Discover St. Joseph

Friday was wet , and Saturday was windy ! For a change of pace I shot some video looking out at Lake Michigan from Lookout Park. You can hear the roar of the wind and see the large waves on the lake but what you can't experience is the cold rawness in the air. My fingers were freezing after just the few minutes it took to shoot this video. It was a day for dramatic pictures. Here's one taken from Silver Beach... And here's another one taken from behind the water treatment plant... Doesn't it look cold and raw? The sky was mostly cloudy but there were occasional peeks of sun. D and I wanted to catch some pics of the sunshine on the lighthouses so we sat in the car and waited just over 90 minutes to get this... Such was the Halloween weather in St. Joseph this year. It definitely felt autumnal and transitional, like we're shifting gears into winter. I'll leave you with one last Halloween image. This charming display was set up by one of our neighbors. Happy Hallow...

Friday, October 30th (Halloween weekend) was one for the record books. The St. Joe/Benton Harbor area received 2.93 inches of rain ! To say it was a wet day is a real understatement. It was soggy with torrential downpours all night and day. It was the day my new furnace was installed too. :-) When the installers took a lunch break, I scooted out to take a few pictures at Lookout Park. There was still some fall color to be found but the season is definitely past peak. We've had so much wind and rain this fall that many of the trees gave up their leaves long ago. I found puddles a plenty... And just a few trees left putting on their autumn show of color. I didn't stay out long. The weather was too wet and raw to suit me. I headed back to the condo and spent the afternoon watching TV and blogging. D arrived in time for dinner :-) We went to Schu's where they had a fire going in the fireplace... October is almost over and Michigan has seen yet another lovely fall color show.

Getting great fall foliage pictures can be easy, challenging, or impossible. There are two important elements you must have to get those knock-your-socks-off pictures... timing + sunshine. The timing has to be just right. If you're too early in the season, you won't get vibrant colors, too late and you won't get any color. And sunshine is a must. If you try to capture bold bright colors on an overcast day, well, give it up. It just ain't gonna happen. There's just nothing like Mother Nature's spotlight to give vibrancy to fall foliage. If you have the right timing + lots of sunshine you almost can't take a bad picture of autumn's canvas. Just find yourself some pretty trees and click the shutter button. If you have the right timing but the sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds you'll have yourself a bit of a challenge. Have patience, stick with it, and you'll be glad you did. If you have the right timing but it's overcast, or worse yet...

Saturday was Sweetest Day. D and I started the day off with breakfast at Sophia's and returned home in time to watch the pregame show before the U of M vs Delaware State football game. The game was fun to watch just for the shear joy of seeing so many touchdowns. Wow! Go Blue! When the game was over, we headed out in search of fall colors and Sweetest Day treats. Our first stop was the Karma Vista Vineyards in Coloma. We'd been there before and remembered the beautiful vistas. I also wanted to get some pictures of the mature grape vines and pick up some wine for gifts. :-) The sun was playing peek-a-boo behind the clouds so we had to be patient to get the pics. But it was worth it! Then we ducked inside and grabbed a few bottles of wine before moving on. The place was really crowded! Next stop was the Chocolate Garden , also in Coloma. We hadn't been to the Chocolate Garden before but we'd seen plenty of signs for it and heard good things from friends too. It's an...

One of the things I find most enchanting about life in St. Joseph is the small town atmosphere. Having spent all my life in a "big city", I'm learning a lot about how things are viewed and treated differently in small towns. Take high school football for example. The cities I've lived in have all had no less than 3 public high schools along with at least a couple of parochial schools. You can be a star player on your high school football team and not even make the city's "top 25 players" roster. Virtually all of the people in the stands are current students (and not too many of those unless they're playing the cross town rival or it's Homecoming), parents of players, or parents of band members. The general public? No, you won't find them in the stands. Too many other choices of entertaining things to do on a Friday night. Contrast that with a city like St. Joseph and you'll find that high school football is a much bigger deal here. D and ...

There is no better place to celebrate Sweetest Day than in southwest Michigan. Take it from me, I'm there and I've got the sweets to prove it! D and I came up Friday to meet with the furnace repairman. Bad news. The condo's furnace is not repairable. That means a new furnace for us. But not this weekend. The installation will have to be scheduled in another week or two. In order to spend time at the condo this weekend we had to make a trip to Lowes to buy a couple of space heaters. Hey, it beats being cold! By the time the repairman left it was lunchtime. So we headed into town to have lunch at Chan's Garden . What? I haven't told you about Chan's before? OK, here's the scoop. My friend CH (who lives here in St. Joe) introduced me to Chan's a few months back. It's a Chinese restaurant in downtown St. Joseph, on State St. They have really good food and their lunch combo prices can't be beat. D had chicken with broccoli. My favorite is sweet and so...