A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.
It’s been a solid week of music. We had our Bring Your Own Guitar session on Wednesday at Empire Ale in Mount Vernon, followed by the Bellingham Folk Festival this past weekend. I had a great time learning new things and meeting other musicians in the area. There were even a few connections with folks from back home. That’s quite a bit for one post, but I’ll try to wrap it all up here.
In an earlier post I mentioned that Laura and I had travelled up river for the Skagit Eagle Festival, only to find that most of the eagles were right here around our little island. This past week while Laura was working on her sabbatical material she sent me catch some “action shots” of our local eagles. Later she joined me for a couple of other excursions out with binoculars and long lenses.
We made it back to Washington after the holidays and I dived right into the music scene. The Sunday after we returned there was a Scottish music session at Littlefield Celtic Center, followed by a practice session Monday afternoon. Since other musicians had been encouraging me to attend one of the practice sessions (and I’m still not sure how to take that) I decided to go to Monday’s session as well.
This blog post has no photos. That in and of itself should highlight the unusualness of the past few weeks. Our holiday trip back to South Carolina was..strange, and our return to Samish Island only heightened the limbo-like quality of the past few weeks. I’m sure that will change as we get back into a routine. Until then, here’s a photo-less recap recent happenings.
I have failed. I came up 4.86 miles short of the 2017 Challenge proposed by the Church of the Double-Bladed Paddle. Between a bum foot, a Christmas head cold, and cold weather I just couldn’t get those last five miles done. Oh well. However, I believe in quality over quantity. I’ve hit some old favorites as well as covered some new territory. Despite not making my goal, I still think it was a successful paddling year.
We’re back in South Carolina. It was an arduous trip across country, but we rolled into town on Wednesday and have been getting reacquainted with our house. It is good to be home and spend some time with family.
It was a Sunday afternoon and Laura was still in South Carolina. Later in the evening the Swinnomish Yacht Club would be holding a lighted boat parade along the waterfront of La Conner. I decided I’d check it out.
Laura had to head back to South Carolina just as the weather was improving here. Over the week or so that she was gone I took the opportunity to head out and get some photos. I couldn’t do much because of my foot, but I could drive around to interesting places to shoot sunrises, sunsets, and lots and lots of birds. Here are some of the random shots from those excursions.
Laura had to head back to South Carolina for some business at Furman, so I had to drive her down to the airport in Seattle. Since she had a morning flight I decided that it would be a perfect opportunity to do some Christmas shopping (well, at least some window shopping) in the Seattle area.
NOTE: I’m still catching up. This post was from a couple of weeks ago.
It has been a week full of music. There was Irish music Monday night, guitar and ukulele Wednesday night, more Celtic music Thursday night, a rehearsal with the Samish Island Singers Saturday morning, and finally a Scottish music session Sunday afternoon at Littlefield Celtic Center. This last session was loads of fun and I’m glad I headed on down to Mount Vernon to see what Scottish music is all about.