Marietta, Ohio - April 25, 2011

Cabela's was...interesting. Cool outdoor stuff, but all the stuffed dead animals were fairly creepy. There was dead stuff from everywhere, displayed everywhere. Dead fish, dead ducklings, dead elephants, and a about 400 dead deer. A giant nature mausoleum. They had some live fish, too, big koi and freshwater game fish. As I said, ...interesting.

We walked around Harmar Village after dinner. The pedestrian bridge was in great shape. Huge flower baskets were suspended from the bridgework. I'll bet they're beautiful during the summer.

The train side is a picturesque ruin - rotted trestles with trees and weeds growing in the holes. Definitely a kid magnet. The water's deep enough that falling in wouldn't be a problem. Inadvisable the week we were there, though, since the Muskingum and Ohio were flooding.

It'll be nice to go back in the summer and take a paddle boat tour on the Ohio.

Push Boats on the Ohio, April 25, 2011

As we drove down OH Rt. 7, we saw lots of these push boats moving coal barges upriver. The Ohio was flooding, with a really strong current, yet the push boats were movig as many as six fully loaded barges upstream and leaving enormous wakes. They have to have seriously powerful engines.

We watched this one chugging upriver from a little park in Marietta, on the bridge to Harmar Village.

Marietta, Ohio

One of the little shops in Harmar Village had unique landscape art - yep, a dozen old bikes hanging from a tree. Only open on weekends, so we didn't get to see what interesting stuff was inside.

I adjusted the color temperature, saturated the blues, increase contrast, sharpened and added a vignette, all in Lightroom 3.

The Brenda Tharp tips are coming, it's been a really busy couple of weeks. I hope it slows down a bit next week.