Rural Indiana

Thursday morning April 30th I drove from Goshen to the Indianapolis Int'l Airport to pick up Bruce. I enjoyed the scenery along the way as I listened to an audio book on CD, Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native". An interesting bit of coincidence, Paul was listening to the very same book! These photos were all taken on the return trip, from the moving car as Bruce drove, the exceptions being the one of the Wabash River on the way to the airport and that of the cardinal in a bush by the Hampton Inn parking lot.

Crop blooming at 65 mph (alfalfa? could have been a little faster, Bruce was driving).

On the banks of the Wabash.

Ethanol plant.

Farm implements used for repair parts.

Bruce spotted our Indiana State Bird.

Amish in Shipshewana and Goshen

I went a little out of the way to pass through Shipshewana on the final leg of my trip to Goshen. Seeing Amish folk and their buggies evoked the familiar feeling of being back home. A few of these shots were taken through my windshield while driving ("car hunting" don't tell). Several others were made possible by brother Bruce maneuvering the car to an inconspicuous spot in the Walmart parking lot allowing me to use the zoom feature and a half rolled down window as a tripod.

Sunglasses on a lady buggy driver made that shot interesting for me. The loading of perishables into Igloos was the perfect answer to a question I'd never asked and the Huggies for a babies bottom brought a chuckle. Although it was nearly noon I went into the Auction Restaurant for a country breakfast and enjoyed the local folks around me being themselves, living lives so very different from mine and doing it happily. There was an atmosphere of fun in the air. I do wish I could have taken a picture of a table of four Amishmen on their cell phones but propriety held me back.

I did jazz up the color a lot on the Menno-Hof shot as the original was gloomy. Now it looks like a tricked out postcard!

Youngstown, Ohio

During my car trip to Goshen, Indiana to see the folks I made several long stops, 30 or so minutes, to stretch out the back and leg muscles. The first was at the Delaware Water Gap (New Jersey side) at daybreak after the first three hours of driving. I made two more stops in Pennsylvania. When I crossed the Ohio state line I knew either I needed a long break or I should stop for the night. Getting off the interstate near Youngstown I could see steel mills in the distance and thought I'd take a closer look around. I've found a strange beauty in industrial landscapes that goes back to my Jersey City days and I wanted to capture some more images of industry, current and defunct. The hard part was getting over the fence and barbed wire without tearing my relatively "new" jeans (sure glad there were no dogs!).

I don't know what purpose many of the objects here had, but their dark shapes silhouetted against against a gray sky fascinated me. I reccognized the track spacing car and the huge slag mountain in the distance, if indeed, that is what they are. The rest is anybody's guess.

The Gap

Here the Delaware Water Gap is around ten miles distant and at the bottom of the cleft in the mountains ahead.

Sunrise on contrails.