Saturday, July 7, 2012

Foto Finish-Travel

Foto Finish is back after being on hiatus for the month of July while it's hostess, Barbara at Cat Patches, was traveling in Ireland.  Today's optional theme is travel.  I've shared a lot of my travel shots over the last year and a half.  We've not taken our vacation yet this summer, so I can't post any shots from that.  As I looked back on our family travels over the years, I realize how they've changed.  When My Guy and I started dating, we were still in school, so vacations were pretty simple.  We didn't have the money to do much.  Once I was out and working, we'd take a road trip in the summer to somewhere and stay for a few days.  Then Kiddo (aka Drama Teen) came along not long after we moved to Texas.  Since it was a 10 hour drive to my family's and a 15 hour drive to My Guy's family, most of our vacation time was used to go home for the holidays. 

One nice thing about our time in Texas was that both of us worked a 9/80 schedule, which allowed us to take every other Friday off.   During the spring, we'd always take one of those long weekends and go on a wildflower photo safari.  We'd bundle Kiddo into the car and just drive the back country roads looking for fields of Blue Bonnets and Indian Paintbrush. 




Some years we'd find lots of places to take photos, some years the pickings were slim.  I never managed to get Kiddo to slow down enough for me to get the seemingly mandatory picture taken by any Texas parent of my kid in amongst the Blue Bonnets.  But those weekend excursions took us all over the state, from Surfside to Sherman, from College Station to San Antonio.  

Unfortunately, Oklahoma doesn't have such a profusion of wildflowers.  Now many weekends are taken up with swim meets, volleyball tournaments and other Drama Teen activities.  Life has changed yet again and so has our travel lifestyle.  I'm sure it will change again once DT heads off the college.

That's it for me this week.  I should really go finalize plans for this year's vacation.  Visit Cat Patches this weekend and scope out the other links.  Maybe you'll find next year's vacation spot.

8 comments:

Dana Gaffney said...

Those are wildflowers?! They are so pretty, I'd love to have them growing in my yard.

Denise :) said...

Kate, those are just lovely! And such an appropriate shot for this 4th of July week!! I love driving down highways that have the wildflowers planted in the medians -- it adds such sweet color to an otherwise drab drive! :)

Barbara said...

I have an image almost identical to this one, only it was taken on Mt. Rainier. Interesting that the landscape would be so similar in such diverse terrain. Thanks for sharing your image and your story.

Jackie McGuinness said...

Gorgeous!

thea said...

Beautiful flowers and such nice memories attached to them. Isn't it interesting how life changes?

Shay said...

Life seems to be full of lots of stages doesnt it? Always changing. always different to the stage that went before it.

Those wildflowers look so pretty. I'd love to find a whole field of them on a backroad somewhere.

quiltzyx said...

Beautiful shot! Love the mix of the colors. I remember seeing Bluebonnets on the shoulder of the road when I was in Texas a few year's back.
Thanks for sharing your Foto Finish with us!

Lynne said...

Funny to think how we measure the phases of our lives by our travels. When we first got married, it was camping in a tent while on car tours of our state. We scrimped and saved for three overseas trips to New Zealand, England and Europe, and Papua New Guinea ( to see a friend who was a missionary there).

Then, when I was pregnant with DD, my parents moved 350 miles away. Needless to say, trips away were usually to see family. As DD got older, we started having camping weekends away. As time progressed, we could afford to stay in cabins instead of tents and we would go away for a week at a time. Now there are just the two of us - we are planning a trip clear across the country involving a four day train journey next year.