Midwest Guest

Happy Holidays!

Today, Tim is allowing me to share one of his photos of Ohio's beautiful Marblehead Lighthouse on Lake Erie with Midwest Guest readers.We've visited this lighthouse many times and particularly enjoy photographing it on a clear winter day with its holiday greenery and red bows.

Want to see more of Tim's great photographs? Check out his online photo galleries at The Wandering Photographer web site or The Wandering Photographer blog.

You can also check out my most recent story about the Marblehead Lighthouse at the Ohio Tourism's Discovering Ohio blog.

And, from our house to yours, here's hoping that the holidays are happy days for you and yours!

Photo © Tim Marks, used with permission

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Happy Thanksgiving!

The peak harvest time has pretty much ended here, but I thought I'd share a few photos I took during our last visit this season to the Northern Farm Market near Romeo, Michigan.

Romanesco Cauliflower

Carnival Squash

Brussels Sprouts

Assorted Gourds

Here's wishing everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving at this time of the year a happy holiday, and wishing for a bountiful harvest of all good things for every one of my readers.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Where I live: 2011 Big Bright Light Show illuminates Rochester beginning November 28

Making the trek to Rochester, Michigan, for the city's dazzling Big Bright Light Show is already a tradition for many metro Detroiters as the dazzling holiday light display flips the 'on' switch for its sixth season beginning November 28.

We love heading out to see the display and enjoying the celebratory atmosphere as visitors 'ooooh' and 'aaaah' at the more than 1.5 million colored lights blanketing Rochester's Main Street and central downtown area.

Rochester got the bright idea to stage a spectacular holiday light display as a way to help the city's many independent businesses draw visitors during the holidays and effectively compete with the national chains' big bucks advertising budgets.

The first Big Bright Light Show in 2006 had 500,000 LED lights and drew several million people to see the display over the next month.

This year, the lights will again cover downtown Rochester storefronts from the South Bridge north to Romeo Road, as well as on Fourth Street from Walnut to Water.

I'll be looking for my favorite display, the Snowflake Spectacular with over 75 animated, white-light snowflakes flashing in sync with holiday music on the old knitting mill's wall on Water Street.

This season's Big Bright Light Show happens 6 p.m. until midnight from November 28 through January 1, 2012.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

 

Ye Olde Winter-Friendly Geocaching Event in Cambridge, Ohio

Thanks to Julie Henning for this story about an upcoming geocaching event in Cambridge, Ohio.

Take a trip back in time this winter, experiencing old world England in historic downtown Cambridge, Ohio. Created in 2006, Dickens Victorian Village is a public art exhibition on display from early-November through mid-January along Wheeling Avenue in downtown Cambridge. Inspired by the characters and scenes from Charles Dickens’ novels, Dickens Victorian Village features 185 life-like mannequins and 80 scenes this 2011-2012 season.

Cambridge is also ground zero for a winter-friendly geocaching event.

Partnering with the Cambridge/Guernesy County Visitors & Convention Bureau for the second year in a row, Ohio geocacher David "CatsInTheCradle" Waters just announced the approval of the Cambridge Christmas at Dickens Village II event on Geocaching.com. (GC34JJ3).

“I moved into the [Cambridge] area in June of 2010 and I knew of the Dickens Victorian Village. I wanted to share it with the geocaching community. There are some similar events that highlight great city/town tourism events (GC1DM1V comes to mind) and I wanted to show off an amazing Cambridge attraction.”

Waters will place approximately 70 temporary caches on an approximately one mile route along Wheeling Avenue and by the Guernsey County Courthouse for the event scheduled from 3:00 p.m.until 9:30 p.m.on Saturday, November 12, 2011. The event is 100% wheelchair and stroller accessible, participants are encouraged to gather around coffee, hot chocolate, and cookies, geocaching before and after one of four computer-controlled—30,000 lights choreographed and set to music—holiday lights shows at the courthouse.

Holding the event twice in 2010, Waters recalls, “We had about 40 at the first event and about 75 at the second one.” Coordinating the event with the help of geocaching friends, last year’s event drew attendees from the Pittsburgh Area Geocaching Association, Ohio Valley Geocaching Association, and The Wilderness Center Geocaching Club.

“I had geocachers come in from within a 100 mile area,” Waters added. “Many of them were people I know or friends of people I know, but I had one group came in from Toledo Ohio just for the event. When I did the same event for my children's eSchool, Ohio Virtual Academy, I had a family drive in all the way from Dayton.”

“We were blown away by the number of people that attended last year’s geocaching event,” said Jonett Haberfield, Dickens Victorian Village Co-Chair. “People came as far away as Pittsburgh. We plan to provide special souvenirs and coupons for geocaches, as well as advertise the event in both the website and 2011 Visitor’s Guide.”

Fundamentally, the event is similar to last year. Dickens Victorian Village is bigger and better, and the city of Cambridge has been undergoing revitalization all summer long. “The Structure of my event has not changed, but Cambridge just had a facelift, so the benches and light posts are new 'antiques' and the vignettes will not all be in the same places they were,” Waters added. In addition to donations from Haberfield and Dickens Victorian Village, Waters hopes to have engraved wooden nickels available to this year’s event participants.

Bio: Julie Henning is the Feed Me and Geocaching editor for Road Trips for Families, a site for families who love the open road. An expert in family-friendly Wisconsin, she has written two iPhone apps, Madison Loves Kids and Milwaukee Loves Kids. A member of the Midwest Travel Writers Association, Julie is a regular contributor to her hometown newspaper in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, where she lives with her husband and three young children.

Text © Julie Henning 2011 All rights reserved. Photos courtesy of David Waters and the Cambridge/Guernsey County CVB. Text and photos used with permission.

Photo Friday: Easter basket awaits bunny in Lorain, Ohio

The Easter bunny sure needs some big eggs and chocolates to fill this Easter basket at Lakeview Park in Lorain, Ohio!

This concrete basket, measuring just over 7 feet tall and a little more than 10 feet wide, draws scores of visitors to the park on the shore of Lake Erie each spring to take photos of their families in their Easter finery.

In fact, there is a Flickr group devoted to such shots dating back to 1941, when park employee David Shukait first erected his colorful creation.

Lorain's park supervisor originally envisioned a large flower basket as a grand entrance to the park and asked Shukait, the park mechanic, to make it happen. Shukait took six months to figure out how to come up with a workable design that involved creating a wooden form as a mold and filling his molds with concrete reinforced by steel rods. Shukait patented his design.

Shukait then set about assembling his curved, concrete pieces in the park system's maintenance garage during the winter with the help of National Youth Administration workers. The basket was a public works project, and the National Youth Administration was a Depression-era New Deal program envisioned by Eleanor Roosevelt to employ young people.

Workers installed the large basket near the park's entrance in spring of 1941 with a plan to plant flowers in it when the weather got warmer.

It was so close to Easter, however, that someone got the bright idea of putting colorful Easter eggs in the basket, hatching what became a traditional photo op for generations of area families.

The Easter bunny is often on hand during the week leading up to Easter to pose with families at Lakeview Park and at a similar basket Shukait created for Lorain's Oakwood Park.

Park employees repaint the basket every year or so, and the color scheme in these photos, taken in January of 2011, echoes the peach-white-purple colors of the early 1970s.

The Lorain basket sits along the Lake Erie Coastal Ohio Trail. Check out my story Lake Erie Coastal Ohio Trail Highlights for other attractions on this scenic drive along Ohio's northern coast.

Check out Lorain County Metro Parks: The First 50 Years by Gary S. Gerrone to learn more about Lorain-area parks.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Amherst

Happy Holidays!

Here's hoping that the holidays are happy days for you and yours!

Marblehead Lighthouse on Lake Erie in Ohio

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: Big Bright Light Show dazzles in Rochester, Michigan

Rochester, Michigan, becomes one of the brightest spots in metro Detroit on November 29 as 1.5 million LED lights blanket its downtown for the 2010 Big Bright Light Show.

I'm thankful that this year I learned about a special preview of the show. City officials turned on most of the lights for a few hours on Thanksgiving evening (and again this evening) to test them before the official start of the month-long light display.

We went last night in the pouring rain to check out preview, and I managed to capture a few images in spite of the weather.

Check out my earlier story, Where I live: Dazzling "Big Bright Light Show" shines again in Rochester, Michigan, for more about this year's display, plus a couple of photos and a short video clip from the 2009 Big Bright Light Show.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Happy Thanksgiving!

We visited Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II when we traveled to Massachusetts a couple of years ago, and I thought it might be nice to share a couple photos from that trip as we get celebrate our Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. today.

I think many of us grew up thinking Plymouth Rock must be some huge boulder dominating the shoreline, but that isn't the case at all. The rock itself is rather small, and we really couldn't get a decent photo of it as construction and barriers obstructed any decent view of it during our visit. But I got a perfectly nice photo of this historic marker near the site!

We did get some nice photos aboard the Mayflower II, a representation of the original Mayflower and part of the area's effort to dispel some of the myths and misinformation surrounding the story of the Pilgrims, their trip to the New World, and their relationship with the Native Americans already living here at the time.

Check out my stories Aboard the Mayflower II and Living history at Plimoth Plantation to read more about the holiday, life in the area during the 1620s, and the "first Thanksgiving".

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Where I live: Dazzling "Big Bright Light Show" shines again in Rochester, Michigan

Get ready to flip the switch for a big, bright holiday on November 29 as Rochester, Michigan, once again becomes what must be the brightest spot in metro Detroit with its dazzling Big Bright Light Show.

We couldn't resist the lure of the lights last year, when we drove to Rochester multiple times to enjoy what must be one of, if not the, most spectacular light displays in the area.

You'd think it would be difficult to outdo last year's spectacle of one million twinkle lights draping downtown Rochester's building facades, but the city ups the figurative and literal amperage this year with displays featuring over 1.5 million lights and expanding the display area. This year's official light display runs along Main Street (a.k.a. Rochester Road) from South Road to Romeo Road and along Fourth Street from Walnut to Water. You'll also see a large lighted Christmas tree and a light show on the side of the old Western Knitting Mill on Water Street.

A crew began stringing the lights in mid-October in order to get every one of the 1.5 million lights in place by Thanksgiving.

The strings of lights, placed vertically four inches apart, create a shimmering blanket of color along Rochester's Main Street that you must see to fully appreciate.

You can drive along Main Street through Rochester see the show, but it is even better to walk the route. We went during the show's opening night last year, experiencing the street party vibe and hometown pride that sometimes seem all too rare in other cities.

The Big Bright Light Show came out of Rochester's effort to offset the effects of a slumping economy and make the Detroit suburb a must-see holiday destination. Discarding the idea of conventional advertising as too costly for the town's independent businesses and probably ineffective in the face of the advertising muscle of national chains and businesses, someone came up with the bright idea of having a truly spectacular holiday display.

Rochester launched the Big Bright Light show in 2006 with 500,000 LED lights covering the building facades in a four-block stretch of Main Street. More than 30,000 visitors showed up the first night of the show, and more than one million people came to see the lights over the next month.

In 2007, the Big Bright Light Show doubled in size with one million lights strung over an eight-block stretch of Main Street and some other downtown side streets.

The show's November 29 kick-off this year coincides with the city's 36th annual Lagniappe shopping event, and a Kris Kringle open-air market featuring Michigan-made goods and products happens December 3-5 amid the light display on W. Fourth Street.

One of my favorite parts of the Big Bright Light Show is the Snowflake Spectacular with over 75 giant lighted snowflakes flashing in sync with holiday music on the old knitting mill's wall.

Check out the Big Bright Light Show 6 p.m. until midnight each evening from November 29 through January 2, 2011.

If you love bright lights, or just want to experience some real holiday cheer, don't miss it!

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Happy Holidays!

I love checking out holiday lighting displays, and the Big, Bright Light Show in Rochester, Michigan, is one of the biggest and brightest displays around town!

Big Bright is one of the brightest spots in metro Detroit these days with over a million twinkling LED lights blanketing Rochester's Main Street and as part of several animated displays.  

Regular readers of Midwest Guest may remember my Photo Friday feature on the Big, Bright Light Show earlier this month, but I believe it is definitely worth visiting more than once during the season!

I've been playing a bit with my own early holiday present, a Flip video cam, and, as promised, took a bit of footage in Rochester the other night. I thought I'd share a couple of my very early results here.

This show draws streams of traffic through town. Listen closely to this clip and you'll hear a talking traffic signal admonishing pedestrians to "wait...wait"!

One of my favorite displays is an animated show of about 70 giant lighted snowflakes dancing across the face of a former knitting mill building. The clip below hardly does the display justice, but I thought it was fun to see the synchronized patterns formed by the flakes in this display.

I've obviously got a bit to learn about video, but taking a bit of footage, setting myself up with a YouTube account, and learning to do simple trims of my footage seemed like good first steps.

Anyone have some good resources or suggestions for those of us just beginning to play with video and use it in their blogs?

Here's hoping that everyone has a beautiful and bright holiday season, and that the New Year brings better days ahead for all of us!

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved