A New Spin to My Yearly Osh Kosh Trip

This summer Tim talked me into another hot sticky trip to the EAA Air Adventure in Oshkosh WI.  We already vacationed one week in Brainerd this summer and we have another trip on the horizon to Silver Bay, so Osh Kosh was out of the question for me.
Oshkosh get's in your blood and apparently for me too, because I caved after making a rather large announcement that I was not going this year.
But this year was so different from any previous year.  We met a lot of interesting people, AND we stayed in a gorgeous home on lake Winnebago a stone's throw from the Seaplane Base.
We drove to OshKosh, which is roughly a 5 hour drive.  We stretched the drive to 6 hours so Tim could keep good on his promise....stop at every schoolhouse we see along the way.
 
So there we were in the middle of Wisconsin and out of the blue appears a sign which read: "Reed School House 1 Mile".  I thought I was seeing things! I have never seen a sign advertising the whereabouts of a one room school.  1 mile later the beautiful brick school house appeared right off of the highway.  We turned in and spent some time reveling in the brick one room Reed School. http://reedschool.wisconsinhistory.org/

Simply put, this is the most beautifully restored one room school house we have ever seen.

The basement was preserved into a complete history of America's one room schools.  It was a pristine museum complete with self auto DVD videos. The picture of George Washington in the upper lefthand corner is the original print from the school house.

Note: the picture of George Washington here.  The same water damaged print hangs above Mrs. Orvilla Selves Zille and her class of 17, 1947

Equally important as the teachers in this building, was the man who invested money into the old dilapidated building to preserve it.  Surprisingly a man from the east coast is responsible for this learning landmark preservation.  Why?  He attended the Reed school for 6 weeks as a young boy and has very fond memories of his experience learning in that building.   Read more about him here

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Later that day we enjoyed the infamous drive in restaurant Ardy and Ed's

One of our waitresses, Rachel.

The home we rented was a stroke of luck from VRBO just blocks away from the EAA Air Adventure Event.  We probably will never get that lucky again.  The home is located on Lake Winnebago and right down the road from the Seaplane base.

Scenic and tranquillity overlooking Lake Winnebago, sipping a gin and tonic and streaming KDKK Park Rapids Mn radio.

(We discovered KDKK Radio on our previous trip to Brainerd.  Familiar tunes of when we were growing up.   Bert Kaempfert and his "golden hits" filled the nights with some great tunes on KDKK)

 The Seaplane Base

Last year we discovered the Seaplane base and this year we spent twice the time there.  Placid, colorful, breezy off the lake - just right, after a full day of stumbling from vendor to vendor in buidings A B C D.  

My next post will cover the new lens I bought and the pictures I took with it at Oshkosh.

Keeping up

My Problem: save and organize a photo subject over a long period of time...ongoing a.k.a. SCHOOLHOUSES

My Temporary Solution: Post the pictures in a common place = not working

Well it would work if I'd decide what I like best!  I know the importance of keeping and saving important files.  It makes sense to be organized.
I have my school house pictures online in Picasa, Flickr, Blogger and Facebook.
I have them saved on my computer in three places.  But I do not have just one file/album anywhere of every schoolhouse picture I have phtographed!

Why I like Flickr:  It has worldly exposure(no photography pun intended), as there are many people out there doing the same thing I'm doing and they use Flickr to share their images.  There are groups you can belong to on Flickr which is pretty cool.  I belong to "The Schoolhouse Historical Society" which has 28 members and 454 photos of old school house across the country.  Why I don't like Flickr:  It is slow uploading my pictures.  I'm still learning the software and do not feel accomplished with it at all.  The time that I've spent learning becomes frustrating because their servers have hiccups which become slow when working inside my albums,  I get impatient and stop.

Picasa Online:  I'm a pro with Picasa.  I love it.  I pay extra each year for extra storage space,  But I see Picasa as just that: STORAGE

Blogger:  I started a blog for fun just like it's name. Lisa'sPhotoAdventures.  I love documenting the photos I had a blast taking.  Usually not portraits of people who pay me and usually not pictures of the school district I work for as I'm the "in house photographer" for the district and that too is challenging my filing capabilities....another post one day. My problem with my blog is that I decided to create pages a couple of years ago.  They appear as Tabs (Blogger calls them pages on the inside).
The tabs do not update as posts. So I actually have blogged more than Blogger gives me credit for. Not that that (Maddie and Barb will love that that) matters, but I admit I like looking over at the history of my blog and the number of posts I posted.  So I need to spend some time figuring out how to transfer my schoolhouse page to a countable post.

Facebook:  I love sharing my schoolhouses on Facebook.  They have generated comments and leads that are very satisfying to me.  I have people commenting all the time on how they love the school house pictures.  But I have not posted all of my schoolhouses to Facebook.  So I would never use it as a source for all the images.

I was hoping by writing about this I would come to a conclusion.  I did not, but  I think it would make sense for me to make sure all my schoolhouse are in one folder in Picasa.   So that is my goal for this summer.

Lake Margaret

Last week I spent my days at a lovely home located on Lake Margaret, Lake Shore, MN

8377 Nottingham Rd, Nisswa, MN 56468

Yep!  That's ALOT of steps going up.  I never counted them but it was a great workout!  Henry lost 1.2 lbs on this trip solely on the steps and his desire to "see the fishies".

Here I looking down on Henry as he makes a visit to the dock.

Ruby and Lily and Henry out fishing for Crappies and Sunnies.
I'm sitting behind them on a little extension in the dock.  I've never hooked night crawlers (or a piece of one) so fast and continuously in my life.  Henry was so excited he fell in the lake.  I had to jump in to rescue him!

 Adrienne, Tim, Lily and Sam fishing Thursday night. The sky is hazed from the smoke coming down from the Canadian forest fires.

 Holding a fish was a big step for Lily.  She was stung by a wasp our first hour at the cabin this year.

Both Lily and Ruby were baiting all their hooks by the end of the week.

Sunday night through Wednesday afternoon us four girls were alone at the cabin.  We painted rocks, fished, made daisy headbands, drew pictures, peeled birch bark, shopped in Nisswa + a great antique junk store and we visited the beach. 

The girls and their mermaid fins.

July 2nd was Maddie's 28th birthday. We had a mexican fiesta with wonderful cupcakes Maddie baked and brought.

Happy Birthday Maddie!

Check out the "just Antiquing it" tab and the "schoolhouses" tab for more pictures of my trip.

And so it goes

I discovered a little park last summer that has some pretty neat gardens.  I've found myself there 3 times already this season.  I'm waiting for that amazing flower photoshoot....and oh Henry can run without a leash for a twenty minute visit.  Late June blooms...

I'm at it Again!

Recently a friend asked me, "how do you find all these school houses?" Well here's how I do it.

The first thing I do is decide on a County to visit.  I have both Minnesota and Wisconsin county maps on both of my computer desktops for easy access.

For my next find I decided Meeker County is a county I have not searched yet.  So the next thing I do is open my 1925 Historic Map of Meeker county found here.  Then I scan the map for the letters "sch" and a black square-looks like this:

When I find one, I start looking for an identifying body of water.  In this case Pigeon Lake.

On Google maps I locate the lake and go to "Earth" view.

See Pigeon Lake?  Red marker indicates the lake.  Now count the county roads under the lake. Until you see the T in the road.  The 1925 map indicates that the school house was/is at the T in the road.

 Zoomed in...yes! something is still there

My eye knows for sure that this school house is still standing.  From the looks of it probably a family home now.  Sometimes I can view in street view mode, in this case I cannot which means the Google camera car never drove down this road. Then I mark the school house on the Google map with a star and save this location so that whenever I access my map I can quickly find this school house again. 

 Here is a snapshot of a portion of my Google school house map.