Nikki's Photography

The Long Beach, Washington Kite Museum holds an annual Kite Festival. This year, turn-out was minimal due to extreme winds and temperatures.

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Idaho Ram’s head sculpture, most likely for a parade float.

Paroisse Saint-Arsène, Rue Bélanger, Montréal, Quebec

Brooklyn, Iowa, USA with grain silos right on main street. Open, blue skies and corn fields, driving east from Oregon US to Ontario, Canada. Too many large IHOP and McDonalds billboards in the fields though, disrupting the otherwise gorgeous scenery.

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Li’l Hefner at Seaside, Oregon

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…Heaven’s in our hearts…
Excerpt from “Heaven’s Here On Earth” by Tracy Chapman from her CD, “New Beginnings”:
Heaven’s here on earth
in our faith in humankind
in our respect for what is earthly
in our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding.
I’ve seen and met angels wearing the disguise of ordinary people leading ordinary lives,
filled with love compassion forgiveness and sacrifice.
Heaven’s in our hearts.

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Left: Children watch on as snake-wranglers demonstrate various tricks goading the rattlesnakes. Fangs have broken the balloons, foreground, during demonstrations at the annual Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas. The Texan cultural tradition, both horrifying and curiously fascinating, takes place during Springtime every March, when thousands of rattlesnakes are competitively captured each year and placed in pits inside the local arena, with wrangling demonstrations, milking, skinning, tables of bizarre crafts, the sale of deep-fried rattlesnake, and even a meat-eating contest involving Miss Roundup’s participation. Next photo: Individuality – each snake has its own unique markings and colors.

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Now that we are moving from Texas and may never live there again, I’m so glad we went. View more photos posted on March 15th 2009, the initial post of Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater TX.

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Small mock inuksuit are built by travellers and displayed on the rocky edges beside Hwy 17 in Eastern Ontario, particularly west of North Bay. Those in the shape of human forms are “inunnguaq”, historically built by the Inuit to help herd cariboo. I built one of my own too, but it’s not as easy as it looks! Next, Lichen amass on shoreline rocks along Lake Superior, Ontario, the largest freshwater lake in the world.

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Vegreville, Alberta, cnada boasts the largest Easter egg, or Ukrainian Pysanka, in the world. The work by Paul Maxum Sembaliuk is 31 ft (9 m) long and three and a half stories high. Vegreville, Alberta is noted for its high Ukrainian Canadian population.

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Theme displays with antiques and creepy maniquins, Rowley, Alberta Museum. I almost feel bad about laughing because the people who have created these displays are quite serious about bringing the town back to life, and they hope to put it on the map as a tourist destination. The amateurishly displayed decor is part of the ambiance and curious charm of the place. Rowley is now a ghost town, and was a shoot site for the films “Legends of the Fall” and “The Magic of Ordinary Days” in addition to “Bye Bye Blues”.

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Canola fields by the North Saskatchewan River, Petrofka Bridge and Doukhobor land. The Doukhobors were Russian immigrants moving to Saskatchewan and the Canadian prairies during the latter part of the 20th century and the early 1900s. To escape the harsh winter they lived in dugouts built partially underground.

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