Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: wow

This was one of the few local farms which specialized in raising cattle, rather than grain. It was also the only local farm sporting an elaborate system of windbreaks. I always figured the two were related. They're now growing corn/beans/wheat, like most of their neighbors. But the windbreaks remain. I miss the steers.

Three miles south of home. Captured during my lunch hour today.

This morning's drive to work.

Far away in northern Minnesota, 1996. I'd camped in Cascade River State Park three times, over the years, beginning in 1981. Somehow I managed not to find the waterfall until the '96 trip. This time we parked on the highway and followed the trail up the river. Well worth the short, fairly steep, hike. Sometimes I feel a little, well, foolish.... Camera: Chinon Genesis III

Door County, Wisconsin; Lake Michigan.

Explored! #54 [July 22, 2007] Thanks! Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This photo looks "the other way" from the Lake of the Clouds overlook in the Porkies. We're looking down at the river from overhead . The drop at this point is only a couple hundred feet or so; along the Escarpment Trail the drop gets higher and the dropoff gets steeper, as the map at the link shows. (What doesn't show is that Joel's deathly afraid of heights.) We hiked along the Escarpment on Wednesday afternoon and I'll doubtless share some other pictures in the near future.

Detroit's waterfront, May 28, 1990. The more I look at this photo, the better I like it. Every Memorial Day weekend, the Marine Historical Society of Detroit sponsors a tour from Detroit to Port Huron and back. The 1990 tour used both Bob Lo boats, and both were fully loaded. This photo was taken from the bow of St. Clair just as the tour began. Or mebbe from Columbia's bow. It's been a long time.... ================== Now, with both big boats inactive (I did not say retired), MHSD's tour necessarily uses smaller boats....

Test negative set

Photographer: Martin Sernstinger, developed (at Michigan News) June 8, 1955. Explored! #56 on Flickr [July 6, 2007.] Thanks! My father--Roger Dinda--is on the left in this photo. The guy in the middle is Fred Stone, and I'm not sure who the other is; since Dad & Stoney were off-duty firemen, I presume the other guy was as well [Sam Garrison, it turns out; see my brother's Flickr comment ]. Dad was a firefighter when I was young, and considered himself still a firefighter until he died. On his off-days, he held other jobs. The fallback job--this one--was called "driving hacks." Or just "hacking." The photo was taken on Michigan Avenue (still called Main Street in 1955, methinks) in Kalamazoo, in front of the cab stand beside Michigan News Agency. The official-looking building across the road is the Kalamazoo County Building, which still looks about the same; on the other hand, Michigan Avenue's been a One Way road for most of my life. Michigan News still stocks comic books, which was the attraction when I was a kid. Good place to buy maps, too. Since the picture dates from 1955, it's over fifty years old. Mom had us digging through boxes of old photos shortly before she died. This one was the best of a stash of Sernstinger pix which had mostly obvious firefighting connections. Dad was a little chubby, I see.... New scan uploaded 12/30/05.

Explored! #103 [February 4, 2013] Thanks! Leelanau State Park, Northport, Michigan. Best in large size, methinks. Two more views of this bay.

Explored! #58 on Flickr [September 1, 2007] Thanks! South Padre Island, Texas. This is one of those terrific photographs almost anyone could have taken, given a camera and the same opportunity.... We (Mom & "the kids") spent part of 1992's Texas ballpark vacation visiting Mom's sister Violet in Corpus Christi. Besides touring the town and sampling the restaurants, we spent nearly a full day on the beach, where the amusements included really cute crabs and really annoying gulls. Both types of critters, apparently, live off the sunbathers.

Explored! #477 on Friday, October 19, 2007, but no longer in the top 500. Thanks! The Narrow Gauge Trail at West Virginia's Babock State Park, in the New River gorge. The tracks were pulled up decades ago, and the trestles have collapsed, but the ties remain.... The Babcock Coal and Lumber Company's Manns Creek Railway carried coal down to the Chessie at the bottom of the Gorge, and lumber to the mill at Landisburg. This track was the coal line from Clifftop; the lumber mainly travelled on the higher track. Photo taken in September, 1998, with my Nikon N90s.

Explored! #345 on Saturday, August 3, 2013. Thanks! Burnis Johnson. Looks like he was tapping his right foot to the music. BJ and I were promoted to Sergeant on the same day and shared supervisory duties on the night shift until he was cycled home (I was Trick Chief; he was Duty NCO). We (sort of) roomed together for a while, before I moved to a more private place with Alford, the alternate shift's DNCO. That's Hoot Headrick's arm, on the left side of the picture. Hoot was another of our roomies. I expect I'll put up a picture of him next week. (If you're impatient, he's also in this one .) Pleiku, Republic of Vietnam, 1971 Another, similar, photo .

"When I have your wounded." ---Major Charles L. Kelly, hero --explaining when he intended his chopper to leave the battleground Dustoffs, parked, and waiting. MedEvac helicopters, downhill from (former, apparently) 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku, sometime in 1971. The 71st was a large hospital earlier in the war, but by the time I arrived in Nam it was a small operation and we signal folks lived in what had once been hospital wards. Since the place was still busy enough to support an air ambulance operation, these Hueys lived on the complex. The red crosses painted on these birds weren't magic shields. They'd land on the battle field, often while the battle raged, and face the dangers which had summoned them in the first place. Perhaps a mile from the hospital, a motor pool had become final home to the twisted and bullet-scarred hulk of a dustoff chopper whose crew had taken heavy fire during a rescue attempt. Brave men. Dangerous work. Camera: Minolta SR-T 101. Replaced with new scan on 12/17/2005.

Marquette, Michigan; from Presque Isle Park.

Another Calumet and Hecla building; downtown Calumet, Michigan. This building was used to maintain the drills used by the miners as part of their daily work. Part of the complex of buildings which forms the heart of the Keweenaw National Historical Park.

Downtown Mulliken, Michigan.

The deck of laker Herbert Jackson at Sault Ste. Marie, Engineers Day, 2005. Here we see the large hatches and the unloader boom.