I came upon these gorgeous tiger lilies while biking Madison’s southwest bike trail yesterday.

As you can see, many of the people who live along the trail do a great job with their flower gardens.

Smokies update:
Thanks to Dad, I’ve added one more picture to the photos of our trip.

Pictured here are four Bloy cousins. From left to right: James Bloy, Wilmer Bloy, Janette McCormick (née Bloy) and Ruth Zeppelin (née Bloy).

Unfortunately, there are no shots of the two of us together.
We should have taken a few of those.

Update: July 26, 2008
Today Dad and I exchanged pictures of our trip. He took this nicely composed shot of me with his camera.

At first I was disappointed in the change of weather, but then I saw familiar scenes made beautiful in a different way.

In some places, the clouds seemed so close you could almost touch them.

The park also has a lot of mountain creeks running through it.

In some places, the rhododendron petals on the ground were pretty thick. From a distance, they almost looked like snow.

We came across the below scene after a short rain storm. You can see in the distance how heavy the humidity was.

It’s hard to see (a little easier if you enlarge the picture) but there are white rhododendron blossoms along the whole length of the above creek.

At one stop, we were gawking and taking pictures of a roadside creek. When we turned around to go back to the car, we discovered this small waterfall on the other side of the road.

At Newfound Gap (above) the blue smoke (actually haze caused by moisture and organic compounds from the lush vegetation) was very apparent.

The views at Morton Overlook (above and below) were probably the most spectacular I saw at the park.

The hiking trail to the top of Clingmans Dome, the highest spot in the Smokies, also offered awe inspiring views (below). Unfortunately, the higher I got, the more the haze prevented me from taking decent photographs.

Sometimes though, it’s good to put the camera down and just look.

Even when the mountainsides were fairly close, such as the Chimney Tops (below) the haze was very noticeable.

When you drive through the park, it’s difficult to keep your eyes on the road as scenic views emerge.

Our destination for the first day was Cades Cove, a valley surrounded by the mountains.

We were there on a Sunday, with a lot of other tourists.

As you drive through the Smokies, there are countless scenic views along the roadway, like Meigs Falls below.

Orchestra Baobab sings in their native languages (Wolof? Mandinka? and some French) and I’m sure most of us in the audience didn’t have a clue what they were singing about. But that didn’t matter with the easy going groove their music had.

Each song seemed to go on forever as Orchestra Baobab laid down a groove, and kept it going. Between the verses the band would go into lengthy jam sessions, highlighting the musicians’ abilities. The lead guitarist and saxophone player were especially impressive. During one song, the two of them engaged in a delicious musical conversation with each answering the other’s riffs. Even though the songs seemed to go on forever, the music was so good during the two-hour concert (not counting the 15 minute intermission), the evening just flew by for me.

There was one oddity about the show. Throughout the evening audience members near the stage kept handing dollar bills to the band. I have never witnessed tipping at a venue like this before. Sure in a small club, a singer (or band) might have a tip jar, but tipping the band at a theatre-sized venue like the Barrymore? I wondered if this kind of tipping was common where Orchestra Baobab comes from.

I started out this post saying the show was almost perfect for a beautiful summer evening. What would have made it perfect? To hear them outside with a cool summer breeze blowing. I guess the closest we could come last night were the faux stars, twinkling on the theatre ceiling.

Life-changing books are not just your favorite books… but books that altered your behavior, changed your mind, redirected the course of your life. Books as levers.

An interesting question worthy of pondering. Here are mine.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams’ wonderful novel (and subsequent sequels) became popular during my college years, when reading for me turned into a chore. It was hard to read just for fun — it was something I HAD to do to get good grades. The Hitchhiker’s Guide changed all that. It was the first book that made me laugh out loud. In addition to the humor, Adams includes many poignant life philosophies as well.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
by Dee Brown
Reading the tragic history of the American Indian, told from their viewpoint, first sparked my interest in Native American culture.

John Hedgecoe’s Complete Photography Course
by John Hedgecoe
I bought my first single-lens reflex camera (a Fujica) when I was in high school. Soon after I got it, friends of my parents (Eric and Doreen) visited my family and gave me this book. It opened up the world of photography for me, teaching me concepts such as depth-of-field, composition, aperture, shutter speeds, ISO, etc. This particular book is long out of print, but Hedgecoe has many others, including some specifically on digital photography. Highly recommended.

Tales of Known Space
by Larry Niven
This collection of short stories was one of the first science fiction books I read. After reading Niven’s thought provoking writing, science fiction titles were the only ones on my book shelves for quite a while.

Cascading Style Sheets: Designing for the Web
by Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos
This book was required reading for a class I was taking in the Web Developers Certificate Program at Marquette University. It showed me the simple yet complex beauty of CSS and designing for the web, and solidified my interest in web development work.

The Black Stallion
by Walter Farley
Farley’s Black Stallion series were outstanding adventure stories for a boy in junior high school to read. I remember spending hours with my friends pretending we were in the stories. They were probably the first books I read that made me really enjoy reading.