Indiana State Fair begins Friday!

In just two more days, Governor Eric Holcomb will kick off the 2019 Indiana State Fair. It will be 17 days of the best of the best of the state, with animals, plants, midway rides, fair food, tractor contests, bands, a daily parade and more adventures and exhibits than you can shake a stick at! LOL!

Once again I'll be spending extra time at the fair covering stories about local 4-H members and their families at the fair.  I've enjoyed going to the fair each and every year, but this chance to see the fair from a new perspective of two has given me a better appreciation for the vast diversity of adventures waiting to happen.

I'll be real honest here, you probably won't find much here on the blog during the next two or three weeks, but you can see some of the sights of The Great Indiana State Fair by following along on Instagram. Check out the state fair's webpage for details about discount days and the schedule of events. I hope to see many of you at the fair.

My Picture My Story ~ Eagles

Back in November I told you that I would be going back through some older photographs and sharing the stories behind them. This one is from March of 2015.

We were hoping to see some bald eagles, in fact, they almost assured us that we would see them. Who were they? They were the DNR staff and conservation officers who were leading this eagle watching expedition. We had registered to go on this trek that started at a State Park about an hour away from our home. It was going to be a stretch of our budget that week to fit in the extra gas we would use, but we all really wanted to go. I had only seen one bald eagle in the wild in my entire life...and to this day Kurt still makes fun of me because I didn't get a photo of it. We were driving along the side of the Mississippi river and I had just put down my camera to pick up a piece of chocolate when it flew in front of our car. Oh well, life is full of tough choices! :)

But today, all four of us were excited about the possibility of seeing live bald eagles in the wild. This was not a zoo trip - this was the real thing! First through, we had to find a parking space. I was a little bit concerned because there were SO MANY cars. They said that the spaces to join the trip were limited, but it sure looked like every single person  milling around had come in their own car. We were parked along a service road outside the nature center because every single space was full, as was the side of the drive to the center. The helpful volunteers let us know we would be just fine and could join the line after the parking lot emptied. So we parked and went inside.

Then there was a short informational meeting, letting everyone know what to expect. Many people raised their hands that they had been on this trip before, but we were not the only newcomers.We would be caravanning in groups. First, to see a bald eagle nest (from across the river where a scope had been set up, so we could see without disturbing them.) We were warned to use the facilities before we left because after the nest site we would be led to the area where we could see the migrating eagles come in to roost. It was a rather remote location, and we would find out later, heavily guarded by the conservation officers, and 15 minutes from the nearest bathroom!

After the short program about birds of prey was over, and we had emptied our bladders, we headed to our car to wait our turn in line. Then off we went, along a maze of country roads to arrive at the eagle's nest viewing area. At times Kurt and I joked that we thought they took the longest and most difficult route possible to get there so no one would ever find it again. :)

Once we stopped and got out to look, we saw the biggest nest I had ever seen. I had heard that eagles make big nests, but it's a little different to hear about a 6' wide nest than it is to see one! Even though it was far away, across the river, I could tell it was massive by how big it was compared to the tree it was in. Then, one of the eagles peeked its head up. Wow!

When our group had all had a chance to look through the scope, and time to use our own binoculars, the volunteer in charge of our section of the caravan rounded us up and took us to the roosting location with these instructions: Find a place to park, stay as long as you like, but watch out for this other people who get cold and need to drive over the bridge to leave.

We arrived at the roosting area and walked over to the bridge. The girls were already talking about how cold it was, so Arlene grabbed the extra blanket from the trunk, and we went with our binoculars. As it grew closer to sunset (which comes early in Indiana in March) we saw eagles flying in to the trees just up the river from the bridge. AMAZING!

If you look again at the picture above, you will see that there are seven dark spots showing the bodies of the eagles that had come in to roost. By the time we eventually left, about an hour later, when all three of us girls were chilled to the bone, and in desperate need of a bathroom, there were at least 11 eagles in the trees. This wasn't just an opportunity to see a bald eagle, it was a whole group - a convocation of eagles!

Was it a fun trip - definitely! Was it cold and did our noses all turn red - absolutely! But more than just seeing the eagles, we were together when we made this memory. 

It was not an easy trip. Several of the side roads were muddy and gross. We had eaten all of our snacks we packed long before we got to the eagle roosting spot - but we went anyway! Afterwards, Kurt used the map app on his phone to find us a bathroom, and some more to eat, at a town that ended up being an hour and a half away from home. 

On that eagle watching trip I learned a few things:

-pack a bigger snack bag, being cold makes us all hungry

-you really need a better camera to take quality photos, but any one will do if you just want to take memories

-always pack some cash for emergency food stops

-memories last, circumstances don't. 

Choose the memories!

Your Picture Your Story

Why do we take pictures?

Have you thought about that recently?

In this digital age where it seems like so many lives are not really lived amongst and around us, but are just snippets of social media strung together- why do we still take pictures? Are we trying to impress, are we trying to avoid, are we trying to remember?

Your pictures may never win a prize in a photography contest, but they are still yours. We take pictures to tell a story - either to share with others, or just to remind ourselves of our stories - of our lives. Your picture tells your story. But - unless you tell me more about it, I may not understand why you took that picture, what story you wanted to remember, what feeling you were trying to capture.

So tell your story

Tell me why you took that photo where the ice cream is dripping down the side of the cone, or the one where your dog is buried in soap bubbles. Tell me about that sparkle in your Grandma's eye, or the look of concentration on the face of your five year old. 

I really enjoy taking photographs, even more, I like printing the good ones out and framing them! Ha! 

But, I do not tell the stories behind the photos often enough. So from now on, I'll be going back through old photos and telling you some stories. Some may be funny, some sad, but they will let you in on a piece of my life, and maybe they will inspire you to share the stories behind your own photos with those around you. We were made to belong to communities, to fellowship with other people, to feel. Stories let us do that.

Let us embrace that humanness of our lives where we share stories again, where we linger to finish a conversation instead of hurrying from one moment to the next. Let's decide to live again - a deep, meaningful life lived with other people where stories help us connect, where the story of your life intersects with my story.  Your photos may be blurry or crooked, but they are yours. Find one of your pictures, and tell your story!

Carol on the top of Mount Baldy

Kurt took this picture of me several years ago - it was 2011. We had taken a trip for our anniversary, the first time we had done that since our honeymoon 17 years before. We had left the girls at my mom's house for the weekend, and we were going to spend 48 hours away. We had decided to go to the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan. Neither of us had been before, weird - since I had spent my life living in Indiana, that I had never been. But - it was a beach, and we wanted to go to a beach - and the Indiana Lakeshore wasthe only one close enough to drive to. This picture is of me standing on the top of Mount Baldy, one of the large sand dunes.  I had climbed a mountain - well, not really, but at 120+ feet tall, climbing to the top of Mount Baldy was a serious hike! I had made it, and I stopped taking pictures long enough for Kurt to snap this picture of me to show the girls that Mama had climbed all the way up by herself!

This picture will never win a photography contest, yet it reminds me of an adventure we had. It reminds me of the next trip we took to the Dunes - when we took the girls with us, and we climbed up together. And now, it reminds me that you can only take a hike up Mount Baldy if you join a guided tour with a ranger, because Mount Baldy has developed some pretty scary holes - probably brought on by rotting trees that the shifting sands have buried over the past 80 years. So now visitors climb other dunes, and appreciate Mount Baldy from the shoreline trail.

Today - this picture reminds me that mountains can be conquered, and I can be the conquerer!