Back in the Game!

This past weekend Missy and I went on a three-day weekend road trip.  Back in late spring Missy was checking out some bed & breakfast inns and we stumbled across Charlie & Jane’s Bed & Breakfast in Mount Ayr, Iowa.  It looked quaint and cute, so I made a reservation.  Neither Missy or I had ever stayed at a bed & breakfast, so this would be a new experience for both of us.  It didn’t hurt that the rates were pretty much the same as a regular boring motel.  So we planned it for late October, hoping to catch some fall colors.

Long story short as far as that goes, we had a blast!  We got to see a lot of new sites and places.  It was very relaxing.  We even dipped down into Missouri and got a few shots.  Sunrises and sunsets, barns and round barns, autumn colors, nostalgia, a wide variety to be sure.  We didn’t have anything in particular in mind, except some autumn colors.  Stay tuned, my next several posts will probably be from this weekend and I will showcase several different themes.

The autumn colors were at the end of their vibrancy, so that was kind of hit-and-miss, but I did manage to get some good shots here and there.  I did a lot of 5-shot bracketing to increase my chances of pulling something out that is worthwhile.  This photo is an HDR, taken a couple miles east of Mount Ayr on State Hwy 2.  This is not an autumn color shot, per se, but I liked the misty feel, the sunrise not strictly defined but glowing through the mist, the lone tree, the cows, and the fence acting as a leading line pulling you back into the photo… back into the mist, to… who knows?

Missy and I are now a big fan of the bed & breakfast concept.  We’re thinking we’d like to do something like this at least once a year, preferably twice a year.  A new place each time, but occasionally go back to a previous place, too.  The bed & breakfast concept makes the whole trip much more… homey… for lack of a better word.