Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just past 2:30 a.m. in "The City."

The current temperature is a chilly 34° under partly-cloudy skies. Today's high is forecast to reach  53°, with rain developing later this afternoon and into this evening, starting around 3:00 p.m. @ 30% and growing to 100% by about 7:00 p.m.. The sun will rise today @ 8:11 a.m. and set later @ 6:4 p.m.


Well, none of the things I had planned for yesterday happened. I didn't do any gardening, I didn't do any cooking, I didn't get anything done in the man-cave, and I didn't do any painting. But, that was just fine with me, as while I was sleeping yesterday morning, Mary was researching an alternative plan for our day.


About the only thing that might be considered a regular activity was feeding the fur-children their morning and evening meals.


Mary decided that since it was such a fine fall day, filled with mostly-sunny skies, no rain, and moderate temperatures, it would be a good day to travel north to the city of Luddington to see what we could see. Rather than leaving Ginger waiting on the back of the couch, we dropped her at daycare. STWD probably realized shortly after our departure that she could get some rest upstairs, That's where she was when we returned after 5:00 p.m.

As it turns out, there was a music store in Luddington that sold ukuleles. More on that later.


One thing that is for certain is that the traffic from GH to just north of Muskegon was a bear. Large pickup trucks and larger box and semi-tractor trailer trucks were speeding alongside tiny cars, often well over the posted speed limit. I know that Adam often says that speed limits are just suggestions, but in this case, they were suggestions to be ignored entirely. Fortunately, once we were past Muskegon and on our way to Luddington, things calmed down.


As we traveled, I used my trusty Olympus DSLR camera to take numerous pix of clouds, electric generating wind turbines, trees, industrial sites and just about anything that caught my attention. I'll share some of those now.

No trip to Luddington would be complete without some pix of the gigantic wind-turbines that seemingly sprout from every hilltop around. These wind-turbines will probably be one source of renewable power when the GHBLP shuts down the Sims Plant on Harbor Island early next year.

Some politicians have suggested that these turbines cause cancer, in spite of scientific proof to the contrary. However, tt is true that they do cause noise pollution.

In spite of the numerous turbines, puffy clouds and trees did the real domination.

During our trip to Harbor Springs two weeks ago, the trees had only a limited amount of color change in evidence.

Rt. 31 is mostly empty once you get far enough north.

Sometimes the trees are dwarfed by the turbines.

Once we were in Luddington, there was much to see and more to photograph.

Murals are everywhere in Luddington.

As are reminders of the American Civil War.

You can't visit a city with an Irish Pub without stopping for a pint.

As we drove home, we stopped to take some pix of this chemical plant

I pretended I was a lost photographer.

But was I?

This tipple was on a road outside of Luddington. It is similar to the one in GH and yet, it may have had another function.

The City Beach in Luddington was nearly deserted during the off-season.

Not completely deserted though.

Hah, their lighthouse is puny compared to the two on our own north pier.

We stopped in at our favorite watering hole before we got Ginger out of daycare. She was glad to come home.

About my new, as yet unnamed, ukulele that I got in Luddington. She is a baritone uke, tuned like the four higher strings on a guitar and with lots of space for my fingers. I don't yet know what I'll do with Leilani, my concert uke, but I won't rush that decision.

Worthy of note. I think I found the right way to change the file-saving of pictures on my camera so that I don't get two saved photos for every time I push the shutter button. Yesterday's shooting produced one pic in JPG format and one in ORF format. ORF is an acronym for Olympus Raw Format. I won't know until I try later today, but here's hoping.

Otherwise, I hope to get to some of those outdoor chores, some of my indoor activities and little else. No real predictions though.  Ciao.