PICTURE POTPOURRI--

Geocaching takes us to some extraordinary places like this one Sue is enjoying near a geocache called Jonathan's Gully at an abandoned quarry on the north end of Kelly's Island.  Of the two major US touristy islands in Lake Erie, Kelley's is by far the most tranquil.  We spent a very enjoyable day there after Labor Day with the crowds gone until next season.

If you are noticing extremely vibrant colors in this photo--your eyes are okay.  Feeling a little whimsical while processing pictures in Photoshop sometimes has this effect on me.  This snappy color is largely the result of pushing saturation far above normal.  I spent a day before our Kelley's Island outing bicycling and geocaching the trail between Norwalk and Monroeville.  For this photo I am standing on an overlook created by the local Kiwanis group.

Sue Corbin, a square dancing friend of ours from Marion, OH, was inquiring about cell phone cameras at a recent wedding we had attended.  Later I was moved to try this hand-held available light photo with my Galaxy S3 phone.  It's hardly photo contest quality but is a fairly remarkable sample of the camera's capability under far less than normal shooting conditions.

Finally, Sue's grand daughter Mackenna Curtis-Collins glides around a hair-pin turn on the Ashland cross-country course while an exuberant grandma (behind her left shoulder) cheers her on.  Mackenna placed second in this recent race behind a teammate, already has helped hoist herself and her team into state rankings--all this and she is early in her sophomore year of high school.

There!  Geocaching, hiking, biking, square dancing, cross country race spectating, a little fussing with photography and the wedding of William and Amy Tenover all wrapped into our schedule of late summer activities.  Mercy!



  

 

THE MALABAR INN--
Very Disappointing!

Sue had never been to this acclaimed eating establishment so we decided to make that our stop for celebrating her birthday dinner in late August.

We will not make that mistake again.

It's 1850s, historical ambiance is marvelously restored into two modest sized dining rooms with an "L" shaped perimeter deck for outside dining under the not so adequate cover of table umbrellas.

Sue ordered a small salad ($5) with an entree of pasta in an Alfredo sauce and shrimp (about $20).  It was advertised with a bacon garnish which she asked to be withheld.  Our classy waiter assured her that would be done.

Seemingly in keeping with my hypothesis that "Mediocrity is today's standard of excellence,"  her meal with its not so generous (size or quantity of shrimp), arrived with a liberal garnishment of bacon.

Back it went for another try.

Meanwhile my beef filet ($27) was ordered, sans salad, cooked medium.  A warm, pink center, the waiter assured me.  It arrived as a very generous cut of meat but had absolutely no evidence of pink--anywhere.  Ditto for the juice like that of a steak cooked correctly.

It was a tender cut of meat but the flavor went the same place the cook hid the pink.

Naturally, waiting for her corrected meal left us eating in shifts, hardly conducive to our celebratory mood.  I chose not to send my steak back, having already lost any confidence my second steak would arrive any better than the first one.

We passed when the waiter did the obligatory advertisement for their dessert.  We already had touched the stove twice with both her meal and mine and didn't want to make that mistake a third time.