A cast iron staircase spirals up a tower to a catwalk around the top of this tower, offering great views in all directions. Most of the lighthouse interiors are open to the public, charging a small fee to climb the towers. My favorite lighthouses are all different.  Of the 700 lighthouses in the United States, 225 of them are scattered around the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan has almost a hundred. Many are unseen, offshore, sitting on dangerous rocks and marking narrow passages where strong currents flow. Many have been closed by the Coast Guard and replaced with modern, automated, high-intensity beacons and GPS-based navigation aids. Some of these historic towers and keepers homes have been purchased from the government with private donations. Volunteers have restored and maintained many of these historic sites. Keepers’ homes have been restored with authentic furnishings. Some of the light towers have their original lamps and their Fresnel lenses, works of art in glass and brass. This is the northernmost light house on Lake Michigan.

My favorite 18 lighthouses, all the way around Lake Michigan with photos and details on shooting them  in #135.

I drove as far north as Opheim and then turned east on Montana’s Route 248, Montana’s longest paved east and west road this close to the Canadian border. I discovered several more railroad spurs, some abandoned and some still being used. Grain elevators are scattered all along the road extending all the way east to North Dakota. Seven miles east of Scobey, I spotted two grain elevators in the distance–the abandoned relics of an old town called Madoc, where older wooden elevators were easy to approach on a paved road. Faded red paint on one of them added an interesting contrast to the surrounding green fields. The road loops around the red elevator and crosses the tracks. An old RR Crossing sign adds an authentic touch to the elevators in the background. Montana’s Hi-Line country is dotted with abandoned farmhouses and villages.

My newsletter #119 contains my favorites.

Located high in the hills on the west side of Portland, just west of the Japanese Garden, is the Hoyt Arboretum. The former site of the Multnomah County Poor Farm is now an outdoor tree museum. Established in 1931 as the home of the largest collection of conifers in the world and spread across 175 acres, the arboretum has over 800 labeled species clustered among the remaining native trees in ten separate groups. Find the specific type of tree you would like to photograph–coast redwoods, giant sequoias, bald cypress, larch, Himalayan birch, ginkgo, bristlecone pines, magnolias and bamboo–on their map. Then follow the trails through dense groves of tall trees that do not naturally grow this far north, like bald cypress that normally grow in southern swamps. These are fully grown, mature trees that look like they have always been here. Small labels identify the different varieties without spoiling your photography. At the bottom of the canyon, the Redwood Trail crosses a small stream and turns to climb the other slope. At that point, a very large cedar clings to a steep hillside above the stream. Its roots have created a pattern covering the hillside, exposed by winter floods pouring down the canyon. I photographed the diagonal lines of roots as both horizontal and vertical images.

My newsletter #124 covers many more trees and flowers plus some of my favorite photo spots in Portland.

St. Augustine Florida has an alligator farm a mile north of town, up Highway A1A. The St. Augustine Alligator Farm was established 110 years ago. It’s open from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and the admission fee was reasonable with the 20% off discount coupon I had printed from their web site at www.alligatorfarm.com. I got my hand stamped for a return visit later in the day. Except for a lunch break, I was there all day. Out behind the main area of the farm is a large pond crossed by a raised boardwalk. Many large alligators live in the pond and protect the wading bird rookery from predators, raccoons trying to steal the bird’s eggs. Large trees around the pond are filled with many nests. All the nests were filled with blue eggs in mid-March. Hundreds of snowy egrets and a few wood storks were busy repairing nests and sitting on eggs. In a few months, the trees would be filled with chicks. Sandhill cranes, ibis, herons, and other small birds are continually flying out to the nearby salt marshes for food and returning with twigs for their nests. Male snowy egrets were dancing in the treetops and preening their feathers, many were fighting over the best twigs.

If you plan to visit Florida, check out my Issue #78 Florida Wildlife Refuges.

I packed up my gear an hour before sunrise and drove east from Alturas, across the Surprise Valley and into Nevada. A few hundred feet up the foothills, I had a better view of the Surprise Valley and most of California’s Warner Range covered with snow. Every few minutes, the sun would pop out between the clouds and light up parts of the valley, distant barns and groves of tall poplars. Nine miles east of Cedarville, I spotted an old windmill in the distance. I pulled off the paved road and headed cross-country on the dry lakebed. A cold wind was blowing. The blades on the old Aermotor windmill were stationary. I waited for the perfect light on this scene, maybe a spotlight through the clouds, but the sky did not cooperate. After a thirty-minute wait, I walked around the windmill and photographed it from the other side.

Issue #128 contains information about the seldom-visited northeastern corner of California.