DRIFTLESS WEEKEND

An area, located primarily in southwestern Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa, escaped glaciation during the last ice age that ended some 12,000 year ago.  As a result, the region, known as the Driftless Area, is marked by rolling hills and deeply carved river valleys.  It's beautiful.  Spring Green, Wisconsin is located in the Driftless Area, and that is where my wife and I joined three other couples, with whom we have been good friends for over 30 years, to enjoy the Labor Day weekend.  We had a great time, and I thought I would post some of the photos that I took during our gathering.

Friday night we enjoyed dinner together, and, yes, there was just a bit of wine.

Later that night we caught an intruder attempting to break into our friends' condo by going through their front storm door.  OK, so this toad didn't really get that far.

We spent the day on Saturday in the nearby town of Mineral Point, a very quaint town with a long history of lead mining.  We toured the town's Pendarvis area, a series of buildings from the 19th century mining era that had been restored beginning in the 1930s.  

Both the buildings' architecture and furnishings offered some photographic opportunities.  Here is a shot of one the buildings that illustrated a mixed wood and stone construction.

I liked how the windows served to emphasize this mixture of facades.

I also found myself taking photos of the weathered logs that some of the buildings featured.

I thought this worked well as a black & white.  

And here is a detail shot of one of the rock walls that had been restored.

I also found myself taking a few shots of latches and door knockers.

And here are a few photos of interior furnishings, including one of a painting that occasioned a number of comments.

This woman obviously had a strong personality but seemed to have suffered some sort of eye injury along the way.  One would have thought that the artist would have minimized her problem.  After all, this was a painting, not a photograph.  And maybe he did or maybe she wanted to make a statement.

Following our tour of Pendarvis, we spent time in downtown Mineral Point.  Here is a relatively random collection of shots from our meanderings.

Note the date of the building in the first photo shown in reverse in the window of the second.  

And I don't know the story of the dog statue in the shot below, but it is well done.

A bit of merchandise.

It appears that small town merchants/artists have great confidence in the honesty of their patrons.

And here's a shot I keep finding myself taking, looking for the abstract in the mundane.

I may be the only person who actually likes this shot.

On Sunday morning, our friends the Petersons directed us to Piccadilly Lilly's, a diner with plenty of local color that is associated with the area's (almost) famous tri-county airstrip.  You get the idea.

It was a foggy morning, and returning to Spring Green I was able to get a shot of some farm land through the open window of my car.

This shot was not ideal, but I did like it quite a lot for the filtered sunlight that was starting to find its way through the fog to illuminate the farm fields.  I thought using the foggy sky as negative space served to drawn attention to the pastoral nature of the land.

I also got a morning shot of some sumac that had not yet begun its fall color show.

And finally I also got a shot of more wildlife, in this case a friendly and (probably) harmless bat that had sought a resting spot in the folds of our friends' patio umbrella before I persuaded it to move to the table while it pondered where to find another napping spot somewhere else.

John