Picture Kaleidoscope 11/25/15 - Puerto Rico edition

Morning!

Figured I'd start sharing my Puerto Rico pics. Will be setting up a gallery for them all, but it's not ready yet. These are all phone camera pics. The gillion others were with my camera. So expect all sorts of photography mayhem soon.

Heh heh heh

Puerto Rico - a property of the US. Only need a drivers license to go there. Currency is the US Dollar. Main language is Spanish.

View of a little island we spotted from the plane.

Amazing skies. Clouds are the main thing you miss when you move away from PR.

Panorama from my uncle's house in the mountains. 

More views from his porch.

He has a set of  Hibiscus bushes as a partial fence. 

I love the flowers from these bushes. Always make me think of home.

View from the balcony of the condo we got to stay in overnight.

Panorama from the top of the 1st viewing tower at El Yunque - PR's protected rain forest.

Pano of the other side on the tower.

Pano at El Morro. Spanish fort in San Juan. All the pink shirts are students on a field trip. 

Different pano view from the fort.

View from El Morro looking out. Huh, something happened as this bugger looks stitched! lol.

These are Quenepas. I'd not had some in 20 years! Last two times I'd made it home, they've not been in season. Ran across some when we went south. YAY! You bite the green to peel off the top. Then you use the bottom half as a cup. The fruit strands are stuck to a large seed. You put it in your mouth and suck off the strands. So good!

More torture to come later. :)

Picture Kaleidoscope 4/8/15 - DART Adventure

Morning, all!

My work place is moving to Las Colinas, which means a much more involved commute. So trying to see how to avoid traffic and all the stress, annoyance, etc that goes with it, I figured I'd check out DART Rail since there's a station right by the new work address.

So I spent a couple of hours doing research, finding out routes, comparing maps, and more. So Saturday, hubby and I set off to check it out and see if it is a viable alternative or not.

This is the view from the DCTA platform off of Hebron in North Carrollton. The A Train stops by here.  As you can see, aside from a roof and some metal chairs and ticket machines, there's nothing here. 

On a day like Saturday, that is not a problem. But any kind of inclement weather and passengers would find no protection here. Also, the big schedule on the marquee is only for weekdays, so we ended up missing the train, because... there are no TOILETS!

Took a panoramic once we got back (before we realized the marquee was wrong and we'd just missed the train).  Wahhhh! (We got in the car and went to the alternate stop.)

Inside of the DART Rail - which we got on at the North Carrollton Station. No bathrooms there either.

Ticket machines and helpful signs. Huge parking lot, big statue, no bathrooms. No real cover.

Incoming DART rail. (We're sitting in the other one.)

And we're off!

Water treatment plant in Carrollton

Some nice views on  the overpasses.

Each station stop had a different decor motif for their columns. Still no restrooms.

A lovely fluffy sky!

Passing strangers

You can see the conductor and the rail map from here. Typical multi transit train setup.

Walnut Hill Station - a nice southern feel to the columns.

The big radar thing/water thing. 

Some more of the stop decor.

Historical Park in Farmers Branch.

They've really fixed it up!

More column decor.

This is the extent of protection at all the stations we stopped at. :( Rain with some wind, and you'd be soaked.

Really can see a long way from up here.

Old Downtown Carrollton

More station decor

Big art thing at the North Carrollton Station. Wish they'd instead put in some bathrooms.

All the stations were clean and so were the trains. But...

We never did go all the way to our final destination. The bathroom situation caused us to hoof it in search of one and after that we were pretty much done. I now know why DART is losing money. I've no idea how the elderly or people with kids could afford to use DART rail without any kind of facilities being available. I spoke to a friend who uses the Red Line and said he'd seen plenty there, but the Green Line seemed to have none. Sadly, the lack of facilities definitely makes this a non-option for me.

Happy Wednesday!

Picture Kaleidoscope 4/30/14

Morning!

Aurora Ice Caves by Bill Cady at Earthshots.org Almost looks like a curtain for the cave!

Bill Cady has some lovely panoramic shots as well as a plethora of other photos. Nice work!

Symphony of Sunset by John Fan at Earthshots.org. Very cool play with the light. Lots of cool nature photography and more at this site.

American Museum of Natural History Starts Digitizing, Makes 7,000 Photos Available To The Public - article by Gannon Burget at PetaPixel.com

Photoshopped Portraits Paint a Creepy and Cuddly Picture of Infamous World Leaders by Gannon Burget. Photos by Chunlong Sun. What a bizarre concept!

See you next time!

Picture Kaleidoscope 1/22/14

Running late again! Figures....

Wings in the sky!

Panorama, baby! Been a while since I did one of these. :)

Lots of pinks and blues in the sky lately

Molasses sky

Lots and lots of pinks and blues. :)

Some cool stained glass windows at the local Dave and Busters. Restaurant tucked away from the noise.

Here's another one.

Food wasn't bad at all either!

Macaroni and Cheese with Chicken. Or death by cheese!

More sunrises at work!

The company just introduced a new rewards system for employees. My boss got one. Love love love this case!

The reward is a silver dollar. Isn't she a beaut?

Such a novel idea. :)

Have a great one!