September 7-13, 2021

The photos will look best if you go to the blog rather than view them in an email, as they get cropped.

On September 7 we started on the trip for home with a first day stop in Pennsylvania along I-79. The main stop of the day was at McConnell’s Mill state park Portersville, PA. The park with the grist mill is about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, via I-79. I had a difficult time finding it as the gps address did not work correctly and the signage was bad, showing up only after turning around a few times. Once I got there it was about a fourth of a mile walk down a relatively steep road (the walk back up about did me in). The mill was built in 1852, destroyed by fire in 1868 and rebuilt. Thomas McConnell bought it in 1875 and replaced the water wheel with turbines and the grindstones with a rolling mill, one of the first in the country. The covered bridge was built in 1875.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The next day we went to Glade Creek Grist Mill in Babcock State Park in West Virginia near Fayetteville. This time we were right in time for breakfast in the van right beside the grist mill. This mill is a recreation from parts of several mills in the area and built in 1976. This is one of the most photographed mills in the state and I only wish that I could be here for the fall foliage. This was the breakfast view which was close enough for Joann to get a good look as we walked all around.

• 

My photographic technique for most of the photos was to use a tripod and bracket three exposures from very dark to very light at a slow shutter speed to make the “silky water look” in the waterfalls. A program then combined the three exposures to get the best exposure from each. In some cases, the white of the waterfalls was still over exposed. In some cases the darkest exposure was the best and I was able to brighten the dark areas without affecting the white waterfalls using a single exposure.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The next two photos are from the iPhone, which does all of the processing of several exposures in the blink of an eye.

• 

• 

A couple more waterfalls in the creek.

• 

• 

• 

We travelled across Kentucky and Missouri, and stopped at a roadside display of old cars.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Please click below to see more old cars and the Frank Lloyd Wright Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma

There was a roadside museum of sorts just up the road from Bartlesville.

• 

• 

• 

• 

This is a comparison of the original photo and my creative rendition for the camera club that got a second place.

• 

• 

The Frank Lloyd Wright tower is 19 stories that he built in 1956 in Bartlesville, OK, north of Tulsa. It was commissioned by Harold Price the owner of the H.C. Price Oil Company. Wright called the design built on the Oklahoma Prairie as “the tree that escaped the crowed forest”. It has four elevator shaft anchors to which the cantilevered floors are attached like branches on a tree. The outer walls are clad in copper leaves. It originally served as an office building, shops, and apartments. Today it is a hotel and restaurant. When we first drove to Arizona 14 years ago we stopped for lunch in the restaurant on the 15th floor. I was there early in the morning and heard a choir practicing for a September 11 commemoration.

• 

• 

• 

• 

At Russell’s Travel Center on I-40 there is a car museum that also features Marilyn Monroe Photos.

• 

• 

• 

• 

In Santa Rosa, NM we stopped at a Route 66 Car Museum.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•