END OF SUMMER WRAP-UP ~~ PARTING SHOT

END OF SUMMER WRAP-UP

Although it has been a relatively cool summer here in Yakima, we can still tell that Autumn has arrived. There is a definite chill in the air, especially in the mornings. We have had quite a few "dreary" days lately, and we actually had some rain. The leaves are beginning to turn color, but not nearly at a pace that they did back in North Carolina. I wish I could be driving through the NC mountains right now to see all the different colors on the mountainsides. But we have to be content with what we have here.

Changes

Since the blog has been taken up with our trip pictures and videos for the last two months, I am going to try and play "catch up" with this blog. I will be showcasing some pictures and videos that I took after we got back from our trip.

A couple of weeks after we got home I decided that I wanted to go to Randall Park to check on things there. We were so hoping to see some Monarch butterflies this summer, but I wasn't exactly sure when they would arrive in Yakima. There are several large patches of milkweed at the park, so we headed over there one morning to see what we could see. The milkweed plants were in full bloom and were absolutely beautiful.

I was even able to catch a bumblebee going to one of the flowers.

There were many ducks on the pond, with groups of them on the surrounding banks usually consisting of the mother duck and her ducklings. The babies were no longer little, and sometimes it was hard to tell which ones were babies and which ones were adults. In the picture below, I'm not sure if that's a juvenile with some downy feathers still on its head, or if it's an adult female trying on a new hat.

About a month after we got home from the trip we decided to have my birthday celebration, since I spent my actual birthday in a car all day, sick with a cold. As usual, Linda's sister Wendy came over to join us. This has become a tradition, just like when we go over to the Seattle side of the mountains for Wendy's and Emily's birthday celebration. We had some good laughs, as usual, good food and drinkiepoos. Whenever the three of us are together we sometimes get silly (especially during drinkiepoo), but I strive to get a serious photo of the three of us each time. Sometimes that just doesn't work out because, you know, there's always one in every crowd.

Come on now!

We returned the favor in August and went over to Seattle for our other traditional celebration. Wendy's and Emily's birthdays are only a few days apart, so we combine it into one big pot-luck party. It is always a good time. And, as you can see, the silliness continues.

Nice hat!

The day after the birthday party, Linda, Emily and I went to Woodland Park Zoo. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, a bit warm but not too hot. And the best thing of all was NO RAIN. If you know Seattle at all, you know how thankful we were for that. At the zoo, we headed immediately for the butterfly house (natch). The flowers around the gardens were still blooming, so that made the walk to that exhibit all the more enjoyable. We even saw a few hummingbirds. See if you can spot one in the pictures below.

The zoo had some fabulous exhibits of all kinds of animals. We stopped at a few on the way to the aviary, because you know, birds! Whenever I find myself in a zoo situation, I usually don't like to go by the primate exhibits, just because the monkeys and chimpanzees look too much like little people in cages. But Woodland Park Zoo has some nice habitat areas that are close to the actual native environment, so it didn't look like they were in prison. I snapped a few quick pictures, but when we got to the gorilla exhibit, I stopped and took my time. There was one gorilla that was just leaning on his hands, looking around. I took his picture, and the expression on his face and the way the light is hitting it was just about perfect. I think this is one of my favorite pictures.

Once at the aviary, we saw so many beautiful exotic birds that it was almost overwhelming. The vibrant colors they display makes them markedly different from the mostly brown birds we have in Yakima. Of course, I was in bird heaven!

Back at home in Yakima, I tried to sit outside and watch the birds as much as I could, knowing that the impending cold weather wasn't far away. We had a couple of little Red-Breasted Nuthatches (I actually think there may have been three) coming to our feeder on a regular basis. I sat out in my lounge chair and tried to catch a good picture of one. They are so fast because they dart in to the feeder, grab a seed, and then high-tail it out of there to either eat the seed in the tree, or "hide" it for later. I did manage to get one really nice picture, and this little guy actually posed for me!

Hello, there!

One time while I was sitting outside in the my chair, I spotted a small butterfly on the butterfly bush, and he looked like he was caught in something. I couldn't just sit there and watch him struggle, so I got up to check it out. I got a small stick and worked to free him from whatever he was stuck on. Come to find out that he was in the clutches of a nefarious bug known as the Ambush Bug (read about it here). As soon as I forced him free, the butterfly flew away. Here is a short video of this bug, which I have been squishing every chance I get. You don't mess with my butterflies or my birds!!

I have been diligently searching around the yard lately for Praying Mantis, because Linda and I had spotted several this summer. We love the smaller green ones, like in the picture below. I don't think I have seen any of the larger brownish ones this year. The larger ones are not so good to have in your yard if you like the hummingbirds because they have been known to eat those cute little birdies!

I happened to see one a few weeks later and she looked like she was about to burst with eggs. I keep trying to find a mantis egg casing, but they are very hard to spot.

Last week, Linda and I took our annual trip to Leavenworth, Washington. We usually go there for my birthday, but this year we weren't here at that time so we decided to go in September. The temperatures were much cooler than they usually are at the end of June. We had a good time, as usual, taking a nature walk, going to the antique mall, shopping at all the funky little shops in town, and of course, our favorite pastime while in Leavenworth...drinking really GREAT beer!

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl has been patient since she hasn't had her weekly feature in the blog. She wants all of her many fans to know that she is doing just fine. She's had a busy summer of napping in the sun, napping in the shade, and now she is ready for a busy fall and winter of napping on the big bed. Here she is, hard at work perfecting her craft.

And that's the way it went for Summer 2019. Check back again next week for more from the Southerner in the Northwest (and Summer Girl, too)!

BACK EAST TRIP ~~ LAST DAYS IN LUMBERTON AND THE TRIP HOME

LAST DAYS IN LUMBERTON

On our last couple of days in Lumberton, we just mostly chilled out at the Caldwell House, and then we moved on to our motel for our last night in town. However, we did manage to get a few walks in around the area. Linda and I both noticed that the humidity seemed to be much higher in North Carolina than it was in Florida. This was probably due to the fact that there was a breeze blowing most of the time in Florida so we may not have noticed it as much. At any rate, we took a walk late one morning and we were dripping and dragging by the time we got back to home base! On one of our walks, we went to Stephens Park, which is only around the corner from Brad's house, and a few blocks from the house we used to live in. We used to walk there quite often when we were in Lumberton. It is a beautiful place.  Below are some pictures and video that I took on our walks. If you want to hear the bird songs, turn your sound up for the videos.

Cypress knees along the banks of
the Lumber River

Approaching Stephens Park

Yellow-Rumped Warbler

The part of the river that runs through Lumberton is now named, appropriately, the Lumber River. The entire river is 133 miles long and was originally named Drowning Creek (which is still the name of the river's headwater, or origin point). This part of the river was originally called the Lumbee River by the local Native Americans, which means "black water" in their language. At some point after the town was settled, the name was officially changed to Lumber River because it was used to transport logs for the logging industry, which was a main industry at the time.

Lumber River

I saw this dragonfly on the ground on the banks of the river. I thought it was dead, but it was so pretty I took a picture of it anyway. The other day I read that sometimes female dragonflies will lay on the ground and play dead, so that the male dragonflies will leave them alone. So she may not have been dead after all, just faking it. I love how the upper part of her body is "Carolina Blue".

Dragonfly

We walked past our old house one last time. We had such good times in this little house, at first working on it with Mike and Scott to get it in shape, and then enjoying the fruits of our labor. However, we went a little overboard with planting bushes, I do believe.

Our little house when we lived in Lumberton

We couldn't leave Lumberton without paying a visit to my family's gravesite. I put a penny on the headstone to show that someone who cared visited.

Placing a coin

On Saturday, June 22nd (my mother's birthday), we packed up our car and left Brad's house to check into the motel. We would leave early the next morning to start our trip home. But we still had one more visit to make. Late that morning we made the ride out in the country to visit our dear friends Mike and Scott. They used to live in town very close to us, and we would walk over to each other's houses frequently. Their house was also an old historic home that they renovated.

Mike & Scott's previous house

Mike & Linda

Scott

We had a nice visit with our friends and enjoyed the tour of their new home. Mike went into great detail (as usual, LOL) on the different elements of their house. After the tour of the house, Mike went outside to grill the chicken for lunch. I sat outside and talked to him while he grilled. I was glad he was outside grilling because while we were inside, I was about to freeze. Even though the temperature was in the high 90's and the humidity was high, I had chill bumps on my arms. Yes, you guessed it, I was getting sick. We managed to visit with our friends until mid-afternoon, then we had to cut our visit short because I was burning up with a fever. We went back to the motel and I immediately got into bed. Some time during the night I sweated out my fever and by the next morning I felt good enough to head out on our return trip home.

Below is some hummingbird video I managed to shoot at Mike and Scott's while I was sitting outside, freezing to death. They were all over the place! I was so jealous!!

THE TRIP BACK HOME

We took a different route on the way home because we were further north at our starting point. The trip back home was pretty much uneventful, even though I felt bad the entire time. I was so afraid this cold that I had was going to turn into pneumonia, but thankfully it didn't. My birthday, June 27th, was my worst day. I spent the entire day napping in the front passenger seat while Linda drove all day. But by the time we got to our motel that night, I was beginning to feel better.

We didn't really encounter any problems on the way home, but we have voted our "Denver Day" the worst day of the entire month-long trip. If you ever decide to go through that area, I suggest you bypass Denver if at all possible. The traffic was horrific, and this is coming from two old ladies who have had to navigate through the Seattle traffic on numerous occasions. The traffic jam began well before we even reached Denver, and continued until we were out of the state. This means that traffic was backed up on a four-lane interstate almost all the way through the entire state of Colorado! It was unbelievable. Needless to say, we are NEVER going through Denver again.

We did pass through a lot of beautiful country on our trip back, with some interesting and strange objects included. Below are some pictures that bear witness to that fact.

"The Pyramid" Bass Pro Shop outside Memphis, TN

Entering Washington State

And so it is that on June 28th, we arrived back home in Yakima in the early afternoon. I don't think I've ever been so happy to arrive at home. Of course, the first order of business was to go see if I could find Summer Girl, since she tends to hide when we are gone for a long time. I walked out the back door and started calling her, and before I could even reach the garden area, I could hear her plaintive little meows. Here's what I found in the garden on the straw.

Later that afternoon, I was able to entice her inside the house. She settled in on my lap with the most contented look on her little face.

Our sweet girl

All in all, we had traveled 7,252.5 miles on our journey and had gone through most of the states in the southern half of the country. While in St. Augustine, we had come across a gift shop that had magnets of all the states. We purchased the ones that we had been through and posted them on our refrigerator when we got home. Please note, we did not actually go through the state of California on this trip, but we put it on the map just because we have made that trip so many times in the past.

That evening, we had what I have to say was the BEST gin and tonic drinks that we have ever had...served in our new (old) Heisey Rose stemware that was given to us by our dear friend Brad.

The BEST gin & tonic

Thus ends our road trip Back East. I want to thank everyone who reads this blog for sticking with me while I documented our trip. I hope it was interesting and informative for the most part.

Next week I'm going to take a break so there will be no post, but I plan to return with a new, more recent, post on September 25th! 
I hope to see you back here then!

BACK EAST TRIP ~~ THE CALDWELL HOUSE

THE LUTHER HENRY CALDWELL HOUSE

In 1978 I had the pleasure to visit the Caldwell House with my father. Being an architect, he loved old houses, and the classic design styles were always his favorites. He was helping in some capacity in the effort to have this beautiful home added to the National Register of Historic Places. I have been enthralled with this landmark home ever since. I used to ride my bicycle past it and wonder what secrets it held inside. When Linda and I lived on 17th street, just a few blocks away, we would walk by and admire its beauty from the outside. Once, when there was an estate sale at the home, we jumped at the chance just to walk through it. Never did I dream that I would one day be invited to stay there for several days, but that is exactly what happened. (Turn your sound up if you want to hear the videos)

Historic and gorgeous home

Construction on this historic home was completed in 1903, and it was occupied by Caldwell family members until the death of daughter Christine Caldwell Thompson in 2009 (link). For many years the house had been falling into disrepair. It had been up for sale for a few years when, in 2012, our good friends Brad and Andrew purchased it. At that time it was definitely a fixer-upper, on a huge scale! Brad is a native of Lumberton and has always been concerned about the preservation of our historic buildings. Since he was 11 years old, he had dreamed about owning this very house. He had no idea back then that his dream would one day come true. Since purchasing the home, Brad & Andrew have managed to bring it back to its former glory. To look at the pictures you would think it was a bed and breakfast inn! But it is a private residence and not open to the public.

The house features a fireplace in every main room, a total of seven, which was common back in the days when there was no central heating system. The tile work around the fireplaces is absolutely gorgeous. I can't find enough adjectives to describe the beauty this house has to offer. Here are a few pictures to show you what I mean. The close up picture of the fireplace below is the one I am standing beside in the first picture. That was the bedroom we stayed in.

In addition to fireplaces, there are several stained glass windows throughout the home, as well as ornate mirrors above each fireplace and on several of the walls.

One could just wander around this house for days and still see something new each time. Brad is very much a collector of old things, and he has many pieces on display from the same era as when this house was in its infancy. Below is a tour I took through the house with my video camera.

Mr. Cardinal decided to act as tour guide, at one point.

Linda found something to play with, and revealed a hidden talent for music. Well, sort of. You be the judge.

Just as you enter the front door of the Caldwell House, you see this huge poster of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney atop the staircase to the second floor. Brad is a big fan of Judy Garland. He has more memorabilia of her on display, see if you can spot any of it in the pictures and video.

Continuing on up the staircase, you come to this sweet little sitting area. To the left of the couch is a door leading out to the second floor veranda.

The upstairs veranda is one of my favorite spots in the house. Linda and I sat up there and had our gin and tonic drinkiepoo one evening. Even though the temperature was pretty hot that day, we had a nice breeze blowing through.

I was so busy taking pictures of the house that I didn't get very many pictures of us. But you already know what we look like. A dear friend did take this picture below of us with our gracious hosts.

Andrew, Linda, me, Brad

For those of you on Facebook, I encourage you to visit the Facebook page for the Luther Henry Caldwell House (<--link). You can see photographs of the shape it was in when Brad and Andrew bought it, and also pictures of the renovation. It is truly amazing what they have done! We are so thankful that they let us stay with them while we were in Lumberton. It was truly a dream come true!


This was one of the most difficult blogs for me to put together due to the sheer number of pictures and video that I had. And I only used about half of it. I hope I have done justice to the true beauty of this home. Next week in the blog we will wrap up our stay in Lumberton and head home.