Decorating our Christmas tree each year evokes many memories of our past travels because holiday ornaments are often the souvenirs that I bring back from our favorite trips.
I did a story about some of my favorite ornaments and the trips they brought to mind shortly after I began blogging a half dozen years ago, and I thought it would be fun to do another story about some of the newer ornaments we've acquired since that time and few older ones that I didn't include in the first article!
If you've followed Midwest Guest any amount of time, you know that I'm a big fan of bridges. You can imagine how much fun I had checking out the bridges in Pittsburgh when we made a trip out there for a family event several years ago. I particularly enjoyed riding the city's Duquesne Incline and making images of the numerous spans and the incline from atop Mount Washington. Better yet? One of those images placed third for the one of the categories for the first monthly competition I recently entered in metro Detroit's Motor City Camera Club!
Most people are familiar with Michigan's mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula, but "Up North" connoisseurs can readily recognize the silhouette of the state's more remote and ruggedly beautiful Upper Peninsula. I got this little sled ornament, handmade by a local man, at a little town on the shores of Lake Superior that celebrates the holiday year round-Christmas, Michigan!
I'm not a huge fan of warmer weather destinations, but I do have some nice memories of Florida when my parents had vacation homes there. This ornament always reminds me of how my father taught me how to search for sand dollars at the beach by feeling for them with my feet while standing in a few feet of water along the beach.
Put-in-Bay in northern Ohio along Lake Erie is a favorite destination for us. I've got some great memories of visiting the island and other places in the Lake Erie Shores and Island region over the past few years. I picked up this little row boat ornament one day in a gift store near the island's hardware store, where I found several jars of one of our favorite brands of regional pickles!
Alaska was long on our bucket list when we finally managed to get there in 2000. We visited the Iditarod Headquarters in Wasilla while we were there, where I got this dog sled ornament. Unfortunately it was July, and there wasn't any snow, so dog sledding was out of the question (no, they weren't even giving dog-sled-on-wheels rides the day we were there). I guess that means dog sledding is still on my bucket list.
I love puffins and have some fond memories of seeing the little football-shaped birds in action during trips to Maine and Newfoundland. I even "adopted" my own puffin years ago and continue to do so each year. Iceland has always been on my bucket list. It still is, although the idea of seeing puffin on a menu there still horrifies me! This little bird stays safe on the branches of my Christmas tree each year, though.
Watching hockey is another favorite pastime, and it's something I've enjoyed since sneaking into Detroit's old Olympia Stadium many times years ago to watch the Red Wings. These days, we have season tickets to the Plymouth Whalers, a Major Junior team in the Ontario Hockey League. We've had a lot of fun over the years watching the team and seeing players we saw there as Juniors make the Big League. We've seen the team many times on the road, and I suspect there will be more travel in the future for us if we want to continue watching OHL games.
© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved
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