it a workout at a friend’s house by trying it out on the night sky. I did a little research on shooting the night sky but obviously not enough. The few good (well, average) pictures I took are here on flickr.com. They are a little dark, but welcome to a dark, night sky. The first picture is of Ursa Major (Big Dipper), and the rest are of the Scropio Constellation with the brightest start on the picture being Jupiter. One of the pictures I took to includes a commercial jet crossing the field of view. They are definitely not going to get me to quit my day job. I hope to do a lot more research and trial-and-error this weekend.

I had my first day ever of metal detecting. Mike Mangrum, myself and son, Daniel, went to Sango, TN where Steve Belsheim owns about 19 acres of land that supposedly Union soldiers camped on for several months. It’s called Campground Bottom and we went the full length of the area twice but found no evidence of the soldiers. We did find very old nails, barbed wire, a large chain, an ax head, some sort of plowing piece, and even a bullet (it appeared to be modern). We even got to see the bridge named after Steve Belsheim!

To see the photos, go here.

Yesterday (I’m writing this early in the morning Friday, April 6th), we went to two places:

Mississippi Armed Forces Museum – Camp Shelby

Landrum’s Homestead and Village

The first was a very nice museum of showing ALL of the armed forces, Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. The base was a Joint Services base federalized in 2004 for training for Afghanistan and Iraq. It had over 15,000 artifacts and was VERY well done. I took pictures of everyone outside in front of one of the helicopters there on display. There is also a panorama of 5 photos showing all the tanks. After the museum, we went to Landrum’s. I thought it was going to be dull and boring but I was surprised. You should have seen Mike, Steve, and myself with our piles of dirt as we “panned” them for treasures. We had so much fun, we “panned” twice. We then set the ladies up and had them go to the Mystery House. The whole house is completed tilted on both sides to the back corner. We watched them walk through the house and laughed as they bounced off the walls. We finished off the day with ice cream and shakes.

The photos for the day are here.