Roadtrip: Little Guinness returns to the Fox Cities.

More spontaneous roadtrips. 

In an old camera bag, I found a full roll of 3M #235 opaque photographic tape and a 24 exposure roll of Fujicolor 200. Little Guinness was still sitting on the kitchen table after the adventures in Green Bay so I just reloaded it. 

We visited the Grignon Mansion in Kaukauna, built in 1837. Charles Grignon ran a fur trading post out of his home at a natural point where travelers had to portage around the rapids that define the Fox Cities. He was also involved as a translator at the Treaty of the Cedars where Chief Oshkosh ceded the Fox Valley to the United States.

It's not the fanciest architecture and appointments, but compared to what most people lived in, it probably was a mansion. His daughter was a long-time faculty member at Lawrence University, where Andy went to college over a century later.

 

The furthest downstream of the fifteen Fox Cities locks is just across the road, with a sluice powering this quaint little water wheel.

It's very bucolic until you walk a bit to the west and see the giant Thilmany Paper Mill dominating the scene.

The Kaukanna Public Library, just upstream, is in the renovated former plant. The modern behemoth is on the same island beween the lock channel and the rest of the Fox.

The locks are kind of public parks. You can walk right up to the gates and these wheels that I presume control them. This is the upstream side.

The downstream side. They still operate from early May until mid-September.

The lock tender's hut. This gives a good scale to the change in river level. There's probably something electric in there that replaced those hand-cranked wheels.

The outlet back to the main channel of the river.

There's a foot path to where the lock channel rejoins the Fox. There are still three more locks before you get to Green Bay.

Fish apparently congregate where they flow together. There's a little pier to fish from.

OK, Oshkosh isn't included in the Fox Cities but it is on the river.

Amazing flowers available at the Farmer's Market.

A week later we headed out to the other side of Lake Winnebago. We had to go through the east side of Appleton, so we stopped to snoop around the Halloween display at HomeGoods.

A grinning pearled skull which looks more like Zinjanthropus Boisei than Homo Sapiens.

We stopped at the Waverly Beach Club in Menasha for lunch. Big windows and short exposures.

We picked the restaurant for its location. This is the first time I've seen Lake Winnebago from it's northern-most point looking down the long way. I've been around the lake numerous times, but the road never gets closer than a quarter mile from the shore and is usually obscured by buildings and vegetation. 

The place is normally a rockin' venue for reasons other than my shaky tripod handling.

The menu is predictably American bar and grill, but the Coconut Shrimp Salad that Sarah had, and my Bacon and Spinach Salad were quite good.

Our destination was Heritage Orchard, famed for their fresh-pressed cider, with copious supplies of many varieties of apples. We got a half-peck of these Honey Crisps.

The orchard is located on the Niagara Escarpment that defines the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago, so it's technically part of the Fox River Valley. They have a shop on the second floor with a view of the lake.

With the camera right up against the window looking over the orchards and the lake.

They also have a display case full of delicious fresh apple pastries and cookies.

We enjoyed them next to this heavily laden Macintosh tree.

Alas, they were out of cider and weren't pressing again for another two days. We'll have to go back.

Little Guinness has a .17mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame.  Fujicolor 200.

The cost of a video demonstration

In order to accurately depict how to load the Bumble Bear for my short video, it was necessary to use a full roll of film rather than just old backing paper. Now I'll have to take pictures with it.

That night, two solid days of rain began. It paused late in the afternoon of the second day. Despite still being heavily overcast, I put the camera out to capture this wet hosta. It started to rain again shortly after the shutter was opened and I had to carefully wrap the camera with a plastic bag without moving it or covering the pinhole.

Not wanting to tempt the weather anymore, I chose this lovely bouquet of dahlias on the lanai. The exposure measured 20 minutes when I opened the shutter but the clouds thickened again and after about ten minutes it measured roughly the age of the universe. The shutter stayed open for another two hours until it got really dark.

The following morning, it had cleared up and the air was quite calm. The bunnies have been particularly cruel to our cabbages but at least one has prevailed and is forming a head.

We're nearing the end of tomato and crabapple season.

There was still plenty of time for the Fox Valley Photography Group's Macro challenge. These wet habaneros got underexposed a bit.

A dahlia bud was illuminated by a sunbeam.

Heading out on my bike, the stage door stairway to the Leach Amphitheatre was highlighted by the sun coming over the building.

While I was building this camera, Daphne Schnitzer saw Joe Van Cleave's Facebook post about the camera I had sent him. She messaged me that she really liked the camera and would love to have one. I'm not really ready to get in the business of selling cameras, but I asked if she'd like to have this one for the shipping cost. In light of this camera's future on the Mediterranean coast, I headed over to the closest analog available, the shore of Lake Winnebago.

Looking back along the Ames Point causeway that encloses Miller's Bay.

A sailboat anchored just off the bathing beach in Menomonee Park.

A great oak bending over to seemingly drink from Lake Winnebago.

A classically inspired portico overlooking the Yacht Club harbor.

The screened in porch on that portico for events on warm days in May during Lake Fly season, and in the late summer when the wasps will fight you for your Coke.

The Bumble Bear has a .27mm pinhole on the axis and a .28mm pinhole 15mm above the axis, 45mm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Ilford FP4+ semi-stand developed in caffenol. 

Roadtrip: The Green Bay Botanical Garden.

We had gone to the Green Bay Botanical Garden last year in October and thought we'd check out the summer show.

They have the most profuse display of flowers in any garden I've visited and considered coming here once when looking for a sculpture garden to photograph.

It's built on two ridges and the valley between them. A domed belvedere provides views of the hillsides.

The dome's stellar pattern projects sunbeams on the pillars.

The conifer garden on a terraced slope at the north end of one of those ridges.

The 1:1 Macro challenge for the Fox Valley Photography Group had just been announced. It was a little breezy to be sticking a camera just 24mm from anything but these arbor vitae needles were inside among the stiff branches.

A rose drooping near near the ground also shielded from the wind. I think this is a Peace so the edges should be pink, but the film thought it looked this way.

They have a test garden of new varieties of vegetables and perennials. Hovering an inch above a strawberry. A feat of tripodology that took about ten minutes to get right without smashing any plants.

Near the main center, they have a pavilion for events called the Lusthaus. A straight translation of the German is "summer house," but I'd hate to be here when Beavis and Butthead visit.

There are numerous places to sit and view the garden, made from rustic materials, casting sunbeams and shadows.

We took advantage of several of these.

The formal box-hedged display garden. There was a couple with Prosumer Digital SLR's having very serious discussions about their photographs as they reviewed them on back of the camera. They didn't notice the cardboard camera on my tripod a few feet away. We saw another couple who both had high-end DSLR's and one guy with two hanging around his neck.

I probably couldn't get away with this for the macro challenge. Each one of these bees is at least a foot long.

Last October we followed the main path on our way to the Hobbit House and just passed by a trail that went up the hill. They're constructing a new Children's Garden blocking the path where it branches off to the Overlook Garden that we had overlooked last fall. It first approaches a vine covered ruin.

It winds through the forest to another shelter near the promised overlook.

A creek flows down the hill which you can cross on stepping stones.

For someone who's a sucker for dappled light, this was just the ticket.

A long wall tops the hill in an S curve I coudn't pass up.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Bleu in De Pere.

Say, wouldn't those salt and pepper shakers just fit on a 24x36mm frame?

And one macro at home with a cherry tomato on the candy jar.

Little Guinness has a .17mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame.  Fujicolor 200.