Photos from Day 5, Normandy Beaches Normandy, the jackpot of the trip, the hook that promised to bring the Americans... Normandy represents a time when all of France liked us Americans, except, of course, the Germans who occupied her. 148 of the 150 passengers on this cruise were from the USA. The two exceptions, Ron & Shiela, wereexceptional people. They said they were from Yorkshire, and from their accents I'd say they were talking about the county in England. I'd see them here or there throughout the trip, and each time seemed to be a moment of reverie when I drifted off musing to myself and (usually Ron) would intercept and seem to share the feeling. Wish I had more opportunity to sit and talk with them. There was about a 2-hour bus ride from Rouen ... read more

A Viking River Cruise from Paris to Normandy with a 3-day extension in Paris was our 35th Anniversary to ourselves, and, man, did we treat ourselves well. Well, the best treatment really came from the folks on the cruise, both the crew and the fellow passengers. We usually fly out of the local airport and usually around 6am, so it was quite unusual to drive to Philadelphia and fly out at 4:30pm, which is happy hour when with Ray Listanski. It also seemed rather unusual to fly from there to France via Toronto. We let the flight arrangements up to the folks at Viking, figuring it would be easier to have them include airport transfers on their side. So we flew throughout the night hearing grumblings from the regulars that the flight was so packed because ... read more

Photos from 10-13-13 - Pemaquid Lighthouse Long before we left home, VB made an event page for the trip, and on it Jakub made a suggestion. There were 4 couples going for 4 days, and he suggested we all take a day to decide where we shoot. My choice was Pemaquid. No one slept in this day because we might not be back till… well, we didn’t know. Even though it was a bit over an hour away, we were down in the rocks shooting by 6. Before my first shot and before the moment I’d forget about things like eating, I was way too cold to create. So I hustled back to the car for an overkill coat. Comfortably numb, I ... read more

Maine has been foremost on the list of October outings since 1991, and each visit has been centered around my cousin and his wife, Stubdude & Juno. Usually I’ll bring one or several friends to enjoy the fun, and the last few years have had the bonus of my daughter Celeste; but her mom always refused the 12-hour journey. This year’s visit, however, was attached to a photo excursion with 3 other members of the Northeast Photography Club, their wives and mywife. Woohoo! Barb had only been to Maine once with me in the 1980s. We had a great time taking Stubby back to his place in Bangor. He lived down the street from Stephen King and made his own beer. Now, ... read more

Photos from this day We were in time for the 9:30 show at the Biosphere. As stated many times in other parts of the Stories Of The Photos, this isn't a good place to learn about things like the history of place, the textbook stuff on flora and fauna, and, in this case, the story of the Biosphere. Here you can learn about things like our guide boasting of having special birds within the enclosure, and how Jakub was the one to find the little critter and point it out to the group. So that’s all I got on the Biosphere part. Mount Lemmon was Yvonne’s suggestion. You may have noticed that one of Jakub’s best suggestions was to follow Yvonne’s suggestion whenever she had one. It was a long, winding road to the top, and ... read more