2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Ever since I was a little kid, I always wanted to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. To be there in the crowd, see all those big balloons and the floats go by, hear the marching bands and see all the celebrities. This year as Thanksgiving neared I thought again about the parade, then I thought about my kids. My daughter is 11. She's maturing quickly and at the age where she thinks she's an adult and wants independence. This may be the last year for a while that she would enjoy the parade; the parade would be too "baby-ish" for her next year. My son is 7, old enough to remember the parade when he is an adult. I made the decision that we would attend the parade this year.

We left Baltimore at about 2am Thanksgiving morning and headed north. We arrived in New York City around 4:45 and were parked and putting on warm clothes in the van at 5:15. By 5:30 we were walking down Central Park West, looking for a good spot to watch the parade from. We found a spot at CPW and 63rd and camped out in the 37 degree morning.


Early Morning Crowd at Central Park West and 63rd

The parade officially started at 9am, and it was about 9:20 when the first color guard of the parade made it to us.


Start of the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade


Kermit the Frog!


A big Smurf


U.S. Twirling All-Stars


Miley Cyrus


Georgia Tech Marching Band


Snoopy!


Miss USA, Crystle Stewart


Mark Twain


Spongebob Squarepants


Shrek


Miranda Cosgrove (iCarly, Drake and Josh, School of Rock)


Hello Kitty


A litterbug


Andy Williams


The Energizer Bunny


WE GOT RICKROLLED!!!


The Real Santa Claus!


Looking down 63rd Street After the Parade


The Parade Aftermath

P.O.D. - Picture of the Day

What A View!

My son checks out the Shenandoah Valley from the summit of Stony Man Mountain (4010') in Shenandoah National Park. We visited the park during peak autumn color.

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Black Rat Snake

Here is something to hold you over until I finish my entry about my most recent hiking trip. I have to leave for work at midnight all this week so I'm not getting a lot of free time. This black rat snake was on the side of the trail leading to the Cave Falls waterfall that I saw on my hike. I was trying to get the snake to strike to get a more dramatic photo, but it wouldn't. Black rat snakes are very docile and almost never strike. Unfortunately most people don't understand this and kill them on sight.

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A Self Portrait at the National Vietnam War Memorial

The other day I went into work very early and I got out early. I took the Metro from Greenbelt to the Archives so I could look up some of my ancestors on the U.S. Federal Census of 1830 and 1820. After that I walked around the National Mall for several hours. As usual, I took a bunch of pictures.

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Sunset at Loch Raven Reservoir

I finally remembered to shoot RAW. This was three shots in RAW format that were converted to TIFF, ran through Photoshop's HDR algorithm, and then converted to a low compression JPEG. There is such a difference between the photo quality of RAW vs JPEG. I don't know if I'll ever shoot JPEG again.

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Car fire on MD 295 / BW Parkway near I-32

This was my excitement driving to work this week. I could see a narrow column of dark black smoke rising from around a turn and I knew it had to be a carbeque so I managed to get out my camera and snap two shots of it as I drove by. High tech rubbernecking. I used a digital Rebel XTi with a 75-300mm zoom lens shooting "from the hip"; I held up the camera and shot without looking through the viewfinder. I did pretty good considering the big lens, the moving car, and not using the viewfinder. This image is straight from the camera - no processing at all.

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Happy Memorial Day 2008!



"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

-John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, Friday, January 20, 1961

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Cunningham Falls

Cunningham Falls, at 78 feet tall, is the tallest waterfall in Maryland. This cascading waterfall is located in the Cunningham Falls State Park on Catoctim Mountain near Thurmont Maryland. There is a large lake with a beach in this park where visitors can swim. There are three hiking trails to get to the falls. The first is a 1/4 mile long boardwalk for handicapped people. The second is a gravel paved double track trail called the lower falls trail. Finally, the yellow blazed Upper Falls Trail follows the ridge line for 8/10ths of a mile over very steep, rugged, rocky terrain. The U.S. Presidential retreat Camp David is also located on Catoctin Mountain, as is the Catoctin Mountain Park, which is run by the U.S. National Park Service.

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Campfire and Kids

This weekend the kids and I went camping at Elk Neck State Park in Cecil County, Maryland. It was raining as we drove to the campsite but the rain stopped just before we reached the park. Saturday was a beautiful day and we hiked to the Turkey Point Lighthouse.

Elk Neck State Park was a nice park with well-kept facilities. The tent pad was a little on the small side - we had a 15' x 17' tent that had to go diagonally to fit on the pad.

We roasted marshmallows and baked bananas with chocolate and peanut butter chips over the campfire.

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Sunrise in the Woods - Click to enlarge


This photo isn't from my backpacking trip, it was taken on a camping trip Sunday morning, April 20, in the Calvert Cliffs State Park youth camping area. I woke up early as usual and was at the car getting my backpacking stove out so I could make a cup of coffee when the clouds broke enough for the morning sun to pour through. I grabbed my camera and got this photo. I'm upset the camera chose ISO 200 because there is some noise that you can see in the large version. I should have shot manual mode at ISO 50 and used a slower shutter speed to keep the exposure the same.

My Backpacking Trip

I have had a very busy week and haven't been able to update my blog. In my last entry I was trying to figure out where I would go on my week long backpacking trip in Kentucky. I ended up spending six nights and seven days on the trail.

I spent three nights at the Big South Fork National Recreational Area and National River near Stearns, Kentucky. Then I hiked back to my car and drove to Mammoth Cave National Park in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky for a three night hiking and camping trip.

I took a notebook with me and kept a journal of my trip. In the near future I'll add entries for each day of the trip. It was definitely a trip I will never forget. In the mean time, here are some teaser photos from the trip. I'll explain them in the upcoming entries.

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This is an eastern bluebird. This one was spotted in the Cromwell Valley Park in Baltimore County, Maryland.

The Eastern Bluebird had been in serious decline in past decades because the European Starling and the House Sparrow, both non-native species, have overtaken the nesting sites of bluebirds. Large numbers of bluebird nesting boxes have been constructed in parks and wildlife refuge areas and these boxes have stopped the Eastern Bluebird population decline and the population is increasing again.

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My son.

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Here is a turkey vulture carrying a carp that I saw at the Loch Raven Reservoir while my son and I were fishing this afternoon. I was finally able to get my camera out today. It was the first time I used my new Canon 200EG photo backpack and I love it. The bag holds everything I need, more than I could carry with me previously. I'll have a full review of the bag coming up soon.

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This is the USS Mitscher, DDG-57. This is the ship I was on when I was in the Navy. I'm a plankowner, which means I was one of the original crewmembers of this ship. I was stationed on it when it was being built and when it was commissioned as a US Navy warship on December 10, 1994.

This picture was taken sometime in 1995, in St Croix, USVI. This was a fun trip because I had duty the very first day we pulled in. That meant I had the next four days off of work. Me and some friends pitched in and got a room and a rental car for the time we were there. We explored the beaches all day and the bars all night. We snorkled every beach we found.

On one windward beach the waves and wind were churning up sediments so the water was cloudy and we couldn't see far, maybe just five feet in any direction around us. I was swimming back to the beach when a bull shark suddenly appeared out of the muck, swam past me, and disappeared back into the muck. To flicks of it's tail and it was gone. The thing was probably six or seven feet long. I knew from my dive classes that sharks will first swim by to check things out, then come by again and nudge you on the second pass to see if you are edible, and then come in a third time for a chomp. I was in thigh-high water so I stood up and ran all the way back to the beach. Since I had on flippers I had to run backwards but standing up made me look like something other than food. I'll never forget how eerie it was seeing the shark appear and disappear like that. Not knowing where he had gone was worse than being able to watch him come in for the kill. I knew he was there, but where? Anticipation of death is worse than death itself...