The Octagon - Exotic Animal Sanctuary (not the Mixed Martial Arts kind) - 10/6/12 - Post 1

I seem to have fallen off the face of the internet for the past few months.  There's nothing like an insanely busy Etsy season on top of a 10-hour-a-day day job.

But I'm on break now, so I can go back to editing the seemingly billions of shots I've had waiting around since at least last October.  So with no further ado...

The Octagon!  

The Octagon in Punta Gorda, Florida has nothing to do with MMA (Mixed Martial Arts).  They're an amazing Exotic Animal rescue.  They take in animals that your typical shelter can't handle... you know... lions, tigers, bears, monkeys,  lemurs and the like.  Most of these animals come from private zoos or individual owners who either discover that these large and typically wild animals can't be controlled as pets any more or who lose them when the state wildlife or law enforcement agencies discover that people who shouldn't have these animals do.

They take in animals who have been abused, starved and otherwise mistreated.  They are a no-kill, long-term operation where animals are cared for and given medical treatment and kept in a humane environment where their well-being is the primary concern.

To that end, they are less concerned with how well a certain enclosure allows for photographs.  They have visitors come to see the animals as a way to generate revenue, but they really aren't a *zoo*, so to speak.

I know exactly what they mean, but I get this mental image of some kids trying to break out the Scrabble board and get the lemurs to take a turn.  I think they'd spell "We Are Not Monkeys".

 So they warn you in many places that these are not domesticated animals.  They are not pets.  Do not try to touch or feed them.  And in case you missed it... YOU COULD LOSE A FINGER!

Speaking of lemurs...  

Like I said, this place isn't set up to be a Brookfield or Lowry Zoo.  The enclosures are for the safety and comfort of the animals.  Not photographers.  So I don't have a lot of pictures of the actual animals worth sharing.  It was incredibly hot the day I was there, so most of them were hiding in shade boxes or just sleeping somewhere in their space.  This lemur was interested in what was going on around him, but he was pretty much the only critter who was.

There's something just amazing about a tiger's eyes, isn't there?  This is Rajee.  She was abused by her former owner - hit with a garden hose.  Needless to say, she's not too keen on people now.  After hearing about someone doing something like that to an animal that depends on them, I'm not too keen on some people either. 

So this guy had no interest in people, but I had to get a picture of his coat.  I've never seen a tiger with anything other than black stripes.  I've seen white with black Siberian and orange with black Amur tigers, but this was very new to me.  How beautiful!

One of the things I found kind of funny about this trip was the amount of uncontained wildlife I was able to shoot there.  So in my next post I'll have dragonflies, a snake, some anoles and a few others that weren't *kept* there, but seemed to really like hanging out with the permanent residents!

And if you have a few extra bucks laying around (and if you're in the US and still looking to make a charitable donation for your 2012 taxes), the Octagon has a donation link on their website.  Please think of helping them out with this incredible mission they've undertaken.

Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve - 4.15.12 - Post 1

A second new place for me this year was Fullersburg Forest Preserve in Oak Brook, Illinois.  It's part of the DuPage County forest system, and I have to say, most of the DuPage parks I've been to have been pretty nice.

I actually came out here with a few other people and we walked, what came down to, the short loop together.  And I got another reminder why I really, really need to stop thinking I can sign up for community events like hikes and think I can shoot while I'm there.  Most people just don't want to stand around and wait for that butterfly to land for fifteen minutes.  And they don't understand why I'm willing to lay down on the gravel path to get 'eye-level' with a beetle.  So when they left I ended up, sort of on accident, doing the big loop.  Or, one of several possible big loops, anyway.

One of the great things about this place is the Visitor's Center.  While the grounds are open, it's staffed by a docent.  Next to the docent's desk is a big magnetic board with fabulous, labeled pictures of all the flora and fauna *currently* being seen, so you know what to keep an eye out for.  Even better, when you're done you can go back and put a name to what you saw.  I need to go back out on a better day (it was pretty gray and windy when I went) to look for some of the more exotic birds like killdeer and teals that they said were currently hanging out.  (I really need to find out how a little bird like that got the name 'killdeer'.  Because I promise you, it never killed a deer in it's evolutionary life. :)

One of the other cool things they have in there is a mostly-complete skeleton of a wooly mammoth.  It was apparently found in the forest preserve.  There's signage (look behind the ribs) that explains that a.) the head was always missing.  When they found the rest of her, the head was gone.  It could have been carried off by a predator, the skull could have been washed down the river, etc.. and b.) that they know it's 'her' by her hips and that she had had calves and c.) there's some debate over whether or not she was killed by people or died more naturally.  There's a big chunk of the femur missing.  Was it pried out by people?  Gnawed on by another animal?  Anyway, it's worth looking at if you stop by the visitor's center.

So, as soon as you enter the forest preserve, you're greeted with signs that a large bridge is out.  They aren't kidding.  And yet, while I was there, I saw a rather elderly jogger climb over the big barricade at the end of the bridge and walk across it.

Now, obviously this happened quite a while ago.   There are a ton of really well-done metal signs all over the place about it. 

 Even the trail signs have been redone to show that the bridge is out.

Which leads me to wonder... wouldn't it just be cheaper and faster to replace the bridge?  It's a wooden bridge across a slow moving stream that's maybe 50 feet across.

Not to mention that it is a fairly huge inconvenience to not have that bridge.  It's the only one in the center of the park.  There's one at the extreme north and extreme south ends, but once you're over one of those, the only way back to the other side is to get to other one. So if you walk from that big black spot in the middle of the map, and go west and then north and around to the eastern leg of the trail, you now *have* to do that whole southern/southeastern trail.  And by whole I mean clear down the the other big black spot in the bottom right hand corner and then back around to the middle which is where your car is parked.  It basically forces you to double your hike, unless you go part way and then turn around.  There is no other bridge over the entire length of the river.  Now, I didn't hate it entirely because some of my best shots came from the area when you're heading northwest from that bottom corner and you get to that spot where the gray trail meets that dark black trail.  But it's kind of a lousy layout if you have someone who does *not* want to walk the entire perimeter of the preserve.

The other annoying thing about these maps is that the trails branch off of each other all over the place.  There are a fairly good number of trail marker arrows (red arrows for the red path, green for the green path, blue for the blue path, etc...), but they don't do a great job of telling you which of the two paths that branch off to the right is blue and which is red.  And not one of those maps has a 'you are here' anywhere on it.  And with that bridge out, you can end up walking for quite a long while before getting back to where you started.

For some reason, this sign - mostly the white one on the bottom - amused me.  I should have gotten a landscape shot of where this thing is. (Next trip)  But it's near the bridge that's out, right next to where the trail goes along the bank of the river.  But at normal times, the river is about four feet down a very steep hill/bank.  So in order for the trail to actually flood, the river would have to rise about four feet.  Now apparently this *can* happen.  If you look at the signs about the bridge, it was a 'raging river' that took it out.  So one would assume that if the rains and weather have brought the river up *four feet*, that, yeah, the trail should probably be closed for a while.  Illinois is having a MONSOON!

But like I said, taking the long way around wasn't the worst thing ever for me.  When you get to the south end there's Graue Mill.  It's a huge, old, flour mill powered by a waterwheel on the river.

I would have gone in to take pictures, but I'm watching my nickles and dimes right now.  Too bad, since I love old historical 'stuff' like this.






Speaking of signs that amused me...

If you can't read it at the size I have it at, it says "Please keep off the mill wheel", of course, you could always click on it to make it bigger.  Really?  I mean, this thing is at least 18 feet in diameter and moving fairly quickly.  Are there enough people out there trying to prove that Darwin had a point, that they actually need a *sign* for that?

So... that's the background of the place.  I give it a pretty solid A-.  Maybe it'll go to a solid A once they actually get that bridge replaced.  Next few posts... the actual sightings I had while I was there.

Tennessee, Post 2

So a little more about Bledsoe Creek...

 First of all, this is one of the first signs you see as you drive in.  Now, I understand saying that you can't drink in the park... but shouldn't the drug thing go without saying?  I mean, it's still part of the state/country, right?  Are they implying that other parks *tolerate* drug use?  Also, my brain tends to process big text first, so I read that sign as "Attention prosecution" like they're only talking to lawyers... and only the lawyers who bring the charges.

Here are the park rules.  Every park I've ever been to posts their rules.  Most of them *don't* start with a typo in the very first rule.  It says "Quit hours are from 10 PM to 7 AM."

Here's the trailhead sign.  The name Mayo Wix sounds like a sandwich spread... not a person.

 But once you're on the grounds and traveling the paths, it is a pretty place.  It's a little more 'complete and proper forest' than a lot of state parks in Illinois.  I used to see areas labeled "savannah" and avoid them because there weren't enough trees to have a lot of wildlife around.  Then I figured out how many birds, insects and small mammals could live in a savannah.  Not to mention how many really great wildflowers can grow where there's lots of uninterrupted sunlight.

In a proper forest area, the trees get really tall, which means the ground cover doesn't.  It means the trees and small mammals go *way* up where they're hard to shoot even with a telephoto lens.  So I've actually reversed my opinion.  I find I get more/better shots in savannahs than forests.  And this was a forest.

 During the Civil War this forest was a fort.  The stone walls are crumbling minute by minute, but you can still see a few remains.  The question is what was the fort protecting?  There are no towns for miles away.  The fort overlooks a valley, but I'm not sure how that's strategically valuable.  But... there it was.

 I'm not sure how the stones are held together.  In fact I'm not one hundred percent sure that they *were* fused together in any way.  Which makes the fact that in 150 years that any parts of the wall are still standing, pretty extraordinary.

The other thing I'm not used to when I hike is hills.  This is one of the more gentle slopes you transverse on the path, but there were areas where steps were cut into the hills because there would be no other way for a person to navigate the steep hill, either up or down.

One last little thing I found.  Someone took some downed wood and made an arrow in the middle of the path.  It reminded me of being in Girl Scouts when we'd have to go out and hide a target and then mark the path for other people to find it.

We didn't see any scouts.

Lest the Women's Room Feel Left Out - Architectural Artifacts, Post 3

Okay, so... back on track today.  Back to the bathrooms at Architectural Artifacts.

So the women's room was about as interesting as the men's.  Slightly less with the massive amounts of toilet paper (which, seemed a little bass-ackwards to me, but so be it).

Front of the Door

Most of them are pretty straight forward. I still find "females" an interesting label.  Also, like the men's room 'engineer' and stuff, I find it interesting that "Hospital toilet" is determined to be a woman's domain.  Also, why would you ever have to label it as a "hospital toilet"?  I mean, if it's in the hospital... isn't it a given that it's a hospital toilet?  If it's from (as it kind of seems to me) a military ship or something, why do you need to denote that it's the *hospital* toilet and not just, you know, the toilet in that part of the ship.  Who cares where it is, as long as it's a toilet, right?  I don't even...

More signs on the inside.  Nothing amazingly interesting.  Other than the fact that the room is so small, that I couldn't even, with my smallest lens, pull back far enough to get all the signs in one shot.

 So here's the rest of them.  Again, nothing drastically entertaining or weird or anything.  Just a whole lot of signs telling you where you are.  (As if the big porcelain 'chair' in the corner wasn't a big enough clue ;).

Reflections of a bathroom sign (or a few)

There was a large mirror on the wall opposite the actual toilet.  Not tilted far enough that you could see yourself from there (because that would just be disturbing), but it lets you see the signs above where you're sitting. Only, you know, they're in a mirror, so they're backwards.  It was all just a bit odd.

Here are those signs the right way around.  I do like the "Queens" sign.  That's a nice change of pace. :)  Also, next to it?  Probably the largest span of unused wall space in the entirety of the operation.  And this place is massive.




And just very quickly, while I know I've discussed this before, this is a great place to stop and look at White Correction.  I didn't realize how yellow the incandescent lights were in the bathrooms when I was shooting, so I didn't change the setting. I manually corrected it in the version above, but a post-production color correction, in my opinion, is never quite as good as capturing it right in the first place.

Architectural Artifacts, post 2 - Making Sales in the Men's Room

So here's post two on the AA trip. Even as big as this place was, there was no space left unused for salable items.  So, if you're looking for a vintage men's room sign, you can find them... you know, on and in the men's room.

Just in case you weren't

 sure...

This was the front of the bathroom door.  Most are pretty straight forward.  "Men". "Boys".  "Gentlemen". "Caballeros".  Most obviously "Males" (but really, who labels their restroom males/females?") But who says the WC has to be for men?  Last time I checked women use the water closet too.

Or even more stereotypically speaking, engineers, quartermasters and fire[people] can't be women?
 But the one that I find the funniest is that one next to the doorknob in red text.  "W.C. Hombres".  We'll go with the British "W.C.", but the Spanish "Hombres".  I'm sure that made sense to someone somewhere.

And if you're still confused once you come in.

BTW, this is the back of that same door above.  Which means that unless you're a busybody photographer woman, you may not realize there are more options for your bathroom labeling needs inside the men's room.  Because, really, who'd think to go look at the back of the bathroom door for something you need?






So many ways of telling you where they are, they couldn't even all be contained on one door. If you can't read the one in the frame, it says, "WASH HANDS.  The law requires thorough hand washing for all food handlers before beginning work and after using toilet.  $10.00 FINE FOR VIOLATORS.  Evanston Health Department."  A whole $10, huh?

Also, the little white one at the bottom apparently says something like "Bathroom towels $.20".  I'm really hoping that means something like paper towels and not, you know, toilet paper or something.  Because, really, charging for T.P.?  Just wrong. :)  (If someone has a better understanding of that sign PLEASE let me know!  I googled "tohallas" and the best the computer could do was say, "Do you mean 'toallas'?", which, actually made sense.)

For those who *really* hate changing the roll.

And of course, if you'd like a vintage T.P. holder... no better place to find them than in their natural environment.  (Weirdly, the women's room only had one toilet paper holder... but that's tomorrow's post.)

 This just begs the question of "why?", doesn't it?  I mean, where are the flushings going when the train is moving that they can't go when the train is in the station?  What are people supposed to do if more than one person has to go before the train leaves?  I mean... ew!

It reminds me of this shot I took on an Amtrack a few years ago (and then photoshopped just the *slightest* bit.  (I swear, all I did was turn the edges of the hat up just a tad, the rest of the evil imagery was already there.)

By the way, these bathrooms are about six feet square and *horribly* lit.  So shooting in them is a bit of a nightmare.

But they are entertaining... as bathrooms go.

Matthiessen State Park - 9.25.10 - Post 1/2

In a little, tiny town called Utica, Illinois, there are two state parks.  One is the very well known Starved Rock, the other is Matthiessen State Park.  A group I belong to had a trip to Matthiessen planned, so I figured it would be a great chance to go shoot a site that's over two hours away and not have to make that drive on my own.

Which... worked up to a point.  I didn't have to make the drive on my own, but I remembered what happened the last time I had this thought (go with the group so I'm not out in BFE on my own)... I get highly annoyed at how fast everyone moves; I really do better when I go shooting on my own or with another photographer who understands 'move slowly and quietly'.  I mentioned something to the group leader about not wanting to sprint through the park, and she said we wouldn't be, but um... yeah we were.  And I don't mean that even from a photographer's standpoint.  Even if I'd left my camera in my car, I'd feel this group was trying to make land speed records.

Nevermind the fact that I was actually trying to take a few pictures.

Not helping at all is that this is a split-level park - there's an upper dells and lower dells section, which means there's a lot of stairs.  It's not like you go down, stay down and then come up and stay up.  You're up and down all over the place.  At one point we did 148 stairs consecutively (according to the signage).  That's roughly the same as going up (yeah, this was 148 stairs UP) 14 floors of a tall building.  Did I mention that my asthma deals with hiking across all kinds of land, but really, really hates doing stairs?  Ugh.

Overall, for this time of year and for a Saturday and for the the kind of photography I do, I'd give this park a D.  It's very, very busy.  Which means there are no animals anywhere you can see.  I heard some birds - I'm quite sure one was an owl - but other than the occasional blur streaking across the sky, I didn't see one animal.  We're also just far enough into fall to be at that awkward place where the interesting flowering plants are pretty well gone, but the really spectacular leaves haven't come in yet.  So ... it was pretty boring photographically speaking.

Between trying to break the four-minute-mile and there not being much to see, I only shot about 2 gigs of photos.  Comparatively, I hiked a place I wasn't ridiculously keen on last week (photos will get up eventually) where even though I was still in the middle of urban civilization, there were enough animals and flowers that I took about 10 gigs of photos in the same amount of time.

There were a lot of people in the woods that day.  A lot of kids and a lot of families with dogs.  So, again, no chance the wildlife was going to stick around.

I shot this sign when I was in the parking lot, waiting, just to test the equipment.  I find it kind of funny now...

See rule 4?  My initial reaction was, "Seriously?  Who's going to go wading in a forest lake?"  Well, we got up to the "Wishing Well" part of the park and there was a lagoon that was very, very low.  Which left a muddy bank from about five feet up the rock wall into the lagoon, which (judging by the dog swimming and playing in it) had to be at least four feet deep.  There were a couple of kids running up the bank and sliding down the mud into the water on their butts.  At first I kind of gave their dads a dirty look, like, "It's 60 degrees and I'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to let your kids play in the water."  (Not that I'd ever say as much, but I thought it).

And then I realized that thirty years ago, my brother and I would have been doing *exactly* that same thing.  My father would have been encouraging it while my mother stood to the side hoping there wasn't a stick popping up out of the mud that we'd snag on or a sharp rock on the bottom that we'd cut ourselves on (but not disallowing it or freaking out over what sliding in all that mud would be doing to our clothes.)

Speaking of signage, this one, from the auxiliary parking lot kind of cracks me up:

Don't get the impression this sign is old, but a.) it doesn't list 911 as an emergency number and b.) it doesn't give the area code.  And we were pretty far out in nowhere-Illinois, and I really don't know what the area code is out there.  I'm thinking we were too far south to be in 815 any more.  So my cellphone, which requires 10-digit dialing, would have been problematic.

I do want to try the place again in the spring or summer and preferably on a weekday when it's apt to be less crowded and have more interesting flora and fauna visible.

But, all that said, I did get a few interesting shots.

Long Lake

 Water is an integral feature of the park.  Largely, it's based on a canyon (hence the hiking back up 14 flights) that is carved by running water, much the same way the Grand Canyon was carved (only on a much, much smaller scale.)  This is one of the lakes that still had water.  You can see that some of the trees (but not many) are starting to change.  I really like looking at the reflections in water pictures.  It shows how still the water is now.

Carved Cavern in the Canyon

The canyon, I'm told, has an actual river running through it in the spring, but by the fall it's pretty dry and the water that is there is pretty still.  But you can still see the way the sandstone has eaten away the walls of the canyon and left caverns in them.

Rainbowed Cavern

To the right of this picture is where the kids were playing in the mud.  Despite their splashing and sliding, the water flattened quickly, the ripples didn't travel far.  I wonder if that has anything to do with the lime in the water.  I like this shot because of the different deposit layers and micro-flora layers on the rocks.  In the back you can see oranges and reds and purples from the sediments in the water and on the left you can see blues and greens from lichens and mosses and other 'air plants' like small ferns.

Crack in the Canyon

Here's one wall in the canyon with a grove cut in it.  I'm sure that when it rains hard enough, there's a fantastic waterfall here.  There are trees sticking out of the rocks all over the place in this park.  Sometimes gravity wins and the tree gets pulled down.  In certain places they create bridges that I'm sure the squirrels and such love.  In other places you just have these tree trunks hanging off the side of the cliff, their roots still holding them up even though the tree wasn't alive any more.

Quiet Creek

Here's the trickle of river that remains this season.  The water is brown from tannin in some of the plants and their parts (like acorns) falling in it.  It's not just muddy.  Even the clearer pools were usually gold or brown in color from this.

Sandstone Erodes

 Sandstone layers and small caverns. 

Sulphur Shelf Spots

One bright spot of color that I did find were a few samples of this orange fungus.  This is called a "Sulphur Shelf" fungus, and is apparently edible.  No thanks.  It's pretty though.

We Don't Need to Put Down Roots

A lot of the rocks had plants growing on or out of them.  I'm not sure what those long finger-looking plants are.  They have the texture of a regular leaf, but they seem to creep and grow like a lichen or moss.

Rocks Reflect

Another reflection.  You can see how still the water is as well as how dark the tannins make it.














Okay, I have one more post for this hike - not nearly as many as I would have liked to have had, but I think we're hitting that place where I need to resign myself to the fact that we're heading into that season where nature shooting gets a little bit harder.

Volo Bog - 9.04.10 - Post 1

This was my second trip to Volo Bog, and it won't be my last.  There's a lot more information on Volo Bog on their website, but the short version is that it's the only open-water "quaking" bog in Illinois - a relic of the last ice age!  It was the first genuinely cool day Chicago had had in months and I alternately needed my sweatshirt, wanted a heavier coat and was happy in my t-shirt, depending on the amount of sun and wind at any given moment.

Volo Bog

Adult Supervision

Okay, I have to say, this sign just amuses me, because when you see it, you can't quite figure out what needs adult supervision.  Turns out that if you go around to where that second sign in my shot is, there's a path down to a dock into a small pond-bog that has bird habitats and tadpoles.  There are a lot of school groups that tour the bog, so it makes sense, but on the surface, it's just this odd sign out in the middle of the path.

Vervain on the Savanna

Besides the bog, there's a large wooded and savanna area that I didn't get the chance to hike the first time I went out there because I was with a group.  Being on my own, I was able to walk the roughly 5 miles of trails and click to my heart's content.  This would have been significantly easier if we weren't having hurricane force winds.

No, really, it was windy.  Check out the flags in the parking lot.  This kept some animals in hiding, but others, like the dragonflies tended to land on something and hold on for dear life... which made for easier shooting if I could catch the plant when it wasn't swaying in the wind.

World Turned Upside-down

Anyway, the bog is fascinating.  This is a shot of the surface reflecting the skies and nearby tamarack forest.  Those are lilypads floating on the top.  I managed to catch this shot early enough in the day that the really, really nasty winds hadn't kicked up yet and the bog was fabulously still.

Waterlily Glow

I love waterlilies, as you may have noticed.  There's something about the way that the seem to glow from the inside.  The water here is so still it's black and the leaves of the lily pads are dark green, which makes the white just stand out and glow.

Light Shines Through

Here's one that's more open and has a fantastic reflection in the still water.

Ripple Effect

This part of the bog - the section that has the floating boardwalk around it - has thousands of ridiculously active frogs in it.  They were hopping up from the water catching bugs and disappearing.  There's something very peaceful about the lily and the ripples here.

Froggy Finger Hold

Here's one who sat still for a few minutes.  I like how he's hanging onto the leaf with his little froggy finger.  This is your good old, standard Green Frog.

Leopard Frog Lies Low

And this, as far as I can tell, is a Southern Leopard Frog.  I think it's a little on the young side and his spots haven't quite come in yet.  I know there are quite a few frogs still developing - in the next post I'll have shots of tadpoles and one of a polywog (a frog that still has the vast majority of his tadpole tail.)






And these were all taken in the half-mile of floating boardwalk (which makes for interesting shooting if you aren't the only one on it.  See my post about trying to shoot from a moving ship in the water.)  I hadn't even gotten into the nature preserve.