My day started much earlier than I would have preferred waking up at 4:30 am and sleep then eluding me.  Out of bed, shower, hit the breakfast buffet, and on the road. This morning it’s to Grand Falls outside Joplin, Missouri. As the review said, you can see the falls from the parking lot but it is so much more glorious close up.  It was exhilarating to realize I was the only one there. There are pools everywhere, reminding me somewhat, of tidal pools.  Despite the numerous pools, it was not difficult to maneuver around them and find different view points from which to shoot the falls. My favorite was shooting with the pools in the foreground, reflecting trees, and the falls in the background. I shot a long fissure line and had just climbed down beside the falls when the first of the  other visitors arrived.  It was time to take the last few shots and leave.

As I drive away, I stop to snap a few pictures further up the river where the current is calm and there is great reflections of the trees and grasses from the far side of the river and then once again from the middle of the low water bridge that crossed the river so that I seems I may have been traversing the river by boat rather than in my car.

I head west on I-44.  When I have driven into Oklahoma, I see a sign that says “Entering Cherokee Nation” and I rather gleefully envisioned a war party racing along side my car.  All buckskins and bows and arrows.  But perhaps I am the victim of too many John Wayne movies as I child; I have no idea how they might have looked. My mind wandered to things like how the land would have looked then.

There is a great vastness to this golden landscape.  It is rather a color I am unfamiliar with in most settings, it lies just shy of orange but is very rich still.  Most fields are not tilled so it is not wheat. I remain bewildered yet enthralled.

There is an old barn with a yellow roof that calls to me and I stop. There is a portion of fencing with weathered wood. And from another angle a beautifully symmetrical tree that I find lovely. A tree in the middle of a small pond and and old Purina mill also captured.

My phone continues to vex me and its inability to hold a charge.  Lunch was at Runts Bar-B-Q in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The bring me to a table near an outlet and plug in my phone. Two ribs, green beans, Texas toast, and a piece of coconut meringue pie. The food was fabulous and I was delighted to see they employed a bus boy with Down syndrome. As I leave town, I sing loudly, “I’m glad to be an Okie from Muskogee, I don’t know any other words to this song!” I sang it another time of two for good measure.

The highway speeds have increased to 70 mph, too fast to take in the landscape for many pictures.  One more stop for a small town cemetery and my photography is done for the day.

Another day where I turn my phone off and on to preserve the charge but today it sends me off in the wrong direction. When I hit Dallas, it sends me to I-30W.  Once there it is sending me off and on the interstate. I most formulate another plan.  I stop for gas and directions. The recommendations I received included Subway for dinner. Ugh.  I don’t want chain store food on vacation.  When I get to the parking lot, I see a sports bar with two cars in the parking lot.  Bonanza, I think!  They should be excited for me to come in, order dinner, and charge me phone.  I step into an all but deserted bar other than five waitresses and a family of three.  The waitress that greets me takes my phone to the bar and plugs in my phone.  The other waitresses have clothes that show a great deal of cleavage. I feel I entered a Hispanic version of Hooters.  I speak a couple of times to the waitress, she tells me that the bar doesn’t usually get busy until at least 10:00.  I told her my daughter was a server as well.  I order a dish with chicken and shrimp.  I was decent but not great food.  The cheese was so think that I ended up spinning it on my utensils much like pasta. It was time to pay and leave,  My phone still not fully charged.

I took a pit stop, got some gas and actually took the time to see if I had USB ports in the back seat. I had felt while driving but only felt the vent. There were more ports and my phone would charge.  Fabulous!  Back on the road again and for the first time in two days, felt at peace with the process.  Arrived in Leander, Texas at 11:15 pm. Lisa and I have a lot of catching up to do.  After all we haven’t seen each other in person in thrith-five years,….

 

 

While I generally prefer to start on the road early in the morning, today I had a meeting to attend that started at noon.  Traveling in a rented Volkswagen Passat, I set out toward Joplin, Missouri, my first night’s stop on my trip.

I find that the car is not charging my cell phone, I am not particularly worried.  I have my GPS and most of my trip today is highway.  At some point I will need the assurance that my phone will charge so I change out cords, it still doesn’t work. I buy a new car phone charger, it still doesn’t work.  I couple riding a Harley double check my charger, it is fine. It just won’t charge in the car.  By this time, I’m resigned that my phone won’t be charging in the car.

Driving southwest on I-44 from St. Louis, I make it barely past Cuba, Mo before I need a change of scenery. I take F north; then a left (west) on Dunham Road. Dunham is a hard-packed rutted dirt road. Unfortunately, that’s about as scenic as that stretch tended to be.  There were no old barns or silos, but there were a couple of interesting fence posts. Barbed wire and weathered wood. I come to an intersection, skewed enough that I wasn’t sure what direction I needed to go.  That is when I discovered that the GPS was no longer working. I put the address into the Google Drive on my phone.  I turn left onto CR1210, traveling southwest. It was along this stretch of road, that I find the only thing worth backing up for, a clearing beyond a clearing. I love how the light plays in the far clearing as if it has this great secret and invites you to come in and see.

Then I hit Missouri B, take a left and follow it until I intersect with I-44 once again.  Knowing that my GPS may be broken and the Google Drive app will probably suck up my phone’s resources like a thirsty man at a desert oasis, I will not be able to adventure off road again today.

Driving on 44, I reach down to adjust my seat forward, hit the wrong button and find that there is power lumbar support in this car,  I begin to think that lumbar support may just cover a great many sins until I realize that I’ve got a great many more miles to cover and my phone will not last that long.  I called my husband and told him that if the phone got to 15% power, I’d turn it off until I got the the exit for the hotel.  I wanted him to know that I might be unreachable. I did have to turn if off: 14%.  For an hour and a half, I was indeed on my own, my own thoughts, my own adventure.

I pull off the road at exit 8, I have 11% power. How does one lose 3% when the power is off I wonder,  Thankfully, the hotel is close,  But by the mile and and half, three turn route, I am down to 4% power.  I try desperately to find the confirmation email my husband sent because despite the fact I know the address, I don’t remember the hotel name.  My phone goes dead.  I pull into the first hotel and walk in the lobby.  It’s the right one.

I am grateful that I arrived safe and sound.  Now to make a plan for tomorrow…

The start of the second day of the church tour arrives along with the realization that I am behind where I want to be in photographing the number of churches I needed to yesterday to complete the tour today.  I also made arrangements to get my tire fixed and have breakfast in Perryville rather than at the bed and breakfast.  This also means that my second goal for the trip which was to photograph more of the Perry County Barn Quilt Tour has to be tabled.

One thing I’ve learned as a photographer, there are times that you must let go of the plans you made and give it over to God.  There are many times that I’ve gone out to shoot specific wildlife and found them not to be on the same schedule I’d planned.  But if I give the time up to God, He has never disappointed my heart nor my lens.

But there are other times with no set agenda, I travel these backroads, I make frequent stops, I back up, I turn around to capture the shimmer, the shadow, the nuance, that undefined quality that I saw in the landscape that I want to capture.  I’ve often felt that I saw the world differently and the backroads offers more time to actually see the world.

Lunch is at Eggers and Company with my friend, Ginger who came down to do the second day of the shoot with me.  Butternut squash soup with chicken sausage and wild rice and a pulled pork sandwich. Lunch was flavorful and filling.

We shot 17 churches that evening, one short from completing the entire tour. However, driving the backroads can be a challenge during the day. When you add in a pouring rain and locations with no specific address and locations that a gps unit does not recognize, there may be issues. In this case, it was not a may be or even a maybe, there were definitely some navigational issues.

However, we ended the evening on a photographic high note.  Our last stop of the evening was St. Mary’s of the Barrens Catholic Church in Perryville, we arrived at approximately 8:50 pm; 10 minutes before the official end of the tour. The last visitors were leaving as we entered.  We asked if we might have a few minutes and were granted that request. St. Mary’s is a beautiful church with high vaulted arches, a spiral staircase, lovely stained glass and a substantial pipe organ.  It is quite the contrast to most of the country churches I’d visited the last two evenings which are much more understated yet lovely in their own ways.

I am happy that I chose to stay locally this year and Eggers and Company B & B was a perfect chose.  Gracious antiques and great hosts. There was no fog, no eerie shadows this evening, nonetheless I was more than happy to find myself safely within Eggers.

 

 

 

 

 

This was a trip I had anticipated for months.  I love churches, old churches, new churchs, churches of all faiths. I had made this trip twice before but this time it was going to be different; this time I was spending the night in Perry County so I could get a good start. I knew it would take all of the time alloted over the two days to cover the 33 churches.

But my start was not a great one, before I even left St. Louis, I had a flat tire.  I called AAA, thank God for AAA, for he came and put on my spare tire.  But that also meant that I was driving 50 mph on the interstate between St. Louis and Perry Counties.  Fifty slow, anxious miles per hour on a misty day when the speed limit is seventy.

That flat and the slow drive caused a late start on the first day of the tour. While I wanted to see at least sixteen out of the thirty-three churches the first evening, I could not find the sixteenth church in the dark.  Driving back to the bed and breakfast on the oh so dark and foggy night along long stretches of deserted country roads, every slasher movie that I could even envision was popping into my head.  Perhaps I should not binge watch Criminal Minds on Netflix as I work.

I am ever so grateful to have a room at the bed and breakfast.  I had discovered Eggers and Company in 2017 when on the tour.  The owners had been gracious enough then to allow us to check out the facilities and even snap a few pictures of this quaint country establishment. Once a general store, now turned bed and breakfast with lunches served in the store with the guest rooms over the store.  Christmas was the theme down to the room where Santa gets ready and decorations and even books in the rooms.

The hot bath in the claw-footed tub with frankincense and lavender was decandent and much needed.  Then to climb into the comfy king size bed was a perfect ending to a day that had a less-than-perfect start.

Some 17 months ago, I was first introduced to the wild horses of Missouri in a photography workshop.  They were beautiful and majestic and yes, wild with their tangled manes and their penchant for retreating into the woods. I became instantly and totally enamored with these beautiful beasts.  But there is more, having irresponsibly (as a photographer) left my extra camera battery in my car and even more irresponsibly (as a human being) lost track of my bearings when I tried to return to the woods where the horses and the rest of my party were.  As I was wandering around the field trying to figure out where I should rejoin the workshop, two horses came from the woods and stood on a small rise, as if to draw my attention to their presence. They guided me back to the herd, theirs and mine! On the Sunday morning of that workshop weekend, I was sitting at the edge of the field, when a horse approached me.  I was not frightened, I spoke quietly and gently to this creature as it approached.  While I could have reached my hand out at one point and touched its muzzle, I did not. What a spiritual moment.

December 2018

We left on a Sunday morning, I first drove to Washington and left my car in a Lowes parking lot.  My friend drove us from there because she has a four-wheel drive.  We drove first to Broadfoot, this time I wrote down the directions.  We drove around the south side of the field; the horses at high alert. We quietly took our cameras and started shooting.  Two of the horses were frisky, biting, rearing, and chasing each other.  It made for some great shots.  We could hear hunting dogs in the woods baying. The beagles appeared, noses to the ground, following some unseen prey.  The horses do not react to these interlopers.  The herd is mostly white, a few greys, the colts are darker, deep grey to black.  An old mare with protruding hips is with the herd. She is thin with a slow, stiff gait.

We left the herd at Broadfoot and went to see if we could find the Shawnee herd.  There were cows in the same field as the Shawnee herd.  The cows left when the farmer appeared with a truck with hay in the corner of the field. Here too were a couple of dark colts. No colts survived in 2017 due to heavy spring flooding.  One deer ran through the field as we stood there followed after a short time by another. Graceful bucks with long bounding leaps seemingly ready to take flight. We stayed there while the sun set, providing its golden light behind the horses, at times, their manes seemingly on fire.

Monday morning, we were up before dawn and caught the morning light just before the sun cleared the eastern hills.  There was fog that morning and it created these marvelous layers to the dawn-brushed hills, all shades of lavender and rose.

We visited the Broadfoot herd once again.  Ground frost kissed the grass and made some dead leaves come to life once again with lacy designs.

We left the Broadfoot herd for Alley Mill.  The grist mill stands near a fresh water spring. The hoarfrost made spider webs into lovely lace and ground frost made the islands in the stream look like a fairyland.

We decided to visit the Shawnee herd once again before heading out of town.  They herd went into to woods and went to the river to drink.  A mare with wide flanks makes me hopeful for more colts next spring.  There golden manes are matted and tangled with burrs.  The horses generally stand close together, in the summer it is to fight the biting flies, in the winter, for warmth or companionship, I am not wise enough to know.

I leave knowing I will return again for I am drawn to these magnificent horses that haunt the waterways of the Ozarks.

 

 

 

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton