Day 68: Fountain/Heather

There are a ton of fountains in Portland. I probably could have spent hours walking around taking photographs of them all. But I have a hectic couple of weeks coming up and wanted to spend time today just relaxing. So I decided to shoot a fountain closer to home.

There is a popular walking trail along the Columbia River on the Vancouver side. I knew this water fountain was there from when I used that trail to try to take my horizon photo. (I actually got a really cool shot of the fountain that day). I decided to take Sammy with me. Charlie got to go on a lot of "bye byes in the car" when he was sick in July and Sammy didn't get to go. I decided he needed a "bye bye" of his own. I also joined a Meetup group for single dog lovers and wanted to get him out with people as I am considering taking him to an event on Friday.

I had a hard time deciding on my picture for today. I have several that show more of the fountain, but chose this one because I managed to press the button to turn on the flow of water, not get my finger in the shot, take the shot with one hand, keep hold of Sammy and have the shot turn out.

f8, Exp. 1/60, 18mm

Day 54: Attractions/Heather

I got a text from Selina last night asking if we could change the theme for today. She and her hubby are taking a kid-free mini vacation and she sent me a list of the things they were hoping to do today and asked if I could work with that. I told her my plans for today were going to work and paying bills so I would get back to her.

This morning I sent her a text suggesting "attractions" and said I'm sure Vancouver has at least one of those. I could have gone over to Portland and found any number of them but after living here since 2000 (except for a stint in Arizona from 2003-2005) there is still so much about my town I don't know. So I Googled "Vancouver, WA attractions" and the first thing to come up was Ft. Vancouver. I used that for "history." The second thing was Pearson Air Museum, which is not open on Mondays.

After going through the (very short) list, I settled on the Covington House. The house was built in approximately 1843. Mrs. Covington ran a boarding school (not clear if it was in the house) teaching the children of the Hudson's Bay employees and Mr. Covington ran their 640 acre farm. Their home became the center of hospitality and musical entertainment and they are credited with bringing the first piano to the NW. The house was moved downtown from it's original location in Orchards (a Vancouver "district"). I suspect the original location may be somewhere close to my house in the area where Covington Middle School is currently located.

It is not currently open to the public so I was not able to go inside.

f5.6, Exp. 1/125, 27mm