Bugs and Flowers

There's a little nature park down by the river near my hotel in Dublin, Ohio, where I found a few flowers and a bug or two after a nice little thunderstorm.

My Ohio Weekend

This weekend, I found myself up for a little exploring.  Cruising the internet, I found the locations of a few waterfalls, for which I have a huge penchant.  The other is ("stalking" is such an ugly word), Amish watching.  So, I decided to do a bit of both.

(as usual, clicking the photos should enlarge them and increase resolution)
I warmed up a bit with a water sculture at the community center near my hotel in Dublin

then progressed down the road, not far away, to Hayden Falls

 where I met a duck.

I set my GPS toward Holmes County, Sugar Creek, Berlin and Millersburg in search of the Amish.

Along the way, I passed a huge 7 story office building that was the home office of Longaberger Baskets in Newark, OH.  It was pretty impressive.

The first thing I try to remember is upon seeing the first road apple on the pavement is start watching, because the roads are sometimes winding, hilly and limited shoulders in some places.

We don't want to run over one of the Yoder boys.

Everything in that region is geared, of course, to Amish.  I even suspect there are folks just pretending to be Amish (I digress) just for business but that's another story.

 It's not like you have to look hard for them

  they come out from small roads and streets and just appear.

 One thing I found interesting was how most of the big box stores, such as Walmart, even had dedicated parking spots for the buggies.  I would guess to protect them from being run over and also, being the cash cow they are, to cater to them as well.

Leaving Millersburg, I started heading back south and found a couple of covered bridges in the process.  One being an active one for anyone to use and another that had been closed only to non-motorized (buggies) vehicles.

 

 This one bears the title of Ohio's longest covered bridge.

At the information sight of the above bridge, I read of another set of waterfalls near there on the road back to Columbus.   It's Honey Run Falls.  A little off the beaten path but still very nice.  It took forever to get shots of it because of kids in the nearby campgrounds playing in them.

Yes, I was more than patient.  I was a kid once myself, so I have been told.

Seriously, it was such a nice place watching the kids and several other photographers trying to grab just the right angle.

Well, outside of going to church with some friends who invited me, that's been pretty much it up here in Ohio.

Until next time...

Independence Day, Columbus, Ohio, 4th of July

Columbus has the "Red, White and Boom" festival which actually begins on July 3.

With some new found friends, I went downtown (against my fears and better judgement) to watch the parade and later that night, the fireworks.

Waiting patiently for the parade to begin, attendees lined the sidewalks along with side men selling noise makers and favors.

Some watched from a window above at the downtown YMCA.

Eventually, it all began

Floats were pretty scarce and saw several cleaned up 18 wheelers
from different firms such as Pepsi, Walmart and a few others.
Unions and politicians even paraded, some with their supporters
marching.

Even Jesus (pretty sure that wasn't really Him) was there.

After the parade, we went down to the river to await the fireworks
display at 10:00 PM.  The walkways were a parade within them-
selves.

At 10:00, the fireworks began along with a light rain.

On the real 4th of July, I rode around in the rain, electing to stay
away from the crowds.  Call me "hyper-vigilant"  if you like but
given events in Boston some weeks back, I wanted to not be a
target for terrorism so I chose more serene places for contemplation.