Animals – Page 20 – Not Content to Crawl

Scarecrow Festival

Posted onOctober 7, 2007July 19, 20081 Comment

St. Charles’ Scarecrow Festival is by far the best festival I’ve been to this year. It’s also enormous! We lucked out and found street parking 20 minutes after the festival opened and headed to the park where we checked out some craft booths to pass the time before the first Skydogz show of the day. I scoped out the location ahead of time so we scored seating with a good vantage point, including having the sun at our backs for optimal shooting. I’m really pleased with how my photos came out too, particularly considering my lack of experience with action photography. The dogs were so energetic and entertaining, we’ll definitely see them again next year.

After the show we took the pedestrian bridge over Fox River to check out all the scarecrows on display. What a madhouse! It was difficult to stop and get photos without being run down by all the people. Plus it was nearly 90° and we were tired from all the walking. We were hungry but man are the concession prices outrageous! We did try some roasted corn, however, and it was good. Then as we walked back to Joe’s truck we stumbled upon a booth selling homemade root boor and deep fried Snickers bars. We shared both and wow, they were yummy!

Full photo sets:
Skydogz
Scarecrows

Kelly Miller Circus

Posted onSeptember 27, 2007July 19, 2008

The circus came to town last week and I decided we needed to check it out. The last time I remember going to a circus was when my grandparents took me. I was about 10 years old and I got to ride an elephant which was the highlight of my week. I also got a blow-up elephant to take home that I loved until the day my cousin sat on it and it popped. I was so ~~pissed off~~ sad. But I digress.

This circus wasn’t too shabby. Not that I have much to compare it to. The tickets were reasonable and the show was longer than I expected – nearly 2 hours (longer if you count the intermission). The first round of gymnasts, I guess you would call them, was a group of Asian guys. They reminded me of that guy in Ocean’s 11. If you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about. They are very flexible and were jumping all over the place, through hoops, etc. There were also some acrobats that climbed a pole another acrobat was balancing on his shoulders or forehead. No nets either! There were horses, dogs, camels and elephants that performed too. And only one clown, whew! Not a big fan of clowns. I liked the juggler, however. He was near the end of the show.

Now the not so great stuff. It felt a little claustrophobic inside the tent and it was hard to breathe. They took every opportunity to try and make more money by selling tons of concessions, toys, coloring books, elephant rides, etc. I felt bad for the people sitting behind the kids who won these monster balloons. It was a gimmick to sell bags of peanuts – some bags had a tag inside saying you won a balloon. Like they couldn’t wait until the end of the show to do that? It was packed in there as it was.

But in all, I enjoyed the show and I managed to get a few decent photos too. I had my camera on the fastest shutter speed and ISO I could get away with. Of course I ran out of memory just as the elephants came out and had to switch to my Powershot which sucks in low-light situations but what can you do? It was still an interesting experience.

I heart nature

Posted onJuly 28, 2007July 28, 20072 Comments

A little earlier today Joe was on the phone with his sister when he motioned to me to look out the window. Lying on a tree branch was a squirrel. We weren’t quite sure if it was our squirrel since it’s been a month and half since we’ve last seen her. We had started to think she may have ended up as roadkill.

All doubt was erased, however, when I opened the patio door and she jumped down and bounded toward me. I threw some unsalted peanuts out for her to munch on. She was a little more hesitant and smaller than the last time we saw her. I think maybe her absence was because she had babies! The neighbors came outside, spooking her, so she ran back to the tree and laid down on the branch, looking toward the peanuts sadly. I went upstairs to take a shower and when I came back the peanuts were gone and so was she. Hopefully she’ll be around again soon.

Oh and as I looked outside I saw a beautiful Eastern Tiger Swallowtail flutter by. Too bad I couldn’t get a photo of that; they seem to be so rare around here. Here’s a photo I took of one last year.

Lunch break @ the nature center

Posted onJuly 22, 2007July 22, 20071 Comment

Most days I am way too lazy to leave work during lunch. I usually find a quiet place to read and eat a tv dinner or sandwich.

However, on Friday I felt like getting out since it was such a beautiful day. I took my camera over to a nearby nature center. I quickly ate my sandwich in the car and then walked a trail before I went inside to check out the turtles in the center’s indoor pond.

After watching the turtles swim around for awhile, I came back outside to check out the flowers and surrounding landscape. Once I had explored everything, I sat at one of the picnic tables and just enjoyed the sounds of nature. It was so relaxing and before I knew it, I had to go back to work to the stale air-conditioned air and a sunless cubicle. It was nice while it lasted!

Indianapolis Trip

Posted onJuly 7, 2007April 1, 20252 Comments

* Note: you can skip to the end of the entry if you’d rather just look at the photos.

Thursday we arrived in Indianapolis in the afternoon, so we checked into our hotel first. We quickly realized that the city, while beautiful, was quite small, so we decided to walk over to the city’s mall, Circle Center, and walk around a bit before going to dinner. As I always do when we’re on vacation, I ended up finding some cute new clothes. New York & Company had a huge sale and more variety than the store by our house. I bought three tank tops, one of which is rather sexy that ties in the back. Joe was really excited when I modeled it for him.

After a little shopping, we walked down the block to St. Elmo steakhouse. I had read many good things about it, so I was really looking forward to our meal. Unfortunately, it was extremely disappointing. You can check out my review at Yelp. To make up for the disappointing food, we entertained ourselves by contemplating why we were seated in our dining room while some people were taken to a second one next door. We joked it was because we weren’t dressed up or attractive enough. That theory went out the window when Joe exclaimed, “Hey, she’s ugly and she just got in”. So then we thought maybe it was our clothes, but then they sat a nicely dressed couple nearby, so we were stumped. In all, we spent $116 on a meal I would never recommend to another person. I’d rather spend $20 at Target for a couple of t-bones and grill them at home.

After dinner we went back to the mall for dessert because I couldn’t stop eyeing the Godiva chocolate store. We also contemplated seeing Transformers at their cinemas. I didn’t have a sweater with me and dinner was starting to process, if you get my drift, so we nixed that idea and went back to the hotel for a bit.

We didn’t want to spend the evening indoors, so we headed over to White River State Park. We kept walking and walking until we ended up at the back end of the zoo and gardens! I took photos along the way, and on our way back we took a walk around the canal which is very picturesque. By the time we got back to the hotel it was near 10 pm but it wasn’t quite dark yet since Indiana is in the Eastern time zone. I think we got to bed around midnight and both tossed and turned most of the night. It’s always difficult sleeping in a different bed even if it is pretty comfortable.

Friday we were up at 6 am. We headed downstairs to the attached T.G.I. Friday’s for breakfast. Yes, you heard that right. Apparently they offer a breakfast buffet for $7.99, but I’d never pay that for eggs and toast; we had free breakfast passes as part of the hotel rate.