Monday walk…an odd walk

After an enjoyable and educational day with Marsha (AlwaysWrite), Jodie (Jodie’s Touch of Style), Jodie’s husband (and photographer), and Leslie, one of her models, Marsha and I planned a museum trip for Friday morning before I headed home. Dicovering the museum was closed (opening, naturally, the next day), we changed direction, heading for the IOOF cemetery. What’s that you might ask? I guessed it meant International Order of Odd Fellows. Almost. The “I” stands for “Independent” rather than “International.” But cemetery it was either way and I do enjoy browsing through cemeteries, especially older ones where there are interesting headstones. Here are a few that caught my eye.

I’d guess that Petra was Catholic as this is a very Catholic headstone. You’ll see more of this type of presentation in European cemeteries.

I found H.C. Tyler’s stone intriguing. Was it made this way or did some part break off? Perhaps H.C. was a lover of rocks and stones. OK, probably not but you have to admit it’s not the usual, either in stone or lettering.

Marsha warned me that the cemetery wasn’t well-kept and unfortunately, she was right. Here’s an excellent example of that. Someone spent a lot of money on a beautiful mosaic remembrance and not only was it breaking up, it was covered with branches and dead leaves.

You can see from the inscription and the choice of a headstone that wasn’t the usual bland stone that Allie was indeed beloved.

As we walked back to the parking area, a small grave caught my eye. Even though it looks big here, it was at most a yard in length, not very wide, and almost hidden by bushes and the tree. Reading the inscription (following photo) tugged at my heart.

How difficult to buy a son less than two when he passed away! We have an almost 10-month old grandson now and I can’t imagine the grief we and his parents would feel were this to happen. If you have children or grandchildren, give them a hug if you can, send a text filled with love, call to tell them your love them, and thank God that you can.

We didn’t have a dessert after this but we did have an excellent lunch with Marsha’s husband, after which I drove back home. It had been a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. We were missing a couple of blogging friends, Lisa from Micro of the Macro and Donna of Wind Kisses. I did however have coffee and lunch with Donna on my way up, always a wonderful time.

Jo’s Monday Walk 1.16.23

Bloggers on horseback

This has been quite the year for blogger meet-ups and the tradition continued in Wyoming not many weeks ago. During the course of a conversation with Deborah of Circadianreflections about my upcoming trip to Wyoming, I mentioned that my husband wouldn’t be coming. She said, “So you have to go alone”, (which is something I don’t mind at all although it’s better when my husband can come too) and I replied, “Yes, unless you want to come out.” And that’s what happened.p, setting up another in-person first meeting with a fellow blogger.

Deborah seems to know almost every flower, bird, and butterfly as well as a LOT about photography. I struggled to learn a bit more about getting off Auto on my camera even though she tried hard to teach me. We even went out one of the last nights to get some shots of the Milky Way. Imagine us with our little headlamps (red so we can see a bit but not destroy our night vision, white for problem situations), trudging around on a somewhat steep bit of land not far below one of the cabins carrying our cameras on tripods, Hopi g not to meet any moose. I told her that if the occupants looked out, they might think aliens had landed. But we survived and once I upload my camera photos, I’ll see if my shots are good enough to share. Yes, Deborah, I still haven’t gotten that done but to be fair, I’ve been doing a lot of work on house, yard, and my Dad’s estate since I got back, and his memorial service was just this last Saturday.

My sole expertise was horseback riding so thankfully I was able not to feel completely incompetent. 🙂 We had some excellent rides, saw and photographed lots of wildlife and flowers, and had fun exploring Sheridan, having coffee and lunch and doing some buying. Here we are, ready to ride, yours truly on the left, Deborah on the right.