We hadn’t been to Harpers Ferry since our honeymoon, so we made a day trip of it to hike the Maryland Heights Trail. Never an easy climb, but we made it up to the overlook.
Zoo Day
Did the National Zoo for a day. As expected, there were animals, including Bao Bao the panda cub.
Owls were in rare form at the bird house.
A tiger was very interested in the zookeeper grinning through the reinforced doors.
Meanwhile, one of these Sponsored Otters is not named like the others.
Great Falls with Mom
Parent came to visit us in NoVA after Florida, so I took Mom out for a hike around the Billy Goat Trail at Great Falls (Maryland side). With the river swollen from the previous week’s heavy rain, the falls raged higher than I had ever seen them before, and Sec. A of the trail was closed due to flooding. Sec. B was still open, though, and proved just as fun and challenging.
We also spotted this rough green snake on the trail during the walk back.
It was great having my parents over for a weekend. Mom’s fitter than I am.
Orlando Airport Chapel
Nestled between the Orlando International Airport Gates 1-57 tram tubes, just behind security and a round planter, sits the airport chapel, a small round room with four couches, a table strewn with bibles and rosary rings, and a stained glass panel called “Tree of Life.”
Full photo album of Orlando International Airport Chapel here, part of my always-growing collection of airport chapel photos.
Playalinda and Atlantis
I was in Orlando to meet up with my parents before a convention, but I had a day to myself before they arrived. The first thing I noticed after checking in to an old, threadbare room at the Best Western was that the tap water smelled funny, like sulfurous mud, and I thought as I lay down to sleep: I should get out of Orlando.
IAD-MCO
I was at Dulles for a while that Friday. I had come over early from work to enroll for TSA Precheck, and tried driving in via a back route called “Ariane Way” that skipped the Dulles Access Road and was frequented by airport workers and cargo delivery trucks. A wrong turn somehow trapped me in the taxi lot, where I managed to U-turn into a one way lane right into the headlights of a rental shuttle before finding my way out to the terminal ramp, much to the amusement of the entire Dulles taxi fleet.
Fiesta
Our Elantra was sadly totaled last month in an accident on Fairfax County Parkway, but fortunately the insurance settlement was enough to pay for most of a new car: a 2014 Ford Fiesta SE sedan.
Easter of the Lamb Cake
We drove up to New Jersey for Easter, where Amy’s mom had bought and cleaned out an 80 year old cast-iron cake mold in the shape of a lamb to make an Easter Lamb Cake.
We watched a video of Fr. Ray Kelly, the now-famous Singing Irish Priest:
My brother-in-law Bob introduced us to “Viking Blod”:
I also played a lot of Goat Simulator:
And on the way back I was moved by the Walt Whitman Center to write some short romantic poetry about the New Jersey Turnpike.
DC Cherry Blossoms 2014
I might have gone a bit overboard using this fisheye lens with the cherry blossoms over the weekend. The blooms were lovely and it was a nice, warm day — though the DC crowds were thicker than I’ve ever seen them, both at the Tidal Basin and at the Washington Monument grove.
Also notable was this sighting of a bit of cherry tree sap leaking from one of the boughs:
…and a black ant crawling over buds sprouting from a cherry tree’s roots:
More photos from this year’s cherry blossoms in the full Flickr photoset: DC Cherry Blossoms 2014 — part of an unbroken series of DC cherry blossom photosets I’ve had going for a decade now.
Fisheye
I recently purchased a used SEL16f28 wide angle lens and VCLECF1 fisheye converter for the Sony NEX3 from Eric Cheng, and gave the combo a try around church and DC last Sunday.
I’ve found the lens combo is also good for macro shots, as evidenced by these pictures of cherry blossoms and cats. (The cats were, of course, the first test subjects for the lenses.) The fisheye isn’t perfect; I’m noticing some blurry distortion and light contrast flare around the vignetted edges — but for my amateur-level needs it’s not too much of a problem.
I also discovered that the camera has a 3:2 aspect ratio setting (all this time I’ve had it at 16:9, unaware the widescreen-like format was missing a lot of vertical visual detail). This, plus the panoramic lens angle, makes the combo much better for non-telescopic astrophotography, and should also be nice for cherry blossom season this week. (Although I’ll still want to keep the standard 18-55mm kit lens on hand at all times for when I need optical zoom, and when the novelty of fisheye fades.)