Mid-January Thaw

No, I’m not referring to the fact that the mercury inched over the freezing mark for the first time in memory.  I’m being much more escapist than that.  My spirit has gone all walkabout and my mind has chosen to follow along.

Today’s new header and the above photo are from last summer, August to be specific and summer vacation not to put too fine a point on the matter.  The new header show’s a view across the water to Mission Hill and a particular sunset that you can only see in the summertime.  The photo with his post shows evergreens viewed from below.  Now they being evergreens, this photo could have been taken in January, but it wasn’t and my viewing of it reinforces my memories of that much warmer time.

Both of these photos were taken at Anne’s family cabin.  This cabin is a 1920s log cabin, with a few newer amenities.  It sits along the shore of Lake Superior in the mighty state of Michigan.  The shoreline at this cabin is a half-mile of sandy beach and although I can’t claim that the lake water is always warm, I can claim that last August it was warm enough for me.

So this is my wish, that this post jogs your memories of your last summer vacation, like it did mine.  I already feel warmer.  The rest of my wish is that this post will help jumpstarted the planning on your next great summer vacation.  I know that it has mine.  Now where should we go this summer?

The graphic at the bottom of this post is courtesy on a new website, at least new to me, called Wordle.  Earlier, on the HuffPost I saw Wordle graphics used to compare and contrast Barack Obama’s and Sara Palin’s responses to the Arizona shootings.  Here is Wordle’s description of itself:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

The text for this word cloud came from the blog, after yesterday’s post.  I don’t know how Wordle culls its cloud, but it is obviously from more than one post.  Wordle is easy to use and there is no requirement to sign-up for it and consequently no threat of spam.  I wanted to create multiple Wordle graphics using other people’s websites too, but Anne said that I had to get their permission first.  So, fellow bloggers, writers or whatevers, give it a try.

5 thoughts on “Mid-January Thaw

  1. I used Wordle to create a word cloud for some archaeologists here back in August 2009. Speaking of summer, thanks for the suggestion of taking a memory trip to warm-vacation times….

  2. excellent sunset pic. makes me a bit home sick.

    next summer I may go on a bike trip in Holland. we’ll see what the job front is like then. and the checking account…

  3. My next summer’s vacay will prob’ly be a lot like the last with rocket trips to the Yooperland, et al. For now, I am rejoicing that we are at Houghton Lake for a long MLK Day weekend and there is beautiful snow here and we skied today!

  4. We are currently working on a two-parter.
    Part 1 – CO to in-laws with a possible road trip to TN tacked on (stop in SL?)
    Part 2 – MI

  5. My summer vacation plans currently entail the following:
    a) Job – will I have one by then, and if so, my available time off?
    b) The kids’ grad schools – where will they be, when do they need to relocate, and do they need my help moving?
    c) Will probably have to take a cue from kayak woman and rely on “rocket trips”

Leave a Reply to kayak womanCancel reply