The End of a Great Weekend

Suz and I got home this afternoon after spending a fantastic weekend together exploring a little culture in Walla Walla. I drove about 575 miles and took about 500 pictures.

After we got moving yesterday after our nap, it became even more apparent that we had overextended ourselves during the car show pictures. Both of us were somewhat rubber-legged in the thigh area. As a matter of fact, we still are. My legs haven't ached this much since I don't know when. Anyway as I was about to say, after relaxing for a while we got ourselves together and took off once again for the balloon/fireworks finale over at the fairgrounds. We got an awesome parking spot right near the gate in a "no parking" zone that had only just then been commandeered by the masses. I didn't even hesitate to pull in behind all the cars in front of me that instantly filled the previously bare side of the street. We watched in amusement as the cars behind us did the same. When we got out of the car it was obvious that this was going to be one huge mob of people. What brings it out--The fireworks or the colorful balloons being lit by their burners at night? We lucked out and got a great spot to sit up in the grandstand right in the middle. We no sooner finished chowing down a couple of great Italian sausage sandwiches when showtime arrived.

The balloon event wasn't nearly as cool as the one earlier in the day but it was fun nonetheless. There were only about a dozen balloons at the night event. Neither Suzie or myself knew what we were doing when we started snapping pictures. We each took a huge pile of pictures of both the fireworks and the balloons. We kept changing lenses and settings, trying to get the perfect combination of things to make a great picture. One thing we really needed but didn't bring was our tripods. Nevertheless, we ended up with some pretty interesting shots. Here are a couple:

When we got back to our room and perused our newly taken pictures, we weren't nearly as pleased as we are some of the times we're out snapping away, but there were some pretty good ones. When it was bedtime we did exactly what we had thought about doing: We took the mattress off the bed. Sleeping on just the mattress on the floor turned out to be one really good night of sleep. It made a huge difference!

When we awoke this morning it was a little cooler than it was yesterday but still beautiful looking. Instead of the whitish, high-cloud day we had yesterday, we had a blue sky with floating clouds in it. In addition it was a little blustery. It was pretty obvious to us that there would be no more balloon launches that day. After all, wind is critical when you're in a balloon--It has to be in your favor.

We checked out at about 10:30 for our drive back home, but before getting on the freeway we investigated Washington State Penitentiary, Washington's only federal prison. While we couldn't get too close to it, we did manage to get a few good pictures thanks to long lenses and such. Here's a sample:

The whole thing was surrounded by more concertina (razor) wire coils than I have ever seen in my life. It's hard to tell how high the coils actually are, but it's safe to say that it's not a fence that anyone is going to be going through. This shot taken with my 300mm zoom will give you an idea. I really don't know how tall the fence actually is, but it's pretty tall.

We stopped at a really cool nursery right along that freeway near the town of Mabton. We spotted it on the way out and kept an eye out for it. It was totally cool!

The place had lots of rusty old cars placed strategically here and there, and had an "Old West Town" that they were in the process of creating as a tourist stop. We each took over 100 pictures there. Again, here's a sample:

We finished off our weekend with one last stop at Subway for dinner, and we enjoyed it alongside a nice river under sunny skies. I great ending to a weekend for sure!