Yesterday I drove to Manchester, Iowa and had lunch with my dear Friend John. We have been friends for 46 years and as usual it was a very enjoyable time spent talking, reminiscing, remembering, and looking forward.
I don’t remember the name of the place we ate at but the first two places we went to were closed. I was telling John about my done adventures and he pointed out there was a nice park / stream just next door to the restaurant. So what’s with this creature? Well, you’ll have to watch the 6 minute video below to find out.
I have readers of this blog in many parts of this country and even some from overseas. So it makes sense to say that I suspect some of you have never seen or been to a drive-in theater. Living in the Midwest they were fairly common in a lot of communities during the 1960- 1980s. But like so many things that have almost become extinct.
The small community of Maquoketa has a Drive-In show and not only that but they get first run movies to boot. The owner of this Drive-In is a friend of mine and we met in Rotary. Anyway on the same day that I had issues with the water tower I also flew my drone around the Drive-in.
It is usually packed every weekend and as you will see from the video they have a lot to offer for good family entertainment. The video is very short but fun.
This is my Friend Ted Strait, founder and manager of the great Maquoketa Farmer’s Market. He is a man of many talents including former HR Director of a major corporation on the West Coast, a master carpenter, and community leader.
I saw him a week ago at a Rotary meeting and asked him if I could do some aerial and still photography of the Market. He said sure and so this past Tuesday I spent some time at the Market.
What the Market lacks in overall size is more than made up for in a wide variety of things for sale, delicious foods, musical entertainment and great bargains. It is the meeting place of people from Jackson County every Tuesday.
This is Santa and Mrs Claus. This is the first time I have met them. They do a variety of events in and around the Maquoketa area. They have their own FB page, so search FB to learn more about them.
The musical entertainment is provided by “Momma J.” known for her beautiful voice and wild hats.
She modeled these for me while she was taking a break from her singing. Really neat lady.
My friend Sally Davis at the information booth for Alzheimer’s activities. There is a very active group of supporters in Jackson County.
Some of the many vendors are shown below.
And is you made it far, here is a very short video of the Market.
These were the ominous clouds that were over Maquoketa Friday that produced a deluge of rain and wind. Thankfully no hail or sever damage were reported. (you can click on images to reveal a larger and more detailed image.)
So to begin the story, I had a lunch meeting with some valued friends at Noon on Friday. I also had a dinner meeting with another great Friend later in the day. So I brought my camera and drones along to fill up the time between the two meetings.
I stopped at a variety of places to shoot video and drone video and I’ll post those at a later date. All the time I was capturing images and video I noticed the clouds building up and getting more and more foreboding.
As I headed back to town I noticed a group of farm tractors traveling in line so I decided to follow them. Turns out there was a large numbers of tractors that had been traveling through some towns in Jackson County and they had all stopped at Maquoketa High School, presumably for dinner.
Well I thought this would be a wonderful video for the drone to fly over so I parked about a block away so I wouldn’t be in the way and launched my drone
Well this is what happened. The drones have forward, backward, and downward safety sensors but not sideways sensors. So I backed the drone up to get all the shot and slide into the side of one of the legs of the tower.
So I had to walk about a block and a half to see if I could find the drone. I found it alright but it was behind the fence that protected the water tower. I could see that it was missing one of it props but hoped I could fly it out of the grass and the fence. NOPE!
So I called a dear friend of mine who called one of the city crews. So thanks to my friends Chris and Shelby plus Jeff who was so gracious to interrupt his day off to help me I was able to retrieve my crashed drone.
Now for the good news. The prop that I thought had broken off was just folded into the side and was just find. Very minor body damage to the drone itself. After three hours of drying and installing new propellers on the drone it was ready to fly again.
That’s it. Like a friend of mine said if you fly drones enough you’re going to crash one. Unfortunately I’ve had more than my share of crashes. A dear Friend of mine might say that people like me shouldn’t have drones. 🙂
Below you will find a short drone video of Maquoketa, Iowa. I’m working on a project and this was some spare footage that I had and I liked it so I made a video for this blog.
Just a short post today. I am trying to hone my skills in video, drone flight, and film editing. Lots of work and so far not much to show for it. Any way the video below is about 7 minutes of flying around the Asbury water tower and the Pizza Ranch restaurant. It was around dusk so the color is not all that good.
After all that if you still want to see the video, just click on it.
Had lunch with my beautiful daughter Wednesday and afterward I wandered down to the river. Found this guy at the 16th Street Basin, which is unusual since they have cleared all the trees the wildlife once used for protection.
I took a lot of shots of him and he didn’t seem to mind. There were some Canada geese close by and a couple ducks, which I didn’t get any still shots of but I did take some video of the Heron and got the ducks and geese in the video.
I also ventured down to the river and captured this video of the small barge.
Today I am showing you the last three images of my leaf photo trip of a couple of weeks ago.
The image above was taken at Pikes Peek State Park. It has a wonderful look out designed for sight seers and it gives a magnificent view of the Mississippi River some of the back waters. If you click on the image to enlarge you can see barges waiting to be loaded and several fishing boats in the back waters.
Jeanne and I stopped in Guttenburg for lunch. the have picnic tables and benches the entire length of the river area (about a mile) as well as charcoal grills and a large walking path. They have really done a nice job.
This last image is from the park again. Just a massive area with a railroad bridge running through it.
That’s it for today. Hope to get some fresh images later this week. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your day. As always be careful and safe.
Talk about déjà vu. It was a week ago that I posted images of the pelicans at the “Duck Pond.” I was in Maquoketa again yesterday for lunch with friends and I fully expected them to be gone.
However on my way out-of-town I discovered they are beginning to look like permanent squatters.
This guy paddled away from me when I first arrived but I just stayed on the observation platform for about 15 minutes and he swam very close to me and didn’t seem to mind the shutter clicking.
Many of the Canada geese are nesting now and they seem to cohabit pretty well with the pelicans.
There were pelicans flying in and leaving the entire 30 minutes I was there. Busy airport. 🙂
A great day today, which is why I’m late getting this posted. I normally like to post in the morning but ran out of time this morning.
I had some follow-up photos for my professional assignment, I needed to take in Preston and Maquoketa and I needed to be in Preston at 9:30 a.m. I rolled in there at 9:32 a.m. and may have exceeded the posted speed limit occasionally.
Then I had a very enjoyable lunch with a dear Friend in Maquoketa. We visited for about an hour and a half. We are both recently retired so it was fun discussing the experiences and feelings we’re both having with retirement.
As I was driving around the area taking pictures for the project I was amazed by the flooding in the farm fields around Maquoketa. Some images from that at another time.
The above image is what is called “selective color.” It is frowned upon by most serious photographers. Well I take my photography seriously but I’m the only one who must like it and I thought this image worked better using selective color. 🙂
Most of these images were made in the Millwork District. It is a fascinating place and I plan on spending more time there in the future.
I left this building art out of my post yesterday. I didn’t mean to so I include it today.
Yesterday I drove to Manchester, Iowa and had lunch with my dear Friend John. We have been friends for 46 years and as usual it was a very enjoyable time spent talking, reminiscing, remembering, and looking forward.
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