angela schwartz photography: June 2007

Yesterday I had the pleasure of photographing a perfect dog in the making. What is a perfect dog? A dog that meets all of the critieria needed to become a guide dog. It starts with careful breeding and hand selection with a series of tests and eliminations. Once a pup has been given the ok to proceed he finds himself sent off to a volunteer host family. This family provides constinuous specific training over the next 18 months in a controlled and pre-approved environment. No rough-housing games for this pup. Always kept on a lead, this future leader must learn to be calm under chaos and follow a routine flawlessly and be a perfect citizen when in public places such as stores, riding on airplanes, and visiting restaurants. A few years of strict training will produce a perfect guide dog or maybe a perfect career change dog (as is what they call it when the dog fails to graduate). Nevertheless, guide dog or career change, these dogs are perfect in every way.

What a gift - the gift of sight.

What a tragedy it must be to lose and be without.

What a gift - a perfectly loveable pair of eyes to see in your stead - a guide dog.

What a gift - the families that train and love these dogs only to say goodbye to them a short 18-months later.

"Pup - P"

June 13-21st 2007
Our cross country drive from Maine to Washington State took us 9 days and over 3400 miles. We drove through 15 states visiting Niagara Falls in NY, Laura Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, SD, Walls Drug in Walls, SD, Mt. Rushmore in Keystone, SD, Stergis, SD, and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. We drove through many towns and cities too.

The United States is a truly beautiful place with rolling hills, sweeping valleys, majestic mountain peaks and wonderful culture. We enjoyed recognizing the uniqueness of each state as we passed through them. We have high hopes to visit several of these states again for a longer vacation.

First sight-seeing stop - the Niagara Falls - on the US side in NY. We drove from Maine to Portsmouth, NH, through Vermont and then into NY. Beautiful countryside was had by all. Wonderful vineyards could be seen for miles in northern NY! And of course the wonderful east coast architecture can be seen throughout all of these states. It was hard to get farther and farther away from the coast and as we left NY we also left the New England landscape behind us. Here we see the Niagara Falls light up in rainbow lights at night. We arrived around 10pm with tired eyes and hearts leaping with excitement as we stood and took in this view. I was very excited to try my hand at a night shot on a tripod. It took nearly a minute for this shot to complete and we at one time had a couple walk infront of the camera while in shoot and low and behold at these slow shutter speeds they didn't show up in the picture - the famous ghost effect! We joked about them being vampires and not showing up in pictures. Ha. Fun.

The main walkway approaching the heads of Mt. Rushmore. The flags and archways leading to the heads really give it a presidential feel.

The four presidents faces of Mt. Rushmore - George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Rosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

The kiddos sidding at a view point with the Mt. Rushmore faces in the background. Did I mention it was high noon and sunny? =)

Here is our U-haul as we make our way up the winding hillside to go visit Mt. Rushmore. I shot this pic from my trailing vehicle. Notice Mt. Rushmore in the nearby mountainside - just below my signature/watermark!

The countryside of South Dakota! Beautiful!

The girls at Walls, SD. Grama wanted to see Walls Drug and to our surprise and a delight an entire western themed town has erupted from this well known medical company. It was a fun place to vist! Lots to do and see.

Walls had many covered wagon rides of all sorts. This one the kids enjoyed. Pay the fee of a quarter or two and off they galloped.

We drove in and made a quick stop at the Harley Davidson store in Sturgis, SD! This was a mural on the side of the store. Cool huh!

Here's the guys in a covered wagon at the Laura Ingalls Homestead museum. I was practicing some framing shots for class this week and submitted this shot.

Here are the kiddos making corn husk dolls and using this special original machine that removes all the corn from the cob. The kids learned first hand how a this was done and enjoyed the hands on process.

Of course visiting the homestead wouldn't be complete without horses and covered wagons. And we were not disappointed. Here's the team of percherons (7 years old each) that pulled our wagon to the schoolhouse just down the way from the gift shop. Aren't they beautiful! We want one now. HA! Off in the horizon you can see the homestead right by the horses head (coming out of it's head..oppss).

Here's the team, being driven by our son and daughter and the handler (they loved that!), going to the schoolhouse. It was a small house that is an original from the time period but not the schoolhouse that Laura went too as that one burnt down in a fire sometime ago. This house was nearby and of the same age so they moved it to this property for visitors and education. Laura apparently walked 3 miles to her school so it wasn't this close. Once there a local retired teacher did a pretend school session having us sing songs and read a poem. Our daughter was invited to put on a bonet and apron and lead the group in song. It was fun to see and be a student in a desk at such a small school.

Here is a replica homestead representing one of the homes that Charles built. It's 480 sq ft. on the inside! It has four rooms, no loft. Apparently he built one room first (180 sq ft I believe) and then added more rooms as the family required. Inside the house is an organ/piano that is very similar to the one that Mary played after she was blind. Once in the house we were shown some time pieces or houseware that they would've used. A gal showed the kids how to make button toys (string and a button) and also how they decorated their shelves with heart cutout papers lining the shelf tops. On the backside of the house was the washing machine (a scrub board) and a clothes squeezer (not sure of the actual term for this machine) and a clothes line. Here we learned how clothes washing was done back in the day. The house has no insulation and the boards you see on the outside is what is also on the inside with some framing boards too. There is very little protection from the elements and there are many gaps in the boards letting light and even the constant prairie wind inside! It's a wonder they could even stay warm in the brutal winters of South Dakota. One of the homestead workers, a young woman, is working the garden that is a replica of what the Ingalls family might have had by the homestead. She is dressed in time period attire.

Our daughter posed for me in the purple flowers beside the homestead and she wasn't very happy about it. She wanted to be off doing the crafts. Evenso, she loves flowers and these were so pretty I just had to have her with them. I like this shot because it shows you a little of the laundry section in the back of the house. And also the view of the prairie they would see in their backyard.

The kids wanted a ride in the pony driven wagon. A young boy drove them around the field and they were thrilled.

A visit through Wyoming, home of wild horses, was a horse lover's paradise. Fields and fields of horses, most domesticated of course. Apparently most of the wild herds are located in the SW part of Wyoming and here I spoted this domestic family on our way to Sheridan, WY (NE). Many paint coats can be seen along the drive through the endless sea of wavy fields. You can almost feel the Indian's present. Driving through SD and into Wyoming we fought the constant winds. Here this family faces it head on. Locals use the wind for energy and it is often seen these large windmills twirling in the wind. Wyoming has a large wild horse population that they manage by horse auctions several times a year. Good thing for us they had done the auction near our town of overnighting two weeks prior to our stay. =)

Yellowstone. Here we view a geiser by a river and smell the sulfur air and soak up the sun rays. The ground beside it had a white clay that resembles sand. Just a beautiful place! As we first entered the park we spied a Bison! What excitement it was considering it was not 10 feet from our vehicle!

Here is the rich color of the bacteria from the hot spots near the geisers. I loved the rich colors and the steam that rised off the water.

The line-up and wait for the great spew of Old Faithful. Though it is always steaming it only spews a tall stream of steam every 1 and 1/2 hours. Quite the crowd is attracted to this spectacular site.