just in case you’re wondering, this one’s from the bird kingdom’s reptile room…

and this is an actual “java house” with each wall carved painstakingly from a single piece of wood… they have this kind of randomly located in the bird kingdom…

my son, on the maid of the mist…

“behind” the horseshoe falls

here we were by the water in toronto…

and this is one of the views from the CN tower

back in niagara falls, at night…

this is the “whirlpool” in the niagara river, downstream from the falls

ithaca falls, by cornell university…

a park we stopped by near taughannock falls

and, taughannock falls! they said this is three stories higher than niagara falls…

one of the rural, unpaved cross-roads between cayuga and seneca lakes:

flying into europe – over the west coast of ireland! even from this high up, it’s one of the most beautiful countries i’ve ever seen. a home for my heart.

an asian sunday market in – i want to say – oh, i can’t say, i can’t remember. one of the many mid-england cities filled with desis – indians and pakistanis, etc., etc. the guy in the foreground looking a little conscious is my husband’s cousin’s husband trying not to be in the picture… :)

at castle hill… a local landmark of sorts in huddersfield.

sunset viewed from castle hill:

at my husband’s cousin’s house, my son eating crisps – not chips – with a distant relation of similar size :)

said cousin’s eldest daughter got married in pakistan this past summer. but i persuaded her to let me take some shots of her in her dress, which she already had with her. she did her own makeup – very talented young woman!

they took us for a bit of sightseeing… we ended up here, at skipton castle (i had to google for a while before i found the name that sparked my memory!), and in castles i always take too many window shots…

more…

musa in a castle window, for a little variety? oh, what i wouldn’t give to do a bridal shoot in a place like this…

alright, so after a few days in the midlands, we traveled to bristol to stay a few days with my own cousin, and they took us on a trip into wales – to oakwood theme park, in pembrokeshire. here on the bus is musa with relatives he was meeting for the first time:

just some trees i liked:

my cousin’s older daughter and my son:

playing with my 70-200 – not always as sharp as i like, but it did the trick here!

how they still keep warm in england! (we traveled back to huddersfield for the final days of our trip)

and finally, something from the flight home: somewhere over very far northern north america, but i couldn’t tell you where for the life of me…

but, until i have some more of those to post, i wanted to go ahead and post some images from some of the trips that i’ve taken with my family. my husband and i LOVE to travel; the following images are from a very long road trip – from maryland to nova scotia – in august of 2007, when our son was only 17 months old. no, it wasn’t easy with a toddler in the car for so long – but it was absolutely worth every minute of whining, and it was also, we believe, an experience that stimulated him into verbal communication, because he really began picking up vocabulary and trying to use it around that time. what a joy it was, on our whale-watching boat trip, to hear him say, “whale!” as one of his first real words!

instead of giving a summary of the trip here, i’m going to give a brief description above each of the photos below – enjoy! we still dream of traveling here again soon…

since this was a road trip, we decided to tour as much of the almost-island province as we could, by staying each night in a different bed-and-breakfast. this was the first of our stops: a quaint B&B run by a wonderful couple named terry and gayle shaw, next to their antique house in port greville. they were SO understanding, despite this having been their first time allowing a young child to stay in the house – and having said child break a glass in the bathroom within an hour of settling in!

terry and gayle recommended to us a visit to cape chignecto provincial park; we didn’t have too much time, as we had to drive all the way to antigonish past the middle of the province, but we did want to see parts of the glooscap trail, one of the province’s eleven scenic travelways. this picture was taken from a lookout over the bay of fundy – i can’t remember what this spot was called!

here are my husband and son on red rocks beach at cape chignecto park:

when we got to antigonish that night, it took some time to find the B&B we had booked: antigonish harbor pat’s bed and breakfast. but when we found it, in pat’s driveway we passed by this incredible view of the near-full moon rising over an inlet of the harbor. so we hastily threw our bags in the room, then brought out some folding chairs and sat out on a green lawn under the night sky, experimenting with the 70-200 zoom lens and the moon:

our drive the following day took us into cape breton island, my absolute favorite part of the trip – not the least because of the island’s celtic influences! here we pulled over on a drive to mabou harbor and beach, just because the green was so green, the blue so blue and the midday light so gorgeous…

at mabou harbor you enter the beach area by a high cliff that gives you a gorgeous view of the curving, hilly shoreline; here the water was clear and warm. it was a perfect beach in so many ways, and one of the first times our son overcame his fear of the water: he got so upset when we had to leave!

one of the most beautiful features of the province at that time of year were the late-summer wildflower fields: everywhere we went along the drive, there were either enchanting views of lush green riverbanks and flowing waters, or wide meadows sprinkled with gold and white and purple…

in cape breton island, we spent two nights near baddeck at the an seanne mhanse B&B, run by a young couple in a sweet old house with a cat. this is the lovely lawn that opens up to the side of the house:

on our way into cape breton island, we stopped in the town of judique to visit the celtic music interpretive centre there; the following day, our full day on the island, we visited the gaelic college of celtic arts and crafts. here is musa running around in one of the musical history displays there…

the rest of that day was devoted to driving up and around the cabot trail, through the cape breton highlands national park. here is a shot from one of the many stops we made along the increasingly rocky, dramatic shoreline:

sometimes the trail took us right along that shoreline; other times it wove up, down and between these sublime green mountains and valleys. so much of this landscape really did remind me of scotland, and it made so much intuitive sense to me that scottish culture rooted itself so deeply in this place…

we made many stops along the way, but the highlight of the day was certainly our boat ride with “fiddlin’ whale tours,” on which the first whale sighting is supposed to be accompanied by local fiddle music. it took almost an hour for that first sighting, but after that they surrounded us for some time… meanwhile, though, our son was impatient with our restriction of his ability to run around the boat as he pleased!

the tail shot above was my pride for the day, but between my husband and i, we took hundreds of pictures of the whales around us, trying to get the best shots we could:

the following day we drove out of cape breton island; this was our first encounter with grey, wet weather on the trip. didn’t make the scenery one whit less lovely:

that was our last full day in nova scotia; after a tour of halifax, we drove to our last B&B, the unique Hammock Inn the Woods, complete with shabby-chic decor, free 7 a.m. yoga classes, two gorgeous, good-natured dogs and a gourmet organicky breakfast. after we left the B&B we drove along the lighthouse route, as it’s known, and stopped at a few waterside overlooks. this shoreline, on the southwest of the province and facing the mainland, is radically different from the atlantic-pounded cape breton island shoreline: mild waters, silver under our cloudy sky, and flat, pebbly beaches looking out to the lighthouses. here are some of the waterworn pebbles!

and with the clouds breaking up, we saw some rainwashed blue as well…

and what kind of trip would this have been without a shot of some of the wild blueberries of regional fame? (this one with the long lens!)

we took the ferry that evening from yarmouth to get back to maine and start the long drive home. chugging westward across the ocean we had a spectacular view (however window-smudged!) of a magnificent sunset: the perfect ending to a very nearly perfect trip…