93 Reasons WHY I do Photo-Safaris
Take a Bunch of Day Trips with Me
“You don’t have to go abroad or take a long vacation to write a travel blog post. Try visiting a nearby park or natural area, or even just part of your town or city that you haven’t been to before. Document the results in a post.” Even though I am a content creator for my marketing clients, when it comes to my own stuff, sometimes it hard to know what to say. To help myself figure out what I should write about I did my normal ‘brainstorming’ activity – I did a lookup using Google search. I went through the results, without clicking and then this list post caught my eye. However, I didn’t find my answer in the first 3 tips. Nor was it in the top ten tips. I had to get all the way to #22. My immediate thought was “Here’s one of my own photo-safari day trips I shared with my husband David” but something happened on the way to the internet and completion of this blog post. As I got past writing this first paragraph, I heard “share my why” as in, why I do photo-safaris. And, so, now I will attempt to do so. Please let me know how I did.
MY WHY
That big question mark in the sky – WHY? We start asking that question almost as soon as we begin to talk. WHY? For me, it has always been a mark of defiance, according to my father anyway. As I grew into a functioning adult, I continued to ask WHY of all sorts of things, like, why did the chicken cross the road? Why do I have to eat broccoli or spinach? And for gosh sakes, why can’t I have my own place at the beach? And now you are asking “how the heck does that have anything to do with going on a photo-safari?” I promise, I’m getting there…
In March of 2020, the covid-19 pandemic brought a screeching halt to our summer travel plans. Not that we had any big ones that we lost money on, unlike David’s son who was supposed to get married in May and honeymoon in Switzerland right after! Ouch! We had tentative plans on taking the Brave (our RV) to head on down to Georgia to see my grandson Matthew on his 8th birthday in July. That would have been an epic photo-safari. Yeah, so we didn’t go.
In fact, between March 12th and now, I have only been out of the state once, to NH – Portsmouth & Auburn (both in August).
How do I know where I went when?
Well, while I may not be taking client portraits in abundance right at the moment, I do take pictures every day. I have done so for a very, very long time. I probably average 30 photos on any given day. I use my Google photos to search for and organize my images. Heck, it’s got over 481 GB of photos stored there currently…and that doesn’t include my client work (for which I use Adobe Lightroom to catalog and organize onto an external hard drive).
My daily photo-safari activities include a very specific assignment – what I call my “daily creativity activity“. I pick an image and turn it into some sort of digital art. In order to grow as an artist, this type of activity is a must-do. I have been operating on this and apply it to my own work since way back when I first moved from NH out to California. I needed a break from being a studio owner, however, it didn’t take me long to recognize that I NEEDED to be photographing and creating! So, in the late summer of 2012, I started my daily creative activity.
But, I digress. I’m supposed to be taking you along on one of my day trip travels. I call them photo-safaris because they are all about going someplace and taking photos. So, for this post, I couldn’t decide which one destination to share, so I went for what I’ve been up to since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. I could also call it “what I did with my summer.” 🙂
I decided to take a look at each month to see where I/we went when we actually went somewhere that might be of interest to others who may be contemplating doing a photo-safari around this great state of Maine. I grew up here, moved away in 1985, and was gone for 35 years. Now I’ve been back for 3 years. So much state, so little time. You really should plan to come to visit!
Starting after the pandemic began my photo-safaris have included:
- March and April were a blur -David and I managed to give him a new hairdo (he went bald) and I was excited to sell a print of one of my digital art images. David spent his time working from home and I spent a great deal of time creating digital art and marketing pieces to share on my social media sites. After weeks of being in quarantine, combined with being buried in snow all winter, we were so ready to get outside. We took multiple walkabouts in the woods near our house and down to the still-frozen lake. We also included a drive to and an afternoon spent getting some exercise walking around Belfast, ME.
- May – TRAGEDY STRUCK! A number of major life moments happened for me during this month in 2020. We watched the astronauts dock together on television. We took our first motorcycle ride of the season. and the most shocking event then took place, the unexpected death of my oldest brother Mark A. Tempesta. Sad sad sad is all I can say for how I felt.
- June – David and I made our way out to the coast in order to spend time together healing from the stress of my brother’s passing, dealing with his estate, and then the Celebration of Life with the family that we hosted outside on June 19th. When I need to “heal” I head to the ocean. That is my go-to destination for dealing with emotional recovery. I am not exactly sure why but I simply love it there. I can be anywhere, but if you asked me “where do you want to go” my first thought is always to go there. So, we headed off with our family to Belfast for a lobster lunch and then on to an epic mountain top sunset goodbye to our brother at the top of Cadillac Mountain!
- July – WE ARE FINALLY LIVING LIFE AGAIN! We managed to take a gorgeous motorcycle ride to the Height of Land scenic overlook just beyond Rangley, ME where David captured a really great photo of yours truly! We spent some time where we had been riding snowmobiles this past winter. We both grew up in that region (Farmington for me, and Wilton for David) so we are very familiar with the lakes and the mountains, yet we were both still amazed by the beauty that we found. We also finally started to plan where to go for our first RV plus motorcycle adventure.
Since I had never been anywhere past Bar Harbor, our first summer destination was Lubec, ME where we explored Downeast Maine! We enjoyed the awesome RV park that was right on the edge of the ocean.We visited the Marshall Point Lighthouse and even drove right up to the Canadian border crossing, which of course, was closed for Covid-19! My mom even drove up and spent the night in a tent and hung out with us. We explored the rocky Maine coastline at the easternmost point in the USA at West Quoddy Head and we really enjoyed our weekend so much, we drove even farther north – I had always wanted to go there after seeing the original “Pete’s Dragon” movie – you know, to see Passamaquoddy! We then traversed to Perry, ME – again – the Passamaquoddy Bay and coastline were typical Maine – lots of granite and trees! We did enjoy a nice walkabout in downtown Eastport (ghost town as you can imagine) and enjoyed lunch in a local restaurant. What we weren’t expecting to come upon was a huge cruise ship and no one around! Did you see that story on the news?So, we enjoyed it so much, we decided to do it again only this time the destination I chose was “up in the County” as they say…that is, a camping adventure to Aroostook County! Again a location I had never been to. That RV/motorcycle adventure took us to the first of the Four Corners Tour. As we were touring around Maine in our 31′ Winnebago BRAVE with our motorcycle trailing along we explored the places we could stay overnight without paying. We are self-sufficient (requiring no hookups) and enjoy the adventure of boondocking! It’s nothing for us to stay overnight along a highway, in a rest stop or park n ride or even along the famous Airline Road, the route that goes between Baileyville to Bangor, ME. We even had a really great adventure on the motorcycle when we drove the abandoned Loring AFB airstrip at Limestone singing Danger Zone from Top Gun at the top of our lungs! A black bear sighting (still no moose sighting for me) and the last photo from this month is actually a heart in the night sky! - August – At this point, we’ve enjoyed 32 firepit fires at home and while away, and I’ve handmade over 200 non-surgical facemasks! We took advantage of some beautiful weather with a very long walkabout all around the Bangor City Forest which connects to the Walden Park Preserve, and spent a fun weekend with family at the Birches Campground in Litchfield!
- September – Took a ride on the scenic Downeast Scenic Railroad with my cousin and mother. It was a fun photo safari and a nice way to see fall in Maine in all of its full glory!
- October – We took a walk along the Messalonskee Stream Trail and drove all the way to the closed Canadian border via way of Jackman & Bingham and the Old Canadian Road National Scenic Byway just to say we did. During that ride, we found a gorgeous waterfall and we had to climb down to see it, only to find the most perfect lighting for some impromptu portraits of each other! When the light is right, you have to take full advantage! Finally, we took what was probably our last motorcycle ride of the year, I brought my surviving tomato plants indoors and I donned my fuzzy wool socks and fleece-lined leggings!
- November – Today is November 5th. We have had a presidential election. Today’s photo-safari included walking with Pixel on our land. The milkweed pods reminded me to take full advantage of every photographic opportunity because life is fleeting.
During these adventures I was able to witness some of the most beautiful sunsets, make and eat some awesome foods, grow a garden, play with dogs, witness and photograph baptisms at our church, enjoy ice cream in the rain with siblings, hunted wild mushrooms, eat a meal with my BFF at the Holy Grail, walkabout at Massabeesic Lake where I took an awesome portrait of my husband and finally, photographed the 8th-grade grads of VCS during their graduation celebration, not to mention, create some fun digital art!
These are all my whys! Because, I also ask, why not?
#soothesmysoul #dailycreativeactivity #goodbrainknows #digitalart #photosafaris #livelife #mywhy #visitme #visitmaine #goodbrainphoto #goodbrainboss #allworknoplaymakescrystalabore
(photos are in random order)(LLama card made by my wildly talented cousin Barb!)(some images are enhanced, others are not. All were captured using my Google Pixel 3a XL)