Photo Hunters: Vertical

I like the theme for this week. Easy, but general enough to be very creative.

This is the first thing I thought of. I have heard it said that the cross of Christ is both vertically and horizontally directed: vertical because He made the way for us to have fellowship with God, and horizontal because He made the way for us to have fellowship with each other. John the Apostle testified of this when he wrote:

That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. ~1 John 1: 3-4

Photo taken at Fort Ontario in Oswego, NY. That’s Lake Ontario there.

And this explains why church steeples are so extravagantly vertical. Photo take in Hamilton, NY.

I love standing under trees and looking up.

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Water Spout on Lake Ontario in Oswego

We don’t get too many tornadoes around here in Upstate New York (thank God), but the lakes occasionally do get waterspouts. During a swirling lake-effect weather pattern over Lake Ontario early this morning, a waterspout formed, and was photographed by some astute passers by!

A photo released today by the U.S. Coast Guard shows a water spout located on Lake Ontario, approximately two miles north of Bogus Point.

The picture was taken at about 7:50 a.m. from the docks of U.S. Coast Guard station in Rochester by Petty Officer 1st Class Eamon McCormack.

Tornado-like water spouts were also spotted Saturday on Lake Ontario in Oswego and Jefferson counties, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a special marine warning. McCormack said he was not aware of any special marine warning today.

“Although (a water spout) looks like a tornado and it has rotating winds like a tornado, it’s not as strong as a tornado,” meteorologist Mike Pukajlo said last week. “As soon as they hit land, they dissipate.”

This photo is courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

This one, a much clearer photo, was submitted to 9WSYR.com. Great shot! You can read a little more about the occurrence here.

Photo Hunters: Space

I shall slack no more!! My previous Photo Hunters have been rather lame. The winter blues have hit me harder than usual this year. It’s been a bone-chilling winter, and I am glad to see it start to ebb away.

Today’s theme is SPACE.. space…space…space…

First thing I thought of was, obviously, OUTER space. This is a photo of when we visited the Children’s Museum in Utica, NY. The entire fourth floor of the museum is devoted to modern science and technological development.

But then I thought of WIDE OPEN SPACE. And we have a lot of that here in New York.

This is when we visited Fort Ontario, in Oswego, NY. That’s the great Lake Ontario there. Isn’t it exquisite? We were up high on berms, as the fort is situated on a small hill looking down on the shores of the lake.

Ahhhhh a person can BREEEEATHE out here.

Here’s a photo of the Fenner Windmill Project in Madison County, NY. The area has dozens more windmills now. They are enormous. I love how they are framed by the pinkish hue in the sky.

I took the next photo yesterday. It’s a wide open meadow, ready for crops. I liked the furrows so I snapped a photo.

And finally, there is the SPACE of ETERNITY, where we will all spend. This is a small cemetery atop Paris Hill in Paris, NY.

How did your Photo Hunt go today? Leave your link in the comments!

Great Lakes Underwater Event in March

I found this juicy little news tidbit in one of my travel news emails: Deep Water Shipwreck Explorer Presents at 2009 Great Lakes Underwater March 7:

If you only have one guess as to who has discovered the Great Lakes’ oldest confirmed shipwreck, the only fully intact wrecked British warship, a rare dagger-board schooner dating to the early 1800s and more than 200 historic shipwrecks in Lake Champlain, the Finger Lakes, and the Mississippi and Ohio River, you better guess Jim Kennard. The well-known underwater explorer and engineer, who has built his own sonar equipment, will keynote the 2009 Great Lakes Underwater event March 7 at SUNY Oswego.

Kennard will make a trilogy presentation of three “Deep Shipwrecks of Lake Ontario” and provide a separate update and a short video on the discovery of the British war ship HMS Ontario that he and Dan Scoville located in May 2008. Kennard says, “Each of the shipwrecks in this presentation has been discovered in the deep waters of Lake Ontario from 360 to nearly 700 feet. One is a rare recently discovered 200-year-old dagger-board schooner – the only such ship to have been found in the Great Lakes.”

Wow! I’d love to go! I never knew that there were any ships sunk in the water at Lake Ontario… but after a moment, I realized, “Well, of course there were!” Lake Ontario, one of the Great Lakes that divides New York State and Canada, was a very active battleground during the French and Indian War (1750s), the American Revolution (1770s), and the War of 1812 (early 1800s). I hope, besides this conference, someone somewhere decides to place artifacts in a museum in the area. I, for one, would love to go!

Oswego is a small and lovely city on the shores of Lake Ontario. This conference may be of short notice, but here’s a quick tip for planning your trip– check out the website HotelsCombined.com. I use it to look for hotels when we travel overnight. The page to see all listings for hotels in New York State is here. It’s very comprehensive. And the website is extremely easy to use– a quick search by country, by city, or search by hotel name. I love the site!

If anyone reading this happens to attend the “Deep Shipwrecks of Lake Ontario” conference, please let me know! I’d love to hear how it went.

Photo Hunters: Nautical

The theme this week is “nautical.” We’ve been to our share of nautical sites and museums, at least a dozen since we have been traveling seriously. This week, I’ll focus on a place I haven’t mentioned much: The H. Lee White Maritime Museum in Oswego, NY. This small museum is located at the harbor, on Lake Ontario. Lake Ontario is a very old, historic area (as far as North America goes). Battles for the French and Indian War in 1757, the American Revolution in 1776, and the War of 1812 (in, uh, 1813, haha) were fought here. And that doesn’t even take into account all the Indian (Huron and Iroquois) battles and fur trading post fights that occurred here.

So we visited the museum, which was stuffed to the gills with nautical items and history. Outisde the museum is a little tugboat. Tours are allowed on it, but when we visited, the tug was roped off. ‘

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