I got my new Canon EOS Rebel XS camera today and took it for a test drive! I added some new photos to the CLOUDS gallery on my website. One sample is below!
Tonight's Heavy On Wrestling show at the Powerhouse Bar in Proctor, Minnesota, at the Hoghead Festival was great. Some notables included former WCW wrestler/valet Daffney, TNA's Knockout ODB, Arya Daivari, Ann Brookstone of course, and AWA Legend Baron Von Raschke.
They announced their next show will be held at the University of Wisconsin, Superior on November 15th, with the main event being Arik Cannon vs Ben Sailer for the new HoW title. MICK FOLEY will be the special guest referee for that title match, and Terry Funk will be working as 'special enforcer'.
The second gallery is of the Harbor, as the Edward L. Ryerson ore/taconite hauler came into the Duluth Harbor. Notice the throngs of people who show up when the big boats come in, even on a weekday before 5 pm!
The third gallery is standard Duluth fare, the Aerial Lift Bridge gallery. I would suspect that 80% of the people who've been to Canal Park have taken at least one picture of the 'Lift Bridge.'
I finally made it to a Heavy On Wrestling show in Superior, Wisconsin! This was their THIRD ever show, featuring Terry Funk, Eugene, Lacey Von Erich, Honky Tonk Man and more! The main event was a triple threat LADDER MATCH that a wrestler named Ben Sailer won to face Arik Cannon for the Heavy On Wrestling Championship at a later date.
I've created a partner website for my View Through My Lens blog... at http://www.viewthroughmylens.net. Someone grabbed up the .com 'viewthroughmylens' so I am stuck with the .net for now :) That's OK though, I needed a place to put photos and galleries and host for this blog. The website name was registered today and I haven't done any 'work' on it yet but I had to announce it.
I was coming home from Wal-Mart and wanted to check out how an area of the St. Louis River that's been clogged with brush and trees turned out after the rains last week. I figured I couldn't even cast into the area before I got there because everything was pushed up against a culvert since winter.
There was just enough opening to see if maybe a Smallmouth might be hiding under the brush so I decided to cast...
Nope, no Smallmouth Bass were biting...But....
THIS guy was.. I only had about 10 feet of distance to cast to..and this Northern Pike hit as soon as the Rapala X-Rap hit the water, it came out of the water to get it.
This Pike trumps the May 24th Pike easily weighing twice what that one did for pretty much the same length in the 30+ inch range.
That was a huge improvement over 4 hours of shore fishing Saturday without catching anything because of all the recent rain.
With the huge amount of rain we had, four PLUS inches... fishing was miserable today, the river was moving which is usually ok, but there was a huge amount of silt and sand that made the river really dirty.
While fishing I heard some noises behind me off in the woods. I turned around and this was behind me.
I was probably 300 feet from the doe and it turned and looked at me as seen in the picture but it never ran, it just kept on it's way, stopping to look around, eat, and keep going. While I didn't catch any fish, this was cool anyway :)
Don't forget, you can click the picture to see it larger.
Ok, I'm not really gone fishing, since it's now almost 11:30 pm but a couple pictures follow.. first up another Rock Bass photo that was taken a few days ago...then a real nice Smallmouth that I caught and released today.
The final picture of this post is an interesting one.. I've never seen a baby turtle like ya see on Animal Planet .. swimming to wherever it's going.. but today I did.. this thing wasn't any bigger than a 50 cent piece...I'm pretty sure it ended up as fish food being alone in the water, but when I saw it it was alive and swimming.
I spent 3 hours this afternoon/early-evening fishing... I had no luck until back-tracking to the car .....
We had a LOT of wind from the east today and I decided to cast a Strike King Spinner Bait white skirt, white willow leaf/Colorado blade combination along a bridge/overpass that people ride 4-wheelers on. The 30-inch or so Pike is the biggest one I've caught in probably three years.
I caught a much smaller pike near the car but that one wasn't worth a photograph.
This smallmouth I caught yesterday and quickly snapped the picture before releasing it since it wasn't much size and not the season yet.
I was coming down the Mesaba Avenue Hill, from Cental Entrance and got a red light, and couldn't pass up this photo op of Park Point, and Downtown Duluth, you see the Holiday Inn in the foreground and the Lift Bridge leading to the long Park Point strip.
Headed to Duluth to watch the Canadian Snowbirds give a 35 minute airshow, as advertisement for the Duluth Air Show in July. Without a good telephoto lens, I ended up with a few good pictures but someday I'll go the expensive route and get a really good camera capable of extraordinary pictures. For now my 12 Megapixel Kodak Easyshare is perfect for what I usually use it for.
The Canadian Snowbirds aren't nearly as loud as I expected, and incredible maneuverable having only seen the larger jets at the Air Show the one year I attended.
As always, CLICK on the photos to view them in larger size.
When in Duluth, with a camera, a person tends to take pictures of the Aerial Lift Bridge, even though I've taken enough of them in the past, here's 2 more:
One thing I'd never seen before, is a mini 'Statue of Liberty' which is hidden in a courtyard next to the DECC Auditorium. According to the plaque, it was placed there in 1976, the American Bi-Centennial.
On the way home I stopped at the river to fish for a bit....
I caught that small St. Louis River Northern Pike, and a nice Smallmouth Bass, but Bass season doesn't start for a week or two, so they have to be released immediately so no photos of that one.
Below are a few pictures from after the UMD Bulldogs captured their 4th NCAA Women's Ice Hockey National Championship
First, Wisconsin Badgers take home their second place trophy
The rest of the pictures are of UMD's celebration, in no particular order, a salute to the fans, the mob of players after the game, and UMD's captains mobbed with the first place trophy!
I bought a new camera finally.. a 12 Megapixel Kodak Easyshare Z1275.. I've been playing around with it a little in some free time.. below is the only picture I've really done to share, of the Applebees here.
It's taken from 500-800 feet away maybe.. not positive on the distance, but the camera has 5x optical zoom and I wasn't at that mark yet