Windmills in RI

Windmills in Rhode Island. As part of our recent trip up to visit Family in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachuessets, and remembering a passed Family member in North Conway New Hampshire, it involved flying into and out of Rhode Island. I don't know how much electricity gets generated by windmills. but there were a number of windmills in the Ocean State, Rhode Island, on streets, near highways.

I thought it was interesting.

Epcot Resort Area Dining

We had a blast going to EPCOT yesterday, walking through the back and going over to the resort areas of Disney's EPCOT Boardwalk, Yacht Club, Swan, Dolphin and Beach Club along with the little lake.

We got Dinner at Big River Grille and Brewing Works. I guess they may be a small microbrewery. Small is relative I guess, most things Disney gets involved with are kind of difficult to classify as small, maybe. But I like the boardwalk, promenade area, and the sunsets are terribly impressive.

Since we had the lap-band surgeries, we don't eat as much. We ended up getting an order of the meat loaf (made with ground beef and italian sausage) with two portions of mashed potatoes, and we split it.

In fact, we ended up getting a to-go box for about the other half of the meal and we started back to the car, It was at that point that the heavens opened up, and rain started to fall. It wasn't a torrential rain, but it was more than just an annoyance. I commented to my wife that it isn't a cold rain, and the temperatures were pretty nice.

We've found that Outback Steakhouse has a verynice carside to go service. We've only used it a few times, but it was very nice, and it might be used more in the future.

I've heard that the burgers are made from grinding up the extra pieces of the steaks which are cut away in order to make the 7 ounce steaks, or whatever.

I love Florida

Here was a picture of Taylor Dayne in Concert at EPCOT's Eat to the Beat that co-incides with the Wine and Food festival at EPCOT. Living In Tampa, we can go over to EPCOT on the spur of the moment and it generally isn't too big of a deal. An hour and a half of travel time each way kind of makes it a bigger deal, but there are people who deal with that as a daily commute.

Whale Tail Fountain

I thought the whale tail fountain in New London, CT was pretty awesome. This was near downtown New London, near the waterfront. I was impressed.

me with hotel background

Here I am in a picture with the Mount Washington Hotel at Bretton Woods in the background. That was the place of the meeting which set up the International exchangability of money. We didn't stay at the Hotel this time around, nor did we ride the cog railway up to the top of Mount Washington, but who knows, someday, we might.

Chickens

When we were staying in North Conway, there were chickens at the Bed and Breakfast. Most of the time, the hens were in the hen house, but once, they were out when we came by. I guess I was fortunate to get this close up shot. It was pretty cool. Most of my involvement doesn't involve much interaction with farm animals.

ski wildcat

We had a pretty fun time at the wildcat ski resort in fall. Granted, there was no snow, and no skiing. but we rode the gondola up, and got some pictures of the trees with some color on them. Fran was dissappointed that the leaves weren't quite at the most colorful, but all in all, I still think they were pretty cool.

Ziplining near wildcat ski resort

This picture is one we shot of four ladies coming down the ziplines. It was a pretty neat experience. Not really something that would be done lots of times, but something to cross off of the bucket list. It was mostly just a straight shot down the easiest part of the slope, but it was pretty cool. A ten minute trip up the ski lift, and a one minute trip down the zip line. I guess we were pretty securely strapped in, on our ride down the side of the mountain.

Josh died on September 11 2001. Possibly at the Twin Towers. It is sad that he has a bench by the beach near Stonington Point to help people remember.

A T-shirt depicting a wildcat in the harness seat flying down the zipline.

A better pic of the ladies ziplining.

Ziplining at Wildcat Mountain

Here, some ladies went ziplining after we had just finished our own ziplining adventure. My wife and I went ziplining, and it was a pretty cool experience. It was a ten minute ride up the easy hill, and then a one minute trip down, sitting in a seat along with some straps keeping people from falling out. It was pretty fun. Perhaps it could be more fun if a pass system could be worked out allowing for additional rides down the mountain, but I think there are probably other ways to seperate people from money.

Ye Olde Harbor Inne, Mystic, CT

We were in the First Mate's room, at the Ye Olde Harbor Inne by Claude. Claude was the Innkeeper. Our room was small, but we enjoyed the location near Downtown Mystic, CT. We walked downtown a couple of times. We got some sundaes at the drawbridge ice cream shop. We also on one of the days we were up there, went to Hartford, CT to see the state capitol, and we walked around downtown for a bit. It was pretty neat. We went to a Jewish naming ceremony for a great neice, and that was interesting. I suppose that involving the community in the child's life is important, and having some details about why names were selected makes one feel slightly more connected.

More of the guy by the lighthouse (rough seas)

A guy by his lighthouse on a particularly rough day at sea. I don't know how this shot could be captured, or why a lighthouse keeper would subject himself to such conditions, even to open the door in order to get the shot, but it might have been photoshopped, or otherwise altered. The forces of nature represented by this photo are impressive.

Welcome to Legoland Florida

This is one of the first lego creations seen when entering Legoland Florida. Legoland Florida is not yet officially open. I believe they are aiming for October 15th as a grand opening date. It most likely is very exciting for the teachers in the area. There were some teachers getting special educator passes, or whatever, who were located directly behind us in line as we got our passes. Supposedly, there are signs up (Billboards) saying how far away Legoland is located (20 miles to Legoland, 15 miles to Legoland, etcetra...)

bird outside my window

I have to say that I am phenomenally impressed by the exceptional pictures that I achieved using a different, newer camera. To be fair, this camera was using the intelligent auto setting, and it was using pretty much a maxed out zoom, but I am impressed by the photo of the bird I got. The details are astounding. Perhaps I'll need to contribute more pictures of back yard birds. I should also clean the outsides of the windows.

Anyway, the new camera is a Panasonic ZS-8. My prior camera was a Nikon Coolpix s8100, which did reasonably well, just wasn't as good at doing the zooms.

I'll need to continue using the camera, to get better shots, but I think this is pretty good.

(also, since I'm using a macbook pro, I have parallels running windows 8 so that I can resize the photos making them easier for web consumption)

I hope that others see the nice picture.

Shuttle Atlantis lifting off

This was a pretty awesome sight.  We parked at the Cocoa Beach Pier, and walked for quite some distance from the pier.  We got a better view, I suppose being closer to the launch.  But it was still at a distance. 

We might have gotten a better view if we had spent more time and energy trying to get Titusville.  As we figured it though, Titusville was probably packed with too many people.

We had a good time walking on the beach, and into a Cape Canaveral neighborhood.  We met a guy from Colorado who was down here for a week just to see the shuttle go up.  We also saw some other guys with pretty nice digital cameras with interchangeable lenses.  They were younger, apparently still employed with the sale of consumer electronics, or at some point in the past were.  The guy from Colorado was with some electrical engineering firm, or something.  

That was the original shot from which the above shot was cropped and resized, I guess within my digital camera (Nikon S8100).  Several of the pictures of liftoff were not good, due to the auto-focus, but what the heck, all it takes is one good shot.

We had an enjoyable time getting back to the car, and traffic was consierably worse leaving the area than when we arrived, but we stopped for lunch at Friendly's, and stopped at Florida Institute of Technology's campus to walk around the Botanical Gardens some.  We asked at the library how many students were on campus, and there was a number about 6,000, but it was unclear if that included the online students or not, apparently, there is a rather large number of online degree seeking students.