Picture Perfect

I mentioned my Oshkosh trip. It was a photography trip with my dad and myself (the destination came from my dad being a pilot for most of his professional life).

We started by driving to Dayton, OH, the first day. We knocked around Wright-Patterson Air Base for a bit, then went to the carillon for sunset. That link's a little misleading, though, because we took pictures at the carillon, but everything else was closed by the time we got there.

From there, we went to a pretty nice steakhouse for dinner. Bit heavy on the salt for the bread (?!?) and the steak, but the salad was fantastic. The House Dressing is anything but subtle, but tastes really nice. And the steak was good; it was cooked perfectly. I'd've just preferred a bit less salt.

The main reason for going to Dayton, though, was to go to the Air Force Museum. My dad wanted to spend the entire day there, while I was thinking that I'd be quite happy to leave an hour or two early.

We didn't get there at opening, but not too late. We got drenched going from the car to the museum (not helped by my forgetting my remote shutter trigger and something else). I had taken a painter's pole for pictures; it didn't look like (for a while) that it would be useful (too little light). But eventually we got to another section (Cold War), and it was mighty useful there.

After a late lunch, my dad asked me (after I'd described it) to bring in the camranger and ipad I'd told him about. I did, and he was seriously hooked after the first time using it. In fact, he'd been agitating to hurry through the section we went to then so we could get to the stuff outside. Well, he was hooked enough with it that he didn't want to go at all anymore. In fact, we closed the place out, and they were rushing us to get us out at that point. It was a lot of fun, and we got some great shots.

In fact, now I'd love to go back there, and probably spend the whole day with it.  The only problem, I guess, is that the iPad wouldn't last the whole day (the amount of data transfer, while using it, just chews the battery like nobody's business).  Well, and I'd need a spare battery for the camranger, most likely, though that's an easier problem.

Anyway, after leaving, we went a mile or so away to a Wright Memorial that seems to've been put up in the 40's.  It was pretty.  And pretty seriously deteriorating, which was a shame.

After that, we had to drive up north to Chicago, where we were going to spend the night (I wanted to get some shots at sunrise at Montrose Point).

It wasn't a terribly interesting drive, for the most part.  But the GPS sent us off on a bit of a wild-goose chase to find a restaurant, which worked out well.  Well, not for the restaurant, which had closed by the time we got there.  But we got a neat sunset looking straight down railroad tracks half a mile from the restaurant.

And when we'd driven a bit farther north, we noticed a lot of red, flashing lights in the distance (east and west).  What was weirder (and which I still don't understand), was that they were all flashing in sync.  It looked really spooky, actually.

Fortunately, before too long, one of the lights ended up being close enough to the road that we could see the turbine spinning next to it.  It was a wind farm.  I'd heard about them, but never seen one, so that was really cool.  I wish there was a way to show a picture of it, but it wasn't something capturable by photo.  I should have stopped, gotten my iPhone out, and taken a video, though.  That might have worked.

But that was it for interesting stuff on the road.  We found Montrose Point, and, shortly after, a hotel room.  I'll talk about later parts of the trip soon (tomorrow, if all goes well).