MMXXIV Adventures HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2024

Introduction

Welcome to my latest photography adventure summary! This is installment number 16 for those of you keeping track. In my last summary from the Texas Gulf Coast I mentioned that I'd been a little lax in keeping up with the adventure schedule. You know how things are. We get back from our trips with a few thousand images, take a couple days to find the best ones, post one or two on social media (ahem, it's @psmithusa on Facebook, Instagram and X) and then create an action item on my Trello board to remind me to write up an adventure summary. This is usually where reality diverges from the plan. I get excited about the next trip and spend more time planning for it than writing up my adventure summary.

Fast forward a few months and here we are at the end of December without all those published summaries in hand. Just like back at work, right? WRONG! Ha ha, this is what I think I like best about retirement. Who cares? I'm in charge and get to change the goals anytime I want. Ah, but I do still want to share a few of my experiences and pictures so I'm just going to lump a bunch of them into this adventure. I creatively named it MMXXIV. Those of you who like me who grew up during the heyday of the Roman Empire probably get it.

OK, enough of the introduction. Here are a few of my favorite shots from this year's early adventures (and actually completed summaries) at Sebastian Inlet, Delray Beach and the Texas Gulf Coast.

Warbler Capital of the World

"Do You Want Veggies?"

I've always considered myself fairly adept at conversational skills but I'm beginning to think I've become over confident. We made a trip up to the western side of Lake Erie to photograph the tiny little songbirds during spring migration. This isn't really my thing but it sounded interesting. After doing some research on the migration timing we discovered there's an event called "The Biggest Week in American Birding", which is a 10-day birding festival in northwest Ohio. Everyone knows it's the "Warbler Capital of the World". I didn't know that. I guess everyone else did. But what I did know is there is no way on earth I'm going to be there during the 10-day birding festival. I don't like people that much. So we planned the trip to arrive on day 11 hoping those birder people would be leaving and us photographers can pick up the scraps with the remaining birds along with a little peace and quiet.

But back to the conversational skills. I guess not having spent time in western Ohio I was missing a bit of the local lingo. For some reason it seemed like every time I ordered a burger or sandwich in a restaurant the server would ask if I wanted veggies. I'm like, no, the thing already comes with a side dish. After the third time it finally dawned on me that they were talking about lettuce, tomato, onion, etc. to put on my sandwich. Oh. Back in high school when I worked at McDonald's (I really did), that stuff was called condiments. But not in western Ohio. Anyway, here are a couple of my favorite shots from the "Warbler Capital of the World".

Air Shows!

How about some air show pics? We photographed a couple air shows this year and the first one was the Spirit of St. Louis Air show back in June. It was a 2-day show but we had to miss Saturday because we were enjoying the 11 hour drive home from our annual Smith Family vacation at the beach. Beach was great, drive was not. Taking pictures at an air show is definitely an upgrade from that drive! Our friend Patti snagged us some awesome flight line tickets for the show and as usual it was fantastic!

Our second air show was in Owensboro, Kentucky. It's an awesome river town and we come every couple of years to visit and photograph the show. Below are a few of my favorite shots from the Spirit of St. Louis and Owensboro air shows.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

"We Thought You were a Bear, Sir"

One of our favorite places to create landscape images is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We've been there several times and you can see our last photography adventure writeup from back in 2022 here.

This year was a little bit in question due to the hurricanes that devasted North Carolina and basically shut down the entire eastern half of the park. We were staying in Gatlinburg and planned most of our activities on the western portion of the park so were able to keep our reservations and most of our plans.

During one of our treks in the park photographing the Roaring Fork river I had a strange encounter with a carload of sightseers. After taking a bunch of photographs down by the water, I was climbing back up the steep wooded river bank toward where we parked our car. Once I stepped out of the woods and onto the road, I just about walked into the side of a car stopped in the middle of the one lane road. The car was so close I could have opened the passenger door. The windows were all rolled down and everyone was staring at me. I didn't quite grasp the situation until the woman in the front passenger seat said, "We thought you were a bear, sir." I think I need to lose some weight. Here are some of my favorite images from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Eagles on the Mississippi

In anticipation of the Mississippi River freezing up at some point in January, we wanted to get a head start on scoping out a few new spots for some some eagle pictures. We ran into some fog and a little bit of cold weather but nothing like what we're likely to see next time out when everything is freezing up! Here are some of my favorites from our scouting trip.

Many Great Adventures!

Lots of great adventures in 2024 with even more planned for next year. Thanks for following along! I hope you enjoyed it. If you missed any of my other photography adventure summaries you can find them here. If you want to see more of my images you can check out my photography Portfolio Page or follow me on Instagram, Facebook or X. See you next time!