To the MOON Alice!!! An Historic Day...

I will update on my cardiologist appointment in my next post...thanks for all the well wishes!!!


I have a couple of thoughts...July 20, 1969...do you remember what you were doing?  [If you were around then, that is]  ...and, As Jackie Gleason portrayed Ralph Kramden along with is costar, his character wife, Alice,  on an old TV program...as in OLD....before there were color TVs even!...The program was called The Honeymooners...when he'd get upset with her he'd say:  "One of these days, Alice...one of these days...to the MOON!"  Or something on those lines.  But, the subject of the moon will come in a bit.  For now, I begin with:

Counting my steps with my cellphone app, I reached nearly 9000 steps on another seawall trek...I'm not doing the usual distance walking like I do in the winter months...as I've stated before, it's just too humid to walk. Especially when you're downtown, with highrises, asphalt, and heavy traffic holding in the heat around the area. But, I guess I am doing pretty good, considering. I stopped in a few places to take photos. Sometimes along the walkway butted right up against the seawall, other times, I crossed the one way traffic lanes to walk in the shaded parts of the median that separates the flow of vehicles. There is really no rhyme or reason to the sequence today with my walk downtown, but brief explanations will show up here and there...

parkway lamp post with a masked bandit [loggerhead shrike] & a juvenile grackle


The shrike and another parkway lamp post


the same juvenile grackle and scaffolding surrounding the church & steeple.  Can you see the bronze statue at ground level in front of the church?

a closeup of the bronze statue of Christ protecting 'all sailors and ocean travelers'...a long distance sighting of the church steeple.

A rain-made pond [normally just grass, but with all the heavy rains!!]   And a new bronze statue of a couple enjoying the view of the Gulf of Mexico along the parkway [near the art center]

Building of new yacht tie-docks [piers] & a lone man contemplating life as he enjoys the sea...

...an old rugged cross along a breakwater in the bay, then...the same juvenile grackle calling mama 'cause some lady is bugging it and a threat to a peaceful morning!!

So, with the full moon on the 1st of the July, and it being clear skies [well, partially; there was a haze early in the morning, but the camera filtered through it], I tried out my new camera without a tripod again. I adjusted to black and white setting then snapped a few images.  I tried to hold the camera as steady as I could and hoped for the best!! At first I stood beside a tree in our back yard where my first image below shows some of the leaves/branch silhouetted on the moon glow... then, I moved away, snapped, zoomed a bit...snapped again, and zoomed fully.

...a few days later, I went back out in hopes of 'catching' a glimpse of some of the unique terrain created by Earth's shadow; this time 'round no black and white setting, just straight long distance shots [again, hand held with no tripod]:

46 years ago, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 touched down on the moon.  Neil Armstrong accomplished another first. With the immortal words, 'That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind'. Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the moon's surface. The two of them spent the next two and half hours exploring, taking pictures, and collecting samples...Before they took off back to Earth, Apollo 11 left evidence of their rendezvous in outer space. Besides Armstrong’s first footprint in the moon dust, the astronauts also planted a three foot by five foot nylon American flag mounted on a pole into the ground. But even with the extreme zoomed lens, I still can't find the American Flag on the moon's surface?!!! [insert wink] And there is supposedly no atmosphere on the moon, so it shouldn't be rotted...still there? Or did they EVEN LAND on the moon? Some believe it was a hoax. I'd like to think there is an American flag up there....somewhere. I'll keep searching.