The Birthday Tour: Part 4 Our So-Called Scenic Backway

And practically a stone's throw from Canada, traveling west, we proceeded along the so-called Rendezvous Region Backway through the "Spectacular Pembina Gorge." I suppose I should be more ecstatic about it, but somehow I was not. Maybe it was the construction we ran into on a 2 lane gravel road, which literally made us have to stop in our tracks for 20 minutes, waiting for the pilot car to lead our little caravan of about 10 cars, across a stretch. Apparently, some kind of construction was occurring (invisible construction escaping the naked eye.) And do you know how long it takes to accumulate 10 cars on a North Dakota backroad?

Well, to prevent totally caving to the phenomena of the "grass being greener on the other side," I just boosted the saturation and contrast in this photo:

This is as hilly as you could ever get in North Dakota. I kid you not; this is our ski slope! (My son once broke his collar bone skiing there. The parent accompanying him on this middle school trip really annoyed me when she called me from the hospital, s*l*o*w*l*y dragging it out that she was in the hospital with my son, then digressing into something about the weather, before she told me he was fine! ALWAYS begin these conversation with a parent with the bottom line: "He/she is fine." That's the rule. Don't break it! It's evil to handle it any other way.)

We did have a hitchhiker on our trip to see the scenery. Before we got totally lost, out of range of our Garmin and cell phone coverage. How do you get lost when there are only a handful of roads? And we kept asking, is THIS the spectacular scenic byway?


And we saw wildlife, so all was good.

The Birthday Tour: Part 3 Icelandic State Park

And this is a rare bit of wonderfulness in North Dakota: an honest to God, actual, real, beach. They're rare, and miles and miles apart (unless you think of Devil's Lake, which is a lake that seems to be slowly consuming the state, like something out of a grade B horror flick named something like "The Glob"). But this is in Icelandic State Park, and it's beautiful.

And there are walking trails! Just wandering through the woods, along some fields. Doug is stalking a monarch. The monarch population has been declining because of the use of herbicides to control milkweed. Apparently, the monarch really depends on the milkweed plant. So I guess Doug should grab this photo while he can.





And you know that little obsession I have about sRGB? And making sure that the photos I post are in this color space rather than RGB? Forget all that stuff I said about "convert" vs. assign. It turned out that the new "save for web" action I created did not have the "embed color space" box checked off, after my computer crash in March. That's all it was! I created a new action, and now, finally, I should have dependable sRGB posts.

Why is this important, you ask? Because web browser need the information to figure out how to interpet the colors in your photo. This means that after you carefully edit your photos, the browser will willy nilly interpret the color any old way it feels like. Unless you embed the color profile in sRGB, and then there's more of a chance that the right color information will be communicated to the browser. (But then there's still that problem of not all browsers being color managed. Will you ever listen Google Chrome?)

Hamilton, ND pop. 73: Part 2 of the Birthday Tour

It was an exhaustive process, but I managed to edit the all of the photos from my extensive tour of Hamilton, ND. Should you, yourself, attempt this walking tour of the city, let me assure you that with good shoes, you CAN walk the entire downtown in one day.

Here is the post office, the centerpiece of the city's sweeping skyline:

Note that the post office includes a small cafe.

Next up, the shopping district. Should you desire to have a shopping spree in Hamilton, it would be helpful to check in advance which days, and hours, the Coffee House Treasures is open. Sadly, we missed that golden window of opportunity to pick up the rare, and perhaps rarely accessible, treasures of lifetime.

And here is a second cafe, and lest there be any question about it, YES! They do have Budweiser! My photo does not do justice to the signage which graces this establishment, marking it as Luscious Lou's 5-81 Country Bar & Grill. Darn, looks like I also missed my chance to meet Luscious Lou. (What's your guess, male or female?)

Above, you also see poor Ruby with Doug. Ruby is not "poor" because Doug has her with him; she's poor because he left her idiot harness on her that keeps her from leaping over the back seat of our car and taking over the steering wheel. It's bulky, obnoxious, and did not manage to keep her from chewing the backseat belt almost all the way through.

Another thing to note about the above photo is the red pick-up truck. After we got back in our car, the elderly, and rather grim-faced driver of this vehicle, tried out his Homeland Security Skills on us, driving up and down the street, four times, seriously scanning us for any signs of Up-to-no-Goodness. A tip of a the hat to the man in the red pick-up in doing his part to protect the Homeland, all .3 square miles of it, only 9.8 miles south of the Canadian border!

And if you want to do a bar crawl across little Hamilton, you could probably literally crawl it from the post office to Bill's Place, to Luscious Lou's. And back. And what a night you'd have!

Mosquito Zombies of North Dakota

They are evil, and they are quick. They are North Dakota mosquitoes, rivaling our state buffalo! And they are prolific.

And they love me.

Apparently, they are no match for:

1.) 2 teaspoons daily of cider vinegar (I'll try anything!)

2.) lavender oil dabbed here and there

3.) Avon Skin so Soft bug guard (the last bastion of my hopes and dreams of not being devoured by these heartless blood-suckers)

I foolishly ventured outside and tried to do a 5 minute raid on the garden weeds, but after 17 bites, I stopped counting.

But I'm not giving up! I only applied a light spray of the Avon Skin so Soft, and started glugging Apple Cider vinegar (God Save Me!) this morning, so there's still hope!

I have read that the real defense against mosquitoes is straight DEET, plentiful and unsparingly, but I hate the smell and it scares me that Ruby, who likes to slather me in doggy kisses, would probably start glowing in the night if I use Off as much as I want, so I'm trying other approaches.

Doug, my ever sympathetic Beloved Spouse, said, "At least you don't have tuberculosis."

What makes husband say such things????????????????