Trips, Pics, and Tales

What a winter we've had so far!  Wait...it's not even officially winter yet!  The past couple of years in Southeastern, PA we've gotten pretty used to some fairly mild winters. Winters without snow!  As a matter of fact, my kids had started to believe we'd never even have snow again! All of that was actually fine by me! I'm a warm weather kind of person myself.  Give me sunshine and warm weather year round and I'm all set!  But this December has thrown my hopes of southern type winters in PA out the window!  In just a little more than one week, we've had snow every couple of days!   I'm pretty much over it by now - but the kids still love it!  Even though they're tween and teens now!  There's nothing like playing in the snow!  Making a snowman... Or a snow angel!   And as much as I can't stand that bone-chilling feeling when I walk outside, I do love to look out the window and see the beauty of the fresh fallen snow!

And now, back to 2010 and our trip to Costa Rica!  We just left off with our hike through the Waterfalls at The Peace Lodge.  Our next stop would be the Aviary! I thought this would be a favorite for my mom since she is a bird lover!  I had remembered the aviary as having so many birds, but when we walked in, they must have all been hiding- we didn't see any!  Hmmm...but almost immediately, one of the employees stopped my daughter, Megan, and asked her if she'd like to feed a Paca.  She was thrilled!  A paca looks sort of like a large guinea pig.  So both her and my son Alex got to feed the little guy some pellets through the cage while the guide told us about the pacas. Then the guide asked them if they wanted to feed the marmosets!  Well, of course!  So, he took us over to them and they were just adorable.  They would grab a piece of food with their hands and run off to eat it.  Sometimes they'd actually eat out of the kid's hands directly!   Next, the gu

A quick break in the Costa Rica trip to take a few minutes to come back to real time! Back to November 2013 and catch up for a minute.  Time is just flying by.  How can it already be the end of November?  As we take time to be Thankful for all that we have today and pause to spend the day with our families and friends and all that is great - hopefully time stood still for just a bit!  Sometimes it feels as though it goes all too fast! Part of what photography does for me is it allows me to capture those moments that just seem to speed by - those Moments in Time!  Last week we seemed to have some of the most beautiful sunsets.  I was lucky enough to be able to capture a few! So, while time stood still for just a few moments, and I was lucky enough to capture them....it's suddenly spinning again!  Tomorrow I'll likely be out shopping and we'll move from Thanksgiving to the whirlwind of the Christmas season!  After all - Sunday is the first day of December!

We woke up after a wonderful night's sleep.  I love sleeping in the cloud forest.  It gets all misty at night and the clouds settle in the valley.  Our Villa had a wonderful balcony, complete with its own hot tub, and sitting out there first thing in the morning, just listening to the birds was a peaceful way to start the day.  Each balcony has it's own hummingbird feeder.  The birds would stop by often to have a little drink as I sipped my morning coffee.   Today our plan is to start with the waterfall hike and then to visit the other exhibits on the property. When we checked in, we were told that the trails to the waterfalls were all now opened again after the earthquake, and that the waterfalls were back to being visible.  And I suppose if you've never been there before, you wouldn't know the difference.  But from what I remembered from our last visit, the trail was much shorter.  The starting point was different, and there were fewer falls to see.  But that being

Another fantastic opportunity that The Peace Lodge offers guests is a night tour of their Frog Habitat.  We had reservations and shortly after our hummingbird feeding experience we were ready to see what the frogs were all about! We met outside of the Frog Building and our guide was named John.  He was fantastic!  The frog area is divided into a couple of different rooms.  We began in the area with the tanks that held the poison dart frogs.  He took out one of these frogs and held it.  He told us all about these colorful frogs and allowed us to take some pictures.   After learning quite a bit about the different poison frogs, we moved onto the middle room.  We spent some time here.  Actually a baby green eyed tree frog jumped right onto Alex's neck!  He wasn't too thrilled and had no interest in touching a frog from that point on!  We did get to see some frog eggs on the bottom of leaves in this room.   And then we moved on to the highlight of the tour.  The third

One of the absolute highlights of our stay at The Peace Lodge in Costa Rica is getting to feed the Hummingbirds.  When you stay at The Peace Lodge you have access to La Paz Waterfall Gardens which is home to rescued wildlife, a butterfly garden, hiking trails to beautiful waterfalls and this wonderful Hummingbird Garden.  Twice a day you can visit the Hummingbird Garden and they allow visitors to hold these little red feeders.  There are seemingly hundreds of birds that will buzz all around and land right on the feeders in your hands!  If you like birds, or even if you didn't think you did, you probably will after this! Feeding the hummingbirds here is really a once in a lifetime experience! At first it can be a bit unnerving to have these little birds zipping right past you, but soon, before you know it, they will even land right on your fingers!  It's amazing really! We spent quite a bit of time out there, just enjoying the birds and relaxing.  After the stress o

It was time to leave Arenal and make the trip to our next destination, The Peace Lodge.  Our driver was right on time.  When he dropped us of earlier in the week he had reminded us that the ride was going to be longer than what we had remembered from our past trips due to the earthquake of 2009.  There was a lot of destruction in the areas we would be driving.  However, when he picked us up, he told us he was just informed that the road from San Miguel was just reopened that week!  If we wanted to give it a try we could!  It would save us a few hours.  Apparently the locals were tired of waiting for the government to fix the road, so they did it themselves....well, that should have been our first clue!  But we said, sure - if the road is fixed, and it's faster -why not!  Off we went! On our way we stopped at what is knows as the "Iguana Bridge". It's a nice break in the drive to stretch your legs and of course get some pictures!   The kids, especially Alex,

Ok!  Let's go back to 2010 and my last big adventure to Costa Rica with my parents and the kids!  I started blogging about this trip way back when and then somehow sort of got sidetracked!  But now let's get back to it!  This post is a bit of a summary of where I left off... I knew Costa Rica was someplace special the first time Keith and I visited in 2008, and this trip in 2010 was our third trip back.  It's not only a country with such diverse ecology, and amazing wildlife, but everyone you meet there makes you feel so welcome. We took a second trip with the kids in 2009, and then returned again in 2010 with my parents.  I couldn't wait to show them the beauty of this country!  I knew my mom would love the wildlife, especially the birds!  And my dad, he loves the outdoors!  This was a pretty adventurous vacation for them.  It was truly a multi-generational trip.   We started our trip with a few days in La Fortuna, Costa Rica.  The highlight here is the Arenal Volc

I'm definitely a summer time type of person.  Every year I look forward to the warm sunny days and start to dread the short dark days of winter as the kids go back to school and fall arrives.  However, one thing is for sure, fall is stunning!  As a photographer, I can't help but want to get outside and start shooting away with my camera!   Yesterday was one of those days!  Keith, the kids and I went to Hibernia Park and while they got some much needed outdoor time, away from all of the electronics, I got to capture some great Moments in Time!   We hiked along the trail to the Damn, the views there were beautiful.  Every once in awhile we'd pass another family, or someone walking a dog.  But for the most part, it was just us, alone.  It was so serene! Then we walked back along the trail to the what's called the Old Damn.   There are some remains of some old buildings along here, and most fun for Alex, a stream with lot