Upde Designs

Happy Sunday!

Fun weekend.  Jeanne and I drove to Des Moines, Iowa on Friday to meet up with some great friends from Kansas City, Missouri.  Des Moines is about half way for both of us and we have talked about doing this for sometime.

Jeanne and Debbie were in college together, both are teachers, and have been great friends since those college years.

Friday evening we had a wonderful dinner and conversation at a nice restaurant in West Des Moines.  I’m not sure how long Jeanne and Debbie visited but I know I was asleep when she came back to the room.  🙂

Saturday we decided to visit the Des Moines Farmer’s Market.  Followers of my blog know that I enjoy photographing the Dubuque Farmer’s Market, so I was really excited about getting to photograph what is billed as Iowa’s largest Farmer’s Market.

It was cloudy, overcast and rainy but the crowd was large and people were shopping, eating, and laughing regardless of the weather.

We walked for what seemed like hours and still didn’t see all the vendors or listen to all the music performers.  We finally stopped at an outdoor restaurant to have lunch and people watch.  The food was excellent and we enjoyed more conversation as well.

Shortly after lunch the rain stopped and full of sustenance we decided to explore more of Des Moines.  The rain had indeed stopped and the sun came out, which meant that the humidity went sky-high.  Whew it was hot walking around the area.

Saw some interesting things in Des Moines that I didn’t realize were there.  It is a nice, relatively clean, and friendly city.  We encountered many nice people at the Farmer’s Market and no one seemed to mind me clicking away with my camera.

Someone thought enough of this rusty old bike that they put a chain around the bike stand so no one would steal it.

I shot 387 images on Saturday.  Not really a large number unless you consider it was one image at a time.  No burst mode so that is a lot of single shots for a few hours.  When we got home last night I ran through some of the images and culled them down to 184.  It was a difficult cut process (which is good) and of the keepers I’ll probably show you 20 at most.  🙂

That’s it for today.  I still have the event I photographed on Friday to show you as well.  So for the first time in recent memory I have a stock pile of blog material.  Yea!!

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your day and be careful.