An Adventure at Ricketts Glen

Years ago, I went to Ricketts Glen State Park and within recent days I found out that a snowshoe / hiking trip there was being planned through my college. I was thinking about going on the trip, because I never tried to snowshoe before. The opportunity seemed to jump out at me, even though I'm not really one who likes Winter and snow. I just wanted to try something different because I haven't in a while. The trip takes place this weekend, on Feb. 20, and would be a great photo opportunity. Ricketts Glen State Park has a lot of beautiful waterfalls, and I remember seeing some of them during my past visit there. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera with me at the time. The person in charge of putting together the event emailed me about a change in the trip's location because of difficult conditions. Even though I would have liked to visit Ricketts Glen again, a new location altogether for the trip would mean a place I haven't been to before. So that is an equally positive aspect in my opinion because I like getting to see places that are new to me. It turned out that I can't make the trip this time around. However, it's something to think about for a future excursion. I probably wouldn't have thought of trying a snowshoe trip if it wasn't for hearing about this activity through campus recreation. So I definitely give credit to my college, Cabrini, for the inspiration to try this outdoor adventure later on down the road. I have a new "bucket list" item...go on a snowshoe adventure!

Winter's Wrath

The winter weather was one reason for the lack in photo outings in recent days...two heavy blasts of snowfall in a row. And I remember thinking, after this past December's snowfall, "I hope that's the most we get this Winter season." So, I'm obviously not big on snow. It makes for pretty scenery in certain settings, but other than that, I'm just not a Winter weather person. I guess that's because I want to get out there, get around easily and comfortably, and go on road trips.

I did manage to take a great number of photos to document the snowfall...sometimes photos were taken looking out the front window or from just inside the back room. Then I took more photos once a path was cleared in the yard, and still more once I could go places. Not roadtrips, but just in getting rides to campus and back, since my car wasn't able to get back on the road again until Feb. 21st. Anyway, a bunch of my blizzard photos are in a slideshow on my Youtube channel...here are a few of them.

These next two were taken on campus...one was just to compare the snow pile heights to the vehicles, and the other, huge icicles at the old mansion.

I think the icicles on the mansion looked pretty in a way...almost like an enchanted Wintry scene in a movie.

Well, with all the Winter weather, I'm ready for Summer and taking photos of things that express that time of year. Watching the Olympics this year as made me think of sports photography. What I'd really like to do is go the one of the NJ shore points and take photos of people surfing. I don't have any sports photography, but I think surfing would be a nice start to that.

The Big Snow '09

We ended up with over 20 inches of snow in the Philadelphia area by the time the snow stopped falling on Dec. 20th. That was more than the total amount from snow storms in the early months of 2009.

Below, a few before / during and after shots I took:

This wooden planter is probably just over 12 inches tall, and you can see just how much even that was covered by snow.

Another thing resulting from the heavy snow was that my internet connection was down for all but a few minutes of the Dec. 19-20 weekend. It has connection problems on and off even on good weather days, but it was worse than usual during the snow storm.

Now, in the last days of 2009, more snow is heading our way from the Mid-west according to the Weather Channel forecasts. I hope there won't be as much, although snow is being forecast for 4 days out of the coming week. My biggest concern is the commute to and from my college campus beginning on Jan. 12th, as well as the parking conditions complicated by any snow accumulation.

So, I'll be staying tuned into the latest and if I'm not back on here before then, hope everyone has a safe and happy New Years!